Mandela Barnes returns to Black Oxygen for a wide-ranging conversation about his Wisconsin roots, his run for governor, and what it actually takes to rebuild trust across a divided state. Angela and Mandela talk about the Milwaukee factory jobs that built his family's foundation, the corporate greed driving both the opioid crisis and the urban-rural divide, why social media profits from division, and what it means to lead from a place of doubt instead of certainty. They close out with Wisconsin hidden gems and Mandela's current playlist.

• Mandela's family story: his grandfather, A.O. Smith, and growing up on 26th and Locust in Milwaukee
• Why he's chosen to keep fighting for Wisconsin instead of leaving for a national platform
• Running for office as an act of care, and what government's spending priorities reveal
• The shared struggles underneath the urban-rural divide in Wisconsin
• Corporate greed, the opioid epidemic, and accountability
• How social media profits from manufactured division, and what it would take to rebuild third spaces
• Leading from doubt instead of certainty, and what it takes to actually listen
• His vision for Wisconsin, and why he still believes better is possible
• The crowded 2026 Democratic primary for governor, and why he sees that as healthy for democracy
• Lessons from the 2022 Senate race and the role of money in politics
• Wisconsin hidden gems: Madeline Island and Havenwoods State Forest
• How to get to know your neighbor again, starting with a simple hello
• Mandela's current playlist

"I believe that better is possible." — Mandela Barnes

"There's so much money in division." — Mandela Barnes

"If you're never in doubt, you're not leading right." — Mandela Barnes

"Sometimes you just gotta say hi." — Mandela Barnes

"It's the people around me, you know, people I grew up with, people I went to school with. If they haven't made it, then what good does it do?" — Mandela Barnes

• 00:00 — Welcome back, Mandela Barnes
• 02:26 — His Wisconsin story: family, A.O. Smith, growing up on 26th and Locust
• 05:21 — Why stay and fight for Wisconsin
• 07:43 — Corporate greed and concentrated wealth
• 11:13 — Collective care and running for office
• 12:05 — Government spending priorities: public housing and SNAP versus wars of choice
• 17:05 — The shared struggles beneath the urban-rural divide
• 19:04 — The opioid epidemic and corporate accountability
• 21:48 — Social media, manufactured division, and who profits from it
• 26:09 — Self-righteousness, listening, and leaving room for co-creation
• 35:22 — His vision and hope for Wisconsin
• 38:14 — The crowded Democratic primary for governor
• 39:25 — Lessons from the 2022 Senate race and the money spent against him
• 43:03 — Wisconsin hidden gems: Madeline Island and Havenwoods State Forest
• 46:24 — Getting to know your neighbor, one hello at a time
• 47:34 — Mandela's playlist
• 48:11 — Where to find Mandela Barnes

• Social media: @TheOtherMandela
• Website: mandelabarnes.com

Produced in partnership with Madison365, amplifying voices across Wisconsin.

T.R. Williams, Wisconsin Women's Network Policy Institute lead facilitator, Senior Director of Development at United Way, business owner, and newly initiated member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated — returns to Black Oxygen for an in-depth conversation about the importance of community.

TR traces her family's Great Migration story from Mississippi to Milwaukee, and her own winding path from New York City to Madison, where she's been longer than she planned. She and Angela reflect on the particular texture of Black life in Madison — the hidden neighborhoods, east side vs west side life, and the community you have to know to find.

TR offers a sharp, grounded critique of meritocracy — how it sells Black people on individualism and severs us from the very thing that has kept us alive: community care. She talks about what the 2024 election clarified for her, why she chose to stay engaged rather than divest, and what radical rest actually looks like as a political act.

In this episode: Community care as resistance, the myth of meritocracy, epigenetics and survival, the Divine Nine in Madison, self-care beyond the spa day, Audre Lorde's radical self-preservation, and how to start building community without going 0 to 100.

A quick update from Black Oxygen host Angela Russell about what's coming up next on Black Oxygen.

In this episode of Black Oxygen, Angela sits down with Tyrone Creech, Executive Director of GSafe Wisconsin for a wide-ranging, deeply honest conversation about what it means to serve LGBTQ+ youth in this political moment.

Tyrone shares the realities on the ground: the stripping of trans healthcare, the collapse of corporate and philanthropic support, the impossible moral calculus nonprofits face when funding comes with compromises, and the extraordinary courage of young people who are doing activism when they should just be kids.

But this episode isn't just about what's being taken away. Tyrone talks about what's holding communities together — chosen family, consent culture, the joy and power of GSafe's Celebration of Leadership (now in its 30th year!), and the Leadership Training Institute (LTI), a transformative camp that gives LGBTQ youth a rare space to just exist, breathe, and be fully themselves. He also offers a direct call to adults everywhere: listen to your kids. Actually listen.

