Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

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 Austin McCoy to discuss his piece “'Disorganize the State': The Black Workers Congress’s Visions of Abolition-Democracy in the 1970’s", which Austin wrote for the Labor and Employment Relations Association’s publication A Racial Reckoning in Industrial Relations: Storytelling as Revolution from Within. 

Austin McCoy is a historian of the 20th Century United States with specializations in African American History, labor, and cultural history.  He is currently working on two books:   The Quest for Democracy: Black Power, New Left, and Progressive Politics in the Post-Industrial Midwest and a cultural and personal history of De La Soul.

The conversation allows us to once again return to the current of radical anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-racist labor organizing that emanated from organizations like DRUM (the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement), the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and - the focus of McCoy’s essay - the Black Workers Congress. 

In this episode we talk about the BWC’s radical vision, which McCoy describes as in the tradition of what W.E.B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy.” And we discuss some of the organizing history of the various individuals and organizations associated with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as well as what happened to their vision over time. 

We recorded this discussion on December 18th of 2023 so while we discuss the solidarity that these revolutionary Black organizers had with Palestinians and discuss the UAW’s ceasefire call and their proposal to examine divestment, there are some notes that are important to add as we release this discussion almost a year later (a delay that is entirely my fault). 

The UAW has endorsed Kamala Harris despite her role in the genocide of Palestinians and her refusal to call for an arms embargo and they did so with no concessions whatsoever on that issue. This stance by the UAW in this moment in many ways reflects the very currents of racist and imperialist union organizing that groups like the League and the BWC were organizing against. So while we can talk about the folks within the UAW who organized for those statements and resolutions within their union as operating within the traditions we discuss in this episode, it is important to note - at least in my view - that the UAW as a whole has ultimately shunned that radical legacy and replicated the historical role of the labor aristocracy in this moment as they and other major unions in the US have done over and over again. 

Nonetheless, I do think that it is important to not dismiss the power or potential of labor organizing in moments like this, even if that potential remains unfulfilled. I think about the lessons that Stefano Harney and Fred Moten pull from people like General Baker when they called us to “wildcat the totality” several years ago. 

I’d like to send much appreciation to Austin McCoy for this discussion. If you would like to support our work please become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links and related or referenced discussions:

Our two part conversation with Herb Boyd about this period and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (Part 1, Part 2)

 "Finally Got the News" (film about the League)

Some archival documents related to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (visit FreedomArchives.org for more) 

Our discussion with J. Moufawad-Paul on "Economism" which deals with some of the imperialist and racist trends within the labor movement (and within Communist or Socialist approaches to organizing the labor movement within empire at various times). 

In July of 2023, we published a conversation on the Iskra Books translation of Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend with Henry Hakamäki and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro (book/listen to part 1 here).

We found the book really fascinating and had lots of questions, so we were only able to cover about half of our questions in our first conversation. This conversation is essentially the part 2 of that conversation, in which Henry and Salvatore are joined by Iskra editors David Peat and Ben Stankhe. Of course by the time we got around to recording this episode in late October, we were three weeks into Israel’s genocidal counterinsurgency campaign against Palestinians, after the heroic uprising known as Al-Aqsa Flood. Obviously, I didn’t intend to delay the release of this episode for almost a year, but at the time I kept telling myself there would eventually be a ceasefire and a new normal would be established. One year later that hasn’t happened yet, and doesn’t necessarily seem and closer than it was a year ago.

All that is really by way of an apology to Ben, David, Henry, and Salvatore for not getting this episode out sooner. It absolutely warrants your attention and it actually relates in many ways to not only the struggle of Palestinians today, but to all struggles for national liberation, socialism, and communism. 

We also just hosted another conversation on Domenico Losurdo’s work last week on our YouTube channel. In that one, Gabriel Rockhill discusses the English translation of Losurdo’s ‘Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn,’ which he edited and was just released on Monthly Review Press (book/episode).

There are a number of references in the episode which I have tried to link in the show notes. First and foremost head over to Iskra books and check out their catalogue of books. As Henry mentions all of their books are available as free pdfs, but I definitely also encourage you to support their work. They’re doing really important stuff, and we plan to highlight more of their work going forward. 

I’ve also linked a conversation we had a couple months ago on another Iskra Books release Ruehl Muller’s Building a People’s Art which is about the role of art and artists in the Vietnamese liberation struggle (book/episode)

As Henry and Salvatore mention at the end of the episode, Communism: The Highest Stage of Ecology, which is an agroecological history of the Soviet Union and Cuba, which will be out via Iskra later this year. You can follow all of Iskra’s releases on Iskrabooks.org and just a reminder that free PDFs are available for this book and all of their others on their website.

We plan to highlight more Iskra Books publications going forward. Including a soon to be scheduled episode on a book they published on Yugoslavian film, and on October 28th at 10 AM EDT we’ll host Conor McCabe to discuss The Lost & Early Writings of James Connolly, the Irish revolutionary (book/livestream)

And lastly, this is our third audio episode of October, and we are trying to get back to releasing audio content with more regularity. To that end it would be really helpful if some of our listeners who do not yet support the show on patreon, became patrons for as little as $1 a month. The main purpose of becoming a patron is of course to support our work, but we do have a recent patreon-exclusive episode with several folks from Black Liberation Media including Jared Ball from IMIXWHATILIKE, Renee Johnston from Saturday’s with Renee, and Geechee Yaw from Earn Your Liberation. Shout-out to all of them and if you become a patron of the show you will get access to that recent conversation which primarily focuses on social media, YouTube and censorship. Sign up at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Guest bios:

Henry Hakamäki is best known as the co-host of the Guerrilla History podcast. And of course among many other things, he is also the co-translator and editor of the book we will be discussing today. You can follow him on Twitter at @huck1995.

Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro is Professor at the Geography Department of SUNY New Paltz and is chief editor for the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism.  His book Socialist States and the Environment is available from Pluto Press. 

Ben Stahnke is an educator, organizer, and artist working on the intersection of political ecology, education, and print. Ben holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in environmental studies, a M.A. in political philosophy, and is currently pursuing a second doctorate in education.

David Peat serves as an editor and copy-editor for both Iskra Books and Peace, Land, and Bread, is a student of Marxism-Leninism from Lancashire, England, who organises with Red Fightback. He has a B.A. in philosophy and is interested in political economy, ecology, and revolutionary education.

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 

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 discuss the role of Black liberalism in the US political landscape, particularly its relationship with the Democratic Party. And how Black liberalism often neglects the interests of the black working poor in service of the ruling class. We contemplate the influence of social media on political discourse and the Black elite’s capturing and commodification of Black cultural expressions in service of empire at the expense of the global working-poor. We touch on Black apathy towards internationalism and passive or active support for imperialism and how this behavior of betraying the interests of the oppressed is learned domestically before being applied internationally. We touch on the petit-bourgeois character of electoral politics and how the poor are largely disappeared in mainstream political discussions and processes.  Momodou Taal is a PhD student in the Africana department at Cornell university. He is also the host of The Malcolm Effect podcast. Too Black is a poet, member of Black Alliance For Peace, host of The Black Myths Podcast which can be found on Black Liberation Media, he’s also the author of Laundering Black Rage, and one of the organizers of the Campaign to Free the Pendleton 2. If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month. We bring you these conversations totally independently with no corporate, state, or grant funding. You can do that at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links:

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

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

Trinity of Fundamentals study group

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This episode was produced and edited by Aidan Elias

In this episode we welcome Dani Manibat to the podcast.

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

A little bit about Material from their website:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links:

the video of Dani explaining class alignments

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

Foreign Languages Press

FLP's webshop.

Material's webpage

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

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

In this episode Damien Sojoyner returns to the podcast to talk about his book First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles.

This episode was recorded in November and unfortunately its release was delayed due to the circumstances of the world today, which have necessitated for us a lot of media work in solidarity with Palestinian resistance, and against the genocide being enacted on Palestinians most visibly and egregiously in Gaza. 

I also had the chance to catch up with Damien Sojoyner at the Archives Unbound conference at UC Santa Barbara a few weeks ago, and you can find a brief interview I conducted with them here.

This book First Strike (Currently 50% of with the code: MN91620 through June 30th) is one that I had been wanting to discuss with Damien since I learned of it, because it very much relates to various intersecting interests of mine, the Black Radical Tradition, abolition, the prison industrial complex, and public education. Disrupting common framing of a school-to-prison pipeline Sojoyner really examines how we might understand public schools, and different regimes of education as enclosures upon more radical possibilities. And we get into a discussion of the warehousing function of schools, the psychological warfare aspects and more. As there is a lot of connection between this discussion and the discussion we had with Damien last year on his book Against the Carceral Archive, we have linked that in the show notes as well.

We will have more audio content coming for you later this week as well as more video content on our YouTube channel.

We've created playlist from the Cedric and Elizabeth Robinson Archives Unbound conference.

If you appreciate the work we do at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism the best way you can support our work is as always to become a patron of the show. We are still working to find better solutions to getting all of the audio content we have backlogged released to you as quickly as possible. This has meant paying for some additional help in many cases. All that is to say, we really appreciate all of you who have been contributing to our work some of you for many years now. If people are not patrons of the show yet and are able to give $1 a month or more that’s deeply appreciated as well. You can become a patron at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

In this episode Josh was joined by special co-host Noah Tesfaye and they interviewed several organizers from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) who have been organizing solidarity encampments this spring. This interview took place about a month ago, so the events they describe are not reflections of the most current activity on their campuses, but nonetheless this conversation is a useful look into the organizing going on in student encampments across the country.

We also hosted livestreams recently with organizers at UCLA and Cornell, as well as multiple scholars who have faced repression or arrests for their involvement with organizing on their campuses.

Thanks to Josh and Noah for hosting this conversation and to Seth Gunter for work editing this episode. 

If you like the work that we do please become a patron of the show, even if just a small annual or monthly contribution. Recently we’ve had more people lowering their support or cancelling than we’ve had people signing up. So first of all just a shout-out to everyone who supports our work and makes it possible, but secondly we are trying to increase the amount of audio content we’re releasing again which has led us to expanding the number of people we’re working with as guest hosts and audio editors. And we would like to have the resources to also pay these folks for their work and continue to make some equipment upgrades. This week Noah and I will be out at a conference on the life’s work of Cedric Robinson and we hope to capture some good audio and video content while we’re out there as well that we can share with you all. Become a patron for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. 

SDS's National Instagram and UMN SDS's twitter. 

In this episode we speak with Paul Renfro about his book Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State

Paul Renfro is an associate professor of history and an affiliate faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Florida State University. In addition to Stranger Danger, He is also the coeditor of Growing Up America: Youth and Politics since 1945, and the author of the forthcoming book The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America which comes out this fall on UNC Press.

Stranger Danger tells the story of how bereaved parents of missing and slain children turned their grief into a mass movement and, alongside journalists and policymakers from both major political parties, propelled a moral panic. Leveraging larger cultural fears concerning familial and national decline, these child safety crusaders warned Americans of a supposedly widespread and worsening child kidnapping threat, erroneously claiming that as many as fifty thousand American children fell victim to stranger abductions annually. The actual figure was (and remains) between one hundred and three hundred, and kidnappings perpetrated by family members and acquaintances occur far more frequently.

We get into all of that and focus intently in this conversation on how Stranger Danger functioned from its inception as a moral panic or a sex panic. A panic Renfro argues we’ve never emerged from, one that still animates the reality of mass incarceration today, but is often less discussed than other contributing factors to the largest system of carceral control and punishment in the world.

This conversation was originally recorded all the way back on September 8th and was slated to be released on Halloween to time it up with the ridiculous annual copaganda about strangers lacing children’s candy a reliable myth propelled by the child safety regime. Obviously that timeline was dramatically derailed by our focus on work around Palestine which has largely taken the form of videos on our YouTube channels. My apologies to Paul Renfro for taking so long to get this excellent conversation edited and released. Even though the conversation certainly has nothing to do with Palestine directly, as I was finalizing the edit for this episode, it was interesting to think in this moment about the demonization of student protesters, the notion that student encampments have been somehow been infiltrated by so-called “terrorists” who are poisoning their minds with radical islam, teaching them anti-semitic rhetoric, and guerrilla warfare tactics. Certainly this has many of the hallmarks of a moral panic. And there are others we discuss in the show the panic around schools teaching sex education, the dangers of drag balls, or concerns about transgender kids in sports. It is important to be able to recognize attempts to manufacture panics, and to think critically about how we respond to these multifaceted propaganda efforts.

If you want to support our work, the best way to do so is to become a patron of the show. You can do so for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

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 Josh interviews Amba Guerguerian and Harry to discuss the New York War Crimes project and their efforts to get people to Boycott, Divest, and Unsubscribe from the New York Times.

Amba Guerguerian is an associate editor at The Indypendent  and a contributor at The New York War Crimes. 

Harry is a writer, educator and organizer with Writers against the War on Gaza and a contributor at The New York War Crimes. 

The New York War Crimes is a project dedicated to de legitimizing the imperial mouthpiece that is The New York Times through focused contemporary and historical critique, while providing an alternative platform for Palestinian and Arab authors, poets and artists — precisely what you won’t find in the pages of The Times.

If you would like to support our work the best way to do so as always is to become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We are also still working to increase our subscriber base over on the YouTube channel so subscribing to that feed is another great way. We have four, possible five live episodes coming this upcoming week so make sure you are subscribed there or on patreon to catch all of that content.

This episode was recorded on March 31, 2024

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

Music is provided as always by Televangel

Links:

The New York War Crimes

The Indypendent

Writers Against the War on Gaza

U.S. Media Control and October 7th with Bryce Greene

Electronic Intifada

Mondoweiss

The Anti-Empire Project with Justin Podour

MAKC YouTube Channel

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)

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.

In this episode we interview Tammy Kovich and El Jones to discuss the book Antifascism Against Machismo

Published by our good friends at Kersplebedeb, and described as 

“An intergenerational dialogue on the meaning of feminist antifascism.

Anti-Fascism Against Machismo collects and continues a conversation begun by Tammy Kovich (as “Petronella Lee”) in 2019. Four feminist, antifascist revolutionaries jump off from each other’s reflections and bring the particularities of their varied contexts to bear on one central problem: What has and will a women’s war against fascism look like?”

