activism Archives - Unchained. Unbothered.

Activist, storyteller and proud preserver of Black Southern culture, Wendi Moore-O’Neal honors the legacy left by her parents – both engaged participants in the Civil Rights Movement and dedicated creators of art and culture. In this episode, Wendi shares how her experience as a community organizer and artist impacted how she dealt with rebuilding a battered New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. She is honest about the blockades to bring back residents who were misplaced after the storm, citing that even she, a college educated professional organizer had trouble finding work that paid her enough money to survive and also allowed her the freedom to rebuild New Orleans the way she and its generations of residents needed it to be rebuilt. Wendi also talks about the mismanagement of financial resources that contributed to many black New Orleanians never being able to return home and the strategic way in which governmental entities sent the message that Black culture did not possess the skill set to properly remake a city that had been broken. Wendi’s honesty continues as she shares how “new” New Orleanians contribute to the city’s rebranding in ways that make her uncomfortable. She ultimately addresses this discomfort in the way she knows best: through the creation of art. She regularly hosts get togethers where marginalized New Orleanians sing together and has produced a film, This Little Light. The film tells the story of how the blockade to progress in New Orleans impacted her personally when she was fired from an organization because she married her wife. As Wendi explores what it will take for New Orleans to be free of what blocks it from the kind of progress she would like to see, she continues her pattern of unabashed honesty. “It won’t be free for the same reason none of us are free. Even in 2019, New Orleans, like many places around the world, is based on a plantation economy.” Wendi explains how it is a city built on the backs of the working class. “This is how capitalism works; all of the wealth is gained on the labor of working people.”

*Shortly after recording this episode, Wendi’s father, John O’Neal, passed away. We offer her and the entire Black South our condolences as he was an icon and culture bearer in not only the Freedom Movement of the 1960s, but in the Black Southern Arts Movement as well.

Host of the popular Baltimore radio show, Today with Dr. Kaye, Karsonya Wise Whitehead is an accomplished scholar, author, activist and speaker. She has had many missions in the course of her career: street activist, advocate for public education and prolific writer for black mothers who are trying to raise healthy black children in America. In this episode, she talks about making the choice to serve her mission based on wherever she was in her life at the time. She explains that a challenge from a listener of her radio show sparked her to examine how she could use herself and her show to bring the racial disparities in Baltimore to the forefront of its residents’ awareness. As a university professor and speaker, Dr. Kaye shares how she has come to reclaim her time and energy. She rejects the expectation that black women, in general, and black women scholars, in particular, should make it their mission to educate white people on white supremacy. Dr. Kaye candidly expresses her disinterest in playing mammy to white America as it still struggles to figure out how to unpack its privilege. When asked about being a free black woman, she provides a nuanced answer that speaks to the complexities of being nonwhite and nonmale in today’s world. She notes freedom is a process and not a goal that one is even consciously seeking most times. “Part of what freedom looks like for me,” Karsonya says, “is being able to have difficult conversations with myself and forgiving myself when I fall short. It is allowing myself not to be perfect.”

Listen below and then subscribe to the show wherever you enjoy your favorite podcasts.