How to Talk to People Who Disagree With You | Professor Dr. Melina Abdullah

<p><strong>Dr. Melina Abdullah</strong> grew up in Oakland, where her mother&#39;s front porch doubled as a classroom for the neighborhood. She&#39;s been organizing ever since, and she teaches, writes a weekly column, hosts a radio show and has spent two decades studying how people actually lead.</p><p><br></p><p>She sits down with Kelly Cheeseman and Pia Arthur on the difference between leaderless and leader-full, why she quotes Ella Baker&#39;s line that strong people don&#39;t need strong leaders, and what she calls womanist leadership, which she wrote her dissertation on.</p><p><br></p><p>Then the conversation goes somewhere else. What AI can&#39;t do, why she thinks spirit, love and art are the things that make us human, why she stopped being quiet about the voice that guides her work, and what she learned from her mother about talking to your kids for three hours at a time.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>In this episode:</strong></p><p>• Group-centered leadership instead of leader-centered groups, and where the idea comes from</p><p>• Alice Walker&#39;s purple and lavender line, and why one image does more than a paragraph</p><p>• Why she asks what her intention is before she agrees to speak to a hostile room</p><p>• The oppositional student who emailed her four years after graduating</p><p>• What she does when the work gets heavy, including the dominoes in her bag</p><p>• How a story travels now, and why independent media and social changed who gets covered</p><p>• Bullhorn, microphone or keyboard, and which one she&#39;d pick</p><p><br></p><p>New episodes of Well Said. Watch on YouTube, listen wherever you get your podcasts.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Chapter Timestamps</strong></p><p>00:00 Intro</p><p>00:54 The front porch classroom in East Oakland</p><p>02:34 Gary, Indiana and who gets news coverage</p><p>05:09 Ella Baker and group-centered leadership</p><p>06:17 Womanist leadership</p><p>08:27 Running for vice president with Dr. Cornel West</p><p>10:05 What the campaign showed her about the two-party system</p><p>12:48 What Dolly Parton meant to her</p><p>16:18 What AI can&#39;t do</p><p>18:16 Why she stopped hiding the voice that guides her</p><p>23:34 Staying grounded on planes and in airports</p><p>27:04 Parenting by talking to your kids</p><p>31:29 Love at the center of the work</p><p>37:23 The three things everyone can give</p><p>40:08 Rapid fire and speaking to a hostile room</p><p>44:12 Bullhorn, microphone or keyboard</p>