In this episode we interview Cappy, an organizer from UprisingSupport.org. In response to massive state repression during the George Floyd rebellions, Uprising Support is a website that was founded by a small group of folks who have a background in doing anti-repression organizing and education. Three years after the George Floyd uprising many people are locked up behind the walls for taking bold action amid the largest mass protests of many of our lifetimes. 

We really encourage everyone to listen to this episode, it’s a great practical discussion about organizing, about anti-repression work and its relationship to political prisoner support and abolitionist organizing. There are many valuable lessons for people engaged in prisoner support work of any kind, but also to newcomers, and to people who organize in other areas where repression is ultimately inevitable if you are organizing in any way that challenges the state or capitalism. 

Along the way Cappy talks about anti-repression work as memory work. As a mode of becoming more effective as organizers, as a way of extending networks of care, and a method of building resilience in our organizations and movements. 

You can check out the website at uprisingsupport.org and get involved.

And if you like the work that we do, we did not hit our goal for the month of August, and we do need your support to keep the show going. For as little as $1 a month, you can be a part of the amazing group of people who have made it possible for us to bring you 44 episodes already for 2023 patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. You will get emails with each of our episodes as well as when we relaunch our study group in a few weeks.

The Final Straw interview referenced in discussion

Uprising Support Contact Page 

In this conversation we welcome Eugene Puryear back to the podcast to talk about the recently published book The Black Belt Thesis: A Reader which was compiled by The Black Belt Thesis Study Group and features a foreword by Eugene Puryear.

The reader itself was published by 1804 Books, and they have published a lot of really good stuff recently that I just want to take a moment to shout-out. They recently along with the Palestinian Youth Movement translated and published The Trinity of Fundamentals which hopefully we will be hosting a conversation on at some point soon. They also recently published a translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine and of course the collection of Hugo Chavez’s speeches that we discussed with Manolo de los Santos last year and much more. So I just say that to say if you go pick this book up from them, that there is a bunch of really good stuff you can grab while you’re there.

Eugene Puryear is a journalist, activist, politician, and host on Breakthrough News. He is a founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and is the author of Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America.

In this discussion we ask Eugene to contextualize the origins of the Black Belt thesis, to discuss some of the articulations and development of the thesis as undertaken by Comintern and the CPUSA. We discuss some of the organizing implications of it, its role in the development of the US communist movement particularly with regards to Black people, and the challenging of the problem of white racism as it exists within the history of the US left and white workers as well. Also Eugene discusses the centrality of national oppression within the political economy of US capitalism. 

Along the way we talk about some of the contributions from figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, Harry Haywood, Louis Thompson Patterson, Claudia Jones and others. 

A couple of other things I want to highlight is that we have been hosting a lot of conversations over on our YouTube page recently the majority of which we have not released as audio episodes. We will link that in the show notes, but also you can just find it by searching Millennials Are Killing Capitalism on YouTube. 

The other thing I want to note is we do have another round of our study group starting back up. For this cycle we will be reading Orisanmi Burton’s amazing book Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression and the Long Attica Revolt. I can’t wait to read that text and discuss it with folks so sign up for that if you’re interested it will be on Wednesday nights at 7:30 PM ET starting on April 17th it is for patrons of the show and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. And as always the best way to support our work is to become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

The Black Belt Thesis: A Reader

Millennials Are Killing Capitalism on YouTube

Tip of the Spear Reading Group (for patrons)

Credits:

This episode is co-hosted by Joshua Briond and Jared Ware. It is co-produced by Aidan Elias and Jared Ware. Our guest for this episode is Eugene Puryear. Our music is from Televangel.

This is the conclusion of our two-part discussion with Dr. Jared A. Ball on the release of the second edition of his book The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. Part one can be found here.

Once again, Jared Ball is the host of imixwhatilike and co-host of Earn Your Liberation and the RemiX Morning Show over on Black Power Media. 

He works as Professor of Africana and Communication Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. His decades of journalism, media, writing, and political work can be found at imixwhatilike.org. 

In this part of the discussion we talk a little bit about hip hop and its modern relation to corporations and social media influencers. Content warning on that conversation especially for fans of modern hip hop music, as Jared Ball and Jared Ware both turn into old men shaking our fists at clouds and telling children to get off our lawns during that portion of the discussion.

Jared Ball talks a bit more about how nonsensical it is to confront his work around “Black Buying Power” with a demand for an alternative solution. From there we get into the After Party concept that Dr. Ball has shared on his platforms over the years, and get into some discussion of Green Party politics and Dr. Cornel West’s campaign. All in all it’s a pretty free ranging conversation where we discuss a variety of different topics. We had a lot of fun doing it and we hope you enjoy it half as much as we enjoyed recording it. 

We did record it a month ago back on June 20th. So you’ll note at the end we referenced the launch party for the second edition, which unfortunately we weren’t able to get this episode out in time to help promote, but we will link a recording of that in the show notes.

We will link to some other places folks can learn more about the book, as well as a link to where you can purchase a copy. 

We do want to mention that Black Power Media did get a strike from YouTube for their H8 Awards so their new content this week will be on Twitch, Twitter and Facebook, until they have served their 7 day sentence for that. You can also find all of the relevant links and information at blackpowermedia.org including ways to donate and support their work.

And last but not least if you like what we do, please become a patron of the show if you have the means to do so. You can do that for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Launch Party for the second edition of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power

Our first conversation with Dr. Ball on the The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power

Discussions on the Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power

Purchase the hardback or e-book of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power

Our conversation with Dr. Ball from the Journalism For Liberation and Combat Session 1: Internal Colonialism & Emancipatory Journalism with Dr. Jared A. Ball

"A Threat To This Day" Jared Ball on the Distortion and Erasure of Black Revolutionaries in Corporate Media

In the episode members of the Kenya Organic Intellectuals Network returns to the podcast. Folks will recall that we had a conversation with them last year on their book Breaking the Silence on NGOs in Africa. 

This conversation started thinking about the situation in Haiti. We previously had a discussion with Dr. Jemima Pierre on the current situation and the western backed invasion of Haiti for which Kenya is sending police. But also I was interested in how the struggle in Palestine was being received in Kenya both at a governmental level and among the masses. Along those lines, often Sudan, Congo, and Haiti are raised up as other examples of genocide, of imperialism, of terrible violence and humanitarian catastrophe as people seek to expand our analysis of what’s happening in Palestine beyond that individual conflict. I wanted to get their perspectives on all of these situations as folks who organize from a Pan African Scientific Socialist perspective from the Kenyan context. 

Just a note that May 25th is African Liberation Day and we also hosted a conversation with the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party on our YouTube channel the other day.

Our guests are Gacheke Gachihi, Lewis Maghanga, Okakah Onyango, and Wanjiru Wanjira.

Gacheke Gachihi is the Coordinator of Mathare Social Justice Centre and a member of the Organic Intellectuals Network.

Lewis Maghanga is a member of the Organic Intellectuals Network and an organiser with the Revolutionary Socialist League based in Kenya. 

Okakah Onyango is a member of the Revolutionary Socialist League, Organic Intellectuals Network and Social Justice Movement. He is a dedicated tech-driven community organizer, blending roles of revolutionary intellectualism and communications strategist. 

Wanjira Wanjiru is a social justice advocate and artivist with a decade of experience as a grassroot human rights defender. She is Co- founder of the Mathare Social Justice centre and coordinator of Matigari kids book club where children learn about pan-african history. She is a writer with the Kenya Organic Intellectuals Network and co-host of Liberating Minds podcast, a history channel on Youtube. She is also working with the African Social Justice Network team in South Africa and Zambia.

After we recorded this episode Mathare experienced major floods. We’ve included a video of Wanjira discussing the floods. There was also a mass arrest of human rights defenders at the Mathare Social Justice Centre. We encourage folks to reach out to the Mathare Social Justice Centre to see if there are ways that we can provide support. And I would just note that in this discussion obviously we focused so much on struggles elsewhere and its important to connect and look for ways to support these comrades in their struggles as well.

We hope that people will connect with these comrades to discuss how they can learn more from them and coordinate struggles with them as they suggest in the episode.

I will just note I know a majority of our work has been on the Youtube side in recent months, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube feed so that you can access all of that content as well. We do have a lot of audio work that needs to be edited and released as well and we’re working to find the right balance to get that work done. To support our work as always become a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

This episode was recorded on March 28, 2024

Music is provided as always by Televangel

Links: 

Mathare Social Justice Centre 

Revolutionary Socialist League (Kenya) 

Liberating Minds podcast 

Pio Gama Pinto book

Breaking the Silence on NGOs in Africa (Book)

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 20 year old organizer Calla Walsh to talk about her experiences as a co-founder of Palestine Action US, as well as the political repression she and others have faced in the case of the Merrimack 4. She talks about why we should view their case as a win, and underlines the need for continued escalation for Palestine thirteen months into the genocidal response to Al-Aqsa Flood

In this interview she offers in-depth discussion of the importance of risk-taking, and the problems of defeatist narratives about taking direct action. It is also a sober set of reflections, criticisms, and self-criticism about the last year in the Palestine solidarity movement in the US. There are also reflections on the lack of strong ethics around movement defense in this time and principles of basic solidarity towards those facing repression even if there may be legitimate criticisms people may have of their actions. Calla also offers an analysis of some of the distinctions between Palestine Action UK and Palestine Action US and how Calla thinks we need to re-orient approaches to direct action for Palestine given these differences.

It is important to note that Palestine Action UK continues to face a lot of repression and continues to have significant successes as well in the UK. We have a recent discussion with Huda Ammori which we encourage you all to listen to, in order to learn more about that, and see ways you can support Palestine Action in the UK.

I really encourage people who listen to this, to write to Calla and other members of the Merrimack 4 while they are in jail.  All of their contact information is below.

If you like what we do please become a patron of the show. You can do so for as little as $1 a month and we can only do what we do with the support of our listeners. We have an upcoming study group on George Jackson’s Blood In My Eye which will be starting up soon. Information on that will be available in the next week, but if you want to make sure you don’t miss that opportunity the best place to keep up to date with that and all our other work is by becoming a patron at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Related Discussions:

Ed Mead and Shaka Shakur

Support the Merrimack 4 in jail! (Mailing information)

On 14 November 2024, four Palestine actionists will begin their 60-day sentence in Valley Street Jail, Manchester, NH as punishment for dismantling the Elbit Systems facility in Merrimack, NH on 20 November 2023. 

Originally they were facing 5 felonies and 37 years in prison. See below information on how to send them letters, books, and commissary $ in jail! Make sure to follow all the jail's mailing guidelines or your letters won't be received.

Bridget's Address: Bridget Shergalis #67968, 445 Willow St, Manchester, NH 03103

Calla’s Address: Calla Walsh #67970, 445 Willow St, Manchester, NH 03103

Book wishlist: tinyurl.com/callabooklist

Paige’s Address: Paige Belanger #68132, 445 Willow St, Manchester, NH 03103

Book wishlist: tinyurl.com/paigebooklist

Sophie's address: Sophie Ross #67969, 445 Willow St, Manchester, NH 03103

They would love to receive books, letters, poems, and updates on the movement and world events. 

Mailing Guidelines: https://hcnh.org/Departments/Department-of-Corrections/Administration

“Items considered contraband include, but is not limited to, the following: postage stamps, letter writing supplies, mail order catalogs, Polaroid photos, paintings, perfumed paper, use of any marker, crayon, highlighter, or any questionable inks, tape, glue, Whiteout, glitter, stickers, body hair or fluids, newspaper/magazine clippings, pages cut/ripped out of any publication, unauthorized inmate to inmate correspondence, third party mail, gang graffiti or tagged correspondence (i.e., language, signs, symbols), anything laminated or spiral bound, posters and wall calendars.

Newspapers – Must be delivered via the US Postal Service and must include the inmate’s name and CCN otherwise it is considered undeliverable and will be disposed of.

Photos – only photos deemed acceptable for inmate possession will be forwarded to the inmate. Photos depicting gang symbols/signs, illegal activity, nudity, partial nudity, or exposure of genitalia is not allowed.

Books/Magazines – must be in NEW condition and directly from the publisher or a book store that sells ONLY new publications shipped via the US Postal Service. Used booksellers or third party retailers will not be accepted and returned to sender. Inmates are allowed only a minimal amount of books and magazines at a time. Any books or magazines received that exceed the amount allowed will be placed in the inmates property and can be requested by the inmate at a later date. [i.e. only ship from Amazon and Barnes & Nobles]

Publications that contain articles or subject matter considered detrimental to the good order of the facility, contain nudity, partial nudity or exposure of genitalia, or publications that are oversized or considered bulky are not allowed and will not be forwarded to the inmate but placed in their property until their release. Soft cover books are recommended.”

Commissary – Add money at accesscorrections.com (NH -> Hillsborough County -> search inmate name or CCN)

All letters are inspected before delivery; do not discuss any details of their case or anything you would not want to be read by a cop.

In this episode we interview Devyn Springer. This is the third episode we’ve recorded over the years with Springer, but the first since the summer of 2018. 

Devyn Springer is a cultural worker, community organizer, and independent researcher. They are a member of the Walter Rodney Foundation and the host of the Groundings podcast.

In this episode we revisit some of our discussion from 2017 on Walter Rodney, touching on How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, the dialectic of underdevelopment and development, and the apocalyptic impact of the transatlantic slave trade on the African continent. Devyn also shares insights on key issues facing African peoples today in Africa and across the diaspora. And Josh and Devyn discuss the continued relevance of Springer’s piece from 2017, Does The Western Left Have An Africa Problem? We also revisit concepts of the guerrilla intellectual and the misleadership class. Finally Devyn adds some thoughts on critical struggles for the Pan African Left today, including freeing political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal.

As always if you appreciate what we do and want to help sustain our work here at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, you can do so by contributing to our patreon. And just a note Devyn announces on this episode a forthcoming season of Groundings and multiple other projects they are working on, so remember to support their patreon as well.

