KPFA - Hard Knock Radio

Hard Knock Radio brought together two Bay Area organizers working at the intersection of immigration defense and civil liberties: Eric from the Friends of La Peña Immigrant Rights Committee, and Marisa Almor of East Bay Sanctuary Covenant. The conversation cut through the noise and focused on how people can protect themselves—and each other—amid rising repression. The moment we’re in Listeners are seeing lines blur fast. Undocumented neighbors are targeted. Dissent is branded as “Antifa.” Eric called the landscape “very dark,” citing a breakdown of guardrails in Congress and the courts. Yet he also sees a counter-force: millions mobilizing to defend constitutional rights—immigrants included. Marisa’s perspective lands hard. She grew up with stories of Spain’s Franco dictatorship. The tools were familiar: surveillance, fear, and the chilling effect on everyday speech. She believes the current shift is bigger than a single community; it’s a political project widening its targets. Still, she notes, mass resistance is growing—and it doesn’t take a majority. “Roughly 3.5%” of the public can swing outcomes if organized and persistent. History rhymes—and warns We traced the parallels. COINTELPRO. The “war on drugs.” Today’s catch-all label of “Antifa.” The Black Panthers’ annihilation was named plainly. Eric and Marisa agreed: repression has long defined life for Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. What’s new is its expansion and brazenness. That should push us toward deeper solidarity, not purity tests or selective speech limits—even within the left. Know Your Rights = first aid Marisa framed Know Your Rights as first aid for civic life. You hope you never need it. But you’ll wish you had it when it counts. Core guidance from the show: Stay silent until you have a lawyer. Do not consent to searches. Demand a judicial warrant (not an administrative ICE warrant). Record openly without interfering. Name the time, place, and officers if possible. Organize roles in the moment: one records, one calls the Rapid Response line, one gathers the impacted person’s info. Friends of La Peña has distributed ~140,000 “red and yellow” rights cards and is training court watchers; they also support asylum applications and the Adopt-a-Corner effort for day laborers. Action items Attend the workshop: Sat., Nov. 2, 2–4 pm at La Peña Cultural Center (3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley). Capacity ~150. Bring two friends. Learn, then train others. Volunteer: Court watch, rapid response, asylum support, community safety. Resources: Friends of La Peña Immigrant Rights Committee — flpir.org East Bay Sanctuary Covenant — eastbaysanctuary.org Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Know Your Rights in a Shifting America: Lessons from the Frontline appeared first on KPFA.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Hard Knock Radio – October 20, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

On Hard Knock Radio, Donald Lacy joined host Davey D to launch Love Life Week, a Bay Area tradition born from the life and legacy of his daughter LoEshe Adama Lacy—Igbo for “love life.” Lacy recounted how a 16-year-old LoEshe pushed to “start a movement” after a friend’s murder in 1997. Following LoEshe’s own killing on October 20, 1997, Lacy and community allies formalized that vision into the Love Life Foundation (first Love Life Week in 1998), dedicated to healing, youth leadership, and community safety without criminalization. The conversation pressed on media narratives that fixate on the 1–3% who cause harm while ignoring the 97–99% of young people striving, studying, working, and parenting. Lacy stressed that despite running for decades on $30–50k annual budgets with no salaried staff, Love Life has served hundreds of thousands—directing funds to youth and single mothers. The call: center real work over fear theater. This year’s schedule blends remembrance, service, and recognition: Monday opens with a press conference and an evening candlelight vigil & healing ceremony near McClymonds where LoEshe was killed (bring photos of loved ones). Tuesday hosts a women-led safety forum at Eastmont with BOSS, Courageous Women, and A Safe Place. Wednesday features a citywide cleanup with CRC and a 5 p.m. street-naming honoring Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale at 57th & MLK. Thursday focuses on feeding the unhoused (West Grand & San Pablo). Friday brings a 5 p.m. town hall with Congresswoman Latifah Simon at City Council Chambers. Saturday closes with a comedy show at Vinci’s Bistro (500 Davis St., San Leandro). Sunday asks everyone for a one-minute silence honoring lives lost to violence. Details: lovelifefoundation.org. Bottom line: Love Life Week models what safety looks like when communities invest in truth, healing, and youth—consistent, accountable, and rooted in love. Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Love Life Week: Turning Loss into Civic Love and Poor News Magazine appeared first on KPFA.

