In this interview we talk to C. Crowle about the recently republished and expanded edition of Attack International’s text The Spirit of Freedom: Anticolonial War & Uneasy Peace in Ireland. The new edition includes the original unabridged 1989 text by Attack International and some great supplementary material compiled by Crowle.

The book is a concise and powerful text on the national liberation struggle in Ireland from the perspective of radicals in the UK. It’s a text that challenges us to think critically about how people in an imperial center practice solidarity with the masses under the yoke of colonialism.

We discuss different facets of the Irish context, including the revitalization of the armed movement in Ireland in the 1960’s, the prisoner hunger strikes, and some of the different strands of Irish Nationalism and Ulster Unionism. We also talk about Attack International’s critical analysis of the shortcomings, and problems with the anti-imperialist solidarity movement in Great Britain during the period of Irish armed struggle.

This episode was recorded back on November 7th 2023 so while we discuss western liberalism, media and the western left with regards to Palestine, many of the questions we raised but didn’t fully flesh out are topics we’ve covered more deeply since then.

Having said that, one cannot help but ponder the resonances between the failures of the British left in supporting Irish liberation to the failures of the western left to materially impact the genocide on Palestinians & to support the Palestinian liberation struggle.

We close by talking about the very real prospects for a United Ireland, what that might mean, and some of Crowle assessments of Irish Republicanism today.

Kersplebedeb published this book, and their online bookstore is leftwingbooks.net. They are based in Canada, and are having a sale of 25% off during the Canada Post strike, because shipments will be delayed (solidarity to the striking postal workers). I highly encourage people to check out their catalogue, and in addition to The Spirit of Freedom, I will include some books I love from them in the show description. 

We have a current discount for new patrons, you can get 20% off your first month if you sign up for a monthly membership, or off your first year if you sign up for a yearly membership by using the code A7E32 when you sign up on patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. You also can now give a membership to our patreon as a gift if you know someone who would enjoy that this holiday season. We’ll include a link for that in the show description as well 

Our George Jackson Blood In My Eye study group will be available for patrons who support the show at any level. We are going to meet to discuss the book weekly on Thursday nights at 7:30 PM Eastern Time starting December 12th. Comrades from the George Jackson Organizing School will also join us for these discussions. 

Links:

The Spirit of Freedom: Anticolonial War & Uneasy Peace in Ireland

Leftwingbooks.net

Give the gift of a patreon subscription

Use promo code A7E32 to get 20% off the first month (if you sign up for a monthly subscription) or year (if you sign up for yearly) at https://www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Other conversations we've had on Ireland:

Ireland, Colonialism and the Unfinished Revolution with Robbie McVeigh and Bill Rolston (Jared also references this book multiple times in the conversation)

The Lost & Early Writings of James Connolly 1889-1898 with Conor McCabe

Irish Women's Prison Writing: Mother Ireland's Rebels, 1960's-2010's with Red Washburn

Books Casey references: 

Three Way Fight Book 

Confronting Fascism - Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement -

A few book recommendations from Leftwingbooks/Kersplebedeb (there are many more, but these are just a few we love):

On Necrocapitalism

Riding the Wave - Torkil Lauesen

A Soldier's Story - Kuwasi Balagoon

Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead

Stand Up, Struggle Forward - Sanyika Shakur

Night Vision - Butch Lee & Red Rover

Conversations we've held on Palestine that flesh out some of the points raised:

The Question of Hamas and the Left by Abdaljawad Omar

Western Theory and the Demonization of the Palestinian Resistance with Max Ajl

Palestine & The Problem of Narrative with The Good Shepherd Collective

Time for Autonomous Action for Palestine with Within Our Lifetime

In this episode we interview Mohammed Khatib and Thomas Hofland from the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. 

This is our third interview with members of Samidoun since October 7th 2023, and we will link the others in the show description. 

Mohammed Khatib is a Palestinian refugee from Ain el-Helweh camp in Lebanon. He lives in Belgium and is the European coordinator for Samidoun.

Thomas Hofland is the coordinator of Samidoun Netherlands.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network organizes solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners and their struggle for freedom and liberation. The network was founded in 2011 and since then expanded to more than a dozen countries. 

As Samidoun write, “On October 15, the United States and Canada sanctioned Samidoun in an attempt to repress political organizing in support of the Palestinian people’s struggle against genocide, colonialism and occupation, and the more than 10.000 Palestinian political prisoners that are being tortured and killed by the Zionist entity. In the US, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced the sanctions, while the Canadian government has listed Samidoun as a “terrorist entity” under its criminal code.” (See full release here)

November 14th Charlotte Kates - the international coordinator for Samidoun who we’ve previously interviewed on two occasions - had her house raided by Vancouver Police in British Columbia. While there is no official statement on this matter yet by Samidoun, we just want to say that we denounce this escalating repression on the Palestinian movement, and send our solidarity to Charlotte and her family, and to Samidoun and to all people who have been organizing on behalf of the Palestinian people who are facing repression by these imperialist genocide supporting states. 

Nothing reveals the nature of the imperialist countries we live in, in the so-called global north, like the fact that as states like the US, Canada and Western European countries provide billions of dollars in arms to the genocidal zionist garrison that calls itself Israel that they also have to suppress civil society organizations like Samidoun who advocate for the political prisoners held by that same genocide enacting garrison.

In this interview we get into how Samidoun understands these repressive actions and how we collectively can and must fight back as the state’s efforts to quell support for Palestinians amid the attempts by western governments to complete their genocidal siege and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people in Gaza.

As the interview mentions, Samidoun is part of the Masar Badil – The Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement. The Masar, founded in 2021, aims to organize and support the Palestinian diaspora as a crucial force of the national liberation struggle. 

And as the interview mentions while these restrictions may prevent folks in some places from being able to materially support Samidoun as an organization, what you can do is continue to “Support the steadfastness of Palestinian people in Gaza by all means” and “Practice your right to resist.”

Previous Interviews with Samidoun:

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network with Charlotte Kates & Mohammed Khatib

Palestinian Prisoners, Genocide, and Repression of Pro-Palestinian Organizations with Charlotte Kates

 

Other Links:

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

Masar Badil– The Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement

"We Keep Resisting" - US & Canada Sanction Samidoun

In this episode we discuss the role of Black liberalism in the US political landscape, particularly its relationship with the Democratic Party. And how Black liberalism often neglects the interests of the black working poor in service of the ruling class. We contemplate the influence of social media on political discourse and the Black elite’s capturing and commodification of Black cultural expressions in service of empire at the expense of the global working-poor. We touch on Black apathy towards internationalism and passive or active support for imperialism and how this behavior of betraying the interests of the oppressed is learned domestically before being applied internationally. We touch on the petit-bourgeois character of electoral politics and how the poor are largely disappeared in mainstream political discussions and processes. 

Momodou Taal is a PhD student in the Africana department at Cornell university. He is also the host of The Malcolm Effect podcast.

Too Black is a poet, member of Black Alliance For Peace, host of The Black Myths Podcast which can be found on Black Liberation Media, he’s also the author of Laundering Black Rage, and one of the organizers of the Campaign to Free the Pendleton 2.

If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month. We bring you these conversations totally independently with no corporate, state, or grant funding. You can do that at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism 

Too Black's recent essay: Unburdened by Palestine: Shedding Black liberalism for anti-imperialism    Momodou Taal's recent essay: Dear Black liberals: Palestine TikTok activists aren't the enemy    There is also a video version of this episode which was released by Black Liberation Media.

This is part one of a two part conversation with Joshua Myers on his latest book Of Black Study. 

In Of Black Study Joshua Myers examines the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Jacob Carruthers and Cedric Robinson as well as June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara, and what each contributed to Black Studies approaches to knowledge production within and beyond Western structures of knowledge. 

In this part of our two conversation on this book, Professor Myers talks about the selection of the six thinkers he centers the book around, and the type of project he is engaged in with the text. We also spend about an hour talking about two of the books chapters, the one centered around the interventions of W.E.B. Du Bois and Sylvia Wynter, as well as looking at each of their relationships to Marxist thought and analytical approaches, and their relationships to science, the humanities and academic disciplinary traditions. As well as what each of them finds among the Black masses and how what they finds there influences their work.

Of Black Study is a new release from the Black Critique series on Pluto Press. This is our third conversation with Joshua Myers, both of our previous two have been discussions centered around Cedric Robinson. We have also done a number of discussions with authors and editors of the Black Critique series over the years, including discussions with Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, Bedour Alagraa, David Austin, and Michael Sawyer (links below).

We strongly recommend this book, for anyone interested in Black Study and/or the critical interventions of the thinkers the book focuses on. It is an indispensable resource. it officially comes out later this week, but you can pre-order your copy now through Pluto Press or through our comrades over at Massive Bookshop. If you pre-order from Massive, 20% of the proceeds go to fund the abolitionist organization Project NIA. We’ve received word that Pluto Press will also be donating copies of this book to all the participants in the incarcerated study group that we support in partnership with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill. So we want to send a big shout-out to Pluto Press and Joshua Myers for that as well. 

Part two - which focuses primarily on Myers’ chapters on Jacob Carruthers and Cedric Robinson - will come out in the next couple of days. 

As always if you like what we do, and want to support our ability to do it, you can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We have a goal of adding 31 patrons this month and currently we’re at 13, so we’re still working towards that goal. 

Our first interview with Joshua Myers (on Cedric Robinson)

Our second interview with Joshua Myers (on his biography of Cedric Robinson)

Greg Thomas’s interview of Sylvia Wynter from Proud Flesh 

From Cooperation to Black Operation (Transversal Texts conversation with Harney & Moten) 

Bedour Alagraa's Interview with Sylvia Wynter “What Will Be The Cure?” 

Our interviews with authors and editors of the Black Critique series 

Beyond Prisons interviews with Dr. Anthony Monteiro (first interview, second interview)

 

 

In this episode we welcome J. Moufawad-Paul back to the podcast. Previously we had him along with Alyson Escalante and Devin Zane Shaw to talk about On Necrocapitalism a collectively authored book they all worked on together along with some other authors.

For today’s episode we are focused on J. Moufawad-Paul’s latest book Politics In Command: A Taxonomy of Economism. This book seeks to understand what economism is, how it is deployed through socialist analyses, and the ways in which various categories (economy, politics, class, practice, revolution, etc) are mobilized and classified according to its imaginary. 

Today we talk about a range of topics related to this book, including what economism is, ways it manifests, and related issues like workerism, the concept of the labor aristocracy, and arguments around so-called identity politics. We also get into a little discussion around Marx’s model of Capital, what Samir Amin called “actually existing capitalism” vs “imaginary capitalism,” and Cedric Robinson’s idea of racial capitalism. And relatedly we talk about why class is not an identity, but rather as Moufawad-Paul puts it “class comes cloaked in the messiness of social relations.”

Along the way JMP debunks some conspiratorial understandings of how capitalism works and how the ruling class reproduces itself. And we get into discussion of what Moufawad-Paul argues is the role of the vanguard party as an interventionist party that helps the working class understand itself as a combative class struggling for the overthrow of capitalism, rather than just fighting for immediate material gains in order to defend against the ravages of austerity.

As we mention in the show, this book is available through Foreign Languages Press, we will include a link to that in the show notes, as well as to several of Moufawad-Paul’s other books, writings and interventions.

Happy New Year to those of you who live under a Gregorian calendar. We have a goal for January of adding 31 patrons to keep up with attrition and hopefully continue to build a little bit as well. Currently we are 23 patrons away from that goal. So it’s a great time to sign up and support the show if you don’t already. You can do that for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Politics In Command: A Taxonomy of Economism by JMP

JMP's Critique of Maoist Reason 

J. Moufawad-Paul's piece on sovereignty that we reference in the episode 

J. Moufawad-Paul’s appearances on Revolutionary Left Radio 

Some of J. Moufawad-Paul’s books from Kersplebedeb 

JMP’s blog 

This is an episode we recorded about a month and a half ago for our 5th anniversary. Due to all the other stuff we were recording at the time we just held on to this one for the year end. 

In this episode we grapple with a bunch of questions sent to us by patrons of the show. We are not experts, and this conversation, like all of ours is not without its own limitations and shortcomings. We hope that our answers will be taken not from a position of authority but as an understanding of a bit of where we are on the specific questions posed to us by our listeners, and a bit of where we’ve come from, and our desires for the future.

