Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 185: Science Fiction & Social Justice — with Walidah Imarisha
Speakers: Kathy Feng, Am Johal, Walidah Imarisha
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Kathy Feng 0:03
Hello, listeners. I'm Kathy Feng with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Situated within the current context of police brutality, for-profit prisons, and excessive incarceration rates. Our host Am Johal is joined by educator, writer and public scholar Walidah Imarisha. Walidah describes her creative works involving ideas and futures of police and prison abolishment, as well as the importance of using science fiction as an avenue to inspire greater imaginings for social change. Walidah also digs into the presence of white progressiveness within Oregon, and speaks to the implications of white supremacy as a colonial global phenomenon present within the United States. We hope you enjoy the discussion.
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Am Johal 0:57
Hello, welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted that you could join us again this week. Really excited to have a special guest with us this, Walidah Imarisha is with us, I believe from Oregon, but I don't know that for sure. Welcome Walidah.
Walidah Imarisha 1:12
Thank you. Yes, from Oregon. Excited to be here.
Am Johal 1:16
Walidah, wondering if we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit?
Walidah Imarisha 1:21
Yeah. My name is Walidah Imarisha, she/her. I am an educator, and a writer. I have written a couple of books. I've edited an anthology of radical science fiction, and I currently teach at Portland State University, in the Black Studies Department.
Am Johal 1:38
Yeah, maybe I'll start with a question around, you know, speculative fiction. Science fiction has been around a long time, you bring political social orientation into the project. And I know in the analogy you edited with adrienne maree brown, in the introduction, you speak about those connections. But I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to what draws you to that particular form, and how it connects to your politics?
Walidah Imarisha 2:06
Absolutely. I mean, I've been a nerd since birth, it is something I came by honestly, so I've always been interested in science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy. And I think the appeal was absolutely around imagination, around being able to see things that I would have never thought of, but get to explore and immerse something entirely new. And that has been part of who I am. I became politicized in high school, began being involved in radical politics, community organizing. And over time, I realized that not only were these two pieces connected, but they were intertwined. Social justice and science fiction, or speculative fiction, the idea that anything we want to build in this world that we have not seen is science fiction. But organizers need spaces like that, because we have to imagine what we haven't seen to be able to build it. So, that became the premise of the anthology i co-edited with adrienne maree brown, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, that all organizing is science fiction, that any time we imagine a world without prisons, a world without borders, a world without brutality, that is science fiction, because we haven't seen that world, but we can't build what we can imagine. So we have to have spaces that allow us to throw out everything we've been told is possible.
Am Johal 3:49
Wondering if you could speak a little bit to how you brought that collection together, and the kind of creative process involved with working with a collaborator like adrienne maree brown.
Walidah Imarisha 4:00
Yes. So I was doing work around what I call visionary fiction, which is that intersection between science fiction and social change. I define visionary fiction as fantastical art that helps us understand current power inequalities, and helps us imagine new ways of building just futures. Adrienne, who is brilliant and amazing, and I know you've had her on the podcast before, was doing work around emergent strategy, specifically Octavia E. Butler's emergent strategy, and we connected around some projects. And actually, it was, I think, almost 12 years ago, that we connected at the US Social Forum in Detroit. And adrienne said, "We should do an anthology," and the rest is history, but that, you know, that work that we were doing separately, really, again, all of it focused around radical imagination, about trying to create spaces for us to continually push beyond what we're told is possible change. That idea of realistic change that is so drilled into organizers, I believe is a method of social control, we have to go beyond what society tells us is possible to get to true liberation. And so, for adrienne's work, for my work, together, and individually, I think that we are both trying to create as many of those spaces for folks to just keep pushing out further and further, this understanding of what's possible.
Am Johal 5:41
It's such an inspiring work. And I'm wondering what the reception was like for you when the book went out into the world?