Davey D sits down with Minister Abdul Sabur Muhammad (formerly known as Minister Keith) to revisit the 30th anniversary of the Million Man March and to connect its spirit to today’s political climate. The conversation recalls the organizing muscle that built October 16, 1995—and asks what it means to sustain that energy now. Why the call mattered Muhammad situates the mid-1990s as a period when Black men were cast as “public enemy number one,” with policy and policing following those narratives. He points to Los Angeles’s notorious “Batterram” era as emblematic of militarized policing, and describes Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Stop the Killing tour and subsequent men-only meetings as groundwork for the March. Crucially, that organizing cut across denominations and geographies: AME churches mobilized nationally; Bay Area hubs like Bethel AME and Jeffrey’s Inner Circle hosted strategy sessions; and reconciliation efforts—most notably between Farrakhan and Dr. Betty Shabazz after the controversy involving Malcolm X’s daughter Qubilah—signaled a broader call to unity. Atonement, unity, and outcomes Davey D underscores that the March was not just a gathering but a moral charge centered on atonement: making amends to family, community, and each other, and then acting. Muhammad outlines tangible results often erased in mainstream accounts: a peaceful day in D.C. without arrests; mass civic engagement including on-site voter registration; and a surge of Black adoptions matching the 25,000 children then on adoption rolls. Locally, initiatives like Oakland’s “Black Men First” took the pledge into the streets. Both recall how major media downplayed the turnout and later minimized community-driven drops in violence, preferring “tough on crime” narratives tied to the 1994 Crime Bill. From Oscar Grant to the present The discussion bridges that spirit of unity to Bay Area organizing after the police killing of Oscar Grant. Muhammad recounts the multifaith, cross-community pressure that forced a meeting with the district attorney and helped move the case toward charges. He also notes the rise of social media as a counter-narrative tool when legacy outlets turned away. The stakes in 2025—and the path forward Asked about today’s landscape—ICE raids, erosion of voting power, stalled reparations, and authoritarian drift—Muhammad isn’t surprised. He frames it as the fulfillment of long-standing warnings: “unite or perish; do for self.” The prescription: build independent institutions; teach our own history (he argues the Million Man March belongs in every curriculum); and organize locally for safer, cleaner neighborhoods and equitable public services. He contrasts the March’s disciplined peace with the January 6 attack to illustrate the power of principled mass action. The closing message: unity—expressed as love, discipline, and collective responsibility—remains a weapon “more powerful than nuclear bombs.” Note: Minister Abdul Sabur Muhammad also points listeners to a national commemoration webcast at noi.org with details and viewing times. The last song played at the end of the show is Threat Level Orange by Earth to Eve. Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post “Unite or Perish”: Minister Abdul Sabur Muhammad on the Million Man March at 30 appeared first on KPFA.

