Welcome to Dreaming in Color, a show hosted by Darren Isom, a partner with The Bridgespan Group, that provides a space for social change leaders of color to reflect on how their life experiences, personal and professional, have prepared them to lead and drive the impact we all seek. 

Today we welcome Mia Birdsong, a pathfinder, writer, and facilitator who engages the leadership and wisdom of people experiencing injustice to chart new visions of American life. As the Founding Executive Director of Next River, she nourishes communities toward a liberated future. 

In her book "How We Show Up" and the podcast miniseries "More Than Enough," she highlights community vitality and the guaranteed income movement. Previously, Mia was Co-Director of Family Story and Vice President of the Family Independence Initiative, promoting new narratives and leveraging data to support low-income families. 

Her public dialogues, TED talks, and other initiatives spotlight marginalized voices as leaders of change. A Senior Fellow at the Economic Security Project and a Future Good Fellow, Mia lives in Oakland, tending to bees, chickens, and plants on the occupied land of the Chochenyo Ohlone people.

In this episode, Darren and Mia discuss what constitutes something as radical, a future without poverty, and finding joy and optimism in activism. 

This is Dreaming In Color. 

Jump straight into: 

(00:22.7) Introduction of Mia Birdsong, Founding Executive Director of Next River.

(06:27.5) Cracked open: Mia shares her educational beginnings in Rochester and how an unexpected Public Enemy cassette tape on a school bus ignited her path to activism.

(09:19.9) Critical Resistance and Mia’s journey to becoming an abolitionist.

(12:04.2) The American dream vs. the collective dream. 

(13:43.1) Ending poverty is not a problem of lacking solutions, but of lacking belief. Mia Birdsong explores her initial efforts advocating for a guaranteed income.

(20:59.9) Dismantling power structures and moving beyond wealth and power hoarding. 

(22:51.2) We explore Mia’s work with Next River and her unwavering commitment to guaranteed income, guaranteed housing, education and universal healthcare.

(26:02.6) What is radical? Mia shares how many “unattainable radical beliefs” are actually being successfully performed all over the world and how discovering these stories of small communities implementing these systems for themselves inspires her work. 

(29:38.2) The path of least resistance: Mia discusses finding strength in vulnerability and staying optimistic vs. falling into cynicism. 

Episode Resources

• Keep up with Mia on Twitter, Instagram, & LinkedIn
• Learn more about Mia through her website.
• Order Mia’s book “How We Show Up” here. 
• Listen to Mia’s podcast “More Than Enough” here. 
• Watch Mia’s TEDX Talk “The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn’t True” here. 

Darren Isom:

Welcome to Dreaming in Color, where we sit down with social change, leaders of color to learn how their unique life experiences have prepared them to lead and drive the impact we all seek. I'm your host, Darren Isom, and this season I'm lucky to have a few of my Bridgespan colleagues dropping in to join me as guest hosts. Together we'll be celebrating the genius of leaders who live into the work every day. This is Dreaming in Color. I'm honored to sit down today with my friend Mia Birdsong, pathfinder, writer and facilitator dedicated to reimagining American life by engaging the leadership and wisdom of those experiencing injustice. Mia is the founding executive director of Next River, an institute for practicing the future. Through her work, she supports communities whose innovative ways can guide us toward a liberated future. In her book, How We Show Up, in her podcast miniseries, More Than Enough, Mia explores community dynamics and expands the guaranteed income movement by amplifying the voices of low-income individuals.

Mia Birdsong:

Absolutely.

Darren Isom:

With that, I'm going to pass the mic to you and you should have an invocation for us to kick off.

Mia Birdsong:

Yes. So of course I did not follow your rules.

Darren Isom:

Of course not.

Mia Birdsong:

And I'm going to read two quotes. The first is Angela Davis, and she says, "Freedom can't be contained within a paradigm that is individualistic. One cannot be free alone. Freedom is collective. Freedom is about transforming conditions so that communities can live in more habitable conditions."

Darren Isom:

All right, Angela.