Walidah Imarisha 5:48
It was amazing, it continues to be amazing, yes, it was, I think it surpassed anything we imagined. We thought we were creating a book, basically, for folks like us, folks who are involved in social movements, who are also nerds and geeks. And we felt that was a pretty big group. There are a lot there were a lot of undercover nerds out there in radical movements who, you know, would be talking very seriously. And then you'd be like, "Star Wars!" and they're like, "Yeah!" So, we figured there would be a lot of us, but, you know, it went well beyond that. And we've had so many folks come to us and say this is the first science fiction they've ever read, is Octavia's Brood. And on the other side, we have folks come to us and say they've been reading science fiction their whole lives, but this is the first time they've thought about getting involved in movements for change. And so, the response is phenomenal. And I think it has connected us with so many other folks who are doing similar work, as well as inspiring some new people to also create their own spaces, to explore those intersections of liberation and imagination.
Am Johal 7:03
I wanted to ask you about a new project that you're working on, Space to Breathe. I'm wondering if you can talk about that a little bit.
Walidah Imarisha 7:07
Yes, Space to Breathe is a very exciting project. It is a film that is set in an abolitionist future in the year 2070. So we have abolished police, we abolished prisons, we have created liberated collective communities. And in that future, this young teen is making a documentary about the history of abolition, and so, is using historical footage. What to them is historical, what to us is current footage of the abolitionist movement, to say, "How did we get here?" And so, I'm working with several collaborators who are incredible. My main collaborator is Jordan Flaherty, who brought the idea to me, and that idea of mixing documentary footage with future, footage with fiction, with this imagined future world, is something that feels very exciting, and also feels like it hasn't been explored fully. So the tagline of it is that it is a documentary from the future, for the future. And for me, the goal is really the goal of all my work, is to make liberated futures feel tangible. And I think the medium of film is very well-suited for that. It's one thing to write a short story, it's another thing to show, folks, "This is what a city would look like this is what education would look like, this is what healthcare would look like, this is what familial units might look like," you know, and to really provide folks not with a blueprint, but with something to respond to concretely. So, I'm very excited about the project, and we've gotten very good response for it as well.
Am Johal 9:07
Sounds amazing. I remember watching Lizzie Borden's film, Born in Flames, a number of years ago, and we interviewed her a little while ago, and yeah, super interesting seeing that film again, and the kind of politics [inaudible] that's more post-apocalyptic tone to it. And in terms of documentary work, how did you get into that side of work?
Walidah Imarisha 9:28
Yes. So, Jordan is the filmmaker. I'm not a filmmaker. I made one short documentary about, actually, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. I didn't intend to make a documentary, but I went down to help and realized there was very limited amounts I could do with the time I had there in terms of impact and skills. You know, I got put on a tarping crew to help put tarps on homes that had gaping holes in them, and that is certainly not my specialty. So I was like, "I will do whatever I can and whatever I can in the moment," and "What do I have that can be helpful?" And I felt like what I had was a network of distribution and connections, and so I made a short documentary. But I don't consider myself a filmmaker. So, in some ways, it's very exciting for me, it feels like I'm pushing beyond what I thought was possible, and learning all kinds of new things, and getting to rely on the expertise of this incredible collective, I'm working with of folks. It's very, it's exciting to get to explore and imagined beyond, and I think we have people who are very skilled at what they do. And we are trying to do things in a different way, a much more collective, communal way of filming, rather than the more hierarchical, segmented way that filming happens. So I think we're trying to infuse that future, we want into the way that we're making the film as well.
Am Johal 11:01
You've had a long involvement with prison abolition work in terms of political organizing, community struggle, and I know that you're involved with a project called Angels with Dirty Faces, and wondering if you could share a little bit about that.