In this conversation we talk to Ivan Stoiljkovic. 

Ivan is the General Secretary of Katarokwi Union of Tenants, the Kingston Peace Council and a member of the Communist Party of Canada.

This conversation is a part of a newer series of conversations where we talk to people about texts that they find politically useful and important. It’s a different approach that moves beyond a typical author talk - which we will continue to do - to engage theory and history with people who are seeking to put theory into practice, or organize with others to deal with the concrete situation they face. Our first episode that came from this idea was last month our discussion with Thandisizwe Chimurenga and Yusef “Bunchy” Shakur on the political writings of Sanyika Shakur. 

In this discussion we are talking about E.P. Thompson’s essay “Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism” 

In that discussion we discuss the imposition of time and time discipline that came with the onset of industrial capitalism. We talk a bit about the various ways that workers resisted the imposition of this sense of time, and then began to fight over time itself. Ultimately however, the fight is to abolish time, which can only be achieved through the abolition of capitalism. 

Prior to that discussion, we start with a little bit of Ivan’s personal and political history, including his childhood in socialist Yugoslavia, and then delve into a discussion of multiple aspects of Thompson’s essay. 

If you appreciate the work that we do, for August we have an ambitious goal of adding 50 patrons to the show. You can help us meet this goal by either increasing your pledge or pledging as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. This is just our second episode of August, but we plan to feature at least four more discussions this month. 

Links:

Ivan Stoiljkovic's Twitter

Ivan's FB Page

Katarokwi Union of Tenants FB page and website

The Yugoslavian leftist group called ‘Crvena Dijaspora’ which he describes in the discussion

E.P. Thompson’s essay “Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism” 

This is the third installment of our conversation with Zoharah and Michael Simmons, and their biographer Dan Berger, as we discuss their lives in relation to Dan’s new book Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey.  

We discuss Michael and Zoharah’s organizing against the Vietnam War, especially the issue of draft resistance.  Along those lines, we talk a bit about Michael’s time locked up as a pre-trial detainee at the Atlanta Prison Farm, during the period where it served as a jail for Atlanta on the same location where Cop City has been proposed. Zoharah shares struggles against patriarchy and male chauvinism within movement spaces, specifically through her experiences at SNCC and the Nation of Islam. And she discusses her own efforts to combat it as a SNCC Program Director in Laurel, Mississippi. 

After Michael’s incarceration for his resistance to the draft, both Michael and Zoharah talk about their years struggling within the American Friends Service Committee both in terms of their jobs there, but also the organizing that they launched beyond the scope of their duties, their struggles to unionize the AFSC, and dealing with the complicated relationship that a predominantly white Quaker organization had to folks like Michael, Zoharah and others who were coming out of the Black Liberation struggle with deep organizing commitments, experiences, and international solidarity. In particular Zoharah’s discussion touches on her participation in work uncovering government surveillance, repression, and counterinsurgency. Michael discusses organizing predominantly Black workers and other workers of color while also building growing connections and mobilizing solidarity with movements in Africa and South America.

We want to thank Pluto Press again for donating 36 copies of the book Of Black Study by Joshua Myers. You can support shipping costs to send those books inside here. 

And we have set a goal of adding 28 new patrons to the show this month to keep up with non-renewals and maintain our support base for the show. If you like what we do and want to join the amazing listeners who sustain this project, you can do so by contributing as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Also we do have a 3 week study group coming on Mao’s lectures On Practice and On Contradiction. If you want to find out more about that we’ll include a link to that in the show notes as well.

Even though this series represents one of our most sustained engagements with a subject, we also assure you that there are many wonderful stories and complicated struggle and issues covered in Stayed On Freedom that we were not able to get to in our discussion with Dan, Michael & Zoharah. We encourage folks to pick up the book if they haven’t already. 

Additional Links:

SNCC/Atlanta Project/Anti-Draft Protests 

The Draft Program / Atlanta's Black Paper

This week’s special report, features Hassan M. Hassan is a scientist and writer. He is a contributing editor for the Peoples Anti-Colonial Press and co-host at TheKulture.TV, a new weekly anti-imperialist roundup. He is currently researching the relationship between dialectical materialism and the history of the philosophy of science.

In special reports, we interview journalists, activists, scholars and organizers on shorter pieces. These might be essays, articles, short stories or even poems. “Special Reports” will be typically shorter than our full episodes, ranging somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour and will have a limited focus. Our goal with these is to talk about current events and ways that people are analyzing and seeking to intervene in them. 

In this episode Hassan joins us to discuss his recent piece published on Regenerationmag.org entitled “American Patriotism Or National Liberation.” In the piece, and in this discussion Hassan analyzes the question using the method of dialectical materialism and specifically takes up the question of where people and nations oppressed by US imperialism especially Black and Indigenous folks fit into the vision of “Patriot Socialists.” 

As a reminder, with the addition of these special reports we’re hoping to increase our content to about 6 episodes a month. If you want to support our ability to do this please contribute to our patreon if you are able to do so. 

In the photo collage is a piece of original artwork by Shenby @leftaesthetic (on Instagram)

In this episode we speak with Da’Shaun Harrison. Da’Shaun is a Black trans writer, abolitionist, and community organizer. Da’Shaun serves as Managing Editor for Wear Your Voice Magazine. 

In this conversation we speak with Da’Shaun about their recently published book Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness.

We talk to Da’Shaun about their analysis of how the logic of anti-fatness works in relation to anti-blackness. This includes a discussion of Da’Shaun’s perspectives on “pretty privilege” and desirability politics. They also talk about the relationship between anti-blackness anti-fatness and sexual violence and abuse. 

Da’Shaun touches on the lack of analysis that exists related to the particular relationship police violence and state violence have to the overlapping identities of Fat, Black and poor.

Josh and Da’Shaun discuss the necessity of applying the abolitionist lens to gender politics. And we speak to Da’Shaun about the influence of afro-pessimism in their work.

If you appreciate the work that we do please consider becoming a patron of the show. We’re on a current drive to reach 1,000 patrons and we’re less than 100 patrons away from that goal. You can help us get there for just a dollar a month. 

This is a special message and brief addendum to our conversation published earlier this week with Dr. Mamyrah Prosper.

We had a great conversation with Mamyrah in which she gave a ton of history of US and European imperialism against Haiti. She also envisioned bolder and more direct forms of solidarity than our modern solidarity movements in the US currently deploy on a regular basis.

However, after we finalized the conversation, she did want to note that there things people are working on currently that can be supported, and forthcoming calls for solidarity organizing that people can tap into more immediately.

We’ll add this addendum to the end of our previous episode with Mamyrah, but we also wanted to release it as a special message since many of you had already hear that message. So here is our special message from Dr. Mamyrah Prosper on current solidarity work in support of the Haitian people.

If you would like to stay in touch with the Pan-African Solidarity Network from Community Movement Builders, fill out this form to get on their mailing list for actions and updates related to Haiti.

Also there is a sign-on letter circulation on Black Alliance for Peace's website, which is demanding that the United States, the United Nations and the Organization of American States end its illegal, colonial interventions into Haiti. 

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

In this episode we interview Dr. Michael Sawyer. Sawyer is an assistant professor of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies in the Department of English at Colorado College. We spoke to him about his book, Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X which is part of the Black Critique Series on Pluto Press. Sawyer is also the author of An Africana Philosophy of Temporality. 

Dr. Sawyer shares with us the process of working to expand the academic field of political philosophy to accommodate the critically important contributions of Malcolm X to Black thought. We talk about how political prisoner and SNCC veteran Imam Jamil Al-Amin helped inspire this project which works to acknowledge the role of Malcolm X’s political philosophy between that of W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. Through the book and our discussion Sawyer deals with how Malcolm X’s thought handles questions of Blackness in relation to ontology, embodiment, geography, and revolution.

If you are able to support our work monetarily, you can do so here: http://www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

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

Lara Sheehi is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the George Washington University Professional Psychology Program. 

Stephen Sheehi is a Professor of Middle East Studies and Director of the Decolonizing Humanities Project at William & Mary. 

Full bios here

Their work in this text is heavily influenced by Frantz Fanon and critically engages theories of decoloniality and Liberatory psychoanalysis. It centers the stories and struggles of clinicians and their clients in Palestine. 

In this conversation Lara & Stephen talk about the historical relationship between psychoanalysis and colonialism, and how power relations and epistemology structure those relations. 

Upending those relations of course are anti-colonial or decolonial theories of psychoanalysis and in this context relationships forged between Palestinian clinicians and their Palestinian clients. Both are subjected to the same settler colonial apartheid regime that necessitates a national liberation struggle.

Along the way they talk about the different forms of every day and extreme oppression faced by Palestinian people, we talk about the work of Palestinian clinicians to confront that harm, and how confronting that requires transgressive acts, organization and ultimately resistance. 

We take up problems like ideological misattunement between Israeli clinicians and Palestinian clients, talk about concepts like disalienation, and conscientisation and other key concepts in Fanonian and decolonial psychoanalytic theory. Providing key insights for resisting individuation, alienation and colonial oppression. 

Lara Sheehi also mentions that she and others have some networks of anti-colonial and anti-capitalist therapists and BIPOC anti-imperialist therapists for folks who are looking for that you can connect with Dr. Sheehi to find out more information.

Also just a note, we realize that this book is priced too high for most people to purchase it for themselves. You can ask your public or school library to purchase a copy - as this was really the publishing model that the publisher chose for this text. The authors are committed however to making sure that anybody who wants to read it can find a way to get access to the text. So if you aren’t able to get your hands on it, please reach out to Lara.

If you like what we do please support our work on patreon. 

Links & Resources:

Palestinian Global Mental Health Network

Gaza Community Mental Health Programme

Maana Centre 

Palestinian Counseling Center

The Guidance and Training Center for the Child and Family

Cafe Palestine Index

Stephen Sheehi's website

Twitter Handles:

Lara: @blackflaghag

Stephen: @zghartawi

IG handles:

@psychoanalystactivist, @decolonizingphotography, and bipocanalysis

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 spoke with Erica Caines, creator of Liberation Through Reading and the Liberation Through Reading Book Club. We talk about her organizing, and the importance and power of reading and political education. Erica is a self published author and local community organizer in her perspective Maryland county. Erica’s organizing is based on both an emphasis on literacy and political education. To date, she’s gifted over 1000 books to Black children and has organized an online book club with a Black Left focus that has had close to 100 participants thus far. 

This is the second half of our conversation with Joshua Myers on his latest book Of Black Study. In part one we covered Myers’ goals for the project and the selection of thinkers he includes. We also reviewed in some detail his chapters on W.E.B. Du Bois and Sylvia Wynter, as well as his inclusion of June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara.

In this part of the discussion we focus on the interventions of Jacob Carruthers and Cedric Robinson, who Myers often places in dialogue with one another. We talk about Carruthers work toward an African historiography, and around language and African Deep Thought, going into the terms mdw ntr and whm msw and talking a bit about their meaning and importance and conceptual relevance to the Black Radical Tradition and revolutionary possibility. 

Because we have two other discussions with Myers on Cedric Robinson, both of which go more in-depth on Black Marxism and Robinson’s interventions there, we focused this time on Myers work around Terms of Order and An Anthropology of Marxism. Myers closes with a reflection on the inability of the western university to accommodate radical thought in general, and Black radical thought in particular, except as a means to discipline and control it, leaving open questions of where Black Study must go from here. 

We again want to thank Pluto Press for donating copies for our reading group of incarcerated folks which we support along with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill. This book comes out Friday on Pluto Press, so make sure to pre-order your copy or pick it up from your favorite radical bookstore. 

Shout-out to all the folks who are patrons of our show and support the work we do bringing you conversations like this. You can join them and become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism 

The discussion with Harold Cruse referenced in the episode.

Our first interview with Joshua Myers (on Cedric Robinson)

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

Our interviews with authors and editors of the Black Critique series 

In this episode we interview two organizers with O'ahu Water Protectors.

O‘ahu Water Protectors is an organization that formed out of a coalition of Kanaka Maoli organizers, Sierra Club members and supporters, Hawai‘i Peace and Justice, and other groups working toward sovereignty, decolonization, and demilitarization.

Mikey Inouye is an independent filmmaker born and raised in Hawai‘i, community organizer and member of O‘ahu Water Protectors.

Shelley Muneoka is a Kanaka Maoli woman and water drinker from He‘eia Uli on the island of O‘ahu. Her work focuses on the care of past, present and future elders of all kinds --  human, more than human and elements like water.

In this conversation Mikey and Shelley discuss the crisis posed by the decrepit fuel tanks at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, above the Pearl Harbor Naval Base. They sit just 100 feet above the aquifer which provides the water supply for the island of O’ahu, the most populous island in Hawaii. Just a few months ago, the drinking water of 93,000 residents was contaminated by fuel from these tanks, closing down two wells. Organizers and residents have fought to shut down Red Hill, the Navy currently has until February 2nd to submit its plan to defuel the tanks at the base.

Mikey and Shelley discuss the crisis and the multi-pronged organizing they’ve been a part of around this issue. They also spend significant time discussing the history of colonialism, US imperialism, and the US military in Hawaii. This includes conversations on environmental degradation, water contamination, as fundamental byproducts of US militarism. They also discuss the unique history of the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor as a site of militourism, and its ideological role as a site of alleged US victimhood and the need for defense of the US against amorphous and alleged “asian threats.” This in contrast with the reality that Hawai‘i was not even a US state at the time of the attacks, but was itself a colonized territory the US used as an occupied military outpost and that the preservation of these tourist attractions continues to contaminate the natural beauty and resources on the Island of O’ahu.

We encourage folks to follow O’ahu Water Protectors on Twitter and Instagram and support their campaign to defend their water. More updates are sure to come soon as this story develops. 

