

Strength & Solidarity
Strength & Solidarity
A podcast featuring the people and ideas that are driving -and disrupting -human rights around the world. You can learn more about the project at our website, www.strengthandsolidarity.org. We welcome your feedback and your suggestions. In particular, if you have a poem or text, a speech, or a piece of music that expresses something important about your own commitment to rights, please tell us about it at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 9, 2023 • 8min
The Coda #30: The film inspiring a new generation of disability activists
In the early 1970s, a group of disabled American teens found themselves at a summer camp with new freedom to think for themselves. The selfhood, courage and joy they tapped into was to power a revolution in US culture and policy towards disability. The story of those activists is told in the documentary film, Crip Camp, and Mexican disability activist Maryangel Garcia-Ramos explains how much it means to her.For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, visithttps://strengthandsolidarity.org/podcasts/Contact us at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org

Oct 26, 2023 • 38min
Best of: Palestine: Refusing to be a second-class citizen
Strength & Solidarity Season 5 will start in November. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, continuing with episode 27, first released, December 8, 2022.
Palestinian activist Issa Amro grew up studious and apolitical – until his university was permanently shuttered in 2003 by the Israeli military in response to the second intifada. The campaign he and others launched to get it reopened was successful but as the full reality of the Israeli Occupation struck home, he decided to commit to non-violent activism and has been organizing in his community ever since. Almost two decades on, a senior UN official has called 2022 the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005. In this episode, Amro explains how he and others have, over the past two decades, built a resilient movement, focused especially on young people, to resist the violent seizure of Palestinian property by illegal settlers and harassment by Israeli security forces.
And in the Coda, a Colombian human rights worker tells us how dancing Salsa lifts her spirits.
For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, visit https://strengthandsolidarity.org/podcasts/
Contact us at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org

Oct 5, 2023 • 35min
Best of: When does the language of rights have power?
Strength & Solidarity is taking a break until Season Five starts in October 2023. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, continuing with episode 8, first released, March 30, 2021.
For people who have made defending rights their life’s work, the language of rights comes as second nature. But what about those facing repression, exclusion or loss of their land and livelihood – how do they describe what is happening to them? When politicians instrumentalize human rights language to justify their interests, does the idea of rights become fatally degraded? In this episode we dig into where the language of human rights shows up, and who can legitimately use it. We speak with Thailand-based human rights lawyer Emilie Palamy Pradichit, founder of the Manushya foundation, on her work with indeigenous communties fighting for rights to their land and what that has taught her about the language of human rights. And in our Coda, Bangladeshi human rights defender Adilur Rahman Khan celebrates his country’s national poet Kazi Nazrul Islam.
In this episode:
Why it matters who is doing the talking about rights
The Coda: A lifelong Bangladeshi activist celebrates his national poet.
For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, please visit www.strengthandsolidarity.org/podcast
Send us your ideas and your feedback at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org

Sep 14, 2023 • 25min
Best of: Has the Human Rights framework outlived its purpose?
Strength & Solidarity is taking a break until Season Five starts in October 2023. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, continuing with episode 3, first released, January 5, 2021.
South African human rights lawyer Kayum Ahmed’s entire career has been spent defending and extending the rights of excluded and oppressed people, at home and abroad. But this former CEO of the South African Human Rights Commission harbors considerable doubt about whether the human rights framework rooted in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights can meet the demands of radical black and brown activists.
In this episode:
Host Akwe Amosu and her colleague Chris Stone talk about why police reform in Nigeria –and elsewhere –is so hard to achieve
Interview with human rights lawyer Kayum Ahmed about radical activist critiques of the human rights framework
The Coda: A song that commemorates the day that US civil rights activists met an African anti-colonial fighter in 1963
For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, please visit www.strengthandsolidarity.org/podcast
Send us your ideas and your feedback at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org

Aug 24, 2023 • 37min
Best of: Mexico: In search of trust – beyond privilege and exclusion
Strength & Solidarity is taking a break until Season Five starts in October 2023. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, continuing with episode 10, first released, June 17, 2021.
This episode of the podcast steps onto tricky terrain with a conversation about identity, power and privilege. Mexican human rights lawyer Alejandra Ancheita tells host Akwe Amosu about building relationships of mutual respect with her clients - indigenous communities fighting against corporate encroachment on their land and livelihoods. And in the Coda, how the courage of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero - assassinated in 1980 for standing up to a violent, repressive regime – confirmed US lawyer Jim Goldston’s commitment to a career in rights.
In this episode:
In Mexico – a lawyer navigating power and identity with her indigenous clients
And in our Coda – the struggle for justice in El Salvador sets a young man’s course in life
For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, please visit www.strengthandsolidarity.org/podcast
Send us your ideas and your feedback at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org

