T.R. Williams, Wisconsin Women’s Network Policy Institute lead facilitator, Senior Director of Development at United Way, business owner, and newly initiated member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated — returns to Black Oxygen for an in-depth conversation about the importance of community.

TR traces her family’s Great Migration story from Mississippi to Milwaukee, and her own winding path from New York City to Madison, where she’s been longer than she planned. She and Angela reflect on the particular texture of Black life in Madison — the hidden neighborhoods, east side vs west side life, and the community you have to know to find.

TR offers a sharp, grounded critique of meritocracy — how it sells Black people on individualism and severs us from the very thing that has kept us alive: community care. She talks about what the 2024 election clarified for her, why she chose to stay engaged rather than divest, and what radical rest actually looks like as a political act.

In this episode: Community care as resistance, the myth of meritocracy, epigenetics and survival, the Divine Nine in Madison, self-care beyond the spa day, Audre Lorde’s radical self-preservation, and how to start building community without going 0 to 100.