Mia Birdsong:

And then I'm going to read you a quote from Alexis Pauline Gumbs. It's from her book Undrowned, which I highly recommend. And she says, "Remember why Harriet Tubman went South. She didn't have to. She was skilled, untraceable. She could have been individually free, unencumbered, but if she wanted to tell an everlasting truth about freedom that would ring across the planet a message for the ages she had to live free in unfree space. It was the only way to bring us all with her."

Darren Isom:

Beautiful. Thank you for breaking the rules there or creating new ones at least.

Mia Birdsong:

Absolutely.

Darren Isom:

Love both of those. And with that perfect starting point from a conversation perspective, of course, I have to start by asking you to share with us your origin story. I would love for you to share a little bit more about your upbringing. At some point, you commented that you slipped through the cracks of the system. I'd love for you to share a little bit more about what you meant by that.

Mia Birdsong:

Yes. I grew up in Rochester, New York. I was raised in my household by my mother, who was a white woman from Macon, Georgia. And my father, who was Jamaican, was very much part of my life, but we did not live together. We lived in the city of Rochester, and I was bussed to a suburb to, and I'm putting this in air quotes, integrate it. And there I received what I think most people, myself included, would consider an excellent education. Part of the reason that I was able to access that excellent education was not because just because I was in this school, but because I had a parent who could navigate the systems that were set up and made sure that I was getting access to all of the things that I deserved. And her ability to do that was largely because she was white.

So her white privilege basically allowed me to have access to an education that most of my Black peers who rode the bus with me were not able to get. School, like conventional American school, I used to say that it was designed for people like me, and I realize now that it was not designed for anybody. It was designed for the system that we are in, it's not designed for the actual children who are experiencing it. But many things about myself allowed me to, again, I'm putting this in quotes, excel in that context. So I was in gifted programs, I was in honors classes, I was in AP classes. I belonged to several choirs. I was the captain of the cheerleading squad. I got really good grades. If you were to hold up a human as a kind of well-rounded, excellent version of what an American school system would want to produce, I was it.

And the fact that I was a Black girl from the city achieving in this environment meant that I was also held up as an example of what's possible. And I totally bought into it. I was like, "Yes, meritocracy. We just work hard and we can achieve," all of that, until I think there are a few things that are the touch points of my political education and my ability to see the ways in which the exceptions are held up as the rule as opposed to exceptions. And then the expectation is that everybody has to be an exception and no one can be normal, right? No one can be mediocre, no one can struggle and be expected to experience wellbeing. The first thing was that in my senior year of high school, John Barker gave me a, who also rode the bus with me, he gave me a Public Enemy cassette. And there was just something that it coincided with in terms of where I was, about to graduate and the messages that that cassette kind of exposed me to.

Darren Isom:

Come through hip hop.

Mia Birdsong:

I mean, seriously, I am forever a Public Enemy fan despite many things that are problematic about them because I feel like it cracked something open in me. And then I went to college, and the second semester of my first year of college, I took my first Black studies class with Adrian Last Jones, and it was over for America. It just spoke to so many things that I couldn't have articulated and didn't even know were questions that I had. It was something that pointed to the systems that we exist in and the culture that we exist in, and the idea that there are these beliefs and stories that we as a culture have kind of accepted, and those are the things that actually determine so much about our experience and what we have access to and who we get to be in America as opposed to our individual selves.

So those things, I feel like were kind of an arc of awakening for me. And then I became a Black studies major. I was like, "I'm going to spend these four years learning everything I should have learned in the first 18 years of my life." I had no plans or ideas about what I was going to do with that after college. I was just like, "I'm here to learn this about me and about Black people and about what it means to be in this country." And I had amazing, amazing professors, and I also am so grateful that... So most of my professors were Black women intersectionality, we were reading Bell. I mean, Bell Hooks was one of my professors. We were reading Bell Hooks and Kimberly Crenshaw. So my understanding of actual critical race theory is inherently embedded with Black feminism. There is no kind of pulling those things, making those things separate for me because the way that I learned them was that those things were inextricably-

Darren Isom:

That's the starting point. That's the starting point, yeah.

