RZNWA Media

Nina, Ali, Reny and Q talk about the Superbowl and weather Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time, how Q became king of the Twitter "Furry" community, critique Netflix's Malcolm & Marie and the media/social media discussions of it, and the intentional obscuring of what "poverty" is by treating "poor" and "working class" like they are the same thing.

Q, Reny, Ali and Nina talk about Joe Biden's inauguration - including Bernie memes and "The Hill We Climb" poem - and how liberal striverism and desperation for "representation" will be the death of us.

Nina, Ali, Q, Reny and Jamel talk about the updated stimulus package proposed by Joe Biden as well as the backpedaling on the Dems promise of $2000 checks and liberals trying to reinvent math, english and history to defend it. We also get into the bastardization and co-opting of radical language and politics as an industry, the new UK strain of COVID and what we expect from that, and afropessimism.

In our first episode of the new year, Q, Ali, Nina and Reny recap the drama of 2020, the first week of 2021 highlights - particularly the character-of-the-day misfortunes of certain folks on Twitter (we looking at you "Bean Dad") - while also breaking down both the events at the Capitol Building in D.C. and the liberal and mainstream media responses and "analyses" of it.Part two of this discussion continues with analyzing the relationship between carceral systems and anti-Blackness, the abuse of power by Black authority figures against Black children as a function of capitalism, and the need to develop better language and practices within community engagement and organizing.

In our first episode of the new year, Q, Ali, Nina and Reny recap the drama of 2020, the first week of 2021 highlights - particularly the character-of-the-day misfortunes of certain folks on Twitter (we looking at you "Bean Dad") - while also breaking down both the events at the Capitol Building in D.C. and the liberal and mainstream media responses and "analyses" of it.

Jamel, Reny, Nina and Q roast Black Lives Matter global network's demand letter to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (and the way they paid them dust), Joe Biden disrespecting and chastising Black activists, and how liberals have been wielding "you just don't know how politics work" against Black people voicing disenchantment with the democratic party and political dissent in an effort to maintain their "managers of Black people" status.

In this Episode, Ali, Reny, and Q critique excerpts from Barack Obama's new book—don't buy that shit— and the ways in which he was able to capture a base by appropriating the style of traditional southern Black preachers. They also discuss Obama's imperial record, and end on examining how mainstream Hip Hop no longer is connected to a grounded sense of community that includes prisons.

Reny and Nina were abandoned by the rest of The Drop Squad but nonetheless had a dope ass convo where we break down standpoint epistemology (have your drinks ready) while discussing “Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference” by Olúfémi O. Táíwò and the nuclear family and how it's harmful to Black people. We might be biased, but feel confident this is our best episode ever.Link to article: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/essay-taiwo

This week, Ali, Q, Nina, Reny and Jamel talk the Gucci - Jeezy Verzuz, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' GoFundMe, millionaires needing financial literacy classes not bailouts, police, prison, and death penalty abolition and Meg thee Stallion's album while contemplating the fact that we may or may not be in a simulation right now.

Reny, Jamel, Q and Nina talk about liberal narratives arising post-election to protect their negro-whisper positions and bags, the fake "radical" masks falling off left and right, and the problem with pretending that words don't have recognized meaning and media pundits and rich liberals collectively pretending not to understand who "the working class" is.

Nina, Jamel, Q, Reny and Ali talk about rappers who can't rap, the inconsistency and selectiveness of "cancelling" people and what it actually accomplishes, and this circus of a failure of an election cycle, as well as why it's good to be distrustful of folks online and in online political spaces because these folks are not our friends.

Jamel, Nina, Reny and Ali get into conspiracy theories, speak to which ones we believe are real and the validity and utility of conspiracy theories as a means of questioning the movements and motivations of our government and powerful people and groups. We also speak to our own political journeys, how we developed our politics, and how we hold grace for each other and Black people throughout our growth. #justiceforJaboukie https://twitter.com/jaboukie ! Give his Blue Check back! https://dailytargum.com/article/2020/03/jaboukie-suspended-for-cnn-tweet

Reny and Ali speak with Darryl "Waistline" Mitchell - cofounder of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Communist Labor Party - as he walks us through the history of 1960s Detroit and the conditions that set the tone for Black freedom movements.

In this episode, Jamel, Reny, Q and Nina talk about the economic impacts of COVID on Black people economically, including small businesses, and the fact that how money is produced and circulated in the US is a lie. Additionally, we discuss Black liberal academics and media pundits trying to scapegoat Black men to elevate Joe Biden in the hopes of getting more jobs, access and validation from whiteness via the democratic party.

Reny, Q, Nina and Ali return to our roots laughing at the contradictions in electoral politics and neoliberal support of Joe Biden, the "Get Well Fascism" campaigns from Ava Duvernay and other Black folks in the entertainment class when Trump was announced to have COVID, Trump as the Typhoid Mary of the Republican party, and the weird democratic allegiance to "decorum" and "honor" with folks who have neither.

Nina, Ali, and Jamel dive deep into analyzing anti-Blackness as a white supremacist power structure with a genocidal logic. While discussing the obsession with white (usually women) blackfishing to gain access and power within Black academic and organizing/political spaces, we get into how colorism factors into the benefits they are able to reap and how colorism is a facet of and cannot be delinked from anti-Blackness. Additionally, we speak to the uniqueness and defined nature of Blackness - specifically Black American culture - and the necessity in gatekeeping that culture, as well as why Ali hates seeing Black women find Black love.