Since this episode was released we have crossed the one million downloads threshold we mention in the episode, which is amazing. We just want to thank everyone, who listens to the show, who shares the show on social media and most of all our patrons who make the show possible and sustainable. Because we recorded this over a month ago, a few of the references are bit dated and there are certain developments since that we would’ve referenced if we’d recorded later. China Miéville’s discussion on the Marxist understanding of the plasticity of humanity is a concept that we would’ve weaved in, if we’d had this conversation after that one. 

Also there’s a brief mention of Defend the Atlanta Forest and the Save UC Townhomes struggles in this episode. We would be remiss if we didn’t mention that Defend ATL Forest has experienced significant state repression lately, including at least half a dozen land defenders being charged with trumped up terrorism charges. We’ll include a link where you can support them in the show notes. 

Also the movement to Save the UC Townhomes is still ongoing. We’ll include links to continue to follow their work and hopefully support it as well in the show notes. 

Thanks to donations from Haymarket Books, China Miéville, and some additional donations for postage from our listeners as well as from Massive Bookshop, we were able to send 40 copies of A Spectre Haunting into our incarcerated reading group in partnership with Prisons Kill. We’ll have a new book coming in January so be on the look out for that. 

And if you want to continue to support our work as always you can do it at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Also we do have a discord now, so we ended up editing out a discussion of that, but if anyone wants a link to the discord, hit us up on patreon, twitter, or IG and we can give you a link to that. We talk about suggestions for guests or show ideas and there is a channel in the discord where people can make those, or they can contact us on social media to make suggestions as well. 

Links:

The Atlanta Solidarity Fund (For Anti-Repression/Legal support of the ATL Forest Defenders) / Defend The Atlanta Forest website

Save The UC Townhomes Website

 

 

This episode is part 2 of Josh’s conversation with Alex Charnley, Alana Lentin, and Michael Richmond. This conversation is extremely wide ranging, but focuses around topics of anti-racism, identity politics, neoliberalism, class politics, and politics of solidarity.

In this part of the conversation Alex, Alana, and Michael get a little deeper into discussions of anti-semitism, of historical fracturing and composition of social movements and class struggles, and of so-called anti-identity politics sentiment and anti-trans discourses as well. 

For full bios and introductions of the guests check out part 1. But just to remind folks this conversation centers primarily around Michael and Alex’s book Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics and Alana Lentin’s latest book Why Race Still Matters. But beyond that Alana discusses themes she’s taken up in her  writing on racism and anti-racism over the past couple of decades, and Alex and Michael bring in some important perspective from their own involvements in social movements as well. 

Please continue to support our partnership with Prisons Kill and Massive Bookshop which sends books into prisoners every month. We will include another link to that in the show notes as well.

This is our 55th episode of the year. And if you appreciate our work and find it valuable for hopefully putting your politics into action or just for your own education, we are 100% supported by our listeners who are not millionaires or billionaires, but regular workers and students and activists and organizers like you. We are able to bring you episodes every week because of the financial support of folks just like you. So if you want to join the wonderful folks who make this show possible you can become a patron for as little as $1 a month or make a yearly contribution of $10.80 at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Now here is part 2 of our conversation with Alana, Alex and Michael.

Links:

Alex Charnley tweets at @steinosteino

Michael Richmond tweets at @Sisyphusa.

The Prisons Kill Book Club

Fractured by Charnley and Richmond

Alana Lentin's books / AlanaLentin.net

In this episode Alex Charnley, Alana Lentin, and Michael Richmond all join the podcast.

Josh brought all three of these thinkers together for a discussion on anti-racism in the current conjuncture. This conversation took place across three continents and time zones that were as much as 16 hours apart. Due to its length, we’ve decided to release this episode in two parts, but because of how arbitrary the cut-off point is, we’ve also decided to release them simultaneously so folks can listen to both without having to wait for us to release part 2.

Teacher and writer, Alana Lentin is a Jewish European woman who is a settler on Gadigal-Wangal land (Sydney, Australia). She’s the author of Why Race Still Matters (Polity 2020), The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a neoliberal age with Gavan Titley (Zed, 2011) and Racism and Antiracism in Europe (Pluto, 2004). Her academic and media articles as well as videos, podcasts, and teaching materials are free to be used and available at www.alanalentin.net

Michael Richmond was a co-editor of the Occupied Times and of Base Publication. He has written for publications including OpenDemocracy, New Socialist and Protocols.

Alex Charnley was illustrator and co-editor of the Occupied Times and of Base Publication. 

They each provide broader discussions of their organizing, teaching and publishing backgrounds in the discussion. 

Michael and Alex’s book Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics was just recently released on Pluto Press. Through an appraisal of pivotal historical moments in Britain and the US, including Black feminist and anticolonial traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, the authors question the assumptions of the culture war, offering a refreshing and reasoned way to understand how historical class struggles were formed and continue to determine the possibilities for new forms of solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world.

Alana Lentin’s latest book Why Race Still Matters is a call to notice not just when and how race still matters but when, how and why it is said not to matter. Lentin argues that society is in urgent need of developing the skills of racial literacy, by jettisoning the idea that race is something and unveiling what race does as a key technology of modern rule, hidden in plain sight.

We want to thank them all for this rich discussion and definitely recommend that people pick up their books and engage with their work. 

Two final notes, please continue to support our partnership with Prisons Kill and Massive Bookshop which sends books into prisoners every month. We will include another link to that in the show notes as well.

This is our 54th episode of the year. We are able to bring you episodes every week because of the financial support of folks just like you. So if you want to join the wonderful folks who make this show possible you can become a patron for as little as $1 a month or make a yearly contribution of $10.80 at https://www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

 

Links:

Alex Charnley tweets at @steinosteino

Michael Richmond tweets at @Sisyphusa.

The Prisons Kill Book Club

Fractured by Charnley and Richmond

Alana Lentin's books / AlanaLentin.net

In this episode we interview China Miéville. 

China Miéville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City and the City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker. He has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. His non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London’s Overthrow. He is also the author of October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. He has written for various publications, and is a founding editor of the journal Salvage. He is also a former member of multiple socialist party formations and organizations.

In this conversation China joins the podcast to talk about his latest book, A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto. The book provides an introduction to The Communist Manifesto which provides readers with a guide to understanding the Manifesto and the many specters it has conjured. Through his unique and unorthodox reading, Miéville offers a spirited defense of the enduring relevance of Marx and Engels’ ideas.

The book also contains the full text of the Manifesto and multiple prefaces penned by Marx & Engels. 

You can pick the book up directly from Haymarket Books at 40% off currently. We really want to thank Haymarket and China Miéville for donating 40 copies of the book (!!) and also for making a donation to help cover the cost of postage to our incarcerated book club through our partnership with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill. We do still need to raise about $150 more dollars to cover the cost of postage to get this book inside, and we’ll include a link to contribute to that effort in the show notes. Last month we were able, along with some donations from Massive Bookshop and our patrons to provide 40 copies of Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection to those incarcerated readers.

As for the show itself, It is December, currently for the month we’ve had more nonrenewals than we have new patrons, which is not unexpected this time of year as people try to balance holiday expenses. However if you have the capacity to become a patron of the show, you can do so for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year, at patreon.com/millennialsarekilingcapitalism. We really want to thank all of the folks who support the show, or have supported it when they’ve been able to, as it is only through your support that conversations like this are possible. 

Links:

To purchase A Spectre, Haunting (currently 40% off): https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1990-a-spectre-haunting

To donate to the Prisons Kill book club (to help with postage for the donated copies): https://massivebookshop.com/products/prisonskill-book-club-donation

To check out the Salvage journal that Miéville talked about in the episode: https://salvage.zone

To support the show: patreon.com/millennialsarekilingcapitalism

[photos in the collage were taken by Guy Smallman, Callum Ford, and Martin Pope or otherwise found on Palestine Action's social media]

In this episode we interview co-founder of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori. Ammori has organized against British complicity in the colonization of Palestine and against British  support for the Israeli colonial apartheid regime in historic Palestine for years now. Palestine Action is an organization born out of that struggle. One that recognizes the need to take direct action approaches. Their core campaign, is the campaign to Shut Elbit Down (#ShutElbitDown). Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest privately-owned arms company. It’s largest single customer is the Israeli Ministry of Defense. 

In this episode Ammori shares some of her organizing history, her experience exhausting the modes of redress available through lobbying and protest, and the rationale behind Palestine Action’s targeting of Elbit Systems. It is noteworthy that while Palestine Action has targeted Elbit in the UK, that there are a number of Elbit Systems facilities in the US, and that in addition to the deplorable and brutal violence that they enact in occupied Palestine, they are also a major contractor for Border Patrol and components of the US-Mexico border wall. 

This is a great conversation about an important ongoing campaign and we hope folks will listen in for ways they can act in solidarity and to consider some of the tactical and strategic considerations Ammori talks through as well. It is noteworthy of course that the British legal system is different from the US legal system, so obviously nothing that’s discussed here should be considered legal advice. But the general point that Ammori makes about the difference between the legal and military framework that Palestinians are subjected to in Palestine versus the legal systems within the imperial core is still an important strategic consideration for movements that seek to be in solidarity with people in Palestine. 

Make sure to check out Palestine Action’s website and follow them on social media to stay current with their campaign, and their legal cases and to look for ways to support and get involved. All of which we’ll discuss further in the episode and include some links in the show notes.

As you all know, it’s the last month of 2022, we have a number of things coming this month, we set a goal of adding 31 patrons this month and we’ve got 24 left to go to hit that goal. You can do either a small monthly or yearly contribution and of course you’ll get emails with every episode that comes out, and when Josh or I publish any articles, and when the next round of our study group starts up. If you’d like to support the show, you can do so at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Palestine Action’s website (includes ways to get involved and follow along with their campaigns)

Palestine Action's Twitter

Palestine Action's Instagram

The Commoner Interview referenced in the episode

 

In this episode we interview Efemia Chela. Chela is a Zambian-Ghanian writer, literary critic, and an editor. Efemia joins us in her role as the commissioning editor at Inkani Books, which is the publishing division of The Tricontinental Pan Africa NPC, a research institute that collaborates with and is aligned with the work of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

In this conversation Efemia shares a bit about some of the current struggles in South Africa, and situates Inkani Books as a publisher within those struggles as well as within their broader African continental context as a Pan African publishing house. 

The focus of this discussion is Inkani’s latest book, Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories which brings together an extensive set of Amílcar Cabral’s interviews, official speeches and PAIGC party directives from 1962 through 1973. It features a foreword by Grant Farred and an introduction by Sónia Vaz Borges who we’ve previously hosted on the podcast. 

We engage Efemia about several of Cabral’s important theoretical interventions, and the grounding of his theory in the real movement of the Guinean and Cape Verdean people and their liberation struggles. We talk about the continued relevance of his thought today to people and movements across the African continent, and discuss studying it in group contexts. Among other things, we discuss the idea of a new humanity forged in struggle, Cabral’s thinking on culture, on patriarchy, his caution with regards to decolonization and neocolonialism, and the question of what Cabral calls organic security for radical and revolutionary movements. 

We want to deeply thank everyone who has been supporting us over these last 5 years. In just the last week we surpassed 1 million downloads around the world, almost half of those downloads have come this year. That feels like an amazing milestone. And we’re so thankful, and hope to continue to grow from here. We do want to note however that we don’t get paid anything for downloads. We don’t sell ads. And it is December, and this month we have a goal of adding 31 patrons, one per day. We’re always catching up with non-renewals this time of year as folks divert money towards holiday expenses. Which is understandable. So if you can afford to become a patron of the show, even if it’s just $1 a month or a small yearly contribution, it really helps a great deal at this time. You can do that at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Links:

Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories by Amílcar Cabral (Inkani Books)

Inkani Books website

Tricontinental South Africa

Other MAKC Episodes on Cabral & the PAIGC:

Militant Education, Liberation Struggle, Consciousness - PAIGC Education with Sónia Vaz Borges (a recent study from Sónia on the PAIGC's education programs) 

The Life of Amílcar Cabral and the Struggle of the PAIGC with António Tomás

“Culture is Sovereign” - Amílcar Cabral and African Anti-colonial Internationalism with António Tomás

Other episodes which reference Cabral historically or theoretically (there are others, but these were most handy):

"We Need To Be Active In The Working Class Struggle For Socialism Globally" - Steven Osuna on Class Suicide

"We Remember The Attempts To Be Free" - Joy James on Black August and the Captive Maternal

Becoming Kwame Ture with Amandla Thomas-Johnson

"Abolition Is Inherently Experimental" - Craig Gilmore on Fighting Prisons and Defunding Police

 

 

 

In this episode we welcome Robin DG Kelley back to the podcast.

