We Who Believe in Freedom

IRISE is cultivating a media project themed “We Who Believe in Freedom.”  In partnership  with the University of Denver’s Department of Film, Media, and Journalism Studies, the Ethnography Lab in the Department of Anthropology, the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Major, and The Spirituals Project (TSP), the vision is to bring IRISE’s R.A.G.E. podcast to a national and international audience.  

Through content and direction generated from DPFF’s curriculum, the series will be led by diverse young hosts pondering a particularly thorny conundrum of inequity and injustice in the contemporary era.  As the hosts work with a broad array of archival and secondary resources around racial justice in the Rocky Mountain West, they will uncover the historical roots to some of American society’s most enduring problems and reveal the connections between hyperlocal events that have national reverberations. 

The IRISE podcast pays homage to one of the songs that The Spiritual Project choir sings, a song called "Ella's Song" written by Bernice Johnson Reagon.  The song is based on the words of the Black activist Ella Baker: "We who believe in freedom cannot rest…" With these words and music in mind, our ultimate goal is to center the experiences of young adults in the recovery and re-imagination of national conversations about racial activism, agency, freedom, and justice that continue to rage to this very day. 

We are currently developing content and treatments for each episode. 

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