We’ll include their social media accounts and some additional links in the show notes.

And as always if you like what we do, please contribute to our patreon, we don’t sell any ads, we don’t have any corporate or foundation sponsors, so everything we are able to do here at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism is funded by you. You can become a patron at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Follow O'ahu Water Protectors on Twitter

or on Instagram

also follow Puuhuluhulu on Instagram for updates on Mauna Kea 

Shelley's speech referenced in discussion

Mikey's speech

Speech from another O'ahu Water Protector, Tina

This episode we have an in-depth conversation with Morgan Artyukhina about their time with the Venezuelan Embassy Protection Collective.

Morgan is an autistic transgender communist and journalist based in Washington, DC, Their reporting can be found on Twitter @LavenderNRed and in Liberation News.

As a point of reference, we recorded this episode on May 14th. Two days after this episode was recorded, activists within the Embassy were arrested by DC police in what seems to be in clear violation of international law. The activists were charged with misdemeanor federal crime of “Interfering With a Federal Law Enforcement Agent Engaged in Protective Functions.” So it is important to understand that everything that Morgan describes in this episode is past tense, and that many of the warnings that they make will regards to the violability of embassies around the world, and the further deterioration of US international diplomacy are now very real possibilities.

Nevertheless, we thought that this was an important story for people to learn more about, and get a perspective of someone who participated in the Embassy Protection Collective from the beginning, as we feel that this has been one of the strongest anti-war anti-imperialist actions that organizers have taken in the US in years, and hope that it marks the renewal of bold action against US warmongering and regime change, in a time when it is needed as much as it has ever been in our history.

In this episode we sat down with Clarissa Brooks. 

Clarissa is a senior at Spelman College, a freelance journalist, and a community organizer. Originally from Charlotte, NC, Clarissa works to blend her love of community, ethical journalism and scholarship in a way that will create a better world. Clarissa was a member of AUC Shut It Down, she was also an ONA HBCU Fellow, Know Your IX Campus Organizer among other projects. 

In this episode we have a roundtable discussion touching on accountability, so-called cancel culture, cultural boycotts, celebrity activism, the neoliberalization of intersectionality and a whole host of other topics. 

This is the 3rd session of Journalism for Liberation and Combat.

This session is hosted by Too Black. Too Black is a poet, member of Black Alliance For Peace, producer of The Last Dope Intellectual Podcast, and host of The Black Myths Podcast on Black Power Media. He is based in Indianapolis, IN.

This session focuses on The League of Revolutionary Black Workers newspaper work as a living example and case study for the examination of emancipatory journalism. In this episode Too Black breaks down comparisons of The South End under the editorship of John Watson in comparison with the coverage of the same events by The Detroit Free Press. This juxtaposition illuminates the possibilities of emancipatory journalism in practice. Shout out to Austin McCoy for sharing examples of articles from The South End with us for this presentation.

Too Black also discusses the work he and his co-hosts do over at the Black Myths Podcast and the process they use to engage and debunk popular myths. Finally Too Black touches on methods of corporate counterinsurgency.

Too Black’s presentation is followed by a Q&A from the Journalism for Liberation and Combat course participants. In the Q&A Brooke Terpstra from Oakland Abolition and Solidarity and I begin a conversation with Too Black about prisons and profit that we continue during an episode of IMIXWHATILIKE that came out this past Monday March 28th. 

There’s a brief introductory conversation by Brooke and me. As we ground the discussion within the overall context of the Journalism for Liberation and Combat seminar series.

All of the Journalism for Liberation and Combat sessions have video versions as well and you can find those on Black Power Media, we’ll provide a link to the playlist with all four sessions in the show notes. This particular session has a decent length powerpoint presentation with examples of articles from The South End so it is beneficial to watch it over on BPM.

If you like the work that we do here at MAKC all of our work is solely funded by our listeners so please become a patron of the show, you can do that for as little as $1 a month over at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Check out and support:

Black Myths Podcast (show, patreon)

The Last Dope Intellectual (show, patreon)

Oakland Abolition and Solidarity

Black Power Media (channel, patreon)

In this episode we welcome Abdaljawad Omar back to the podcast.

This is another slightly edited livestream that we’ve converted to an audio podcast. You can check out the video on our YouTube channel, we’ll put that link in the show notes. And Also just to note that we’ve continued to put lots of content out there, including an interview with Boots Riley from The Coup also the director and creator of the film Sorry To Bother You and the hit series I’m A Virgo. We talked to him about labor organizing, the strike wave, solidarity with Palestine and getting principled anticapitalist art through the gauntlet that is Hollywood. 

I really wanted to get an audio version of this episode with Abdaljawad out this week. Many will know that Refaat Alareer was assassinated this week by the Israeli military. And while we don’t talk about Refaat in this conversation directly, I needed to go back and listen again to Abdaljawad’s commentary on resistance and on mourning and melancholy in the Palestinian context. I hope that this conversation will be therapeutic for others in a way that enables you to continue to put one foot in front of the other and continue to struggle and resist in whatever capacity you can. And in doing so I hope that we can honor Refaat memory and all of the thousands of other martyrs as we continue to seek to find courageous ways support the struggle for Palestinian liberation, which is an important front in the struggle for the liberation of all people. 

Just a note this conversation was recorded back on November 30th amid the prisoner exchanges, so if that portion of the conversation where we discuss that feels a bit dated that is the reason why, but it still feels like an important and pertinent discussion nonetheless. We will include the pieces we discussed in the show notes.

Lastly I will say that we are launching our Sylvia Wynter study group in the beginning of January you can find out more about that on patreon, and becoming a patron is the best way to support the show, but also to keep up with all of our episodes whether they are released first on YouTube or via this podcast feed. 

Links:

"Can the Palestinian Mourn?" - Abdaljawad Omar's piece (the primary subject of discussion)

Judith Butler "The Compass of Mourning" (the piece Abdaljawad responds to)

Fundraiser for Sekou Odinga (mentioned in episode)

'Army and Arabs': truth, play, and illusions in the West Bank (another piece written by Abdaljawad that we briefly touch upon)

Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS) is a collective of imprisoned human rights advocates. We talk about their recent national call for outside solidarity actions from August 21st through September 9th. We also talk about the state of prisoner movements today and solidarity organizing on the outside.

He also discusses the dangers of celebrities co-opting prisoner resistance and speaking over their demands to impose bad solutions, like recent calls for increases in the numbers of prison guards in Mississippi.

JLS has an International Law Project underway to document the inhumane conditions in prisons in all 50 US states, for the purpose of presenting these conditions before the UN Human Rights council. We talk about that project as well as JLS’s organizational stance on the 2020 elections.

In this episode we interview Dhoruba bin Wahad. A leading member of the New York Black Panther Party, a Field Secretary of the BPP responsible for organizing chapters throughout the East Coast, and a member of the Panther 21. He is a veteran and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army and a former political prisoner. He - and Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt - are, we believe, the only two Black political prisoners to use COINTELPRO documents to secure their release from political imprisonment. Both the FBI and NYPD settled with Dhoruba in lawsuits he filed against them for framing him.

There are a number of great writings and conversations with Dhoruba bin Wahad out there. But we asked Dhoruba to do this episode to discuss his political philosophy. He found our approach to that a bit humorous at times, but as one of our favorite thinkers, and someone who embodies their theory in social practice to a degree few of us can imagine, we hoped to contribute to his legacy in this way.

In this conversation we cover some common themes in Dhoruba’s writing, we ask about his ideology, his frequent use of the term “whirlwind,” Democratic Fascism, his emphasis on humanism, and the differing historical destinies of white and Black people in the US. Dhoruba talks about demands, encapsulation, the local nature of politics, Black sovereign thinking, solidarity, united fronts and political consequences for injustice. We also discuss the iconification of Assata Shakur and what it means to support the right of self-determination and the people who become political prisoners for exercising that right.

There were other questions and follow-ups we wanted to ask, but time did not allow for it. We hope that if possible we will be able to record a part 2 in the future.

More importantly, we want to note that we are not requesting financial support for our platform for this episode. Instead what we hope our listeners will do is contribute to the GoFundMe that Community Movement Builders has set up for Dhoruba bin Wahad’s medical fund. Dhoruba has stage 4 cancer and is in need of financial support. The GoFundMe will only be up for two more weeks, so if you can give something to that, please do so now. We’ll include a link to that in the show notes.

Links:

The GoFundMe

Dhoruba's website 

Dhoruba's content on imixwhatilike.

Dhoruba's content on Black Power Media.

Still Black, Still Strong

Look For Me In The Whirlwind

Dhoruba bin Wahad's Political Writings (in French, English and German)

In this episode we interview Alex Turrall, an independent researcher and primary school teacher. We talk to Alex about two reviews they've written for Liberated Texts. Liberated Texts is an independent book review website which features works of ongoing relevance that have been forgotten, underappreciated, suppressed or misinterpreted in the cultural mainstream since their release.

Liberated Texts focuses on texts with anti-colonial, anti-imperialist themes and those related to the history of Marxism, communism and revolution globally.

We ask Alex to talk about the work of Soviet pedagogues Anton Makarenko and Vasily Sukhomlinsky. In doing so Alex touches on the interventions of these Soviet educators at two key points in Soviet history, after the revolutionary rupture with the Tsarist Russian Empire and in the aftermath of World War II. Along the way, Alex touches on different techniques and strategies illuminated by the books they reviewed for Liberated Texts. Alex also talks about the influence of these pedagogical figures within the socialist world and among liberation movements.

We’ll links to the articles, the video Alex references and some other resources in the show notes. We apologize in advance for all the mispronunciation in this episode, as we try to pronounce various names in unfamiliar languages to us.

As of publishing this episode, we have hit our big goal of 1,000 patrons. Thank you so much all for your support. Both Josh and I are doing this work full-time now, and we couldn’t do it without you all. So if you are listening and haven’t become a patron of the show yet, it’s still a great time to do so.

Now here is our conversation with Alex Turrall on Makarenko and Sukhomlinsky. 

Links:

A Pedagogy of Nature: Vasily Sukhomlinsky's My Heart I Give to Children by Alex Turrall (Liberated Texts)

A Pedagogy of the Collective - From The Soviet Union To Latin America: Makarenko, His Life and Work by Alex Turrall (Liberated Texts)

Sukhomlinsky's Lesson

Las Makarenkas Educadoras (Cuba)

MST, Agro-ecology and Pedagogy

Makarenko Archives

This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation with journalist, educator, author, and activist Herb Boyd. Our conversation with Boyd centers around his book Black Detroit, with particular attention paid to the middle of the 20th Century, leading up to the development of The League of Revolutionary Black Workers. 

In this part of the conversation Boyd talks about moving to Detroit, the strains of Black progressive and radical politics going on at the time. We ask about the importance of figures like Malcolm X and MLK to Black organizers in Detroit. Boyd shares some of the issues facing Black workers in the working class city of Detroit at the height of its relationship to automobile manufacturing, and the contradictions that arose in the union movements for Black workers specifically. Boyd also shares some personal history of key Black organizers, activists and politicians in this era, leading up to the Rebellion of 1967.

It covers 800 years of history of colonialism in Ireland, and pays particular attention to the various colonial forms British Imperialism imposes upon the people of the island. 

It also takes a deep dive into examining the contradictions of each of the Irish states that emerge from partition, an undemocratic and colonial imposition that the Irish people have yet to dismantle.

Along the way the book also deals with important questions of race, gender and the position of Ireland in relation to the British Empire.

At its core the book demonstrates that Ireland has not achieved decolonization even in the 26 counties in the South, but argues that self-determination for Irish people is within reach, perhaps closer now than it has been in a century.

In our conversation we explore many of these topics as well as An Gorta Mór, the British starvation of Ireland often misnamed/misunderstood as the "Potato Famine." We talk about the unexpected possibilities and contradictions created by the UK’s reactionary Brexit maneuvering. We talk about resonances between Ireland and other sites of settler colonialism, and discuss how racism and religious sectarianism are interwoven in the Irish context.

We also ask Robbie & Bill about the legacy of Irish anti-imperial struggle, which is significant and innovative, but is also checkered by a history of figures who failed to demonstrate solidarity to other anti-colonial struggles and marginalized peoples. They also discuss the complexity of Irish involvement in colonial management, and racial regimes outside of the Irish context.

We want to give a special shout-out to Liberated Texts (you can order volume 1 here) and Chris Beausang for the review which alerted us to the existence of this book. 

And just note that you can order it directly from Ireland at Beyondthepalebooks.com. And if you’re listening in North America I’ll just add that the good people at leftwingbooks.net have ordered some copies so you should be able to order it there soon as well.

One more note, Dhoruba Bin Wahad is mentioned in passing during the show. Dhoruba who has lived a life in struggle for Black Liberation is currently battling stage 4 cancer and has a gofundme to support his treatment and care. We have contributed and we encourage you to do the same.

Lastly, if you like what we do and want to hear more conversations like this, please support us on patreon. Our listeners are our sole source of income for the show, and you can become a patron for $1 a month or whatever you can afford to contribute.

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. 

This is part one of a two part conversation with Felicia Denaud.

Felicia Denaud is a writer, poet, and professor of Africana Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She writes, in the words of Sylvia Wynter, toward the end of empire, war, and accumulation by elimination. She’s listens, in the words of Dhoruba bin Wahad for “the last of the loud.”

In this part of the discussion we get into Denaud’s work around two key and very interesting concepts within her work. One she describes as the “Unnameable War,” and the other the “Master-State Complex.” We also begin to talk about the piece that spurred this conversation, Denaud’s recent essay “Into The Clear, Unreal, Idyllic Light of the Beginning | A Will of the Night,” which was published by The Caribbean Philosophical Association. In our discussion of that essay here we ask Denaud about what she draws from revolutionary Grenada and Safiya Bukhari. And we close this part of the discussion with Denaud sharing some of the areas of Haitian history that are not examined and appreciated with the care and inquiry they should be if we truly have a dedication to defending revolutions.

