This episode is the fifth conversation in the Black Lives Matter series. In it, you will hear Dr. Ervin talk about the collapse of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for black people. He also talks about the choice between gradual change in contrast to “cataclysmic change” (his words) as relating to the liberation of black people around the…

This episode is the fourth conversation in the Black Lives Matter series where empowerment starts here with Reverend Dr. Valerie Bridgeman. In this call, Rev. Valerie links BLM to the spiritual. She talks about God as not sharing, about Jesus being a black woman, and about uprooting historical systems such as the police department so we can properl…

In this episode, Empowerment Starts Here with Senator Lena Taylor from Wisconsin. The Senator joins this BLM series as a public servant trying to disrupt social margins for her constituents while personally being in those margins. She talks about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by going right to the U.S. Constitution and then directly co…

In this episode, the Informant, a local artist, talks black lives matter through the lens of a black man growing up in Milwaukee, WI. He talks about his lived experiences with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and his encounters with police. In the close out, the host will explore humanization, self actualization and liberation as specific…

In this episode, Henry Leonard talks about public education and black lives matter through the lens of a union worker. He also shares his perspective on life as a contested experience for blacks yet a privileged experience for whites. Finally, in the close out, the host will consider white supremacy and its relatedness to the education of black min…

This episode is the first of a season of seven where the host explores what black lives matter means to her on a personal level and then engages with others to find out what it means to them as well. To learn more about this episode and to access the show notes, please visit our webpage.By Angela Dye

By Angela Dye

In this episode, the informant talks about the capital required for parents to enroll their children in charter public schools and the ways in which this requirement violates the tenets of free education. In the close out, the host adds to the conversation by talking about democratic education from the angle of property, privilege and power. Visit …

In the recorded conversation, the Informant talks about public school employment for educators of color and how it differs from what their white counterparts experience. He also talks about educators of color only being allowed to teach in under-resourced schools and finally, he talks about different access points to privilege and power. In the clo…

Contrary to public treatment, racism is not just about the n-word. It is also not just about blatant discrimination on the grounds of color. In this episode, the host talks about the subtleties of racism at the interpersonal level relating to legitimacy, authority and the control of resources. For a full description and the show notes, please click…

In the Case of Black Love, the informants talk about happiness, love, sex, sexuality, sexual assault, black men, black women, black consciousness, R. Kelly, Judge Kavanough, polyamory and monogamy, white patriarchy, black matriarchy, and much, much more! In the close out, the host talks about the causal relationship (made throughout the conversatio…

In this episode, the informant shares insight on words and the human experience those words represent. She talks about writing, publishing and the development of the mind. In the close out, the host talks about a mental function called chunking and how it is essential for experts and the highly creative mind.…

In this episode, the informant and host talk about sex from a sociological perspective. Together, they interrogate ideas on sex as an act of pleasure, the right to have pleasurable sex, and the dignity of sex as related to being human. They also talk about parenting in the development of healthy sexual identities and the role that church plays in t…

The Sunken Place is a term/metaphor borrowed from Jordan Peele's movie, Get Out. In this episode, the host proposes four conditions that creates this condition. Instead discussing racism, as was the premise of Peel's interpretation of the Sunken Place, she explores how other conditions in the physical, social and political world also creates causes…

To be critical is to understand all events, experiences and phenomenon by examining their relationship with the social world. One who is critical accepts the social world as a series of interconnecting systems ...usually enacted to maintain current distributions of power. In this episode, the hosts considers how two seemingly similar people can hav…

In this episode, the informant talks about three levels of power shifting: the power shift that happens at the classroom level when whiteness is de-centered in the literature read by black and brown students; at the local level when gentrification takes over black and brown communities; and at the global level when white Americans must confront the…

In this episode, four ESH returns come back to talk about a common theme they share: being white, male and privileged. In this conversation is Chris Thinnes from Ep03 (The Case of Allyship in Context); Peter Anderson from Ep09 (The Case of Gradelessness); Dr. Paul Thomas from Ep10 (The Case of Critical Literacy) and Justin Schleider from Ep24 (The …

