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How Racism Works in a Democratic City

Michele Goodwin, plus Mia Birdsong on abolishing the police.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener

June 25, 2020

A decal pasted onto a street sign marks “George Floyd Avenue” at a memorial site at 38th St and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)

Michele Goodwin talks about her experiences of racism in daily life in Minneapolis—before she became Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine. Also: removing statues from the Capitol honoring traitors and defenders of slavery—there’s one that’s been overlooked: Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.

Plus: In the current mobilization around Black lives, everyone can do something, even if it’s not marching in the streets—Mia Birdsong explains. She’s the host of The Nation’s podcast More Than Enough, about universal basic income, and her TED talk has been viewed almost two million times. Now she has a new book out—it’s called How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community.

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Start Making SenseTwitterStart Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


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