Robin DG Kelley is the Gary B. Nash professor of American History at UCLA. He is the author of seven books, and the editor or co-editor of even more. 

For this episode, Kelley returns to the podcast to talk about the 20th Anniversary Edition of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. 

We talk to Kelley about what has been added to the new edition of the book, and discuss some of the ways that Freedom Dreams has been taken up during and in the wake of what Kelley terms “Black Spring” the protests following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others. 

Kelley also talks a bit about the context in which Freedom Dreams was written and why he’s restored a previously unreleased epilogue to the book. 

Beyond that we ask several questions about the original text itself, drawing from the great reservoir of Black radical visions that continue to animate Freedom Dreams 20 years after its release. 

Just a quick plug Robin is currently raising funds for Palestine Legal which is an independent organization dedicated to defending and advancing the civil rights and liberties of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom. We’ll include a link to that fundraiser in the show notes. 

We’ll also include a link to purchase the new 20th anniversary edition of Freedom Dreams from Massive Bookshop. Speaking of Massive our book club for incarcerated readers with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill was able to fund copies of the 25th Anniversary Edition of Scenes of Subjection to all 41 its participants, so thank you very much to all of you who supported that campaign! We will be announcing our December book soon so keep an eye out for that. 

And we also hit our goal of adding 30 patrons for the month of November. Thank you to everyone who continues to support us. If you appreciate and enjoy conversations like this, become a patron of the show. You can do it for as little as $1 per month and be a part of the amazing group of folks who make this show possible. 

Links/References:

Purchase Freedom Dreams from Massive Bookshop

Conjuncture: Against Pessimism (hosted by Jordan Camp) with Robin DG Kelley

Robin & LisaGay’s fundraiser for Palestine Legal. More on Palestine Legal

Midnight On The Clock Of The World - (our first interview with Robin DG Kelley)

In this conversation Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson return to the podcast for the second conversation on their book Rehearsals For Living (part one is here).

This conversation was recorded in late October, about a month after recording the first part. Most of these questions were conversations from the reading which we just weren’t able to ask during our first conversation due to time constraints. 

In this conversation we talk more about architects of climate catastrophe in Toronto, about fascist monsters, and we talk about cooptation and elite capture. We also discuss moments of intense spectacle and important organizing and world-making that takes place all the time outside of the light of media attention. Robyn reflects on the spread of abolitionist ideas into the mainstream and Leanne discusses prominent scholarship within settler colonial studies in the academy and the disconnect between that and indigenous forms of knowledge.

Once again, Rehearsals for Living is a really powerful read and we encourage you to pick it up from Haymarket Books or from your local bookstore.

As we release this episode, we’re just 2 patrons away from hitting our goal for the month of November, which was to add 30 patrons to make up for non-renewals and continue to grow. If you appreciate conversations like this and the other 175 episodes of this podcast, you can help sustain our work at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

In this episode we speak with Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, about her book Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs is an assistant professor of Geography and African American & Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. In addition to Prison Capital, she is the co-editor of The Jail Is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration (Verso Books 2024). Her research, writing, and teaching is grounded in over 15 years of abolitionist organizing and political education facilitation in New Orleans and beyond. 

Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. This book is the first detailed account of Louisiana's unprecedented turn to mass incarceration from 1970 to 2020.

In this discussion we talk about the dynamics that contributed to that history. It’s a fascinating conversation that gets into Louisiana’s shifting political economy, the policing of New Orleans, the importance of sheriff power in Louisiana, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and various forms of anti-carceral organizing from the streets of New Olreans to Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola. 

Massive Bookshop has Prison Capital if people are interested in picking up a copy and delving more deeply into this conversation, as I mentioned a couple times during the episode there is a lot of really interesting analysis in the book that we didn’t have time to adequately address in this conversation.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say we’re releasing this conversation during Black August, find some local or online political education about that, write to political prisoners, get involved in their campaigns. 

If you want to support our work please consider contributing a $1 a month or more to our patreon at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We do have a Trinity of Fundamentals study group that starts this coming week and you can find details about that on our patreon as well. 

Links:

Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana.

The Jail Is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration

Trinity of Fundamentals study group

 

[Note: In the episode image the artwork behind Dionne Brand at the podium is by Torkwase Dyson, as is the cover art work for Nomenclature]

In this conversation we are thrilled to welcome Dionne Brand to the podcast. 

This is a conversation with her new book Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems and also with a number of her lectures, interviews, and dialogues over the years. If we reference something not in Nomenclature we have done our best to include a link to it in the show notes. 

We ask questions about themes and ideas we hear or read Brand grappling with in her work, as well as questions that we grapple with in relation to her work. These include questions about time, epistemology, nature, the category of the human, Black thought, spectacle, narrative, capital, imperialism, socialism and liberation.

If you find value in this conversation and others we publish, we encourage you to support the podcast at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism, we are 100% supported by our listeners and you can be a part of that for as little as $1 a month.

Dionne Brand is a renowned poet, novelist, and essayist. Her writing is notable for the beauty of its language, and for its intense engagement with issues of international social justice. Her work includes ten volumes of poetry, five books of fiction and three non-fiction works. She was the Poet Laureate of the City of Toronto 2009-2012. From 2017-2021 Brand was Poetry Editor at McClelland & Stewart- Penguin Random House Canada.

Dionne Brand became prominent first as an award-winning poet, winning the Griffin Poetry Prize for her volume Ossuaries, the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Trillium Book Prize for her volume Land to Light On. She’s garnered two other nominations for the Governor General’s Literary Award for the poetry volumes No Language Is Neutral and Inventory respectively, the latter also nominated for the Trillium and the Pat Lowther. She has won the Pat Lowther Award for poetry for her volume thirsty also nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the city of Toronto Book Award.  Her 2018 volume, The Blue Clerk, was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry and the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Prize.

Brand has also achieved great distinction and acclaim in fiction and non-fiction. Her most recent novel, Theory won the Toronto Book Award 2019 and the BOCAS fiction prize. Her novel, Love Enough was nominated in 2015 for the Trillium Book Award. Her fiction includes the critically acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, At the Full and Change of the Moon, and, What We All Long For an indelible portrait of the city of Toronto which also garnered the Toronto Book Award. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, French and German. Dionne Brand’s non-fiction includes Bread Out Of Stone, and A Map to the Door of No Return, which has been widely taken up by scholars of Black Diaspora and An Autobiography of The Autobiography of Reading. In 2021 Brand was awarded the Windham Campbell Award for fiction.

Dionne Brand has published nineteen books, contributed to many anthologies and written dozens of essays and articles. She has also been involved in the making of several documentary films. She was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at St. Lawrence University in New York and has taught literature and creative writing at universities in both British Columbia and Ontario. She has also held the Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair in Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University. She holds several Honorary Doctorates, Wilfred Laurier University, University of Windsor, Simon Fraser University, The University of Toronto, York University and Thornloe/Laurentian University.  She lives in Toronto and was Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph until 2022. She is a member of the Order of Canada.

In every area of her work Brand has received widespread recognition through literary awards, honorary doctorates, and praise by the likes of Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Kamau Braithwaite, and so many, many others. In the show notes we will include Dionne Brand’s full bio which further details her award winning work in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and film. As well as her distinguished work as an educator, documentary film maker, and poetry editor.

Sources:

Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems

David Naimon’s interview with Dionne Brand on Between The Covers Podcast 

Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand in Conversation 

Dionne Brand: The Shape of Language (along with Torkwase Dyson) 

“I Am Not The Person You Remember” - In Memoriam of MF DOOM with Hanif Abdurraqib

“The Oppressed Have a Way of Addressing Their Own Conditions” - On Joshua Myers’ Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition  

Dionne Brand - “An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading”  

[The image contains the cover of the 25th Anniversary Edition of Scenes of Subjection, two images of author Saidiya Hartman, and one image from visual artist Torkwase Dyson (which is included in the book) entitled set/interval/enclosure]

For this conversation we are extremely honored to welcome Saidiya Hartman to the podcast. 

In this conversation we’ll be talking about the new 25th anniversary edition of Hartman’s groundbreaking and influential work Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America.

In addition to Scenes, Saidiya Hartman is the author of two other amazing books, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval and Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. She has been a MacArthur Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. She is a Professor at Columbia University.

This 25th anniversary edition features a new preface by the author, a foreword by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an afterword by Marisa J. Fuentes and Sarah Haley, notations with Cameron Rowland, and compositions by Torkwase Dyson.

We ask about a number of the key formulations in Scenes, including Hartman’s work on empathy, the fungibility of Blackness, the varied violences and violations of enslavement, white supremacy and the popular theater, and the constitutive limits of bourgeois liberal democracy. 

We also talk about Black Feminism, gender differentiation, and the role of cishetpatriarchy in law, violation, and aspiration. 

A content notice, that although we don’t hover on details, the conversation does include references to rape, abuse, and sexual violence in the context of slavery and in its afterlives.

Hartman shares some clarifications on where the pessimism in Scenes lies. She also offers scathing critiques of the limits of emancipation, of the structure of citizenship, and of the project of inclusion within US empire and racial capitalism. 

Along the way, we take time to attend to various forms of Black anarchism and the attendant survival programs that Hartman observes and highlights in Scenes and in her later work, particularly Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments.

We are also partnering with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill to send copies of this book into prisoners. This is part of a new project where we will pick one book each month to share with incarcerated people. We’ll provide a link to this program in the show notes if you want to contribute to it. You can also pick up a copy for yourself while you’re over there if you like.

And lastly if you like what we do, and want to support our capacity to bring you conversations like these. Our platform is 100% supported by our listeners. Thanks to everyone who became a patron last month we hit our goal thanks to your support. If you would like to support us for as little as $1 a month you can do so at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

This is the continuation of our conversation with Winston James about his latest work Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik. In part 1 we talked about McKay’s origins in Jamaica up through the Red Summer of 1919 when he would pen his famous poem “If We Must Die.”

In this conversation we talk about McKay’s time in Harlem, his relationship with Hubert Harrison, his support of - and political differences with - the Garvey movement or the UNIA. In that vein we also talk about McKay’s theorization of the relationship between class struggle, anticolonial struggle, and anticapitalist revolution. And relatedly his support of movements for Irish nationalism, Indian independence, and Black Nationalism. 

James also shares McKay’s experiences as a worker, as a member of the Wobblies or the IWW, and as a member of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers Socialist Federation in the UK and some associated discussion of syndicalism and leftwing communism. We close with some reflections on McKay’s attitudes towards Bolshevism over time, especially after Lenin.

We really enjoyed Winston James book and highly recommend it to people who are interested in McKay’s life or just in history including debates of the Black left - and communist left - in the early 20th century. You can pick up Winston James' Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik which is currently on sale from our friends at Massive Bookshop.

A final reminder as this is likely to be our final episode of this month. October is the 5 year anniversary of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. We had set a goal of adding 50 patrons this month. And with 2 days left is attainable. We need just 4 more patrons to hit that goal. You can help us hit that goal for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. A new post will be up on patreon about it this week, but our Black Marxism study group will start up in November, and our 5 year anniversary episode is still on its way.

For this conversation we welcome Winston James to the podcast. Winston James is the author of A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay’s Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion, The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer 1799-1851, and Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twenty Century America. James has held a number of teaching positions, most recently as a professor of history at UC Irvine.

James joins us to talk about his latest work, Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik. The book examines McKay’s life from his early years in Jamaica to his years at Tuskegee and Kansas State University and his time in Harlem, to his life in London. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, James offers a rich and detailed chronicle of McKay’s life, political evolution, and the historical, political, and intellectual contexts that shaped him. The work also locates McKay’s closest interlocutors, and those he debated with, as well as McKay’s experiences as a worker and within communist and anarcho-syndicalist organizations like the Worker’s Socialist Federation and the IWW. 

In part 1 of the conversation, we focus on McKay’s early years in Jamaica up through the Red Summer of 1919. James begins with a discussion of McKay’s family, his life in Jamaica, his brief stint as a constable in Kingston, his early poetry and his influence on the Negritude movement. James also discusses the appeal of the Russian Revolution and of the Third International to Black people in this era, and contextualizes the terror of white vigilante violence in the post war period in the US and how Black people fought back against it. As a content notice some of this discussion is a brief but explicit examination of the abhorrent character of anti-black violence of the period. We close part 1 of the conversation with a discussion of McKay’s “If We Must Die,” the context of armed self-defense, the context of fighting back, from which it emerged and its global resonance with the emerging Black radicalism of the period and with radical movements decades after its release.