Mia Birdsong:

So it was not just a conversation about ending policing or dismantling prisons or ending surveillance or ending carceral ways of being in other institutions. It really was like, "What do we need and what do we want to feel safe? What do we want to experience? What is the world that we're actually trying to build?" And that question is one, that invitation is one that has really guided my work, and I've definitely lost track of it sometimes, but I find myself returning to that. It's not just about, "What do we not want? What are we fighting against? What are we reacting to, but what are we building? What are our dreams? What is the vision we have for a world that we really, really want that is not a reaction to the one we don't want?"

Darren Isom:

A hundred percent. And we've talked about this before, this idea of the power and the flex of being able to build something, having the invitation to build as opposed to critiquing and tearing things apart. And there's space for critiquing and tearing things apart. Not saying otherwise, but literally, what are we building in its place? And I do have to follow up on that with the question of what does American dream mean to you in this context of all those various things? And does this dream truly exist? As you laugh out loud at me, go for it.

Mia Birdsong:

So I think the thing that I dream of is not American, it's not America. It's not contained within the nation state that we live inside of. It's not contained within the parameters of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and the things that the founding fathers wanted. So when I think about what I want versus what the American dream is, those things are not really connected. So if you're asking me about what the collective dream that I think about is, I mean that's a whole... We can go on forever about that. But fundamentally it is that each of us gets to be in a world where our well-being is tended to. I mean, I feel like that's the shortest sentence that I can, and then I can give you examples and go into more about that. But I feel like that's what it is. And when I say each of us, I will add this, I don't just mean humans because share this planet with lots and lots of life.

Darren Isom:

That's beautiful. We'll come back to that a little bit later in the conversation because a lot to be unpacked there. But I would love to spend a little time talking about addressing poverty in America. And you've spoken quite a bit about guaranteed income as a way to successfully address American poverty. I would love for you to share a little bit more about that and what other bold solutions can we implement to mitigate poverty in the US?

Mia Birdsong:

The first time I heard about guaranteed income was when I was in college, and I remember it was in some history class and it was in reference to a speech that MLK gave in which he espoused guaranteed income. And I remember at that point my political education was not complete, and it still isn't, let's be clear. And I think that I kind of scoffed at the idea, and I think there are two reasons. One is I didn't believe that that's something that America would do. I was like, "We'll never get that. That's too much to ask." And then the second piece is that all the systems that we exist in, we internalize. So then, and still now, this part of myself that felt like guaranteed income was antithetical to the idea of, "You work hard and you achieve things." The morality that we put on the idea of hard work.

And the idea is that you're providing people with money in order for them to build on the things that they are capable of. So I was at this conference and I was reintroduced to the idea of guaranteed income. And now it didn't seem so crazy to me. I was like, "Yes." But the problem that I pointed out is that nobody in that room would directly benefit from it. So I was invited to do a project to essentially bring the voices and perspectives of low-income folks into that conversation. And when I did, it was a six city tour and I spoke with dozens and dozens of low income folks. I also spoke with folks who organize or run less restrictive programming for low income folks. And what became very clear almost immediately is that this was not a conversation about policy. This was a conversation about culture and belief, and specifically one about deservedness.

And that just took me down this whole path of really thinking about why. We actually have solutions to poverty in America. Poverty in America is a policy decision that we've made. We've decided to have it based on the ways in which we've structured policy and that we don't lack for solutions. We don't lack an ability to understand how to do things. We actually lack a belief in it. And going back to my own first reaction to guaranteed income, that lack of belief comes both... From some of us, it's because we believe it's too much to ask. And then there are those of us who believe that poor people, they're kind of poor because they must be lazy, or they don't work hard enough or their parents didn't read to them when they were children. There's some way in which they don't actually deserve to not be poor.

Darren Isom:

The mother didn't miss the classical music when they were-

Mia Birdsong:

Total, when she was pregnant.

Darren Isom:

Yeah.

Mia Birdsong:

And I find this thread of these two threads of disbelief across the political spectrum. And I think it's very easy for those of us like myself on the left to point fingers at the right because there is plenty of finger pointing to do there for sure. But let's be clear, American beliefs about hard work and success and deservedness absolutely exist in all of us. And it just shows up in slightly more crafty ways on the left.

Darren Isom:

Yeah. And I want to jump in a little bit there as well because you've said that solutions that don't include the voice of those who are most impacted or doomed to fail, right?

Mia Birdsong:

Yes.

