Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

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 and 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: How the 'war on terror' obscures America's alliance with right-wing Islam What We Forget by Nazia Kazi and Anuj Shrestha Dr. Nazia Kazi's website Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Updated) By Nazia Kazi

In this 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 (Gon-e-en-gay-ha-ga) 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 and 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. So we will include a link in the show notes for how folks can contribute to that effort as well. 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     

This is part one of a two part conversation with Joshua Myers on his latest book Of Black Study.  In Of Black Study Joshua Myers examines the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Jacob Carruthers and Cedric Robinson as well as June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara, and what each contributed to Black Studies approaches to knowledge production within and beyond Western structures of knowledge.  In this part of our two conversation on this book, Professor Myers talks about the selection of the six thinkers he centers the book around, and the type of project he is engaged in with the text. We also spend about an hour talking about two of the books chapters, the one centered around the interventions of W.E.B. Du Bois and Sylvia Wynter, as well as looking at each of their relationships to Marxist thought and analytical approaches, and their relationships to science, the humanities and academic disciplinary traditions. As well as what each of them finds among the Black masses and how what they finds there influences their work. Of Black Study is a new release from the Black Critique series on Pluto Press. This is our third conversation with Joshua Myers, both of our previous two have been discussions centered around Cedric Robinson. We have also done a number of discussions with authors and editors of the Black Critique series over the years, including discussions with Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Bedour Alagraa, David Austin, and Michael Sawyer (links below). We strongly recommend this book, for anyone interested in Black Study and/or the critical interventions of the thinkers the book focuses on. It is an indispensable resource. it officially comes out later this week, but you can pre-order your copy now through Pluto Press or through our comrades over at Massive Bookshop. If you pre-order from Massive, 20% of the proceeds go to fund the abolitionist organization Project NIA. We've received word that Pluto Press will also be donating copies of this book to all the participants in the incarcerated study group that we support in partnership with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill. So we want to send a big shout-out to Pluto Press and Joshua Myers for that as well.  Part two - which focuses primarily on Myers' chapters on Jacob Carruthers and Cedric Robinson - will come out in the next couple of days.  As always if you like what we do, and want to support our ability to do it, you can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We have a goal of adding 31 patrons this month and currently we're at 13, so we're still working towards that goal.  Our first interview with Joshua Myers (on Cedric Robinson) Our second interview with Joshua Myers (on his biography of Cedric Robinson) Greg Thomas's interview of Sylvia Wynter from Proud Flesh  From Cooperation to Black Operation (Transversal Texts conversation with Harney & Moten)  Bedour Alagraa's Interview with Sylvia Wynter “What Will Be The Cure?”  Our interviews with authors and editors of the Black Critique series  Beyond Prisons interviews with Dr. Anthony Monteiro (first interview, second interview)    

In this episode we welcome J. Moufawad-Paul back to the podcast. Previously we had him along with Alyson Escalante and Devin Zane Shaw to talk about On Necrocapitalism a collectively authored book they all worked on together along with some other authors. For today's episode we are focused on J. Moufawad-Paul's latest book Politics In Command: A Taxonomy of Economism. This book seeks to understand what economism is, how it is deployed through socialist analyses, and the ways in which various categories (economy, politics, class, practice, revolution, etc) are mobilized and classified according to its imaginary.  Today we talk about a range of topics related to this book, including what economism is, ways it manifests, and related issues like workerism, the concept of the labor aristocracy, and arguments around so-called identity politics. We also get into a little discussion around Marx's model of Capital, what Samir Amin called “actually existing capitalism” vs “imaginary capitalism,” and Cedric Robinson's idea of racial capitalism. And relatedly we talk about why class is not an identity, but rather as Moufawad-Paul puts it “class comes cloaked in the messiness of social relations.” Along the way JMP debunks some conspiratorial understandings of how capitalism works and how the ruling class reproduces itself. And we get into discussion of what Moufawad-Paul argues is the role of the vanguard party as an interventionist party that helps the working class understand itself as a combative class struggling for the overthrow of capitalism, rather than just fighting for immediate material gains in order to defend against the ravages of austerity. As we mention in the show, this book is available through Foreign Languages Press, we will include a link to that in the show notes, as well as to several of Moufawad-Paul's other books, writings and interventions. Happy New Year to those of you who live under a Gregorian calendar. We have a goal for January of adding 31 patrons to keep up with attrition and hopefully continue to build a little bit as well. Currently we are 23 patrons away from that goal. So it's a great time to sign up and support the show if you don't already. You can do that for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism Politics In Command: A Taxonomy of Economism by JMP JMP's Critique of Maoist Reason  J. Moufawad-Paul's piece on sovereignty that we reference in the episode  J. Moufawad-Paul's appearances on Revolutionary Left Radio  Some of J. Moufawad-Paul's books from Kersplebedeb  JMP's blog 