In part two - which will come out in the next couple of days - we will focus on McKay’s debates, positions, and activism within the spaces of revolutionary Black Nationalism and the Communist left of the period.

We will include a link to the book in the show notes. We both highly recommend it.

If you would like to purchase Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik by Winston James consider picking it up from the good folks at Massive Bookshop.

As for our current campaign, we have 8 days left this month and we are working towards our goal of adding 50 patrons this month in recognition of 5 years of doing Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. So far this month we have added 34 patrons so if we can add 2 or more patrons daily for the rest of the month we’ll hit that goal. You can join up all the wonderful people who make this show possible by contributing as little as $1 per month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

This is the second part of our two part conversation with Too Black on his piece “Laundering Black Rage”  which you can read over at Black Agenda Report. Too Black is a poet, member of Black Alliance For Peace, host of The Black Myths Podcast which can be found on Black Power Media, he’s a writer, and he is the communications coordinator of the Campaign to Free the Pendleton 2. 

Here is part 1 of the conversation.

We continue our conversation of “Laundering Black Rage” in this episode. In this part we talk about neocolonialism. We talk about class distinctions and some of the impacts of so-called desegregation, which did not really desegregate US society, but did make certain internal borders more porous to Capital, markets and elites. In that context we have some discussion about struggling against local elites or against elite capture. Too Black also offers some valuable insights on how people have been socialized in this neocolonial era. This conversation also includes about a 25 minute back and forth between Too Black and J about the way Too Black theorizes the state. While not a debate, there is some distinction between the two points of view that we seek to clarify in discussion. Ultimately there is a lot of overlap, but a slightly different conceptualization. We hope folks enjoy listening to us grappling with this theorization together.

For an update on our October campaign. October marks the 5 year anniversary of MAKC. We are trying to add 50 patrons this month. 23 new patrons have signed on so far this month, so we’re almost half way to our goal as we reach the halfway point of the month. If we can add two people today we’ll be back on track. You can kick in $1 a month or more and support the sustainability of this show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Additional links:

The Black Myths Podcast Patreon 

Campaign to Free The Pendleton 2

Previous conversation Too Black References from BPM along with Jared Ball, Brooke Terpstra, Erica Caines, Too Black, and Jared

 

 

Our guest for the episode is Too Black. Too Black is a poet, member of Black Alliance For Peace, host of The Black Myths Podcast which can be found on Black Power Media, he’s a writer, and he is one of the organizers of the Campaign to Free the Pendleton 2. 

In this conversation we welcome Too Black to discuss his recently published 2 part essay “Laundering Black Rage” (part 1, part 2) which we will link. The essay was published at Black Agenda Report. It’s a provocative analysis of the process through which Black Rage gets laundered towards other ends. The piece looks in particular at this process through the recent example of the 2020 uprisings, but it also looks at other examples.

More than just a guest, Too Black is an interlocutor of ours. We’ve worked together on the Journalism For Liberation & Combat series (audio, video). We’ve had conversations about organizing and about theory that go beyond the bounds of podcast work. Due to length we split the conversation in two parts. Part 1 mostly covers the basic themes of the essay and the structure of the process of “Laundering Black Rage,” part two is a little more conversational, but there are conversational elements in both.

Most importantly we will include a Link Tree for the campaign to Free the Pendleton 2 in the show notes, please check it out, and if nothing else sign the petitions, but I also encourage you to check out some of their media work, and to see if there’s some way you can get involved or support the campaign. Free The Pendleton 2 Campaign Link Tree.

We also encourage you all to check out The Black Myths Podcast, they have some excellent conversations, with many guests you’ll recognize from our platform as well. And support them on patreon as well. Also shout-out to our friends over at Black Power Media who host the Black Myths Podcast videos. Support that work as well.

And lastly for an update on our October campaign. October marks the 5 year anniversary of MAKC. We are trying to add 50 patrons this month. Currently we’ve got 22 new patrons for the month, so we’re almost half way to our goal as we approach the half-way point of the month. You can kick in $1 a month or more and support the sustainability of this show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Additional notes: In conversation there's a mention of a Kali Akuno video. 

In this episode we interview multiple people who’ve been involved in the struggle to Stop Cop City and Defend the Forest in Atlanta. What started as a political struggle against an extremely unpopular massive new police training facility has morphed and evolved in many different directions.

We welcome Kamau Franklin from Community Movement Builders back to the platform for the third time for this conversation. He brings with him several folks with knowledge of the movement to stop cop city and what has become known as the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement.

This is a conversation that touches on modes of liberal city governance and counterinsurgency against radical social movements like the uprisings that took place across the country in the summer of 2020 in response to many instances of police violence including the police lynching of George Floyd and in Atlanta specifically the police execution of Rayshard Brooks as well. Kamau along with Sara, Paul and River discuss some of the current political economy of the greater Atlanta metropolitan area and discuss different phases of the struggle to prevent the political approval and physical construction of the massive police training facility.

Along the way we also get into conversations about some of the dynamics coalition which is diverse both in terms of political tendencies and traditions, but also in terms of its racial composition. We talk about of some of the tensions and issues that can arise from these circumstances. And there is some discussion of tactics and strategy as well that is specific to this struggle, which warrant broader consideration contingent of course on the conditions of other struggles.

You can learn more and support at https://defendtheatlantaforest.org

You can also contribute to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund as Sara recommends in the show: https://atlsolidarity.org to support folks who are facing repression and legal cases.

And you can learn more and support Community Movement Builders at https://communitymovementbuilders.org.

Also in Kamau’s other role, he is a co-host of the Remix Morning Show on Black Power Media, make sure you check them out and support their work as well, this conversation would not have been what it was without Kamau’s support and facilitation.

Apologies that due to the number of guests and internet connections some of the audio cuts out at a couple points in the conversation. In all cases it resolves and hopefully minimal meaning and information is lost. But we encourage folks to stick with it even if the audio is a little frustrating in parts because the conversation offers so many important insights.

And last but not least, if you like the work that we do here at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. If you want to hear more conversations about dynamic social movements, revolutionary history, political theory, and tactical and strategic discussion, then join up with the awesome folks who support our show currently by becoming a patron of the show. This October marks the 5th anniversary of doing the show. We’ve hosted over 165 conversations in that period. And for those 5 years we’re looking to add 50 patrons this month to help us sustain this work. 50 is a lot, but you can be one of those folks helping to support by just kicking in a dollar a month or by making a small annual contribution at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

 

In this conversation Charisse Burden-Stelly returns to the podcast, and is joined by Jodi Dean to talk about their new book Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writing. 

Charisse Burden-Stelly is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University. Along with Gerald Horne she co-authored W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life In American History. She is a co-editor of the book Reproducing Domination On the Caribbean and the Postcolonial State. She is also the author of the forthcoming book Black Scare / Red Scare. She is a member of Black Alliance for Peace and was previously the co-host of The Last Dope Intellectual podcast.

Jodi Dean teaches political, feminist, and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited thirteen books, including The Communist Horizon, Crowds and Party, and Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging. She is also a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

The first collection of its kind, Organize, Fight, Win brings together three decades of Black Communist women’s political writings. In doing so, it highlights the link between Communism and Black liberation. Likewise, it makes clear how Black women fundamentally shaped, and were shaped by, Communist praxis in the twentieth century.

Organize, Fight, Win includes writings from card-carrying Communists like Dorothy Burnham, Williana Burroughs, Grace P. Campbell, Alice Childress, Marvel Cooke, Esther Cooper Jackson, Thelma Dale Perkins, Vicki Garvin, Yvonne Gregory, Claudia Jones, Maude White Katz, and Louise Thompson Patterson, and writings by those who organized alongside the Communist Party, like Ella Baker, Charlotta Bass, Thyra Edwards, Lorraine Hansberry, and Dorothy Hunton.

Dr. CBS and Dr. Dean introduce the text further in the discussion, and read some excerpts from it along the way as well. In conversation we talk about a number of the interventions made by Black Communist Women that are collected in Organize, Fight, Win. We also talk about how many of these women have often been written about, frequently to further intellectual frameworks that are not the Black Communist analysis and modes of organizing that they themselves espoused.

We discuss the interventions these women made in relation to unionization efforts, anti-imperialism, anti-fascism, and the struggle for peace. We also discuss the difference between common manifestations of identitarian politics  today and the materialist analysis these Black Communist Women deployed.  We also talk about the internal critiques that they leveed against certain positions of the CPUSA, not in attempts to destroy the party, but in dedication to its mission.

Organize, Fight, Win is available for pre-order from Verso Books and it will come out on this coming Tuesday. Black Alliance for Peace has a webinar kicking off the International Month of Action Against AFRICOM on Saturday October 1st. We’ll include links to those as well as to pre-orders for Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future all of which are named in the episode. We’ll also include links to some previous discussions that relate to topics covered here.

And as always if you like what we do, please support our work on patreon. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. 

Relevant links:

Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future  

Black Alliance for Peace webinar on AFRICOM 

Black Alliance for Peace's International Month of Action Against AFRICOM 

Our previous conversation with Dr. CBS which provides a lot of useful context on anti-communism and anti-blackness and other terms and frameworks that are relevant to this discussion.

Our previous discussion on Lorraine Hansberry’s time at Freedom

Our conversation with Mary Helen Washington (who was also referenced in the show)

 

 

In this conversation we speak with Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 

Robyn is the author of the bestselling and award-winning book Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. She is also an assistant professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at University of Toronto. She also has a lengthy history of writing about and organizing with social movements against borders, state violence and for abolition.

Leanne is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, musician, and member of Alderville First Nation. She is the author of seven books including A Short History of the Blockade and As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance.

In this conversation we discuss their latest book Rehearsals for Living. This will be part 1 of a 2 part discussion with the authors. Robyn and Leanne discuss world-endings and world-building as realities and practices of Black and Indigenous existence and resistance. They talk about grappling with building a necessary relationality and solidarity between Black and Indigenous movements in so-called Canada as well as internationally against white supremacy, capitalism, settler colonialism and other structures of violence and domination. They also talk about ways of living that are necessary to recall and to continue or renew practices of in the face of already existing climate change and devastation. And they discuss how social movements build upon each other continuing to produce knowledge that grows and sustains and builds their capacity for stronger bonds of solidarity and more effective modes of resistance. 

As a note there is a portion of this episode and of Rehearsals for Living that builds on a conversation we published with Stefano Harney and Fred Moten back in July of 2020. Here is a link to that conversation for anyone who wants that context or wants to revisit it after hearing Leanne’s reflections.

Rehearsals for Living is a really powerful read and we encourage you to pick it up from Haymarket Books or from your local bookstore.

This is our fourth episode of the month, we’ve just hit our goal of adding 25 patrons for the month. We want to thank everyone who signed up to support the show this month. It is only through the support of our listeners through patreon that we are able to sustain this work. If you would like to join them in supporting the show and its hosts and continue to grow our work, you can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

In this episode Dr. Jesse Benjamin returns to the podcast.

Like our previous conversation with Jesse we’re connecting to talk about a recently released book by Walter Rodney, in this case it’s Decolonial Marxism: Essays From The Pan-African Revolution, which is a previously unpublished collection of Rodney’s essays on race, colonialism and Marxism. Jesse Benjamin is a scholar, activist, publisher, and board member for the Walter Rodney Foundation, and he is the co-editor of Decolonial Marxism.

We talk about how Decolonial Marxism showcases Rodney’s range as a theorist and a thinker, as an educator, and as an activist. This collection of essays across a range of topics really provides practical examples of what we think Rodney meant by the term “guerilla intellectual.” It also gives us a glimpse of how Rodney assessed some of the movements and key theorists and leaders of his lifetime, particularly with respect to anticolonial nationalists and socialists on the African continent. Jesse Benjamin offers insights into how he reads Rodney’s work in these pieces with respect to pedagogy and epistemology. We also talk about the title Decolonial Marxism and how Rodney takes up the questions of the relevance of Marxism to African peoples and other peoples of the so-called Third World. Jesse also talks about the significance of many of Rodney’s interventions in a range of areas and approaches that are really groundbreaking or, at the very least, would’ve been quite cutting edge during Rodney’s lifetime. And all of us marvel at how relevant and insightful Rodney’s contributions remain decades after his assassination.

We strongly recommend the book for anyone who appreciates Walter Rodney’s work and if you’re not familiar with Rodney’s work it’s really essential stuff and we highly recommend it. Verso Books has published this text and they also have editions of 3 other Rodney books all of which are authorized by the Walter Rodney Foundation and Rodney’s family. And everything is 40% off over there at Verso for the rest of September.

