Ep. 21 - Welcome to the Gun Show

In light of all-too-frequent mass shootings across the country,
another political gun control debate, and the broad swath of
youth activism surrounding these issues, BrownTown turns a
previous organic conversation into an episode. As gun violence in
America is sadly nothing new, the youth mobilization after the
Parkland, Florida school shooting sparked a lasting conversation
around gun violence, the NRA, and public policy. However, as the
March For Our Lives movement picks up steam and funding, the
mainstream narrative often forgets or obscures the work of
primarily Black and Brown individuals and organizations (insert:
Good Kids Mad City; the 4 Front Project, Tiffany Loftin of NAACP)
who have been working against the intersections of violence in
and outside of their communities through nuanced, complex
analyses that connect the “gun problem” to larger systems of
oppression that sustain inequality and death in less salient
ways.


Full Transcription Here!


BrownTown takes this approach to examine the culture of violence
as a uniquely American phenomenon, which finds itself at the
intersection of capitalism, militarism, white supremacy, and
toxic masculinity. With SoapBox’s Chicago Drill and Activism
project as a site of investigation, we explore drill rap from the
UK and Chicago—two places with starkly different gun policy, yet
similar problems for some of its most marginalized population.
This leads them to compare and contrast gun policy on a global
scale in an attempt to understand the story behind stats. How has
America reconciled with its violent past? Why do some places with
looser gun laws or violent histories have far less homicides and
suicides? The second amendment is often propped up as a
unquestionable staple in these conversations while obscuring the
contextual milieu in which it was created as well as the
reasoning behind some state’s stricter gun legislation (insert:
Reagan and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s).


Lastly, BrownTown takes a reflexive look at even how our everyday
language promotes a standard of domination and violence in
seemingly “apolitical” ways. Through the examples, historical and
contemporary, personal and hypothetical, BrownTown walks away
from the conversation noting that our efforts to curve violence
in America must be holistic, incremental, and radical in its
approach if we are to truly get free. Originally recorded May 8,
2018.


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CREDITS: Intro song This is America by
Childish Gambino. Outro song PROM / KING by Saba. Audio
engineered by Genta Tamashiro.


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