I was senior producer for the podcast Who We Are, a limited series narrative podcast about the racism baked into the United States legislative system. It was hosted by Carvell Wallace, produced by Cosmic Standard, and distributed by Vox in partnership with Ben & Jerry’s and the ACLU. I was lead producer on four of the original six episodes (and make a surprise voiceover cameo in episode 4).
WWA was… a lot, to be making during a pandemic and in the midst of historic protests following George Floyd’s murder. It involved mailing guests multi-piece audio kits, me and the technical director engineering and producing on the back end behind muted, camera-off Zoom squares, Carvell surrounded by coats in a closet, and Jeff with a giant comforter over a Murphy bed in his office to muffle sound.
And the uprising haunted everything. This monologue was one of many things that woke me up in the middle of the night that July.
Episode one set the stage and determined the stakes, through the lens of the first American slave ships: the Desire, Prosperity, Fortune, and Hope. It features ACLU Legal Deputy Director and attorney Jeffery Robinson.
Proudest moment: commissioning a new poem by Boston poet laureate Porsha Olayiwola. Full title:
“I Cannot Wade Through The Past Without Waking The Dead.
I Cannot Weigh Wailing,
Summoning The History
As The Present Of This Country Is Homing The Haunting
Honing The Howls
The Clang Of Cuffs
Calling Chains A Lineage”
Episode three is about Black bodies on the line, on the block and in the streets. It’s built around the third stanza of “The Star Spangled Banner” - the one they don’t teach in schools anymore.
That stanza was written after Francis Scott Key watched the formerly enslaved Colonial Marines, fighting with the British, drive American soldiers back into the White House and set it on fire. At the time, that was the last major offensive on a United States seat of government. I have been wanting to remake this episode since January 6th, 2021.
In addition to Jeff, it features Minneapolis activist Miski Noor of Black Visions Collective and Wellesley’s transcendent Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson. Here’s Kellie, pointing out that while some current portrayals of the Civil Rights movement portray Dr. Martin Luther King as Jesus’ little brother [her quote; I cackled on mute], the struggle for freedom holds an inherent violence.
This episode has a lot of me in it, that first monologue most prominently. But Sandra Lawson-Ndu of Bells Atlas also sang this haunting rendition of that third stanza, which still plays in my head long after this has podcast ended.
“And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.”
Episode five is on how we arrive in this world.
An episode like this cannot help but speak to intergenerational trauma. But just as I wanted to find love in resistance in episode three, it was hugely important to me to find joy and sacredness in birth. The episode features gynecologist and maternal health advocate Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, as well as SéSé Doula Services founder Nicole JeanBaptiste.
There was a time, points out Dr. Joia, when the economic engine of America was Black women’s uteruses. That’s the past she and Nicole are fighting against to transform the future.
Episode six brings us up to the 1992 Crime Bill. (It’s also the episode where my pre-interview, surprisingly, snuck its way into the final cut.) It seeks to draw the series together, and in so doing to look forward. Like the Mississippi itself, the episode runs through Memphis - Jeffery’s hometown. He speaks of the way collateral consequences haunt people long after their release from prison, and the way carceral facilities themselves haunt the American landscape.
Memphis is not just Jeff’s hometown. It’s also the birthplace of Afrofuturist Sheree Renee Thomas - and what she calls “Mississippi Delta genius culture.” One thing I try to do in all my work, from news to audio essay, is to let artists lead the story. Grateful to Sheree for naming white supremacy for the pathology that it is, and helping dream new worlds into existence.
For a history podcast, this show leans forever and relentlessly forward. There’s an Akan concept I wrote into the first episode called sankofa. You may have seen the symbol: a duck with its neck curved back over its shoulder. It’s not unique to Ghanaian culture: the idea that only by looking at what’s behind you, and seeing it clearly, can you move into the future.