We pick up this conversation with Tammy Kovich who wrote the original zine upon which the book is constructed as well as El Jones who wrote the introduction. The book itself also includes contributions from Veronica L and from the late great Butch Lee who became an ancestor in 2021, and who we all spend time honoring in this conversation.

Among other things we discuss different variants of fascist or far right patriarchy and misogyny, the problems of the politics of representation and neocolonialism, and histories of the resistance of women in antifascist movements including in Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, and Spain.

I will add that we recorded this conversation back in August, and I am sure that if we had recorded it after October 7th we would have talked about what an antifascist war against zionism might look like and the contributions of women and children in the Palestinian struggle against genocide.

We very much appreciated this book and encourage folks to pick it up from Kersplebedeb’s retail arm which is leftwingbooks.net/. It is currently 40% off for the month of March along with over 400 titles at their online bookstore.

If you appreciate the work that we do, becoming a patron of the show or increasing your pledge to the show if you can afford to do so, are the most meaningful ways you can help us keep it going. We would not be able to bring you these episodes on a weekly basis and the livestreams we put out multiple times per week without the support of our listeners. We also will be starting a new study group in April and the best place for you to find out more about that and track everything we release is to become a patron for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

In this conversation we talk to Zeyad el Nabolsy about two of his recent pieces on Marxism-Leninism in the East African context. One piece is entitled, “Lenin in East Africa: Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu and Dani Wadada Nabudere” from The Future of Lenin: Power, Politics, and Revolution in the Twenty-First Century  and the other is “Questions from the Dar es Salaam Debates” which is in the book Revolutionary Movements in Africa: An Untold Story which was recently released from Pluto Press.

Zeyad El Nabolsy is an Assistant Professor at York University, he has written extensively on African philosophy, and we hope to have many more conversations with him in the future. I will note as a caveat again that this is one of the conversations that we recorded prior to October 7th so if it feels like Palestine, or the Congo or Haiti or Sudan or even more discussion on Fanon might be meaningful for us to engage with in this discussion given recent events, there is a reason that we do not and that the context that we do discuss in passing are the anticolonial coup d’etats in West Africa. 

Zeyad has done some interesting work on Edward Said and some work on western philosophy and Islam so hopefully we can have another conversation with him soon that is able to weave together some more current events with his historical and philosophical research interests. Nonetheless, this is a very interesting discussion and highlights some East African Marxists that we should be more familiar with given the importance of their thought and their political formulations, but who are often not well known outside of circles who are more knowledgeable about African Marxism or African Marxism-Leninism.

In this discussion we do talk about East African-Marxism Leninism, Pan Africanism, African Socialism, and the famous Dar Es Salaam Debates. We also talk about Dani Nabudere’s work on imperialism, taking Lenin’s theory of imperialism and updating and applying it to the African context. There’s much more to say, but we’ll leave for the conversation itself.

As always to support our work become a patron of the show. It’s the best way you can ensure that we’re able to continue bringing you livestreams which we do multiple times each week on our YouTube page, that we are able to bring you podcast episodes, and of course our study groups as well. You can support us at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism for as little as $1 a month.

Aidan Elias and Jared Ware co-produced this episode.

Sources/Links:

“Lenin in East Africa: Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu and Dani Wadada Nabudere” from The Future of Lenin: Power, Politics, and Revolution in the Twenty-First Century  

“Questions from the Dar es Salaam Debates” from Revolutionary Movements in Africa: An Untold Story

Zeyad El Nabolsy's PhilPapers site (where you can download free pdfs of his pieces)

For this episode we interview Ernest McMillan to discuss his memoir Standing: One Man's Odyssey During the Turbulent '60s which came out last summer. McMillan grew up in the highly segregated heart of Dallas, Texas. We talk to him about his childhood experiences within his segregated Black community, and his experiences organizing against white supremacy in Dallas and across the South with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). 

McMillan’s story is one of the power of organizing, but also of fierce state repression, police raids, trumped up charges, and a j ourney to find refuge in West Africa, time in the underground, political imprisonment, and prison organizing. There are many more aspects of his life story of course, but those are some of the ones he discusses in Standing and in this episode as well.

A couple of notes, McMillan offers a few words on solidarity with Palestinians, and on the importance of this today. This conversation was recorded in September, and I say that just to underscore the long history of solidarity between SNCC members and the Palestinian Liberation struggle. If we had recorded it after October I’m sure we would’ve talked about that solidarity in more detail, but I’ll just say it’s a common thread that has come up in most of our conversations with SNCC veterans.

We do have a number of new episodes on their way soon. I apologize to the audio listeners that I have been a little busier on the video side in recent months, but Aidan Elias - who co-produced this episode - is helping to produce and release the audio content we have and more is on its way soon.

We encourage folks to pick up Ernest’s book to learn more about his life and political odyssey.

To support our work please consider contributing to our patreon. You can do so for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Other conversations we've had with SNCC veterans or about SNCC (or SNCC members) in some capacity. 

In this episode we speak to Pulitzer Prize winning composer and musician Henry Threadgill and the co-author of his autobiography Brent Hayes Edwards. The book we discuss, which was published last year is entitled Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music.

Henry Threadgill was born in Chicago in 1944. He is one of the most significant and innovative composers of the 20th and 21st Century. In addition to being an award winning composer is an amazing saxophonist and flautist. He also is known for his percussion work, in particular the invention of the hubkaphone, a marimba like instrument made out of hub caps. He has been a leader or co-leader of the bands Air, Ensemble Double UP, Make a Move, The Henry Threadgill Ensemble, The Henry Threadgill Sextett, The Situation Society Dance Band, Very Very Circus, X-75, Zooid and 14 or 15 Kestra: Agg and probably some others I didn’t track down.  If we went into all the bands and groups Henry was a part of the list would be three times as long. In recent years Threadgill has established a completely new chromatic system for musical composition outside the confines of diatonic harmony. In 2016, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for In For a Penny, In for a Pound, an album he composed for his sextet, Zooid. He currently lives in New York.

Brent Hayes Edwards is a Professor at the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and the Director of the Scholars-in-Residence Program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.

So why this episode, it’s a bit outside of most of our content here. Perhaps the closest things we’ve done to a conversation like this would be the dialogue we hosted between Fred Moten & Hanif Abdurraqib or the interview we did with Dionne Brand last year. But although I didn’t ask it directly, the guiding question that animated this interview and engagement with Henry and Brent’s book for me was: what insights might a truly revolutionary composer have for aspiring revolutionary organizers or for cultural workers seeking to maximize the revolutionary possibilities of their work? 

We hope you enjoy this conversation and that it proves as meaningful to you as it was to us. It was a tremendous honor to sit down with Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards to discuss their beautiful book which is available now everywhere.

Thank you to Aidan Elias for co-producing this episode.

If you appreciate the work that we do, as always you can support our work for as little as $1 per month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Our podcast is fully supported by individual contributions of folks like you and we encourage you to join the amazing folks who make it possible for us to bring you these conversations on a weekly basis. 

In this episode we welcome Chris Gilbert back to the podcast to discuss his new book, Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project. 

Chris Gilbert is a professor of political studies at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela and creator and co-host of Escuela de Cuadros, a Marxist educational television program and podcast. Gilbert is co-author with Cira Pascual Marquina of Venezuela, The Present as Struggle (Monthly Review, 2020). 

We’ve hosted three previous discussions with Chris Gilbert, one related to an essay that is a chapter of this book, which discusses the theoretical work behind seeing communes as building blocks of a socialist metabolism. The two others with Cira Pascual Marquina were on the book they co-authored.

I just want to make a note, that we recorded this conversation back in September, prior to October 7th, which would’ve definitely warranted some attention in the conversation particularly as Gilbert talked about sanctions as total war and viewing Venezuela as a concentration camp, remarks that resonate with the Palestinian experience currently. This was also recorded prior to some of the recent developments in Venezuela including - among many other things - the Essequibo referendum, Biden threatening harsher sanctions against Venezuela, and the arrest of 32 people in alleged assassination plots. The best place as always to stay abreast of developments in Venezuela is to follow and support the work of venezuelanalysis.com. 

We talk about many things in this conversation, but a few I will highlight are Gilbert’s theoretical work, building on the work of feminist social reproduction theory, Marx’s theory of value, to put forth the concept of directly social labor as a key to the emancipatory possibilities of the commune. Gilbert also shares some of the contributions of African Maroon communities and indigenous communal practices to the development of Venezuela’s socialist vision.

We also talk about why for Gilbert the commune represents a recovery of Marx, in particular the romantic Marx who saw revolutionary potential among the Iroquois Confederacy, Algerian peasants and Russian peasant communes. Along the way we talk about a commune that is geographically the size of Manhattan and discuss currency experiments, communal banking efforts, and the process of “de-alienation” that Gilbert sees in the commune.

The book is out now from Monthly Review press, I highly recommend it, it was one of our favorite books that we read in 2023. 

And if you like what we do please support us at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We do have a study group that starts for patrons tomorrow night at 7:30 PM ET on February 8th studying the counterinsurgency manual, so this is a final call for anyone interested in joining us for that.

Links:

Purchase the book from Monthly Review Press.

Previous conversation on a chapter in this book

Part 1 & Part 2 of our discussion with Chris and Cira

Aidan Elias co-produced this episode.

For this episode I’m joined by Haydar of The Resistance Report which is a podcast that was launched after October 7th by a Palestinian news organization known as the Al Falasteniyeh Media Network or AFMN.

In this discussion we talk to Haydar about AFMN, their approach, their media work including The Resistance Report, and their efforts to uplift the analyses of Palestinians from Palestine to those in the diaspora. We talk a little bit about their analysis of the resistance’s position and of the unfolding genocidal depravity of the zionist occupation in Palestine. We talk about the suppression of AFMN as an outlet which has attempted to set up offices and develop correspondents in Gaza. We also get into a little bit of a discussion of episode four of theirs which is entitled Al-Araj’s Echo, Guiding Modern Resistance, which highlights the life and contributions of Bassel al-Araj to the Palestinian Resistance.

We encourage folks to check out their work for yourselves and if you like what they’re doing support their work. We will include links to listen and support them in the show notes.

And of course if you want to support our work we have a study group that starts next week, we’ll come together at 7:30 PM ET on Thursday nights to discuss the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. If you become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month you can join us for that study group or just contribute and make this show possible along with the work on our YouTube channel. 

Now here is our interview with Haydar of The Resistance Report  

For this week’s episode we interview Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani

Leila Shomali is a Palestinian PhD candidate in International Law at Maynooth University Ireland and a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.

Lara Kilani is a Palestinian-American researcher, PhD student, and is also a member of the Good Shepherd Collective.

We interviewed them on January 12th to talk about their recent piece “Anti-Zionism As Decolonisation” which is published in the brand new debut physical edition of Ebb Magazine. We will also link a web version of the article in the show notes. I will also say quickly that just recently we hosted a conversation with Louis Allday on our YouTube channel that goes over some of the other topics and analyses in that issue of Ebb Magazine. I highly recommend it and I actually bought a couple copies so that I could share it with others. 

In this conversation we talk about both the terms anti-zionism and decolonization which have each faced their own forms of elite capture and distortion. Along the way we talk about settler colonialism, the Oslo Accords, NGO’s, the limits of human rights discourse and international law for Palestinians, the problems of neoliberal identity reductionism, and why as Lara and Leila write, “the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure.”

I very much enjoyed this discussion and encourage people to check out and support the work of the Good Shepherd Collective which Leila and Lara are members of, and which they talk about through the conversation as well. We will link their work in the show notes.

Leila and Lara reference a number of articles in their discussion and we will link those in the show notes.

We do have a study group starting next week, where we will go over the US military counterinsurgency field manual Thursdays at 7:30 PM ET. If you are interested in that I put a link in our show notes. It is for our supporters whether you support us on patreon on or Youtube. And if you want to stay up to date on all of our work and support our work the best way to do that is to become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism 

"Anti-Zionism As Decolonisation" (their article the episode is based on)

"Jewish Settlers Stole My House. It's Not My Fault They're Jewish" by Mohammed El-Kurd

When Does a Settler Become a Native? Reflections of the Colonial Roots of Citizenship in Equatorial and South Africa by Mahmoud Madani

Guide for Jewish Anti-Zionist Allyship

Steven Salaita "A Postmortem on Bernie Sanders and Palestine"

Defund Racism (includes their report on Regavim)

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Lenin. A couple months ago we had the pleasure of speaking with Paul Le Blanc, the author of a new book entitled Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution. 

Paul Le Blanc is an activist dating all the way back to Students for a Democratic Society or SDS in the 1960’s. He is also an acclaimed historian who teaches at La Roche University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of too many books to name, but several on Lenin, Trotsky, CLR James, Rosa Luxemburg and other revolutionaries and movements.

We talk to Le Blanc about Lenin’s flexibility, his understanding of Marxism as not a dogma, but a guide to action, his belief that ordinary people could and must change the world, and his childhood. We also get into the concept of the United Front, Lenin’s experiences working with individuals who did not share his ideology, his understanding of dialectics, and his fierce commitment to struggle and to constant learning from struggle. Paul shares some thoughts on Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, his concept of revolutionary defeatism, and the question of authoritarianism, bureaucratization, and democracy through examples in Lenin’s life and leadership as well as what he advocated on these issues at the end of his life.

We close with some thoughts from Le Blanc on today and the type of approach he thinks organizations and parties need to undertake in today’s world in order to change it once again before it’s too late.

We deeply appreciate Paul Le Blanc for taking the time to talk to us about his book which is available now from Pluto Press. 

We would like to thank Aidan Elias who did the lion’s share of the production work on this episode. 

If you appreciate the work that we do, the best way to support the show, to stay updated on our study groups, follow any writings Josh or I may publish, and keep track of our work on both YouTube and our audio podcast feed is to become a patron of the show. You can join that for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We have a new study group that will be announced this week, so keep an eye out for that.

This is the conclusion of our 2-part conversation with Michael Hardt on his recently published book The Subversive Seventies. Part 1 is here.

In this conversation we talk about the turn among management and the ruling class in the 1970’s away from a politics of mediation and discuss the various ways that movements in the 1970’s sought to deal with this shift in the political terrain. We talk about the false problem of the so-called debate between non-violence and violence. We discuss various movements including East Asian Anti-Japan Armed Front, Weather Underground, The Black Panther Party, and the Fatsa Commune. 