Darren Isom:

And I think what's perfectly clear as well, and I've seen this in consulting that very often we coming up with solutions and approaches and no one's bothered to ask the communities that are going to have to hopefully have these programs and activities.

Mia Birdsong:

Yeah. "Do you want this?"

Darren Isom:

"Do you want this?" And it's interesting because it's not a question of, I've worked in a private sector where you're launching a product for three-year-olds, and you spend two months doing focus groups with three-year-olds.

Mia Birdsong:

Okay. But we're so paternalistic. We're so paternalistic. I mean, the rooms I have been in with folks who come up with all kinds of solutions and then somebody will be like, "Did you actually ask the person who would have to receive this?" And sometimes it has never occurred to people. Sometimes they're like, "Why would we need to do that? We know this will work." Again, I was going to say it's unbelievable, but it's not unbelievable.

Darren Isom:

It's not unbelievable if you understand the stories behind it.

Mia Birdsong:

It's totally believable.

Darren Isom:

But what can leaders, and particularly leaders of color, do to meaningfully bring the voice of those folks who are most impacted into the rooms where solutions are being created? What should we be doing? What does success look like there?

Mia Birdsong:

I think there's a spectrum here. At one end of the spectrum, you have focus groups, for example. And at the other end of the spectrum, you have power. And that's the end we actually need to be at if we're not going to keep tinkering around the edges of poverty and decide we're just going to make poverty tolerable for people. But if we actually want to end that keep poverty in place, we actually have to have a conversation about power. And that largely means ceding power to the people who do not have it. We have a few examples of this in philanthropy. I feel like participatory budgeting, there are foundations that have pools of funds that they allow a community to decide how things are going to work.

But the reason that we have to have organizing is because people don't give up power. That not a thing that happens. I would love for us to evolve to a place where we recognized that holding power over other people or holding power in ways that other people don't get to hold is not actually good for us. And I don't just mean psychically or spiritually, but I mean the things that we desire and need as human beings, we cannot, this goes back to both my quotes, we cannot get those things by ourselves. And the world in which people are hoarding wealth and power is one in which nobody is free. The wealth hoarders are not free either because they're constantly having to defend the resources they have. I mean, this is why wealthy people live in walled communities and have their private security forces because you don't get to do that without there being some consequences.

Darren Isom:

And the wealth hoarding there, I mean, obviously that reminded always to the quote, "The oppressor's a liar. We all get free together." And so reminding folks that it's actually and work on each other's liberation, that we actually drive the impact that we all seek. I want to jump in a little bit more and talk about those both solutions that you framed up to poverty. And a lot of people hear these ideas and like guaranteed income, like corporations, and automatically view it as a distant possibility in a utopia that doesn't exist. The earlier you right hearing this, it's like, "Oh, that's not going to work with American narratives." I know at Next River you are directly working on solving this. How do you get people to become more imaginative and recognize that a society that actually works for all of us is possible and within reach?

Mia Birdsong:

Oh my God, there's so many things to do. But one of the things I think about is that we have accepted a story that having the things we need to live a life of well-being is too much to ask for. So I'll give you an example of this coming to a head. For me, when I was doing all this guaranteed income research, I was one of four Black people in the country nationally who was talking about guaranteed income. And I was giving this talk at Stanford, and this is a well-meaning, smart, liberal, some even progressive audience. And one of the-

Darren Isom:

Allies. Allies.

Mia Birdsong:

Exactly. And there was this moment during the Q&A where one person was like, "Well..." I was like, "Guaranteed income. We should have this." And one person was like, "Well, what about public transportation?" And another person was like, "Well, what about education?" And I got fed up and finally I was like, "Who told you that you could only have one thing? Who told you that of the web of things that we all require to survive, to make a life, that we have to choose which one of those we get to actually work on and have?" And I think there is this way in which many of us have bought into the narrative that you got to silo everything and you've got to pick a thing. And that's the only thing that we can have because they, whoever "they" is, the powers that be are not going to let us have more.