Make sure you get connected with the Walter Rodney Foundation every year they host a Walter Rodney Symposium which is an amazing event.

And if you like what we do here we hope you will consider joining up with all of our wonderful patrons in supporting the show. We currently have a drive to add 25 new patrons this month. We only need 10 more to hit our goal for this month, so head on over to patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism and become a patron if you can spare $1 a month or more. Also while you’re there we currently have a poll to determine our next study group book, so make sure you vote on that and be on the look out for updates because we will be reconvening our study group in October.

Our previous conversations that deal most directly with Walter Rodney's work and life (from most recent to oldest):

“Almost As If Their Spirits Are Still There” - David Austin on The 1968 Congress of Black Writers

"Our Enemies Know the Power of Books" - Louis Allday and Liberated Texts

"The Wealth of Europe is the (Stolen) Wealth of Africa" with Devyn Springer

Walter Rodney's Russian Revolution - A View From The Third World with Dr Jesse Benjamin

Devyn Springer Discusses Walter Rodney

 

In this episode, we speak with Roderick Ferguson about two of Josh's all-time favorite books, One-Dimensional Queer and Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. 

The former which problematizes single-issue politics that came to dominate, disrupt, capture, and destroy the gay liberation movement—and has continued to plague queer (anti-) politics today. 

And the latter which discusses the regulation of sexual difference and its role in circumscribing Black-African culture. 

Throughout the conversation, we discuss the concept of one-dimensionality—which Ferguson borrows from Herbert Marcuse—and how the mobilization of the concept in queer struggles “[drove] a wedge between queer politics and other progressive formations.” We also discuss how the structural realities imposed through capitalism, racialized violence and neglect, have made the nuclear family unit a “material impossibility” for non-white people—namely Black-African people. 

Roderick A. Ferguson is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale University. 

He is also faculty in the Yale Prison Education Initiative. He is the author of One-Dimensional Queer, We Demand: The University and Student Protests, The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference, and Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. He is the co-editor with Grace Hong of the anthology Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization. He is also co-editor with Erica Edwards and Jeffrey Ogbar of Keywords of African American Studies (NYU, 2018). He is the 2020 recipient of the Kessler Award from the Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS).

If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a patron. You can do so for as little as a $1  a month. 

This episode was produced and edited by Aidan Elias

For this episode we welcome Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad back to the podcast.

This is our second conversation on The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power (Part 1 is here)

As we noted in our previous conversation we weren’t able to get to all of our questions in the first discussion, but Noam and Vijay were generous enough to agree to record a part 2. We recorded this conversation on September 2nd, which is interesting because some information on the war in Ukraine had been revealed between our two conversations and we get into that in discussion. We will link the article they reference in the show notes.

This conversation, begins with discussion of the Tet Offensive and Noam facing potential trial for his resistance during the US war in Vietnam. Vijay talks about Noam’s piece “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” 

From there we get into discussion about “the Pentagon System,” and the military industrial complex. 

They both share some thoughts on Manufacturing Consent and the role of the media, and discuss a few examples of how this functions. Talk about imperialism with regards to resources and power. And Noam discusses how NATO and the Pentagon rebranded their purposes after the Cold War.

From there we get into the invention of “humanitarian intervention,” and how concepts of human rights and genocide have been manipulated by the US despite US’s total lack of accountability within the frameworks of international law. 

We close with some discussion on how to recompose and reconstitute movements in the imperial core, against imperialism and toward better horizons.

Both this conversation and our previous conversation with Noam and Vijay are based on questions developed on their book The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. Which is on sale now and we definitely recommend it. We will also link the previous discussion the authors had with Guerrilla History that we reference in the episode. If you don’t listen to Guerrilla History check them out, we really like the work they do and hopefully you will as well.

We’re down a few patrons this month. We’re working to maintain the sustainability of the podcast in these difficult times. To that end we have a goal of adding 25 patrons this month. You can become one for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year. All support, adds up and makes this show possible and keeps us completely independent, ad free, and able to bring you conversations like this every week. So head over to patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism and help out if you can.

The Hill and Stent article (the one that references the April peace agreement)

Reflections on a Political Trial 

The Responsibility of Intellectuals 

In this episode we are honored to host a conversation with Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad, to discuss their brand new book The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. 

Part 2 of the conversaiton can be found here.

Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historical essayist, social critic and political activist. While we couldn’t find a complete bibliography, from what we could gather, it seems that at this point he has written over 100 books, on a wide range of topics. 

Vijay Prashad is an executive director of Tricontinental: institute of Social Research, the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books, and a senior non-resident fellow at Chonyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He is also the author of over 20 books and a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

In this conversation we talk about the recent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the so-called “China threat,” The Godfather attitude of U.S. imperialism, the war in Ukraine, sanctions, and international law. We also question whether we should look at the U.S. as a declining power or just an empire in transition.

As you will see we were not able to get through all of our questions in this conversation, but Noam and Vijay were kind enough to record a part 2 with us as well, which we will release in the coming days. This part of the conversation was recorded on August 30th.

We want to thank all of our patrons for making our show possible. It’s a new month and we have a new goal to add 25 patrons again this month. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month. All of the support for our show comes from listeners like you as we have no grant funding and we don’t sell any ads. You can become a patron by signing up at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

And be on the look out for part 2 of this conversation in the coming days.

In this episode we interview Marika Sherwood. As she mentions in the episode, Sherwood was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary in 1937. After World War 2, the surviving members of her family emigrated with her to Australia, she was briefly employed in New Guinea, and eventually emigrated to England, finding employment as a teacher in London. She will discuss on the episode how she became dedicated to researching and publishing Black history. Along with Hakim Adi and others, Sherwood is one of the founders of the Black and Asian Studies Association in the UK.

For us, this conversation was primarily spurred by our reading of her book Kwame Nkrumah and the Dawn of the Cold War, The West African National Secretariat 1945-1948.

In this conversation Sherwood touches on some of the methods used by British government and the British press to suppress the organizing Kwame Nkrumah - along with others like George Padmore - was engaged in, during this crucial post-war period.

She also talks about areas where she sees a need for further research on anticolonial movements and counterintelligence operations against them. Sherwood also stresses the need for the UK to release more documentation on its own counterintelligence operations against Nkrumah, Padmore and others.

We encourage people to check out Sherwood’s other work as well. To give you an idea, she sent us a list of her publications and it was 8 pages long, including over 20 books. In addition to Kwame Nkrumah, her books include work on Pan-Africanism, Claudia Jones, and Malcolm X.

In many ways this is a conversation about dedication, for Sherwood we get some understanding of why she has dedicated so much of her life to studying African movements and Black History. It also hopefully give us some sense of the dedication that Kwame Nkrumah had to all the peoples of Africa. And it also highlights the dedication of British Empire to undermining the conditions for true self-determination on the African continent and their dedication to deliberately hiding that legacy out of public record. 

We hope you enjoy this episode. This is our fifth episode of August, we already have a bunch of really exciting conversations slated to come out in September and October as well. If you’d like to become a patron of the show, you can become one for as little as $1 a month. It is with the generous support of our listeners that we can continue to bring you these conversations every week.

In this episode we interview Dr. Gao Yunxiang. Dr. Gao is professor of history at Toronto Metropolitan University and the author of Sporting Gender: Women Athletes and Celebrity-Making during China’s National Crisis, 1931-1945. For this conversation we are honored to have Dr. Gao join us to talk about her book Arise, Africa! Roar, China! Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century. It is a very interesting book that examines the lives and interconnectedness of three seminal figures of the Black Left in W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes as well as two very interesting Chinese internationalist cultural workers and activists Liu Liangmo and Sylvia Si-lan Chen. Of course in examining Du Bois and Robeson the work also examines the politics and lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois and Eslanda Robeson.

We initially planned to have a conversation on the whole book for this episode, but due to some time constraints we recorded this as a part 1 primarily focusing on W.E.B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois and Yunxiang’s scholarship on them which breaks ground from archival sources that have often been ignored by western academics due to lack of access to Chinese archives or due to linguistic barriers. At a later date we plan to record an additional conversation that looks more in-depth at the other central figures in Dr. Gao’s book, namely Langston Hughes, Si-Lan Chen, Liu Liangmo and the Robesons. 

This discussion examines the conversation behind the famous photo of W.E.B. Du Bois laughing with Chairman Mao, the impact of Shirley Graham Du Bois and Eslanda Robeson on their husband’s views toward Communist China, and why Shirley Graham Du Bois is buried in China. As well as, how she navigated the Sino-Soviet split and her role within China through  the shifting landscapes of Chinese Communist policy, including the Cultural Revolution.

This is our 4th episode of the month. We’re on a current push to add 10 patrons before the end of the month. You can be one of those 10 folks to help us meet that goal for as little as $1 a month. We want to extend our gratitude to all the patrons of the show and to folks who share these episodes with friends, family and comrades. You can become a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. 

Documentary on Du Bois in China mentioned in the episode.

In this episode we interview Claude Marks the co-director Freedom Archives. The Freedom Archives the best archive we know of documenting the history of revolutionary, radical and progressive movements of the 1960’s through the 1990’s. 

In this conversation we talk about Freedom Archives and its collections, most of which are available at FreedomArchives.org. 

Claude shares a brief overview of his own radical media work and participation in struggles which led to his political imprisonment. And talks about the plight of political prisoners, and the broader communities targeted and impacted by the prison system, in the US today. 

Claude also shares some reflections that are timely for Black August including historical importance and current relevance of George Jackson, which Freedom Archives honored with their excellent 99 Books digital exhibit last year.

We talk about the FBI’s counterintelligence program, which is detailed in the Freedom Archives documentary COINTELPRO 101 and ask Claude about the relationship he sees between the state’s counterinsurgency in that era and today.

He emphasizes the importance of studying movements that were successful and of understanding the work of political prisoners as part of the struggle that is embraced and supported within more advanced movements. 

We close by asking about projects that Freedom Archives has on the horizon and ways that folks can get in touch with them and also support their critical work. You can donate here to Freedom Archives.

And as always if you like what we do, please consider becoming a patron of our show. You can do so at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism for as little as $1 a month. We offer sincere gratitude to everyone who finds a way to support us and if you can’t contribute monetarily right now, share an episode on social media or introduce some friends to the podcast. 

This episode will include audio clips from George Jackson, Assata Shakur, Corky Gonzales, Dylcia Pagan, & the BPP Kids (these last three are all a part of the Vinyl Project of Freedom Archives) we include these just to showcase some of the amazing material that Freedom Archives brings together. We’ll include links in the show notes to all of these clips, some of which are available in longer form on Freedom Archives. 

In this episode we interview Rasheda Alexander and Sterling Johnson. They are both participants in the struggle to defend the UC Townhomes, which residents have renamed the People’s Townhomes in Philadelphia. This one of the most recent flashpoint struggles in Philadelphia in a long struggle to defend the neighborhoods Black Philadelphians were originally segregated into from the forces of gentrification and displacement. Sterling who is an organizer with Philadelphia Housing Action joined us previously in part 1 of our conversation on the book How We Stay Free to talk about the massive housing struggles for homeless people in Philadelphia in 2020.

In this episode both Rasheda and Sterling offer personal context, overarching analysis, and talk about the issue of housing among other things as a racial justice issue, as a disability justice issue, and as an issue of justice for the elderly.  

Rasheda provides listeners with a concrete understanding of the liberatory potential of struggles like this, how they can transform relations among participants and be an example of abolition in practice. Sterling provides a great deal of analysis and context around the forces housing organizers have to fight, and advocates for a proliferation of encampments as a tactic in that struggle. 

It is important context to know that the protest camp, by which I mean basically the pallets and the tents, was removed by the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office this past Monday. When we had spoken on July 27th it was supposed to originally have been removed on that day. It was through organizing, resistance, and support from other groups in Philly including organized labor that the encampment lasted as long as it did. I’m going to play a quick clip of audio of Philadelphia’s Sheriff who brands herself as a “social justice warrior” as she is removing the encampment. In the background you can hear residents and protesters chanting “we ain’t goin’ nowhere,” which has been a clarion call of the Save UC Townhomes movement. 

Even with the encampment’s tents and barriers removed, the protest and the fight to Save UC Townhomes will continue. Please connect with them by following them on social media for more updates on how to support their struggle. And get involved in housing struggles in your own community. Even if it is not your home being impacted, these fights affect all of us.

