Episode Notes
In this episode, we welcome Mia Birdsong, a pathfinder, writer, and facilitator who engages the leadership and wisdom of people experiencing injustice to chart new visions of American life. As the founding executive director of Next River, she nourishes communities toward a liberated future. Mia previously served as co-director of Family Story and as vice president of the Family Independence Initiative, promoting new narratives and leveraging data to support low-income families.
Listen as Mia discusses what constitutes something as "radical," a future without poverty, and finding joy and optimism in activism.
Episode Transcript
Darren Isom:
Welcome to Dreaming in Color, where we sit down with social change leaders of color to learn how their unique life experiences have prepared them to lead and drive the impact we all seek. I'm your host, Darren Isom, and this season I'm lucky to have a few of my Bridgespan colleagues dropping in to join me as guest hosts. Together we'll be celebrating the genius of leaders who live into the work every day. This is Dreaming in Color.
I'm honored to sit down today with my friend Mia Birdsong, pathfinder, writer and facilitator dedicated to reimagining American life by engaging the leadership and wisdom of those experiencing injustice. Mia is the founding executive director of Next River, an institute for practicing the future. Through her work, she supports communities whose innovative ways can guide us toward a liberated future. In her book How We Show Up and in her podcast miniseries More Than Enough, Mia explores community dynamics and expands the guaranteed income movement by amplifying the voices of low-income individuals.
Previously, Mia redefined family narratives as co-director of Family Story and showcased the initiative of low-income families as vice president of the Family Independence Initiative. Her impactful work includes public dialogue, centering Black women, interviews with notable figures, and her widely viewed TED Talk “The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn't True.” Mia is a senior fellow at the Economic Security Project, a Future Good Fellow at the Institute for the Future, a Pop Culture Collaborative 2024 Pluralist Visionary honoree, and has held fellowships with the Aspen Institute and New America California. Living in Oakland, California, on occupied land of the Chochenyo Ohlone people, Mia tends to bees, chickens, plants, and people, embodying the commitment to community and connection. Such a pleasure to welcome Mia Birdsong to today's episode of Dreaming in Color.
Mia, it is wonderful to have you here today. So excited for us to chat, at least chat on screen. We chat all the time.
Mia Birdsong:
Absolutely.
Darren Isom:
With that, I'm going to pass the mic to you, and you should have an invocation for us to kick off.
Mia Birdsong:
Yes. So of course I did not follow your rules.
Darren Isom:
Of course not.
Mia Birdsong:
And I'm going to read two quotes. The first is Angela Davis, and she says, "Freedom can't be contained within a paradigm that is individualistic. One cannot be free alone. Freedom is collective. Freedom is about transforming conditions so that communities can live in more habitable conditions."
Darren Isom:
All right, Angela.
Mia Birdsong:
And then I'm going to read you a quote from Alexis Pauline Gumbs. It's from her book Undrowned, which I highly recommend. And she says, "Remember why Harriet Tubman went South. She didn't have to. She was skilled, untraceable. She could have been individually free, unencumbered, but if she wanted to tell an everlasting truth about freedom that would ring across the planet, a message for the ages, she had to live free in unfree space. It was the only way to bring us all with her."
Darren Isom:
Beautiful. Thank you for breaking the rules there or creating new ones at least.
Mia Birdsong:
Absolutely.
Darren Isom:
Love both of those. And with that perfect starting point from a conversation perspective, of course, I have to start by asking you to share with us your origin story. I would love for you to share a little bit more about your upbringing. At some point, you commented that you slipped through the cracks of the system. I'd love for you to share a little bit more about what you meant by that.
Mia Birdsong:
Yes. I grew up in Rochester, New York. I was raised in my household by my mother, who was a white woman from Macon, Georgia. And my father, who was Jamaican, was very much part of my life, but we did not live together. We lived in the city of Rochester, and I was bussed to a suburb to, and I'm putting this in air quotes, integrate it. And there I received what I think most people, myself included, would consider an excellent education. Part of the reason that I was able to access that excellent education was not just because I was in this school, but because I had a parent who could navigate the systems that were set up and made sure that I was getting access to all of the things that I deserved. And her ability to do that was largely because she was white.
