Antipod Antipod: A Radical Geography Podcast and Sound Collective

In this episode we consider the spread of COVID in prison from a public health perspective. We’ll hear from abolitionist organizers in WA state, and speak with Dr. Aaron Mallory, assistant professor of Geography and African American Studies at FSU. We discuss a variety of public health responses and ask what this moment opens up for thinking about carcerality, responsibility and abolition.

Music: dex digi (Dexter Thomas)
Intro: Piano Ruff Stilt Lodrum a
Interlude/Transition: Africa Again Lodrum a
Outro: Lofi Ting a

ACLU/ Prison Policy Initiative “Failing Grades”

APHA “Advancing Public Health Interventions to Address the Harms of the Carceral System”

APHA “Abolition is Public Health”

Free Them All WA

Prison Policy COVID spread as of June 2020

Prison Policy Initiative States of Emergency

“Surviving the Pandemic in Prison” Interview with incarcerated abolitionist, Lawrence Jenkins on COVID inside Stafford Creek CC

UCLA Law COVID Behind Bars Data Project

Dr. Aaron Mallory, African and African American Studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Aaron received their PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota. You can reach Dr. Mallory at @Mallory_Air on twitter, dr_former_lover on IG, and aarondmallory@gmail.com

In the first part of this episode, we explore the uneven effects of state-supported and state-prescribed COVID responses, focusing on the experiences of someone who was arrested and incarcerated beginning in the summer of 2020. His narrative reflects those of the many people inside and outside prison walls who bear the impacts of COVID’s precarity. In the second part, we ask anti-carceral organizer Io Brooks about how the forced movement of people within and among spaces of incarceration has shaped-and been shaped by–the pandemic.

Music: dex digi (Dexter Thomas)
Intro: Piano Ruff Stilt Lodrum a
Transition Music: Africa Again Lodrum a
Interlude: Lofi Ting a
Outro: dream seq2.mp3 a

Welcome to Season 2 of Antipod. This season will focus on questions of carcerality in the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the possibility of abolitionist, liberatory futures.

In this trailer, we introduce you to the themes and stories that will comprise this season's episodes, as well as to the new Antipod Sound Collective (Asha, Carrie, Deondre and Theo).

Episodes 1 and 2 of Season 2 will be coming soon, but until then, we hope you enjoy this trailer--welcome back to Antipod.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter! @ThisIsAntipod

Want to find out more about Antipod: A Radical Geography Podcast and Sound Collective? Visit our website at: thisisantipod.org

Many thanks to The Antipode Foundation for their generous support.

This trailer, and Antipod as a series is hosted by Asha Best, Carrie Freshour, Deondre Smiles and Theo Hilton.

The episode was mixed and edited by AK Al Moumen.

In this episode, hosts Alex Moulton and Brian Williams visit Birmingham, Alabama to revisit the work of Dr. Bobby M. Wilson. Dr. Wilson’s work was the subject of two panel discussions at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in 2019. Titled “Reframing Marxism and Race: The Scholarship of Bobby Wilson,” the panels included Wilson in conversation with collaborators and interlocutors who reflected on his work and mentorship: Adam Bledsoe, Joe Darden, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Perla Guerrero, Wendy Cheng, Benjamin Rubin, and Willie Wright. The hosts discuss a range of topics, from the lineage of radical Black scholarship and activism with and through geography to the place-specific intricacies and intimacies of racial capitalism.

Episode 2 of Antipod is the second in a two-part series dedicated to the life, work, and wisdom of Dr. Clyde Adrian Woods. This episode builds on the conversation that Akira and Brian had in the Episode 1, which engaged with a pair of panel discussions held in 2018 at the New Orleans Community Book Center and the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting. The panels focused on Dr. Woods’s Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations of Post-Katrina New Orleans, edited by Jordan T. Camp and Laura Pulido (University of Georgia Press, 2017). In Episode 2, hosts Allison Guess and Alex Moulton dive deeper on themes presented in Episode 1, especially Woods’s notion of the Blues Epistemology. Allison and Alex trade licks with Dr. Woods, Sunni Patterson, and Dee-1, among others and craft a multi-layered understanding of the Blues Epistemology. They do so in conversation with “No One Knows the Mysteries at the Bottom of the Ocean,” which is the opening chapter of Black Geographies and the Politics of Place (Between the Lines Press, 2007), a book co-edited by Dr. Woods and Dr. Katherine McKittrick (Queen’s University, Canada). As they unfold the notions of “the underside,” “the bottom of the belly,” and “Blues time,” Allison and Alex refer to and draw upon a panel organized by the Antipod Sound Collective at the 2019 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. That panel, titled “Creating a Soundscape of Radical Imagination: Podcasts as Scholarship,” involved a conversation among the Antipod Sound Collective members and Nerve V. Macaspac (Assistant Professor, College of Staten Island, City University of New York).

