1 Feb 2021
*Bonus!* One Year, Three Seasons: GCV Pod Hosts Mahlet/MK, Asha, and Tri reflect. Recorded Oct 2020
It's the GCV, the Podcast 1 year, 3 seasons-end reflection and conversation!
Green Card Voices, the Podcast Season 1 host Mahlet aka MK, Season 2 #LoveYourAsianNeighbors host and co-manager Tri, and Beyond Allyship podcast manager and co-host Asha Thanki join each other after the end of the season 3 Beyond Allyship finale in October 2020, barely a week before the momentous 59th United States presidential election on Tues Nov 3rd, 2020. Tri has a lot of questions for the hosts, including:
Mahlet’s thoughts, as the host who was part of the start of the overall life of the podcast, on what the unplanned trajectory, as impacted by worldwide pandemic and the U.S national social uprisings, of the podcast series means to her
Tri’s thought process in the conception and shift to season 2 of GCV the Podcast, titled the #LoveYourAsianNeighbors series. As GCV’s then-social media intern with an amateur enthusiasm for podcasts as a long-time podcast consumer, Tri took on the task of shifting the format of the podcast to best demonstrate GCV’s role as a storytelling platform during a global pandemic whose circumstances also amplified anti-Chinese and Chinese-adjacent attitudes and actions in countries such as the U.S.
Asha’s circumstances and task that became creating the season 3 series, Beyond Allyship, of stepping into the podcast manager role in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police and the consequent uprisings that began in Minnesota and has since spread to many sites of allied protests worldwide, and shifting the podcast’s goals, yet again, to address the social injustices against peoples grouped and distinguished as “Black” and African under the banner of a Minneapolis-based non-profit that primarily seres as a platform for immigrant and refugee first-person storytelling
Asha sharing how GCV the Podcast is set up well to reach listeners in many different places as it concerns their understanding of the political, historical, and cultural moment we’re living by facilitating a platform for guests to demonstrate what work they have already been doing, rather than the hosts guiding the conversations outside of the immediate experiences of the guests
Tri’s comment on how the Green Card Voices became a veritable “time capsule” for three stages of GCV’s varied alignment of commitments to immigrant and refugee first-person storytelling first on its own terms, then in emphasized relationship to Asian U.S diasporic peoples during a global pandemic, and in most recent memory in relationship with often non-immigrant Black peoples and recent-diasporic African peoples
Tri asks Mahlet, Asha, and is asked himself: “How are you? Have you been able to go for relaxing walks? Have you seen a cute dog? Have you had enough down-time off of Zoom?”
Last but not least, we bring back the closing Story Stitch question that became a staple of the #LoveYourAsianNeighbors series: “Tell about a time when your life felt abundant.”
Thank you so much for listening along to our bold and stimulating conversations with community and movement leaders. Please check out our past episodes and conversations with strong-willed, whole-hearted, and community driven storytellers and leaders to see just how powerful and complex our immigrant, refugee, and diasporic communities really are.
Visit us at greencardvoices.org to learn more about the necessary value of immigrant, refugee, and diasporic narratives in building the future in America worth sharing with one another as local and global neighbors.
Thank you for being a great listener and neighbor.