Walidah Imarisha 11:17
Sure, that was my creative nonfiction book that I wrote, Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption. And it focuses on three people's stories: myself, my adopted brother, Kakamia, who was incarcerated for 29 years, went to prison, was arrested at 16, sentenced as an adult. And James McElroy, who was a member of the Westies, the Irish mob in New York, who ran Hell's Kitchen. The premise of it was really, sometimes folks do horrific things to one another, and then what? Because as an abolitionist, I firmly believe that police and prisons make us less safe. They are not there to protect us or to stop crime, they are there to control and exploit potentially rebellious communities. And so, if the goal of prisons and police is not to keep us safe, and not to address harm, what do we do when harm happens? And how do we hold the humanity of everyone involved, while still holding people accountable for the immense harm that has been done? I don't offer any clear answers in that book, so if anyone is looking for a blueprint, that is not the book. I admit that completely. But I think one of the things I realized, over the years, doing abolition work, saying to people, "I think we should eliminate police and prisons," is that we have all been indoctrinated with the notion that only bad people go to prison, and that the people who are incarcerated lose their humanity in our eyes, as a society. And so, before we can even talk about, "What do we build, instead?" I felt the first step was actually to re-humanize folks who are incarcerated, to say, "This certainly does not take away from the fact that people have done horrific things and absolutely have to be held accountable. But no one ever fully loses their humanity." And how do we hold both of those things at once? The work that I have done has made me intimately aware that statistics don't change people's minds off the bat. I think that statistics can help you understand things, but first, you have to be open to understanding things. Otherwise, people just throw out statistics that don't fit their worldview. I think what begins to break openings in people's worldview, is stories, is narratives, is being able to emotionally connect with someone else, and to say, "Even if I would never do that I see you as a person like me." And that's when we can begin to then bring in statistics, and more kind of concrete documentation. So, through centering on three people's stories, that's what I was hoping to do, was to just start making that spiderweb of cracks that allow a little bit of light to come through for folks.
Am Johal 14:34
Sounds amazing. I wanted to also ask you about the Oregon Black History Project because coming from up here, Oregon has this progressive reputation and once you start going into its history, things start to get a lot murkier and somebody who we both know, Matt Hern, wrote a book around the city of Portland where he goes through some of that history as well, but I'm wondering if you could speak about that project, and how you became I'm involved in it, and the necessity of it.
Walidah Imarisha 15:02
Absolutely. And Matt's book is wonderful. I absolutely recommend folks to check it out, I think it's called What a City is For, and studies three cities, and Portland is one of them. The way I got involved in the work felt very natural. As a Black teen, I moved to Oregon. I grew up overseas on military bases, and so even though I was in places that were very, very white, like Germany and Iceland, the communities I lived in were overwhelmingly people of colour, because the military disproportionately recruits people of coluor. So, moving to Oregon, and later to Portland, which is the whitest major city in America was a big culture shock for me. And I went in search of why that was, why did I feel like a place like Iceland, my community in Iceland, had more diversity than a state in the United States, that is built on Indigenous land? And it was through that work that I've learned, began to learn the history of Oregon and its history of race, identity, and power. And through the work of my mentor, Dr. Darrell Milner, who helped to found the Portland State University's Black Studies department that I now teach in, I went through it as an undergrad, I really began to see this history of brutality, exclusion, exploitation, that is the foundation of this place, and really began to understand that the founding ideology of Oregon, and of all of the Northwest, is as a racist white utopia. And that is the framework that allows you to make sense of everything that has happened here: the 2.5 million acres of Indigenous land that were stolen, given away for free to white people, to literally build this white utopia they dreamed of, the brutal and horrific Black exclusion laws that said Black people could not live in the Oregon Territory, which, Oregon Territory was all of the Northwest, basically. So an entire region told Black people, "You cannot live here, and if you come here, we will publicly whip you every six months, up to 39 lashes until you leave." That is the foundation of this place, and I think it is incredibly important, because the image Portland puts out of itself as progressive is actually not a break from that ideology. It's a natural extension of the notion of a racist white utopia, because the progressiveness Oregon puts out, and specifically Portland puts out, it is a white progressiveness. It is if you are rich and white, this is a utopia for you. But that is a racist, classist utopia, which to some, is an incredible dystopia. It's an absolute nightmare. And I think it's incredibly important, and the work I do is about really saying, you cannot say you are a just place, if you are furthering racial injustice. Then, you are a place that is great for white people, and you need to say that explicitly. So everyone knows the deal, because folks of colour absolutely know the deal, when we come here, it's white folks who are like, "But it's so progressive, except for the fact that there are no people of colour here at all." So, you know, that is a big part of my work. But I think that the bigger part of my work is centering the agencies of those communities that do, have, and will exist here. There have always been communities of coloor here, obviously, this is Indigenous land, but even Black communities that were literally told you would be publicly tortured, over and over again until you left, stayed and built under those circumstances. That is visionary, courageous and beyond what I could imagine. That agency needs to be centered in everything that happens going forward in this place.