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Our theme music is "It’s Not Jazz" by Tronx.

archive.org/details/netlabels

archive.org/details/dystopiaq02…TronxItsNotJazz.mp3

Our interstitial music in this episode is: “I Am Who I Am” by Dee-1 featuring Shamarr Allen (Produced by Shamarr Allen); “When the Levee Breaks,” by Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie; and “Attention” by Dee-1 featuring Sunni Patterson (Produced by Mystro).

https://archive.org/details/Kansas_Joe_Memphis_Minnie-When_Levee_Breaks
https://archive.org/details/Dee-1_-_The_Focus_Tape

Our outro music for this episode is from a live performance of the New Orleans-based New Breed Brass Band, recorded on January 18, 2019 at the Crystal Bay Club in Crystal Bay, Nevada.

https://archive.org/details/NewBreedBrassBand-TheRedRoomCrystalBayClubCrystalBayNV18-JAN-2019

Music from all of these artists is available on archive.org and licensed under Creative Commons 3.0.

creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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Make sure to follow us on Twitter! @ThisIsAntipod and Instagram @antipod2019 and subscribe to our podcast. Follow Allison on Twitter @AllisonGuess1.

Many thanks to The Antipode Foundation for their generous support.
Episode 2 is written/hosted by Allison Guess and Alex Moulton.
The episode was mixed and edited by Darren Patrick/dp.
This episode was produced by all members of the Antipod Sound Collective.

Please cite as: Antipod Sound Collective. "Episode 2: The Blues Epistemology, Lick Trading in Blues Time from the Bottom of the Belly." Written/hosted by Allison Guess and Alex Moulton, edited by Darren Patrick/dp. October 30, 2019. https://thisisantipod.org/2019/10/30/episode-2

Bibliography

Woods, Clyde. 2017. Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in The Mississippi Delta. 2nd Edition. London: Verso.

–––. 2017. Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations in Post-Katrina New Orleans. Edited by Jordan T. Camp, and Laura Pulido. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

Woods, Clyde and Katherine McKittrick. “No One Knows the Mysteries at the Bottom of the Ocean.” In Black Geographies and the Politics of Place, edited by Clyde Woods and Katherine McKittrick. Toronto: Between the Lines Press.

–––, eds. 2007. Black Geogra

In this first full episode of Antipod we turn our attention to Black Geographies, the theme of our first season. Hosts Brian Williams and Akira Drake Rodriguez walk listeners through a series of clips from a panel on Clyde Woods’s posthomously published work Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations of Post-Katrina New Orleans, edited by Jordan T. Camp and Laura Pulido (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Brian and Akira comment on the use of Woods’s “blues epistemology” framework to contextualize the ongoing making and re-making of Black geographies in New Orleans. Covering themes from dispossession to displacement to the fallacy of “natural” disasters, this episode challenges traditional notions of urban planning and privileges what Woods’s calls “the visions of the dispossessed.” Clips from this episode are from an “Author Meets Critics” panel at the Community Book Center in New Orleans’s Seventh Ward, a space of continuity for pre- and post-Katrina New Orleans residents. The participants in the discussion were: former Woods student and activist-poet Sunni Patterson; Khalil Shahid, Senior Policy Advocate at the National Resource Defense Council; Anna Brand, Asst. Prof at the University of California at Berkeley; Shana Griffin from Jane’s Place, New Orleans’ first community land trust; Sue Mobley, who, at the time of the panel, was the Public Programs Manager for the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design at Tulane University; and Jordan T. Camp (editor) who at the time of the panel was at Barnard College, and is now the Director of Research at the People’s Forum in New York.