On this edition of Hard Knock Radio, host Davey D speaks with Professor A.D. Carson of the University of Virginia — a scholar, artist, and emcee whose academic work flips the script on what scholarship can sound like. Carson first gained national attention when his doctoral dissertation took the form of a 34-track rap album, Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes and Revolution. Now he returns with a new book, Being Dope: Hip Hop in Theory Through Mixtape Memoir — a deep meditation on art, politics, and survival in hostile institutions. Carson traces his lens back to his years at Clemson University in South Carolina (2013–2017), where he experienced an environment that felt “like going backward in time.” The Ku Klux Klan openly distributed recruitment flyers on campus, wrapped in candy and tossed onto dorm steps. Each time students protested, Clemson administrators defended the Klan’s actions as “free speech.” Yet, as Carson notes, those same administrators later fired Black professors for critical social-media posts, revealing how freedom of speech applies unevenly in the South. Those years birthed student marches and a nine-day sit-in, during which Carson and others were arrested for protesting racial inequity. It was that same week he interviewed for his first teaching job. He refused to hide his activism, choosing instead to make it part of his professional identity — an act of defiance that would define his career. Now based in Charlottesville, Carson again finds himself in the crosshairs — this time of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk and his group Turning Point USA, which placed him on its infamous “Professor Watchlist.” The list targets academics deemed “radical” for challenging conservative orthodoxy. Carson’s supposed offense: critiquing Kirk, Ben Shapiro, and Tom MacDonald for what he calls “weaponizing white male anger through rap.” He warns that such attacks are designed not to debate ideas but to intimidate educators and stifle dissent — part of a larger campaign to brand critical scholars as “enemies of the state.” In Being Dope, Carson expands that critique into metaphor. He argues that America treats Black culture like a drug — criminalized when it threatens power, commodified when it can be sold. Hip-hop, he says, is both the target and the cure: a “pharmacy and a trap house.” Through peer-reviewed albums, orchestral collaborations, and new publishing models, Carson reclaims that space — proving that hip-hop can challenge power even within academia. As Davey D sums it up, Carson’s work shows how the struggle over who gets to speak — and what counts as knowledge — is far from over. Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post A.D. Carson on Hip-Hop, Power, and “Being Dope” appeared first on KPFA.

Davey opens by flagging a broader cultural chill: institutions soft-pedaling Black history (e.g., museum text that erases “slavery”) and artists being penalized for political speech. That lands close to home with news out of St. Louis: after releasing two political tracks during a heated mayoral race, Tef Poe is suddenly the target of a law-enforcement “investigation”—not for violent lyrics, he stresses, but for naming names and challenging power. Tef lays out his lineage of “diss records for politicians,” noting he’s taken aim at Democrats and Republicans alike. He sketches the local stakes: the city’s first Black woman mayor—elected with movement support—faces a challenger, Kara Spencer, backed by major corporate interests tied to displacement and privatization schemes (airport, even the Cardinals). There’s also a push to shift control of St. Louis policing to the state. Despite disagreements with the mayor, Tef frames his stance as defending Black St. Louis’s right to determine its own leadership without external manipulation. They connect the dots nationally: outside money and influence flooding races (Cori Bush, Jamal Bowman, even Oakland fights), and the wider hypocrisy around rap lyrics—celebrated when profitable, criminalized when politically sharp. Tef explains “The Ghost of Ivory Perry,” a high-speed drill homage to a legendary St. Louis activist who pioneered direct-action tactics; the song resonated across generations, fueling a groundswell that he describes as the city being “on fire” politically. He and Davey revisit Ferguson’s predatory courts and the DOJ-validated ticket-and-warrant machinery that once blocked basic civic participation. Midway, Tef widens the lens: St. Louis’s old-money networks, secretive civic clubs, and organized-crime-style power—continuities he argues reach back to segregationist elites. He urges practical, everyday organizing: use your lane (music, radio, classrooms), sit on juries, “pick locks” from the inside, and report back. They critique crime-highlight websites and PR pipelines that frame narratives against Black communities while treating political art as suspect. To close, Tef connects U.S. struggles to global anti-Blackness, warns of a creeping fascism that restricts movement and speech, and issues an urgent call: get active now—write, organize, challenge power—because the next phase of the fight is already here. Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post From Ferguson to Now: Tef Poe on Power, Policing, and Political Art appeared first on KPFA.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Hard Knock Radio – October 13, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Hard Knock Radio – October 10, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Hard Knock Radio – October 9, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Hard Knock Radio – October 8, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