This is an episode we recorded about a month and a half ago for our 5th anniversary. Due to all the other stuff we were recording at the time we just held on to this one for the year end.  In this episode we grapple with a bunch of questions sent to us by patrons of the show. We are not experts, and this conversation, like all of ours is not without its own limitations and shortcomings. We hope that our answers will be taken not from a position of authority but as an understanding of a bit of where we are on the specific questions posed to us by our listeners, and a bit of where we've come from, and our desires for the future. Since this episode was released we have crossed the one million downloads threshold we mention in the episode, which is amazing. We just want to thank everyone, who listens to the show, who shares the show on social media and most of all our patrons who make the show possible and sustainable. Because we recorded this over a month ago, a few of the references are bit dated and there are certain developments since that we would've referenced if we'd recorded later. China Miéville's discussion on the Marxist understanding of the plasticity of humanity is a concept that we would've weaved in, if we'd had this conversation after that one.  Also there's a brief mention of Defend the Atlanta Forest and the Save UC Townhomes struggles in this episode. We would be remiss if we didn't mention that Defend ATL Forest has experienced significant state repression lately, including at least half a dozen land defenders being charged with trumped up terrorism charges. We'll include a link where you can support them in the show notes.  Also the movement to Save the UC Townhomes is still ongoing. We'll include links to continue to follow their work and hopefully support it as well in the show notes.  Thanks to donations from Haymarket Books, China Miéville, and some additional donations for postage from our listeners as well as from Massive Bookshop, we were able to send 40 copies of A Spectre Haunting into our incarcerated reading group in partnership with Prisons Kill. We'll have a new book coming in January so be on the look out for that.  And if you want to continue to support our work as always you can do it at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism Also we do have a discord now, so we ended up editing out a discussion of that, but if anyone wants a link to the discord, hit us up on patreon, twitter, or IG and we can give you a link to that. We talk about suggestions for guests or show ideas and there is a channel in the discord where people can make those, or they can contact us on social media to make suggestions as well.  Links: The Atlanta Solidarity Fund (For Anti-Repression/Legal support of the ATL Forest Defenders) / Defend The Atlanta Forest website Save The UC Townhomes Website    

This episode is part 2 of Josh's conversation with Alex Charnley, Alana Lentin, and Michael Richmond. This conversation is extremely wide ranging, but focuses around topics of anti-racism, identity politics, neoliberalism, class politics, and politics of solidarity. In this part of the conversation Alex, Alana, and Michael get a little deeper into discussions of anti-semitism, of historical fracturing and composition of social movements and class struggles, and of so-called anti-identity politics sentiment and anti-trans discourses as well.  For full bios and introductions of the guests check out part 1. But just to remind folks this conversation centers primarily around Michael and Alex's book Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics and Alana Lentin's latest book Why Race Still Matters. But beyond that Alana discusses themes she's taken up in her  writing on racism and anti-racism over the past couple of decades, and Alex and Michael bring in some important perspective from their own involvements in social movements as well.  Please continue to support our partnership with Prisons Kill and Massive Bookshop which sends books into prisoners every month. We will include another link to that in the show notes as well. This is our 55th episode of the year. And if you appreciate our work and find it valuable for hopefully putting your politics into action or just for your own education, we are 100% supported by our listeners who are not millionaires or billionaires, but regular workers and students and activists and organizers like you. We are able to bring you episodes every week because of the financial support of folks just like you. So if you want to join the wonderful folks who make this show possible you can become a patron for as little as $1 a month or make a yearly contribution of $10.80 at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Now here is part 2 of our conversation with Alana, Alex and Michael. Links: Alex Charnley tweets at @steinosteino Michael Richmond tweets at @Sisyphusa. The Prisons Kill Book Club Fractured by Charnley and Richmond Alana Lentin's books / AlanaLentin.net