In this episode:

• The current landscape for trans youth in Wisconsin and what survival looks like right now
• The moral weight of accepting grants from institutions that have abandoned the community
• What consent culture is, why it matters, and why it needs to start young
• G-Safe's Celebration of Leadership (COL) — May 30th at the Monona Terrace — and why Angela, a self-proclaimed gala-hater, loves this one
• The Leadership Training Institute: what happens when you give LGBTQ youth a space described as "paradise"
• What gives Tyrone hope — and why his team of 10 serving 200+ GSAs across Wisconsin is one of the most powerful things he knows

#BlackOxygenPodcast #BlackPodcasts #Wisconsin #BlackInWisconsin #MadisonWisconsin #LGBTQ+Youth #GSafe

Marcus Allen of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Madison, Wisconsin sits down with Angela for a wide-ranging conversation about faith, service, combat, and community. What unfolds is a portrait of a man shaped by rejection, forged in war, and called to build something lasting.
Marcus traces his journey from Clarksdale, Mississippi through Milwaukee's Great Migration chapter, three combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a divine detour that landed him in Madison in 2016. Now celebrating 10 years at Mount Zion — which itself turns 115 this year — he talks candidly about what it takes to lead a congregation that refuses to be just a church.
They get into the real: PTSD and the military's broken reintegration systems. The Black church's complicated relationship with mental health. The hypocrisy of using Christianity to justify policy that abandons the least of these. The fundraising gauntlet facing faith-based nonprofits. And the sermon Marcus preached just the day before — about Jephthah, the son rejected by his own father — and why it hit so close to home.
Mount Zion runs a free drop-in behavioral health clinic (licensed therapist, crisis stabilizer, substance abuse counselor — no appointment needed), after-school programs, foster care aging-out support, juvenile detention programming, a food pantry, older adult transportation, and is now eyeing housing. They serve 300 unduplicated individuals a year across 15–18 Dane County zip codes. Eighty percent of the people they serve have no church connection.

Shalicia Johnson is a Madison-born photographer and the owner of ArrowStar Photography, where she specializes in community photography, business portraits, and family portraiture. Before picking up a professional camera, she spent 28 years in early childhood education, primarily with infants and toddlers in a continuity of care model. That work, and the deep observational practice it required, shapes everything about how she photographs people today. In this episode, Angela and Shalicia cover a wide range of topics including:

Growing up in Madison and the forces that nearly redirected her path;
What 28 years with babies teaches you about the world; Feeling a photograph versus seeing one; Community photography as documentation and history-keeping and much more.

Connect with Shalicia: ArrowStar Photography is on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, and Google.

#BlackOxygenPodcast #BlackPodcasts #Wisconsin #BlackInWisconsin #BlackPhotographers #ArrowStarPhotography #BlackPodcasters #MadisonWisconsin #WisconsinPhotographer

Angela welcomes back the very first Black Oxygen guest, Opal Tomashevska — a Madison native, credit union leader, poet, and newly elected board president of the Lussier Community Education Center — for a rich conversation on community care as resistance. Rooted in Opal's story of growing up in Wexford Ridge and coming of age through community institutions, they explore how the cooperative model of credit unions, Black professional affinity spaces, and tight-knit circles of accountability have sustained Black women through systems that were never designed with them in mind.

The conversation takes a deeper turn as Angela and Opal examine what it truly means to belong — not just to be welcomed — and the quiet cost of spending years hustling for worthiness in corporate spaces. Against the backdrop of an alarming and underreported wave of Black women's displacement from the workforce, they reflect on codependency, self-abandonment, and what it looks like to finally stop making yourself smaller to stay safe. Opal's closing vision: a Black Women's Renaissance is already underway — and it is being built on belonging to oneself first.

Key Themes Community care as resistance · Welcoming vs. belonging · The cooperative finance model and credit unions · Black professional affinity spaces and ERGs · Hustling for worthiness · Self-abandonment and reclaiming agency · Black women and workforce displacement · Modeling self-care for our children · Intergenerational community impact · The Black Women's Renaissance

#BlackOxygenPodcast #BlackPodcasts #Wisconsin #BlackInWisconsin #UpperMidwest #Diversity #Inclusion #Belonging

What if the story you've been afraid to tell is the exact story someone else needs to hear?
New episode of Black Oxygen is live — and this conversation with Danielle Hairston-Green hit different.
Danielle is a Moth Story Slam winner, host, storyteller, and director at UW-Madison Extension. She came to Wisconsin from Philadelphia by way of Texas. Eight years later, she's still here — and she has things to say.

We talked about community care, shame, healing, and what it means to stop being the subject of someone else's narrative and become the author of your own.

Her mentor told her: tell your stories from your scars, not your wounds.
This one will stay with you.

#BlackOxygen #BlackOxygenPodcasts #Storytelling #CommunityCare #BlackInWisconsin #TheMothMadison

Embracing Arms - https://www.embracingarms.com/our-team

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hairstongreen/