We’ll include more links in the show notes, including an Opinion piece that came out in the Philly Inquirer after the demolition of the encampment:

“We are still waiting for the Mayor’s Office to respond to our demands. However, I am grateful for all of the support that our protest camp has received, and look forward to continuing our fight regardless of the court or the sheriff’s decision to dismantle it. I cherish this community and I will continue to fight for it until I can’t anymore.”

That quote by Maria Lyles, who is a resident of UC Townhomes, sums up the perspectives from residents who have been struggling to defend their community in this fight. It also echoes much of Rasheda’s sentiment in this conversation.

An editors note, this episode was a live conversation much of which the interviewees were outside, or at UC Townhomes. So there were a couple parts that had to be clipped, and there are still some issues that remain in the audio, in all cases they are brief and clear up quickly.

At Millennials Are Killing Capitalism we had an initial goal of adding 25 patrons this month to keep up with attrition. We’re only 6 patrons away from hitting that goal as we publish this on August 11th, so hopefully we can exceed that goal this month. Thank you to all the folks who support us on patreon, and if you would like to join them you can do so for as little as $1 a month on patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Our music is provided by Televangel.

Now here is our conversation with Rasheda Alexander and Sterling Johnson.

https://savetheuctownhomes.com

https://www.instagram.com/saveuctownhomes/

https://twitter.com/saveuctownhomes

Frank Rizzo, the UC Townhomes, and the fight to save Black Philadeplhia by Rasheda Alexander and Sterling Johnson

Article referencing the Black Bottom Tribe (mentioned in episode) 

I'm being evicted from University City Townhomes by Maria Lyles

Philadelphia Housing Action

 

 

 

In this episode we are honored to welcome Dr. Ruth Wilson Gilmore to the podcast.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences and Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Co-founder of many grassroots organizations including the California Prison Moratorium Project, Critical Resistance, and the Central California Environmental Justice Network, she is author of the prize-winning Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California.

In this episode, we ask questions primarily from Wilson Gilmore’s latest book Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation. Along the way we talk about consciousness, conjunctural analysis, the horizon of abolition, and various modes of organizing against premature death. We also ask a couple of questions facing abolitionists today, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore offers some insights into the various forms of struggle in which she finds hope.

We strongly encourage folks to pick up Abolition Geography which is packed full of insights from Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s past 30 years of thinking and writing about abolitionist struggle, much of which she participated in directly. 

Our music as always is provided by Televangel.

We want to give a huge thank you to all of our patrons for supporting the show. Our work here is only possible because of your support. We don’t sell ads, we don’t put our episodes behind a paywall and we don’t charge guests fees. We don’t do any of those things because we don’t want any corporate interests influencing our content, and we want all of our episodes to be freely available to anyone who wants to listen. So if you aren’t already a patron, and you enjoy this conversation please become a patron of the show. You can do so for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

In this interview we wanted to do a discussion about the law, politics and abolition. We thought that this was an important thing to have some discussion on, in light of all the recent Supreme Court rulings which have rightfully caused a lot of anger, indignation, protest and organizing. 

Our guests for this week are Sophia G and Nathan Y. Sophia is a lawyer defending criminalized immigrants and a PIC and border abolitionist. Nathan is an abolitionist lawyer defending criminalized immigrants and defending Cuba from economic imperialism. 

In conversation they both work to demystify concepts like the law and rights as neutral concepts or principles. They emphasis the importance of seeing courts as a site of struggle, where any wins or losses made do not come a result of good legal arguments, but as a result of larger social forces and power struggles. 

Both emphasize the importance of keeping politics front and center, and of viewing the law as something to be understood, only so that we can disrespect it and overcome it, rather than putting it on a pedestal. And that lawyering like any other skill or trade, needs to be put in service of social movements, which means dispensing with the mythology and decorum of the law, and liberal understandings of it.

Along the way they discuss interesting tactics, such as jury nullification (Beyond Criminal Courts Jury Nullification toolkit) in the wake of Dobbs and new anti-abortion laws and mass participatory defense campaigns for people facing criminalization and deportation. They also talk about some of the work of Survived and Punished New York. So also follow them on social media for ways you can support struggles like the ones described by Nathan and Sophia in this episode.

This is an important discussion for organizers, activists, people who have been activated by recent Supreme Court decisions, and for attorneys and law students who are trying to understand how they can use their legal skills in ways that frankly are pretty foreign to most folks in the legal profession.

One struggle mentioned near the end of the episode: 

"Assia's community is calling on folks to sign her pardon petition (https://bit.ly/AssiaPetition) and is inviting folks to a speakout featuring her and other criminalized New Yorkers facing deportation. The speakout will highlight how New York's tools of criminalization facilitate mass deportations—and will call on the governor to grant clemency to the speakers fighting for their right to remain in the US. Details: August 8, 2022, 6:00 PM ET. Tentative Title: "New York's Complicity in the Deportation Machine: Beyond 'Sanctuary' and Other So-Called Protective Laws." Zoom link: https://bit.ly/NYDeportationMachine Meeting ID: 882 5834 8400 / Passcode: 295136 One tap mobile

+16468769923,,88258348400# US (New York)"

This is our fifth episode of July at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. Every episode we do requires many hours of research, preparation, recording, editing and production. We operate the show totally independently and without any advertising or financial backing other than the support of our listeners. It’s super easy to become a patron of the show and you can do it for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. By doing that you will of course be notified of each new episode as well as every time we start up a new session of our ongoing study groups.

In this episode Chris Gilbert returns to the podcast.

Chris Gilbert is a professor of Political Science in the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela in Caracas, Venezuela. His articles have appeared in Venezuela Analysis, Monthly Review, CounterPunch and various other publications. Gilbert is the creator of the Marxist educational program “Escuela de Cuadros,” broadcast on Venezuelan public television. Along with Cira Pascual Marquina, Chris is also the co-editor of the book Venezuela: The Present As Struggle: Voices From The Bolivarian Revolution which we did a two-part episode on last year.

This conversation is framed around a recent article of Gilbert’s that was published in the Monthly Review. The piece is called “Mészáros and Chávez: The Philosopher and the Llanero” and it tells the story of the relationship, personal, theoretical and practical between István Mészáros and Venezuelan revolutionary and former president Hugo Chávez. 

At the heart of the discussion is the question of the commune. And the theory of communes as the basis for a transition to socialism, as while as the practice of communes in Venezuelan society. Along the way, Gilbert also contextualizes the discussion in Mészáros’ theory, Chávez’s programs and experimentation, and in the material practice of existing communes in Venezuela today. 

We also discuss Mészáros’ critiques of 20th Century Socialism and his explanation of the Capital System as a metabolic system, that must be broken down and replaced by a completely new metabolism.

And of course Gilbert reminds people in the US, Canada and Europe that they should be pressuring their governments to end the inhumane sanctions on Venezuela.

We hope you enjoy this episode. We want to thank all of our patrons for your support. If you like what we do and can afford a small monthly or yearly contribution, head over to patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Our podcast is 100% funded by our patrons and we put out new episodes every week.

Links:

The piece this episode is in dialogue with 

Part 1 of our discussion Gilbert & Marquina's book Venezuela The Present As Struggle

Part 2 of that discussion.

Huge Chávez's speech "Golpe De Timon" or "Strike At The Helm"

Hugo Chavez's - Aló Presidente Teórico #1 (since we coudln't find a full English translation we linked two related pieces: Venezuelanalysis /Utopix on Aló Presidente Teórico #1  

Angel Prado The Commune Holds the Solution to the Crisis

A film referenced by Gilbert on the episode as well: 5 Factories Film - Worker Control In Venezuela 

Our music is by Televangel 

In this conversation we interview Tracy Rosenthal who is a co-founder of the Los Angeles Tenants Union. Their book, Abolish Rent, written with Leonardo Vilchis, is forthcoming from Verso. 

We talk to Tracy about their recent piece “Inside LA’s Homeless Industrial Complex” which discusses the aftermath of LA’s Echo Park encampment from 2020, and current trends in social control with respect to unhoused people in Los Angeles. Tracy examines the relationship between police and ostensibly social service oriented nonprofit organizations in developing new forms of carceral containment, under the auspices of so-called interim housing. 

We also talk a bit about some of the organizing that unhoused folks are undertaking in response to these trends. As well as the work Tracy and others are doing with the LA Tenants Union and the Autonomous Tenants Union Network. 

And we are as always working to maintain our capacity to bring you these shows as frequently as we do. Doing that requires monetary support. We appreciate every single one of our patrons. If you are looking to join them in financially sustaining this show, you can become a patron for as little as $10.80/year, or $1/month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. And if you’re not able to give monetarily, boost the patreon link on your social media or share an episode with someone. It all helps.

Music for our podcast is provided by Televangel. 

Articles discussed in the episode: 

“Inside LA’s Homeless Industrial Complex”

"101 Notes On The LA Tenants Union"

Tenant Organizing: LA Tenants Union and the Autonomous Tenants Union Network. 

 

In this episode we welcome Dani Manibat to the podcast.

Dani Manibat is an organizer in the National Democratic Movement in the Philippines and this article was written for the journal Material. Recently we hosted another conversation with J. Moufawad-Paul on Settler Ideology on our YouTube channel. 

A little bit about Material from their website:

“Material’s editorial framework is guided by a Maoist perspective, and so, this journal is a platform for contending schools of thought with non-antagonistic contradictions—for revolutionary communist thought: the kind of thinking that agrees capitalism cannot be reformed, that actual revolutionary work is required, and that collaboration with any kind of liberal or conservative thinking is exactly that, collaboration.”

Dani’s essay, “The Marxist Framework and Attitude on Social Investigation and Class Analysis” is available for free online and I’ve linked it in the show notes. I have also included a link to Foreign Languages Press, which is a great press for Marxist work, particularly from the Maoist perspective, but also including many classics of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism in their webshop.

From the article description: “This essay is an ongoing product of discussions and conferences among Filipino Marxist and national democratic youth organizers as we attempt to deepen our understanding of Social Investigation and Class Analysis (SICA) work. It is in this light that not only is there a necessity to underline the importance of SICA work for the Filipino youth, but also to give some pointers on what to look for, what to watch out for, as well as have theoretical discussions on social classes.”

I’ll add that this conversation and the essay work well together, you can get more of the theory behind SICA and how one might think about the process perhaps from the essay itself, where as here we have a wider ranging conversation on practice and some examples of how these things might look in the day to day. 

There is a portion of the conversation where Dani references a graphic, I will note that section when we get there. I have uploaded the video from that section of the interview so people can see the graphic that Dani is describing as he is talking about that. And I will link that in the show notes. 

To support our work please become a patreon of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

the video of Dani explaining class alignments

“The Marxist Framework and Attitude on Social Investigation and Class Analysis”

Foreign Languages Press

FLP's webshop.

Material's webpage

 

In this episode Dr. Jared Ball returns to the podcast. Jared Ball is a professor of communication studies at Morgan State University. He is the author of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power and I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto and he is the co-editor along with Dr. Todd Steven Burroughs of the book A Lie Of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X. 

He is one of the founders of Black Power Media and the host of the iMiXWHATiLIKE program, which can be found on that platform. He is also a co-host of BPM’s Remix morning show. 

This time around we focus on his work in the realm of media criticism.  In particular Jared has for many years engaged in criticism around representations of Black Radical figures in both mainstream media and academic work created for the mass market. 

In this conversation we talk about the tactics used to distort, misrepresent, or erase entirely the legacies of figures like Malcolm X and Kwame Ture. We also get Jared’s take on whether or not Judas and the Black Messiah represents a break from a history of demonization of Black revolutionaries in US mainstream media.

On top of that we have a lot of fun talking about some of Jared Ball’s favorite radical movies.

We encourage folks to watch and support Black Power Media if you don’t already, you can find them on YouTube or at BlackPowerMedia.org. And we’ll include links to some of Jared Ball’s work that informed this discussion.