In this episode, the informant models what it means to be unapologetic around issues relating to women. She talks boldly about birth control, about abortions as a reproductive right, about being child-free, and about her relationship with women of color and queer women. Also in this conversation, you will learn that it is quite difficult to talk ab…

In this episode, the host talks about property, power and prestige as conditions of social class; about class inconsistency and class stratification; and about the consequences of a social class system. To access detailed notes for this episode along with a list of the resources mentioned, click here.…

In this episode, the informant talks about being black at school as a psychosocial phenomenon impacting black students and families, black educators, and black community stakeholders. She also talks about the nonprofit and for-profit organization that fuels her work and the dynamic challenges of monetizing social justice and providing services to s…

In this episode, Dr. Marachi offers a critique on standardized testing as part of a larger phenomenon of big data and predictive analytics. She talks about testing as relating to resource distribution and data mining; about power holders as test makers and the design and coding of tests to keep them secure as power holders; and about social justice…

In this episode, the informant talks about individualism versus collectivism (in terms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness); about traditionalism versus innovation (in terms of critical pedagogy and rejecting the middle as the naming of the case); and about the English language as a power tool of culture and privilege (in terms of intrape…

This case explores three themes extracted from Senate hearings around the Supreme Court vacancy and the allegations levied against Judge Kavanaugh: body and space; power-over; and the contested nature of the invisible. In this episode, the conversation is more academic (ish) than newsworthy. Whereas other programs have discussed Judge Kavanaugh in …

In this episode, we spend a good chunk of time talking politically about giftedness, about the federal definition provided for gifted and talented programming, and about the ways in which capitalism and commercialism make space for some gifts while ignoring/invalidating others. To access show notes and resources discussed in the episode, please vis…

In this episode, the informant talks about medicine and the health profession in terms of how prepared it is (or not) in dealing with communities of color. To access show notes and resources mentioned in the episode, visit the webpage.By Angela Dye

In this episode, the informant talks about socioeconomic conditions of fathering and challenges faced by black, low-income dads (unemployment, housing and mental health). In the closeout, the host talks about the physiological impact of children (even adult children) when neglected by a parent during childhood. To access show notes and resources me…

When you have multiple access points to powerlessness, the work of social change can seem impossible—even secondary to the work of survival. But nonetheless, there are those of us fighting for our wholeness, fighting for our humanness, all while trying to pursue a vision for a better tomorrow for us all. This episode talks intimately about the work…

In this eisode, the host focuses on the social world as relating to the power and privilege afforded to specific cognitive functions (within Meyers Briggs personality theory). She also brings attention to the challenges that exist when certain functions are embodied by women of color. This is the second part where Part I (Episode 33) focused on det…

The final case is being presented over two episodes allowing for an adequate representation of two related yet distinct discussions. In the first episode (Ep33), the host provides an argument for why knowing the landscape of one's internal world is essential to disrupting margins. The case was inspired by six informants (in Ep20, Ep22, Ep25, Ep27, …

In this episode, the informant talks about self-love and self-care as liberatory practices. She provides a five-part construct on critical race feminism. She also talks about the bleeding nature of the subthemes within critical race theory: critical feminism, feminism, jurisprudence, and critical legal studies. For a complete list of the key points…

In this episode, the informant explores racism and sexism in higher education. To get more of a description and access resources mentioned in the conversation, please visit our webpage: https://empowermentstartshere.net/2018/05/16/the-case-of-the-academy-and-women-of-color/By Angela Dye

In this episode, the informant talked about dignity as a sense of mutual self-worth within the human race and race and gender as social constructs that serve to disrupt our overall sense of oneness with each other. She also talked about blackness within global white supremacy, about multiple community membership versus single community membership, …

