Are we in the middle of a great resignation or a great revolution? On the latest episode of Radical Imagination podcast, I discuss this very question with Sarah Jaffe, journalist, and author of Work Won’t Love You Back, and Saru Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. We know that workers and workplaces are experiencing something transformative. Workers are using their agency, individually and collectively to demand fair wages and decent working conditions. They’re leaving jobs that exploit and dehumanize and organizing to change what is unacceptable. They’re taking a line from Beyonce's playbook and saying – loudly and quietly – “You won’t break my soul," and employers are taking notice. We also know that people have been reawakened to the central role of government, which is to provide for the basics and ensure dignity and fairness. Inspired by the Bey, we say to all who’ve yet to join the equity movement, “Now let’s get in formation.”

In previous episodes, we explore the continued season of racial reckoning. In Land Back with Clyde Prout III and Jeff Darlington; and in the Land Justice episode featuring Kavon Ward, we focus on the growing movement in our country to reconnect Indigenous and Black people with land and property that was stolen from them or their ancestors. 

We also explore racial awakening happening beyond our national borders by looking at The World Reimagined — a national public art project in the United Kingdom — which explores the history and legacy of the trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved Africans, and presents a forward-looking approach to reframing history as an essential element toward creating an equitable future. I speak with its artistic director, Ashley Shaw Scott Adjaye, about the ways in which art and artists are keeping this burgeoning racial consciousness alive, fanning the flames of curiosity, and ultimately transforming the way we understand ourselves and the world around us.