So her white privilege basically allowed me to have access to an education that most of my Black peers who rode the bus with me were not able to get. School, like conventional American school, I used to say that it was designed for people like me, and I realize now that it was not designed for anybody. It was designed for the system that we are in, it's not designed for the actual children who are experiencing it. But many things about myself allowed me to, again, I'm putting this in quotes, excel in that context. So I was in gifted programs, I was in honors classes, I was in AP classes. I belonged to several choirs. I was the captain of the cheerleading squad. I got really good grades. If you were to hold up a human as a kind of well-rounded, excellent version of what an American school system would want to produce, I was it.
And the fact that I was a Black girl from the city achieving in this environment meant that I was also held up as an example of what's possible. And I totally bought into it. I was like, "Yes, meritocracy. We just work hard and we can achieve," all of that, until I think, there are a few things that are the touch points of my political education and my ability to see the ways in which the exceptions are held up as the rule, as opposed to exceptions. And then the expectation is that everybody has to be an exception and no one can be normal, right? No one can be mediocre, no one can struggle and be expected to experience well-being. The first thing was that in my senior year of high school, John Barker, who also rode the bus with me, gave me a Public Enemy cassette. And there was just something that it coincided with in terms of where I was, about to graduate and the messages that that cassette kind of exposed me to.
Darren Isom:
Come through, hip hop.
Mia Birdsong:
I mean, seriously, I am forever a Public Enemy fan despite many things that are problematic about them because I feel like it cracked something open in me. And then I went to college, and the second semester of my first year of college, I took my first Black studies class with Adrienne Lash Jones, and it was over for America. It just spoke to so many things that I couldn't have articulated and didn't even know were questions that I had. It was something that pointed to the systems that we exist in and the culture that we exist in, and the idea that there are these beliefs and stories that we as a culture have kind of accepted, and that those are the things that actually determine so much about our experience and what we have access to and who we get to be in America, as opposed to our individual selves.
So those things I feel like were kind of an arc of awakening for me. And then I became a Black studies major. I was like, "I'm going to spend these four years learning everything I should have learned in the first 18 years of my life." I had no plans or ideas about what I was going to do with that after college. I was just like, "I'm here to learn this about me and about Black people and about what it means to be in this country." And I had amazing, amazing professors, and I also am so grateful that... So most of my professors were Black women, so intersectionality, we were reading bell. I mean, bell hooks was one of my professors. We were reading bell hooks and Kimberlé Crenshaw. So my understanding of actual critical race theory is inherently embedded with Black feminism. There is no kind of pulling those things, making those things separate for me, because the way that I learned them was that those things were inextricably…
Darren Isom:
That's the starting point. That's the starting point, yeah.
Mia Birdsong:
Yes, totally. And you throw a class in there, and we've got the whole thing. So I was at Oberlin, that's where I went to college. And then I think the other kind of pivotal moment for me is, I moved to New York, to Brooklyn, after college. And in 1998, a friend of mine who is an immigration attorney, I feel like she was in school at this time, she told me I should go to this conference at UC Berkeley called Critical Resistance. And I do not know what was going on that I flew across the country. I had no money, right? I'm a 20-something-year-old in New York. I flew across the country and went to this conference, and it is there that I became an abolitionist. Angela Davis was there, Ruth Wilson Gilmore was there. And I remember, in addition to getting this education about these underlying systems that exist in America and the fallacy of those systems and the false logic that they're built on. We were asked this question and given this invitation in imagining the world as we wanted it.
So it was not just a conversation about ending policing or dismantling prisons or ending surveillance or ending carceral ways of being in other institutions. It really was like, "What do we need, and what do we want to feel safe? What do we want to experience? What is the world that we're actually trying to build?" And that question is one, that invitation is one that has really guided my work, and I've definitely lost track of it sometimes, but I find myself returning to that. It's not just about, "What do we not want? What are we fighting against? What are we reacting to? But what are we building? What are our dreams? What is the vision we have for a world that we really, really want that is not a reaction to the one we don't want?"
Darren Isom:
A hundred percent. And we've talked about this before, this idea of the power and the flex of being able to build something, having the invitation to build as opposed to critiquing and tearing things apart. And there's space for critiquing and tearing things apart. Not saying otherwise, but literally, what are we building in its place? And I do have to follow up on that with the question of, what does the American dream mean to you in this context of all those various things? And does this dream truly exist? As you laugh out loud at me, go for it.