Aug 3, 2023 • 33min
Best of: Nigeria: Driving police reform through mass protest
Strength & Solidarity is taking a break until Season Five starts in October 2023. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, continuing with episode 9, first released, June 3, 2021.
In this first episode of Season two, host Akwe Amosu looks back to late 2020 and Nigeria’s massive #EndSARS protests against police brutality and impunity and asks youth organizer Samson Itodo to assess their impact. What is the role of leadership and organizing in a spontaneous upswell of citizen rage and who has to deliver it? And in the Coda, veteran human rights defender Suliman Baldo recalls the way poetry powered the revolution in his country, Sudan.
In this episode:
● Converting protest into respect for right in Nigeria
● The Coda: How poetry fuelled Sudan’s revolution
For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, please visit www.strengthandsolidarity.org/podcast
Send us your ideas and your feedback at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org

Jul 13, 2023 • 35min
Best of: Argentina: A stunning victory for woman
Strength & Solidarity is taking a break until Season Five starts in October 2023. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows, starting with episode 6, first released, March 10, 2021.
In 2005, a small group of women began a campaign to make abortion legal in Argentina. While rich women might be able to find safe means to terminate their pregnancies, the poor were forced to seek backstreet abortions at grave risk of imprisonment, injury and death. As much as those building the movement believed in their cause, even they were stunned, a mere 13 years later, to see a million people in the streets of Buenos Aires supporting their demands. At the end of 2020, a vote in Senate brought final victory. In this episode, one of the organisers at the heart of the campaign shares the strategies that won the day. And, in this episode’s Coda, the Brazilian samba that seemed to be a lovers’ tiff but was a veiled attack on military rule.
In this episode:
Feminist Victoria Tesoriero breaks down the brilliant, dogged campaign to legalise abortion in Argentina
The Coda: How a 1970 samba promised Brazilians a better future beyond dictatorship
For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, please visit www.strengthandsolidarity.org/podcast
Send us your ideas and your feedback at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org

Jun 22, 2023 • 39min
36. Zimbabwe: You can’t keep a good movement down
How does an organization weather hostile times? When a state repeatedly unleashes violence on whole communities, when activists get brutalized and locked up, is it inevitable that an organization aiming to defend rights and justice must weaken and lose power? If not, how does it find the resilience to survive the pressure and keep working towards its goals? Zimbabwe has been independent and free of racial tyranny for over forty years yet there has rarely been a time when rights and justice were not under attack by government and security forces. In this episode we ask Dzikamai Bere, National Director of ZimRights - the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association - how they have survived three decades of repression with a quarter of a million active members across the country.
And in the Coda, US racial justice leader Vince Warren talks about the central role of music in his life and shares his “pandemic project” – an EP of songs he’s recently released.
For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, visit https://strengthandsolidarity.org/podcasts/
Contact us at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org

Jun 22, 2023 • 8min
The Coda #29: ‘Filled with music, filled with justice’
Vince Warren is a renowned human rights lawyer and leader in racial justice who leads the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Like so many others, he found himself locked down during the pandemic. Disruptive and destabilizing though that period was, Vince was grateful to be able to take refuge in his lifelong passion for music. A drummer and performer over many years, he took the chance to write some new songs and has recently released them on an EP. He reflected on the connections between his human rights and musical identities.And in the Coda, US racial justice leader Vince Warren talks about the central role of music in his life and shares his “pandemic project” – an EP of songs he’s recently released.For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, visit https://strengthandsolidarity.org/podcasts/Contact us at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org

Jun 1, 2023 • 46min
35. Disability Rights: Activism as a vital ingredient for victories
The death in March 2023 of US disability rights activist Judy Heumann provoked grief but also joyful celebration of a leader whose strategic instincts and sheer grit helped secure victories that improved peoples’ lives. Heumann never lost her faith in activism - building power at street level. She led persons with disabilities and their allies in blocking traffic, occupying buildings and often literally putting their bodies on the line for the cause. Three disability rights advocates – Catalina Devandas, Alberto Vasquez and Peter Torres Fremlin reflect on that history and ask whether activism is still a central tool for their community. They discuss factors like inclusion and identity as sources of both strength and division, and the pros and cons of integrating disability rights work in the wider human rights movement.
For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, visit https://strengthandsolidarity.org/podcasts/
Contact us at pod@strengthandsolidarity.org