Maura James McNamara

Alabama is farming out incarcerated people to work at hundreds of companies, including McDonald’s & Wendy’s. The state takes 40% of wages and often denies parole to keep people as cheap labor. Getting written up can lead to solitary confinement. This is modern day slavery. ----- More Perfect Union’s mission is to build power for working people. Here’s what that means: We report on the real struggles and challenges of the working class from a working-class perspective, and we attempt to connect those problems to potential solutions. We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power, and we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems. We're an independent, nonprofit newsroom. To support our work: - Help fund our reporting: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mpu-splash - Substack: https://substack.perfectunion.us/ - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@moreperfectunion - Twitter: https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MorePerfectUS - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perfectunion/ - Threads: https://www.threads.net/@perfectunion - Website: https://www.perfectunion.us

This video was filmed during a recording of the Unbroken Chain Podcast in Philadelphia in December, 2019. You can listen to a full conversation on the podcast. Shawn Thornton is a visionary artist based in Philadelphia, PA. His paintings are highly detailed and symbolic, often taking him years to complete. He had a tumor in his pineal gland that went undiagnosed for six years and during that time began to experience unusual states of consciousness, including invasive voices and episodes of psychosis, energies which can be seen reflected in his visual language. In this conversation, he describes the experience of losing his mind, navigating western medicine and antipsychotic drugs, and finally finding relief in painting and exercise. He hypothesizes on the damage he did to himself as a young artist and shares what it is like to navigate life now with lasting cognitive repercussions and a new awareness and appreciation of his mental health. Find Shawn’s incredible art online at ShawnThorntonPainting.com and on IG @shawn_thornton_paintings. Video by Maura McNamara The Unbroken Chain podcast is also available everywhere podcasts are found. Subscribe on youtube: https://bit.ly/2Tt5nYf Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/2TXabdF Hosted by Maura James McNamara www.maurajames.com [Wind Surf Ballad” - Dominique Guiot]

Salaam Green is the founder and director of the Literary Healing Arts Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama. After writing helped her recover her sense of self during the lowest point in her life, she has devoted her life to helping others use their voice and tell their stories as a healing tool as well. In this uplifting conversation, we talk about worthiness, resilience, rewiring trauma triggers, letting joy drive our lives, and following the blueprint for social change left for us by indigenous and enslaved ancestors. This is a beautiful exploration of our inherent ability to heal ourselves with the power of our imagination. You can find Salaam at literaryhealingartsdotcom.wordpress.com. The Unbroken Chain podcast is also available everywhere podcasts are found. Subscribe on youtube: https://bit.ly/2Tt5nYf Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/2TXabdF Hosted by Maura James McNamara www.maurajames.com [“A Place” - Nils Frahm]

Tepahteh Hutze, aka Oso, is a medicine man from a lineage of curanderos carrying the wisdom of the Nahuatlakas and the Lakota. Life is a ceremony, he says, and everything we do is prayer. He holds regular sweat lodge and medicine ceremonies for his community, and offers the opportunity for all he meets to return to their earth-based roots and claim the medicine within that is our birthright as humans. In this conversation, I share some of my recent experiences in ceremony with him, and he talks about our place in creation, the disconnection that has created abusive relationships with our environment, and how we can cleanse ourselves naturally with the four elements and return to the understanding that we own nothing in this life. “Treat people with your heart, and you’ll never be wrong.” Learn more about Oso’s offerings at www.tepahtehhutze.com and reach out to him on instagram @tepahtehhutze. Video by Daniel Carl Fox & Maura McNamara The Unbroken Chain podcast is available on all podcasting platforms. Subscribe on youtube: https://bit.ly/2Tt5nYf Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/2TXabdF Hosted by Maura James McNamara https://www.maurajames.com

Sarah Knapp is a musician, healer, and traveler who moved home to San Diego three years ago to care for her father who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. In caring for him and others at the end of their life, she uses music therapy and an innate respect for elders to bring exquisite calm and peace. “No matter how disoriented he is, music always works. When I put on his favorite songs, he relaxes. He feels safe; he becomes present.” Sarah founded the San Diego chapter of the Resistance Revival Chorus and the community gathering place One House Community Center. She holds regular community events including Death Cafe and trauma informed yoga. In this conversation we talk about her dad’s return to his divine boyhood, the exquisite beauty of the dying process, grief ceremonies, the medicine of Gaia’s playground, and what she’s learned about how to live. Find her beautiful offerings at sarahknappmusic.com, and on instagram @everythingtrueisfree. You can watch a short documentary about her and her dad called “The Great Forgetting” at https://vimeo.com/309242521. Video by Daniel Carl Fox The Unbroken Chain podcast is available on all podcasting platforms. Subscribe on youtube: https://bit.ly/2Tt5nYf Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/2TXabdF Hosted by Maura James McNamara https://www.maurajames.com

