How did this come about?

The Just Transition strategic framework includes shifting the culture and worldview that guides our extractive economy. MG is working to create an economy of the future that promotes a culture and worldview based on sacredness, care, and cooperation. Given the gross inequality and oppression that we experience in this economy, it’s hard to believe that we can actually make a transition to a new economy that works for the people and the planet. That’s why as artists, organizers, and activists we must produce and create things that inspire and encourage people to take collective action to make that kind of change. 

A few years ago we began to explore cultural strategy work. As a result we created some amazing productions including the Make it Fresh Series, The Creative Wildfire Retreat for Organizers and Artists, the Green Collar Comedy Series, and The North Pole Show Season 1-2. After evaluating our cultural strategy efforts it became clear to us that for our next project we’d like to create a podcast as a way to directly share our thoughts, strategies, and analysis with the people that know and love our work. We want you to hear from us and the people we’re building a movement with!

Check out this short interview with the host of our “DWGTF?” podcast Layel Camargo.

As a cultural worker, supporting and embodying the best ways to make impact have kept me rooted and continuously push me to initiate cultural production with Movement Generation, my political home. Did We Go Too Far? (DWGTF) was born after a robust lunch conversation that proceeded to instigate the possibility of recording conversations about Just Transition. Movement Generation has always been an amazing thought leader as well as a catalyst towards ecological justice and with social justice. After The North Pole Show came out, we sought out to think of our next cultural production that would continue to spark dialogue and entertainment. Originally, the goal was to simply continue to engage organizers, artists, and MG aficionados. COVID-19 shifted and highlighted the need to continue to push discussions on the many crises we face as they intersect with the pandemic. 

What is the Podcast trying to do? 

This podcast aims to simply connect with all we are feeling – enraged, confused, managing the best we can, and at times finding relief. For some of us, we’ve finally been able to stop forcing ourselves into dynamics that make us so unhappy. The pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered a lot for many and we're struggling and attempting to make sense of it on the collective, individual and systemic level. This podcast simply wants to ask: how far have we gone? Do we need to go farther? Or is it time to pull the plug and start building something new?

How is it getting done? 

Our podcast aims to not replicate the same hetero-patriarchal, white supremacist systems that are currently being shed light on. Thus, our project is collaborative community and collective effort. Movement Generation invested time to understand cultural strategy and podcast making. Partnering up with a woman-of-color centered podcast production company, We Rise, and local musicians like Diasporadical and Los Nadies aims to amplify and center those who are not to usually invested in when creating cultural products. We’ve nurtured this project with radical imagination and emergence amidst the hard conditions of COVID-19. We hope you enjoy it.