Frederick Douglass had it exactly right and we must never forget. Power concedes nothing without

a demand. It never did and it never will.

Welcome to Push Black's Black History Year. I'm Jay. Thanks for giving us some time today.

As we think about what's needed to achieve black liberation, we always have to

remember that changing the balance of power in our society is crucial. Freedom and autonomy cannot be separated and we can have

neither without shifting the balance of power in economics and policing and politics and the labor force and schools in every

system that influences our lives. Much of season two has been about wrestling with these big

themes of power and control. So we could think of no one better than renowned

abolitionist and scholar Dr Joy James to help us begin to

understand these ideas as they relate to what she calls revolutionary struggle. She's the

Ebenezer Fitchitch professor of humanities at Williams College.

She's authored resisting state violence and seeking the beloved community and

edited anthologies on incarceration and politics, including the

Angela White Davis Reader and the new abolitionists. Oh yeah, Dr James knows a lot

about subverting power systems.

Get ready, folks.

This conversation is one for the books. Dr. James, welcome to Black History Year, happy to have you here. So we start out all our

episodes, just asking folks, what does Black liberation look like to you?

Wow, it's complicated and it may continually evolve, but I think of it as a zone of freedom and which we're allowed to love without fear and

we're allowed to struggle without being put into cages or disappeared.

I was talking to an old friend of my cages or disappeared.

I was talking to an old friend of mine

...