Davey D opens by clocking a surge of disinformation that treats facts and political education as disposable—amplified by anonymous influencers and even AI personas attacking iconic figures like Assata Shakur and the Panthers. Akuno traces this back to well-funded, right-wing astroturfing that targeted Black and Latino audiences—citing ADOS/FBA as examples—and leveraged platform algorithms that trap users in “information cul-de-sacs.” He points to the rise of deepfakes and a broader program to control reality by shaping what people think. In that frame, Akuno name-checks Peter Thiel and the neoreactionary playbook around Curtis Yarvin, arguing that Palantir-style surveillance infrastructure now undergirds federal decision-making while figures like J.D. Vance are positioned as heirs to MAGA power. Pivoting from media to material conditions, Akuno and Davey lay out Jackson, Mississippi as a case study: years of “starve the city, then blame the victims,” followed by a state-engineered mini-dictatorship—separate courts, Capitol Police expansion, and resource capture. Akuno recounts how these moves intensified after Jackson became majority-Black, and how control of the courts—slept on by Democrats—enabled the rollback. A recent Wall Street Journal narrative lauding the “Jackson Plan,” he says, whitewashes a strategy that denied infrastructure funding for decades but found limitless money for policing. So what to do? Akuno is blunt: we don’t yet have a formula to beat platform gatekeeping. Quality content alone won’t travel if algorithms throttle it. His prescription is dual: build an autonomous social-digital commons (own servers, platforms, data) and reinvest in on-the-ground organizing—up to and including radio/shortwave grids to route around chokepoints. The conversation closes by tying the Jackson-Kush Plan, Cooperation Jackson, and the Build & Fight formula to the present: mutual aid, co-ops, unions, makerspaces already exist; the missing piece is disciplined coordination at scale. Project 2025, he argues, is the empire’s counter to the 2020 uprisings, executed with precision—but internal contradictions and looming austerity could open cracks by 2026. Davey underscores the lesson: real power is collective, not messianic. Akuno credits a wide network of comrades and elders, framing the work as shared, iterative, and urgent to protect any living democracy and to build something new beyond it. Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Fund Drive Special: Kali Akuno appeared first on KPFA.

On Hard Knock Radio, host Davey D sits down with award-winning tech journalist Karen Hao to unpack her book Empires of AI—a sweeping critique of how today’s AI boom concentrates power while eroding public agency. Hao traces OpenAI’s arc from a purportedly altruistic nonprofit to a profit-driven juggernaut shaped by the egos and ambitions of its founders. She argues that to evaluate tools like ChatGPT, we can’t stop at personal convenience; we have to reckon with the hidden inputs—mass data scraping from writers and artists, huge land/energy/water demands for data centers, and uneven, sometimes harmful outcomes for users. Hao and Davey probe how “convenience” morphs into dependency. Hao says many people recognize the hollowing effect of constant engagement and that younger users, in particular, are increasingly skeptical. She describes a “quasi-religion” inside the Valley: AGI believers split into “boomers” (utopia) and “doomers” (apocalypse), both projecting salvation or damnation onto speculative tech. Sam Altman, she contends, deliberately cultivates myth—an “everything machine” that promises to tutor kids, cure loneliness, and fix climate change—pushing beyond Apple-style brand loyalty into messianic claims about intelligence itself. Davey presses the Apple analogy, and Hao counters that AI’s leap is qualitative: companies market systems as smarter than users while fraying the basic “fair exchange” with the public. She points to research suggesting heavy reliance on chatbots can dull critical-thinking “muscle,” especially worrisome for kids forming habits and worldviews shaped by corporate values baked into models. The “empire” frame sharpens around labor and extraction. Hao recounts Kenyan workers paid under $2/hour to sanitize training data—absorbing trauma akin to social-media moderation—while generating value that fuels Silicon Valley profits. She echoes Indigenous critics who call data the “last frontier” of colonization: platforms seize what communities create, then sell it back as services. The conversation lands on politics. With Trump pushing to purge “woke AI,” strip guardrails, and supercharge surveillance, Hao says the mask slips: these systems aren’t neutral; they’re infrastructures that can hard-wire an ideology. Her closing appeal: widen the lens, resist the addictiveness, and organize for public-interest AI—so communities, not empires, set the terms. Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Fund Drive Special: Inside the Empire of AI: Karen Hao on Power, Profit, and the New Digital Colonialism appeared first on KPFA.