Mia Birdsong:
So I think the thing that I dream of is not American, it's not America. It's not contained within the nation state that we live inside of. It's not contained within the parameters of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and the things that the founding fathers wanted. So when I think about what I want versus what the American dream is, those things are not really connected. So if you're asking me about what the collective dream that I think about is, I mean that's a whole... We can go on forever about that. But fundamentally it is that each of us gets to be in a world where our well-being is tended to. I mean, I feel like that's the shortest sentence that I can… and then I can give you examples and go into more about that. But I feel like that's what it is. And when I say “each of us,” I will add this, I don't just mean humans because we share this planet with lots and lots of life.
Darren Isom:
That's beautiful. We'll come back to that a little bit later in the conversation because there’s a lot to be unpacked there. But I would love to spend a little time talking about addressing poverty in America. And you've spoken quite a bit about guaranteed income as a way to successfully address American poverty. I would love for you to share a little bit more about that and what other bold solutions can we implement to mitigate poverty in the US?
Mia Birdsong:
The first time I heard about guaranteed income was when I was in college, and I remember it was in some history class, and it was in reference to a speech that MLK gave, in which he espoused guaranteed income. And I remember at that point, my political education was not complete, and it still isn't, let's be clear. And I think that I kind of scoffed at the idea, and I think there are two reasons. One is, I didn't believe that that's something that America would do. I was like, "We'll never get that. That's too much to ask." And then the second piece is that all the systems that we exist in, we internalize. So then, and still now, this part of myself felt like guaranteed income was antithetical to the idea of, "You work hard and you achieve things." The morality that we put on the idea of hard work.
So I was like, "That's some kind of pipe dream." Fast-forward to, I think it's 2018, I was invited to a small convening that the Economic Security Project was putting on. And at that point, I had been doing economic justice work that was grounded in this idea that you should just give people money. I mean, we complicate things so much. And people are unhoused, and then we spend millions of dollars doing research on how to make that not a thing. I'm like, "The way that you make people not unhoused is you provide them with housing. It really is that simple." I know this because I live in a house, and I'm not unhoused by definition. Anyway, I was doing this economic justice work that was around essentially leveraging the capacities and assets and skills and dreams, all the kind of affirmative things that exist in any person, but particularly in poor people.
And the idea is that you're providing people with money in order for them to build on the things that they are capable of. So I was at this conference, and I was reintroduced to the idea of guaranteed income. And now it didn't seem so crazy to me. I was like, "Yes." But the problem that I pointed out is that nobody in that room would directly benefit from it. So I was invited to do a project to essentially bring the voices and perspectives of low-income folks into that conversation. And when I did, it was a six-city tour, and I spoke with dozens and dozens of low-income folks. I also spoke with folks who organize or run less restrictive programming for low-income folks. And what became very clear almost immediately is that this was not a conversation about policy. This was a conversation about culture and belief, and specifically one about deservedness.
And that just took me down this whole path of really thinking about why. We actually have solutions to poverty in America. Poverty in America is a policy decision that we've made. We've decided to have it based on the ways in which we've structured policy, and we don't lack for solutions. We don't lack an ability to understand how to do things. We actually lack a belief in it. And going back to my own first reaction to guaranteed income, that lack of belief comes both... From some of us, it's because we believe it's too much to ask. And then there are those of us who believe that poor people, they're kind of poor because they must be lazy, or they don't work hard enough, or their parents didn't read to them when they were children. There's some way in which they don't actually deserve to not be poor.
Darren Isom:
The mother didn't listen to classical music when they were…
Mia Birdsong:
Totally, when she was pregnant.
Darren Isom:
Yeah.
Mia Birdsong:
And I find this thread of these two threads of disbelief across the political spectrum. And I think it's very easy for those of us like myself on the left to point fingers at the right because there is plenty of finger pointing to do there, for sure. But let's be clear, American beliefs about hard work and success and deservedness absolutely exist in all of us. And it just shows up in slightly more crafty ways on the left.
Darren Isom:
Yeah. And I want to jump in a little bit there as well because you've said that solutions that don't include the voices of those who are most impacted or doomed to fail, right?
Mia Birdsong:
Yes.
Darren Isom:
And I think what's perfectly clear as well, and I've seen this in consulting, that very often we coming up with solutions and approaches, and no one's bothered to ask the communities that are going to have to have these programs and activities.
Mia Birdsong:
Yeah. "Do you want this?"
Darren Isom:
"Do you want this?" And it's interesting because it's not a question of, I've worked in a private sector where you're launching a product for three-year-olds, and you spend two months doing focus groups with three-year-olds.