Felicia wanted us to highlight the fundraising campaign for Lawrence Jenkins, an incarcerated abolitionist who will be coming home soon in Washington state and the campaign to Free the Pendleton 2. We will include links to both of those campaigns .

And as always if you appreciate the work that we do bringing you conversations like this on a weekly basis, please become a patron of the show. You can do so for as little as $1 a month, our work is only possible through - and only funded by - the support of listeners just like you. Support at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Part two of this conversation with Felicia Denaud will be released this coming week.

Links:

Lawrence Jenkins

Campaign to Free the Pendleton 2 // Our episode on this struggle

“Into The Clear, Unreal, Idyllic Light of the Beginning | A Will of the Night"

­­­­­­­"we’ve barely begun to speak/scream/sing: on frankétienne’s dézafi"

Renegade Gestation: Writing Against the Procedures of Intellectual History 

In this episode we catch up with representatives from Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. They talk about the state of the prison abolition and prisoner support movements from their perspective. JLS describe an exodus of liberals from prisoner support movements with the election of Joe Biden. A dangerous trend given Joe Biden's track record as a key figure in the expansion of prison,  jails and police power historically.

They also talk about the weaponization of COVID-19 inside prisons as well as the insufficient response from people outside the walls, in light of the genocidal policy COVID-19 policies in US prisons. 

This summer, JLS is calling for national “Shut ‘Em Down” demonstrations at jails, prisons, and detention centers around the country on August 21st and on September 9th. 

In addition JLS provides updates from their International Law Project with the National Lawyers Guild. They also talk about changing demand number 9 of the 10 demands to include the immediate release of all political prisoners.

Finally we talk about other concerns coming from inside prisons today, and JLS challenges folks on the outside to move in the spirit of abolition in solidarity with prisoners on the inside.

To be added to the endorsement list for the Shut ‘Em Down campaign: email outthemud.jls@protonmail.com

For media inquiries related to that campaign: media@incarceratedworkers.org

Reminder that we are 100% funded by our listeners, if you’d like to become a patron of the show you can do so on our patreon page. 

In this episode we interview Dr. Bedour Alagraa. Alagraa is an Assistant Professor of Black Political and Social Theory in the department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently she’s working on a manuscript entitled The Interminable Catastrophe: Fatal Liberalisms, Plantation Logics, and Black Political Life in the Wake of Disaster.

We center our discussion with Bedour around her recent publication in Offshoot Journal, What Will Be The Cure?: A Conversation with Sylvia Wynter. From there we delve into some of Wynter’s life and scholarly work. Along the way we talk about some of the important influences in her thinking, including other luminaries within Black Caribbean Radical Thought. 

We also touch on Alagraa’s writing on the Sudan, her manuscript The Interminable Catastrophe, and the series Black Critique at Pluto Press, which she edits along with Dr. Anthony Bogues. 

In this episode is the conclusion of our 2 part conversation with Max Ajl. 

Max Ajl is an educator and a researcher and the author of A People’s Green New Deal, which we highly recommend and had a previous discussion of back in 2021. He is also the associate editor of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy.

Here we continued our discussion of his piece “Theories of Political Ecology: Monopoly Capital Against People and the Planet."

In this section of the conversation we talk about China’s role in the world system and Max discusses the question of imperialism with regard to China, specifically on the African continent. From there we get into a discussion of degrowth, what Ajl sees as its strengths and weaknesses as a camp of ecological thought engaging at a popular level. We also dig deeper into Max’s interventions in the realm of ecologically unequal exchange, something we began to discuss in part 1 of the conversation.

We thank Max Ajl for this conversation and will include links to a bunch of the citations in the show notes as well as to the article we’re discussing and Agrarian South Journal.

We recorded this conversation way back in early August, but this is the first episode we’ve released since the most recent phase of Palestinian Resistance to apartheid and colonialism began on October 7th and since the apocalyptic Israeli siege on Gaza began as a form of collective punishment. We want to express our unequivocal solidarity with the Palestinian people in this time in their anticolonial struggle, and enduring the crimes against humanity that the Israeli state is enacting on the whole population of Gaza. We will be looking to do some more work on that specific topic soon. But for now we want to make sure to relay that to our listeners along with this episode.

Links/Citations:

“Theories of Political Ecology: Monopoly Capital Against People and the Planet.” by Max Ajl (the subject of the episode)

https://www.agrariansouth.org

Ching Kwan Lee's The Specter of Global China

The Future is Degrowth

Jason Hickel 

Ali Kadri

Danny Faber 

Vladimir Kontorovich 

Zeyad El Nabolsy -  pieces on Cabral

This is part 2 of our 2-part conversation with Felicia Denaud.

In this part of the discussion Denaud talks about what the category of political prisoner might do politically, in thinking about movement building through a lens of movement defense in this moment. We also continue our conversation on her work on the Master-State Complex and thinking about the state capacity for violence and the private outsourcing of that "sovereign" power that comes about with the slave trade, plantation economy and settler colonialism. It’s worth saying that this conversation happened a week before Jordan Neely was murdered, but that case also relates deeply to these dynamics described in this conversation.

Denaud talks about the use of light and darkness in Fanon’s work and talks about his concept of social treason as a potentially more robust language to deal with those who leverage political struggles for their own personal, political and monetary gain on the backs or at odds with the social movements that propel them to levels of power and accumulation.

This is our 4th episode of the month of May. We are behind on our goal for the month and looking to add 26 more patrons this month to hit our goal. If you’re able to kick in at least a $1 a month or $10.80 per year you can become a patron of the show and join the amazing community of folks who make this show possible at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Lawrence Jenkins

Campaign to Free the Pendleton 2 // Our episode on this struggle

“Into The Clear, Unreal, Idyllic Light of the Beginning | A Will of the Night"

­­­­­­­"we’ve barely begun to speak/scream/sing: on frankétienne’s dézafi"

Renegade Gestation: Writing Against the Procedures of Intellectual History 

Cooperation Jackson's Kali Akuno on the lessons of and the ongoing struggle in Jackson MS

More on political prisoners:

The Jericho Movement (political prisoners)

uprisingsupport.org/

atlsolidarity.org/

Dr. Yannick Giovanni Marshall writes and teaches in Black Studies. His research focus is on police power, colonial policing in Nairobi, the white supremacist state, anti-colonial movements and movements against anti-Blackness. 

He is currently an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Knox College and has taught courses on Black Lives Matter and Deconstructing the Police for several years. 

He is also a prolific writer, who writes frequently for publications including Al Jazeera and Black Perspectives which is published by the African American Intellectual History. He has also published multiple volumes of poetry. You can find links to many of his publications on yannickmarshall.net.

In this episode we discuss several of his writings over the last couple years, particularly on questions of coloniality, liberalism, policing, fascism and marronage. 

You can support MAKC on Patreon.

Jared and Josh discuss the degree to which they had or didn’t have political mentors growing up. Jared talks about Kwame Ture's (f/k/a Stokley Carmichael) influence on his father, and how that shaped some of the actions his father took during his own period of radicalization. Jared talks about how his father’s confrontation with the state at the 1968 DNC in Chicago lead to his basic refutation of armed revolution within a US context. Josh discusses how he learned to analyze politics not so much from mentors, but by observing different relationships growing up.

***Video version now up on Black Power Media***

Earlier this month Brooke Terpstra from Oakland Abolition and Solidarity and Jared Ware convened a brief course that we titled Journalism for Liberation and Combat. At the heart of the course was the question: How do we cultivate revolutionary culture? Further we looked at the specific intersection of media or cultural production and revolutionary organizing.  Over the next couple weeks we will be sharing audio versions of all of these sessions. We will also be working with Black Power Media to release the video versions of these discussions over there over the next couple of weeks, the first one could premiere as soon as this Friday. What you will get here is lightly edited audio. The videos do often include visual aids. In addition to this there is a syllabus for this course which we will link in the show notes, that includes all of the readings we asked course participants to complete along with participating in the classes themselves. We encourage folks to do this course on their own time ideally with folks they organize with or work on radical media work with or maybe both. 

Our guests for this series include:

Jared Ball from IMIXWHATILIKE and Black Power Media, 

Too Black from Black Myths Podcast, Black Power Media, and The Last Dope Intellectual

Erica Caines from Black Alliance For Peace & Hood Communist

Kelly Hayes from Truthout & Movement Memos

Brian Nam-Sonenstein from Shadowproof and Beyond Prisons

Brandon Soderberg (coauthor of I Got A Monster: The Rise & Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad)

And Jared Ware (MAKC) and Brooke Terpstra (Oakland Abolition & Solidarity)

In this conversation there’s a little bit of an introduction from myself and Brooke just giving you some background on the series, and then you will hear Jared Ball’s presentation Journalism, Internal Colonialism, and Emancipation. In this session, Jared Ball will cover a summary of internal colonialism theory as context for emancipatory journalism. He will define and exemplify emancipatory journalism and he will discuss the rise and current state of the media/journalism environment in these so-called United States.

At the close of his presentation, there is a Q&A session where Jared Ware, Brooke Terpstra, and coco ask Jared Ball some introductory questions. coco the comrade who joins us, is a conscious New Afrikan who engages in prisoner solidarity work along with political education & New Afrikan resistance, currently they host the Nkrumah study group we’ve been running.

For folks looking specifically for Jared Ball’s presentation it starts at 29:45 seconds. The first roughly 30 minutes here are Brooke and me discussing the Journalism For Liberation & Combat series as well as this episode.

This was a collaborative process and so I encourage you to contribute to, join or follow any of the organizations involved in putting this together - whether they do media work or organizing work - for us the easiest way to do that is by becoming a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

This is part two of our two part episode with three of the contributors to On Necrocapitalism: A Plague Journal, which is available from Kersplebedeb and you can find that at leftwingbooks.net. 

On Necrocapitalism was collectively authored by a writing group known as M.I. Asma which included J. Moufawad-Paul, Devin Zane Shaw, Mateo Andante, Johannah May Black, Alyson Escalante, and D.W. Fairlane. 

In this conversation we speak with Alyson Escalante, J. Moufawad Paul and Devin Zane Shaw. 

In part two we continue our discussion of pacification and capture in response the historic rebellions of 2020 and the related crisis in the ruling class. We also get into some discussion of unequal exchange, the ongoing climate crisis, and settler colonialism as a material relation of capitalism in the US & Canada, rather than just as a moral wrong. Along the way we get into some of the nuanced differences in the racial regimes in the US and Canada. We talk about some events since the Biden election, from liberal pacification, to the declining ranks in movement work, and the ongoing danger posed state support for settler vigilantism among the far right. And we ask the authors if they predicted the weird re-emergence of so-called proletarian patriotism in the imperial core.

As we wrap up the end of the year at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, we just wanted to note that we’ve put out 48 episodes this year. That’s 4 episodes each month. We read all the books, do the research, develop the questions, record, edit and release these ourselves with no ad revenue, no pay per click revenue and no sponsorships, just the support of the many great folks who donate to our patreon. And we’re approaching 300,000 downloads for this year alone.  So please if you’re able to contribute even a small amount to our patreon, it helps us make this show possible and ensures that all our content stays free, even for the folks who can’t afford to give anything.

Link to Part 1 (and links to more work from Alyson Escalante, J. Moufawad Paul and Devin Z. Shaw)

In this episode we talk to Alejo Stark. Alejo is an organizer with Michigan Abolition and Prisoner Solidarity (MAPS) and a co-producer of Rustbelt Abolition Radio (RAR). Between 2008 and 2013, he was an undocumented student organizer with the migrant justice movement, fighting against deportations in South Florida and Rhode Island. Alejo has a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

In this episode we take a high level view of the Zapatista movement, 25 years after the uprising of 1994. Alejo shares history of theoretical and practical contributions of Zapatismo, and discusses his time in Chiapas at The Zapatistas and ConSciences for Humanity conference.

Alejo also discusses the women’s revolutionary law, key touch points and transitions in the Zapatismo struggle, the tension that exists between Zapatismo and state centric politicians like AMLO, and poses challenging questions for people looking for a way forward through a state centric project as the capitalist hydra brings about an unparalleled climate catastrophe.

Music by Televangel, formerly of Blue Sky Black Death

In this episode we inter view Torkil Lauesen. Lauesen is a long-time anti-imperialist activist and writer living in Denmark. From 1970 to 1989 he was a full-time member of a communist anti-imperialist group, supporting Third World liberation movements by both legal and illegal means. In connection with support work, he has traveled in Lebanon, Syria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, the Philippines, and Mexico. In the 1990’s, during his political imprisonment, he was involved in prison activism and received a Masters degree in political science.

He is also the author of multiple books, including The Global Perspective: Reflections on Imperialism and Resistance and The Principal Contradiction. He is currently a member of International Forum, an anti-imperialist organization based in Denmark.

Today we talk to him about his latest book Riding The Wave: Sweden’s Integration into the Imperialist World System. Which is a thorough investigation into the development of the so-called “Swedish Model” considered by many to be the pinnacle of social democracy. Many US based social democrats, have even gone so far as to describe it this model as a form of “socialism.” Torkil explains the relationship of this economic model to colonialism and imperialism, arguing that the accomplishments of the Social Democratic Party, and trade union movement, would not be possible if one took imperialism out of the equation.

We hope you enjoy this conversation, and definitely recommend Lauesen’s new book Riding The Wave, which is not only a great history of the conditions that produced the “Swedish Model,” but deals with many other global phenomena at some length, including how neoliberalism restructured the capitalist world system.

A reminder that we are still slowly working our way toward 1,000 patrons for the show, which is our current goal. You can become a patron at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Our next episode will be a set of reflections between Josh and I on four years of doing Millennials Are Killing Capitalism as we’re a little more than a week away from our 4 year anniversary.