In this episode Alex Charnley, Alana Lentin, and Michael Richmond all join the podcast. Josh brought all three of these thinkers together for a discussion on anti-racism in the current conjuncture. This conversation took place across three continents and time zones that were as much as 16 hours apart. Due to its length, we've decided to release this episode in two parts, but because of how arbitrary the cut-off point is, we've also decided to release them simultaneously so folks can listen to both without having to wait for us to release part 2. Teacher and writer, Alana Lentin is a Jewish European woman who is a settler on Gadigal-Wangal land (Sydney, Australia). She's the author of Why Race Still Matters (Polity 2020), The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a neoliberal age with Gavan Titley (Zed, 2011) and Racism and Antiracism in Europe (Pluto, 2004). Her academic and media articles as well as videos, podcasts, and teaching materials are free to be used and available at www.alanalentin.net Michael Richmond was a co-editor of the Occupied Times and of Base Publication. He has written for publications including OpenDemocracy, New Socialist and Protocols. Alex Charnley was illustrator and co-editor of the Occupied Times and of Base Publication.  They each provide broader discussions of their organizing, teaching and publishing backgrounds in the discussion.  Michael and Alex's book Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics was just recently released on Pluto Press. Through an appraisal of pivotal historical moments in Britain and the US, including Black feminist and anticolonial traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, the authors question the assumptions of the culture war, offering a refreshing and reasoned way to understand how historical class struggles were formed and continue to determine the possibilities for new forms of solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world. Alana Lentin's latest book Why Race Still Matters is a call to notice not just when and how race still matters but when, how and why it is said not to matter. Lentin argues that society is in urgent need of developing the skills of racial literacy, by jettisoning the idea that race is something and unveiling what race does as a key technology of modern rule, hidden in plain sight. We want to thank them all for this rich discussion and definitely recommend that people pick up their books and engage with their work.  Two final notes, please continue to support our partnership with Prisons Kill and Massive Bookshop which sends books into prisoners every month. We will include another link to that in the show notes as well. This is our 54th episode of the year. We are able to bring you episodes every week because of the financial support of folks just like you. So if you want to join the wonderful folks who make this show possible you can become a patron for as little as $1 a month or make a yearly contribution of $10.80 at https://www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.   Links: Alex Charnley tweets at @steinosteino Michael Richmond tweets at @Sisyphusa. The Prisons Kill Book Club Fractured by Charnley and Richmond Alana Lentin's books / AlanaLentin.net

In this episode we interview China Miéville.  China Miéville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City and the City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker. He has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. His non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London's Overthrow. He is also the author of October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. He has written for various publications, and is a founding editor of the journal Salvage. He is also a former member of multiple socialist party formations and organizations. In this conversation China joins the podcast to talk about his latest book, A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto. The book provides an introduction to The Communist Manifesto which provides readers with a guide to understanding the Manifesto and the many specters it has conjured. Through his unique and unorthodox reading, Miéville offers a spirited defense of the enduring relevance of Marx and Engels' ideas. The book also contains the full text of the Manifesto and multiple prefaces penned by Marx & Engels.  You can pick the book up directly from Haymarket Books at 40% off currently. We really want to thank Haymarket and China Miéville for donating 40 copies of the book (!!) and also for making a donation to help cover the cost of postage to our incarcerated book club through our partnership with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill. We do still need to raise about $150 more dollars to cover the cost of postage to get this book inside, and we'll include a link to contribute to that effort in the show notes. Last month we were able, along with some donations from Massive Bookshop and our patrons to provide 40 copies of Saidiya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection to those incarcerated readers. As for the show itself, It is December, currently for the month we've had more nonrenewals than we have new patrons, which is not unexpected this time of year as people try to balance holiday expenses. However if you have the capacity to become a patron of the show, you can do so for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year, at patreon.com/millennialsarekilingcapitalism. We really want to thank all of the folks who support the show, or have supported it when they've been able to, as it is only through your support that conversations like this are possible.  Links: To purchase A Spectre, Haunting (currently 40% off): https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1990-a-spectre-haunting To donate to the Prisons Kill book club (to help with postage for the donated copies): https://massivebookshop.com/products/prisonskill-book-club-donation To check out the Salvage journal that Miéville talked about in the episode: https://salvage.zone To support the show: patreon.com/millennialsarekilingcapitalism

