RUNNING TOWARD FREEDOM with Walter Riley

RUNNING TOWARD FREEDOM with Walter Riley

June 18, 2026 · 49 min

About this episode

Walter Riley discusses movement-building and his experiences as a civil rights attorney and activist.

Fugitives are on the run— not free yet, they are running and running hard…running toward freedom. Refugees have escaped war or catastrophic climate collapse or extreme social disintegration, and forced to flee their homes, compelled to confront a fresh landscape, they invent new ways of living, learning, loving, and being— on the run . Walter Riley is a long-distance runner—he’s been in the mix and on the move for eight decades. A refugee from the Jim Crow South where as a teenager he was a renowned organizer and activist, and at 19 moderated a conversation with Malcolm X in Durham, NC, Walter Riley is a civil rights attorney in Oakland, California, winner of the National Lawyers Guild’s Champion of Justice Award, and a founder of Haiti Emergency Relief (visit Episode #38 where Walter is in conversation about Haiti with our Beloved late comrade Malik Alim). Walter Riley is a fugitive from our soul-crushing racial capitalist system, and a powerful revolutionary thinker and strategist. His son Boots Riley says that his dad teaches us that “we must participate, we must engage, we must seek to change the world.” In motion and in action we will develop our thinking and figure out with…

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