Today on the show: a special panel discussion addressing the questions: How can communities build power in the face of colonization, natural disasters, and corporate profiteering? In Puerto Rico and the Hawaiian island of Molokai, residents have been grappling with some of the highest energy costs in the nation, while for-profit utilities amass record profits. But communities on both islands have advocated for a different path, one that prioritizes care, democratic control, and resilience. Join us to hear how people are fighting back against disaster capitalism and the privatization of their energy utilities and building their own energy solutions.

Guests:

• Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, serves on the Maui County Council representing Molokai.
• Ruth Santiago, JD, LLM is a community and environmental lawyer who works with grassroots environmental advocacy groups in Puerto Rico, and is part of the We Want Sun (Queremos Sol) initiative.
• Todd Yamashita is a founding board member of Hoahu Energy Cooperative, a community owned and managed energy coop.

Moderator: Niki Franco, Partners for Dignity & Rights

FULL BIOS:
Ruth Santiago, JD, LLM is a community and environmental lawyer who works with grassroots environmental advocacy groups in Puerto Rico. She has sought to protect Puerto Rico’s South Coast aquifer, battled the country’s largest oil burning power complex and worked to expand rooftop solar energy projects in the Jobos Bay communities between Salinas and Guayama in southeastern Puerto Rico. Additionally, she is part of a civil society initiative to promote community-based solar projects and energy democracy called We Want Sun (Queremos Sol). She also serves on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

Born and raised in Molokai, Keani Rawlins-Fernandez is honored to serve the people and ‘āina of Molokai, Maui, Lāna‘i, and Kaho‘olawe on the Maui County Council. She is committed to ensuring that her community’s voice is put at the center of decision-making, that the ‘āina is protected, and that the people in her community are cared for.

Todd Yamashita is a fourth-generation resident of Molokai and serves on the board of Hoahu Energy Cooperative Molokai, which is committed to creating resilient, sustainable, equitable, culturally conscious energy for all.

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Host Max Rameau talks with Manju Rajendran of Durham Beyond Policing. Together, they discuss the landscape of organizing in North Carolina, abolition, healing justice, and the work of building and maintaining community.

Manju Rajendran is a facilitator, trainer, conflict transformation practitioner, and organizer with 27 years of local, state, regional, and national-level experience. Her work is grounded in popular education pedagogy and healing justice. Manju is a trainer with Ready the Ground Training Team, member of Sanctuary Beyond Walls, and part of Durham Beyond Policing. Manju is a queer, working class, South Asian immigrant woman who grew up in North Carolina. Her father organized with the local NAACP chapter and her mother was active in public schools, so she was brought up in meetings and community gatherings. She brings an expansive network of intentionally-sustained relationships with peers and mentors with her, especially from across the Southeastern US, and remains accountable to the communities who raised her.

Links to topics mentioned on this episode:
Durham Beyond Policing
Budget Proposal on Policing
News article on 2023 protest
Community Safety and Wellness Task Force
Southerners On New Ground (SONG)
Interrupting Criminalization
INCITE
Critical Resistance
BYP 100 Durham
UE 150 City Workers Union
Manju's bio with AORTA

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Host Max Rameau talks with Kamau Franklin of Community Movement Builders, Inc and Black Power Media. Together, they discuss the movement to Stop Cop City, its national relevance, and the strategy behind the movement. They also discuss creating accessible political media, and what Kamau's learned from his time in Palestine.

Kamau Franklin is the founder of Community Movement Builders, Inc. Kamau has been a dedicated community organizer for over thirty years, beginning in New York City and now based in Atlanta. For 18 of those years, Kamau was a leading member of a national grassroots organization dedicated to the ideas of self-determination and the teachings of Malcolm X.

He has spearheaded organizing work in various areas including youth organizing and development, police misconduct, and the development of sustainable urban communities. Kamau has coordinated and led community cop-watch programs, liberation/freedom schools for youth, electoral and policy campaigns, large-scale community gardens, organizing collectives and alternatives to incarceration programs. Kamau was an attorney for ten years in New York with his own practice in criminal, civil rights and transactional law. He now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and two children.

For more on the topics we discussed, see these links:
@kamaufranklin
@CommunityMvt
https://communitymovementbuilders.org/
https://www.blackpowermedia.org
https://forgeorganizing.org/article/struggle-stop-cop-city-any-means-necessary

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