We Can't Win Unless We're Organized, with James Lopez

Show Notes

In this episode, Niki interviews James Lopez, Executive Director at Power U Center for Social Change. Grounded in an organizing tradition and a leftist framework, the two discuss what it means for "defund the police" to go mainstream, the benefits and limitations of social media politickin, and what is needed to win meaningful material social change. 

James began organizing through the Western New York Law Center working with members of their consumer debt clinic, which helped change New York state policy around predatory lending, payday loans, and Community Reinvestment issues. Prior to Power U, James was an organizer for VOICE-Buffalo, where he organized with residents and those formerly incarcerated in order to push policy on policing reform and alternatives to mass incarceration. He was also part of Black Love Resists in the Rust (BLRR), which is a collective of organizers of color in the city of Buffalo committed to developing transformational organizing in the city of Buffalo. James is an alum of Black Organizing for Leader and Dignity (BOLD) Directors Training.

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Episode transcript available here.
Music courtesy of Magic City Hippies.

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What is Getting to the Root of it with Venus Roots?

join niki franco (venus roots), a community organizer, writer, and facilitator of spaces for collective study, as she leans into conversations of radical truth-telling with artists, theorists, and organizers living in a world of rigid binaries and multiple truths. she navigates the urgency of solidarity, ancestral preservation, and dismantling systems of oppression that inform and deform our lives.

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