Naptown People’s Radio

Cinder Patel and Sym Cloyd, two library workers and AFSCME 3395 union members, talk about the daily environment of working in our libraries for our communities, how the union fights for the workers and patrons, and more.

Naptown Breakdown

This week's Naptown Breakdown begins with two lawsuits the ACLU filed against Miami "Correctional" Facility, specifically Indiana's for-profit medical provider, Centurion Health, and several unnam...

Liz Marvin, a local organizer with Indy Resistance Indivisible, joins the show this week to expose how ICE is using the Indy Airport to fly "ghost flights" filled with immigrant workers. No ICE Flights and others are exposing the barbaric reality, forcing us to take a stand: Will we let ICE use our airport as a base of their human trafficking operation?

Naptown Breakdown

Before the interview, co-hosts Dani Abdullah and Derek Ford t...

Activist Lindsey Holtgrave pulled up to this week's show to tell us about several recently-enacted laws attacking the people of Indiana and our most basic democratic rights—and how we can fight back.

Before speaking with Lindsey, co-hosts Dani Abdullah and Derek Ford discuss the consequences of the U.S.' illegal war on the Islamic Republic of Iran. While bombing strikes kill thousands overseas, the supply disruption caused by...

This week we're excited to bring you a special episode that 1) analyzes the 250 years of oppression and resistance as we prepare for the "Independence Day"celebrations and 2) discusses how we are and can strategize based on that legacy of resistance.

Today we are also celebrating the the halfway point in our first year at our new home: a visible storefront in downtown Indianapolis. With a nod to Douglass and his famous speech, we a...

Comrade Shaka A. Shakur joins the show for an extended segment of Dispatches from Behind the Wire, providing an in depth description of his case, current situation, and future prospects. Shaka has served 25 years of a 60-year plus sentence for an incident in which no one was deprived of life and the “injured” party said he would not oppose any sentence modification or early release. The Shaka Shakur Freedom Campaign is ...

This week's episode features New Afrikan Political Prisoner Kwame Beans Shakur discussing not only the need to test theory through practice but providing concrete examples of how to do so successfully. "Revolution is based on land," as Malcolm X said, but that's not enough: cutting the umbilical cord with U.S. imperialism requires the knowledge of cultivating the land and, more generally, utilizing our capacities collectively for a...

Abby Morgan, an organizer with Action Neighbors—a subgroup of the Indy Action Coalition— joins the show, which released its first episode one-year ago today, to discuss their new 4th Amendment Campaign to fight against ICE terror.

This week's Naptown Breakdown starts with the rise of China and the U.S. war against Iran and quickly moves to Indiana, as co-hosts Dani Abdullah and Derek Ford discuss how over 800 workers at...

Rania Hatab of the Lower Hudson Valley DSA and Rockland Coalition to End the New Jim Crow and Jasmine Moody of the Liberation Center tell us first-hand about the battle to dismantle Delaney Hall.

Both Hatab and Moody were about an hour away finishing a screening and panel of the new documentary, "Across Enemy Lines: Shaka A. Shakur," when Hatab got word the main organizer inside Delaney Hall was potentially being moved. Working wit...

This week, Founding Member of the Hampton Institute and Host of A Different Lens podcast, Devon Bowers, joins the show to discuss the origins, trajectory, and needs of independent left political organizations and media outlets.

The Hampton Institute is a proletarian (working-class) think tank founded by Colin Jenkins in 2013 to counter right-wing so-called "think" tanks. Their writers, contributors, and editors come from Korea, Jap...

Helping thread together the many struggles facing the people and planet today, FTF KD joins this week's episode. He lets us know about a new podcast, "In the YO!," he's releasing soon (that will also be coming to you from the Indy Liberation Center).

China stands tall while Trump walks away with scraps. This week's Naptown Breakdown begins with Trump's recent visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the re-assertion of independe...

Our 50th episode features two PSL organizers, one who founded the Indianapolis branch and another who joined two years ago.

As we worked out ideas for our 50th episode, we realized we hadn't spoken much about the organization behind the podcast: the Indianapolis branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. On this week's episode, hear co-host Derek Ford dialogue with Sam James, who co-founded the Indianapolis branch in 2018, a...

This week we hear from Haki Shakur, National Spokesperson for the Provisional Government of the Republic of Afrika, on the state of the struggle for New Afrikan independence.

Before we get to the Naptown Breakdown, co-host Dani Abdullah makes plain why we at the Indy Liberation Center always keep the fight for Black Liberation center-stage and work to move it forward. We mean something specific when we refer to "the system:" it is ...

In our final segment in our May Day series, co-hosts Dani Abdullah and Derek Ford ask: How and why did May Day (or International Workers' Day), which originated in the U.S. in the late 19th century, only reappear in popular U.S. consciousness 20 years ago?

But first, the Naptown Breakdown follows up on several stories we've covered. The first is the IDOC settlement of roughly $1.2 million to 31 inmates who were forced to live in da...

As we prepare for May Day 2026, producer Dakota Fronterhouse joins the show to discuss a recent incident in which several of his fundamental rights were defended by his union. First, co-hosts Dani and Derek turn to recent regional labor struggles, and particularly the historic 2011 battle in Madison, Wisconsin. During the early months of that year, workers occupied the Capitol Rotunda and took to the streets for 29 consecutive days...

Kayla Cowels, an organizer in Elkhart, Indiana joins the show this week to discuss the Feb. 8 killing of 17-year-old Bryan Ramirez Gomez, who died after cops Nicholas Ragsdale and Thomas Breneman shot him in a park.

Prompted by the April 8 nationwide day of action against the U.S. war on Iran, Dani Abdullah opens up our Naptown Breakdown by asking her co-host Derek Ford why, with all of the issues we face in this city, it's still n...

We're honored to have Veronika Williams and Keanda Young, loved ones of Jamar and Lamonte Thomas, join Naptown People's Radio this week to debunk the IMPD's lies and correct the media's narratives about the March 7 shooting downtown.

Our Naptown Breakdown covers IMPD Patrol Officer Gary Francis Hadden's assault on Noah Leininger, one of the organizers of the anti-ICE protest over the weekend. After an unknown man grabbed Leininger ...

Director, clinical psychologist, actress, model, paralegal, and activist Dr. Meleeka Clary joins the show this week to discuss her 16-year long battle against her ex-husband and the Indiana courts.

Our Naptown Breakdown starts with two encouraging updates. First we hear a message from Shaka A. Shakur that he sent after finally receiving a copy of his book, Manifestations of Thought: When the Dragon Comes (1804 Books). Up next is an...

Our third episode celebrating Women's History Month feature includes co-hosts Dani Abdullah and Derek Ford discuss more of their women revolutionary heroes and an urgent segment of "Dispatches from Behind the Wire" where we hear from an inmate at Miami Correctional Facility about the horrendous and routine medical neglect he and his fellow inmates–including ICE detainees–face on a daily basis.

First, our Naptown Breakdo...

In our second episode celebrating Women’s History Month, co-hosts Dani Abdullah and Derek Ford bring one of the women revolutionaries they study and admire to the table, women who made significant contributions to the anti-imperialist struggle through united fronts, in the theoretical and practical terrains. They didn’t share their choices with each other, so what results is a spontaneous and authentic dialogue that is ...