Mia Birdsong:
Okay! But we're so paternalistic. We're so paternalistic. I mean, the rooms I have been in with folks who come up with all kinds of solutions and then somebody will be like, "Did you actually ask the person who would have to receive this?" And sometimes it has never occurred to people. Sometimes they're like, "Why would we need to do that? We know this will work." Again, I was going to say it's unbelievable, but it's not unbelievable.
Darren Isom:
It's not unbelievable if you understand the stories behind it.
Mia Birdsong:
It's totally believable.
Darren Isom:
But what can leaders, and particularly leaders of color, do to meaningfully bring the voice of those folks who are most impacted into the rooms where solutions are being created? What should we be doing? What does success look like there?
Mia Birdsong:
I think there's a spectrum here. At one end of the spectrum, you have focus groups, for example. And at the other end of the spectrum, you have power. And that's the end we actually need to be at if we're not going to keep tinkering around the edges of poverty and decide we're just going to make poverty tolerable for people. But if we actually want to upend the systems that keep poverty in place, we actually have to have a conversation about power. And that largely means ceding power to the people who do not have it. We have a few examples of this in philanthropy. I feel like participatory budgeting, there are foundations that have pools of funds that they allow a community to decide how things are going to work.
But the reason that we have to have organizing is because people don't give up power. That is not a thing that happens. I would love for us to evolve to a place where we recognized that holding power over other people or holding power in ways that other people don't get to hold is not actually good for us. And I don't just mean psychically or spiritually, but I mean the things that we desire and need as human beings, we cannot, this goes back to both my quotes, we cannot get those things by ourselves. And the world in which people are hoarding wealth and power is one in which nobody is free. The wealth hoarders are not free either because they're constantly having to defend the resources they have. I mean, this is why wealthy people live in walled communities and have their private security forces, because you don't get to do that without there being some consequences.
Darren Isom:
And the wealth hoarding there, I mean, obviously that reminded me of the quote, "The oppressor's a liar. We all get free together." And so reminding folks that it's actually and work on each other's liberation, that we actually drive the impact that we all seek. I want to jump in a little bit more and talk about those both solutions that you framed up to poverty. And a lot of people hear these ideas and, like guaranteed income, like reparations, and automatically view it as a distant possibility in a utopia that doesn't exist. It's like, "Oh, that's not going to work with American narratives." I know that at Next River you are directly working on solving this. How do you get people to become more imaginative and recognize that a society that actually works for all of us is possible and within reach?
Mia Birdsong:
Oh my God, there's so many things to do. But one of the things I think about is that we have accepted a story that having the things we need to live a life of well-being is too much to ask for. So I'll give you an example of this coming to a head for me. When I was doing all this guaranteed income research, I was one of four Black people in the country nationally who was talking about guaranteed income. And I was giving this talk at Stanford, and this is a well-meaning, smart, liberal, even progressive audience. And one of the…
Darren Isom:
Allies. Allies.
Mia Birdsong:
Exactly. And there was this moment during the Q&A where one person was like, "Well..." I was like, "Guaranteed income. We should have this." And one person was like, "Well, what about public transportation?" And another person was like, "Well, what about education?" And I got fed up, and finally I was like, "Who told you that you could only have one thing? Who told you that of the web of things that we all require to survive, to make a life, that we have to choose which one of those we get to actually work on and have?" And I think there is this way in which many of us have bought into the narrative that you’ve got to silo everything and you've got to pick a thing. And that's the only thing that we can have because they, whoever "they" is, the powers that be are not going to let us have more.
So you can't ask for more. It's like the people in power are like our dad, and we're asking them for the keys to the car or something. I'm just like, "No, we have to actually stop accepting the idea that less than what we need is acceptable." And there's no reason, especially in the wealthiest nation on the planet, that we actually can't have guaranteed income education, public transportation, not to mention guaranteed housing and universal healthcare. Those things are all accessible, but the only reason they're not is because we don't believe they are. The main barrier is like, "Whoever's holding power doesn't even have to have a strategy to get us to block those things from happening. We've already decided we can't have them all."
Darren Isom:
There's such a level of community policing even, idea policing around this. I've sat on panels where I'm talking about endowing Black organizations, and folks will stand up and say, "Well, what about unrestricted funds for programs?" And I'm like, "Yes, yes, that too. Yes, all of that." And so how, from a behavior perspective, do we have folks realize they're able to prance with pride and actually humanize the communities in a way that folks can see that they're worthy of those things as well?
