“We Will Not Go Back to Normal”: Moving Beyond 'Cutting Poverty' to a Vision of Economic Liberation

OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas

Modern-day oracles are increasingly describing this moment in human history as a “battle of imaginations”—in which oppression is what happens when an individual or a whole group of people are living in someone else’s dream, instead of being free to dream their own.

It’s in that spirit that the first episode of Off-Kilter’s fall season kicks off with the words of poet and activist Sonya Renee Taylor:

“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate, and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”

To that end, as Off-Kilter steps out of the news cycle this fall to reflect on the broader context of the moment in human history we find ourselves in—and the roles we can all play in shaping our collective future—the pod will be diving deep into the key limiting beliefs we as a society must release and replace in order to realize true economic liberation for us all, which feels in many ways to be the medicine our policy, advocacy, and movement spaces need most right now, as a much-needed antidote to the short-termism that dominates so much inside-the-beltway strategy and thinking today.

So, to kick off this series of conversations, Rebecca sat down with two of her favorite advocates, visionaries, and storytellers—Jeremie Greer and Solana Rice. They’re the cofounders of Liberation in a Generation, which works to build a liberation economy where people of color belong. They’re also the cohosts of the podcast Racism Is Profitable. A core through-line of their work is calling out and tearing down the limiting beliefs upholding what they call the “oppression economy” that defines life in America today.

For more from this week’s guests:

• Learn more about Liberation in a Generation and connect with them at liberationinageneration.org
• Subscribe to “Racism Is Profitable”
• Follow Solana and Jeremie on Twitter @solanarice and @jeremiegreer