Insisting on Our Humanity with Hank Willis Thomas and Congresswoman Cori Bush

In this episode, artist Hank Willis Thomas holds space for Congresswoman Cori Bush to share vulnerability around the intense battles that have shaped her public career: the Ferguson uprising, personal traumas, the road to Congress, and the violent insurrection she confronted in her first weeks in office. Thomas shapes an empathetic conversation, taking a moment to recognize Bush and show an appreciation of Black women throughout history. Their conversation asks us to consider how we can care for front-line activists, bring joy to the center, and insist on our humanity.


Congresswoman Cori Bush is a registered nurse, community activist, organizer, single mother, and ordained pastor for the people of St. Louis. Congresswoman Bush is serving her first term as the representative of Missouri’s 1st Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. She is the first Black woman and first nurse to represent Missouri; the first woman to represent Missouri’s 1st Congressional District; and the first activist from the movement fighting for Black lives elected to the United States Congress.


Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males, In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth), Writing on the Wall, and the artist-run initiative for art and civic engagement For Freedoms. Thomas is a recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2018), Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2018), Art for Justice Grant (2018), AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize (2017), Soros Equality Fellowship (2017), and is a former member of the New York City Public Design Commission.


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As a major component of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis's exhibition Stories of Resistance, Radio Resistance assembles the voices of intersecting local and global agents of change. Artists featured in the exhibition are paired with figures from the past, present, and future of St. Louis, coming together to transmit messages of dissent. Eleven episodes will be released over the course of the exhibition, amplifying shared struggles, collective dreams, and models of individual and group action. Using a historically rebellious medium, Radio Resistance broadcasts social narratives of defiance and hope.


Selections of Radio Resistance will be broadcast on St. Louis on the Air, the noontime talk program hosted by Sarah Fenske on St. Louis Public Radio. Full episodes will be released biweekly in a listening station at CAM, and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. A publication celebrating Stories of Resistance, featuring episode highlights, will be released later this year.