Leftwingbooks.net, is having a 20% sale the rest of September on books on its “Against War and Empire” category. Use the code: AGAINSTEMPIRE all one word, all caps at checkout to get that discount. 

In this episode we welcome César “che” Rodríguez to the podcast.

We had a lengthy conversation about Rodríguez’s piece, “‘Oscar Did Not Die in Vain’ Revelous Citizen Journalism, Righteous/Riotous Work, and the Gains of the Oscar Grant Moment in Oakland, California,” which we will link in the show notes.

César “che” Rodríguez works as a faculty member of Race & Resistance Studies at San Francisco State Univeristy, is a rank-and-file union member of the California Faculty Association, and organized with Change SSF. 

As we got into discussion with che, we had some questions about his own relationships with Clyde Woods and Cedric Robinson and his use of certain methodological concepts. These questions led to in-depth discussion which offered so many insights into Cedric Robinson’s concepts of racial capitalism and racial regimes, and Clyde Woods’ concept of the blues epistemology and academic necrophilia. We decided to release that portion of the discussion as part one of the conversation. In particular che spends a good portion of this discussion laying out how he works with Robinson’s concept of racial regimes dialectically, providing an example of how he uses tools from Cedric Robinson, Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall and others to offer a conjunctural analysis of racial capitalism in Oakland in the lead up to what he calls the Oscar Grant moment. And we get into che’s concept of the hyphy corrido ché's concept linking Woods’ blues epistemology with Robinson’s mandate that ethnic studies scholars “record the noise.”

In part two we will get into a more detailed discussion of the movement that came together and protagonized in the wake of the of state murder of Oscar Grant, including a detailed discussion of the citizen journalism, the organizing and rebellion, and some thoughts on what we should take away from the Oscar Grant moment for movements against police impunity and popular struggles more broadly.

This is already our 6th episode of September, our 53rd of the year. We are currently 17 patrons away from hitting our goal for the month. That’s ambitious, but if a few folks sign up for as little as $1 a month, it is still within reach. Become a patron here. We want to thank all the people who support the podcast through patreon and make the show possible. We also want to give a shout-out to folks who like and share the episodes on social media or write reviews of the podcast wherever they listen to it. 

Links:

“‘Oscar Did Not Die in Vain’ Revelous Citizen Journalism, Righteous/Riotous Work, and the Gains of the Oscar Grant Moment in Oakland, California” (the article from the episode)

Cedric J. Robinson - Critical Ethnic Studies Conference 2013

In this episode we welcome an organizer who goes by Grandma to talk about the campaign to Stop Camp Grayling.

Encompassing roughly 150,000 acres of land, Camp Grayling is already the largest National Guard training facility in the United States. For about a year now there has been a concerted effort to expand it to an even larger area. In this conversation we talk to Grandma about the campaign to fight its expansion, about the environmental impacts of the current facility and the further devastation that could be generated by its expansion. We also talk about the relationship between the National Guard and settler colonialism, imperialism, and the fascistic management of human populations impacted by the worst impacts of climate change. 

Of course, many around the country have also become more familiar with the national guard’s role in domestic counterinsurgency and pacification during times of social unrest such as the rebellions in 2020 in the wake of the extrajudicial killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others.

Understanding these roles of the National Guard and also Camp Grayling’s utility to the testing and development of new technologies of warfare and to the training of military and police forces domestically and internationally, Grandma also situates this intended expansion within various attempts to build new “cop cities” including but not limited to the struggle in Atlanta.

We also discuss some of the actions that folks in the movement have taken, some of the repression they have faced, and some of the contradictions of local politics that create different spheres of opposition to the project than for instance the cop city project in Atlanta.

I apologize that I did not get this episode out in time for the week of action, as I recently took a short vacation from production work, but hopefully there will be more of those coming in the future. You can follow them at @GraylingCamp on the website formerly known as twitter or email them at stopcampgrayling at proton dot me.

This is our first episode of August, our goal for the month is get 50 people to either become patrons of the show or increase their pledge to the show. We’ll be looking to publish at least 6 episodes this month. So if you’ve been thinking about either increasing your pledge or becoming a patron you can do so for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Links:

Follow them on X/Twitter or instagram

The Base Among the Jack Pine: notes on the Camp Grayling Expansion on Anishnabewaki (zine we discuss in the podcast)

This is a slightly edited version of our recent livestream with Abdaljawad Omar. 

Abdaljawad Omar is a writer, analyst, and lecturer based in Ramallah, Palestine. He currently lectures in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University.

In this conversation we discuss some of his recent writings which we will include in the show notes. Specifically we talk about the Palestinian resistance in relation to concepts of hope, grief, and melancholy. We discuss Abdaljawad’s recent piece “Hopeful pathologies in the war for Palestine: a reply to Adam Shatz” and also got to give folks a sneak peak at some of the arguments that Abdaljawad would bring to his response to Judith Butler which was just published this week. We’ll include links to these pieces as well as the ones he’s critiquing in the show notes in addition to his recent interview with Louis Allday.

And if folks like this conversation tomorrow November 30th at 9:30 AM ET we will be live with Abdaljawad again on our YouTube channel. A great reason to go subscribe to that, turn on your notifications and so on. If you miss that livestream it will be up for you to view anytime on our YouTube page. And as I have said before we will be releasing audio versions of many of those conversations as podcasts as we are doing here. And I think as things slow down a bit we will probably settle on 2-3 livestreams each week and at least 1 podcast episode per week. 

If you want to support our ability to do more, whether that’s editing more audio or doing more livestreams the best way to do that is to become a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism for as little as $1 a month. Huge shout-out to all the people who do support us and make this show possible. 

"Can the Palestinian Mourn?" in response to Judith Butler's "The Compass of Mourning"

The original Adam Shatz piece and Abdaljawad's response “Hopeful pathologies in the war for Palestine: a reply to Adam Shatz”

"An Unyielding Will to Continue" with Louis Allday in Ebb Magazine 

In this special episode, Jared talks to a prisoner named Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun, founder of the Free Alabama Movement. Bennu is currently serving a life without parole sentence in the state of Alabama and we talk about his first interactions with the criminal justice system as a child. This is a conversation about family separation, denial of due process, institutional racism, judicial and law enforcement collusion, and the impact that these practices can have on the trajectory of someone’s life.

The interactions Bennu describes altered the trajectory of the lives of six teenagers in 1988 in profoundly negative ways. This is the story of the Gadsden 6 and it is a story that matters to the individuals who remain without parole opportunities due to the circumstances Bennu describes, but it also matters to the thousands of people across the US who are still behind bars because of similar treatment at the hands of the state.

Link to Bennu's certified court records, posted at his request.

In this episode we interview prisoner movement historians Dan Berger and Toussaint Losier who co-authored the book Rethinking The American Prison Movement. Today is the 49th anniversary of the Attica Rebellion, and in this episode we honor the ongoing tradition of prisoner resistance by examining the history of prisoner movements, and discussing the challenges faced by prisoners as well as abolitionists on both sides of the walls amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the current movement for Black Lives in the streets. 

This episode is also in response to Jailhouse Lawyers Speak's national call for outside supporters to provide political education between August 21st and September 9th 2020.

This is the conclusion of our discussion with César “che” Rodríguez (part 1 is here), who works as a faculty member of Race & Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University, is a rank-and-file union member of the California Faculty Association, and organized with Change SSF. 

Here we get into the actual history of the murder of Oscar Grant, trigger or content warning on that discussion for folks. It’s not needlessly graphic, but it is descriptive of the events as they took place. Then we get into how various types of citizen journalism, movement journalism, organizing, protest, popular mobilization, and rioting broke the cycle of police impunity for a moment in time.

We talk about that, weigh the limitations of the so-called reforms put in place and think about implications for future struggles against the relentless scourge of police terrorism in this country. 

We’re getting closer to our goal for the month of September, with just 5 days left in the month we’re 10 patrons away from it. Shout-out to all of our new patrons this month and to the folks who have been contributing for years. You can become a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year.

Links:

https://www.indybay.org

https://sfbayview.com

“‘Oscar Did Not Die in Vain’ Revelous Citizen Journalism, Righteous/Riotous Work, and the Gains of the Oscar Grant Moment in Oakland, California” - The essay we're discussing in the episode

In this episode we talk to author Garrett Felber about his book Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, The Black Freedom Struggle, and the Carceral State which is out today, January 13th. 2020. The book is a political history of the Nation of Islam which centers the NOI and anticarceral organizing in the story of the postwar Black freedom struggle and the rise of mass incarceration.

Felber is an assistant professor of History at the University of Mississippi. His research and teaching focus on twentieth-century African American social movements, Black radicalism, and the carceral state. Felber was the lead organizer of the Making and Unmaking Mass Incarceration conference in December 2019, and is the Project Director of the Parchman Oral History Project (POHP), a collaborative oral history, archival, and documentary storytelling project on incarceration in Mississippi. 

Felber is also a co-founder of Liberation Literacy, an abolitionist collective inside and outside Oregon prisons. He also spearheaded the Prison Abolition Syllabus, a collaborative reading list published by Black Perspectives which highlighted and contextualized prison strikes in 2016 and 2018. Felber is also the coeditor of the Portable Malcolm X Reader with the late Manning Marable and is currently working on a biography of former political prisoner Martin Sostre.

This is the slightly edited audio from a livestream conversation we had with Max Ajl on the morning of October 17th. This conversation was held on our new YouTube channel and we’ll include a link to that in the show notes. We encourage folks to head over there to subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications for all episodes so that you don’t miss any of our livestreams. We held three livestreams this past week the one you’re about to hear, one with Morgan Artyukhina, and a third one with Decolonize Palestine. We also are planning to release at least four new livestreams this coming week so make sure you check those out as well.

We will eventually get these all edited and released as podcasts, but in the meantime you can head over to our YouTube channel and watch and listen to any of them in full unedited fashion.

We mobilized to have these conversations to help folks find the clarity they need to act and act in a strategic and decisive manner in these times. 

Max Ajl is a friend of the show and has been on multiple times now.

He is an educator and a researcher and the author of A People’s Green New Deal, which we highly recommend and had a previous discussion of back in 2021. We also recently hosted him for a two-part series on theories of political ecology. He is also the associate editor of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. 

In this discussion we talk to him about his time in Gaza, about the notion of so-called non-violent resistance within a Palestinian context, about key dynamics to pay attention to in the coming weeks, and understanding Palestinian Liberation as a key component of the world we want to bring about.

As I’ve mentioned before, adding video content to the audio content we’re producing on a weekly basis is a major lift in terms of our labor commitment to the podcast. We will also need to bring on some additional support to make it sustainable over time. Which also means that we need your support. If you appreciate the work that we do and find it useful then kick in something to our patreon. You can join for as little as $1 a month and of course we encourage folks to do more than that if they are able to do so. Our patreon is patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

In this episode we interview Laura Whitehorn.

Laura Whitehorn is a co-founder and organizer with the RAPP Campaign (Release Aging People in Prison). Whitehorn is a veteran organizer of numerous organizations, including Friends of SNCC, the Weathermen, Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, the May 19th Communist Organization, and the Madame Binh Graphics Collective among others. 

A committed anti-imperialist, Laura Whitehorn spent 14 years incarcerated in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy and destruction of Government property in what has been called the “Resistance Conspiracy” case.

We talk to Whitehorn about her organizing history, anti-racism, the work of the RAPP Campaign, freeing political prisoners, COINTELPRO, and some of the errors made by white activists during the New Left era that we must still grapple with today. Whitehorn also discusses Zoom, youtube, and Facebook, banning a recent talk she gave with Leila Khaled. Along that topic, Whitehorn talks about being an anti-Zionist Jew, and the violence of settler colonialism in the US and the Israeli state.

In this episode William Jamal Richardson joins the show to talk about Nkrumah-Toureism and the relationship between settler colonialism, slavery, and capitalism in American society.

William talks about how his parents involvement in the All African People's Revolution Party” shaped some of his politics growing up. He also gives a brief overview of who Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure were and how their different personal backgrounds, perspectives and philosophies complimented each other. He also discusses how the Pan-Africanist movement informed their politics and was enriched by their contributions.

In this episode we were honored to host Kali Akuno, co-director and co-founder of Cooperation Jackson and Kamau Franklin is the founder of Community Movement Builders and a co-host at Black Power Media’s Remix Morning Show. 

We brought Kali and Kamau into conversation under a banner of discussing strategy. Strategy is something that Josh and I feel is both essential and often lacking within a lot of formations in the US left. 

The conversation is wide-ranging and touches on a number of topics that may prompt folks to need greater context. In the show notes we will include some links to other readings and discussions with Kali and Kamau on what the Jackson plan is, why they left the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and what their current work entails. 

Beyond strategy, in this episode we get into discussion of political education, neoliberal socialization, burnout, fickle organizers, reflection and criticism, Democratic Centralism, cadre and mass organizing, climate change, ecological collapse, food sovereignty, self-defense, revolutionary violence, and the capture of social movements through the nonprofit industrial complex and Democratic Party electoral politics.

It is our greatest hope that conversations like this one provide folks with tools, insights and provocations that they can bring with them into their organizing efforts so that we can build more effectively going forward for the alternatives are clearly bleak and dystopian. 

Both Community Movement Builders and Cooperation Jackson do accept donations. So we will also provide links to both organizations in our show notes if people would like to give them a donation. And please support Black Power Media as well. 

And of course, we need your support to continue to bring you these conversations freely, and in non-commoditized form. All of our work is available ad-free and none of our episodes are behind a paywall and we hope that we can always keep it that way so that all of these conversations are freely available to organizers, activists, students, workers, the poor, and the oppressed. To support our ability to do that you can contribute to our patreon for as little as $1 a month or for a yearly contribution of just $11 a year.