In this episode, the host talks about student power as a practice of teaching and learning. She makes a case that it is an essential element of student empowerment... specifically relating to learners who are disenfranchised from the learning process. Visit the webpage to access the show notes where resources mentioned in the episode are listed: ht…

In this episode, the informant talks about what happens when your life becomes the place of protest impacting your body, your home and your reputation. In it, you will learn how she handled attacks on her character, her reputation, and her inside access to local change efforts happening in her city– all as the price paid for walking in her integrit…

In this episode, the informant talks about the unique teaching style of black female educators that comes from suffering and surviving in an inequitable society. While this case covers issues in teaching and learning, it also covers issues in the social world. The informant does a wonderful job exploring how these two areas (schooling and society) …

In the recorded call, you are going to hear the informant offer four (possibly five) ways that math teachers can do social justice work in a math classroom (and beyond). To access show notes and resources mentioned in the episode, please visit our webpage.By Angela Dye

A significant portion of this case explores race and gifted and talented programming. The case also explores issues around testing and cultural biases, digital natives and digital immigrants, Generations Y and Z, and STEM programming in k12 schools. To access show notes and resources mentioned in the episode, please visit our webpage.…

In this conversation, you will learn about movement as vital to building brain cells, moving information from short-term into long-term memory, and positioning students as co-constructors of knowledge—not just mindless receivers of someone else’s knowledge. In the close out of the episode, the host talks critically about no-excuse schools that regu…

This episode explores American Apartheid as a system of structures that routinely disadvantages people of color for the advantage of white Americans: wealth, housing, education, mass media, and criminal justice. To access more notes and the resources mentioned in this episode, please visit: https://empowermentstartshere.net/2018/03/13/the-case-of-c…

This episode is based on a song entitled Two Times written and performed by the informant (Jerry B Seus). In the case segment of the episode, the listener will hear Jerry B talk about his writing process; about his emotional life and the gender bias he believes society holds about emotions; and about the role of failure as necessary for succeeding.…

This case can be divided into two halves. The first half is where the informant talks about family secrets, why it is a topic for her, and how she was frustrated upon discovering some of her family’s own secrets. It is here that the listener learns a lot about how family secrets negatively impact future generations. In the the second half, the info…

This is a conversation about divorce, God and sexuality. To access the show notes, please visit: http://wp.me/p4MtzN-93By Angela Dye

This is a conversation about race, love and belonging. To get a full description, please visit: https://empowermentstartshere.net/the-eshpodcast/By Angela Dye

By Angela Dye

In this episode, the host brings closure to the season by sharing the different lessons offered on power. There were 12 informants in Season 1 and as they are highlighted in this episode, listeners are able to learn more about them and the four levels of power that impacted their work with social change: Structural, Cultural, Interpersonal and Intr…

In today’s conversation, Imani Evans talks about how she took her experience with trauma and made it her life’s work. Specifically, she argues that the very thing that made her want to die is the thing that gave her a reason to live. She talks about her experience with sexual violence, with identity and intersectionality, and with her business deve…

In this episode, Imani Evans, a therapist and activist for women and girls healing from sexual and domestic violence, presents Part 1 of The Case of Healing, Surviving and Thriving. She talks about critical foundations to thriving, such as in joy, happiness, and peace. And, she argues for a pursuit of wholeness, where thriving resides, which requir…

In this episode, C. Eric Ervin, a former emergency medical doctor, provides listeners with a compelling proposition about class, human behaviors and social well-being.

This week Empowerment Starts Here with informant Kaitlin Popielarz in the Case of Therapy and Well Being. In it she discusses working with a therapist as a form of self care, the stigma that can sometimes surround this form of healing and how her family dynamics helped make going to therapy possible. Kaitlin also delves into the racial privilege th…

In this episode (Ep12), Empowerment Starts Here with Angela Dye (the host). With the Case of the Social Change Organization, Angela offers a 4-part construct for organizations promoting social change. She reasons that organizations committed to social change should have a clear and active aim, should be treated as a learning organization, should co…