[photos in the collage were taken by Guy Smallman, Callum Ford, and Martin Pope or otherwise found on Palestine Action's social media] In this episode we interview co-founder of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori. Ammori has organized against British complicity in the colonization of Palestine and against British  support for the Israeli colonial apartheid regime in historic Palestine for years now. Palestine Action is an organization born out of that struggle. One that recognizes the need to take direct action approaches. Their core campaign, is the campaign to Shut Elbit Down (#ShutElbitDown). Elbit Systems is Israel's largest privately-owned arms company. It's largest single customer is the Israeli Ministry of Defense.  In this episode Ammori shares some of her organizing history, her experience exhausting the modes of redress available through lobbying and protest, and the rationale behind Palestine Action's targeting of Elbit Systems. It is noteworthy that while Palestine Action has targeted Elbit in the UK, that there are a number of Elbit Systems facilities in the US, and that in addition to the deplorable and brutal violence that they enact in occupied Palestine, they are also a major contractor for Border Patrol and components of the US-Mexico border wall.  This is a great conversation about an important ongoing campaign and we hope folks will listen in for ways they can act in solidarity and to consider some of the tactical and strategic considerations Ammori talks through as well. It is noteworthy of course that the British legal system is different from the US legal system, so obviously nothing that's discussed here should be considered legal advice. But the general point that Ammori makes about the difference between the legal and military framework that Palestinians are subjected to in Palestine versus the legal systems within the imperial core is still an important strategic consideration for movements that seek to be in solidarity with people in Palestine.  Make sure to check out Palestine Action's website and follow them on social media to stay current with their campaign, and their legal cases and to look for ways to support and get involved. All of which we'll discuss further in the episode and include some links in the show notes. As you all know, it's the last month of 2022, we have a number of things coming this month, we set a goal of adding 31 patrons this month and we've got 24 left to go to hit that goal. You can do either a small monthly or yearly contribution and of course you'll get emails with every episode that comes out, and when Josh or I publish any articles, and when the next round of our study group starts up. If you'd like to support the show, you can do so at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism Links: Palestine Action's website (includes ways to get involved and follow along with their campaigns) Palestine Action's Twitter Palestine Action's Instagram The Commoner Interview referenced in the episode  

In this episode we interview Efemia Chela. Chela is a Zambian-Ghanian writer, literary critic, and an editor. Efemia joins us in her role as the commissioning editor at Inkani Books, which is the publishing division of The Tricontinental Pan Africa NPC, a research institute that collaborates with and is aligned with the work of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In this conversation Efemia shares a bit about some of the current struggles in South Africa, and situates Inkani Books as a publisher within those struggles as well as within their broader African continental context as a Pan African publishing house.  The focus of this discussion is Inkani's latest book, Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories which brings together an extensive set of Amílcar Cabral's interviews, official speeches and PAIGC party directives from 1962 through 1973. It features a foreword by Grant Farred and an introduction by Sónia Vaz Borges who we've previously hosted on the podcast.  We engage Efemia about several of Cabral's important theoretical interventions, and the grounding of his theory in the real movement of the Guinean and Cape Verdean people and their liberation struggles. We talk about the continued relevance of his thought today to people and movements across the African continent, and discuss studying it in group contexts. Among other things, we discuss the idea of a new humanity forged in struggle, Cabral's thinking on culture, on patriarchy, his caution with regards to decolonization and neocolonialism, and the question of what Cabral calls organic security for radical and revolutionary movements.  We want to deeply thank everyone who has been supporting us over these last 5 years. In just the last week we surpassed 1 million downloads around the world, almost half of those downloads have come this year. That feels like an amazing milestone. And we're so thankful, and hope to continue to grow from here. We do want to note however that we don't get paid anything for downloads. We don't sell ads. And it is December, and this month we have a goal of adding 31 patrons, one per day. We're always catching up with non-renewals this time of year as folks divert money towards holiday expenses. Which is understandable. So if you can afford to become a patron of the show, even if it's just $1 a month or a small yearly contribution, it really helps a great deal at this time. You can do that at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Links: Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories by Amílcar Cabral (Inkani Books) Inkani Books website Tricontinental South Africa Other MAKC Episodes on Cabral & the PAIGC: Militant Education, Liberation Struggle, Consciousness - PAIGC Education with Sónia Vaz Borges (a recent study from Sónia on the PAIGC's education programs)  The Life of Amílcar Cabral and the Struggle of the PAIGC with António Tomás “Culture is Sovereign” - Amílcar Cabral and African Anti-colonial Internationalism with António Tomás Other episodes which reference Cabral historically or theoretically (there are others, but these were most handy): "We Need To Be Active In The Working Class Struggle For Socialism Globally" - Steven Osuna on Class Suicide "We Remember The Attempts To Be Free" - Joy James on Black August and the Captive Maternal Becoming Kwame Ture with Amandla Thomas-Johnson "Abolition Is Inherently Experimental" - Craig Gilmore on Fighting Prisons and Defunding Police      

