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In this archival return to the early formation of Global I Am, we revisit a pivotal conversation recorded in 2020 — a year that fundamentally reoriented global consciousness.

Host Tori L. Reid convenes voices from what was then known as the Global International African Arts Movement, reflecting on the cultural, political, and spiritual convergence that followed the murder of George Floyd, the enduring moral courage of Congressman John Lewis, and a worldwide reckoning with race, justice, and human dignity. As Lewis urged, this was a moment for “good trouble” — not merely protest, but principled disruption in service of a more expansive democracy.

Moving fluidly across borders and ideas, the conversation considers the emergence of the digital nomad as a defining figure of a new generation — globally mobile, culturally literate, technologically fluent, and increasingly unbound by geography. This posture reflected a reality long understood within the African diaspora: that Black identity, African identity, and cultural influence have always operated on a global plane.

Tori is joined in dialogue with the author of Dispatches from the Vanguard, published by London’s Repeater Books — a work now regarded as both timely and quietly prophetic in capturing the emotional, cultural, and political temperature of the era. Some observers drew parallels between COVID-19 and the influenza pandemic of the early twentieth century. Yet the deeper inquiry explored here is civilizational: if the Harlem Renaissance gave rise to the Black Arts Movement, and later Hip Hop, what new renaissance was being gestated in 2020?

This episode traces the energetic roots of Global I Am — not merely as a platform, but as an emerging intellectual and cultural movement grounded in Pan-African consciousness and the enduring human impulse to create meaning in moments of rupture. The discussion touches on living life as art, building global movements, ancestral presence and healing — including reflections on Patrick Howell’s father, Dr. Bing P. Howell — and the responsibility inherent in cultural stewardship.

What ultimately emerges is a portrait of an idea before it fully declared itself: Global I Am — an understanding that culture, capital, entrepreneurship, spirit, and creativity are inseparable, and that the African diaspora has long stood at the generative center of world culture.

Both time capsule and foundation stone, this archival conversation reminds us where the signal first gathered strength — why it mattered then, and why its resonance continues to expand now.