In Search of Black Power

Send us Fan Mail Jordan Peele's movie "Us" left audiences dazzled, but also confused. How should we interpret this complex and layered social justice horror film? New Timbuktu Creative Director Lawrence Grandpre gives his take; linking to film to mass incarceration and the cost of black upward mobility through the lens of Winston Duke's character Gabrielle, and his prized boat....

Send us Fan Mail Puerto Rico is more than an island which got hit by a hurricane. It's home to people who are victims of man-made disasters of colonialism and police brutality. It's also the epicenter of powerful indigenous resistance to racialized neoliberal exploitation. Scholar & activist Rosa Clemente joins us to discuss what's been happening on the ground on the two-year an...

Send us Fan Mail Assata Shakur has become a revolutionary icon, for better or worse. Attempts to legitimate her resistance to police violence and venerate her escape from prison have had the side effects of obscuring the breadth of depth of her radical politics, anti-capitalism, and insightful analysis. This collaboration with IMixWhatIlike.org brings you Assata in her own words, infused with hip-...

Send us Fan Mail In our final #HotMicSession for the Summer, Dayvon Love gives a talk on the psycho-social dynamics behind white folks doing work with Black kids. Combining personal experience with academic analysis, Dayvon breaks down the role whiteness plays in the social imaginary and, despite good intentions, how it manifests itself in everyday teacher/student engagements.  Support the show In...

Send us Fan Mail We take you with us into one of our fundraising dinners, where we discuss the history of the scholar activist network which brings you ISOBP - Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. We break down our methodology around policy advocacy and how we seek to innovate as a “Grassroots” think tank.  Support the show In Search of Black Power is a Black-owned internet show and podcast.  This pod...

Send us Fan Mail Dayvon Love breaks down the history of independent black institutions in Baltimore, explaining the political advancements these institutions and the lessons we should learn for contemporary activism.  Support the show In Search of Black Power is a Black-owned internet show and podcast.  This podcast is sponsored and produced by Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS) . The internet...

Send us Fan Mail We're on a Summer Break! We're bringing you our #HotMicSessions - talks recorded live and in the field. In this first session, our host, Lawrence Grandpre breaks down some history of the war on drugs and how we need more comprehensive solutions to address the issue of drug addiction.  Support the show In Search of Black Power is a Black-owned internet show and podcast. ...

Send us Fan Mail We analyze 3 books all written by our collective - Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. We examine how the centrist politics of Democrats are a core impediment to Black progress with Dayvon Love, author of Worse Than Trump, the American Plantation. We then discuss Lady Brion's poetry in With My Head Unbowed and conclude with a discussion with host Lawrence Grandpre on "The B...

Send us Fan Mail Derrick Bell is often called "The Father of Critical Race Theory" and his sci-fi inspired story "The Space Traders" has been taught for decades as surreal thought exercise on question our underlying assumptions on race in America. In this episode we look back at Space Traders story and use Bell's work to challenge the multicultural orthodoxy on racial prog...

Send us Fan Mail What would a Black city based on radical cooperative economic visions really look like? In Search of Black Power Hosts Lady Brion and Lawrence Grandpre present two examples of these futures. The first, based upon real Black organizing in Baltimore, presents a vision of how culture becomes the seeds for grassroots community revitalization. The second, based upon a cooperative visio...

Send us Fan Mail As Wakanda returned to the big screen in the New "Avengers" film, in Search of Black Power looks back at the original movie and how it represents a particular vision of a black techno-utopia which requires deeper examination. What is the link between the images of the black "futures" we're sold in popular culture and the recent wave of new urban renewal po...

Send us Fan Mail In Part Two of In Search of Black Power's Hardcore (Black) History of Baltimore, we tell the story of one of the grandfathers of the neoliberal city, Jim Rouse, depicting what happened when his vision of city planning as "civic engineering" came to West Baltimore. In trying to create a utopia in Upton, did liberal reformers and nonprofit developers sow the seeds for...

Send us Fan Mail Inspired by Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" Podcast, In Search of Black Power host Lawrence Grandpre does a deep dive on Baltimore history, using the stories of the riots of the 1860s and the 1960s to show Baltimore as a site where the highest hopes, and deepest darkness, of the American experiment in race relations have been played out.  Support the show In Search...

Send us Fan Mail "The Wire" is often seen as a show showing the gritty side of police work. But in light of questions raised by the Black Lives Matter movement, does the shows depictions of police corruption and gender politics go deep enough? This episode goes deep on the real corruption in the BPD and the depth of gender violence of policing, focusing on the story of Korryn Gaines, a B...

Send us Fan Mail The HBO show The Wire is hailed as a "realistic" portrayal of the Baltimore's street drug trade and violence that springs from it. But is this true? In the first episode of "In Search of Black Power" activists and residents from Baltimore challenge the show's depictions, incorporating analysis from Baltimore history and of current movements to show th...