The Podcaster's Dilemma

Introduction

Having a radio meant seriously going to war.

Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (1965)

Broadcasting from Oakland, California, “the center of the known universe,” Alicia Garza’s podcast Lady Don’t Take No! begins with the pronouncement: “This show is pro-Black, pro-Queer, proudly Feminist, and pro-Do-Whatcha-Like. Every week, you are going to get the best of what goes on in my head, what we’re lovin’ on, what we’re hatin’ on, what we might be and what we aint gon’ do.”¹ Garza, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement along with Patrisse Cullers and Opal Tometi, brings unfiltered community-based perspectives on everything from pop culture to politics. With broadcasts that elevate the voices of local and national Black activists, thinkers, and artists (e.g. Erika Huggins, W. Kamau Bell, Davey D., Lateefah Simon, Angela Rye, Laverne Cox), Garza’s broadcast, “recorded with whatever was lying around,”² embodies the spirit of media freedom. Opening against the alternative hip-hop beats of the Bay Area-based duo Latyrx, every broadcast sounds like a paradigm shift. Emerging in a summer of protest that followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the midst of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic (“’rona and rebellion”), Lady Don’t Take No! is an audio brick thrown at the plateglass window of corporate misinformation, as Garza and her guests take back the narrative. Speaking as a member of the loving communities that she advocates for, Garza urges ...