IN 2019, WE TOLD THE WORLD WHY INTERSECTIONALITY MATTERS

2019 REWIND: INTERSECTIONALITY MATTERS

In the week leading up to New Years, we'll be looking back at some of 2019's greatest hits. Today, we're highlighting the first season of Intersectionality Matters, a new podcast from AAPF that premiered in February 2019. Over the course of the year, we released 8 episodes, featuring conversations with guests like Tracee Ellis Ross, Barbara Smith, Eve Ensler, and so many more. You, the listeners, have already made it one of the top 2% of all podcasts based on numbers of listens per episode. If you have some downtime over the holidays, we invite you to listen to any episodes you might have missed this year, and then let us know what you think! (twitter: @IMKC_podcast; email: intersectionalitymatters@aapf.org) We’re so excited to share more intersectional stories with you in 2020. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and leave us a review on iTunes!

Episode 1: A Mother’s Nightmare: The Life and Death of Korryn Gaines with Rhanda Dormeus, mother of Korryn Gaines On August 1, 2016, Baltimore County police arrived at the Randallstown, Maryland apartment of 23-year-old Korryn Gaines to serve a warrant alleging that she had failed to appear in court. Gaines, who had miscarried twins as a consequence of improper treatment while being held in connection with a traffic stop, had received paperwork for the stop that did not provide the date on which she was expected to appear. Read more. Episode 2: I Believe I Can Lie: R. Kelly (Still) In Denial with Kenyette Barnes R. Kelly’s serial abuse of Black women and girls has been one of the entertainment industry’s worst-kept secrets for the entirety of the 21st century. In the mid 90s, Kelly was romantically linked with and even briefly married to 15-year-old singer Aaliyah, for whom he wrote and produced the incriminatory hit “Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number.” An explicit bootleg tape which appeared to feature Kelly abusing yet another teenage girl circulated on street corners as early as 2001. Read more.

Episode 3: Black Women & #MeToo: From Hollywood to Hip Hop with co-host Dee Barnes and Rashida Jones, Beverly Johnson, Jamilah Lemieux, Stephanie Jones-Rogers, Kenyette Barnes After hip hop icon Dr. Dre brutally assaulted trailblazing emcee and television personality Dee Barnes in 1991, his career continued to skyrocket while she was effectively blacklisted from the entertainment industry. Nearly three decades later, Dre, who has allegedly assaulted several other women in addition, continues to enjoy a decorated career in which his heinous misdeeds have become mere footnotes. Read more. Episode 4: The Anatomy of an Apology: How Himpathy & Hubris Undermine Accountability with Eve Ensler & Kate Manne You’ve probably heard the phrase “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”--the misguided notion that love eliminates the need for apology. In politics, the love that mutes apologies is often same-party affinity--as in, “we know we’re on the same side” so accountability is unnecessary. Yet it’s more likely that the contrary is true: love as well as coalition demand an openness to saying “I’m sorry,” for without it, justice is impotent. But what are the consequences when apologies don’t materialize? Read more. Episode 5: Stonewall 50: Whose Movement Is It Anyway? with Barbara Smith & Lady Phyll and the Reclaim Pride Coalition As Pride month reaches an exuberant crescendo this weekend with World Pride, an event that’s one part party, one part protest, questions about the trajectory, priorities, and composition of the movement persist, including how to best foreground the lives and concerns of members of the LGBTQ+ community whose experience is filtered through the interstices of more than one form of oppression. Read more. Episode 6: What Slavery Engendered: An Intersectional Look at 1619 with Dorothy Roberts In the rare instances when the United States grudgingly acknowledges its debt to chattel slavery, the country usually imagines a faint residue of racism as the primary contemporary consequence. The gendered dimensions of the peculiar institution--namely, the codification of rape and the commodification of Black women’s reproductive capacity-- are often excluded from the ledger. Read more. Episode 7: Defending the C.R.O.W.N.: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Nappyness with Traces Ellis Ross & Brittany Noble Jones In 2012, Vanessa Van Dyke was threatened with expulsion by her Florida middle school unless she “tamed” her natural hair. Tiana Parker was told by her school that her dreadlocks were faddish and unacceptable. In 2013, Melphine Evans, a top executive at British Petroleum, says she was fired for wearing braids and dashikis to work. And in 2016, Chastity Jones lost her case against an employer who withdrew her job offer for refusing to cut off her natural locs. Read more. Episode 8: When They See Her: The Story of Michelle Cusseaux with Fran Garrett, mother of Michelle Cusseaux December 14th, 2019 marks the fifth anniversary of the Say Her Name campaign, a movement founded to raise awareness of the names and stories of Black women, girls and femmes killed by police, and to provide support to the families affected. The campaign has produced a groundbreaking report, earned a nod in a tweet from a major presidential candidate, and convened the #SayHerName Mothers Network, a community for mothers of Black women lost to police violence. Read more.