A reminder that this conversation - like part 1 - was recorded in September and this is why we con’t reference some more recent events like the Palestinian resistance and Israel’s western backed genocidal war on Palestinians. 

We also have a little bit of a discussion of Hardt’s use of the notion of strategic multiplicity and the idea of non-priority between different forms of oppression within movements. 

Lastly I know I acknowledged it last time, but I do mention Sekou Odinga in this episode, who as you all know passed away just recently. Again may he rest in power.

For the month of January we’ve released three livestreams on our YouTube page. One with Josh Davidson and Eric King on Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners. Another is a wide-ranging discussion with Abdaljawad Omar on The Making of Palestinian Resistance and a conversation with Louis Allday on the debut issue of Ebb Magazine he edited, entitled “For Palestine.” Also on Sunday the 21st we have a livestream with Shireen Al-Adeimi on Yemen. Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel to follow our work there.

We are just winding down our Sylvia Wynter study group and a new study group will be launching in February so keep an eye out for that. 

The best way to support the show, to stay updated on our study groups, follow any writings Josh or I may publish, and keep track of our work on both YouTube and our audio podcast feed is to become a patron of the show. You can join that for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. 

This is part 1 of a 2-part conversation on Michael Hardt’s recent book The Subversive Seventies. 

Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author, with Antonio Negri, of the Empire trilogy and, most recently, Assembly. He is co-director with Sandro Mezzadra of The Social Movements Lab. 

A couple of things I need to say up front. This conversation was recorded in September and initially would have been released in October, but obviously our programming took a quick turn to solidarity work on the Palestinian struggle in light of those events. As I mentioned in the intro to our most recent episode we will continue to do that solidarity work primarily though not exclusively through our YouTube page for a while just so that we can get some of these other conversations out on the podcast feed.

Nonetheless, this conversation and the book and the problems it poses I think are as interesting and relevant today as they were in September. I mostly note it's recording date for two reasons, one it will be glaring that we don’t talk at all about events in Palestine in the conversation. The second reason I mention the date is that in the intervening months Michael Hardt’s long-time collaborator Antonio Negri passed away. Negri was of course a very serious and renowned political philosopher, militant organizer, and a political prisoner, coming out of some of the very movements that Michael Hardt discusses in this book. May he rest in peace and our condolences to Michael for the loss of his friend and collaborator.

This discussion is about Michael Hardt’s book The Subversive Seventies which was one of the more interesting books we read last year on the podcast. And we would definitely recommend it both for its value as a historical text as well as for the theoretical work Hardt is engaged in in the text. As is laid out quite well I think on the publisher’s website, it is a book that attempts to reconstruct the history of revolutionary politics in the 1970’s, to systematically approach political movements of the seventies within a global framework of analysis, and to bring together a wide range of political movements from the decade highlighting the ways movements in different countries resonated with and were inspired by one another.

Part 2 of the conversation will be released this coming week. 

I would also be remiss if I didn’t say rest in power to Sekou Odinga who passed away earlier this week. We hope to be able to do more in honor of him and as a tribute to his legacy in the coming weeks and years. 

If you appreciate the work we do, our work is only possible through the support of our patrons. You can support our show for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

This is a lightly edited version of a livestream we hosted back on December 13th with Steve Salaita.

We’ll include a link to that livestream for folks who want to watch the conversation, which is one of my favorites we’ve hosted since we launched our Youtube Channel as a companion with this audio podcast. 

Steven Salaita is an educator and the author or editor of eight books. His written work includes Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine, Uncivil Rites, Israel's Dead Soul, and Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where it Comes From and What it Means for Politics. 

His forthcoming book An Honest Living: A Memoir of Peculiar Itineraries will be released in March 2024.

In this episode, we discussed several of Salaita's recent interventions regarding the Palestinian resistance and Israel’s genocidal retaliation. All of the articles we discuss can be found on his website: stevesalaita.com. Because it was a livestream, audience members were also able to ask questions and Steve was gracious enough to answer several of those as well.

A quick update, in order to catch up on some of the fifteen audio podcasts we’ve recorded but haven’t released yet we will focus on editing and releasing those over the next couple of months. So if you haven’t yet make sure you also subscribe to our YouTube channel, a link to that is in the show notes. Over there, there are a number of conversations we haven’t converted to audio yet, and we will continue to host more livestreams there in the coming weeks as well.

If you want one central place to stay abreast of all of our work, become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month. You will get an email with every new episode, new livestream, new study group, or new publication that Josh or I put out and it is the best way to support our work and keep it coming. You can sign up for that at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

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

In this episode Steven Osuna returns to the podcast.

Steven Osuna is an associate professor of Sociology at CSU Long Beach. He has written extensively on street organizations, policing, the so-called war on drugs, and the ravages of capitalism and neoliberalism. He also has experience organizing in the Philippine solidarity movement and other struggles. 

Shout-out and solidarity to all of the Cal State University faculty as I know have been on rolling strikes and are negotiating  their new contracts currently.

In this conversation Osuna talks to us about Mao’s speech & essay “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People.” This is a part of our series of episodes with guests where they pick a piece of communist, socialist or other radical thought and we read it as well and we come together and we talk about it. 

This conversation was recorded back in August, so you won’t hear references to the current struggle in Palestine or other current events, but this discussion is relevant as always to organizing among the people and so it is relevant to today nonetheless. 

Thanks again to Steven Osuna for this conversation. We’ll include links in the show notes to the Philippine solidarity campaigns he uplifted as well as the Foreign Languages Press website and their journal new Material.

Also once again we do have a Sylvia Wynter study group coming up. That is for patrons or YouTube members only. It will be Wednesdays at 7:30 PM ET during the month of January. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month and support our work at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Philipine Human Rights Act

International Coalition for Human Rights in the Phillippines 

Foreign Languages Press & their new journal "Material"

; 

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)

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 

We recorded this conversation just before the world shifted on October 7th. We actually have several conversations that we still need to release that we recorded in August and September, but I wanted to get to this one first due to the urgency of Shaka Shakur’s situation.

Shaka Shakur is a New Afrikan Political Prisoner who has been behind the walls for the majority of his life since he was 16 years old. He’s currently held captive at Beaumont Correctional Center in Virginia. He was mentored by figures such as Zolo Azania and James “Yaki” Sayles. Shaka has an extensive track record of prisoner organizing and exposing injustices and human rights violations behind the walls. I’ll include a more extensive bio from his Jericho Movement page in the show notes.

Shaka had reached out to me after the publication of our discussion with Thandisizwe Chimurenga and Yusef “Bunchy” Shakur on Sanyika Shakur’s political writings. He wanted to share some things and also offer the perspective of someone from Sanyika's generation who spent many years studying and struggling in the same circles, and communicating with Sanyika through the Prison News Service and other publications that circulated behind the walls connecting New Afrikan prisoners and other political and politicized prisoners. Shaka also describes similar experiences of becoming politicized during their first period of incarceration at a young age, struggling upon his return to the outside & ultimately ending up back behind the walls.

Shakur shares his reflections on that era, on changes in the prison movement and outside support movements over time and on the disconnect that often exists between revolutionary rhetoric and revolutionary action in the US left in recent years. 

Importantly, Shaka Shakur is currently dealing with multiple urgent health issues, including his battle with cancer and we have multiple links and ways people can support his legal campaign and his request for clemency. We will have links to all of this in the show notes, but just to say that he is still asking people to call in and put pressure the Department of Correction for further medical testing. That call is in the show notes as well. 

This episode was also recorded before the passing of Ed Mead who we mention in this discussion. Rest well Ed, you've earned it. 

The last thing I will say is that although this was recorded before the Palestinian struggle took center stage, I think many of Shaka’s reflections are relevant to that movement as well as the US based solidarity efforts that are currently underway so keep that in mind as you listen.

Shaka Shakur Medical Needs/Update

Shaka Shakur's Clemency Petition

Shaka Shakur's Jericho Movement page

Shaka Shakur's Legal Defense Fund

Documentary: Shaka Shakur Human Rights Held Hostage

Shaka Shakur's Defense Link Tree

Aidan Elias co-edited & co-produced this episode

In this episode we talk to Ali Kadri.

Ali Kadri is the author of Arab Development Denied: Dynamics of Accumulation by Wars of Encroachment, The Unmaking of Arab Socialism: Anthem Frontiers of Global Political Economy and Development and The Cordon Sanitaire: A Single Law Governing Development in East Asia and the Arab World

Max Ajl recently recommended that everyone needs to be reading Dr. Kadri’s work in these times, and so we reached out to have a conversation with him and I’m so glad that we did and we can share it with you all. In this discussion we talk to Ali Kadri about his theory of waste, and how we make sense of war and genocide within our analysis of how capitalism functions on a global scale. Dr. Kadri gets into these dynamics in relation to the struggle to the genocide of Palestinians today. And we talk about imperialism and the class dynamics at play in the current struggle. I found this to be a super illuminating discussion in the current moment. This was recorded on November 8th, 2023.

Check out all 16 of our recent livestreams on our youtube channel.

Tonight, November 16th at 8 PM ET we will be hosting a screening of the film The Lobby - USA and we will host a panel afterwards. This is a documentary film that goes into the aims, strategies and tactics of the pro-Israel lobby in the US with regards to crushing Palestinian solidarity organizing among students and I highly recommend it. If you’re listening to this after November 16th you can catch the replay at the same link which will be in the show notes.

Links:

The Lobby - USA screening & panel

Support us on patreon or by becoming a member of our youtube channel

This is the slightly cleaned-up audio of our most recent conversation with Fred Moten.

This was recorded on October 25th. Given the evolution of this struggle and the increasingly genocidal character as well as the ongoing resistance, our comments if we were to hold this discussion today on November 11th would undoubtedly be different. 

Nonetheless I think a lot of what we cover remains important and we wanted to try to create an audio version of this conversation which held true to the character of the original which we will link in the show notes, but also share it with our broader audience, much of whom prefer the audio format. The audio quality of this version is hopefully also slightly better than the original YouTube version.

I would note that we now have fourteen of these livestreams up on our Youtube channel which everyone can check out. All of them are related to this current struggle for Palestinian liberation as well as the struggle against the genocidal settler violence we see unleashed on Gaza with full support material, ideological, military of the US as a settler empire in particular and the institutions and governments so-called Western World writ large. 

I want to acknowledge and shout-out everyone who is taking action and trying to deepen and expand their own anticolonial practices in these times until Palestine is free, until we all are free.

Once again thank you to Fred Moten for this conversation

If you like our work of course you can as always support our work on patreon or by becoming a member of our YouTube channel. Thank you for listening and I hope you are finding new comrades in the streets every day.

Fred Moten's conversation with Robin DG Kelley, Aqua Cooper & Rinaldo Walcott that is mentioned in the episode

Previous episodes with Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, and his conversation with Hanif Abdurraqib that we've hosted.

This is a slightly edited audio version of one of the MAKC livestreams we’ve hosted on our new Youtube channel. We will continue to polish the audio versions of those livestreams and release them as episodes here as well. Due to the amount of labor that goes into making them viable audio podcast episodes there will be a little bit of a delay on that. In the meantime I of course encourage folks to check them out on our YouTube channel and we will play with ways to get audio versions, perhaps even unedited audio versions to our patreons in a more timely manner. Please bear with us as we attempt to meet the importance of this moment with the livestreams and balance that with maintaining the catalogue for our podcast. 

I will just note that prior to October 7th we already had 12 episodes of unreleased audio episodes so we will begin to get back to releasing some of those starting next week as well. As far as the livestreams the next one which we will release a properly edited audio version of will be our conversation with Fred Moten, which you can currently watch on Youtube.

This conversation is an episode we recorded with the creators of Decolonize Palestine, Rawan Masri and Fathi Nemer from Ramallah in the West Bank. This conversation was recorded on October 19th so any description of current events or predictions made must be understood from that moment in time. It is our duty to continue to resist the genocidal onslaught that the United States and Israel have unleashed upon the Palestinian people, in particular the people of Gaza. I will be in DC tomorrow for the national march, which is a small act, but I look forward to being in the streets with hundreds of thousands of you tomorrow. 

We will include links to many of the websites and groups they highlighted in the episode. In some cases they were responding to questions posed by folks in the chat so to that full experience you can watch this stream on YouTube.

Another note you can now become a member of our Youtube channel. This will have some perks, basically very similar to being a patron of the podcast. Also we are in the process of finalizing our next study group and will have details on that for Youtube members or for patrons of the show very soon. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

On a more urgent note, there are many ways mentioned in this episode which you can also support Palestinians directly in this time from a humanitarian perspective. In these times of severe crisis caused by the US government and western support for Israeli settler colonialism and its genocidal expressions, there are urgent needs there and there are links where people can support those efforts. See below:

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

Adalah

Articles:

"'Operation Al Aqsa Flood' was an act of decolonization" by Rawan Masri (we discuss this piece in the beginning of the episode).

This was released after our episode, but expands on themes Fathi touches on in the discussion: "The world would rather show solidarity with our corpses than honor our resistance" - Fathi Nemer

Decolonize Palestine & other political education materials:

Decolonize Palestine

Decolonize Palestine Myth Database

Support Decolonize Palestine

https://www.1948movie.com

Institute for Palestine Studies

Palestine Film Institute 

Discusses martyr Heba Zagout (mentioned the podcast)

Palestine Action US Launches to join global campaign to Shut Elbit Down - YouTube episode

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

This is a special announcement.

Given the critical nature of the Palestinian Liberation struggle in this moment. 

We have made some quick shifts. As we announced on patreon this past weekend we have launched a YouTube channel where we will hold multiple weekly livestreams. Those conversations will eventually be available through the podcast stream as well, but for now you can find them at YouTube.com/@MAKCapitalism. 

Make sure to check our page out there, subscribe to our channel, which you can do free of charge, and when you watch videos make sure to click the like button and turn on notifications and all that good stuff. I feel silly saying all of that, but it will help the channel be successful and reach more people, and enable us to grow and bring you even more work. We’ve been planning to make this transition for a while, which is why we’ve been collaborating more via live streams and things of that nature. 

