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Indy 20th Anniv. Videos

In celebration of our 20th year of publishing, we took on the endeavor of recording Indy memories from some of the people who have been instrumental in the foundation and up-keeping of what The Indypendent means to the people directly involved in making the paper happen, to our readers and to the City of New York. We hope you enjoy these conversations as much as we did!

To read our 20th anniversary issue, click here.

Reverend Billy is an activist and political shouter, a post-religious preacher
of the streets and bank lobbies. He’s been in New York forever with the activist performance group the Church of Stop Shopping. He has been involved with The Indypendent for the past fifteen years. Since 2017, the Reverend has written an advice column for The Indypendent, “Reverend Billy’s Revelations.”

Kazembe Balagun was a regular contributor to The Indypendent‘s culture section from 2002-2007. From 2007 to 2013, he was the Education/Outreach Coordinator at the Brecht Forum. Since 2013 he has been the Project Manager at the Rosa Luxuemburg Stiftung’s New York office. His works covers ground from the essay, “We Be Reading Marx Where We From: Socialism and the Black Freedom Struggle” to a book review of Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA.

Kiara Thomas interned with The Indypendent in the summer of 2020. During her internship, she covered the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests that inundated the streets of New York City on a daily basis. Thomas is a journalism student at SUNY Stony Brook. Her writing and studies are oriented around issues of social justice.

Theodore Hamm is the founding editor of the New York City-based literary and culture journal, The Brooklyn Rail. Hamm currently serves as the director of the Journalism and New Media Studies program at St. Joseph’s College, in Brooklyn. He has been writing in-depth investigative pieces that cover public officials and electoral politics for The Indypendent since 2018. He recently published his book Bernie’s Brooklyn: How Growing Up in the New Deal City Shaped Bernie Sanders’ Politics.