MullyMan is a motivator, infinite student of life, and one of Baltimore’s most recognized hip hop artists, bringing truth and purpose to a time of confusion and emptiness. After first meeting during a Lyft ride, we hung at his place in Atlanta to go deep on waking up to our truth and de-conditioning from the bullshit narratives perpetrated by institutionalized healthcare, education, policing, and propaganda. He talks about the controlled environment of the hood where he grew up in Baltimore and the freedom he found in hip hop, which has become part of the solution for healing on an international level. Along the way he touches on the myth of Christopher Columbus, the history of Black Wall Street, defying ignorance, cultural appropriation, reparations, the dangerous comforts of the “infinite argument,” and so much more. Find him on IG @iammullyman or bookmullyman@gmail.com. Video by Daniel Carl Fox The Unbroken Chain podcast is also available on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and Soundcloud. Subscribe on youtube: https://bit.ly/2Tt5nYf Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/2TXabdF Hosted by Maura James McNamara www.maurajames.com

Jim White is a master storyteller of many mediums: critically acclaimed solo artist of six albums, record producer, visual artist, and writer of award-winning fiction. He is also the narrator and defacto tour guide of the award winning BBC documentary, “Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus” (2003), a road movie set in the rural South, which the LA Times described as “decidedly strange, delightfully demented.” Prior to becoming a musician, Jim led an "aimless, diverse life," working countless menial labor jobs: dishwasher, landscaper, lifeguard, cook, surfboard laminator, road builder, culminating with 13 long years driving a taxi cab in New York City. He is currently completing a memoir based on a series of uncanny coincidences that befell him during his days driving that taxi. Jim was also a pro surfer, served as literary commentator for the National Endowment of the Arts, and was a European fashion model. Samuel Beckett once played a practical joke on him. In this conversation, recorded at his home in Athens, Georgia, we cover a lot of territory, from his childhood in the “Christ-haunted south,” to the undoing of harmful spiritual programming, and the universal value of his self-therapy through music. You can enter Jim’s world at www.JimWhite.net and wherever music is found. Video by Daniel Carl Fox The Unbroken Chain podcast is available on all podcasting platforms. Subscribe on youtube: https://bit.ly/2Tt5nYf Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/2TXabdF Hosted by Maura James McNamara https://www.maurajames.com

Arielle Crawford (Ep 3!) returns to the podcast, this time to talk sustainability, consumerism, and revolution in the streets. Arielle is the founder of ARIELLE, a conscious womenswear collective focused on sustainable textiles, domestic manufacturing, and fair-trade practices. She runs it single-handedly from design and sourcing to production and sales. She also created “Plastic Free in NYC: a Guide to Living Less Trashy,” which is available digitally for free. In this conversation, Arielle shares the impact of her first year as a plastic-free citizen on her kitchen, bathroom, and closet, and shares insights about how she has reconsidered her legacy and recalibrated her joy. Find her at shop-arielle.com and on instagram @shop_arielle. Video by Daniel Carl Fox The Unbroken Chain podcast is also available on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and Soundcloud. Subscribe on youtube: https://bit.ly/2Tt5nYf Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/2TXabdF Hosted by Maura James McNamara www.maurajames.com [“Nostalgia” - Piero Umiliani]

Tom Patterson has been curating and writing about contemporary folk, visionary, and outsider art for more than 30 years. He is known for his biographies of Georgia visionaries Howard Finster and Eddie Owens Martin, aka St. EOM, as well as “Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum” (2001) and countless articles in Aperture, BOMB, Folk Art, Public Art Review and Raw Vision, among many others. Here we explore the relationship between artist and source, transformative experiences of expanded consciousness, rewiring social conditioning, trapping spirits, synchrotism, and the singular obsession that grips some of us to pull down experiences from visionary planes of consciousness into visual language. You can email him at Tom41052@aol.com and find many of his articles online. Video by Daniel Carl Fox The Unbroken Chain podcast is also available on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and Soundcloud. Subscribe on youtube: https://bit.ly/2Tt5nYf Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/2TXabdF Hosted by Maura James McNamara www.maurajames.com [Music by The Dead Tongues]