Hello and welcome back to the Earth Sea Love Podcast.
We are greatly excited to be sharing our new series of conversations with you.
We are also deeply saddened and enraged about the recent lynching of Professor Jason Arday.
In this introduction, with me your host Dr. Sheree Mack recorded before Jason’s passing, I talk about the racial smear campaign of the last month or so. I have subsequently gone back in and added a word or two before this episode in honour of Jason.
Below I will include the links I mentioned to positive, good media that champions Professor Jason Arday. In short, he never should have been unalived. They hounded him to death. And he coudn’t take any more. How much can one person take?
This introduction is a solo episode where I talk about the Practicing Creative Fugitivity project which is Arts Council England funded. This project involves forming a study circle around the reading Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu. The conversations that follow within this series is me talking with members of the SistaCircle around their understandings and takeaways from reading in community this book. How can we move from the theory into practicing fugitivity in our every day.
I thought it only fitting to start this series with my own understanding of fugitivity and how I’ve been practicing it within my life. I hope to return with another solo episode at the end of the series to reflect of how I’ve moved my understandings and practices on in response to these conversations and the practicing creative fugitivity as a whole .
We share these amazing conversations as a means of telling our own stories. As a means of witnessing our wholeness, fullness and aliveness for ourselves. As it has become mighty clear and evident, white supremacy culture, a by-product of racial capitalism is alive and well, working just as it was constructed to work; whiteness = humanness. Anything/ anyone else is exploited, extracted and disposed of.
Fugitivity is about refusal. Refusing the anti-black narrative, refusing to be defined, controlled and used and abused by the system. We chose to run, flee, take flight towards freedom. And in the midst of flight we linger to live and love, experience joy and grief, pain and pleasure on our own terms.
Welcome back to the Earth Sea Love Podcast. Thank you for your ears and hearts. Enjoy this series.
Links:
1. A replay of the vigil that was held for Prof. Arday at Trafalgar Square on 17th August 2026
https://www.youtube.com/live/lPHGREJFG40?si=Tvziri5N-GJDPmie
2. Two episodes from Kehinde Andrew’s podcast, Make it Plain where he talks about Professor Jason Arday
https://youtu.be/f0Led8VMAm8?si=uFjEqf6wtT17QRO0
https://youtu.be/uPmtCS3MPT0?si=cuJWdYetaCcpbgr6 ( at the end of this episode there is the inclusion of a lecture Professor Arday gave last year)
3. Elliott Connie relating to Jason Arday’s situation through mental health
https://youtu.be/_n2wE3w3Q40?si=AQJ8xVPbGXzc4_pl
4. Daniella Maison writing in The Independent before and after Jason’s passing
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/cambridge-plagiarism-jason-arday-black-academic-b3025197.html
5. Owen Jones talking to Kehinde Andrews about the lynching of Professor Jason Arday
https://youtu.be/dv8MXCHcBVU?si=WSG7FBwsbUepr7js
6. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza writing about the murder of Jason Arday
https://paulddf.substack.com/p/who-killed-jason-arday?r=1qc34b&triedRedirect=true
7. LBC episode where people who knew Professor Arday call in to share how he touched their lives. Right near the end there’s a caller called Dean from Newcastle who shares a speech he prepared about being validated by Professor Jason Arday ( from 51 minutes in they start talking about Jason Arday).
https://youtu.be/0AQZOyOrQpk?si=WRs1E583yNpuya_T
8. The Go Fund Me Campaign set up for Jason’s family
https://www.gofundme.com/f/in-memory-of-dr-jason-atta-kwei-arday
9. The Good Law Project call for a public enquiry into the media
https://goodlawproject.org/warnings-about-jason-ardays-mental-health-were-ignored-by-the-press/
10. Jason Arday was a talented football.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jason-arday-cambridge-university-tributes-37555625
11. A community grief circle has been scheduled by Black Psychology Team for Black and Global Majority communities to come together to grieve for the evening of Thursday 27 August. Sign up here – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bp-community-grief-circle-tickets-1998360526128?aff=oddtdtcreator
12. Let’s and on a good note . Everything Good about Jason Arday, created by his students. Everything Good About Jason Arday:’https://leilacancode.github.io/everythinggood-about-jasonarday/
The music used throughout this series is free music from Ketsa.uk
This track is MOLE SOUL BY KETSA
This series is funded by Arts Council England
* In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org