We decided to launch now, given that there is so much misinformation and disinformation around the Palestinian liberation struggle against the US and Western Europe’s sponsored settler colonial outpost known as Israel. We don’t want to overstate our role in that struggle, the real struggle is in the streets, it is in organizations, it is locally in the west against our own governments and institutions, and primarily it is on the ground in Occupied Palestine. But we do think that we can play an important role in utilizing our platform to help people gain ideological clarity and orient our thinking as we engage in physical struggle as well as ideological struggle with those around us. 

So far this week we have already hosted two conversations over there. The first one with Max Ajl is an uncompromising perspective of the Palestinian Liberation struggle and why it must be supported and indeed why we must see it as part of our own struggle for the world we want.

We also hosted a livestream with Morgan Artyukhina on Zionism, Judaism and Genocide where she demystifies some common misconceptions and also talk a little bit about Far-Right Nationalism and Christian Zionism. 

Hopefully both of these are useful conversations in breaking down propaganda, demystifying the current situation, and ideologically clarifying the importance of this current moment and the struggle for decolonization in Palestine. We’ll include links to both of these conversations in the show notes for this special announcement.

Tomorrow, October 19th at 10 AM ET the co-creators of Decolonize Palestine, Rawan Masri and Fathi Nemer will be joining us live from the West Bank. These are two amazing comrades that we hosted on the podcast back in 2021. We’ll be talking to Rawan about her latest piece “‘Operation Al Aqsa Flood’ was an act of decolonization.” And we’ll also be discussing the latest developments in Occupied Palestine and in the region. We will include a link to this livestream in the show notes. If you miss it you can replay it at any time on our YouTube page.

If we can work it out we will also have a live stream on Saturday so again make sure you head over to that YouTuge page and subscribe and turn on notifications or become a patron and you’ll get all the episodes emailed to you whether they are audio podcasts or YouTube videos. 

Lastly I will say that many of our current patrons and a few new folks have helped us start this endeavor up by increasing their pledges or joining our patreon for the first time. And a few folks have also made one-time contributions. We greatly appreciate that support. If you are able to support our work, but haven’t yet or used to be a patron and have taken a break, we can definitely use the support. In order to sustain this we will likely have to add some additional support to our team and we will need more resources to make that possible. You can support our work at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. 

Links:

Tomorrow’s Live Stream with Decolonize Palestine

Max Ajl Reflects on Time in Gaza and Palestinian Resistance

Zionism, Judaism and Genocide with Morgan Artyukhina

Decolonize Palestine’s website

Our previous episode with Decolonize Palestine

“‘Operation Al Aqsa Flood’ was an act of decolonization” by Rawan Masri

Our guests for this discussion are Frances Hasso, a brilliant scholar and friend of the show, and author of Buried in the Red Dirt: Race, Reproduction and Death in Modern Palestine, and our friend Sina Rahmani, host of The East Is A Podcast. 

No show notes today. Listen to the conversation or don't. And if you want to be on the right side of history, take action in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

We recorded this on October 12th, at roughly 9 PM ET (US)

Some links provided by a comrade below:

And continue to look for local actions that you can pariticpate in or start one up. 

Donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians’ Emergency Appeal here Palestine Trauma Centre in Gaza – statement and link to donate

Gaza Mental Health Foundation

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

In this episode Max Ajl returns to the podcast.

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.

We caught up with Max back in early August to talk about one of his recent pieces, from Agrarian South. The article is entitled “Theories of Political Ecology: Monopoly Capital Against People and the Planet.” 

It’s a very interesting article that covers a range of ostensibly left-wing approaches to ecology and the ecological crisis through a critical lens. Recording this conversation in the middle of summer there were a number of events and conversations we reference that folks will recall. This will be a two-part release.

In this first portion we talk about the theory of ecologically unequal exchange, wheat and cereal grains as weapons of imperialism, bananas and fresh fruits in the first world, and get into some of Alj’s critiques of different strains of political ecology. In particular in this episode Max talks about Andreas Malm’s formulation of “Fossil Capitalism,” and also critically engages with the frameworks of eco-modernism and extractivism. 

Ajl challenges the euro-centric variants of Marxism that dominate much of the first-world Marxist engagement with ecological questions, raising the importance of bringing anti-imperialist analysis, a world-system level understanding of capitalism and solidarity with national liberation movements into the theory and practice of ecological movements. 

We will link the article we discuss in the show notes as well as some of the articles that Max mentions in the discussion. 

In part two of this conversation which will come out in a few days, we will talk a little more about eco-modernism and get into degrowth as well.

This is our first episode of the month of October, we thankfully hit our goal of new patrons for the last month. And have set a goal once again to add 40 new patrons this month to keep up with nonrenewals and hopefully slowly increase our base of support for the show. Thanks to everyone who contributes. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links/Citations:

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

Patrick Higgins articles referenced

Charlotte Kates article referenced

Archana Prasad mentioned

In this conversation Breht from Revolutionary Left Radio join the podcast to talk about the Friedrich Engels’ short piece, "The Principles of Communism." This piece which is presented in Question and Answer form was a draft that would inform the creation of The Communist Manifesto. This is part of our series of episodes we’ve been doing lately where we talk to friends of the podcast about some of their favorite works, particularly works by authors who are no longer with us. So far we’ve talked to Thandisizwe Chimurenga & Yusef “Bunchy” Shakur about Sanyika Shakur’s Stand Up, Struggle Forward, we’ve discussed an E.P. Thompson piece with Ivan Stoiljkovic. We also have an episode with Steven Osuna where we discuss Mao’s “On The Correct Handling of Contradictions Among The People,” which will be coming soon. 

We definitely want to give a big shout-out to Revolutionary Left Radio, Guerrilla History, and the Red Menace podcast. Breht puts countless hours into those projects and I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts, but I do check out work from all of those projects and encourage others to do the same and support them financially if you’re able to do so. 

Now of course it is time to remind listeners that this is our seventh, and likely final episode for the month of September. If just five people either become new patrons or increase their pledge in these last four days of the month we will hit our goal, so we’re really close, it’s within reach and if you’ve been thinking about kicking in even just a $1 a month it’ll help us hit that goal and keep sustaining the show. You can do that at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

One final plug I will be joining Sina Rahmani of The East Is A Podcast over on his YouTube page for a live episode on this Thursday September 28th. We would love it if folks would come through hang out with us, it’ll be more relaxed, we’ll just be having fun talking about current events and hopefully if some folks come through we’ll even get a little bit of Q&A in with the audience. 

Other Links:

Is Marxism Just Religion By Another Name?

What is this document and why are we discussing it?

What is the proletariat and why is it important to communist theory?

China Miéville discussions on the Communist Manifesto: Rev Left's, ours

Other Red Menace Episodes on Engels, including the 3-part episode on The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State 

Red Menace episode on Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

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 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 conversation we talk to Santi Elijah Holley about his recently published book An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created. 

A history of the political family that included Tupac, Assata, Afeni, Dr. Mutulu, Salahdeen, Lumumba, Zayd and many others. What does it mean to take the name Shakur? What were some of the key relationships and sites of politicization for these folks? Holley’s book gets into many of these questions, and examines the radical organizing and political activity of many of the Shakurs and of their comrades like Sekou Odinga and Bilal Sunni-Ali. 

There are aspects of this book we appreciated as there’s a lot of important history here that gets brought into one place. These figures are often looked at in isolation, in a depoliticized context, as icons or simulacra. In other places we read about them as individual figures in histories of formations like the Black Panther Party or the Republic of New Afrika. So we appreciated seeing them discussed in relation to one another and some of the events and people who shaped their political development. As you will see in this discussion both Josh and I also have our criticisms of this book and how it presents this history. As usual, we do not debate with the author here, but we do ask multiple critical questions about aspects of the book that we felt either did not do justice to the legacy of people being examined or do not help people see the New Afrikan Independence Movement as a living struggle that people still engage today in a variety of ways in various organizations. As always, we welcome further dialogue on that from folks who are involved in those movements if they wish to engage with us. We will also link some of our other discussions about that history and with people who struggle in the tradition of New Afrikan independence today.

Most importantly today we want to uplift Baba Sekou Odinga who features prominently in this book, and prominently in the history of Black Liberation struggle in this country. He was recently hospitalized and has been released to a rehabilitation facility, but he needs our support. We are not going to plug our patreon this episode and instead ask that folks contribute to this fund for Immediate Relief Support for Sekou Odinga

Other related links:

Sekou Odinga episode

Jamal Joseph episode 

Claude Marks episode 

Dhoruba bin Wahad episode 

Jalil Muntaqim episodes 1, 2 

Thandisizwe Chimurenga and Yusef “Bunchy” Shakur on Sanyika Shakur

Kamau Franklin and Kali Akuno

Kamau Franklin on Liberated Zones Theory  

Stop Cop City discussions: 1  & 2 

Free The Land! Edward Onaci on the History of the Republic of New Afrika

Building Infrastructure: Identifying Tactics for Sustainable Formations: A Panel Discussion Supporting Jailhousee Lawyers Speak

Content Notice: This episode contains discussions of sexual violence & rape

This is the conclusion of our discussion on Orisanmi Burton’s forthcoming book Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. This discussion was recorded on the same day as the previously released episode, so you may catch references back to that conversation or to others we’ve had with Burton over the last couple of years. We’ll link those in the show notes.

Here we largely move into discussion of Attica itself, but this is not the blow by blow rendition that you have likely heard elsewhere. We talk about Attica through George Jackson’s idea of the Black Commune, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Abolition Geography, we talk about how in the words of the Institute of the Black World “the men of Attica were different than their captors,” and we talk about the demand that prisoners be repatriated to a non-imperialist country. We also talk about Burton’s findings on the repression faced by the prisoners after the slaughter of 39 men 52 years ago today. While we don’t talk in graphic detail about all of that repression, a trigger warning is still necessary as we talk about sexual violence in that discussion. 

We close by talking about Burton’s work on the Black Liberation Army and how examining the prison as a site of struggle helped him develop a more capacious view of the BLA than what we find in most representations of who they were and what animated their activities.

We’re very grateful for the time that Orisanmi Burton has spent with us over the course of this interview and our other conversations over the past couple of years. We hope folks get as much out of these conversations as we do, and we strongly recommend that people pre-order Tip of the Spear if they haven’t already.

This is our 4th episode for the month of September. If you appreciate the work that we do, the best way to keep it coming is to join the amazing folks who make this show possible at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism by giving as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year. 

Links:

pre-order Tip of the Spear

Part 1 of this discussion

Prior episodes with Orisanmi Burton

This is a conversation about Andaiye who was born 81 years ago today on September 11th 1942.

For this discussion we speak with Alissa Trotz, who like Andaiye was born in Guyana. Alissa teaches in Women and Gender Studies and Caribbean Studies at the University of Toronto. For the last 15 years she has edited In the Diaspora, a weekly newspaper column in a Guyanese daily newspaper, the Stabroek News. Alissa has worked with Red Thread, the women’s organization co-founded by Andaiye, for over two and a half decades. She is the editor of the book we discuss today, The Point is to Change the World: Selected Writings of Andaiye published by Pluto Press. The book also has a recently translated Portuguese version, published by Edition Funilaria in Brazil.

Andaiye was one of the Caribbean's most important political voices. She was a radical activist, thinker, and comrade of Walter Rodney. 

Through essays, speeches, letters and journal entries, Andaiye's thinking on the intersections of gender, race, class and power are profoundly articulated, Caribbean histories emerge, and stories from a life lived at the barricades are revealed. We learn about the early years of the Working People's Alliance, the meaning and impact of the murder of Walter Rodney and the fall of the Grenada Revolution. Throughout, we bear witness to Andaiye's acute understanding of politics rooted in communities and the daily lives of so-called ordinary people.

We discuss various writings from this collection. Touching on concepts like negation and self-negation, self-criticism as a political method, Andaiye’s concept of the conspiracy of mutual caring, some of her reflections on her time with Walter Rodney in the Working People’s Alliance, and a good deal discussing Andaiye’s thought around the importance of autonomy in organizing. There are also some discussions of the importance of cross-racial organizing in a context like Guyana with a working class politically divided along racial lines. Alissa shares with us reflections on the work of Red Thread, in which again she and Andaiye both organized. We touch on work around wages for housework, social reproduction and care, and how Andaiye organized around many different issues from violence against women and children to her own battle with cancer.

And if you appreciate the work that we do. Our work is 100% funded by our listeners and so if you like the content that we bring you multiple times per week, please join the wonderful folks who support this show and make these conversations possible at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Purchase the book from our friends at Massive Bookshop or directly from Pluto Press or in Portuguese from Edition Funilaria.

Visit their website and read more about Red Thread.

Find more of Alissa Trotz's work here, In The Caribbean Diaspora, and at Stabroek News

Orisanmi Burton returns to the podcast to discuss his forthcoming book Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt.

We recorded this episode on August 21st the anniversary of the assassination of George Jackson, and we release it on September 9th, the 52nd anniversary of the Attica Rebellion. We spoke with Dr. Burton for over three hours and will release the conversation in segments. In this episode we talk about Dr. Burton’s methodology and why this book is different from other historical renderings of Attica, something that will immediately be apparent as we get into the discussion. 

We talk in this episode about the relationship between prisons, slavery, war and the law. Burton also shares reflections on the New York City Jail Rebellions of 1970, also known as the Tombs Rebellion or the Tombs Uprising. We talk about ways that Dr. Burton works with political Blackness and different notions of manhood through meditations from Queen Mother Moore and Kuwasi Balagoon. Burton reflects on how rebels gained leverage in zones of captivity and recalibrate our understanding of the Panther 21 by examining their impact and influence as political actors amid their repression. We also discuss different aspects of the lesser known November 1970 Auburn Prison Rebellion.

In the remainder of our conversation with Orisanmi Burton we will discuss his work’s treatment specifically on the Attica Revolt. This is our 4th conversation with Orisanmi Burton and we will link the others as even though they are on separate writings, they all relate to this book and interventions within it and fill in gaps we don’t cover in this episode. 

If you haven’t already, go out and pre-order this book. I mean no disrespect to the other authors who’ve written great books this year, there are some other great contenders, but this is the best book that I’ve read this year.

And if you like what we do, please become a patron of the show. As I mentioned last time, this podcast keeps me more than busy with full-time work. And I know it keeps Josh extremely busy as well. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We have some special announcements coming soon there too that you won’t want to miss. 

