Shalicia Johnson: You're a part of something bigger

What's coming from Black Oxygen

A quick update from Black Oxygen host Angela Russell about what's coming up next on Black Oxygen.

Tyrone Creech: Chosen Family, Consent Culture, and the Fight for LGBTQ Youth in Wisconsin

In this episode of Black Oxygen, Angela sits down with Tyrone Creech, Executive Director of GSafe Wisconsin for a wide-ranging, deeply honest conversation about what it means to serve LGBTQ+ youth in this political moment. Tyrone shares the realities on the ground: the stripping of trans healthcare, the collapse of corporate and philanthropic support, the impossible moral calculus nonprofits face when funding comes with compromises, and the extraordinary courage of young people who are doing activism when they should just be kids. But this episode isn't just about what's being taken away. Tyrone talks about what's holding communities together — chosen family, consent culture, the joy and power of GSafe's Celebration of Leadership (now in its 30th year!), and the Leadership Training Institute (LTI), a transformative camp that gives LGBTQ youth a rare space to just exist, breathe, and be fully themselves. He also offers a direct call to adults everywhere: listen to your kids. Actually listen. In this episode: * The current landscape for trans youth in Wisconsin and what survival looks like right now * The moral weight of accepting grants from institutions that have abandoned the community * What consent culture is, why it matters, and why it needs to start young * G-Safe's Celebration of Leadership (COL) — May 30th at the Monona Terrace — and why Angela, a self-proclaimed gala-hater, loves this one * The Leadership Training Institute: what happens when you give LGBTQ youth a space described as "paradise" * What gives Tyrone hope — and why his team of 10 serving 200+ GSAs across Wisconsin is one of the most powerful things he knows #BlackOxygenPodcast #BlackPodcasts #Wisconsin #BlackInWisconsin #MadisonWisconsin #LGBTQ+Youth #GSafe

Pastor Marcus Allen: Recovery from Rejection

Marcus Allen of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Madison, Wisconsin sits down with Angela for a wide-ranging conversation about faith, service, combat, and community. What unfolds is a portrait of a man shaped by rejection, forged in war, and called to build something lasting. Marcus traces his journey from Clarksdale, Mississippi through Milwaukee's Great Migration chapter, three combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a divine detour that landed him in Madison in 2016. Now celebrating 10 years at Mount Zion — which itself turns 115 this year — he talks candidly about what it takes to lead a congregation that refuses to be just a church. They get into the real: PTSD and the military's broken reintegration systems. The Black church's complicated relationship with mental health. The hypocrisy of using Christianity to justify policy that abandons the least of these. The fundraising gauntlet facing faith-based nonprofits. And the sermon Marcus preached just the day before — about Jephthah, the son rejected by his own father — and why it hit so close to home. Mount Zion runs a free drop-in behavioral health clinic (licensed therapist, crisis stabilizer, substance abuse counselor — no appointment needed), after-school programs, foster care aging-out support, juvenile detention programming, a food pantry, older adult transportation, and is now eyeing housing. They serve 300 unduplicated individuals a year across 15–18 Dane County zip codes. Eighty percent of the people they serve have no church connection.

Shalicia Johnson: You're a part of something bigger

Shalicia Johnson is a Madison-born photographer and the owner of ArrowStar Photography, where she specializes in community photography, business portraits, and family portraiture. Before picking up a professional camera, she spent 28 years in early childhood education, primarily with infants and toddlers in a continuity of care model. That work, and the deep observational practice it required, shapes everything about how she photographs people today. In this episode, Angela and Shalicia cover a wide range of topics including: Growing up in Madison and the forces that nearly redirected her path; What 28 years with babies teaches you about the world; Feeling a photograph versus seeing one; Community photography as documentation and history-keeping and much more. Connect with Shalicia: ArrowStar Photography is on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, and Google. #BlackOxygenPodcast #BlackPodcasts #Wisconsin #BlackInWisconsin #BlackPhotographers #ArrowStarPhotography #BlackPodcasters #MadisonWisconsin #WisconsinPhotographer

Opal Tomashevska: Welcoming vs Belonging

Angela welcomes back the very first Black Oxygen guest, Opal Tomashevska — a Madison native, credit union leader, poet, and newly elected board president of the Lussier Community Education Center — for a rich conversation on community care as resistance. Rooted in Opal's story of growing up in Wexford Ridge and coming of age through community institutions, they explore how the cooperative model of credit unions, Black professional affinity spaces, and tight-knit circles of accountability have sustained Black women through systems that were never designed with them in mind. The conversation takes a deeper turn as Angela and Opal examine what it truly means to belong — not just to be welcomed — and the quiet cost of spending years hustling for worthiness in corporate spaces. Against the backdrop of an alarming and underreported wave of Black women's displacement from the workforce, they reflect on codependency, self-abandonment, and what it looks like to finally stop making yourself smaller to stay safe. Opal's closing vision: a Black Women's Renaissance is already underway — and it is being built on belonging to oneself first. Key Themes Community care as resistance · Welcoming vs. belonging · The cooperative finance model and credit unions · Black professional affinity spaces and ERGs · Hustling for worthiness · Self-abandonment and reclaiming agency · Black women and workforce displacement · Modeling self-care for our children · Intergenerational community impact · The Black Women's Renaissance #BlackOxygenPodcast #BlackPodcasts #Wisconsin #BlackInWisconsin #UpperMidwest #Diversity #Inclusion #Belonging