Mia Birdsong:
I have also found that part of what gets us past this block we have and believing in something that we think is unbelievable is actually pointing out that the thing is already happening. My colleague and friend Natalie Foster recently released a book called The Guarantees. And there's seven of them, I don't remember what all of them are. But it is full of both arguments for and examples of the ways in which communities are already, and governments mostly on the city level, are already providing these things for people. I'm like, "It's already happening." Again, it's not this heavy lift of figuring it out, it's just that we'd have to decide that those things are actually a priority for us. And when I talk to people about freedom and the world in which we are all free, we are collectively engaging in the practice and process of being free, I also point to the places where it's already happened or it's already happening.
Because the other thing is that collective freedom, which I feel like these guarantees are embedded in. This is what it means to be a person. We are fundamentally interconnected, interdependent animals. We're not sea turtles where Mom lays some eggs and then is like, "Peace out, watch out for the seagulls," and you just hatch and then you race to the ocean to see if you're going to make it, right? We are born completely helpless, and we are raised. In no context are we people who access food, shelter, care, whatever, on our own. We need each other for that. And we all go through stages in our lives where we are on different parts of the giving and receiving, where we're giving more or receiving more, but we're all doing all of those things.
And that is what it means to be human, to be cared for and to be receiving care. So the other thing is that as I think about, or I talk about the idea of living in a society where all of our needs are tended to so we can live a life of well-being, I'm like, "That's what it means to be a person. So I'm just inviting us to return to something that we all already know." And I think that that's the other thing that helps people move from this place of the protection of cynicism to something where they are... The vulnerability of imagination and dreaming.
Darren Isom:
And I hold onto the quote, "Cynicism is a form of obedience." And I think that it requires us to really think differently about the space in the world. One of the things that I admire most about you and why I enjoy so much of our conversations is there is an understood joyfulness in the conversations. I've realized in the last year or so, or the last few years, maybe something that's always been true, but I've never really thought of myself as an optimist. I've always thought of myself as a cynic, but as I get older, I realize how much of an actual optimist I am about all things. I think things are going to get worse before they get better, but they will get better. And that for me is the definition of looking into the future, thinking about what we're trying to create.
Mia Birdsong:
Yeah.
Darren Isom:
I would love for you to share what fuels you to live in this hopeful and joyful state in the midst of everything going on around us, because the world is a mess right now. It's a hot mess for sure.
Mia Birdsong:
In many ways, I'm constitutionally an optimist, but I also have chosen to be an optimist. I think in my late teens and early-to-mid-twenties, I definitely practiced a kind of cynicism. It was a cynicism that I thought made me sound smarter, critiquing, pooh poohing things. There's a way in which I was like, "That makes me sound like I know what I'm talking about. It makes me smart." And then again, I also think there's a way in which cynicism is kind of protection. It means I'm not going to be disappointed. It means when things stay shitty, I'm like, "I expected that already. Of course they did." And optimism requires a kind of vulnerability. I have to be willing to have my heart broken over and over again. I have to be willing to believe that something that I have never experienced or don't have my own model for, that we can figure it out.
I think what I keep finding, and this goes back to what I was saying before, is that part of what keeps me fueled is that then I find out that we've already been doing this. I hear some story or get introduced to some collective of people who are doing a thing, and I'm like, "Oh, we're already doing this." There are places where people have decided that they are not going to just stay in the morass of what exists now. They're not going to accept it and they're going to do something better. So there's that. I mean, there are lots of things that fuel me. And then the other thing that I'll point to right now, because as I'm sitting here talking with you, there's a crow that keeps flying outside my window.
And the other thing that I feel like I connect to on an almost daily basis is awe. I think that there are just so many cool things that exist in the world, right? I listen to a science show or a podcast about something and I just learn a thing that is just so cool and magical and amazing, and I'm just like, "Oh my God." And I have this garden that is blooming right now, and I go out there almost every day, and I'll just stare really close at some flowers, and I'll see whatever bugs are on them and just kind of watch the procession of over time, over through a season, of birds and animals and flora that make their life in this place that I share. And that just fills me with awe. And I'm just like, "That's so cool."
Darren Isom:
I am with you 100 percent. I feel like I geek out all the time.
Mia Birdsong:
Yes.
