Brea Baker: Dreaming of Radical Love

Dreaming in Color

Welcome to Dreaming in Color, a show hosted by Christian Celeste Tate and Anum Qadir from The Bridgespan Group, that provides a space for social change leaders of color to reflect on how their life experiences, personal and professional, have prepared them to lead and drive the impact we all seek.

In this episode, we speak with Brea Baker, a Freedom Fighter and Writer working on the frontlines for nearly a decade. She began as a student activist, contributing to #NextYale, a movement to address the legacy of white supremacy on Yale’s campus, the Women’s March of 2017 where she was the youngest national organizer, and the 2018 student walkouts against gun violence. In her professional career, Brea has contributed to dozens of electoral and advocacy campaigns. She advises storytellers, celebrities, and industry leaders on building our collective imagination and responding thoughtfully to social justice movements.

To add to that, Brea’s book, Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership is set to release on June 18th. Rooted traces the experiences of Brea’s own family’s history of having land violently taken from them and explores historic attacks on Black land ownership to better understand the racial wealth gap.

Join this conversation as Brea takes us on her family’s tumultuous journey of land ownership ultimately leading to the “Baker Acres”—a haven for her family, and a palace where they are surrounded by love, sustained by the land, and wholly free. Listen as she paints a picture of a world post-reparations.

This is Dreaming in Color.

Jump straight into:

(0:32) Introduction of Brea Baker: Freedom Fighter and Author.

(3:13) Land theft as the original sin that makes colonialism possible.

(4:18) Brea shares her origins as a student organizer.

(10:03) Brea’s delves into her family’s history and how the violent theft of her family’s land led to her activism.

(18:31) Brea paints a picture of reparations in its different forms—the physical, as in the restatement of land and wealth but also the emotional and spiritual, like holding space for grief and rage.

(27:20) Brea speaks on her role as an artist and writer and the responsibility of being society’s truth teller and recorder of history.

(30:52) Holding space for radical love.

Episode Resources

• Keep up with Brea on Twitter and Instagram
• Learn more about Brea through her website.
• Order Brea’s book Rooted here and read her writing in Elle, Refinery29, Harper’s Bazaar, and Sweet July

Learn more about reparations through Bridgespan’s special collection