For more context:

Cooperation Jackson's Kali Akuno on the lessons of and the ongoing struggle in Jackson MS

Community Movement Builders and Liberated Zones Theory with Kamau Franklin

The Jackson-Kush Plan: The Struggle For Black Self-Determination and Economic Democracy

Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi

In this episode Fathi Nimer and Abdaljawad Omar rejoin the podcast to talk about recent events including the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and the Iranian retailatory strikes, which took place on October 1st. We conclude by talking a bit about the meaning of October 7th, 2023 one year later. Here is a video version of the episode if you prefer to watch the conversation.

Despite the difficulty in fully drawing meaning from something we’re still in the midst of, Fathi and Abboud do offer excellent analysis of the current state of the war, and of the importance of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Fathi Nimer is Al-Shabaka’s Palestine policy fellow. He previously worked as a research associate with the Arab World for Research and Development, a teaching fellow at Birzeit University, and a program officer with the Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies. Fathi holds a master’s degree in political science from Heidelberg University and is the co-founder of DecolonizePalestine.com, a knowledge repository for the Palestinian question. Fathi’s research revolves around political economy and contentious politics. His current focus is on food sovereignty, agroecology, and the resistance economy in Palestine.

Abdaljawad Omar is a writer, analyst, and lecturer based in Ramallah, Palestine. He has written extensively in Arabic. In English Abboud has contributed to Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, and Ebb Magazine among other outlets. This is his 13th episode on MAKC. All of those episodes are collected in this playlist. 

Giving direct aid to people in Gaza is a way of directly intervening against the genocidal policy of zionist settler colonialism and US imperialism. We recommend the Sameer Project as a a grassroots direct-aid organization that provides tents, water, food and medical aid to Palestinians in Gaza, including areas of the north where the Zionist entity does not allow NGOs to function. We’ll link a recent livestream we hosted with Hala from the Sameer Project as well as links to their funds.

We also just passed our 7th anniversary at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, this episode today marks our 275th audio episode of MAKC. In addition, in just the last year we’ve hosted 126 livestreams on our YouTube channel. With me primarily operating in the video realm over the past year in order to respond more quickly to developing events, we have had to pay for some outside support on some of the audio production but also that process has slowed a bit. Our most recent payment for October from patreon was our lowest level of support from patrons since May of 2023. There are a variety of factors contributing to that I’m sure, but if people are able to become patrons of the show we can really use your support to support what we’re already doing and to pay for production work as well to get more audio episodes released. Join for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

We will have a patreon member exclusive episode this week on the contradictions of using Youtube as a platform for this work. Jared Ball, Renee Johnston, and Geechee Yaw who I recently did a two part video collaboration with about elections, will join us for that conversation as well. I recently participated in a two part discussion with them on elections which we held on MAKC & Black Liberation Media. We’re hosting our discussion on censorship on patreon so we can speak totally freely about YouTube as a platform.

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 talk to Noname about Noname’s Bookclub, and the inspiration behind it and her aspirations for it, including her plot to take down Amazon. We get into conversations about capitalism, socialism, Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Noname’s critique of American Exceptionalism in Song 32, and broader discussions about representation and the state of hip hop music today as a cultural vehicle for progressive change. 

In this episode we host Joshua Myers, to talk about his recently published book Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition. Folks will recall that last year we had a conversation with Josh Myers about Cedric Robinson much of which centered around the content and concepts within Black Marxism. 

While there is a slight overlap between this conversation and that one, the two are quite distinct and mutually inform each other. So we invite folks to revisit that alongside this conversation, or to listen to both for the first time to get a more complete picture of Myers’ extensive knowledge and analysis of Robinson’s life and work. Beyond that of course we encourage folks to pick up this book as it really does a great job of grounding Robinson’s intellectual work within the context of his life, organizing and relationships.

In this conversation we talk more about young Cedric’s developing anti-imperialist and anti-colonial consciousness. His disenchantment with the aims, strategies and tactics of the Civil Rights Movement. His critiques of leadership, and analysis of charisma, which set the ground for his first book The Terms of Order. And we discuss how Robinson’s work has always aimed to assault the foundations of academic disciplines.

We discuss the relationship between Robinson and CLR James, and the practices of study and development of undercommons spaces for colleagues and students. We also talk about the relationship between Cedric and Immanuel Wallerstein and Modern World Systems Theory. 

We talk briefly about the arguments Robinson takes up in An Anthropology of Marxism and Forgeries of Memory and Meaning and of course we can’t resist a couple of questions on recent readings, mis-readings, and non-readings of Robinson’s most well-known work Black Marxism.

We are only six patrons away from returning to 1,000 patrons, so if you have been waiting for that moment to become a patron of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, it’s a great time to join up and help sustain the work that we do here, bringing you conversations like this.

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 Robyn Spencer. Robyn Spencer is a historian and the author of The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and The Black Panther Party In Oakland. 

Our conversation is centered around Spencer’s organizational history of the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party. Her work pays particular attention to the experiences and reflections of women who joined the Oakland Panthers, and to the political struggles of the party on issues of gender and patriarchy.

Spencer discusses the Panthers internationalism, and legal defense strategies, the counter insurgency and repression they faced, and lessons that can be learned through a deep engagement with their efforts to build a better world.

This week we have Mark Bray to talk all things in the world of anti-fascism following a slew of recent fascistic events. We touch on Bolsonaro's election in Brazil, and cover some of the points raised in Bray’s book Antifa, which if you haven’t read is an excellent history of European and American anti-fascist movements starting with those who opposed the German and Italian forms of fascism and moving into the modern era.

MARK BRAY is a political organizer and historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe. He is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House 2017), Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street (Zero 2013), The Anarchist Inquisition: Terrorism and Human Rights in Spain and France, 1890-1910 (forthcoming), and he’s the co-editor of Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader (which just came out on PM Press). His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Boston Review, and numerous edited volumes. He is currently a lecturer at Dartmouth College.

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)

This is part one of a two-part conversation with Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, editors of the book Venezuela, The Present As Struggle: Voices From The Bolivarian Revolution. This book is a collection of interviews with Chavistas, communards, Campesinos, and a variety of activists, organizers, intellectuals and workers from the grassroots in Venezuela. 

The book offers a view of both the impacts of US imperialism and sanctions in Venezuela, but also the voices of the Venezuelan people on the pathway out of the existing crisis and toward socialism. 

In this first part of our conversation, Cira and Chris talk about the subjects they interview in their book. We also discuss internationalism, US sanctions, some tendencies within the Bolivarian revolution, and some of the challenges that face rentier economies like Venezuela’s.

Gilbert and Pascual Marquina also share insights on the communes and the struggles of campesinos and why the represent the most revolutionary possibilities for the present and future of the Bolivarian process.

A couple quick plugs, please support Venezuelanalysis.com as the best English language source of information coming out of Venezuela. And of course if you appreciate the work we do bringing you interviews like this, please remember to support us on patreon if you are able.

In this episode we talk to Wendi Muse, a PhD candidate in History at New York University. Her research concerns intellectual and political exchange between Brazilians and Portuguese-speaking African scholars, journalists, and activists during their concurrent respective struggles against  authoritarian regimes of a military dictatorship and colonialism and its impact on Brazilian leftist practice & thought. Wendi is the creator of the LeftPOC hashtag and the LeftPOCket Project, which bridges academia, activism, and digital media to make the history of leftists of color more readily accessible to the public.

In this episode we speak to five of the creators and authors of 8 To Abolition. Which is an abolitionist response to the police preservationist platform 8 Can’t Wait. Since launching 8 to Abolition has become a viral phenomenon and served along with the popular demands of Defunding Police and Defending Black Life to serve as a key conversation piece and political framework for community-based discussions around police violence and police abolition.

We talk to Nnennaya Amuchie, Rachel Kuo, Eli, Micah Herskind and Reina Sultan.

Nnennaya Amuchie is a diehard Black left genderqueer feminist and abolitionist, communist, organizer with Black Youth Project 100, published writer on police violence, and an attorney working to build movement lawyering infrastructure. They believe in a joyful and pleasurable future without police and prisons, where reproductive justice is actualized.

Rachel Kuo is a scholar of race, digital technology, and social movements. She is a co-founder of the Asian American Feminist Collective. 

Eli is a community organizer from New York working with Black trans led initiatives invested in learning and helping create tools for community building and survival. From creating spaces for Black trans men and masculine people to explore masculinity and manhood using a Black feminist and womanist framework to crowdfunding for Black trans people Internationally, Eli is invested in building through love and self-accountability.

Micah Herskind is an Atlanta-based organizer and writer. 

Reina Sultan is a Lebanese-American Muslim journalist and organizer.

In this conversation we welcome home Safear Ness. Safear is a formerly incarcerated organizer, a founder of In The Mix Prisoner Podcast, a writer, and a Revolutionary Abolitionist. 

In this conversation we discuss Safear’s recent piece “Phone Resistance” from the Study & Struggle blog. We also talk about a zine he adapted from Dan Berger and Toussaint Losier’s book Rethinking the American Prison Movement entitled Revolution: The Prison Rebellion Years, 1968-1972 (artwork by Paul Lacombe). We also get his reflections on organizing, social media, and the abolition movement as someone who became a prison abolitionist inside Pennsylvania prisons.

Safear also reflects on organizing inside, on Russell “Maroon” Shoatz concept of The Hydra, and other aspects of prison life including censorship 

There is a discussion of phone zaps as well and we get into Stevie Wilson’s current situation facing repression in PADOC. The phone campaign for that is currently taking a break, but may start-up again soon. Stay in touch by following Stevie’s twitter account operated by comrades outside the walls, and by following Dreaming Freedom, Practicing Abolition. 

For this month we will be sending copies of Mohawk Warrior Society: A Handbook for Sovereignty and Survival into our incarcerated readers. Thanks to PM Press for donating those copies and to Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill for facilitating that project as always. You can support that project here.

We won’t be plugging our patreon this week. But definitely would encourage folks to support projects like In The Mix and In The Belly where incarcerated people are developing their own podcast and journal projects. 

Links: 

In The Mix Prisoner Podcast

In The Belly Journal

Imam Jamil Action Network

The Jericho Movement

Campaign Against Prison Censorship and Book Banning

Martin Sostre Institute

Study & Struggle

Dan Berger & Toussaint Losier on the American Prisoner Movement

In this week's short episode, we sit down with filmmaker and musician Boots Riley to talk about his debut film Sorry To Bother You, which hits theaters everywhere July 13th. Boots recently received Sundance Film Festival's Vanguard Award for the film. Boots talks with us about his artistic and organizing history, discusses how getting a film this is radical produced for mass consumption is possible in a society like ours, and discusses the importance of militant labor organizing in the left’s ability to build power. 

In this episode we welcome members of the Kenya Organic Intellectuals Network to the podcast.

We discuss their most recent book Breaking the Silence on NGOs in Africa edited by Nicholas Mwangi, Lewis Maghanga and the contributors of the Kenya Organic Intellectuals Network.

Today we have Gacheke Gachihi, Comrade Maghanga, Sungu Oyoo, and Wanjira Wanjiru each from various formations including the Kenya Organic Intellectuals Network. 

Primarily the subject of our discussion is their book which follows on the work of Professor Issa Shivji who wrote a very important piece back in 2007 called Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa. The comrades from the Kenya Organic Intellectuals Network examine the conjuncture in which NGOs emerged in Kenya, they talk about their role in social movements, they share some of their own experiences working in NGOs or organizing in struggles where NGOs take a prominent role. And importantly they examine the contradictions, limitations  and historical role of NGOs in Africa, with a specific emphasis on Kenya. They also discuss their own efforts through organizations like the Revolutionary Socialist League, Communist Party of Kenya, Social Justice Centres, Kongamano la Mapinduzi, Mwamko, and the Ukombozi Library to cultivate progressive movements in Kenya and revitalize a larger revolutionary Pan Africanist movement with a scientific socialist orientation.

Guests:

Gacheke Gachihi is Coordinator at the Mathare Social Justice Center, and a member of the Social Justice Centres Working Group.

Comrade Maghanga is a member of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Socialist League, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He is an activist and organizer, and an active participant in the Pan African Movement.

Sungu Oyoo is a writer and organizer at Kongamano la Mapinduzi and a member of Mwamko.

Wanjira Wanjiru is a co-founder of Mathare Social Justice Center, host of the Liberating Minds podcast, and Matigari book club. 

Links: 

Mathare Social Justice Centre 

Kongamano la Mapinduzi 

Mwamko 

Ukombozi Library 

Revolutionary Socialist League (Kenya) 

Liberating Minds podcast 

Pio Gama Pinto book

Breaking the Silence on NGOs in Africa (Book)

And if you appreciate the work that we do, we’re still work on our goal for the month to add 40 patrons to the show. We are running a little behind pace, but if a few comrades chip in we should still be able to reach it by the end of the month. You can support the show for $1 a month or more at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. 

In this episode we talk to Louis Allday, writer, historian and founding editor of Liberated Texts.

Liberated Texts is an independent book review website which features works of ongoing relevance that have been forgotten, underappreciated, suppressed or misinterpreted in the cultural mainstream since their release.

Louis gets into a more detailed description of the site’s purpose and some of the reviews they’ve featured since its founding just over a year ago. He also talks about the importance of books to anti-imperialist struggle, and ways that the publishing industry has been targeted by counterintelligence and counterinsurgency operations by the likes of the CIA and other related agencies.

The inaugural Liberated Texts Collected Reviews volume is now available. Published by Ebb books, we’ll include links to where you can order it in the show notes.

As we mention in the episode, Liberated Texts is a resource that we use to find interesting subject matter for this podcast. We’ve previously featured a couple of discussions directly based on reviews from the site, and also featured folks who have gone on to write reviews for Liberated Texts. We’ll include some links to those in the show notes as well.

As Louis mentions in the episode, Liberated Texts is going to soon begin republishing or publishing books in English for the first time starting in July of this year. Their first book will be an English translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s On Zionist Literature. Proceeds from the sales of their first volume of collected reviews will go towards that publishing work.

