15. Imagining a more Just Post-Pandemic World through Black Lives Matter, Part 1

In the next two bonus episodes, we are taking a step back from Boccaccio’s stories in order to bring more focus to the stories going on around us. Boccaccio’s ten young story-tellers are, in part, using narrative to elevate their minds above the plague that ravaged their home. They seek to point out the injustices and hypocrisies of their own time. 2020 is, of course, very different from 1348. We are not in medieval Italy. We live in a complicated, pluralistic, deeply damaged and deeply inspirational continent-wide democracy. So for this episode we are exploring the civil rights protests that have been going on around the country. We’ll be speaking with artists James Edward Becton, Ashley Bufkin, and Justin Withers.

We asks each of our guests four key questions:

1. How did the pandemic change what you were doing? What activities were stopped?

2. Black Lives Matter, ‘ramped up’ in April, May, June. What was your experience of that?

3. What was the hypocrisy or wrong thing about the pre-pandemic world?

4. What has to happen to make the post-pandemic world better?

The guests mention several resources in the course of the conversation. These include James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, The Autobiography of Malcom X, United NY, The Black Consortium, 8cantwait.org, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, Black Lives Matter.

Boccaccio's The Decameron was translation by John Florio. Podcast intro: Karen Alvarado. Editing and Sound Design by Brady Marchand, additional ediing from JM Meyer. Copy editing by Bob Jones, Ania Upstill, Karen Alvarado, and J.M. Meyer. Project manager: Celine Dirkes. Graphic design: Hannah Lang.

Music and SFX:
Steven Maertens, Spanish Guitar Loop from https://freesound.org/people/stevenmaertens/sounds/449846/