Through the Portal is a podcast from the Social Justice Portal Project, a national collaborative think tank hosted by the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois Chicago. Each month, grassroots activists and radical scholars will give voice to community struggles, national strategies and sustainable alternatives for the future. The guest speakers, who are also Portal Project participants, explore what it means to walk through the portal of the current moment by centering racial and social justice issues. This episode's guest, Kennedy Bartley, is a Chicago-based organizer and thinker who until recently served as the Legislative Director of United Working Families Chicago and has been a central force behind the Defund CPD campaign. Kennedy breaks down the radical potential of contesting the electoral space, the value of participatory democracy, and how contested coalition with elected officials can be a pathway to tangible, liberatory change. SHOW NOTES UWF Chicago - https://www.unitedworkingfamilies.org/ Defund CPD - https://linktr.ee/defundcpd Learn more about the Portal Project: http://sjiportalproject.com/