Bourbon 'n BrownTown

BrownTown talks memes, mass mobilization, and more with Camila Cuevas (AKA @ComradeCami) , Chilena expat living in Florida, USA. She uplifts liberation struggles and provides social movement resources through memes and social media via what she calls "thirst-trapping the masses into class consciousness." The team dissects our current moment in the social media landscape, the influence of TikTok on...

BrownTown chops it up with Dixon Romeo, Executive Director of NotMeWe and organizer with the Bring Chicago Home campaign. On March 19th, 2024, Chicago voters have the opportunity in the state primary elections to restructure the already existing, one-time Real Estate Transfer Tax (RETT) "on properties when they are sold to create a substantial and legally dedicated revenue stream to provide perman...

BrownTown sits down with co-authors of the "Girl, I Guess" Progressive Voter Guide , three-peat guest Stephanie Skora and newcomer Raeghn Draper to talk all things 2024 Cook County Democratic Primary Elections. From ethics and attitudes in long-form opinion journalism to new endorsement standards surrounding Palestinian liberation, the gang situates the relationship between electoralism and the Le...

BrownTown on BrownTown. BnB audio engineer Kiera Battles is back with her behind-the-scenes insights on the podcast as the team discusses the episodes of 2023. Last year brought the continuation of the Whiskey and Watching series, a host of episodes surrounding the 2023 Chicago Municipal Elections, a resurgent discussion of #NoCopAcademy in the midst of the #StopCopCity struggle in Atlanta, and pl...

BrownTown invites Muhammad Sankari from the US Palestinian Community Network ( USPCN ) to discuss this current moment in the struggle to Free Palestine. The gang frames Israel's genocide in Gaza and assault on the other territories in historical context with regards to the long history of resistance struggles across the globe. #FreePalestine. Originally recorded December 19, 2023. Transcriptions a...

BrownTown shares space with frequent collaborator, Isiah “ThoughtPoet” Veney , photographer, A&R, organizer, and overall creative from Chicago's South Side. ThoughtPoet and BrownTown unpack the Afro-futuristic and "hood empathetic" themes of his photography work, his and SoapBox's collaboration in the "One Million Experiments" film, lessons from the 2020 uprisings, and more. What does community-bu...

BrownTown on BrownTown. Join Caullen and David as they celebrate BnB's 100th episode with guest hosts and homies Samantha Grund-Wickramasekera and Camille Williams. Sam is a long-time listener and SoapBox board member while Camille was one of the first podcast guests. As collaborators and friends of BrownTown, they have seen the podcast and SoapBox as a whole grow over the years and detail that as...

BrownTown again chops it up with the Hoodoisie fam, co-host Ricardo Gamboa and Executive Director Mia Carbajal for "Whiskey & Watching." The team deconstructs the darling 90's comedy-drama "I Like It Like That" (1994), the first large studio film directed by a Black woman. The film centers around an Afro-Latina woman in the Bronx whose life is turned upside down when her husband is arrested after...

BrownTown shares space with Chicago Southsider and former #NoCopAcademy organizer Freedom X as they reminisce about the height of the campaign and discuss what the new feature documentary means to them in this moment. Come see the film this #NoCopTOBER and be on the lookout for future screenings at Linktr.ee/NoCopAcademy and SoapBoxPO.com/NoCopAcademy! #NoCopDoc   GUEST Freedom X is a Chicago Sout...

BrownTown talks water access, water solidarity, and abolition as presence with Avalon Betts-Gatson and Tommy Hagan, organizers with the Coalition to Decarcerate Illinois (CDI) . From indigenous land back struggles to fighting for clean drinking water for incarcerated peoples, water is the most basic human right. The gang gets meta discussing organizing strategies within coalitions of various ideol...

BrownTown is delighted to -- for the first time -- share a new series from our movement media fam over at AirGo . Help This Garden Grow is a new six-part podcast documentary series telling the story of Hazel Johnson, a visionary of the Environmental Justice movement and a resident of the Altgeld Gardens community on the far South Side of Chicago. Hazel is the founder of People for Community Recove...

BrownTown chops it up with Alderhomies Rossana Rodriguez (33rd) and Jessie Fuentes (26th) in the inaugural recording within the Harambe Studios at the SoapBox office. Chicago City Council is now the most Black and Latine, the most queer, the most politically left, and with the most female leaders in the city's history (and in some cases, currently in the country). With that, the gang discusses May...

