Today’s conversation explores something my guest, Bayo Akomolafe, calls post activism. Post activism opens a space of inquiry about the ways that we respond to crisis and invites us to examine places of power in a situation. It is noticing that the solutions that we advance to a problem may, in fact, be part of the problem until we recognize the framing from which we respond.

Bayo shares: This is the reason my elders say, the time is urgent, let us slow down. Slowing down is not reducing one's speed. Slowing down is noticing the others that frame us and then acting upon that framing or the new spaces of power that are opening up.

A father and and self-proclaimed proud diaper-changer, Bayo was invited to be the Coordinator/Special Envoy of the International Alliance for Localization in 2014, a project of Local Futures (USA). He temporarily left his lecturing position in Covenant University, Nigeria to help build this Alliance for a more beautiful world. Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.) has been Visiting Professor at Middlebury College, where he taught on ‘transraciality’ (his neo-materialist take on racialization) and postactivism. He has also taught at Sonoma State University (CA, USA), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), and Schumacher College (Totnes, England) – among other universities around the world. He is a widely appreciated speaker, teacher, public intellectual, author and facilitator, globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action and social change.

This is one of the deepest conversations I’ve had on the show and our explorations are wide ranging. Please enjoy.