So you can't ask for more. It's like the people in power are like our dad and we're asking them for the keys to the car or something. I'm just like, "No, we have to actually stop accepting the idea that less than what we need is acceptable." And there's no reason, especially in the wealthiest nation on the planet, that we actually can't have guaranteed income education, public transportation, not to mention guaranteed housing and universal healthcare. Those things are all accessible, but the only reason they're not is because we don't believe they are. That's one of the main barrier is like, "Whoever's holding power doesn't even have to have a strategy to get us to block those things from happening. We've already decided we can't have them all."

Darren Isom:

There's such a level of community policing even, idea policing around this. I've set on panels where I'm talking about endowing Black organizations and folks will stand up and say, "Well, what about unrestricted funds for program?" And I'm like, "Yes, yes, that too. Yes, all of that." And so from a behavior perspective, do we have folks realize they're able to prance with pride and actually humanize the communities in a way that folks can see that they're worthy of those things as well?

Mia Birdsong:

I have also found that part of what gets us past this block we have and believing in something that we think is unbelievable is actually pointing out that the thing is already happening. My colleague and friend, Natalie Foster, recently released a book called The Guarantees. And there's seven of them, I don't remember what all of them are. But it is full of both arguments for and examples of the ways in which communities are already, and governments mostly on the city level, are already providing these things for people. I'm like, "It's already happening." Again, it's not this heavy lift of figuring it out, it's just that we'd have to decide that those things are actually a priority for us. And when I talk to people about freedom and the world in which we are all free, we are collectively engaging in the practice and process of being free, I also point to the places where it's already happened or it's already happening.

Because the other thing is that collective freedom, which I feel like these guarantees are embedded in. This is what it means to be a person. We are fundamentally interconnected, interdependent animals. We're not sea turtles where Mom lays some eggs and then is like, "Peace out, watch out for the seagulls," and you just hatch and then you race to the ocean to see if you're going to make it right. We are born completely helpless, and we are raised. In no context are we People who access food, shelter, care, whatever, on our own. We need each other for that. And we all go through stages in our lives where we are on and different parts of the giving and receiving where we're giving a more or receiving more, but we're all doing all of those things.

And that is what it means to be human, to be cared for, and to be receiving care. So the other thing is that as I think about, or I talk about the idea of living in a society where all of our needs are tended to so we can live a life of well-being, I'm like, "That's what it means to be a person. So I'm just inviting us to return to something that we all already know." And I think that that's the other thing that helps people move from this place of the protection of cynicism to something where they are... The vulnerability of imagination and dreaming.

Darren Isom:

And I hold on to all the time, the quote, "Cynicism is a form of obedience." And I think that it requires us to really think differently about the space in the world. One of the things that I admire most about you and why I enjoy so much of our conversations is there is an understood joyfulness in the conversations. I've realized in the last year or so over the last few years, maybe something that's always been true, but I've never really thought of myself as an optimist. I've always thought of myself as a cynic, but as I get older, I realize how actual optimistic I am about all things. I think it's going to get worse before they get better, but they will get better. And that for me is the definition of looking into the future, thinking about what we're trying to create.

Mia Birdsong:

Yeah.

Darren Isom:

I would love for you to share what fuels you to live in this hopeful and joyful state in the midst of everything going on around us because the world is a mess right now. It's a hot mess for sure.

Mia Birdsong:

In many ways, I'm constitutionally an optimist, but I also have chosen to be an optimist. I think in my late teens and early to mid-twenties, I definitely practiced a kind of cynicism. It was a cynicism that I thought made me sound smarter, critiquing, poo-pooing things. There's a way in which I was like, "That makes me sound like I know what I'm talking about. It makes me smart." And then again, I also think there's a way in which cynicism is kind of protection. It means I'm not going to be disappointed. It means when things stay shitty, I'm like, "I expected that already. Of course they did." And optimism requires a kind of vulnerability. I have to be willing to have my heart broken over and over again. I have to be willing to believe that something that I have never experienced or don't have my own model for, that we can figure it out.

I think what I keep finding, and this goes back to what I was saying before, is that part of what keeps me fueled is that then I find out that we've already been doing this. I hear some story or get introduced to some collective of people who are doing a thing, and I'm like, "Oh, we're already doing this." There are places where people have decided that they are not going to just stay in the morass of what exists now. They're not going to accept it and they're going to do something better. So there's that. I mean, there are lots of things that fuel me. And then the other thing that I'll point to right now, because as I'm sitting here talking with you also, there's a crow that keeps flying outside my window.