Our previous episodes with Orisanmi Burton

In this discussion we talk to CalvinJohn Smiley about his book Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition, which examines how individuals returning to society navigate and negotiate this process with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas. 

CalvinJohn Smiley, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department of Hunter College-City University of New York. He also has worked to abolish the death penalty, and currently volunteers at Rikers Island and Horizon Juvenile Center facilitating restorative justice programming.

We talk to Smiley about his concept of purgatory citizenship, and understanding reentry as a verb rather than a noun. We talk through his application of Walter Rodney’s analytical tools from How Europe Underdeveloped Africa to the history of Newark, NJ. Much of this conversation is centered on the experiences of folks returning from prison, and barriers presented by parole and probation processes, navigating housing, employment and many other visible and less visible hurdles. We also discuss the Prison Reentry Industry and its role within the Prison Industrial Complex or Carceral Continuum.

You can pick up this book from our friends over at Massive Bookshop. 

And speaking of radical abolitionist re-entry work. Our comrades over at Jailhouse Lawyers Speak have been working to build a housing center for women returning from prison. That is still a work in progress and can be supported so we’ll put a link to that project in the show notes where you can learn more and support their work there. https://www.jlshousingcenter.com

And of course a friendly reminder to support the podcast on patreon if you can. Between the study, the preparation, the editing and all the other aspects of running this show it is more than a full time job for me. Josh also puts in a significant number of hours to the show in addition to other work obligations. We really appreciate all the folks who chip in and make this show possible and if you are a listener who has not yet become a patron of the show, if you can afford to part with as little as $1 a month you can help us keep this show going. We have struggled to hit our goals in recent months and are hoping we can hit our goal for the month of September.  So kick in at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism if you can.

[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

[French version of MAKC, the English version of this episode is available here]

Dans cet épisode, nous parlons à Inemesit Richardson et Wendlassida Simporé du Centre Thomas Sankara pour la libération et l’unité africaine. Elles sont les deux des membres du Parti Révolutionnaire de Tous Les Peuples Africains.

Le Centre Thomas Sankara pour la libération et l’unité africaine est une bibliothèque panafricaine et un centre de l’éducation politique à Ouagadougou au Burkina Faso. Le centre est une bibliothèque de prêt, gratuite au public, qui fournit des livres sur le panafricanisme, le socialisme et la libération du Tiers-monde. Le centre organise et présente des séances de cinéma, des débats, et d’autres événements gratuits au public. Le centre dirige un programme de garde parascolaire des « Jeunes Pionniers » pour les enfants des âges 8 à 14 et organise également un cercle d’études-travail des adultes qui se réunit fréquemment pour étudier de façon critique des livres révolutionnaires et pour mettre en pratique la théorie dans la communauté.

Nos invitées discutent des actualités dans la région, y compris le coup d’état récent au Niger. Elles discutent des dernières nouvelles par rapport aux leaders actuels du Burkina Faso, de cette tendance des coups d’états anticoloniaux, de la relation entre la région et la Russie, et du­ rôle du franc CFA dans le système néocolonial français dans la région. Nous avons enregistré cet épisode le 10 août, et depuis cette date, plusieurs événements ont eu lieu. Nous allons mettre des articles supplémentaires dans les shows notes.

Il faut bien noter que notre discussion d’une invasion éventuelle de la Cédéao est en ce moment spéculative et qu’une invasion ne s’est pas encore passée. Cependant, la Cédéao a déjà imposé des sanctions et d’autres pénalités, et la Cédéao menace les leaders nigériens d’une intervention militaire pour renverser le gouvernement. Les pays voisins, le Mali et le Burkina Faso, s’opposent aux menaces de la Cédéao et font front commun pour défendre les militaires nigériens. Il y a un débat en cours sur l’établissement d’une fédération régionale.

Nous allons inclure un lien où vous pouvez aider le Centre Thomas Sankara au Burkina Faso. Dans cette version française, vous écouterez Inemesit qui traduit les questions en français. Vous trouverez les réponses en français d’Inemesit et de Wendlassida. Il y a aussi une version anglaise de cet épisode.

Afficher les notes et l'introduction traduites par Jacob Dennis

Links:

Le Centre Thomas Sankara pour la libération et l’unité africaine

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 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 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 interview Anthony Dest. 

Anthony Dest is assistant professor of anthropology at Lehman College and currently a faculty fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics. He is also a member of the Colombia Freedom Collective.

We talk with Anthony about three of his essays about political economy, organizing and resistance in Colombia. This conversation primarily focuses on the organization of Black Colombians in formations like the Black Communities Process (PCN), as well as indigenous communities and other grassroots social formations. 

Dest touches on the history of the US sponsored war on drugs in Colombia, the Peace Accords process in Colombia between the FARC and the Colombian government and on the resistance of the Liberation of Mother Earth Process. We also talk about some of the contradictions created by neoliberal reforms in Colombia and through an examination of the dialectical relationship between inclusion and autonomy, how Black and indigenous communities have organized in light of those reforms, while also looking at the various contradictions that have arisen along the way.

Finally we talk about coordinated action and more spontaneous rebellion amid national strikes, and the election of the Petro and Márquez administration as well as other local electoral efforts. We close with an important conversation on the political prisoners who have been repressed in response to some of the uprisings we discuss, and ways that people can materially support the Colombia Freedom Collective, which we encourage folks to do.

You can support the Colombia Freedom Collective at colombiafreedomcollective.org we’ll include that link in the show notes as well as a place where you can access Dest’s writings.

And of course if you appreciate the work we do, please consider becoming a patron of the show. You can do so for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

In this conversation Josh interviews Zachary Levenson and Marcel Paret discussing their article on “The South African tradition of racial capitalism,” which serves as the introduction to a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies on the same subject.

Zachary Levenson is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida International University in the United States and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He is the author of Delivery as Dispossession: Land Occupation and Eviction in the Postapartheid City and a member of the Spectre editorial board.

Marcel Paret is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah and Senior Research Associate in the Center for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of Fractured Militancy: Precarious Resistance in South Africa After Racial Inclusion (Cornell University Press, 2022).

Levenson and Paret situate the South African tradition of racial capitalism against the organizational backdrop of the anti-apartheid movement, and outline the key theses of this South African tradition of racial capitalism.

They discuss how these activists, comrades, organic intellectuals and/or theorists within this tradition theorized the role of the state and capital in the development of racist policy, and the contradictions this created as well as the potential avenues of resistance it enabled. 

And if you like the work that we do here at MAKC, this month we’re trying to reach a goal of adding 50 patrons to the show. We should be launching a new study group in the coming months as we are winding down with our Wretched of the Earth study group so keep your eye out for that too. You can stay informed on that and support the show by giving as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Ethnic and Racial Studies Journal (the issue we discuss will be released in October)

Fractured Militancy: Precarious Resistance in South Africa After Racial Inclusion

Delivery as Dispossession: Land Occupation and Eviction in the Postapartheid City

Spectre

South African History Online

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” 

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)

In this episode we discuss the brand new authorized English translation of Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend, pre-orders are now being fulfilled, from Iskra Books. 

Joining us for this conversation are the translators of the text Henry Hakamäki and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro. 

Henry Hakamäki is best known as the co-host of the Guerrilla History podcast. And of course among many other things, he is also the co-translator and editor of the book we will be discussing today. You can follow him on Twitter at @huck1995.

Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro is Professor at the Geography Department of SUNY New Paltz and is chief editor for the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism.  His book Socialist States and the Environment is available from Pluto Press. 

We talk to the two translators about why this book has taken so long to receive an authorized translation into English. How Henry and Salvatore got involved in the project. We also talk about how the book helps us deconstruct and reorient ideas and understandings about Stalin’s legacy and in doing so hopefully helps to pave the way for better understandings of the larger social processes during a critical era of Soviet History as well. 

We talk about how Losurdo addresses the false equivalence often made between Stalin and Hitler. Which also sets up a false equivalency between fascism and communism. Our guests discuss problem of comparing abstract universalist ideals with concrete attempts to build socialism. How Losurdo deals with and situates the purges and terror with regards to Stalin’s legacy as well as contradictory charges that Stalin was both bumbling and incompetent and an absolute dictator that made every decision of any importance across the whole of the USSR. We close with some discussion of Stalin on the national question and his stance on language in the early USSR.

The book is available now for pre-order and we will include a link in the show notes where folks can purchase the book. The free pdf should be available through the Iskra Books website by August 9th.

We also just want to send a shout-out to Guerrilla History the podcast which Henry is a regular co-host. They have another episode on the book that is out that goes in more detail over some of the aspects of the book that we do not touch on as much so check that out and while you’re there subscribe and check out their other content and support their work if you appreciate what they do.

And lastly this is our fifth episode of the month of July. We did hit our goal for new patrons for the month, so thanks to everyone who contributed to that. And if you have been thinking about becoming a patron of the show we can always use your support to sustain what we do here. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Purchase the book (paperback)

Purchase the book (hardback)

Free PDF will be available here in the coming days

Guerrilla History episode on the book 

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 this episode we welcome Dr. Jared A. Ball back to the podcast.

Of course we know Jared Ball as a host of imixwhatilike and co-host of Earn Your Liberation and the RemiX Morning Show over on Black Power Media. 

In addition he is of course 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. 

He has previously joined us for multiple discussions which we will link in the show notes.

For this conversation we talk about the newly released second edition of his book The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. We should note that we do have a previous conversation on the first edition and if you missed that it would be helpful to understand the work more holistically. Today we talk about some of the new sections in the second edition, including the chapter on Cryptocurrency and Cryptoganda targeted at Black audiences. We also talk to him about what it has been like to confront various promoters of the concept of Black Buying Power in the promotion of the book. 

There will be a second half of this conversation which we will release later this week where we wrap up our discussion of the second edition and get into some other topics.

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. 

And if you like what we do of course as always, support our ability to continue to do it. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

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 this episode we welcome Thandisizwe Chimurenga and Yusef “Bunchy” Shakur to have a conversation that revolves around Sanyika Shakur’s final book, Stand-Up, Struggle Forward: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings on Nation, Class and Patriarchy.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga is an award-winning Los Angeles-based journalist. Having worked in print and radio/broadcast journalism, she is the author of No Doubt: The Murder(s) of Oscar Grant; Reparations … Not Yet: A Case for Reparations and Why We Must Wait; the soon-to-be-published Some Of Us Are Brave: Interviews and Conversations with Sistas on Life, Art and Struggle, published by Daraja Press, and Nobody Knows My Name: Coming of Age in and Resilience After the Black Power Movement co-written with Deborah Jones, to be published by Diasporic Africa Press.

Her commitment to infusing radical Black feminist/womanist politics within Revolutionary New Afrikan Nationalism, which she believes is key to destroying capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacist imperialism, has been informed by Aminata Umoja, Assata Shakur, Pearl Cleage, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Queen Mother Moore, Gloria Richardson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Claudia Jones, Ida B Wells and the “Amazons” of Dahomey.

Yusef “Bunchy” Shakur is a father, neighborhood organizer, author of multiple books, educator and a member of Community Movement Builders. He organizes in Detroit, Michigan. Yusef wrote the foreword to Sanyika’s Stand Up, Struggle Forward which we’re discussing today and Sanyika Shakur wrote the foreword to Yusef Shakur’s book Redemptive Soul. 

In this discussion Thandisizwe and Yusef talk about their own personal and political relationships with Sanyika Shakur and to his writings. We talk a little bit about New Afrikan political thought as it emanated from the New Afrikan Prisoners Organization particularly as was elaborated by Owusu Yaki Yakubu formerly known under the names James “Yaki” Sayles and Atiba Shanna. We discuss the importance of terminology within the New Afrikan Independence Movement and the contributions of Yaki and Sanyika to this body of political thought. 

Thandisizwe Chimurenga and Yusef “Bunchy” Shakur share reflections on Sanyika’s writings on patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia and on revolutionary transformation. They discuss the difficulties of re-entry for politicized and political prisoners in an environment without a strong political home to return to, as well as the use of solitary confinement and control units as weapons against politicized figures.

Since the publication of our last episode Dr. Mutulu Shakur has transitioned beyond this realm and we want to send our condolences to all of his loved ones and co-strugglers, we also want to take this moment to recognize his indelible contributions to the New Afrikan Independence Movement and the cause of Black Liberation.

In the show notes we will link to the book we discuss which can be found through Kersplebedeb or leftwingbooks.net along with the writings of Yaki. We highly, highly recommend both. We will also include a link to many more related writings available digitally through Freedom Archives. 

And of course if you like what we do, bringing you these episodes on a weekly basis, become a patron of the show. You can do so for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Thandisizwe's website (includes ways to support her work)

Yusef "Bunchy" Shakur's website (includes a store with his books)

Stand-Up, Struggle Forward: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings on Nation, Class and Patriarchy

Meditations on Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings by James "Yaki" Sayles

Freedom Archives: New Afrikan Prisoner Organization Archives

"Pathology of Patriarchy: A Search for Clues at the Scene of the Crime" by Sanyika Shakur

Beneath My Surface - Thandisizwe Chimurenga (includes reflection on Sanyika's passing as discussed in the episode)

Day of the Gun (George Jackson Doc)

The Political Theory of Dr. Mutulu Shakur with Thandisizwe Chimurenga, Kalonji Changa, & Akinyele Umoja

This past May David Chávez, Steven Osuna, Alejandro Villalpando, and Jared Ware (co-host of MAKC) gave a panel presentation at the Abolitions Conference in DC. We wanted to have a conversation to share some of what we talked about, some of our reflections on the conference, discuss some of the possibilities, limitations and contradictions of Abolition within Academic spaces, as well as some of the potential ways that these spaces, jobs within them, or alternatives to them might be useful in advancing the abolitionist struggle. Before we get into this conversation we would like to thank organizers Whitney Pirtle and Tanya Golash-Boza for putting the conference together and welcoming us to it. And also shout out all the folks we were able to connect with there and the people who gave talks and shared their insights and their research.

We will include links to our presentation from the conference and encourage folks to check out others from the conferences if they’re interested. There is a lot of good work that was presented and good discussions that were had. 