On this Hard Knock Radio episode, Davey D opens with “Ancestors” by guest Miko Marks, framing her long road to wider recognition as audiences rediscover Southern Soul, Americana, and country through mainstream moments—from Beyoncé’s country pivot to Ryan Coogler’s recent work. Marks traces her journey from a 2005 traditional country debut to an expansive roots blend—blues, gospel, folk, jazz—after shedding industry boxes that once demanded a narrow look and sound. She recalls being one of only a few Black women positioned in country at the time (alongside Reese Palmer) and how labels subtly pitted artists against each other. Maturity, friendship, and craft ultimately refocused her on finding her own lane. The conversation pivots to The Nine Lives of Barbara Dane, the award-winning documentary for which Marks will perform. She sees kinship with Dane—another Midwestern artist who fused art and activism, genre freedom, and courage in hostile times. Marks explains how political honesty enters her songs naturally, citing “Goodnight America,” a lullaby for the nation’s transgressions that some misread as anti-American. For her, it’s about acknowledgement, healing, and renewal. That theme flows into “Lay Your Burdens Down,” a response to today’s weight of hypocrisy and uncertainty, urging shared lifting of collective pain. Asked about country music’s receptivity to social commentary, Marks says the genre has grown but still struggles with “good-old-boy” biases and gender inequity. She welcomes Beyoncé’s country album for spotlighting young Black women—broadening who gets seen and heard. After stepping away from recording for 14 years—an act of resistance against industry games—Marks returned on her own terms, prioritizing audience connection and artistic freedom. She’s now preparing a traditional blues project (including a Christmas blues cut), underscoring that country and blues differ less in substance than in marketing; both are rooted in Black musical traditions. Davey D echoes Herbie Hancock’s line: at day’s end, it’s all Black expression. Marks closes by honoring her own ancestors—many of her family have passed—and inviting listeners to the Nine Lives of Barbara Dane screening at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater. Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Fund Drive Special: “Ancestors” and Chicago Raids appeared first on KPFA.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Hard Knock Radio – October 2, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Hard Knock Radio – October 1, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

Leonard Peltier joins Hard Knock Radio from house arrest on Turtle Mountain, grateful to be home yet blunt about the political moment. He warns of rising fascism, culture-war censorship, and the real danger of global conflict, arguing that only broad, cross-racial unity can blunt the slide. While skeptical of both parties, he urges strategic voting and mass participation to defend what freedom remains. Asked about turning to Indigenous philosophies, Peltier says we can’t “go back,” but we can move forward by restoring principles that long predated the U.S.—healthy separation of religion and government, gender equity in governance, and land stewardship. He stresses Land Back as a practical goal: reclaiming federally controlled lands that rightfully belong to Native nations, but only through unity and invitation from tribal traditionalists. Peltier links the present to erased histories: Indigenous innovations in agriculture and health, matriarchal authority, and the trauma of stolen children—citing his own family’s story—to insist that truth-telling prevents repetition. He connects that erasure to current media silence around Gaza and calls for organized pressure on outlets that obscure atrocities. Reflecting on the late Assata Shakur, he underscores decades-long AIM/Black Liberation solidarity and insists that kind of principled alliance must deepen now. His heroes range from Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull to the Panthers and Che, but he laments diminished eyesight and media access that make it harder to track today’s leaders. Still, his core message is steady: unity, disciplined nonviolence with a right to self-defense, and sustained public action—from demonstrations to strategic ballots. Peltier closes with three “jewels”: build unshakeable unity; show up—physically and politically; prepare to defend your communities lawfully while refusing to be provoked into violence. He’s clear that he won’t recant or soften his stance after decades inside—he plans to spend his remaining years speaking, organizing, and urging others to carry the struggle forward. Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Fund Drive Special: Leonard Peltier Speaks appeared first on KPFA.

