Intersectionality Matters!

In the second episode in our new conversation series, “Under the Blacklight: The Intersectional Vulnerabilities that COVID Lays Bare” (originally aired over Zoom April 1st), five incredible change-makers join host Kimberlé Crenshaw for a conversation about building collective resistance and power in the time of COVID-19. Saru Jayaraman and Mily Treviño-Sauceda illuminate the impact of the current crisis on workers in the restaurant and agriculture industries; Naomi Klein explains how governments around the world are using this disastrous moment to push through legislation that would otherwise be roundly dismissed as dangerously authoritarian; Dara Baldwin talks about the dehumanizing and ableist rationing programs being advanced in states like Alabama, Kansas, and Washington; and Janine Jackson critiques, among other things, the corporate media’s “lives v. livelihood” framing that has dominated news cycles in recent weeks. In the coming weeks, we'll continue hosting live events that bring together artists, activists, thought leaders, scholars, service-providers and others on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19. Each Wednesday we’ll bring you a virtual conversation over Zoom, which will be released as an episode of Intersectionality Matters! the following week. With: Dara Baldwin — Director of National Policy, Center for Disability Rights Janine Jackson — Program Director, Producer & Host of FAIR Saru Jayaraman — President, One Fair Wage; Co-Founder, ROC United Naomi Klein — Gloria Steinem Chair for Media, Culture and Feminist Studies, Rutgers University; author of The Shock Doctrine Mily Treviño-Sauceda — Vice President and Co-Director, Alianza Nacional de Campesinas Hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw (@sandylocks) Produced and Edited by Julia Sharpe-Levine 
Additional support provided by Andrew Sun, Emmett O’Malley, Michael Kramer, Janeen Irving
 Music by Blue Dot Sessions Follow us at @intersectionalitymatters, @IMKC_podcast

On this episode of Intersectionality Matters, Kimberle Crenshaw is joined by two timely voices -- Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, and J.R. Fleming, Executive Director of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign -- to discuss how ageism, and its varying intersections with race, class, ability, and gender, is materializing in the fight against COVID-19. Kimberlé Crenshaw: @sandylocks, @kimberlecrenshaw Ashton Applewhite: @thischairrocks Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign: @chiantieviction Intersectionality Matters Podcast: @IMKC_podcast, @intersectionalitymatters Produced and Edited by Julia Sharpe-Levine Additional support provided by Andrew Sun, Emmett O’Malley, Michael Kramer, Janeen Irving Music by Blue Dot Sessions ~~ Read more about polling in Chicago low-income senior housing : https://theintercept.com/2020/03/18/illinois-polling-locations-low-income-seniors/ This Chair Rocks Blog: https://thischairrocks.com/blog/

The past several weeks have prompted unprecedented levels of turmoil and unpredictability due to rising alarm over COVID-19. While American society has taken precautionary measures to counter the spread of the virus, those most vulnerable to societal neglect remain most impacted. Coronavirus did not create the stark social, financial, and political inequalities that define life for so many Americans, but it has made them more strikingly visible than any moment in recent history. Unfortunately, some of the intersectional dimensions of these structural disparities remain undetected and unreported. On Wednesday March 25th, Intersectionality Matters teamed up with the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) to premiere a new virtual conversation series entitled “Under the Blacklight: The Intersectional Vulnerabilities that COVID Lays Bare”. On this episode, you’ll hear a condensed version of that conversation, which featured six incredible speakers and drew an audience of 1,300 people over Zoom. In the coming weeks, we'll continue hosting live events that bring together artists, activists, thought leaders, scholars, service-providers and others on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19. Each Wednesday we’ll bring you a virtual conversation over Zoom, which will be released as an episode of Intersectionality Matters! the following week. With: Eve Ensler — Tony award winning playwright, performer and activist; Founder of V-Day and One Billion Rising Laura Flanders — Author and broadcaster; Founder of GRITtv and host of the Laura Flanders Show Eddie S. Glaude Jr. — Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University Ai-jen Poo — Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance Dorothy Roberts — Professor of Law and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania Alvin Starks — Director, Equality Team, Open Society Foundations Music by Blue Dot Sessions Produced and Edited by Julia Sharpe-Levine Additional support provided by Andrew Sun, Emmett O’Malley, Michael Kramer, Alanna Kane, Janeen Irving Twitter: @IMKC_podcast, IG: @IntersectionalityMatters, Fb: Intersectionality Matters with Kimberlé Crenshaw #IntersectionalityMatters