Thank you as always to all of our patrons for your support. And if you like what we do, our conversations are totally supported by our listeners. You can become a patron for as little as $10.80 per year, or a dollar a month over at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

BlackPowerMedia.org

imixwhatilike.org

Prior appearances of Jared Ball on MAKC

Great Harlem Debates (Jared Ball cites this in the show with reference to Barack Obama's presidency)

Journalism For Liberation and Combat Seminar Series 

The Vernon Philosophy of Black Media Avoidance

Defining Black Power: Jared Ball Debates Peniel Joseph

The Assassinations of Malcolm X Literal and Posthumous: A Contributors Roundtable

Myth: The Malcolm X Movie is Accurate (w/ Dr. Jared Ball) - The Black Myths Podcast Bonus Cut

Revolutionary Reflections, Revolutionary Vision: Kwame Ture at 80

From Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism

Selma, Media and Dr. John Henrik Clarke Remembered

Judas & the Black Messiah - JAB's first thoughts  & Chairman Fred Hampton Jr & Rosa Clemente discuss Judas & The Black Messiah with Jared Ball

 

 

In this episode we interview two organizers to discuss the struggle for National Democracy in the Philippines and solidarity with that struggle.

Jen Benitez has been a community organizer with the Philippine-US Solidarity Organization since 2019. Her family is indigenous Zapotec migrants from Oaxaca, Mexico. Her desire to support the Filipino people’s struggle for justice stems from a shared history of colonialism, forced migration and anti-imperialist solidarity between Mexico, the U.S., and the Philippines. 

Jaz Tabar is a cultural worker and community organizer with Anakbayan Long Beach as well as a regional leader for BAYAN Southern California. Since they started organizing in 2017, they have been able to study and apply the revolutionary history and lessons of Filipino resistance to their own experiences as a diasporic Filipino organizing to build a mass movement for the achievement of National Democracy in the Philippines!

Both Jaz and Jen get into more detail on their organizations in the episode.

In conversation they talk about what drew them both to organizing in solidarity with the masses in the Philippines. And talk about the struggle for National Democracy in the Philippines against what they describe as the three basic problems, feudalism, bureaucrat capitalism, and imperialism. 

They discuss their political education programs, which include a study of Philippine Society and Revolution (which can be found in this collection) and why they understand the Philippines as a semi-feudal, semi-colonial society.

They also talk about the campaign to pass the Philippine Human Rights Act and end US military aid or so called “security assistance” to the Philippines.

They discuss why their organizations have a history of calling for the ousting of dictators in the Philippines, a call that they continue with the new heads of state Bongbong Marcos & Sara Duterte.

Jaz & Jennifer also explain the context of red-tagging and anti-terrorism laws in the Philippines and the way these efforts provide a blanket pretext for the silencing of dissent and other forms of violent, carceral and even deadly repression both in the Philippines and among the international solidarity movements.

We also have a discussion of the importance of land reform for the Philippine masses, as a society that is made up of 75% peasants. 

We will include some more ways people can get involved below.

And again if you like what we do, new months always do mean that some patrons can’t renew with us for financial reasons. We’ve set a modest goal of adding 15 patrons again this month to keep up with those monthly declines. We want to thank those who have continued to support us and if you haven’t become a patron yet, please do so for as little as $1 a month so we can continue to bring you content like this every week. You can become a patron at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Links:

PUSO: https://linktr.ee/puso.socal

PUSO IG: @puso.socal

Philippine Human Rights Act: humanrightsph.org 

Anakbayan IG: @anakbayanusa

BAYAN IG: @bayan_usa

Anakbayan LB: @anakbayanlb 

 

In this episode we interview Dr. Mary Helen Washington. Mary Helen Washington is an accomplished African-American literary scholar and the editor and author of many books including Midnight Birds and Black-eyed Susans: Stories by and about Black Women, Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women 1860-1960, Memories of Kin, and the book we focus on in this discussion on The Other Blacklist: The African-American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s.

Mary Helen Washington is also a  Distinguished Professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. She previously served as the president of the American Studies Association. Washington worked for many years developing Black Studies programs, including in Detroit where she has stated she was “part of the ground troops helping in the activities of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), an offshoot of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.”

In this conversation we specifically focus on the work of Gwendolyn Brooks prior to her joining the Black Arts Movement in the late 1960’s, within the Black cultural and literary left that Washington analyzes in The Other Blacklist. 

Mary Helen Washington situates Brooks within this Black cultural milieu as a member of the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood and as someone who was connected and had relationships to Black communists, and other communists and progressives as well as to cultural institutions and magazines of the Popular Front.

Washington highlights Brooks' attentiveness to working class concerns and critiques of racism both interpersonally and institutionally in her writing as far back as the 1940’s. She also highlights Brooks’ work in dialogue with critiques reflected by other communist and progressive Black women of her era, including Claudia Jones, Lorraine Hansberry and Alice Childress. In doing so, Washington argues that Brooks’ work offers early blueprints for Black Left Feminism operating within her poetry, essays and her novel Maud Martha.

The discussion is also firmly attentive to the racial politics and the anticommunism of the 1950’s, in which racially radical or progressive analyses were automatically cause for suspicion, surveillance, and potentially repression. 

Additionally, Mary Helen Washington talks about other important figures from her book The Other Blacklist including other communist and leftwing Black figures of the 1950’s including visual artist Charles White, and authors Lloyd Brown, Alice Childress, and Frank London Brown.

We want to thank all of the patrons who support our show. We are funded solely by our listeners and patrons. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month or 10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

 

In this episode we interview Matt Deitsch, artist, journalist, organizer and former founder and director of March For Our Lives. 

This episode is a bit different from many of ours. Rarely have we engaged with the politics of gun control, or with an area so tightly situated and controlled within the arena of electoral politics and non profit organizing. But we felt that interviewing Matt offered a unique opportunity to examine the politics of gun control in the so-called United States, and the relationship between movements against gun violence and mass shooters and the Democratic Party, their think tanks, well funded non profit organizations and the ruling class. 

Matt presents a specifically interesting perspective, as someone who was activated by the devastating gun violence in Parkland Florida, and politicized through the organizing efforts they and others undertook through their organization March For Our Lives. Also as someone who provides a highly critical reflection around the work they and others undertook in relation to that movement, but who also believes they learned valuable lessons for mass organizing.

Along other things Matt talks about organizing as youth, the strengths, limitations and contradictions of that, discusses moments of dialogue with other organizers and youth, particularly ones from different class and racial backgrounds and how these relationships and discussions altered their own political viewpoint around the scope of issues of violence. As someone who has spent much of the last 4 years deeply involved in electoral organizing, Matt cautions against the amount of energy put into it and highlights some of the forces most invested in that use of organizer time and effort.

Ultimately Matt argues for the essential work of political education, of building power outside of the electoral arena, and holding a political horizon based in anti-imperialism, abolition, and socialism. They draw out linkages of different forms of violence and highlights the bipartisan influence of the police state and the military industrial complex on the politics of gun control reform as an antidote to violence, within the politics of either dominant party.

Just as a note, this episode was recorded prior to the new bipartisan gun legislation or the court’s recent decision around concealed carry restrictions, which would likely have had minimal impact on the discussion. It was also recorded before the courts officially gutted Roe. But there are many cautionary perspectives and suggested approaches that we think warrant consideration and are relevant to a new generation of people hopefully pushed into action by the violence of all aspects of the US state.

Lastly just want to thank all of our patrons for your support. These are difficult times for everyone with rising costs, and our show is totally dependent upon your support. So if you like what we do and want to contribute to our work please become a patron at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

In this episode we interview Dr. Dorothy Roberts.

Dorothy Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Penn Program on Race, Science, and Society. The author of four books, including Killing the Black Body, Fatal Invention and Shattered Bonds. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  

In this conversation we’re honored to host Dr. Dorothy Roberts to discussed her latest book Torn Apart: How The Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—And How Abolition Can Build A Safer World. 

We talk to Dr. Roberts about how family policing or the so-called child welfare system functions within a larger carceral web in the United States. She talks about the geographic zones of family policing and discusses the origins of our family policing system in slavery, settler colonialism and Elizabethan poor laws.

Roberts discusses the deep ableism that undergirds the family policing system and talks about how family policing has been a frontline for the war on drugs. She talks about how the system overwhelmingly disrupts predominantly Black and Brown families in the US, along with those of poor white people, noting that it also criminalizes children and is in many ways indistinguishable from other parts of the prison industrial complex.

Along the way, Dr. Roberts lifts up the many struggles of families against this system, with stories of the ways the system terrorizes families, as well as the many ways that people are organizing against the system. As we close the conversation, these examples of resistance, mutual aid and organizing provide a foundation for building a reality in which family policing is abolished and replaced by a much more powerful network of care that is more effective at preventing and resolving issues of familial violence and abuse.

We are only able to bring you episodes like this due to the support of our listeners. You can support us at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year. We are down a few patrons again this month, so if some new folks can join in and support that’d be really helpful in ensuring we can continue to bring you these episodes on a weekly basis. 

UPDATE: Transcript of the episode is now available here.

In this episode we interview Karim from Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (NYC) and author Wendy Trevino. 

Karim is an anti-prison, anti-police anarcho-communist. And an author of the book Burn Down The American Plantation.

Wendy Trevino was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. She lives and works in San Francisco. She is the author of Brazilian Is Not a Race and Cruel Fiction. Wendy is not an experimental writer.

This conversation is a bit different than many of ours. We wanted to have a critical conversation about the western left’s response to the war in Ukraine, but often we associate anti-imperialist analyses with Marxist-Leninists.  Within the anarchist left and other parts of the western left there are those who support the Ukrainian war effort for various reasons. Although we don’t often take explicit positions as a platform, we at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism think any support for the Ukrainian war effort is mistake. Josh has co-hosted a conversation on their other platform Return To The Source podcast, and now we host this one here.

In this episode Karim and Wendy provide an analysis of the situation in Ukraine, and they grapple with several of the common misconceptions or positions they encounter. They also talk about the state of affairs for the antifascist movement in the US. And they remind folks that there are many other international struggles that need support, and that there are struggles that need to continue to be waged against fascism, borders, and prisons right here in the belly of the beast.

It’s a new month and as always we need the support of our listeners to keep this show going. We truly appreciate all of the folks who do contribute to the show at whatever level they can, it means everything to us and to our ability to bring you these episodes weekly. Our only financial support for this show is the support from our listeners. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 per month and you get emails with each episode plus periodic invitations to study groups and things like that. We’ll have another study group starting up soon this summer. 

Links:

RAM-NYC

Burn Down The American Plantation: Call for a Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement

Cruel Fiction

Brazilian Is Not a Race (PDF)

 

In this episode we interview Ed Mead. Mead is a veteran of the revolutionary underground organization the George Jackson Brigade which operated in solidarity with prisoner, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist struggles. A prolific organizer and participant of prisoner struggles both inside and outside of prisons, Ed also co-founded the prisoner organization Men Against Sexism.

He also worked with a number of other organizations and struggles over the years including work with the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the Attica Brothers Legal Defense Committee, the National Lawyers Guild, Prison Legal News, and California Prison Focus. 

In this conversation we talk about some lessons along the way of Ed’s political development, from social prisoner to jailhouse lawyer to organizer to revolutionary to political prisoner. 

Ed offers unvarnished reflections from a life in struggle, characteristically with no holds barred for what he refers to as “the tamed left.” 

Our conversation was informed by Ed Mead’s autobiography Lumpen and by Daniel Burton-Rose’s books on the George Jackson Brigade. We will include a full list of sources in the show notes.

Links:

Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead

Theory and Practice of Armed Struggle in the Northwest: A Historical Analysis

Creating A Movement With Teeth: A Documentary History of the George Jackson Brigade

Guerilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970's

Sundiata Acoli's Support Fund

Washington Prison History Project Oral Histories

Abdul Alkalimat is a founder of the field of Black Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. A lifelong scholar-activist with a PhD from the University of Chicago, he has lectured, taught and directed academic programs across the US, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and China. His activism extends from having been chair of the Chicago chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s, to a co-founder of the Black Radical Congress in 1998.

This conversation is framed around his recent book The History of Black Studies. Alkalimat shares some of his background, and his experiences with the struggles for Black Studies in the 1960’s. We also talk about his role in the founding of the Institute of the Black World.

In discussing Black Studies, we ask Dr. Alkalimat about the ideological strains that make it up, the origins of it as an academic discipline, and what Black Studies looked like before it was allowed into the academy and how it continues to look outside of the academy.

A focus in this conversation is a discussion about social movements and the type of knowledge that is examined within them and the type of knowledge that is produced by them. Within this, we get into discussion about the role of cadre development and mass political education in social movements, and the role that Alkalimat thinks Black Studies can and should still play for these struggles. 

We close with some discussion of the work Dr. Alkalimat is currently doing with the Southern Workers Assembly to organize the South. 

In the show notes, we’ll include links to several of the resources Abdul Alkalimat talks about in the episode.