When the streets of Portland lit up between 2016 and 2020, the world saw nightly battles between protesters, far-right groups, and federal officers. But for longtime organizer and writer Luis Enrique Marquez, those years were less about spectacle and more about community defense. His new book, Anti-Fascist: A Memoir of the Portland Uprising, documents the lessons, contradictions, and solidarity that defined the era. On Hard Knock Radio, Marquez sat down with Davey D to break down what went down in the Northwest—and why it matters now. Occupy ICE and Hard Lessons One of the most powerful flashpoints came with Occupy ICE. Portlanders set up encampments that literally shut down a regional ICE office. For Marquez, it was a turning point that showed everyday people could push back on one of the most feared agencies in the country. “We shut down ICE here in Portland, and it showed people across the country that you could fight back.” But there were complications. Closing a reporting site also meant some immigrants couldn’t check in, which may have sped up deportations. “We learned hard lessons—closing a reporting site meant some people couldn’t check in. That may have sped up deportations. We had to hold that.” Portland vs. the Feds By summer 2020, Portland had become the testing ground for Trump’s federal surge. Night after night, protesters faced off against militarized agents. What held the line wasn’t one group or ideology—it was solidarity. “The only reason we beat the feds was because liberals, progressives, and radicals all stood shoulder to shoulder.” Breaking Myths, Building Culture Marquez pushes back on corporate media narratives that paint antifascists as violent agitators. “Breaking a window isn’t violence. Violence is the system—ICE raids, prisons, police killings.” For him, the real story was about discipline and care: no one left behind, jail support protocols, conflict resolution, and a culture of accountability. Music also played a role—each chapter of his book opens with a playlist, because soundtracks carried people through the struggle. Facing Fascism, Together Marquez doesn’t mince words about the far-right. From Proud Boys brawling in Portland and Berkeley to ICE’s alignment with private security, he sees it as one ecosystem of repression. “You can’t separate the street fascists from ICE—they’re all part of the same machine.” Lessons for the Long Game For Marquez, the takeaway is simple: there are no heroes, only communities defending themselves. Every role matters—whether you’re on the street, cooking meals, writing, or running jail support. And with every copy of the book sold, $10 goes to One People’s Project to continue exposing fascist networks. “It’s not about heroes—it’s about communities defending themselves… We defend each other.” Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Anti-Fascism in Portland: A Conversation with Luis Enrique Marquez appeared first on KPFA.

Jeff Chang joins Hard Knock Radio to break down his new book, Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America. We start with a truth many of us in Black and Hip-Hop communities feel instinctively: Bruce isn’t just “an Asian hero,” he’s a global underdog icon—postered up next to Ali and Marley, sampled and name-checked in rap, and embraced across barrios and blocks. During the pandemic, Jeff watched Bruce’s image reappear on Chinatown walls as a signal of pride, resilience, and a call for solidarity against anti-Asian violence. Chang clears up myths and centers history. Bruce Lee was born an American citizen in San Francisco’s Chinese Hospital in 1940—amid Chinese Exclusion-era racism and medical segregation. Birthright citizenship (14th Amendment) makes that possible; Chang notes how recent political attacks on birthright rules would have rendered Bruce deportable today. Another correction: Bruce didn’t train the Black Panthers—they just missed each other by a year—but his Oakland chapter was real: a Broadway school (now by “Bruce Lee Way”), students from Cal during the Free Speech era, and a deep Bay imprint. We track Bruce’s formative years in colonial Hong Kong: a privileged kid who grew up angry at apartheid-style British rule, learning Wing Chun amid rooftop challenge fights (bammo culture) while simultaneously becoming Hong Kong’s cha-cha champion and a child actor. His teachers (including Ip Man) pushed not just technique but philosophy; Bruce devoured texts and began shaping a practice grounded in balance, realism, and self-defense for everyday people. In Seattle, teaching turned him “American” in a new way. His first students—Jesse Glover, a Black kid brutalized by cops at 12, and Taki Kimura, a Japanese American crushed by wartime incarceration—made Bruce confront U.S. segregation and trauma up close. That classroom was cross-racial and political, long before slogans. Hollywood is the crucible. As Kato on The Green Hornet, Bruce fought stereotypes—begging for lines, writing a script, and refusing to play the silent servant. Kids wanted the Kato doll; studios still typecast him. He went back to Hong Kong, flipped the action genre with bare-hand realism (not cable-heavy wire-fu), and made the hero human and vulnerable. Those films landed squarely with Third World organizers in SF and beyond; theaters erupted during Fist of Fury. From Jackie Chan and Jet Li to today’s MCU and John Wick-style set pieces, the standard Bruce set—speed, clarity, stakes—still rules. Five key takeaways Bruce Lee’s U.S. birth amid exclusion laws ties his story to the 14th Amendment and today’s fights over birthright citizenship. He’s a bridge figure: embraced by Black and Brown audiences because his films dramatize the underdog versus empire. The Oakland/Seattle years matter—teaching built cross-racial solidarity and grounded his philosophy in real community needs. Hollywood resistance was activism: letters, rewrites, and public demos to challenge the “silent servant” box. He re-engineered action cinema: fast, plausible, low-trick choreography that made every hit feel earned—and risky. Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Fund Drive Special: Bruce Lee, Birthright, and the Making of Asian America — Jeff Chang on HKR appeared first on KPFA.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson. The post Fund Drive Special: Chris Hedges Collection appeared first on KPFA.