There's a natural boom among women of African descent. Kinky, curly and coily hairstyles have joined cornrows, locks and twists as just a few of the looks that Black women, girls and femmes are rocking confidently and unapologetically. This Black hair renaissance is reshaping what we see in fashion magazines, on television, in classrooms, and even in boardrooms. But constant vigilance is the price of freedom, with the exception of new legislation in California and New York, it remains true that anti-discrimination laws nation-wide do virtually nothing to protect Black people from getting fired, suspended, and otherwise disciplined for wearing their natural hair. In 2012, Vanessa Van Dyke was threatened with expulsion by her Florida middle school unless she “tamed” her natural hair. Tiana Parker was told by her school that her dreadlocks were faddish and unacceptable. In 2013, Melphine Evans, a top executive at British Petroleum, says she was fired for wearing braids and dashikis to work. And in 2016, Chastity Jones lost her case against an employer who withdrew her job offer for refusing to cut off her natural locs. On this special episode of Intersectionality Matters, Kimberlé Crenshaw dishes with Mixed-ish star and PATTERN founder Tracee Ellis Ross on their respective journeys towards loving their own natural hair, aesthetic freedom, and how the current convulsive political moment is expanding the social justice imaginary. We also hear from award-winning journalist Brittany Noble Jones about her personal experience with hair discrimination in the workplace and modeling self-love for the next generation. Tune in for an inspiring look at Black women’s tireless advocacy for life, liberty and the pursuit of nappyness. Hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw (@sandylocks) Produced and Edited by Julia Sharpe Levine Recorded by Julia Sharpe-Levine and Susan Valot Music by Blue Dot Sessions With: Tracee Ellis Ross, (@traceeellisross), Brittany Noble Jones (@noblejonesontv) Pattern Beauty: @PatternBeauty Intersectionality Matters: ig: @intersectionalitymatters, twitter: @IMKC_podcast Additional support from G'Ra Asim, Michael Kramer, Emmett O'Malley, Zoe Bush, Andrew Sun

December 14th, 2019 marks the fifth anniversary of the Say Her Name campaign, a movement founded to raise awareness of the names and stories of Black women, girls and femmes killed by police, and to provide support to the families affected. The campaign has produced a groundbreaking report expanding the conversation on police violence so that it foregrounds the experiences of Black women and girls, earned a nod in a tweet from a major presidential candidate, developed a multimedia arts-activism venture called Say Her Name: The Lives That Should Have Been, and convened the #SayHerName Mothers Network, a community for mothers of Black women lost to police violence. But none of these developments would be possible without the courage, resilience and ingenuity of Fran Garrett, the mother of Michelle Cusseaux. Cusseaux, a 50-year-old Black woman, was shot and killed on August 14, 2014 by Officer Percy Dupra while Phoenix police were trying to serve a mental health wellness check. Her life was taken just days after the police killing of Ferguson, MO teenager Mike Brown became national news, sparking nationwide outrage and galvanizing the modern movement for Black lives. To help Cusseaux’s story gain resonance in its own right, Garrett led a group of local activists in marching her daughter’s casket through downtown Phoenix, calling for an outside agency to investigate the shooting and a slew of reforms aimed at racial justice and mental health parity. It was this brave act that drew the attention of the African American Policy Forum, which catalyzed the Say Her Name campaign and the delineation of a throughline linking the loss of Cusseaux with countless other Black women like her lost too soon to state violence. Garrett’s bid for broader attention to the cause was amplified a few months later at the Millions March NYC, where AAPF made an intersectional intervention by saying the names of Michelle and other slain Black women to politicize their legacies alongside the demands made on behalf of Brown and other victims of police violence. On this special episode of Intersectionality Matters, Kimberlé Crenshaw dives deep with Fran Garrett to go beyond the headlines for the unvarnished truth on the unspeakably tragic loss of a beloved Phoenix community member. Tune in as they take stock of the movement’s progress five years in and assess the headway still to be made in making Black women’s vulnerability to police violence fully legible as a social problem. Music by Blue Dot Sessions Produced and Edited by Julia Sharpe-Levine Recorded by Sarah Ventre and Julia Sharpe-Levine Additional support provided by Andrew Sun, G’Ra Asim, Emmett O’Malley and Michael Kramer Twitter: @IMKC_podcast, IG: @IntersectionalityMatters, Fb: Intersectionality Matters with Kimberlé Crenshaw #IntersectionalityMatters LEARN MORE: http://aapf.org/shn-campaign SAY HER NAME CEREMONY OF REMEMBRANCE (NYC)- https://www.eventbrite.com/e/say-her-name-5th-anniversary-remembrance-ceremony-tickets-85292830151 MICHELLE CUSSEAUX MENTAL HEALTH FAIR (PHX)-https://www.aahherc.com/