Darren Isom:
I'm just completely amazed by things. I'm amazed by people, even when they're problematic. I'm amazed by the thinking all behind it, and I just live in awe. And I think that level of curiosity is always inspiring. I would love for you to just share a little bit more about, you've been able to imagine this wonderful, beautiful world for us and how we get there. And I know that some experiences and people have helped you realize that future we long for is within possibility. And you shared just very thoughtfully some of the experiences that you've been through from conversations and others that have really allowed you to think through this work and live an optimistic way. Something we're asking folks this season is for them to share, what does freedom look like for them? And I know it's such an open question, and it's done that way intentionally, but what does freedom look like for you?
Mia Birdsong:
Part of what I love about this question is, it invites, for me, it invites me into imagining what it would be like to live in a society where I didn't have to worry about whether or not I or my loved ones or anybody in my community was going to be taken care of. And the release of worry is part of what I think about when I think about what freedom feels like. I get to wake up and not be concerned. I'm not like, "How is this impossible thing going to come together? How is this thing going to hold?" It means that I get to explore, I get to be creative. I get to move through my days with a kind of agency that is about upholding boundaries, right? I feel like many of us don't even know what our boundaries would be if we were actually free because our boundaries are constantly being crossed by the systems that we exist inside of.
So I think about the ways in which I would be able to choose to care for others, the ways in which I would be able to, without apology, ask for the things that I needed or access the things that I needed. I think about what kind of music and art and just creativity and pleasure I would explore. I think about, "Oh my God, the food that I would be making with people.” I think about the relationship I would have to land. I realized that while I believe that all of us have ancestral memory of what it means to be free, and we have this internal compass that we can calibrate toward freedom, I also know that the freedom that I've experienced in my life, it's like the experience of Maroons, right?
It's the marinage experience as opposed to where we create a space inside of which we can be free, but outside that space is still all the bullshit. So when I think about what you're talking about, it is that there's no inside outside freedom, not freedom anymore, that we actually have this thing and we're engaged in this process together. And that, I don't know what that feels like, I don't know. But just the act of imagining and seeing the ways in which I've been limited and then being able to remove that limit, psychically, in my head remove it, and then be like, "Oh, what's beyond that limit?" And then seeing another one and being like, "Oh, well, what's beyond that limit?" And imagining that world just geeks me out so hard.
Darren Isom:
How beautiful is that? And I love the way you're thinking about how even our possibilities are limited by what we've lived, right? Even as someone who, my family came to New Orleans from Haiti as free people of color in colonial French Louisiana. That freedom was fairly… it was conditional.
Mia Birdsong:
Yeah. On my grandmother's side, we were Maroons in Jamaica. We were free Black people. And that don't mean that…
Darren Isom:
No.
Mia Birdsong:
... Like, "I don't have to deal with white supremacy right now. It's still here."
Darren Isom:
Exactly. Exactly. So you've expressed that we have to be willing to dream our most courageous thoughts and things when it comes to policy and systems change. So this idea of dreaming most courageously. And remarks, and I'm going to quote you here, "If we start compromising our ideals before we begin, as many of my wisest mentors remind me, binaries are bullshit." Another thing that we're thinking through in this season of Dreaming in Color is giving people the space to highlight mentorship and the leaders that come before us and that have really shaped who they are. And I would love to take this moment to give you space to call out and shout out some of your mentors and how they've contributed to your growth.
Mia Birdsong:
Oh my goodness. I mean, I mentioned Adrienne Lash Jones as one of my early, early mentors. I remember asking her when I was 19 if Black people could transcend racism. And of course she, like any good mentor, was like, "What do you think?" And I feel like that's a question I've been asking my whole life. I just continue to ask that. So shout out to Adrienne Lash Jones, Dr. Adrienne Lash Jones. One of my favorite teachers, mentors, besties, family members is Malkia Devich-Cyril, who founded and ran an organization called MediaJustice for 20 years and is now doing work on a project called Radical Loss, which is about the power and transformation of grief for movement work.
And oh my God, they're one of the smartest people that I know. And I feel like what they have taught me about Blackness, what they have taught me about movement, what they have taught me about power and progressive politics, what they have taught me about the media, what they have taught me about gender, what they've taught me about what it means to be in a body is kind of endless. And now they're teaching me so much about grief and joy. I'm so honored to be witness to the work that they're doing, but also to just sit at their feet and soak up their wisdom and knowledge on a regular basis.
Darren Isom:
It's beautiful. Well, that's all I have for you. I just have one closing question, which is, if you had to choose a song, any song to walk out on stage to or walk offstage, what would that song be?