In this episode we welcome Robin DG Kelley back to the podcast. Robin DG Kelley is the Gary B. Nash professor of American History at UCLA. He is the author of seven books, and the editor or co-editor of even more.  For this episode, Kelley returns to the podcast to talk about the 20th Anniversary Edition of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.  We talk to Kelley about what has been added to the new edition of the book, and discuss some of the ways that Freedom Dreams has been taken up during and in the wake of what Kelley terms “Black Spring” the protests following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others.  Kelley also talks a bit about the context in which Freedom Dreams was written and why he's restored a previously unreleased epilogue to the book.  Beyond that we ask several questions about the original text itself, drawing from the great reservoir of Black radical visions that continue to animate Freedom Dreams 20 years after its release.  Just a quick plug Robin is currently raising funds for Palestine Legal which is an independent organization dedicated to defending and advancing the civil rights and liberties of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom. We'll include a link to that fundraiser in the show notes.  We'll also include a link to purchase the new 20th anniversary edition of Freedom Dreams from Massive Bookshop. Speaking of Massive our book club for incarcerated readers with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill was able to fund copies of the 25th Anniversary Edition of Scenes of Subjection to all 41 its participants, so thank you very much to all of you who supported that campaign! We will be announcing our December book soon so keep an eye out for that.  And we also hit our goal of adding 30 patrons for the month of November. Thank you to everyone who continues to support us. If you appreciate and enjoy conversations like this, become a patron of the show. You can do it for as little as $1 per month and be a part of the amazing group of folks who make this show possible.  Links/References: Purchase Freedom Dreams from Massive Bookshop Conjuncture: Against Pessimism (hosted by Jordan Camp) with Robin DG Kelley Robin & LisaGay's fundraiser for Palestine Legal. More on Palestine Legal Midnight On The Clock Of The World - (our first interview with Robin DG Kelley)

In this conversation Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson return to the podcast for the second conversation on their book Rehearsals For Living (part one is here). This conversation was recorded in late October, about a month after recording the first part. Most of these questions were conversations from the reading which we just weren't able to ask during our first conversation due to time constraints.  In this conversation we talk more about architects of climate catastrophe in Toronto, about fascist monsters, and we talk about cooptation and elite capture. We also discuss moments of intense spectacle and important organizing and world-making that takes place all the time outside of the light of media attention. Robyn reflects on the spread of abolitionist ideas into the mainstream and Leanne discusses prominent scholarship within settler colonial studies in the academy and the disconnect between that and indigenous forms of knowledge. Once again, Rehearsals for Living is a really powerful read and we encourage you to pick it up from Haymarket Books or from your local bookstore. As we release this episode, we're just 2 patrons away from hitting our goal for the month of November, which was to add 30 patrons to make up for non-renewals and continue to grow. If you appreciate conversations like this and the other 175 episodes of this podcast, you can help sustain our work at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