In this episode, Kimberlé chops it up with Dorothy Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading scholar in race, gender, bioethics, and the law. In a conversation that merges intersectional inquiry with The 1619 Project, which interrogates America’s history of slavery in order to understand racial disparities in 2019, Crenshaw and Roberts shed light on the lasting consequences of slavery, segregation, and White Supremacy, and their impact on Black women specifically. Their timely conversation highlights the relationship between the legacy of slavery and instances of modern oppression against Black women, such as the curbing of welfare, forced sterilization, and mass incarceration. Music by Blue Dot Sessions Produced and Edited by Julia Sharpe-Levine Recorded by Emmett O’Malley and Julia Sharpe-Levine Additional support provided by Andrew Sun, Mihir Samson, G’Ra Asim, and Michael Kramer Twitter: @IMKC_podcast, IG: @IntersectionalityMatters, Fb: Intersectionality Matters with Kimberlé Crenshaw #IntersectionalityMatters

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, the wrenching demonstration against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar and refuge for queer and trans people in Lower Manhattan. The courageous act of resistance that took place over the course of several days in 1969 is widely perceived as the catalyst to the modern LGBTQ+ liberation movement in the United States. As Pride month reaches an exuberant crescendo this weekend with World Pride in NYC, an event that’s one part party, one part protest, questions about the trajectory, priorities, and composition of the movement persist, including how to best foreground the lives and concerns of members of the LGBTQ+ community whose experience is filtered through the interstices of more than one form of oppression. On this episode of Intersectionality Matters, host Kimberlé Crenshaw ponders these questions with two of the movement’s torchbearers: Barbara Smith, trailblazing Black feminist critic and co-founder of the Combahee River Collective, and Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, also known as Lady Phyll, co-founder and executive director of UK Black Pride. Tune in for their fascinating insights on living in the overlapping margins of race, gender and sexuality, the future of LGBTQ activism and their commitments to retrieving the experiences of queer Black women from a location that resists telling. Hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw (@sandylocks) Produced and edited by Julia Sharpe Levine Recorded by Elizabeth Press, the Sanctuary for Independent Media, and Michael Kramer Music by Blue Dot Sessions With: Lady Phyll (@msladyphyll), Barbara Smith (@thebarbarasmith), and the Reclaim Pride Coalition (Colin Ashley, Robert Baez, Francesca Barjon) (@queermarch) Intersectionality Matters: ig: @intersectionalitymatters, twitter: @IMKC_podcast Additional support from G'Ra Asim, Naimah Hakim, Madeline Cameron Wardleworth, Peter Gaber, Ezra Young ~~~ NYC Trans Day of Action Friday, June 28 from 4-6pm: https://alp.org/events/15th-annual-trans-day-action NYC Dyke March Saturday, June 29 from 5-8pm: https://www.nycdykemarch.com/ Queer Liberation March Sunday, June 30 from 9:30-3pm: https://reclaimpridenyc.org/ World Pride Parade Sunday, June 30 at 12pm: https://2019-worldpride-stonewall50.nycpride.org/ UK Black Pride Saturday, July 7 at 12pm: https://www.ukblackpride.org.uk/

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”--the misguided notion that love eliminates the need for apology. In politics, the love that mutes apologies is often same-party affinity--as in, “we know we’re on the same side” so accountability is unnecessary. Yet it’s more likely that the contrary is true: love as well as coalition demand an openness to saying “I’m sorry,” for without it, justice is impotent. But what are the consequences when apologies don’t materialize? Is letting it go really the only way to think about healing, both emotionally and politically? In this episode of Intersectionality Matters, host Kimberlé Crenshaw talks to Tony award-winning playwright and activist Eve Ensler about her groundbreaking new book The Apology and how the withholding that is the touchstone of the inviolable code of silence among men can be broken. Ensler discusses the journey she traveled to conjure the apology she needed from her late father for sexual and physical abuse. We also hear from philosopher Kate Manne on himpathy, the term she coined to describe the disproportionate and inappropriate sympathy powerful men often receive in cases of sexual assault and other forms of gendered violence. Himpathy, she explains, may help us understand how some women who stood by Anita Hill are now embracing Joe Biden’s candidacy despite his failure to fully come to terms with his role in in her heinous treatment during Clarence Thomas’s senate confirmation hearings in 1991. Both Manne’s and Ensler’s interviews illustrate the grim reality that men are often socialized to deny their commission of gender-based harm, and that many of us are socialized to condone that very inability to accept blame— sometimes to the degree that we position men who have victimized others as victims themselves. Tune in for a thought-provoking exploration of what it could mean for perpetrators and bystanders to genuinely confront and atone for violence they’ve either committed or enabled. Hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw (@sandylocks) Produced and Edited by Julia Sharpe Levine Recorded by UCLA and Cornell University Music by Blue Dot Sessions With: Eve Ensler, (@vday, @eveensler) Kate Manne (@kate_manne) Intersectionality Matters: ig: @intersectionalitymatters, twitter: @IMKC_podcast Additional support from G'Ra Asim, Michael Kramer, Kevin Minofu, Naimah Hakim, Madeline Cameron Wardleworth