And the other thing that I feel like I connect to on an almost daily basis is awe. I think that there are just so many cool things that exist in the world, right? I listen to a science show or a podcast about something and I just learn a thing that is just so cool and magical and amazing, and I'm just like, "Oh my God." And I have this garden that is blooming right now, and I go out there almost every day and I'll just stare really close at some flowers and I'll see whatever bugs are on them and just kind of watch the procession of overtime, over through a season of birds and animals and flora that make their life in this place that I share. And that just fills me with awe. And I'm just like, "That's so cool."

Darren Isom:

I am with you one hundred percent. I feel like I geek out all the time.

Mia Birdsong:

Yes.

Darren Isom:

I'm just completely amazed by things. I'm amazed by people, even when they're problematic. I'm amazed by the thinking all behind it, and I just live in awe. And I think that level of curiosity is always inspiring. I would love for you to just share a little bit more about you've been able to imagine this wonderful, beautiful world for us and how we get there. And I know that some experiences and people have helped you realize that future we long for is within possibility. And you shared just very thoughtfully some of the experiences that you've been through from conversations and others that have really allowed you to think through this work and live an optimistic way. Something we're asking folks this season is for them to share, what does freedom look like for them? And I know it's such an open question and it's done that way intentionally, but what does freedom look like for you?

Mia Birdsong:

Part of what I love about this question is it invites, for me, it invites me into imagining what it would be like to live in a society where I didn't have to worry about whether or not I or my loved ones or anybody in my community was going to be taken care of. And the release of worry is part of what I think about when I think about what freedom feels like. I get to wake up and not be concerned. I'm not like, "How is this impossible thing going to come together? How is this thing going to hold?" It means that I get to explore, I get to be creative. I get to move through my days with a kind of agency that is about upholding boundary, right? I feel like many of us don't even know what our boundaries would be if we were actually free because our boundaries are constantly being crossed by the systems that we exist inside of.

So I think about the ways in which I would be able to choose to care for others, the ways in which I would be able to, without apology, ask for the things that I needed or access the things that I needed. I think about what kind of music and art and just creativity and pleasure I would explore. I think about, "Oh my God, the food that I would be making with people. I think about the relationship I would have to land." I realized that while I believe that all of us have ancestral memory of what it means to be free, and we have this internal compass that we can calibrate toward freedom, I also know that the freedom that I've experienced in my life, it's like the experience of Maroons, right?

It's the marinage experience as opposed to where we create a space inside of which we can be free, but outside that space is still all the bullshit. So when I think about what you're talking about, it is that there's no inside outside freedom, not freedom anymore, that we actually have this thing and we're engaged in this process together. And that, I don't know what that feels like, I don't know. But just the act of imagining and seeing the ways in which I've been limited and then being able to remove that limit, psychically, in my head remove it, and then be like, "Oh, what's beyond that limit?" And then seeing another one and being like, "Oh, well, what's beyond that limit?" And imagining that world just geeks me out so hard.

Darren Isom:

How beautiful is that? And I love the way you're thinking about how even our possibilities are limited by what we've lived, right? Even as someone who, my family came to New Orleans from Haiti as free people of color in colonial French Louisiana. That freedom was fairly, it was conditional.

Mia Birdsong:

Yeah. On my grandmother's side, we were Maroons. In Jamaica, we were free Black people. And that don't mean that-

Darren Isom:

No.

Mia Birdsong:

... Like, "I don't have to deal with white supremacy right now. It's still here."

Darren Isom:

Exactly. Exactly. So you've expressed that we have to be willing to dream our most courageous thoughts and things when it comes to policy and systems change. So this idea of dreaming most courageously. And remarks, and I'm going to quote you here, "If we start compromising our ideals before we begin, as many of my wisest mentors remind me, binaries are bullshit." Another something that we're thinking through in this season at Dreaming in Color is giving people the space to highlight mentorship and the leaders that come before us and that have really shaped who they are. And I would love to take this moment to give you space to call out and shout out some of your mentors and how they've contributed to your growth.