And as always if you like what we do here at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, the best way that you can support our work is to become a patron of the show. You can do that for as little as $1 a month or a yearly membership of $10.80. If you’re not able to do that right now, please do what you can to like, share, retweet and spread the word.

Links:

Liberated Texts

Order Liberated Texts from Bookshop.org

Another interview we did which talks about Walter Rodney's time in Tanzania and relationship with Nyerere.

Our episode with Bill Rolston and Robbie McVeigh

Our episode with Alex Turrall

Our previous conversation with Ju-Hyun Park.

In this episode we interview Craig Gilmore. Gilmore is a prison abolitionist, cofounder of California Prison Moratorium Project, and a member of the Community Advisory board of Critical Resistance.  

Gilmore shares practical examples of prison abolitionists stopping new prison construction in California and how those examples have helped inform organizer approaches to stopping new prisons and jails. We also talk about possible lessons these abolitionist fights have to the fight to defund police.

Gilmore also addresses various recent critiques of abolition on the left. And talks about work he uses to orient his abolitionist practice, including explaining what he thinks the relevance of Amilcar Cabral and the PAIGC is to abolitionist fights in the US. 

In conversation we also talk about violence, harm, self defense, and the opportunities and threats of this moment.

This is the slightly edited version of our December 5th livestream with film director, producer, screenwriter, rapper, and communist Boots Riley. He is the lead vocalist of the musical groups The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. He wrote and directed the film Sorry to Bother You and is the creator and director of the television series I’m A Virgo. 

We talked to Boots Riley about the recent labor upsurge, including the wave of strikes and increasing militancy among workers in the US. We briefly discuss United Auto Workers’ call for a ceasefire in the war on Gaza and establishment of a Divestment and Just Transition working group. 

We also discuss navigating the capitalist film and television industry as a communist and possibilities for organizing among creatives. Boots also answers some questions about making anticapitalist art including some behind the scenes insights from I’m A Virgo.

We want to shout-out Boots Riley for joining us for this discussion and definitely recommend I’m A Virgo if people haven’t watched it yet. I also want to say there’s some really special content we released in the month of December on our YouTube channel. Including our conversation with Steven Salaita and our conversation on Kuwasi Balagoon with several comrades of his and movement elders including Ashanti Alston, David Gilbert, dequi kioni-sadiki, Matt Meyer, Meg Starr, & Bilal Sunni-Ali so if you haven’t checked that out yet, make sure you do at youtube.com/@makcapitalism.

This will be our final episode released in 2023. We have a ton of stuff already being edited for release for 2024. This year we released 67 audio episodes, 26 livestreams and our content was listened to or watched over 640,000 times. We’re proud of that, and we’re also proud that our programs are still entirely dependent upon regular folks like yourself who listen and watch the work we put out. Today is your last day of 2023 to support us and that would be much appreciated, but also we hope many of you who have not become patrons of the show yet will do so in 2024. And we want to profusely thank everyone who supported us in 2023 for making the show possible for another year. You can support us at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

This episode was co-edited and co-produced by Aidan Elias and Jared Ware

Josh interviews Charlie about his article in Cosmonaut Magazine, entitled “ACT UP, Fight Back: A History of AIDS in America.” In conversation Charlie talks about the history of AIDS and how imperialist capitalism or international monopoly capitalism fueled the spread of the AIDS epidemic in the US. 

The bulk of the conversation is about the development of political resistance to the AIDS crisis, most prominently in the organization ACT UP. Charlie also discusses the weak governmental response to the crisis, and areas where ACT UP was successful, as well as areas in which the response to the AIDS crisis continues to fall short - in eliminating the epidemic among Black and racialized populations in the US, and internationally - due to the problems created by a capitalist health system and an insufficient organizing response. 

Along the way Josh asks Charlie about some resonances between the responses to the COVID pandemic and the AIDS epidemic in the political economy of the US. And they discuss their perspectives on some of the issues that come up when socialist organizations try to engage or alternatively don’t engage in mass struggles like the AIDS crisis, or the most recent rebellions after the police lynching of George Floyd.

Our episodes are completely funded by our listeners. No ads, no corporate money, no grants. And this allows us the independence to cover history like this from a radical perspective. If you like what we do please support our work at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. 

In this episode we interview Professor Elisabeth B. Armstrong. Armstrong is a professor of the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College. She teaches courses on feminist political praxis, with a focus on transnational feminist movements seeking social, economic and environmental transformation. Her courses include Marxist feminism, Women, Money and Transnationalism, decolonial feminist archives and gendered movements about the land, food and survival. Many of her courses are community-based research courses linked to regional and international community movements for the basic needs of land, food, labor, and embodied self-determination. In addition to the book we discuss in this episode Armstrong is the author of The Retreat From Organization: U.S. Feminism Reconceptualized, and Gender and Neoliberalism: The All-India Democratic Women’s Association and Its Strategies of Resistance.

In this conversation we are here to talk about her latest book Bury The Corpse of Colonialism: The Revolutionary Feminist Conference of 1949. In 1949, revolutionary activists from Asia hosted a conference in Beijing that gathered together their comrades from around the world. The Asian Women’s Conference developed a new political strategy, demanding that women from occupying colonial nations contest imperialism with the same dedication as women whose countries were occupied. This book tells the remarkable story of how these bold activists constructed a blueprint for anti-imperialist feminist internationalism and shows how movements create a revolutionary theory over time and through struggle.

The book is a great discussion of conjunctural analysis, the dedication of these women militants, from communist parties and other antifascist, anticolonial, and anti-imperialist formations in the 1940’s. We talk to Dr. Armstrong about how these women developed their strategy, what they were experiencing in their struggles, and how they sought to put their strategy of an inside/outside approach to anti colonialism and anti-imperialism into practice in the middle of the 20th century as the international anticolonial movement was developing.

Also May is winding down and we’re just 9 patrons away from hitting our goal for the month. This is our 6th episode for the month of May. If you appreciate the work we do releasing episodes like this on a weekly basis and running study groups, kick in $1 a month or more and help us sustain the work, which is only possible through the support of everyday folks like yourself. You can become a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Purchase the book from Massive Bookshop

In this episode Dylan Rodríguez returns to the podcast. 

Dylan Rodríguez is a teacher, scholar, organizer and collaborator who has maintained a day job as a Professor at the University of California-Riverside since 2001. His lifework focuses on liberationist, anticolonial, and abolitionist confrontations with the antiblack, colonial, and white supremacist violences that permeate the ongoing Civilization project. He was elected to serve as President of the American Studies Association in 2020-2021, and in 2020 was named to the inaugural class of Freedom Scholars. Since 2021, he has served as Co-Director of the Center for Ideas and Society.

Since the late-1990s, Dylan has participated as a founding member of organizations like Critical Resistance, Abolition Collective, Critical Ethnic Studies Association, Cops Off Campus, Scholars for Social Justice, and the UCR Department of Black Study, among others.

He is the author of three books, most recently White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide (Fordham University Press, 2021), which won the 2022 Frantz Fanon Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

In January of 2021 we published an episode with Rodríguez on his most recent book White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide. In that conversation along with many of the other themes and topics from that book, Rodriguez began to frame out some thoughts with us on counterinsurgency. This past fall on Black Agenda Report, Dylan published an interview with Roberto Sirvent entitled "Insurgency and Counterinsurgency." 

In this episode we pick up that conversation, talking about counterinsurgency as a totality, as a curriculum, and as epistemic. We get into various elements of what that means to Rodriguez, and about the composition of the counterinsurgent bloc. We also talk about how we recognize it, resist it and embrace beautiful revolutionary wildness.

For this month our book for incarcerated readers is Walter Rodney’s Decolonial Marxism. A big thank you to Verso Books for donating the copies. We do need to raise some money for shipping for those and there’s a link in the show notes where you can pitch in to that effort over at Massive Bookshop.

We also have a big goal for this month, we’re hoping to add 40 patrons for the show. Despite meeting our goal in February, we actually had more non-renewals than new patrons for the month. So we are hoping we can make up for that in March. Our show is totally supported by listeners like you, we don’t sell ads and we don’t run on any grants. So if you appreciate our work and get something out of it, then become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links: 

More of Dylan’s books, edited collections, and writings (in collections) can be found at Massive Bookshop.

Dylan Rodríguez can be reached on Twitter (@dylanrodriguez), Instagram (dylanrodriguez73), and Facebook.

[This episode was conducted bilingually in French & English and there is also a French version of the episode here]

In this episode we speak with Inemesit Richardson and Wendlassida Simporé of the Thomas Sankara Center for African Liberation and Unity in Burkina Faso. They are also both members of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party.

The Thomas Sankara Center for African Liberation and Unity is a Pan-African library and political education center in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

The Thomas Sankara center is a free community lending library supplying books about Pan-Africanism, socialism and Third World liberation. They host film screenings, debates and other free events. They also run an after-school young pioneers children's education program for primary school students ages 8-14 and  have a work-study circle for adults which meets regularly to critically study revolutionary books and put theory into praxis in their community.

We talk to both of our guests about recent events in the region. In particular, about the most recent coup in Niger. They discuss the pulse on the ground with regards to Burkina Faso’s current leadership, these anticolonial coups, the region’s relationship to Russia, and the role of the CFA Franc in France’s neocolonial system in the region. We recorded this conversation on August 10th and there have been multiple developments since then, we’ll include some additional articles in the show notes. It should be noted that when we discuss a potential ECOWAS invasion during the episode, that this has not actually occurred yet, although ECOWAS is sanctioning Niger and threatening to use force to overthrow the current leadership. Mali and Burkina Faso have vowed to defend Niger’s leadership with military force. And there is ongoing discussion about the development of a regional federation.

We will include a link to where you can support the work of the Thomas Sankara Center in Burkina Faso. 

In this French language version of the episode, you will hear Inemesit translate the questions into French, and you will hear both Inemesit and Wendlassida answer the questions in French as well. There is also an English language version of this episode.

Links:

Thomas Sankara Center for African Liberation and Unity in Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso & Mali vow to defend Niger’s new leadership with force

The People of Niger Want to Shatter Resignation

Africa's Last Colonial Currency - The CFA Franc Story

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 interview, we are joined by Mary Turfah  who discusses a couple of her recent articles including the broader context of medical neutrality and the targeting of healthcare workers in Gaza. She addresses the historical context of medical neutrality, which emerged in the mid-1800s as a means to ensure medical immunity on the battlefield. Turfah explains how this concept has racialized limitations, particularly in colonial contexts where colonizers often do not need the medical facilities of the colonized and thus feel justified in targeting them.

Turfah highlights the systematic targeting of healthcare workers in Gaza by Israeli forces, noting that nearly 500 healthcare workers had been killed as of May 15th, often through targeted bombings or summary executions. She emphasizes that this targeting is part of a broader strategy to control the Palestinian population by eliminating those who can provide life-saving care. This strategy not only cripples the current medical infrastructure but also undermines the future training and development of medical professionals in Gaza.

The interview also touches on the personal experiences of healthcare workers in Gaza, who often have to change out of their scrubs to avoid being targeted and face abductions and other forms of violence. Turfah underscores the importance of recognizing the humanity and professional integrity of these healthcare workers, who are often put on the defensive in Western media narratives that seek to justify Israeli actions.

Turfah also problematizes the psychological and biomedical explanations used to justify the behavior of Israeli Zionists, arguing that the roots of this violence lie in the Zionist ideology and colonial project, not individual psychosis.

We conclude by reflecting on Mary’s experiences as a surgical resident and the broader implications for medical professionals working in conflict zones.

You can follow Mary Turfah on Twitter and Instagram at @MaryTurfah to keep up with her work and insights.

Mary Turfah is a writer and resident physician trained in Middle Eastern South Asian and African Studies at Columbia, where her research focused on trauma memory and the margins of the Nakba. She has written about medical neutrality and settler psychosis for The Baffler, the (mis)uses of Edward Said's famous 'permission to narrate' for Protean, the destruction of medical infrastructure in Gaza for The Nation, and other things for other places. She is working on an essay collection about medicine and imperialism, explored through the life of a Lebanese ob-gyn who inspired her to pursue medicine.

Giving direct aid to people in Gaza is a way of directly intervening against the genocidal policy of zionist settler colonialism and US imperialism. We recommend the Sameer Project as a a grassroots direct-aid organization that provides tents, water, food and medical aid to Palestinians in Gaza, including areas of the north where the Zionist entity does not allow NGOs to function. We’ll link a recent livestream we hosted with Hala from the Sameer Project as well as links to their funds.

To support our work become a patron of the show for as little as $1 per month. We will have a patreon-member only release tomorrow (October 8th)

This episode is edited & produced by Aidan Elias. Music, as always, is by Televangel

Links:
https://www.maryturfah.com/

Running Amok The feeds of the IDF depict what Zionism can’t see
No Side to Fall In Medical neutrality in Gaza

What It’s Like on the Front Lines of Gaza’s Hospital Hell Talking to Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan 

This week we have two really exciting guests Zoé Samudzi is a writer and doctor student in Medical Sociology at the University of California, San Francisco. William C. Anderson is a freelance writer. His work has been published by the Guardian, MTV, Truthout, and Pitchfork among others. We had Zoé on the show all the way back in episode 2, and for William we’ve been wanting to have him on the show for a long time and this was a great opportunity. This week we’re talking to them about their new book which comes on today June 5th on AK Press. So please, if you haven’t already bought a copy, log on to AKpress.org or visit your local radical bookstore and get yourself a copy. 

"As Black As Resistance makes the case for a new program of self-defense and transformative politics for Black Americans, one rooted in an anarchistic framework that the authors liken to the Black experience itself. This book argues against compromise and negotiation with intolerance. It is a manifesto for everyone who is ready to continue progressing towards liberation."

In this conversation we welcome Dr. Nazia Kazi to the podcast.