BrownTown sits down with the original "Ad Man" Justin Stillmaker to reflect on the role of advertising as propaganda, its attempts to co-opt social movement language and optics throughout the past half decade, and the odd trajectory of the term "woke" (and the right-wing obsession with hating it). Now in 2023, with unapologetic anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Black, and anti-labor laws and rhetoric sweeping the...

BrownTown on BrownTown. As SoapBox (the film and movement media hub that powers Bourbon 'n BrownTown) moves into its first-ever office, Caullen and David discuss their journeys finding and curating spaces to call home, personally and professionally. BrownTown affirms housing as a human right while examining Chicago and America's dialectical relationships -- the housing crisis and Bring Chicago Hom...

BrownTown breaks down the relationship between police abolition and state-sanctioned police accountability measures with newly elected Police District Councilors David Orlikoff and Ashley Vargas. The guests square their PIC abolitionist organizing roots with the new accountability structure, Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA), for the Chicago Police Department. Three...

BrownTown virtually visits Atlanta and chops it up with Chelle Sanders and Jasmine Burnett, organizers with #StopCopCity. Chicago’s #NoCopAcademy and Atlanta’s #StopCopCity movements are part of the same struggle: to end violent policing, protect the environment and defend Black and brown lives. As similar as they are, only years apart, they also both vary in terms of structure and place-based his...

BrownTown shares space with the Hoodoisie hosts Ricardo Gamboa and Charles Preston and Executive Director Mia Carbajal in the return of "Whiskey & Watching." BrownTown and the Hoodoise deconstruct the Oscar Best Picture "Everything Everywhere All At Once" (2022): When an interdimensional rupture unravels reality, a middle-aged Chinese immigrant must channel her newfound powers to fight bizarre and...

BrownTown reflects on the 2023 Chicago municipal elections and the importance of disrupting dominant media narratives with Morgan Elise Johnson, filmmaker, publisher, and co-creator of the TRiiBE, an award-winning digital publication and production company dedicated to reshaping the narrative of Black Chicago. Local, community, and especially radical and movement-based actors in radio, film, podca...

BrownTown continues to dialogue about the relationship between electoral and radical politics with Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez and Alderperson-elect Jessie Fuentes . With the historic 2023 Chicago municipal elections in the rearview, the team situates what this never-before-seen cohort of socialist and progressive alderpeople and new mayor means in terms of the city's social movements and politica...

BrownTown again invites Hannah Linsky (she/her), vintage stylist, seller, educator, and liver and breather of all things fashion to unpack the politics of dress. In part 2, the friends go macro and discuss fashion within current and historical social movements and its impact on policy and popular culture. From Scottish Resistance to the Black Panthers to Iran's Hijab Protest Movement and everythin...

BrownTown on BrownTown. Now-BnB audio engineer Kiera Battles makes her debut bringing in behind-the-scenes insights to the podcast as the gang unpacks the episodes, new series, and various recording environments that made up 2022. For better or worse, here's to 2023! With 11 total full episodes, this shortened year brought 8 guest episodes (3 repeat guests), only 1 with no guests, and 2 new series...

BrownTown listens, learns, and discusses how to make philosophy more accessible, environmental justice through animal rights, and ethical food pathways with Shanti Chu , philosopher, writer, speaker, and creator of ChiVeg , a dynamic food blog that focuses on ethical eating with vegetarian recipes. The team explores the topics' connections to each other through personal experiences and critical pe...

BrownTown chops it up about WORK. Building on previous episodes about labor, unions, and trying to do liberatory work within capitalism, BrownTown contextualizes recent inflation hikes, the state of "hustle culture," and the seven-decade growth of corporate profits on the backs of the working class. While the majority of adults WORK, the propaganda that you must "earn" the right to live and be pro...

BrownTown invites Hannah Linsky (she/her), vintage stylist, seller, educator, and liver and breather of all things fashion to unpack the politics of dress. The friends use their experiences with clothing and fashion growing up to dissect the often overlooked yet important cultural artifact. As an everyday window into individual and collective beliefs and values, the limitless expression of how we...

BrownTown again shares space with Sophie Elizabeth James , sociologist and Unpaid Emotional Labor podcast host, and Pearl Quick , farmer, pastor, and poet extraordinaire, in the sophomore episode of our recurring "Whiskey & Watching" series. BrownTown and guests deconstruct, recontextualize, and, dare we say, decolonize popular films, TV shows, books, and more! This time the gang unpacks Passing (...