Mia Birdsong:

Oh my goodness. I mean, I mentioned Adrienne Lash Jones as one of my early, early mentors. I remember asking her when I was 19 if Black people could transcend racism. And of course she, like any good mentor was like, "What do you think?" And I feel like that's a question I've been asking my whole life. I just continued to ask that. So shout out to Adrienne Lash Jones, Dr. Adrienne Lash Jones. One of my favorite teachers, mentors, besties family members is Malkia Devich-Cyril, who founded and ran an organization called MediaJustice for 20 years and is now doing work on a project called Radical Loss, which is about the power and transformation of grief for movement work.

And Mack, oh my God, they're one of the smartest people that I know. And I feel like what they have taught me about Blackness, what they have taught me about movement, what they have taught me about power and progressive politics, what they have taught me about the media, what they have taught me about gender, what they've taught me about what it means to be in a body is kind of endless. And now they're teaching me so much about grief and joy. I'm so honored to be witness to the work that they're doing, but also to just sit at their feet and soak up their wisdom and knowledge on a regular basis.

Darren Isom:

It's beautiful. Well, that's all I have for you. I just have one closing question, which is if you had to choose a song, any song to walk out on stage to or walk offstage, what would that song be?

Mia Birdsong:

Today I'm feeling a little Lianne La Havas. Her album Blood is just unbelievable. Oh, we can go with Unstoppable.

Darren Isom:

Unstoppable. Okay, I'll take that.

Mia Birdsong:

It's so good.

Darren Isom:

Mia. Thank you for your time. It's always wonderful to chat with you recorded or not and I'm so happy to have you in my world.

Mia Birdsong:

Oh my God, this is just like an utter delight and you're such a gift to all of us.

Darren Isom:

Thank you, Dear. James Baldwin would've turned a hundred earlier this summer, but his writing and presence are just as if not more compelling now as they were when he died some 40 years ago. I wrote my first James Baldwin book in middle school, and although I could recite my middle school class and teacher's schedule well into my twenties, I can't even remember my seventh grade English teacher's name now. But I do remember reading Go Tell it on the Mountain and being so enamored by Baldwin as a writer that I went on a Baldwin binge shortly after. Reading a lesson, five of his books in the following few months. And as I read more and grew more in life, I learned to love Baldwin, not just as a writer, but as a friend and mentor. The Piranha prophetic prose and easily one of the most brilliant men to walk among us.

It was gifted to me by Dr. Logan, Howard's then Dean of Humanities, a man whose absolute elegance, intellect, and nobility made you feel as if you stepped into the Harlem Renaissance whenever you were in his presence. He offered it to me as I prepared to make my way to Paris for my junior year abroad. In it, Baldwin explores the Harlem childhood that shaped his early consciousness. He also documents his time in Paris in a way that masterfully and lovingly connects the Black American struggle for liberation with that of the Paris-Algerian community. The book reminds us stewards of this ever-changing world of our role as midwives. He writes, as an old world is dying, a new one announces that it is ready to be born.

And that's a wrap for this season of Dreaming in Color. I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to our incredible guests and guest hosts who have shared their powerful stories and insights with each of us. Each conversation has been a testament to the resilience, creativity, leadership, and love that surrounds us. To our listeners, thank you for joining us on this journey. We hope these stories have not only informed and inspired you, but also encourage you to dream big and take action in your own communities. Until next season, stay inspired, stay empowered, and keep dreaming in color. The season may have ended, but the music plays on.

This season we've collected the theme songs from all of our guests and collaborators to create a Spotify playlist for our listeners to enjoy. Thanks for listening to Dreaming In Color, a special shout out to all the folks who make this magic happen. From StudioPod Media, our wonderful Producer, Denise Savas, Audio Engineer, Teresa Buchanan, and Graphic Designer, Diana Jimenez. And from Reelworks, our video production team, Jenny Loo and Stephen Czaja. A huge shout-out to our ever brilliant Bridgespan production team, Cora Daniels, Christian Celeste Tate, Christina Pistorius, Ryan Wenzel. And this season's guest hosts, Jasmine Reliford, Nithin Iyengar and Angela Maldonado. And of course, our fabulous creative director, Ami Diané. What a squad y'all. Be sure to rate, subscribe, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Catch you next time.