Dr. Nazia Kazi is an anthropologist and educator based in Philadelphia. Her work explores the role of Islamophobia and racism in the context of global politics. 

She is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stockton University in New Jersey, where she teaches courses on race, ethnicity, immigration, and Islam in the U.S. She is the author of Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics. Kazi is also a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights. 

This episode came about in response to the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, which should be widely understood as a crime against humanity and an egregious violation of even the most basic application of international and human rights law.

We invited Dr. Kazi on the show to discuss how US media continues to cover this war, and the broader so-called “War on Terror” over 20 years later. Kazi demystifies some of the liberal multicultural discussion of Islamophobia and examines a more complex history of the US’s relationship to Islam specifically by looking at CIA operations. She also examines the impact of post-9/11 policy making on government surveillance, the political expressions of Muslims in the US, inclusionary nonprofit politics, and extrajudicial political repression. 

We also discuss what it is that we are to #neverforget when it comes to 9/11 and how mainstream media and K-12 education have been a part of a political assault on both historical and political analysis around that day and around the impacts of the “war on terror” on politics and state repression both domestically and internationally.

And if you like what we do bringing you conversations like this every week then please become a patron of the show. Our show is 100% funded by our patrons and you can become one for as little as $1 a month. We’re just 8 patrons away from hitting our goal for the month. So sign up and become a patron at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism 

Links:

How the 'war on terror' obscures America's alliance with right-wing Islam

What We Forget by Nazia Kazi and Anuj Shrestha

Dr. Nazia Kazi's website

Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Updated) By Nazia Kazi

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

Barbara Smith co-founded the seminal Black Feminist Socialist organization the Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. She is an educator, organizer, scholar and publisher and theorist of Black Feminist politics. 

In this episode we talk about Barbara Smith’s latest piece on the Hamer-Baker plan to dismantle white supremacy. We also discuss the work of the Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table. Smith talks about the challenges of coalitional politics and the need for white political groups to desegregate their personal lives as a necessary precondition to desegregating their political spaces. She also discusses some of her role models including Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and Howard Zinn and her comradeship with Audre Lorde and others. Smith also discusses the term identity politics, which first appeared in the Combahee River Collective Statement and her own opinion on its current use and demonization.

In this episode we interview Matyos Kidane and Shakeer Rahman two organizers with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, a community organization founded in 2011, working to build community power toward abolishing police surveillance. They are rooted in the Skid Row neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, based out of the Los Angeles Community Action Network. 

Recently the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition has been thrust into the spotlight due to backlash against their creation of the website watchthewatchers.net, which complies police data from multiple public records requests originally made by journalist Ben Camacho best known for his work with KNOCK-LA. While this so-called controversy is interesting and warrants some debunking of the lies being put forward by LA police, politicians and their allies, we also wanted to use the opportunity to highlight the organizing of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and learn from their process of collective study and how to use state archives, public records requests, community knowledge and analyses of police and local political economy to produce resources for abolitionist movements.

Along the way we talk about how Watch The Watchers has grown out of a longer history of Cop Watch practices and ways that this tool already been used by activists, journalists and community members.

In the show notes we’ll include links to support the work of Stop LAPD Spying, to a toolkit opposing the Robot Dogs being proposed by the LAPD and a link to some examples of their work.

And if you appreciate the work that we do bringing you an assortment of discussions with organizers, activists, scholars and movement veterans on a weekly basis become a patron of the show. We have a goal to add 40 new patrons again this month to help us sustain the work that we do. You can join the amazing folks who make this show possible for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Stop LAPD Spying Coalition (Donation Page)

Toolkit for opposing Robot Dogs in LA (meeting on Friday May 5th)

automatingbanishment.org

Automating Banishment: The Data-Driven Policing of Stolen Land (Haymarket discussion) with Mike Davis and Stop LAPD Spying 

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 talk to Nick Estes about his book Our History Is The Future, the new collection he co-edited Standing With Standing Rock and we also talked about his latest piece A Red Deal, which is a synopsis of a movement document that he and his comrades at The Red Nation have developed.

Estes pulls together struggles against settler colonialism, imperialism, capitalism and the destruction of the environment and shares an outline of his vision of the path to liberation.

In this episode we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Gerald Horne to the podcast. 

Dr. Horne holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. He has also written extensively about the film industry. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University. 

The author of over 30 books, just a few of Dr. Horne’s most notable titles include The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism, Fire This Time, Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary, Confronting Black Jacobins, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois, Race to Revolution, Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro American Response to the Cold War, and White Supremacy Confronted. 

In this particular discussion we focus on Dr. Horne’s recent book The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of US Fascism. Given that it is over a 600 page book, and our interview was just about an hour long we did not get into many of the threads in that fascinating text. The book examines the specific set of relations and contradictions that led settler separatists to create the Republic of Texas, as well as those that led to the return of Texas to the Union, Texas’s role in the confederacy and the relationship of Texas settlers to slavery. It also examines the completely genocidal position Texas settlers held towards indigenous populations, and their relationship to Mexico which abolished slavery all the way back in 1829, exacerbating some of these contradictions among their slaveowning settler population in the northern part of Mexico that we now know as Texas. The book also extends beyond the Civil War period to look at the development of Jim Crow in Texas after Reconstruction. We strongly recommend people pick it up if they’re interested in learning more about the forging of some of the most fascistic tendencies in US History.

We also talk to Dr. Horne about some of the critiques of his book The Counter-Revolution of 1776 and about the right wing assault against the teaching of US history in this country.

This is our sixth episode we’ve published in this short month of February, and a lot of hours of reading, developing questions, interviewing, and editing have gone into that. The best way to support our ability to continue to bring you this content along with the ongoing study groups that we hold is to become a patron of the show. You can do that for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. And if you already support the show, or if you’re not able to support financially, retweeting, reposting, sharing, and liking episodes on social media does help to connect the episodes to more listeners.

Now here is our conversation with Dr. Horne on US History and counter-revolution.

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 episode we talk about a forthcoming graphic novel adaptation of C.L.R. James’ play Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History. 

The text of this graphic novel is a play by C.L.R. James that opened in London in 1936 with Paul Robeson in the title role. For the first time, black actors appeared on the British stage in a work by a black playwright.

In this conversation we talk to Sakina Karimjee and Nic Watts who adapted James’ play into graphic novel form and illustrated it. We talk about how C.L.R. James dramatized the Haitian Revolution and its various contradictions and characters and how they sought to tell this story through a graphic novel, using James’ script.

Along the way we talk about many aspects of the revolution, about the story’s protagonist Toussaint Louverture, about the relentless imperialist pursuit of Haiti, which was ongoing throughout the revolutionary period and continues into the present day. And we also discuss why the Haitian revolution is so suppressed in popular culture and popular representations of history, despite being one of the single most important events in world history. 

The book will be out on October 10th from Verso Books, but in the meantime you can pre-order it wherever you buy books.

Mamyrah Prosper on the History of Imperialism in Haiti, the Current Crisis and Questions of International Solidarity 

“The Messages We Refuse To Learn From” - Felicia Denaud on the Unnameable War and Afro-Assembly

Jemima Pierre on Haiti's Significance in Our Americas

The Continued Occupation of Haiti - Jemima Pierre on Luqman Nation on Black Power Media

You can join the Black Alliance for Peace Newsletter, which will keep you updated on issues impacting Haiti and many other issues of Black Internationalism. There are many other ways you can get involved in their work too that you can find on their website.

And to support our work at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. This is our fifth episode of the month and unfortunately so far this month we have more non-renewals on pledges than we have new patrons. So if you’ve been thinking about supporting the show or increasing your support of the show, it’d be hugely appreciated at this time. 

In this episode we talk to Eugene Puryear, who provides political analysis daily on By Any Means Necessary. Eugene is also a member of the Party For Socialism And Liberation.

In this episode, Eugene shares analysis of recent events in Haiti, Venezuela, Sudan, South Africa and Iran. We talk to him about political movements spanning the globe and get a sense of some of the most important struggles that are often not covered or misrepresented in mainstream media.

For point of reference it’s important to understand that this episode was recorded on May 30th. As you will note, despite the two weeks since we recorded it, this episode remains extremely relevant in terms of the political analysis of situations around the globe, including the potential false flag in the Gulf as we release this episode today on June 13th.

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 

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: 

+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 we interview Amandla Thomas-Johnson, about his new book, Becoming Kwame Ture. Amandla Thomas-Johnson is a British-born writer of African-Caribbean descent. He is based in Dakar, Senegal, from where he covers West Africa. 

He has reported from a dozen countries, and has covered social movements from Trinidad and Tobago to Chile to Mauritania. He has worked for the BBC, The Guardian, Al-jazeera, and Channel 4, among others.

Amandla discusses the myopic historical view US historiography has of Kwame Ture (who the US generally remembers as SNCC activist Stokely Carmichael), limiting his life’s work predominantly to the 16 years he lived in the US rather than looking at it from a wholistic and international perspective. 

In the conversation, we cover Ture’s Pan Africanism, his relationship to Sékou Touré and Kwame Nkrumah, and the development of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP). We talk about his commitment to Palestinian solidarity and support for social movements around the world. We also discuss Ture's involvement in attempts to return Kwame Nkrumah to power in Ghana, and his involvement in the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG). 

Along the way Amandla tells fascinating stories, including Ture’s connections to the lives of figures such as Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Amilcar Cabral. This conversation and the book, reveal pats of the life, politics and organizing of Kwame Ture that have largely been neglected by most biographers operating from a US centric lens.  

In this episode Abdaljawad (Abboud) Omar returns to the show. 

This is the lightly edited audio from a livestream we recorded on March 24th 

Abdaljawad Omar is a writer, analyst, and lecturer based in Ramallah, Palestine. He currently lectures in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University. He has written extensively in Arabic. In English Abboud has contributed to Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, and Ebb Magazine among other outlets.

We discuss his essay "Bleeding Forms: Beyond the Intifada," which is available open access through Duke University press.

We will also talk about recent developments in the US-co-authored zionist genocidal war on Palestinians. Although we would note that because this was recorded a little over a week ago, a few of my comments are not totally current to the most recent developments, but the analysis remains quite relevant nonetheless.

We discuss some of the recent developments from the Palestinian resistance which continues to maintain a heroic resistance against the zionist occupation’s forces. And of course we touch on the siege on Al Shifa hospital, the full extent of which we revealed yesterday when the IOF retreated from the area.

This was our seventh conversation with Abdaljawad Omar since November. Previously we have released a couple of them as audio podcasts, but there are still 4 others that have not been converted yet and all of them are up on a playlist on our Youtube channel that we’ll link in the show notes:

Also want to note that since October 7th we’ve also had a few conversations with Dr. Lara Sheehi discussing recent developments from a decolonial psychoanalytic perspective. And we also have created a playlist for those. 

In addition some of our recent guests on the Youtube feed include Steven Salaita, Within Our Lifetime, Decolonize Palestine, Celeste Winston, Matteo Capasso, Hanif Abdurraqib, Dylan Rodríguez, and more.

We also have three more livestreams prepared for this coming week so remember to subscribe to the Youtube channel, turn on notifications and catch those.

We do also have another study group starting up. This time on Orisanmi Burton’s Tip of the Spear. This will start on April 17th at 7:30 PM ET. This study group is available for all patrons of the show. To gain access to that or just to support our work, become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Livestream conversations with Abdaljawad Omar

Livestream conversations with Lara Sheei (including one with Stephen Sheehi as well)

This episode is focused on the campaign to free Sundiata Jawanza.

Sundiata Jawanza is a New Afrikan, abolitionist and human rights activist currently incarcerated in the South Carolina.

Today we have four guests, Audrey Bomse and Jenipher Jones both co-chairs of the Mass Incarceration Committee of the National Lawyers Guild, Darren Mack of Prison Lives Matter, and Roc, the Jailhouse Lawyers Speak Housing Program Coordinator. 

In this discussion J shares a bit about the Sundiata Jawanza’s freedom campaign, a bit about the case itself, and primarily we focus on a political discussion of Sundiata Jawanza’s work in part discussing his individual contributions, but primarily through the political work that he and his comrades have done through Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. As part of that discussion, we also discuss the overall importance of jailhouse lawyers to the legal education and opportunities at freedom and defense of human rights within US prisons. 

We want to ask all of our listeners to please get involved, to connect with Sundiata Jawanza, and to support his freedom campaign by writing the parole board on his behalf. Full details on how to do that can be found at SundiataJawanza.com.

To learn more about Jailhouse Lawyers Speak.

People can write JLS by mail at: 

JAILHOUSE LAWYERS SPEAK

PO BOX 673

MERCER, PA 16137

Or email jailhouselawyersspeak@protonmail.com or outthemud.jls@gmail.com

Some prior episodes with (or in solidarity with) Jailhouse Lawyers Speak:

Jailhouse Lawyers Speak's 2020 Call To Action 

“In The Spirit of Abolition” - Jailhouse Lawyers Speak Calls For Shut ‘Em Down Demonstrations

"Building Infrastructure: Identifying Tactics for Sustainable Formations": A Panel Discussion Supporting Jailhouse Lawyers Speak's #SHUTEMDOWN2021 Demos

This is a quick special report. In this episode we interview TeleSUR English presenter and Kawsachun News co-founder Camila Escalante. Camila shares with us the latest news coming out of Bolivia today October 19th, after the Movement Toward Socialism seemingly had a resounding victory at the polls yesterday October 18th, returning to power just a year after a US backed coup d’etat removed Evo Morales from power. We talk to Camila about the past year, the election, and concerns to watch for in the restoration of power for MAS.

We also talk about the base of MAS and western mainstream narratives that have been disrupted by this overwhelming display of democratic support for this socialist movement in Bolivia. Camila also discussed the critical importance of movement journalism to counter western mainstream propaganda and US state department imperialist objectives against socialist movements.