Joining J for this conversation: 

David Chávez teaches History & Ethnic Studies at Compton College. With his dissertation, “From Delinquents to Street Terrorists: L.A.’s War on Black and Chicanx Youth, 1945-1965,” Chávez has studied the policing and criminalization of those populations in Greater Los Angeles. He also has many years of organizing experience, including with Critical Resistance.

Steven Osuna is an associate professor of Sociology at CSU Long Beach. He has written extensively on street organizations, policing, the so-called war on drugs, and the ravages of capitalism and neoliberalism. He also has experience organizing in the Philippine solidarity movement and other struggles. 

Alejandro Villalpando is an assistant professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies and the Latin American Studies Program at Cal State LA. He earned his Ph.D. in Critical Ethnic Studies from UC Riverside, and an M.A. from Latin American Studies at Cal State LA. His work lies at the intersection of Black, Central American, and Ethnic Studies. He also organizes with the Coalition for Community Control Over the Police.

We have had previous conversations with Alejandro and Steven and will link those in the show notes as well.

It is July. Over the months of June and May we released over 14 new episodes of material. We probably will not be able to keep that pace up for this month, but we could definitely use some support from our listeners. We unfortunately just missed our sustainability goal for June. So if you are listening and are able to support the show become a patron for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Our presentation at the UCDC Abolitions Conference “Advancing the Abolitionist Struggle, Everywhere” (starts at approximately 4:31:30 into the recording)

“The Day in Day Out Commitment to Abolition” - Alejandro Villalpando on Organizing, Building Connection, and the Abolitionist Horizon 

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

One alternative to an academic conference is the recent Black Radical Organizing Conference, you can find video of it on Black Power Media 

Photos of panelists taken by Charles H.F. Davis III at the Abolitions Conference

In this episode we welcome on multiple activists and organizers involved in the struggle to stop cop city.

For this discussion Kamau Franklin from Community Movement Builders, and Micah Herskind return to the podcast, and K from Unity and Struggle, and Matthew Johnson from the Stop Cop City Faith Coalition join them to talk about various facets of the movement to stop cop city current strategic and tactical questions and concerns.

They each provide brief introductions during the show itself. We catch folks up on some of the important recent events in this struggle since our conversation on the movement last Fall. We discusss the repression of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, the use of domestic terrorism charges, and against firm and nearly unanimous public opposition the Atlanta City Council’s recent allocation of the funding for the building of Cop City. 

We also get into the new referendum initiative and some of the tactical and strategic debates around that effort. Further all of our guests offer up multiple ways that people can get involved and plug into the struggle against cop city wherever they are. This week is a week of action in the struggle to Stop Cop City so we will include links with more information on ways people can get involved in that as well.

UPDATES which occurred after the recording (which are relevant to some discussions within the episode): The referendum effort is now underway, the county clerk approved the ability of organizers to begin collecting signatures a couple of hours after we recorded this conversation. Dekalb County DA Sherry Boston has withdrawn her office from the prosecution of 42 cases against stop cop city activists due to movement pressure. 

And we are almost at the end of the month, this is our 7th and final episode for the month of June. We are unlikely to hit our goal for new patrons of the month, as we are still over new 10 patrons away from reaching it. But any support you can offer is very much needed and appreciated. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Week of Action in Atlanta June 24 - July 1 

Contribute to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund

Referendum Effort - Cop City Vote (thread on helping with referendum)

stopcopcitysolidarity.org

communitymovementbuilders.org's Stop Cop City Page

Unity and Struggle's Three Theories of Victory in Atlanta

This is the Atlanta Way: A Primer on Cop City by Micah Herskind

defendtheatlantaforest.org

atlpresscollective.com

Our prior episode on the movement to Stop Cop City

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. 

For this episode Orisanmi Burton returns to the podcast.

This episode is about Dr. Burton’s latest article which was released today on Truthout. This new piece is called, “New Docs Link CIA to Medical Torture of Indigenous Children and Black Prisoners.”

In our conversation we will talk about the connections between the Central Intelligence Agency’s MKULTRA program, former Governor Normal Rockefeller, the Rockefeller Foundation, McGill University, the Allan Memorial Institute and experiments that were conducted in New York State prisons. 

There are some references in this episode to our most recent episode with Orisanmi Burton in this discussion, when Dr. Burton makes mentions to things he discussed “earlier” or “before” they are to be found in that discussion which we will link as well. 

Content Warning: There is discussion of torture, rape, and other forms of state violence in this episode

We also encourage folks to pre-order Dr. Burton’s forthcoming book Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt and will link that in the show notes.

If you would like to support our work we are running a little behind on our goal for the month of June. For as little as $1 a month you can contribute to that effort at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism and support our ability to bring you these episodes on a weekly basis.

Links: 

Our Mohawk Warrior Society episode

First episode with Orisanmi, 2nd episode with Orisanmi

Silent Cells (referenced in the discussion)

Acres of Skin

Recent agreement between Mohawk Mothers and McGill

In this episode Josh caught up with organizers from the National Network on Cuba, Shaquille Fontenot and Tee Maloney.

We will provide full bios of each guest in the show notes, but will share some highlights here.

Shaquille Fontenot (she/they) is an anti-imperialist, cultural worker. Shaquille currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Cedar Wolf Media Group, and is co-founder of the Lowcountry Action Committee (LAC), a Black-led grassroots organization dedicated to Black liberation through service, political education, and collective action in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Shaquille is also a member of the National Network on Cuba, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the Black Alliance for Peace, Charleston Climate Coalition, and others. Shaquille is also a founding member of the People’s Budget Coalition and serves the National Network on Cuba as co-chair.

Tee Maloney is a revolutionary cultural worker who makes art and designs based in contributing to the global movement for African liberation and unity, and other movements related to the international struggle toward ending imperialist domination Tee is the Art Lead for the June 25th Action in DC and is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, a work-study member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party. They got involved in the National Network on Cuba as a brigadista from the most recent May Day delegation.

In this discussion they talk about the current revitalization of the movement to end the US blockade or embargo on Cuba, a 60 year blockade that is an egregious attack on the human rights of the Cuban people by the US government. They also discuss the NNOC’s efforts to get Cuba taken off the state sponsors of terror list.   

Tee and Shaquille also discuss their trips to Cuba, what they’ve learned from those experiences, they combat some misinformation and also contextualize some protests and advocate that people really need to improve their social media literacy when evaluating how to respond to protests in other countries.

There are a number of events coming up as part of this renewed campaign to end the blockade and get Cuba removed from this list. The first one is tonight, June 15th at 7:30pm Eastern Time a webinar from Black Alliance For Peace which will be livestreamed on Twitter and YouTube. If you miss the livestream, a recording will be on BAP’s Youtube page after the event as well.

There are a number of upcoming actions in solidarity with the Cuban people which we’ll also list in the show notes, the biggest coming June 25th in DC. 

Our comrades at Prisons Kill and Massive Bookshop selected Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary to send into our incarcerated readers this month. Support that here.

And if you appreciate the work that we do here, become a patron of the podcast for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Shout-out to each and every person who makes this show possible through your monthly or yearly donations. Thank you.

Links:

#OFFTHELIST CAMPAIGN

NNOC.ORG

TEE’S ART

In this episode we welcome Gabriel Rockhill to the podcast to discuss his latest piece “The Myth of 1968 Thought and the French Intelligentsia: Historical Commodity Fetishism and Ideological Rollback” which is out this month, in the June issue of Monthly Review.

Gabriel Rockhill is the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique, Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, and the author or editor of nine books, as well as numerous articles and essays.

Many listeners have asked us to read and possibly have a discussion about Rockhill’s recent work in particular which has included critical articles on Foucault, Žižek, the Frankfurt School and what Rockhill describes as “The Global Theory Industry” within his work. 

In this conversation we largely examine his most recent piece on the promotion of a certain sect of French intellectuals in the wake of the 1968 uprisings and strikes in Paris. Rockhill discusses the relationship or lack thereof that he sees between those thinkers who have been promoted as “68 Thinkers” and the actual activities of the period, the political decisions being made on the ground, and most urgently for Rockhill’s concerns the incredibly vibrant worker movement of the period and the possibility of taking power and building a socialist project in France.

We hope folks enjoy this discussion which also examines the relationship between those who organize for socialism, grassroots uprisings, and the process through which publishers, state actors, and the media recuperate and commodify upheaval and then freely associate it with thinkers that are compatible with the maintenance of the status quo which is being protested. Alongside this cultural project there is of course also the violent repression of the state both overtly and clandestinely. Along those lines Rockhill also discusses Operation Gladio. 

We will include links to some of the projects that Rockhill mentions in the episode in the show notes, including the summer program at the Critical Theory Workshop.

And of course if you appreciate what we do here at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, please become a patron of the show. Our show is only possible due to the contributions of listeners like you. For as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year you can join all of the amazing folks who make this show possible at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Links:

The Myth of 1968 Thought and the French Intelligentsia: Historical Commodity Fetishism and Ideological Rollback

Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique

Some of Rockhill's other work on the Global Theory Industry specifically on Foucault, Žižek, the Frankfurt School.

Thomas Sankara translations on Liberation School

Iskra Books (mentioned in the episode)

This is part 2 of our 2 part conversation with Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba on their new book Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care. (Part 1 is available here).

In this episode we continue our conversation with Kaba and Hayes on the idea that organizing is not match-making. They each talk about organizing across difference and dealing with some of the contradictions that can come up within struggles around shared objectives. They talk about some of the differences between friends and comrades and the transformation that can happen within the waging of struggle. 

We discuss about the phrase “hope is a discipline,” what it means and doesn’t mean, whether hope is a useful framework for people, and the notion of active hope that weaves through a lot of the book.

We also talk about seasonality within organizing, avoiding burn out, and how to deal with increasing visibility and remain responsible to the social movements you’re in.

Mariame Kaba is currently raising funds for the Online Abortion Resource Squad, if folks are able to support that effort we encourage them to do so. 

Once again we want to thank Kelly and Mariame for having this conversation with us. You can pick up Let This Radicalize You from Haymarket Books, our friends at Massive Bookshop or your local radical bookstore. We will include a link to the resources mentioned in the episode and a few other items in the show notes.

We do want to thank all of the folks who support us on an ongoing basis or for however long they can. And we invite new listeners and those who haven’t become patrons yet to do so. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year. We receive no revenue from foundations or advertisers, so it is only through the support of our listeners that we are able to bring you conversations like this on a weekly basis and often more frequently than that. Become a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Mariame Kaba is currently seeking to raise $50,000 for abortion funds. Support here.

Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care (resources page).

When We Fall Apart (mentioned in the discussion) 

The Prison Culture Blog

Movement Memos

Lifted Voices

Survived and Punished

Our first conversation with Mariame Kaba (2019)

Our previous (panel) discussion with Kelly Hayes (2022)

For this conversation we are honored to welcome Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba back to the podcast. 

This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation on their latest book Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care.

For both of these folks, I’m going to read shorter bios today, and then link to more of their work, because for each of them I could easily spend 10 to 15 minutes just talking about their backgrounds.

Kelly Hayes is a Menominee author, organizer, movement educator and photographer. She is also the host of Truthout's podcast Movement Memos. Kelly is a co-founder of the direct action collective Lifted Voices and the Chicago Light Brigade.

Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator and curator who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. She has founded or co-founded a number of organizations including but not limited to the Chicago Freedom School, Project NIA, We Charge Genocide, and Survived and Punished. She is also the author or co-author of many books and zines including but not limited to No More Police and We Do This ’Til We Free Us.

Both of our guests today are known for their extensive organizing around, writing about, and advocacy of prison-industrial-complex abolition and all that entails as a liberatory horizon and arena of radical organizing.

Much like this conversation, the book is a radical invitation for folks to organize and take action in big and small ways, but most importantly in collective ways. We really appreciated this book and encourage all of our listeners to get a copy. The book is an excellent resource, it’s funny, it’s engaging, and no matter where you are coming from I’m sure you will find it useful for your organizing, activism and radical engagement with others. 

We want to extend our gratitude to Mariame and Kelly for this conversation and part 2 which we will release in a few days, for their organizing and writing and for the many ways that they invite people into abolitionist practice. We will include links to some free companions created for the book as well. These can deepen your study of the book, hopefully collectively, offer reading lists, reading questions and many other really great resources.

This episode marks our first episode of June, we released seven episodes in the month of May. That is only possible because of the support of our listeners. We have been experiencing a lot of folks unable to renew pledges lately on the show, which is understandable during harder financial times. We do want to thank all of the folks who support us on an ongoing basis or for however long they can. And we invite new listeners and those who haven’t become patrons yet to do so. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year. We receive no revenue from foundations or advertisers so it is only through the support of our listeners that we are able to bring you conversations like this on a weekly basis and often more frequently than that. Become a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Links:

Mariame Kaba is currently seeking to raise $50,000 for abortion funds. Support here.

Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care (look to resources heading on middle of page for the free workbook and discussion guide)

The Prison Culture Blog

Movement Memos

Lifted Voices

Survived and Punished

Our first conversation with Mariame Kaba (2019)

Our previous (panel) discussion with Kelly Hayes (2022)

In this episode we welcome Orisanmi Burton back to the podcast.

For this conversation, we discuss Dr. Burton’s latest article, “Targeting Revolutionaries: The Birth of the Carceral Warfare Project, 1970 – 1978.” Which he describes as a supplement to his forthcoming book, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. This piece was recently published in the May issue of Radical History Review which is on Political Imprisonment and Confinement.

In this discussion we pick up on our previous episode with Orisanmi Burton on carceral warfare. Here Burton talks about the role of Black Panther and Black Liberation Army veteran and former political prisoner Dhoruba bin Wahad’s role in illuminating and analyzing the FBI’s little known Prison Activists Surveillance Program (PRISACTS). Burton situates this program amid a broad set of counterinsurgency programs which operated in multiple theaters of war both internationally and domestically. Burton illustrates how within this international terrain of counterrevolutionary war, figures slipped between various programs, moving between military, intelligence, private defense contract, and domestic law enforcement and prison systems. Importantly, Burton reminds us that many state actors, including congressional bodies, presidents and governors recognized a threat of revolutionary activity in the streets in the 1960’s and by the late 60’s and early 70’s they understood there to be a threat of revolutionary activity behind prison walls as well. To respond, they sought to use programs like PRISACTS to specifically undermine incarcerated revolutionaries. The legacy of this struggle offers a great deal to help us understand the role of US prisons today as sites of domestic warfare.

