Behind the Scenes with Rural Race Talks

Rural Roots Rising

Last month we introduced LaNicia Duke and her call-in program Rural Race Talks on Coast Community Radio. We recommend listening to Community Media Spotlight: Rural Race Talks first. This month’s episode, Behind the Scenes with Rural Race Talks, explores the power of learning in public with LaNicia and discusses how her radio show is an extension of her organizing.

One lesson from this episode is that the small-town reality that everyone knows everyone means that the transformations made possible through rural organizing and media-making can be shared in real-time.

Histories of racism in rural places are also shared histories, and reckoning with, healing from, and rebuilding requires us to have these conversations and grapple together with how to move forward. LaNicia knows that process can't happen in isolation and Rural Race Talks is one way of creating a space for that work on the air.

Download this episode’s transcript at ruralrootsrising.org.

More on what you heard in this episode:

Rural Race Talks is a live call-in radio show hosted by LaNicia Duke on Coast Community Radio carving out space to grapple with our unique legacy of systemic racism and what that means for our present in honest and sometimes messy ways. The show comes at these conversations from multiple angles–everything from how we can begin to heal from our collective, social, and generational traumas to what 2020 taught us about race.

LaNicia is a self-identified “brown-skinned girl” and community organizer in Tillamook County, which is nearly 94% white. She considers the radio show an extension of her organizing and the real-life conversations she has off the air with her friends and neighbors. Check out full episodes of her show at coastradio.org.

This episode has also created unexpected opportunities for collaboration and connection. In February, as we produced this episode, LaNicia also interviewed Hannah Harrod, an organizer at ROP and this episode’s host, as part of a Rural Race Talks episode. Listen to that episode in the Coast Community Radio archives.

To learn more about LaNicia’s organizing work in Tillamook County and beyond, visit laniciaduke.com. In this episode, LaNicia shared her work as a chef through Coastal Soul and about the power of food to bring people together. We also discussed her motivations to co-create the first Martin Luther King, Jr. Day events in Tillamook County which you can read more about in the Tillamook Headlight Herald.

Interested in connecting with other rural Oregonians who are making media or building power in your area? Learn more about Rural Organizing Project at rop.org or reach out at [e-mail].

We featured music from The Road Sodas, The Library Ann’s, PC-One, and the Staple Singers.

Rural Roots Rising is a production of the Rural Organizing Project. Thank you for listening!

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