Counter Stories

In what is likely the first of its kind, our guests this week started a conference about eating disorders in BIPOC communities. Intergenerational trauma, accessibility, beauty standards and disability justice are just a few issues that play a role in our relationship with food. Guests: Angela Goens, Whitney Trotter 

Our latest show explores how people of color often experience extractive experiences when in predominantly white spaces. From professional compensation to the reliving of their own experiences, the crew invites listeners to ask themselves, are my personal or professional interactions extracting resource, time, energy from my BIPOC peers? 

Our latest Grab Bag show touches on a variety of topics including the January 6th hearings, the first Indigenous Miss Minnesota, the record settlement between the city of Brooklyn Center and the family of Daunte Wright, and a check in with our co-hosts. 

As Juneteenth becomes a more mainstream celebration, we wondered if those benefiting from the holiday know the history behind it. Rose McGee, the brains behind Sweet Potato Comfort Pie and author of Kumbayah The Juneteenth Story joins the crew to dig deeper into the history of the emancipation proclamation and the recent resurgence of interest in the importance of June 19th.  Rose McGee, Sweet Potato Comfort Pie 

There are many complexities to mental health. Those complexities increase when you’re a person of color. Sam Choo sought to bring those complexities to the surface as the, up until recently, content producer for the public radio show Call to Mind; bringing personal experience, cultural perspectives and the ability to bring the conversation to the public. 

On this episode, we vent about where we are as the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder coincides with a recent string of mass shootings raising the question, when will enough be enough?Counter Stories is a co-production of the Counter Stories crew, the other media group, and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities. With support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

Sarah Lancaster is many things. She is a public school teacher, a coach, a director of school plays, president of the local civic association, and as the only teacher of color in her rural school district, she’s an important connection between her students and the education system. Onamia is majority Indigenous students, and having grown up in the community, Lancaster made her journey back to make sure students were learning about and seeing themselves reflected in their education. Guest: Sarah Lancaster, 2022 Minnesota Teacher of the Year

May is Foster Awareness month. Hoang Murphy joins the crew to talk about his personal experience in the foster system and how his organization, Foster Advocates, is giving the power to the young people living this often-invisible reality. Guest: Hoang Murphy, Foster Advocates

The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe is posing two questions to their enrolled members this year regarding blood quantum, or BQ as it is often seen as a derogatory term. BQ was established by the colonizers and continues today. The questions will inform the tribe leadership about whether BQ should be removed as a requirement to be a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and allow the tribe to determine its own membership requirement. But it’s not that simple. Our guests join us to unravel just the top few layers of this complex issue. Guest: Wayne Ducheneaux, Native Governance Center [https://nativegov.org/] Sally Fineday, MN Chippewa Tribe member 

A question about the lack of Black players on Argentina’s national futbol team between colleagues, sparks a conversation about blaqueamiento. Blaqueamiento is a racial whitening practice that occurred in some previously-colonized countries in the Americans and Caribbean. This practice of idealizing and preferring European features, continues to this day throughout the world. 

In this special episode, we bring you the conversation our producer, Hlee Lee, moderated at a recent event celebrating the 20th anniversary of ThreeSixty Journalism, a nonprofit providing journalism training to the youth of color. The five panelists are all graduates of the program, have taken what they learned and applied it to their careers in various fields. Guests: Evan Odegard Pereira, Amolak Sing, Victoria Turcios Laparra, Feven Gerezgiher, Aaliyah Demry

Counter StoriesThere has been a lot of news about labor recently with the unionizing of Amazon workers in New York and recent teachers strikes in Minnesota. In this episode, the crew talks with Alanna Galloway and Daniel Perez about their work in the labor movement and how people of color have an important, albeit complicated history with labor unions.---Counter Stories is a production of the other media group (omg) and Ampers, Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund. 

Overt racism is more and more prominent. From hotels banning Native Americans to the crew’s own personal experiences in racist housing practices, from it taking more than a hundred years to pass an anti-lynching law to recent conflicts between communities of color. Racism has gone from hidden and passive-aggressive to open and overt. 

On this Grab Bag show, we talk about making those in dominant culture UNCOMFORTABLE. Including, the nonsensical questions Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is facing from senators, a big red panda making white people mad, more cases of Anti-Asian hate a year after the murders of six API women in Atlanta, and the confirmation of the Mille Lacs Reservation. On this Grab Bag show, we talk about making those in dominate culture UNCOMFORTABLE. Including, the nonsensical questions Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is facing from senators, a big red panda making white people mad, more cases of Anti-Asian hate a year after the murders of six API women in Atlanta, and the confirmation of the Mille Lacs Reservation. 

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the Crew immediately looked around to see how we could help the people suffering from the war. Our guest currently resides in Germany and has utilized social media to connect with a group of women to bring supplies from Germany to Ukraine during the ongoing conflict with Russia. Guest: Heidi Inman.To support her work, monetary donations can be made to: Paypal - @innie07 Venmo - #Heidi-Inman-2 If you need a code, it is 8732 

There’s a lot happening internationally and here at home. On this Grab Bag show, Luz explains the ridiculousness of a political pundits demanding potential SCOTUS Judge Jackson’s LSAT score, we react to the Minnesota State High School League’s slow and lacking response to racist incidents at school games, and we touch on the public school teacher strike in Minneapolis. 

On this special episode, crew member Anthony Galloway talks with a group of Black Men about how they’re feeling during the past few weeks, months, and years as their community continues to be under scrutiny in the wake of police brutality, school disciplinary inequities, and more. Guests: Kassius Benson, D.A. Bullock, Anthony Williams 

In this episode, the crew explores the history of Freedom Schools with May Esperanza Losloso of the Children’s Defense Fund and the legislation and movements to limit what schools teach. They also explore recent racist encounters in school athletics and the overall climate that begs for deeper learning about our nation's history. Guest: May Esperanza Losloso

Public school districts are having a hard time retaining teachers of color. But what’s behind this? Could it be the first in-first out process, where newer teachers are let go whenever there is a budget cut? Is it because teachers of color are not feeling supported? Is it both? As one parent put it, all students need mirrors and windows in education - so they see themselves and their peers reflected in their teachers. Guest: Kenneth Eban, Advancing Equity Coalition

Well, here we are again. Minneapolis Police have killed another Black man in a no-knock raid on an apartment. In 9 seconds, police entered an apartment and shot Amir Locke, who was a licensed gun owner and was asleep on the sofa. It forces the question: Is change possible? Guest: Toussaint Morrison, On Site Public Media