Am Johal 19:21
Walidah, looking at the authoritarian populism of the American political climate right now, in many ways. Trump was just a symptom of what was already happening on the ground in many respects. And when you look at the orientation of the Supreme Court, just the normalization of anti-democratic practices that are you know, essentially have become a working feature of the American political landscape, the attempted fusion of church and state, there's something to the atmosphere right now that just being north of the border, it's frightening being next to it, let alone being inside of it. And I'm wondering, in terms of your own politics in art, you know, what does resistance look like in the present political moment of this context, that American political context that is unfolding right now?
Walidah Imarisha 20:20
I mean, I think, I think it's important to recognize this landscape is not unique to America, right? I'm like y'all, Canadians, you've got this! It may look different, but it's there! It's everywhere!
Am Johal 20:34
Absolutely.
Walidah Imarisha 20:35
White supremacists, imperial colonialism, and its continued manifestations are a global phenomenon. And I think that piece is the other piece that is important: this is not new. This is not a break from what has happened. So, we have to be able to hold at the same time, new manifestations change, conditions shift, and we have to adapt, and we have to respond to those. And this is not a break from the foundation. This is why I say Oregon is so important for the United States as a whole to study. Because the only thing unique about Oregon is Oregon was bold enough to write it down. But Oregon was founded as a racist white utopia, the United States was founded as a racist white utopia. We want to talk about the exclusion of rights, those were baked into the constitution of this nation, that disenfranchised, disempowered, and dehumanized everyone who was not a white man. And so, it is incumbent on us to understand that, because if we keep acting like these things are new, if we act like this, "Oh, this has only been happening for five years, or 10 years, or 20 years or 50 years," we are missing the point. And we will never be able to move beyond what we're told is possible, because we will continue to hold the sort of nostalgia for what was before.We need to get back to the core of who we are. This is the core of who the United States of America is. And knowing that, knowing that the system is not broken, it's not drifted off-course, it is exactly where it was intended to be, and it is operating very well, with those intentions. That is when we are able to step back and say, "Then this has to be completely reimagined, dismantled, replaced," and then we have the responsibility to do that work. And so, again, my work, I feel very privileged to be doing the work that I'm doing, as both a historian and a futurist, because it allows me to see time as, you know, not not just one section, and not even linearly, to see time as fluid. And when you are able to zoom out and see sort of the expanse of time, and change, and patterns, it allows you to see that the real social change happens when people who are oppressed and are told, "You can never change this, you can maybe make it a little easier, that foot may get half an inch off your neck, we may relieve a little bit of that pressure, if you fight hard enough." We see that oppressed people historically have always rejected that, and have said, "We will dream impossible dreams, and then build that into reality." And they have. And that means it's a historic certainty that that is how you make change, which means it's a futuristic certainty that no, not only is that how we will make change, but we will absolutely win, because we've seen that before. And that level of certainty of hope, is what I think is terrifying to systems of power. Because if we have hope that change is not only possible, but is within arm's reach, then we know we can dismantle everything. That is why systems of power try so hard to rob us of our hope, and to make us feel powerless and isolated. We have never been powerless and isolated, we have never been hopeless. And this moment, like every other moment, demands of us the courage to dream, and then the fortitude to build that into existence. And there's not a doubt in my mind that we can and will do that.
Am Johal 21:15
Walidah, is there anything you'd like to add?
Walidah Imarisha 23:57
I hope that folks engage in their own practices of radical dreaming individually and, and collectively. It's important to recognize we have to be dreaming together, because that is where our strength is. There's space for our individual brilliance within that collective, but then we Have to do the work of building it into existence. It's not enough to just imagine these worlds, it's not enough to just create those spaces of experimentation and play, which is important. We have to then do the work in the streets, in the community, on the ground, of doing, of being the future that we want, of pulling that future into the present.
Am Johal 25:24
Walidah, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar. Lovely to speak with you.
Walidah Imarisha 25:30
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
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Kathy Feng 25:36
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to this episode Walidah Imarisha. To check out the book Octavia's Brood, or Walidah's other projects, look in the show notes below. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter @sfu_voce to stay up to date on our latest episodes and public events. We release new episodes every Tuesday, so make sure to subscribe to Below the Radar on your podcasting app of choice to make sure you never miss an episode. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll catch you next time on Below the Radar.