Creating a World Beyond Tyranny

Jul 2, 2025

Welcome back to The NERVE! Conversations With Movement Elders a podcast from the National Council of Elders featuring intergenerational conversations between elder and younger organizers about important topics in our movements today. 

This episode features a conversation about the history of the rise of the authoritarian right wing in the United States, attacks on our archives and schools, and how we organize for a world beyond fascism. 

This episode is hosted by Frances Reid (she/her) a member of NCOE and a longtime social justice documentary filmmaker based in Oakland, CA.

Joining Frances in this conversation are:

• Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons (she/her) is Professor Emerita from the University of Florida. She is a Veteran of the Black Freedom, Peace, and Social Justice Movements from the 1960s until today. She was a student activist in the 1960s Sit-In Movement. Simmons was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and its Project Director In Laurel, Mississippi for two years beginning with the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. 

• Suzanne Pharr (she/her) is a southern queer feminist and anti-racist organizer and political strategist who has spent her adult life working to build a broad-based, multiracial, multi-issued movement for social and economic justice in the United States. Since 1980, Pharr has been tracking the growth of a US authoritarian movement and providing political education about its goals, strategies, and leadership.    
       
• Ashby Combahee (s/he/they) is a Black queer memory worker from the South. Ashby is a full-time librarian and archivist at the Highlander Research and Education Center and cofounder of Georgia Dusk: A Southern Liberation Oral History

 

• Uyiosa Elegon (he/him) is an Edo organizer rooted in Houston, Texas. He is a co-founder of Shift Press, a media organization that provides training and news that encourage local youth civic engagement.

To download a free e-copy of Suzanne Pharr's recently re-released book In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation visit suzannepharr.com

CREDITS: Created and produced by the National Council of Elders podcast and oral history team: Aljosie Aldrich Harding, Frances Reid, Eddie Gonzalez, Sarayah Wright, alyzza may, and Rae Garringer.