Just a note that there is a second portion of this conversation which we hope to release at a later date. It is briefly referenced in the opening question. Currently we are just waiting for the publication of that second article.  

Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt is available for pre-order you can find a link for that in the show notes. And the publisher does have a 40% off sale that goes through the end of May. I can’t wait to have more discussion on that book upon its release.

This is our 7th episode of the month of May. We are still behind on our goal for the month. As of publication today we need 7 more patrons to hit that goal. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. 

Links to references from the episode:

“Targeting Revolutionaries: The Birth of the Carceral Warfare Project, 1970 – 1978.”

Previous MAKC interview with Orisanmi Burton 

Previous MAKC interview with Dhoruba bin Wahad 

Our Interview with Damien Sojoyner 

Interview with Orisanmi Burton and Dhoruba on BPM

“Resisting Living Death at Marion Federal Penitentiary, 1972" by Alan Eladio Gómez

You can pre-order Tip of the Spear at UC Press. It is 40% off through the end of May (with the promo code May40)

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

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 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/

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 interview Dr. Kris Manjapra.

Kris Manjapra works at the intersection of transnational history and the critical study of race and colonialism.  He is the author of five books, in this episode we discuss his comparative study of global emancipation processes and the implications for reparations movement today: Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation.  

In addition to his scholarly work, he is the founder of a site-based nonprofit, Black History in Action, dedicated to the restoration and reactivation of a Black cultural heritage center in Cambridge, MA.  Kris also co-organizes a free online community certificate course, entitled Black Futures Matter, serving people’s assemblies across the US and the Caribbean.

Our conversation with Manjapra focuses on Black Ghosts of Empire and on unsettling our mystified and highly inaccurate dominant views of emancipation processes globally. Dr. Manjapra walks us through the origin and history of the legal apparatus of emancipation and takes a materialist approach to analyzing whose interests were served through these processes to demonstrate how these historical shifts preserved and upheld the interests of slave owners. He also demonstrates the various ways that emancipation processes were designed to place Black people into a state of indebtedness and delay their freedom from bondage. This is an excellent discussion for thinking through the ways that the white supremacist capitalist state and the property owning classes  seek to respond to crises in ways that preserve existing hierarchies and power relations.

We also discuss many of the vibrant Black abolitionist movements that demanded, organized, and struggled for alternative futures. Taking a look at some of the earliest Pan Africanist and Black Feminist thinkers, cultural workers, and organizers Manjapra stitches together a rich tapestry of movement lineage that carries into the current ongoing struggles for reparations for slavery and its long afterlives.

If you appreciate the work that we do we are on a push to add 40 patrons again this month. We are just a little bit behind the pace on our monthly goal so any support people can give is much appreciated. You will be joining a community of folks who make this show possible every week with their donations at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links to some companion conversations:

Rinaldo Walcott - On Black Freedom and the Abolition of Property

Saidiya Hartman - Scenes of Subjection at 25

Robin DG Kelley - Freedom Dreams at 20

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 episode we welcome Damien Sojoyner to the podcast. 

Damien M. Sojoyner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of First Strike: Prison and Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles and Joy and Pain: A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums.

For this episode we invite Dr. Sojoyner to the podcast to discuss his latest work Against the Carceral Archive: The Art of Black Liberatory Practice which offers a distillation of critical, theoretical, and Black organizing and activist work over the past three decades. Working from collections at the Southern California Library the book examines the study and practice of the LA chapter of the Black Panther Party,  the Coalition Against Police Abuse, Urban Policy Research Institute, Mothers Reclaiming Our Children, and the collection of geographer Clyde Woods. 

We ask Sojoyner about how he thinks about carcerality and the archive in relation to domestic warfare, and discuss the collections and documents he examines in the book and what they reveal about the practices of organizations grounded in the struggle for Black Liberation in Los Angeles. 

Against the Carceral Archive is a great text to come to grips with the level of rigorous study, analysis and dedication that are required for effective organizing agains  t the forces of racial capitalism and the imperialist state.

Thank you to Dr. Sojoyner for this book and for joining us for this conversation. We’ll include links to the Southern California Library which provided collections for Sojoyner’s research here and continues to be an amazing resource for people in struggle in Los Angeles.

And if you appreciate the work that we do, we strongly encourage you to become a patron of the show, you can so for as little as $1 a month & all of your support adds up to make this show - and our own study groups - possible on a weekly basis. 

Links:

Southern California Library

Pick-up a copy of Against the Carceral Archive: The Art of Black Liberatory Practice

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:

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 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

For this discussion we welcome Manolo de los Santos to discuss the book Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez. 

Manolo de los Santos is the co-executive director of the People’s Forum and is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He co-edited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs Hybrid War and Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro. He is a co-coordinator of the People’s Summit for Democracy.

Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez is the first book length English translation of a collection of speeches from Hugo Chávez. Chávez left behind thousands of hours of speeches, and this book collects seven of them, presenting his theories, perspectives, and his visions of 21st century socialism. An almost encyclopedic blend of songs, stories, and dreams of the Venezuelan people, his words are a tool for young people seeking to understand the ideas of Chavismo and the Venezuelan process of building socialism in South America.

This conversation is a combination of thinking with Chávez as a historian, as a student of socialist practice, a theorist, and as a revolutionary in his own right. We talk a bit along the way about the example of Cuba, Chávez’s relationship to Fidel Castro, the influence of Mao Tse-Tung on his thinking, Chávez’s thinking on urgency, socialism and the climate crisis, and on the critical importance of study to the revolutionary process.

The book is available from 1804 Books and we highly recommend it. We want to thank Manolo and the folks at 1804 Books for this book and conversation.

We also want to thank PM Press for donating 35 copies of the Mohawk Warrior Society for our incarcerated reading group (in partnership with Prisons Kill and Massive Bookshop). Thanks to their donation and contributions from listeners last month we do have enough to cover that book and the postage to send it in this month.

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 and find out about things like our Wretched of the Earth study group which is going to start later this month.

Some of our other conversations on Venezuela and Chávez:

"Venezuela The Present As Struggle" with Gilbert & Marquina

"Chávez Has A Present In Venezuela" with Gilbert & Marquina

Geo Maher On Revolutionary Solidarity with Venezuela

"Commune or Nothing" with Chris Gilbert

This is the second episode in our two part discussion on Socialist Yugoslavia with our guests Gal Kirn and Dubravka Sekulić.

Gal Kirn is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Culture at the University of Ljubljana. Kirn's research has focused on the theme of transition in (post)socialist context, in particular in the fields of art, politics and memory in the period of national liberation struggle and the socialist Yugoslavia. He published two monographs Partisan Ruptures (Pluto Press, 2019) and The Partisan Counter-Archive (De Gruyter, 2020), and recently co-edited (with Natasha Ginwala and Niloufar Tajeri) a volume Nights of the Dispossessed. Riots Unbound (Columbia Press, 2021), and with Marian Burchardt Beyond Neoliberalism (Palgrave, 2017)

Dubravka Sekulić is an architect, educator, and theorist. She is interested in popular spatial literacy and her research explores how political economy and legislative frameworks produce built environment. She teaches at the Royal College of Art, London (UK). Her  work includes PhD thesis called Constructing Nonalignment: The Work of Yugoslav Construction Companies in the Third World 1961-1989 and she is a co-author of Surfing the Black: Yugoslav Black Wave Cinema and its Transgressive Moments among other projects. 

In this part of the discussion our guests offer a brief synopsis of Yugoslavia’s role in the development of the nonaligned movement. From there we discuss the role of Yugoslav architectural and construction firms in the construction of physical infrastructure within other non-aligned countries. This leads into some discussion around Yugoslavia and racialization, whiteness and what it means to be European. Connected to this is a discussion of Yugoslavia’s market reforms the contradictions they produce for the country’s workers, and an examination of how professionalization produced certain class contradictions and bourgeois or white aspirations that furthered certain racist and anti-solidaristic tendencies within Yugoslavia.

Just a quick note that the splicing of this conversation on Yugoslavia into two parts was arbitrary and based on the length of the discussion. There are references in this portion of the conversation to comments made in part 1. It is possible to listen to either episode independently but we strongly encourage folks to listen to both parts to get a fuller picture of the overall discussion.

Our monthly goal for April is to add 40 patrons this month again, to keep up with non renewals and help us continue to sustain our work here. So kick in $1 a month or whatever you can spare at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism and join the wonderful folks who make this show possible. Our next study group, which will focus on Frantz Fanon’s Wretch of the Earth will begin later this month.

Links:

Part 1

Surfing the Black: Yugoslav Black Wave Cinema and its Transgressive Moments

Partisan Ruptures 

The Partisan Counter-Archive

This is part 1 of a 2 episode discussion on Socialist Yugoslavia, the legacy of the Yugoslav Partisan struggle, and on how we think about and understand transition with relation to Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav context. For this discussion we are thrilled to welcome Gal Kirn and Dubravka Sekulić to the podcast. 

Gal Kirn is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Culture at the University of Ljubljana. Kirn's research has focused on the theme of transition in (post)socialist context, in particular in the fields of art, politics and memory in the period of national liberation struggle and the socialist Yugoslavia. He published two monographs Partisan Ruptures (Pluto Press, 2019) and The Partisan Counter-Archive (De Gruyter, 2020), and recently co-edited (with Natasha Ginwala and Niloufar Tajeri) a volume Nights of the Dispossessed. Riots Unbound (Columbia Press, 2021), and with Marian Burchardt Beyond Neoliberalism (Palgrave, 2017)

Dubravka Sekulić is an architect, educator, and theorist. She is interested in popular spatial literacy and her research explores how political economy and legislative frameworks produce built environment. She teaches at the Royal College of Art, London (UK). Her  work includes PhD thesis called Constructing Nonalignment: The Work of Yugoslav Construction Companies in the Third World 1961-1989 and she is a co-author of Surfing the Black: Yugoslav Black Wave Cinema and its Transgressive Moments among other projects. 

In this first part of the discussion we will talk about the transition out of Yugoslav socialism, and we talk a bit about histories of Yugoslav self-management economically, politically and culturally. We also discuss social or societal property, anti-fascism as a positive transnational political project, and why the nationalist and genocidal war in Yugoslavia was necessary to breaking up certain structures of Yugoslav socialism. 

In part two we will discuss more of Yugoslavia’s role within the nonaligned movement, some of its interesting legacies of design, development and construction. And we think about Yugoslavia and racialization, including Yugoslavia and the various Post-Yugoslav states within a context of whiteness and what it means to be European. 

We were able to hit our goal in March both for postage for our incarcerated reading group, and also for patreon. We’ll be picking a new book soon for the book club. Our monthly goal for patreon is to add 40 patrons this month again, to keep up with non renewals and help us continue to sustain our work here. So kick in $1 a month or whatever you can spare at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism and join the wonderful folks who make this show possible and you’ll also get a notification when our study group starts back up later this month where we will be studying Frantz Fanon’s Wretch of the Earth.

In this episode we interview Brooke Terpstra and James Carlin, members of Oakland Abolition and Solidarity. Oakland Abolition and Solidarity supports prisoners’ efforts to organize for their own self-defense against inhumane treatment. They function as a liaison, building bridges between inside and outside to support prisoners organizing their local chapters. They advocate the abolition of incarceration, white supremacy, and capitalism.

We speak with Brooke and Carlin about a recent announcement made by California Governor Gavin Newsom, that claims that he will transform San Quentin prison into a Norwegian style prison. This claims has been widely disseminated within mainstream media, alongside visions of Newsom as some transformational prison reformer. Ultimately this is a form of carceral propaganda that serves a similar function of other forms of copaganda that we see all the times with relation to policing. 

Brooke and Carlin talk about some of the realities of San Quentin, its role in our imagination of prisons in the US which unsurprisingly out of step with the reality on the ground inside. We also talk about these concepts of "the Norway Model," or "Norwegian prisons," or "Scandinavian prisons," and how these concepts function in our society. Discussing the propaganda purpose they serve, which is more significant than the actual reality of these types of projects. There’s also some discussion of efforts, which happen across the country, to develop a small set of programs inside individual prisons that can serve as smokescreens for the prison system as a whole. To have an individual prison capable of hosting tours, and producing 5 o’clock news segments of prisoners doing organic gardening, taking yoga classes, or training emotional support dogs as part of an effort to mystify the level of violence that is the every day reality of all prisoners locked up.

We also talk a little bit broadly about why the idea of Norwegian prisons has currency in the US, who this appeals to, and discuss possible motivations for politicians deploying this language and image through the media.  We close with a brief discussion of whether California actually represents a model for decarceration with its declines in prison population over the last 15 years or so. 

Most of this conversation is dedicated to debunking certain ideas and mythologies, but the work of groups like Oakland Abolition and Solidarity is extremely important. Here is a link to their website and also a link where you can donate to support their work. 

And for us we’re really close to hitting our monthly goal on patreon, we only need 4 more new patrons at the time of this show. So kick in $1 a month or whatever you can spare at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism and join the wonderful folks who make this show possible. 

Other links:

Journalism For Liberation and Combat (featuring Brooke Terpstra and many other organizers and media workers)

Our previous episode with Brooke from 2019

This episode is about the Campaign to Free the Pendleton 2. In this discussion Too Black from the Defense Committee to Free the Pendleton 2 and from Black Myths Podcast returns to MAKC. He is joined by Rodney “Big R” Jones and TheKingTrill.

Big R, who was incarcerated in Indiana State Penitentiary in 1985 along with the Pendleton 2 talks about the events that led to the egregious political repression of John "Balagoon" Cole and Christopher "Naeem" Trotter.

Each of our guests share details of the case and the campaign. In discussing the campaign we get into some basics of organizing, and building an organization or coalition around a campaign that has a fighting chance in the midwest. Also a discussion about how we politicize issues and activate people into action and struggle around an issue, rather than resting at the level of sympathy and caring. Beyond that there’s an important discussion around building connection inside and out, and on the ethic of care, and defense and preservation that animates the Pendleton 2, which is not unique to them at all, but is absolutely noteworthy and admirable.

Two quick plugs for us, we are sending copies of Decolonial Marxism by Walter Rodney into our incarcerated reading group this month. Support here.

