“You Are Not the Chain of Freedom”: A Conversation with Loretta Ross

Nothing Never Happens

What becomes possible when we anchor our pedagogical praxes in frameworks of reproductive justice and intersectional feminist care? What coalitions grow? What visions are revealed, and what worlds emerge?

Teacher, organizer, storyteller, and freedom-fighter Loretta Ross shares her wisdom on these questions and so much more. Topics include: attacks on reproductive autonomy, to politicized teaching in a democratic classroom, to the history of Black women's organizing, to creative and effective protest tactics, to the "rotating international favorites" served at the West Point Military Academy dinner club.

Loretta Ross is a movement visionary recently recognized as a Class of 2022 MacArthur Genius Fellow. After working at the Center for Democratic Renewal in Atlanta, she went on to found and then become the National Coordinator of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. She has taught very widely, in and out of the university, as Founder of the National Center for Human Rights Education, as Program Director of the National Black Women's Health Project, and now as the Associate Professor in the Program on Women and Gender at Smith College.

She is a prolific author, whose authored and co-authored works include Reproductive Justice: An Introduction (2017), Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundation, Theory, Practice, Critique (2017), and Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice (2004). Her forthcoming book, Calling In the Calling Out Culture, will be out in 2023.

Credits: Outro Music by Akrasis (Max Bowen, raps; Mark McKee, beats); audio editing by Aliyah Harris; production by Lucia Hulsether and Tina Pippin.

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