[Note: In the episode image the artwork behind Dionne Brand at the podium is by Torkwase Dyson, as is the cover art work for Nomenclature] In this conversation we are thrilled to welcome Dionne Brand to the podcast.  This is a conversation with her new book Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems and also with a number of her lectures, interviews, and dialogues over the years. If we reference something not in Nomenclature we have done our best to include a link to it in the show notes.  We ask questions about themes and ideas we hear or read Brand grappling with in her work, as well as questions that we grapple with in relation to her work. These include questions about time, epistemology, nature, the category of the human, Black thought, spectacle, narrative, capital, imperialism, socialism and liberation. If you find value in this conversation and others we publish, we encourage you to support the podcast at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism, we are 100% supported by our listeners and you can be a part of that for as little as $1 a month. Dionne Brand is a renowned poet, novelist, and essayist. Her writing is notable for the beauty of its language, and for its intense engagement with issues of international social justice. Her work includes ten volumes of poetry, five books of fiction and three non-fiction works. She was the Poet Laureate of the City of Toronto 2009-2012. From 2017-2021 Brand was Poetry Editor at McClelland & Stewart- Penguin Random House Canada. Dionne Brand became prominent first as an award-winning poet, winning the Griffin Poetry Prize for her volume Ossuaries, the Governor General's Literary Award and the Trillium Book Prize for her volume Land to Light On. She's garnered two other nominations for the Governor General's Literary Award for the poetry volumes No Language Is Neutral and Inventory respectively, the latter also nominated for the Trillium and the Pat Lowther. She has won the Pat Lowther Award for poetry for her volume thirsty also nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the city of Toronto Book Award.  Her 2018 volume, The Blue Clerk, was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Prize. Brand has also achieved great distinction and acclaim in fiction and non-fiction. Her most recent novel, Theory won the Toronto Book Award 2019 and the BOCAS fiction prize. Her novel, Love Enough was nominated in 2015 for the Trillium Book Award. Her fiction includes the critically acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, At the Full and Change of the Moon, and, What We All Long For an indelible portrait of the city of Toronto which also garnered the Toronto Book Award. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, French and German. Dionne Brand's non-fiction includes Bread Out Of Stone, and A Map to the Door of No Return, which has been widely taken up by scholars of Black Diaspora and An Autobiography of The Autobiography of Reading. In 2021 Brand was awarded the Windham Campbell Award for fiction. Dionne Brand has published nineteen books, contributed to many anthologies and written dozens of essays and articles. She has also been involved in the making of several documentary films. She was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at St. Lawrence University in New York and has taught literature and creative writing at universities in both British Columbia and Ontario. She has also held the Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair in Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University. She holds several Honorary Doctorates, Wilfred Laurier University, University of Windsor, Simon Fraser University, The University of Toronto, York University and Thornloe/Laurentian University.  She lives in Toronto and was Professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph until 2022. She is a member of the Order of Canada. In every area of her work Brand has received widespread recognition through literary awards, honorary doctorates, and praise by the likes of Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Kamau Braithwaite, and so many, many others. In the show notes we will include Dionne Brand's full bio which further details her award winning work in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and film. As well as her distinguished work as an educator, documentary film maker, and poetry editor. Sources: Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems David Naimon's interview with Dionne Brand on Between The Covers Podcast  Adrienne Rich and Dionne Brand in Conversation  Dionne Brand: The Shape of Language (along with Torkwase Dyson)  “I Am Not The Person You Remember” - In Memoriam of MF DOOM with Hanif Abdurraqib “The Oppressed Have a Way of Addressing Their Own Conditions” - On Joshua Myers' Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition   Dionne Brand - “An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading”  

[The image contains the cover of the 25th Anniversary Edition of Scenes of Subjection, two images of author Saidiya Hartman, and one image from visual artist Torkwase Dyson (which is included in the book) entitled set/interval/enclosure] For this conversation we are extremely honored to welcome Saidiya Hartman to the podcast.  In this conversation we'll be talking about the new 25th anniversary edition of Hartman's groundbreaking and influential work Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. In addition to Scenes, Saidiya Hartman is the author of two other amazing books, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval and Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. She has been a MacArthur Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. She is a Professor at Columbia University. This 25th anniversary edition features a new preface by the author, a foreword by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an afterword by Marisa J. Fuentes and Sarah Haley, notations with Cameron Rowland, and compositions by Torkwase Dyson. We ask about a number of the key formulations in Scenes, including Hartman's work on empathy, the fungibility of Blackness, the varied violences and violations of enslavement, white supremacy and the popular theater, and the constitutive limits of bourgeois liberal democracy.  We also talk about Black Feminism, gender differentiation, and the role of cishetpatriarchy in law, violation, and aspiration.  A content notice, that although we don't hover on details, the conversation does include references to rape, abuse, and sexual violence in the context of slavery and in its afterlives. Hartman shares some clarifications on where the pessimism in Scenes lies. She also offers scathing critiques of the limits of emancipation, of the structure of citizenship, and of the project of inclusion within US empire and racial capitalism.  Along the way, we take time to attend to various forms of Black anarchism and the attendant survival programs that Hartman observes and highlights in Scenes and in her later work, particularly Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. We are also partnering with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill to send copies of this book into prisoners. This is part of a new project where we will pick one book each month to share with incarcerated people. We'll provide a link to this program in the show notes if you want to contribute to it. You can also pick up a copy for yourself while you're over there if you like. And lastly if you like what we do, and want to support our capacity to bring you conversations like these. Our platform is 100% supported by our listeners. Thanks to everyone who became a patron last month we hit our goal thanks to your support. If you would like to support us for as little as $1 a month you can do so at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