Thank you again to all of the folks who continue to support us on patreon. If you want to support our work our greatest need right now is for patrons who support on a monthly basis, you can do that for as little as $1 a month. And if you don’t want the monthly payment, you can also make a yearly contribution. You can find our patreon at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Now here is our conversation with Abdul Alkalimat on The History of Black Studies.

Links:

The History of Black Studies

The Future of Black Studies (forthcoming)

Abdul Alkalimat's website & weekly listserv

Southern Workers Assembly

The Wall of Respect

New Philadelphia 

The cited conversation with Africa World Now Project

In this conversation we interview Steven Osuna to discuss his piece “Class Suicide: The Black Radical Tradition, Radical Scholarship, and the Neoliberal Turn” from the 2017 collection Futures of Black Radicalism.

Steven Osuna is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at California State University, Long Beach. He is a scholar of racism and political economy; globalization, transnationalism, and immigration; and policing and criminalization.

Steven was born and raised in Echo Park, Los Angeles and is a son of Mexican and Salvadoran working-class migrants. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Homies Unidos-Los Angeles and a member of the Philippines US Solidarity Organization (PUSO).

In this episode Josh interviews Osuna, to discuss the role of the academic who sees their work as in solidarity with movements for the working class, anti-imperialist movements, and struggles for socialism and communism.

Osuna talks about the concept of class suicide as put forth by Amilcar Cabral and additionally embodied in the theory and practice of figures like Frantz Fanon and Walter Rodney. Steven also talks about his own experiences as a student of Cedric Robinson. And Steven talks about Robinson’s notion of the Black Radical Tradition alongside his own background and interest coming out of the Marxist tradition through learning about the El Salvadoran communist movement and also bringing an interest in liberation theology.

Ultimately the conversation is concerned with how someone taking on a petty bourgeois position, and gaining access to the resources available in a place like a university can actually use that position and those resources in material solidarity with concrete working class struggles. Osuna does not mean this to be an abstraction, for him it means participating in working class, anti-imperialist movements and doing so by lending whatever labor those movements need rather than the position that might feel most comfortable to the petty bourgeois academic.

Big shout-out to our new supporters on patreon and folks who have continued to support us. Our work is totally funded by our listeners and so we appreciate every dollar folks are able to give to keep this podcast going. If you would like to become a patron you can do so at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism at whatever you can afford, and your support makes this show possible.

In this episode we welcome back Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò. Táíwò is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University.

Earlier this year we interviewed him to talk about his book Reconsidering Reparations.

In this episode we talk about his latest book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) which hits book stores this week. 

In this conversation we talk about elite capture as a concept. We talk about how elite capture has morphed dominant understandings of what folks mean by the term “identity politics” in stark contrast to the version of it put forth in the Combahee River Collective Statement back in 1977. 

Femi dispels notions that the ways elites have captured and reappropriated this term are unique to identity politics, and argues persuasively that in fact elite capture is a system behavior that shows up in all kinds of places and ways within our social systems, and that social movements and our radical ideas are not immune to this process. 

We also talk about some other examples and versions of elite capture big and small that are occurring all the time, and talk about how we might best fight back against this phenomenon. 

In addition we get some discussion of what Táíwò refers to as deference politics, as well as politics that are based around trauma. Including some of the things that he thinks these approaches get right, and some of the things that they get wrong and ways we might differently engage the problems they seek to address.

And we also get into some discussions around the attention economy and Femi touches on privilege discourse as well. 

We’ve continued to take some hits to our patronage for the show lately. We just want to say that we know times are tough for everyone financially right now and we just really want to give a shout-out to everyone who is continuing to give what they can to support the show. If you haven’t become a patron yet, it’s the best way you can support our ability to bring these conversations week after week. You can do that at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year.

Now here is our conversation with Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò on Elite Capture

Elite Capture from Haymarket Books

Elite Capture from Pluto Press

Other items referenced in the show:

How We Get Free by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The conversation between Asad Haider and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on socialism and identity politics.

Our own discussions with Barbara Smith of the Combahee River Collective

 

This is part two of a two-part discussion on two of Joy James' recent books. This part of the discussion is focused on Contextualizing Angela Davis: The Agency and Identity of an Icon   Part one of the conversation was on New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the (After)Life of Erica Garner (Common Notions).   MAKC Host Josh Briond is joined by special guest hosts Akua N and Noah Tesfaye for this conversation.   Joy James is the Ebenezer Fitch Professor of the Humanities at Williams College. A political philosopher who works with organizers seeking social justice and an end to militarism, James is the editor of The Angela Y. Davis Reader; Imprisoned Intellectuals; and co-editor of The Black Feminist Reader. James’s most recent books include:  In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love; New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the (After)Life of Erica Garner; and, Contextualizing Angela Davis: The Agency and Identity of an Icon. Her forthcoming volumes ENGAGE: Indigenous, Black, Afro-Indigenous Futures and Beyond Cop Cities will be published this summer and fall.   James' website and instagram page (@captivematernalstruggles) which we are using to update and archive talks, events, essays, etc. Please feel free to follow and tag us/post collab when the episode is live.   Akua N is a Chicago-based doctoral student in education policy studies, exploring the intersection of mass media, counterinsurgency, white supremacy, and schooling in capitalist contexts.   Noah Tesfaye is a researcher and organizer based in the Bay Area. His work focuses on the political philosophy of the Republic of New Afrika and New Afrikan Independence Movement, particularly in its relationship to contemporary organizing around self-determination for Black people within the "United States."    This episode is edited and produced by Aidan Elias   Links:    Steinem Papers   Pendleton 2 (our episode with links on ways to support/connect)   Sekou Odinga & James at the Death Penalty Conference:  This is the exchange Prof. James mentioned with the young Black activist and the panel. I have linked the video below with the time stamps

• The young activist question: (1:55:00)
• Baba Sekou's Response: (2:08:00)
• James' Response: (2:16:18)

How to Live (after we die): On Protest, Social Media, and queer Black death - Logos Journal   Slave Rebel or Citizen (Inquest)   Our roundtable on Kuwasi Balagoon   Marcuse's Most Famous Student: Angela Davis On Critical Theory and German Idealism by Joy James     Links for Book Purchasing:   New Bones Abolition (2023)   Contextualizing Angela Davis (2024)   Beyond Cop Cities (August 2024)

In this episode we interview David Austin, and discuss his book Moving Against The System: The 1968 Congress of Black Writers and the Making of Global Consciousness.

David Austin is the author of Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal and Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution. He has also produced radio documentaries for CBC Ideas on the life and work of both CLR James and Frantz Fanon. A former youth worker and community organizer, he currently teaches in the Humanities, Philosophy and Religion Department at John Abbott College and in the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. 

For Moving Against The System Austin provided an introduction and compiled and edited the speeches from the Congress of Black Writers.

In this conversation we talk with David Austin about the context of this historic gathering in Montreal, Canada in 1968, amid the rising tide of the Black Power Movement. We ask Austin about the involvement of key figures from the congress including Kwame Ture, Walter Rodney, CLR James, James Forman, and Richard B. Moore among many others.

David Austin also shares some great insights from the intellectual and political practice of CLR James, and the proliferation of study circles with which James engaged directly.

We ask about some of the contradictions and debates that come up in the Congress around the presence or role of whites, questions of Black Nationalism and socialism, varying analyses around class and race, lessons to be derived from African history, the omission of women from the group of presenters, and some of the generational divides. 

Finally, David shares some great reflections on the vibrancy of Black internationalism in the middle of the 20th Century, further highlighting figures like CLR James and Walter Rodney, and discussing Claudia Jones as an example as well.

If you’re interested in picking up this book, its part of the Black Critique series from Pluto Press.

And if you like the work that we do and are able to support, we definitely need new patrons to continue to sustain our work. You can support the show over on patreon for as little as $1 a month and it’s a great way to keep up with the podcast, and also you get notified when new rounds of our study group open up.

Several of Austin's works, including Moving Against The System are available also through Canadian publisher Between The Lines.

This is part 2 of a 2 part conversation with the editors and contributors to a book called How We Stay Free: Notes on a Black Uprising. This book is edited by Christopher R. Rogers, Fajr Muhammad and the Paul Robeson House & Museum and is a great testament to the local dimensions of the Black uprising in Philadelphia in the months after the murder of George Floyd. 

In this part of the conversation we talk to Gabriel Bryant and Abdul-Aliy Muhammad. These conversations were recorded separately, just due to availability, but are presented here as a unified whole. 

Gabriel Bryant is an organizer and youth advocate for groups that have included Sankofa Community Empowerment and Philadelphia Community Bail Fund. 

Abdul-Aliy Muhammad is a Philadelphia-born writer and organizer. They often write about Blackness, bodily autonomy and medical surveillance.

In this conversation both Gabe and Abdul-Aliy offer reflections on the Philly Black Radical Collective and on the long work of organizing outside of the spectacle of the mass mobilization. Gabe talks about some of the nuts and bolts of community organizing and building power as well as some recent developments in solidarity organizing for political prisoners including Mumia Abu Jamal’s latest campaign #LoveNotPhear.

Abdul-Aliy talks about their piece from How We Stay Free, which is titled “Black Trans Lives Matter.” They talk about organizing in defense of Black Trans and Black Queer lives and working with Dominque “Rem’mie” Fells’ family after Dominque was murdered in 2020.

Featured in this conversation are also two songs from Gabe, whose stage name is Gabriel Prosser, a nod to the enslaved abolitionist who planned a massive slave rebellion in Virginia at the turn of the 19th Century. We’ll include links to Gabe’s bandcamp in the show notes.

After the interviews with Abdul Aliy and Gabriel, How We Stay Free editors Christopher Rogers and Fajr Muhammad rejoin a discussion of other struggles ongoing in Philadelphia.

In the show notes, we’ll include links to buy How We Stay Free, and possibly get a solidarity copy for a student, elder, organizer or political prisoner.

And if you like what we do, we’re still trying to get our patreon back where it was a few months ago. We’re only down about $20 this month as we release this episode, so if a few of you can commit to $1 a month or more, or a small yearly pledge, we should be able to make that up.

Black Philly Radical Collective

Abdul-Aliy's piece "As Philadelphia mourns Dominique ‘Rem’mie’ Fells, Black trans lives still matter"

Our previous conversation with BPRC organizers Megan Malachi & Robert Saleem Holbrook

Abdul-Aliy Muhammad's latest on the struggle for MOVE family members to recover their children's remains

Gabriel Prosser Bandcamp

Songs featured in the episode:

“New Season” Gabriel Prosser featuring Verse Mega 

“F.U.T.U.R.E.” Gabriel Prosser featuring Blak Rapp Madusa - 

This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation with the editors and contributors to a book called How We Stay Free: Notes on a Black Uprising. This book is edited by Christopher R. Rogers, Fajr Muhammad and the Paul Robeson House & Museum and is a great testament to the local dimensions of the Black uprising in Philadelphia in the months after the murder of George Floyd. 

In this conversation Chris and Fajr introduce themselves and talk about the book and its contents and authors, which include many important activists and organizers here in Philadelphia. After that, we talk to organizers Sterling Johnson and Wiley Cunningham from Philadelphia Housing Action.  They talk about the monumental housing struggles in Philadelphia during 2020, giving credit to their fellow housing activist Jennifer Bennetch, who passed away just recently at only 36 years old.

They talk about many aspects of this complicated struggle which included a squatting movement as well as multiple encampments and complex negotiations with both Philadelphia Housing Authority and the City of Philadelphia. Although they offer understandable caution with regard to what they actually won, this struggle was historic in its scale as well as in the agreements that were leveraged through direct action. It is a struggle that warrants deeper examination by housing activists in Philadelphia and around the world, as the forces of capitalism continue to dispossess the most vulnerable.

At the end of the discussion Chris brings in a note on one of the big housing campaigns currently underway in Philly, the struggle to Save the UC Townhomes, a public housing facility that the owner is attempting to sell, a move that will cause dozens of Black families to be evicted by July 22nd if it cannot be stopped through organization and direct action. 

You can buy How We Stay Free, and possibly get a solidarity copy for a student, elder, organizer or political prisoner.

And if you like what we do, we’re still trying to get our patreon back where it was a few months ago. We’re  only down about $20 this month as we release this episode, so if a few of you can commit to $1 a month or more, or a small yearly pledge, we should be able to make that up. 

Links:

How We Stay Free

Paul Robeson House & Museum Website/Paul Robeson House & Museum Twitter

Philadelphia Housing Action/Philadelphia Housing Action Twitter/Timeline

Save The UC Townhomes/Save UC Townhomes Twitter