On Hard Knock Radio, host Dave “Davey D” Cook sat down with Oakland-raised investigator and former CPRA executive director Mac Muir, co-author (with Greg Finch) of Cop Cop: Breaking the Fixed System of American Policing. The conversation moves from New York’s entrenched resistance to oversight to Oakland’s imperfect but real gains, and lands on practical reforms that could actually change outcomes on the street. Muir frames the book’s premise plainly: the system is “fixed”—structured to over-police Black and Brown communities and to sour officers against the public they serve. Because much of what happens inside internal affairs never reaches daylight, Cop Cop tells the day-to-day stories of complaints, investigations, and the quiet harms that don’t make headlines but shape lives. New York vs. Oakland. Running investigations in New York, Muir encountered “almost comprehensive hostility” to oversight inside a vast, insular NYPD. In Oakland, federal monitors and a stronger charter-based system created more leverage. It’s not the OPD of 2003, he notes, and he left “more optimistic” about the trajectory—while stressing that scandals persist and trust remains a multi-generational project tied to unaddressed history. The airplane-crash standard. Davey D pushes a comparison: when planes crash, investigators reconstruct every factor to stop repeats. Police killings and abuses rarely get that prevention-first treatment. Muir agrees: settlements tally damage after the fact; the work should be to prevent the next incident—down to the “everyday” harms of stop-and-frisk that, in New York, correlated with lower test scores for young Black men. Fear as policy—and PR. Muir walks through a lineage of fear campaigns: the 1960s fight against a civilian review board (fronted by a slick police-union ad warning that “your life” depends on officers never being second-guessed) and the 1970s “Fear City/Fair City” push that helped protect police budgets while schools and social services were slashed. Davey D recalls the fallout as a student—no after-school programs, more police, a cycle cemented by rhetoric. Why DOJ consent decrees aren’t enough. Federal interventions can force short-term box-checking, but they leave. The durable fix is local, charter-level oversight with real power over discipline. Chicago’s recent model, Muir argues, bakes civilian control into the machinery rather than renting it from Washington. Piercing the jargon. Investigations can’t accept magic words—“I feared for my safety,” “bulge,” “exigent circumstances”—as end-points. Muir’s method is to strip the lingo and reconstruct what an officer actually saw, heard, and did. If the facts don’t align with the claimed fear, the justification fails. Concrete reforms Muir backs: Civilianize internal affairs. Stop asking officers to police their colleagues; independent investigators produce better records and more credible discipline. Recruit (and retain) more women. Across decades of data, women officers show lower force and misconduct rates and disrupt corrupt networks; even male force use drops in their presence. Tie conduct to cost. Require malpractice-style insurance for officers (or cities). Premiums rise with misconduct, making repeat harm financially untenable. Stop the shuffle. Build systems that block problem officers from hopping jurisdictions; treat certification like a real license that can be lost. History, memory, repair. In Oakland, trust won’t be rebuilt without public reckoning: Panthers era violence, Bobby Hutton, 1980s killings—truth-telling forums matter for institutional legitimacy. Transparency under federal oversight helps, but acknowledgement is a community-level necessity. On slogans and politics. Muir calls “more Black officers” an overrated fix—representation hasn’t reliably altered outcomes—and says the “defund” frame backfires by suggesting no one answers 911. The through-line is not ideology but incentives and structures that reliably prevent harm. Asked...