This is the continuation of our conversation with Winston James about his latest work Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik. In part 1 we talked about McKay's origins in Jamaica up through the Red Summer of 1919 when he would pen his famous poem “If We Must Die.” In this conversation we talk about McKay's time in Harlem, his relationship with Hubert Harrison, his support of - and political differences with - the Garvey movement or the UNIA. In that vein we also talk about McKay's theorization of the relationship between class struggle, anticolonial struggle, and anticapitalist revolution. And relatedly his support of movements for Irish nationalism, Indian independence, and Black Nationalism.  James also shares McKay's experiences as a worker, as a member of the Wobblies or the IWW, and as a member of Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers Socialist Federation in the UK and some associated discussion of syndicalism and leftwing communism. We close with some reflections on McKay's attitudes towards Bolshevism over time, especially after Lenin. We really enjoyed Winston James book and highly recommend it to people who are interested in McKay's life or just in history including debates of the Black left - and communist left - in the early 20th century. You can pick up Winston James' Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik which is currently on sale from our friends at Massive Bookshop. A final reminder as this is likely to be our final episode of this month. October is the 5 year anniversary of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. We had set a goal of adding 50 patrons this month. And with 2 days left is attainable. We need just 4 more patrons to hit that goal. You can help us hit that goal for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. A new post will be up on patreon about it this week, but our Black Marxism study group will start up in November, and our 5 year anniversary episode is still on its way.

For this conversation we welcome Winston James to the podcast. Winston James is the author of A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay's Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion, The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer 1799-1851, and Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twenty Century America. James has held a number of teaching positions, most recently as a professor of history at UC Irvine. James joins us to talk about his latest work, Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik. The book examines McKay's life from his early years in Jamaica to his years at Tuskegee and Kansas State University and his time in Harlem, to his life in London. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, James offers a rich and detailed chronicle of McKay's life, political evolution, and the historical, political, and intellectual contexts that shaped him. The work also locates McKay's closest interlocutors, and those he debated with, as well as McKay's experiences as a worker and within communist and anarcho-syndicalist organizations like the Worker's Socialist Federation and the IWW.  In part 1 of the conversation, we focus on McKay's early years in Jamaica up through the Red Summer of 1919. James begins with a discussion of McKay's family, his life in Jamaica, his brief stint as a constable in Kingston, his early poetry and his influence on the Negritude movement. James also discusses the appeal of the Russian Revolution and of the Third International to Black people in this era, and contextualizes the terror of white vigilante violence in the post war period in the US and how Black people fought back against it. As a content notice some of this discussion is a brief but explicit examination of the abhorrent character of anti-black violence of the period. We close part 1 of the conversation with a discussion of McKay's “If We Must Die,” the context of armed self-defense, the context of fighting back, from which it emerged and its global resonance with the emerging Black radicalism of the period and with radical movements decades after its release. In part two - which will come out in the next couple of days - we will focus on McKay's debates, positions, and activism within the spaces of revolutionary Black Nationalism and the Communist left of the period. We will include a link to the book in the show notes. We both highly recommend it. If you would like to purchase Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik by Winston James consider picking it up from the good folks at Massive Bookshop. As for our current campaign, we have 8 days left this month and we are working towards our goal of adding 50 patrons this month in recognition of 5 years of doing Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. So far this month we have added 34 patrons so if we can add 2 or more patrons daily for the rest of the month we'll hit that goal. You can join up all the wonderful people who make this show possible by contributing as little as $1 per month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism