We Rise

This episode offers our full conversation with Ember Phoenix & Ben Joselyn, water protectors on Anishnaabe land, building community & protecting the sacred. For more on the movement to Stop Line 3, you can listen to We Rise episode 32 (called Have you heard of Line 3?), 35 - The People are a River, and 37, our full interview with water protector Jaike Spotted Wolf. ABOUT LINE 3: Line 3 is a pipeli...

ABOUT THE EPISODE: A small group of artists from We Rise Production went to the Mississippi headwaters in July 2021 and - with permission - gathered stories and sound. On this episode you’ll hear directly from people who have been on Anishnaabe land in Minnesota for months. What have they been doing there? Rising up against the construction of a tar sands pipeline called Line 3. As we continue to...

"What you are about to hear comes from youth from across Turtle Island - from occupied Ohlone land in the San Francisco Bay Area to Shawnee territory in Louisville, Kentucky. As we learn and explore media making, we bring you the wisdom we carry in our voices… and the seeds of our vision for the future..." This episode of We Rise was co-created by youth from our Telling Our Stories: Re-Envisioning...

This episode contains 9 speeches by organizers of the event: From The Shellmounds to Sheikh Jarrah: Call to Honor Those We Have Lost to Colonialism, held on Memorial Day 2021. We share their memories, visions & voices with utmost care & consent. A few times, speakers explain that they are going to share a prayer, but the prayer is not in this podcast. That’s because these prayers are sacred & We R...

Do you know about Line 3? Maybe you’ve heard of Keystone XL or DAPL (the Dakota Access Pipeline)? Many of us haven’t heard about Line 3… yet. Even though it is the biggest tar sands pipeline project in global human history. Enbridge Corporation is reconstructing a pipeline on Anishnaabe land in occupied Minnesota, and we must rise to stop it - to protect the clean waters, for the wild rice, to sho...

Part three of the Free Palestine! series features voices from Yelamu Ohlone land commonly known as San Francisco, California. We begin with Mama Tiny of Poor Magazine offering a warrior call & prayer. Then, Zeyad of Palestinian Youth Movement speaks to us on May 15th, Nakba Day, where nearly 10,000 people, families, children, and allies took to the streets that day in solidarity with the people of...

May 15 is Nakba Day. Catastrophe. Remembering May 15, 1948 when Palestinians were violently forced to leave their land, their homes by the settler colonial nation state of Israel. 73 years later, the violence has not stopped. Voices have not faltered. The call to return remains. Part two of Free Palestine! series is the second half of Center for Study & Preservation of Palestine's Nakba Day rally...

May 15 is Nakba Day. Catastrophe. Remembering May 15, 1948 when Palestinians were violently forced to leave their land, their homes by the settler colonial nation state of Israel. 73 years later, the violence has not stopped. Voices have not faltered. The call to return remains. Part one of Free Palestine! series comes from the Center for Study & Preservation of Palestine's Nakba Day rally on Chin...

We Rise has been partnering with Mycelium Youth Network for over a year, and together, we are so excited to share this two-part podcast series with you. Here is the second of two keynote speeches from MYN's Autumn 2020 conference entitled Apocalyptic Resilience: An Afro-Indigenous Futuristic Adventure. This episode features the brilliant organizer, researcher, & AfroFuturist Black feminist nerd Do...

We Rise has been partnering with Mycelium Youth Network for over a year, and together, we are so excited to share this two-part podcast series with you. Here is the first of two keynote speeches from MYN's Autumn 2020 conference entitled Apocalyptic Resilience: An Afro-Indigenous Futuristic Adventure. This first episode features the unstoppable Isha Clarke with Youth vs. Apocalypse, and Atekpatzin...

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network has called for all organizations in support of Palestinian liberation to endorse the "Days of Resistance", in occupied Palestine and internationally, August 7-9, 2020. In response, Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) chapters and many organizations across the nation are participating in actions throughout this weekend. This program was curated to go al...

This show is a follow up to our last episode about the indigenous led peasant movement in Nicaragua - in defense of land, water and sovereignty. On that episode David de la Gran of KPFA’s La Onda Bajita spoke with Medardo Mairena, one of the most prominent leaders of Nicaragua’s peasant movement, and a recently released political prisoner. His sentence by Ortega’s government was for 200 years… Tod...

We Rise had the extreme honor to record a show with David de la Gran of KPFA's La Onda Bajita featuring Medardo Mairena, leader of Nicaragua's indigenous peasant movement. David was joined by UC Berkeley students to co-facilitate the conversation. Mairena was joined by four members of Nicaragua's National Council in Defense of the Land, Lake and Sovereignty. On June 11, 2019, Mairena was released...

On July 15, Cal Shakes (an SF Bay Area theater company) hosted a community meal and civic dialogue about the role of joy in our movement building, our resistance, and our art, inspired by our production of House of Joy by Madhuri Shekar. We Rise got to record, produce, and edit this episode of Asides, the Cal Shakes podcast. Hosts: Tierra Allen, SK Kerastas, and Kimiya Shokri. Guests: Playwright M...

On July 9, Cal Shakes (an SF Bay Area theater company) partnered with Causa Justa :: Just Cause to host a community meal and civic dialogue called “Is Capitalism Killing Us?” inspired by their production of The Good Person of Szechwan. We Rise got to record, produce, and edit this episode of Asides, the Cal Shakes podcast. Hosts: SK Kerastas and Tierra Allen. Guests: Aimee Suzara, Ronald Flannery,...

This Sudan Uprising teach in was organized by Alaa Suliman, A Sudanese American residing in the Bay Area for about 20 years. "Having been born and raised in Sudan, the recent events of the Sudan uprisings have been a very emotionally involved experience for my family and I. These events have hit so close to home, we felt a great sense of obligation to bring awareness to our struggle through educat...

In the spring nicole gervacio of We Rise joined Mycelium Youth Network at Pear Tree Community School as they were finishing their 6 week program entitled 'Science for Survival' where youth learned water catchment, water purification, created emergency bags, made tinctures and salves, went on a medicinal first aid walk, and conducted a mini-home assessment of needs. Mycelium Youth Network educates...

Indigenous women and girls go missing or are murdered at startling rates that are not yet fully known. While there are many movements working hard to bring more attention to this, there is little legislation in the nation and minimal police support. In addition, the mainstream media has been eerily silent. Listen to a special report, by Pacifica Network producers Sara Blanco and Morning Star Gali,...

With an invitation from First Voice Media producer Kendall Crakow, Birth Bruja creator & host Eri Guajardo Johnson and We Rise co-creator & co-host Cat Petru sat down to weave stories about their mothers and grandmothers. As the two state in their dialogue, there are so many stories left untold. The ones that surfaced reflect the personal & political, pain & revelation. They are prayers, memories,...

On a bright, sunny day at Mills College in Oakland, California (better known as occupied Huichin), We Rise co-creators Cat & Nicky joined queer pop singer songwriter Be Steadwell and the exceptional artists of A Letter To My Ex, Be's first musical. A Letter To My Ex premiered in DC and opens in Oakland on Wednesday, April 10. The run is short - April 10-13 - and tickets will sell out. So get yours...

We Rise' dynamic duo creators Cat & Nicky are joined by Lindsey Page, founder & trainer at Radically Fit gym in Oakland - occupied Huichin - in this hilarious & honest conversation about the fitness industry, our relationships with our bodies, taking up space, capitalism, and well, joggers, of course. Apologies that there’s only one Friday left in February to catch the self-defense workshop we tal...

Rhodessa Jones of The Medea Project and Cultural Odyssey joins us again for this sweet & potent Winter Solstice edition of Women Saving Our Own Lives. Uzo Nwankpa and Lisa Frias, who both performed in The Medea Project's When Did Your Hands Become A Weapon? join host Cat Petru live in the KPFA studios as well. Please note that we discuss rape culture and violence against women in this #metoo momen...

With the rains just lifting the dense smoke in the SF Bay Area, some might be reminded of the nourishment of life in balance. The massive fires, in both Northern and Southern California, were devastating. Wildfires though they are, their intensity is a result of global warming brought on by uncontained, disproportionate & extractive economic growth. Our eco-logical and eco-nomic systems are not so...

Get out the vote! Please enjoy this plunge into electoral politics with trusty guides Sharon Peterson & Mari Nakagawa. From KPFA's Full Circle (where Cat learned everything she knows), we bring you this rebroadcast. On this episode, Mari & Sharon get into: Protecting our vote, and raising our voices (even between elections) How we can improve our electoral process so that it better serves, you kno...

One constellation of guiding lights for We Rise are Toni Cade Bambara’s words: “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” Rhodessa Jones is this artist. With her latest show When Did Your Hands Become a Weapon? running thru this weekend at San Francisco’s Brava Theater, to 40 years of Cultural Odyssey and 30 of The Medea Project, we have a lot to dive into - and celebrate. Th...