Nina, Ali and Reny talk about the impact that COVID has had on socialization and navigating school, work, day to day existing, how we have been holding up in quarantine and impacted by COVID, the lack of support and interventions from our government, and what a "return to normal" looks like and how the effects will be felt by Black folks. Completely unprovoked, Reny also felt the need to let the rest of us know he can't cook and hates flavor.  Hide your baked mac n cheese and your seasonings.*the article mentioned: https://www.theroot.com/the-caucasians-guide-to-aunties-1845028700^ we do not endorse nor do we recommend reading it.

Jamel, Reny and Nina welcome back Q. Anthony (on a probationary, guest host basis) to talk about the current political reality for Black people and the importance of promoting Black politics that are shaped by the realities of actual Black people being impacted by them. We discuss Breonna Taylor's murder, defunding/abolishing the police, and the infantilization of Black people politically that promotes ideas that we are completely unable to contextualize, theorize around, understand our experiences on a ground level and that what we truly need is celebrities, politicians and academics to save us.

Ali, Nina and Reny are joined by friend of the pod Keyma discussing music, Black political unity, Netflix's "Cuties" and what role Hollywood should play in Black political and social futures as a means of representing Black experiences and telling our stories.

This week, Jamel, Reny, Ali and Nina get into the failings of the Democratic party to engage Black people and our political needs beyond shallow, performative displays of "solidarity" and recognition of identities, the DNC, and the harm in the idea that we can hold politicians who have never displayed any concern for or allegiance to anyone or anything but their careers "accountable."

Reny and Jamel speak with Dr. Tommy J. Curry about his work in Black male studies and the failings of the academy to decolonize scholarship being taught, cited and upheld as representative of the experiences of Black men and boys. Have your drinks ready, because they letting the "ontology"s and "epistemology"s fly.

Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly drops by to talk Black left politics, the history of Black communism, the current uprising for Black lives, and much more.

Nina and Jamel welcome Ashley (@brownblaze) and Imani (@imaniloves_you) to the podcast to talk Kamala Harris and electoral politics, why local politics should be paramount for true believers, the political utility of "visibility," COINTELPRO, and much more. Organizations mentioned: Heal The Land United Together (https://www.healthelandunited.org/)Planting Justice (https://plantingjustice.org/)

Reny, Nina, Ali, and Jamel chop it up this week about Black political engagement, the weaponization of trauma and victimhood in the service of liberal electoralism, how “Lesser of Two-Evils” politics harms Black communities, and how celebrity politics like "Protect Beyoncé at all costs" have, you know...actual costs. 

Friend of the pod and polymath Dr. Kortney Ziegler (fakerapper) drops by to talk about cryptocurrency, his experience working in the intersection between tech and prison abolition, his film STILL BLACK: a Portrait of Black Transmen, the erasure and speaking over of Black trans male identity, and why Jamel will get washed 10 times out of 10 in a fight with a mountain gorilla.

In part 1 of a 2 part interview, journalist Milton Allimadi (@allimadi), founder of Black Star News and African History professor at John Jay College joins the Drop Squad to talk about the history of pan-Africanism, the democratic primaries, and the roots of the Black Power tradition. Cheikh Anta Diop Interview: https://youtu.be/c5pDjJTUnb8 Walter Rodney: Race and Class in Guyanese Politics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9szjOu-yIPs

In part 2 of a 2 part interview, journalist Milton Allimadi (@allimadi), founder of Black Star News and African History professor at John Jay College joins the Drop Squad to talk about the history of pan-Africanism, the democratic primaries, and the roots of the Black Power tradition. Cheikh Anta Diop Interview: https://youtu.be/c5pDjJTUnb8 Walter Rodney: Race and Class in Guyanese Politics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9szjOu-yIPs

The Drop Squad covers survivor's guilt in the time of COVID, Usman vs. Masvidal on UFC Fight Island, the impossibility of solving institutional racism with piecemeal policy, medical racism, Children's Aid and the destruction of Black and Indigenous families, pop-Afropessimism and Tragic Blackness, and Talib Kweli's uh...social media tendencies

In our pilot episode, The Drop Squad (@wildfonts, @JamelTheCreator, @andraydomise, @univrslsoldier, and @RenyTay) get into Dr. Sebi & COVID-19, police killings, Black Male Trump Voters™, Kamala Harris "taking responsibility" for her record, the anti-capitalist hip-hop wars, Megan thee Stallion's Bun B rap style, and how Rapsody got done dirty

Friends of the pod Josh (@Cimarron_man) and Slank (@DabSquad_Slank) drop by to talk about the history of Black armed resistance, Black radicalism, and where to start looking if you're new to radical Black politicsWorks mentioned: "Black Power: The Politics of Liberation" Assata: An Autobiography

Friends of the pod Devyn (@HalfAtlanta) and Asia (@fkaLuna_) drop by to talk about the Atlanta Uprising, Keisha Lance Bottoms and Killer Mike, the politics of polite protest, and more

Rezistans Nwa is a project that recognizes the diverse nature of Blackness, one that recognizes liberation cannot wait, and that recognizes we will never liberate ourselves by assimilating into relationships of power created by and maintained for the benefit of our oppressors.We're here to collaborate, synthesize, and most importantly, learn and grow together.To support us, go to www.patreon.com/RZNWA and become a patron of our network.