Also we do have a push this month to add 40 patrons, we need 11 more new patrons to hit that goal, so if you appreciate the work we do bringing you these conversations on a weekly basis, your financial support is what really makes that possible. Join up with the other amazing folks who make this show possible for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

We’re going to include a bunch more links about this struggle, ways to get involved, ways to learn more and do political education around it for yourself and for others, and stay tuned towards the end of the episode there’s more discussion on what the campaign needs and how you can plug in and support directly.

Content Notice: This episode does contain discussions of anti-Black violence & brutality, but they are critical to understanding the campaign and supporting the freedom of the Pendleton 2.

Links:

Idocwatch.org

Trailer for the film, The Pendleton 2: They Stood Up Directed by TheKingTrill, Produced/Edited by Too Black, featuring Big R

LinkTree for ways to learn/support the Pendleton 2

TheKingTrill’s Youtube Channel

Email for the Campaign To Free The Pendleton 2 is thependleton2 at gmail dot com

In this episode we have a roundtable discussion grounded around the book The Mohawk Warrior Society: A Handbook on Sovereignty and Survival. For this discussion we have all four of the editors of this book, Philippe Blouin, Matt Peterson, Malek Rasamny and Kahentinetha Rotsikarewake. In addition Karennatha and Kawenaa, two other members of Kanien'keha:ka Kahnistensera (Mohawk Mothers) joined the conversation.

The book we discuss does a lot of things. It presents the works of Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall, it discusses what the Mohawk Warrior Society is, and Louis Hall’s influence and participation and activation of that movement as an autonomous political force. It also discusses some of the history of their vibrant and at times quite successful struggles against colonialism, but also against forces of assimilation, annihilation, and appropriation. The book also provides a number of resources to help understand the philosophy embedded in Mohawk language and thought, in which the Mohawk Warrior Society is grounded. This is a sovereign tradition of anticolonial resistance to genocide that crosses the imposed colonial borders of the US and Canada, and still exists in defiance of setter law and ways of knowing. As is discussed in the show, it is also potentially a guide or an offering. The Mohawk Warrior Society has out of necessity often been a somewhat secretive formation, this book and conversation offer a glimpse into their world view, and it’s incumbent upon us to listen in and take note.

This virtual roundtable features six guests. Due to time constraints there is just a lot that we weren’t able to get to in this conversation and so we really encourage folks to pick up the book and read it. We’ll include links in the show notes.

The book’s editors and our guests are:

Kahentinetha Rotiskarewake is a Kanien’kehá:ka from the Bear Clan in Kahnawà:ke. Initially working in the fashion industry, Kahentinetha went on to play a key role as speaker and writer in the Indigenous resistance, a role which she has fulfilled consistently for the last six decades. During this time, she witnessed and took part in numerous struggles, including the blockade of the Akwesasne border crossing in 1968. She has published several books, including Mohawk Warrior Three: The Trial of Lasagna, Noriega & 20–20 (Owera Books, 1994), and has been in charge of running the Mohawk Nation News service since the Oka Crisis in 1990. She now cares for her twenty children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Kahentinetha means she who is always at the forefront.

Philippe Blouin writes, translates and studies political anthropology and philosophy in Tionitiohtià:kon (Montréal). His current PhD research at McGill University seeks to understand and share the teachings of the Teiohá:te (Two Row Wampum) to build decolonial alliances. His work has been published in Liaisons, Stasis and PoLAR. He also wrote an afterword to George Sorel’s Reflections on Violence.

Matt Peterson is an organizer at Woodbine, an experimental space in New York City. He is the co-director of The Native and the Refugee, multimedia documentary project on American Indian reservations and Palestinian refugee camps.

Malek Rasamny co-directed the research project The Native and the Refugee and the feature film Spaces of Exception. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the department of Social Anthropology and Ethnology at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris.

And as I said Karennatha and Kawenaa who are two other members of Kanien'keha:ka Kahnistensera (Mohawk Mothers) joined the conversation as well. It was an honor to host them.

And if you appreciate conversations like this, we are on a push for the month of March to add 40 patrons, we’re about half way there, and we have just less than half of the month remaining so kick in $1 a month and join the wonderful people who make this show possible and become a patron of the show. You can do that at https://www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Other links:

Support the MAKC/Prisons Kill book club

Buy the book from Massive Bookshop

Buy the book from PM Press

Conversation at Concordia referenced in the episode.

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.

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 conversation we interview Alejandro Villalpando. 

Alejandro Villalpando is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies and the Latin American Studies Program at Cal State LA. He earned his Ph.D. in Critical Ethnic Studies from UC Riverside, and an M.A. from Latin American Studies at Cal State LA. His work lies at the intersection of Black, Central American, and Ethnic Studies. His co-authored chapter entitled "The Racialization of Central Americans in the United States,” can be found in the edited volume Precarity and Belonging (Rutgers University Press, 2021). He was also a co-founder, co-organizer, and co-facilitator for a year-long political education project entitled the Abolition Open School. Villalpando is also indelibly shaped and inspired to be part of and contribute to the crafting of a world rooted in justice, equity and dignity for all by his young child and partner who remain the bedrocks of his existence.

This discussion is primarily about organizing around the issue of police violence in Los Angeles, specifically south of Interstate 10 where Alejandro is born and raised and continues to live and organize. Villalpando shares a bit about his own experiences growing up in Los Angeles around police violence and around the organized abandonment and criminalization of his community by the state. He also discusses organized violence from a transnational perspective that attends to everything from imperialist wars and CIA counterinsurgency wars in Central America to both interpersonal violence and state violence in the Los Angeles area. Pushing back against these forces through political education, mobilization, and grassroots organizing, Alejandro speaks of the abolitionist work he and his partner engage in, and in the work they do with the Coalition for Community Control Over the Police and with many families who have had their loved ones taken by the state. Along the way Villalpando talks about a lot of the contradictions that come up when working to do abolitionist work in the real world with real people. And he talks about balancing some of the more practical day to day work of organizing around the vexed positions of responding to state violence, with the necessary work of world building and offering up the more expansive horizon of abolition.

Alejandro and his partner are co-convening Heal Together's Anti-Carceral Care Collective which is a space for anyone who needs a grief processing space that’s anti-carceral.

We just sent off our latest book to our incarcerated reading group. We want to thank Pluto Press for donating copies of Josh Myers Of Black Study. We also want to thank Massive Bookshop for kicking in for postage, and also the folks who donated some funds for postage to make that happen. And finally we want to thank our partners over at Prisons Kill.

Lastly, there’s 5 days left in the month of February, we only need 2 more patrons to hit our goal for the month of adding 28 patrons to the show. So if you want to support the show, kick in $1 a month or more be a part of the amazing community of folks that make episodes like this possible on a weekly basis at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Other links:

Steven Osuna's episode (mentioned in this discussion)

Jury Nullification Toolkit (also discussed in the episode)

Villalpando social media links:

IG: @CentAmStudies IG 

IG: @SouthCentralCat911

Twitter: @CSULA_LAS

In this episode, Joy James returns to the podcast and is joined by K. Kim Holder. 

Holder was a member of the Harlem Chapter of the Black Panther Party and his dissertation The Black Panther Party 1966-1972: a curriculum tool for Afrikan-American studies was the second dissertation written by a veteran of the Black Panther Party. It is credited with helping to usher in a new wave of academic interest in the party. He also contributed some reflections to Kuwasi Balagoon’s A Soldier’s Story Revolutionary Writings by a A New African Anarchist. 

Joy James is the Ebenezer Fitch Professor of the Humanities at Williams College. Whether as an author or editor, her books include Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals, Shadowboxing, Imprisoned Intellectuals, The New Abolitionists, Resisting State Violence, the Angela Y. Davis Reader and others. The book that occasions this conversation is her latest work In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities. It has a foreward from Da’Shaun Harrison, an afterword by Mumia Abu-Jamal. And features original articles, co-authored essays with Kim Holder, and interviews and discussions transcribed from various podcasts including Groundings, The Black Myths Podcast, our own interview with her from the summer of 2020 and several others.

In this discussion we talk to Dr. Holder about the pieces that he and Dr. James co-author in the book and about his experiences with the Black Panther Party in Harlem. We also discuss a number of the interventions and topics covered within this book, especially the captive maternal and the role of spiritual grounding and community in relation to struggle. The book is officially out now in the UK and comes out in March in the states, you can order a copy from Divided Publishing’s website or pre-order it through other online booksellers. 

We want to thank Joy James and K. Kim Holder for joining us for this conversation. Also just want to note that Joy James is currently releasing weekly episodes along with Kalonji Changa and Jared Ball over on Black Power Media. That show, which is referenced in the discussion is called Guerrilla Intellectual University. Also because certain recent developing events are referenced in the discussion, this episode was recorded on January 22, 2023.

And of course if you appreciate the work that we do here bringing you these conversations on a weekly basis, the best way to help us sustain this work is to become a patron of the show. Our work is totally supported by our listeners we don’t sell any advertisements or engage in any paid promotions for the podcast so become a patron for as little as $1 a month and join the amazing people who make this show possible at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

This is the 4th and final installment in our series of conversations with Zoharah Simmons, Michael Simmons, and their biographer Dan Berger. The conversations are inspired by Dan’s new book Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey, which covers the lives and struggles of Zoharah and Michael in SNCC and in a variety of organizations thereafter.

In this part of the discussion, we talk about the book as a love story. Not primarily of romantic love, but of the love that animates long term struggle. We also discuss Zoharah’s efforts organizing with the National Black Independent Political Party, Michael’s organizing work in Philadelphia, his efforts with the Philadelphia Workers Organizing Committee and work to develop a new national communist party. We also ask them to touch on their internationalist organizing efforts in the 1980’s, 90’s and beyond.

We really want to express our deep gratitude to Michael, Zoharah and Dan who each spent roughly six hours recording with us. As we have said throughout the series there are many aspects of the book, that even despite this lengthy treatment from us, we just couldn’t get to, some of them beautiful, some of them very painful, but all of them full of lessons, information, and the making of history. Stayed On Freedom is out now and we hope folks will pick it up and read it for themselves.

One last reminder that we have a new study group that starts next week. We’ll be reading Mao’s On Practice and On Contradiction. We’ll include a link to that in the show notes. And if you like what we do, please become a patron of the show, our show is 100% supported by our listeners through patreon. So join up for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Links:

Purchase Stayed On Freedom

Support our book club for incarcerated readers.

Previous Installments in this series:

Part 1 

Part 2 

Part 3

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 is the second episode in our series on Dan Berger’s new book Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey. 

We welcome back Dan Berger, and Michael and Zoharah Simmons for this discussion.

Make sure you check out part one if you missed it. In part 1 Zoharah and Michael Simmons share stories from their childhoods and their early politicization, as well as their first experiences organizing with SNCC in Mississippi and Arkansas. That conversation will enrich your understanding of part 2, but this conversation also works as a standalone discussion. In this episode the focus is on the organizing work that Zoharah and Michael were a part of, how SNCC approached community organizing in Mississippi, Arkansas and then with the Atlanta Project. Building throughout this episode are the influences and experiences that organically developed into what we know as Black Power. We discuss the Black Consciousness Paper also called the Black Power statement by some, which was developed by the Atlanta Project in Vine City, in which Zoharah and Michael organized. Along the way there are very interesting lessons, experiences, and ideas for organizers and an important discussion of what the actual interventions and implications of Black Power were within SNCC and the broader Black Liberation struggle. 

Make sure to pick up a copy of Stayed On Freedom by Dan Berger for more depth on many of the stories touched on here in discussion with Dan, Michael and Zoharah.

It is a new month, we are fortunate that we hit our goal for 31 new patrons in January on the last day of the month. This month we will set a goal of 28 new patrons. You can become one of them and support our work here for as little as $1 per month. You can join all of our amazing patrons for as little as $1 per month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Our January selection of our book club with Prisons Kill and Massive Bookshop was Joshua Myers book Of Black Study. We want to thank Pluto Press for generously donated 36 copies for those incarcerated readers. We do need to raise a little money for postage for that. You can support that here.

Links:

Our first conversation in this series with Dan Berger, Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons

Our (previous) conversation with SNCC organizers Jennifer Lawson and Charles Cobb Jr

Our (previous) conversation with SNCC organizers Jennifer Lawson and Dorothy Zellner

Our previous episodes with Dan Berger 

"The Black Consciousness Paper"

The Atlanta Project (SNCC Digital Gateway)

This conversation is centered on Dan Berger’s new book Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey. 

Stayed On Freedom brings into focus two unheralded Black Power activists who dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom.  

Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons fell in love while organizing tenants and workers in the South for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Their commitment to each other and to social change took them on a decades-long journey that traversed first the country and then the world. In centering their lives, historian Dan Berger shows how Black Power united the local and the global across organizations and generations.  

We’re really excited that for our discussion of the book we get to do something a bit different than we usually do, thanks to Zoharah and Michael Simmons who join us along with Dan Berger to offer some oral history of their decades of struggle. 

In this part of our conversation, we talk about their childhoods, their early politicization, defying their families in order to get directly involved in perhaps the most dangerous work in the Civil Rights Movement and we begin to talk about the Black communities they joined in the Deep South to be a part of those transformative struggles against Jim Crow. 

There will be at least 2 more episodes talking with Zoharah and Michael about their long-term commitment to what Berger calls “The Long History of Black Power.” And we are so grateful to Dan, Michael and Zoharah for taking so much time to bring you these oral histories. Stayed on Freedom is on sale now and you can pick it up from our friends at Massive Bookshop and at bookstores everywhere. 

As a note we have done some previous oral histories with SNCC veterans and we will include those in the show notes as well, as they provide more context for one of the most important radical struggles in the history of this country.

It’s almost the end of the month and we are behind our own goal for patrons which we set monthly to keep up with non renewals and attempt to build towards the greater sustainability of the labor we put into this podcast. We need 12 more patrons to hit that goal this month. So if you’ve been thinking about it, now is a great time to kick in and support the podcast at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Purchase Stayed on Freedom from Massive Bookshop

Our (previous) conversation with SNCC organizers Jennifer Lawson and Charles Cobb Jr

Our (previous) conversation with SNCC organizers Jennifer Lawson and Dorothy Zellner

Our previous episodes with Dan Berger 

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