After hip hop icon Dr. Dre brutally assaulted trailblazing emcee and television personality Dee Barnes in 1991, his career continued to skyrocket while she was effectively blacklisted from the entertainment industry. Nearly three decades later, Dre, who has allegedly assaulted several other women in addition to Dee, continues to enjoy a celebrated career in which his heinous misdeeds have become mere footnotes. The combination of racism and patriarchy is the condition of possibility that allows Beats by Dre to be well-known commodities while beatings by Dre remain largely overlooked. As part of their fifth annual event series, Her Dream Deferred: A Week on the Status of Black Women, the African American Policy Forum, in partnership with the Hammer Museum, convened a panel called “Black Women and #MeToo”. Along with Dee, the panel included such leading lights as actor and Times Up WOC activist Rashida Jones, supermodel and Bill Cosby accuser Beverly Johnson, cultural critic Jamilah Lemieux, historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers and #MuteRKelly co-founder Kenyette Tisha Barnes. The panel was moderated by AAPF Executive Director and Intersectionality Matters host Kimberlé Crenshaw. The panel uplifted the unsung genealogy of the Me Too movement by acknowledging forerunners like Tarana Burke, who coined the hashtag #MeToo to raise awareness around the question of Black women’s vulnerability to sexual violence, and Anita Hill, who told the world her story about what a Supreme Court nominee had done to her as a young lawyer. Black feminists like bell hooks and Alice Walker were recognized also for laying bare the realities of gender-based violence that impacts Black women. Tune into this profound and pathbreaking episode of Intersectionality Matters for a thorough post-mortem on the powerful insights shared on the panel, as well as a look into what the movement’s path forward might look like. Hosted by Dee Barnes (@sistadbarnes) and Kimberlé Crenshaw (@sandylocks) Produced and edited by Julia Sharpe Levine Recorded by the Hammer Museum Music by Blue Dot Sessions Featured panelists: Kenyette Barnes, Beverly Johnson, Rashida Jones, Stephanie Jones-Rogers, Jamilah Lemieux More on Her Dream Deferred: aapf.org/her-dream-deferred-initiative Intersectionality Matters: ig: @intersectionalitymatters, twitter: @IMKC_podcast Additional support from G'Ra Asim, Michael Kramer, Kevin Minofu, Naimah Hakim, Madeline Cameron-Wardleworth, UCLA School of Law

R. Kelly’s serial abuse of Black women and girls has been one of the entertainment industry’s worst-kept secrets for the entirety of the 21st century. In the mid 90s, Kelly was romantically linked with and even briefly married to 15-year-old singer Aaliyah, for whom he wrote and produced the incriminatory hit “Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number.” An explicit bootleg tape which appeared to feature Kelly abusing yet another teenage girl circulated on street corners as early as 2001. In 2017, a Buzzfeed exposé alleged that the man who famously crooned “I’m a bad man/And I’m not ashamed of it” held several women captive in his home in a cult-like harem. Yet it took the convergence of the #MuteRKelly movement, the January 2019 release of documentary Surviving R. Kelly and popular culture’s broader reckoning with the pattern of sexual violence perpetrated by powerful men for the self-proclaimed Pied Piper of R&B to face consequences for orchestrating his salacious symphony. At long last, Kelly has now been charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four women, three of whom were minors at the time. On this timely and trenchant episode of Intersectionality Matters, host Kimberle Crenshaw goes beyond the sheet music with #MuteRKelly co-founder Kenyette Barnes to rupture the rhythm Kelly has used to give Black women and girls the blues for decades. Intersectionality Matters! is recorded and produced by Julia Sharpe-Levine. This episode was edited by Julia Sharpe-Levine and Rebecca Scheckman and recorded by Robert Jimison, Michael Kramer, and Julia Sharpe-Levine. Additional support was provided by Michael Kramer, Naimah Hakim, G’Ra Asim, Kevin Minofu, and Madeline Cameron Wardleworth. Music by Blue Dot Sessions Juror Audio from Lifetime Docuseries, "Surviving R. Kelly" Kenyette Barnes: @legisempress Mute R Kelly: ig: @officialmuterkelly, twitter: @offMuteRKelly Kimberlé Crenshaw: ig: @kimberlecrenshaw, twitter: @sandylocks Intersectionality Matters: ig: @intersectionalitymatters, twitter: @IMKC_podcast Learn more: https://www.muterkelly.org