Mia Birdsong:
Today I'm feeling a little Lianne La Havas. Her album Blood is just unbelievable. Oh, we can go with “Unstoppable.”
Darren Isom:
“Unstoppable.” Okay, I'll take that.
Mia Birdsong:
It's so good.
Darren Isom:
Mia. Thank you for your time. It's always wonderful to chat with you, recorded or not and I'm so happy to have you in my world.
Mia Birdsong:
Oh my God, this is just like an utter delight, and you're such a gift to all of us.
Darren Isom:
Thank you, dear.
James Baldwin would've turned 100 earlier this summer, but his writing and presence are just as if not more compelling now as they were when he died some 40 years ago. I wrote my first James Baldwin book in middle school, and although I could recite my middle school class and teacher's schedule well into my twenties, I can't even remember my seventh-grade English teacher's name now. But I do remember reading Go Tell it on the Mountain and being so enamored by Baldwin as a writer that I went on a Baldwin binge shortly after, reading no less than five of his books in the following few months. And as I read more and grew more in life, I learned to love Baldwin, not just as a writer, but as a friend and mentor. The prophetic prose and easily one of the most brilliant men to walk among us.
Baldwin creates lush narratives that offer shelter, comfort us, and help us make sense and find place in this often surreal, unfriendly world. And as author Robert Jones writes of Baldwin, "All of his writing, no matter how pointed, critical, or angry, is imbued with love." As someone who understood that love is key to liberation, he committed himself to the herculean task of persuading the rest of us. As Baldwin writes himself in If Beale Street Could Talk, "If there's any saving grace, it' is this: Love may not save us all, but helps us forget the night and its endless cemeteries for a moment when all the other stars have faded." Having now made my way through much of Baldwin's canon, I can say without a doubt that each piece is beautiful and compelling in its own right. I can also boast a favorite, Baldwin's 1972 memoir, No Name in the Street.
It was gifted to me by Dr. Logan, Howard's then-Dean of Humanities, a man whose absolute elegance, intellect, and nobility made you feel as if you stepped into the Harlem Renaissance whenever you were in his presence. He offered it to me as I prepared to make my way to Paris for my junior year abroad. In it, Baldwin explores the Harlem childhood that shaped his early consciousness. He also documents his time in Paris in a way that masterfully and lovingly connects the Black American struggle for liberation with that of the Paris Algerian community. The book reminds us stewards of this ever-changing world of our role as midwives. He writes, “As an old world is dying, a new one announces that it is ready to be born. This birth will not be easy, and many of us are doomed to discover that we're exceedingly clumsy midwives. No matter, so long as we accept our responsibilities to the newborn, the acceptance of the responsibility contains the key to the necessarily evolving skill.”
My conversations with Mia always remind me of the new world that is being born. Our conversations fill me with joy and endless possibilities. Most importantly, they remind me of how much we all belong here and the wonderful order of things as keepers of a long and beautiful legacy, as witness bearers and storytellers. In Baldwin's 1963 article, “A Talk to Teachers,” he writes, "American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone's ever said about it. And how lucky are we to be trusted with making sense of it all as we chart our path forward?"
And that's a wrap for this season of Dreaming in Color. I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to our incredible guests and guest hosts, who have shared their powerful stories and insights with each of us. Each conversation has been a testament to the resilience, creativity, leadership, and love that surrounds us. To our listeners, thank you for joining us on this journey. We hope these stories have not only informed and inspired you, but also encourage you to dream big and take action in your own communities. Until next season, stay inspired, stay empowered, and keep dreaming in color. The season may have ended, but the music plays on.
This season we've collected the theme songs from all of our guests and collaborators to create a Spotify playlist for our listeners to enjoy. Thanks for listening to Dreaming In Color. A special shout out to all the folks who make this magic happen. From StudioPod Media, our wonderful producer, Denise Savas, audio engineer, Teresa Buchanan, and graphic designer, Diana Jimenez. And from Reel Works, our video production team, Jenny Loo and Stephen Czaja. A huge shout-out to our ever brilliant Bridgespan production team, Cora Daniels, Christian Celeste Tate, Christina Pistorius, and Ryan Wenzel. And this season's guest hosts, Jasmine Reliford, Nithin Iyengar, and Angela Maldonado. And of course, our fabulous creative director, Ami Diané. What a squad, y'all. Be sure to rate, subscribe, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Catch you next time.
