In this episode we interview Justine Teba, Orien Longknife, and Demetrius Johnson from The Red Nation. Our discussion centers around the book The Red Deal: Indigenous Action To Save Our Earth, which is the first book release from the Red Media imprint on Common Notions. The Red Deal is a call for action beyond the scope of the US colonial state. It’s a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and land—an affirmation that colonialism and capitalism must be overturned for this planet to be habitab...
Apr 17, 2021•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 95
This is part two one of a two-part conversation with Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, editors of the book Venezuela, The Present As Struggle: Voices From The Bolivarian Revolution. The book is a collection of interviews with Chavistas, communards, campesinos, and a variety of activists, organizers, intellectuals and workers from the grassroots in Venezuela. Cira Pascual Marquina is Political Science professor at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela in Caracas and a writer and editor ...
Apr 01, 2021•47 min•Season 1Ep. 94
This is part one of a two-part conversation with Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, editors of the book Venezuela, The Present As Struggle: Voices From The Bolivarian Revolution. This book is a collection of interviews with Chavistas, communards, Campesinos, and a variety of activists, organizers, intellectuals and workers from the grassroots in Venezuela. The book offers a view of both the impacts of US imperialism and sanctions in Venezuela, but also the voices of the Venezuelan people o...
Mar 29, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 93
Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism and Border & Rule. She is trained in law, and is a community organizer and campaigner in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One Is Illegal and Women’s Memorial March Committee. In this episode we talk to her about her latest book Border & Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, which further examines border imperialism and the featur...
Mar 20, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 92
This is part 2 of our 2 part conversation with journalist, educator, author and activist Herb Boyd. In this part of the conversation we talk more about how Boyd and other politicized students used the 1967 Rebellion to launch Black Studies at Wayne State University, and develop it into a radical space for the political and cultural education of Black students living in Detroit and often working and organizing on campus, and in the automobile plants. We also ask Boyd several questions about the R...
Mar 14, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 91
This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation with journalist, educator, author, and activist Herb Boyd. Our conversation with Boyd centers around his book Black Detroit, with particular attention paid to the middle of the 20th Century, leading up to the development of The League of Revolutionary Black Workers. In this part of the conversation Boyd talks about moving to Detroit, the strains of Black progressive and radical politics going on at the time. We ask about the importance of figures like Malc...
Mar 14, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 90
400+1 is a Black, cooperative federation that exists to leverage vanguardism, destabilization, and Black and autonomous alternatives to build a world beyond survival. The federation is currently engaged in a protracted struggle against the state for Orisha Land, an autonomous zone in Texas. We talk to them about their organization, how it’s structured, what political education looks like to them, and their analysis, which argues for the necessity of the Black Vanguard at this historical moment. ...
Mar 07, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 89
In this episode we catch up with representatives from Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. They talk about the state of the prison abolition and prisoner support movements from their perspective. JLS describe an exodus of liberals from prisoner support movements with the election of Joe Biden. A dangerous trend given Joe Biden's track record as a key figure in the expansion of prison, jails and police power historically. They also talk about the weaponization of COVID-19 inside prisons as well as the insuff...
Mar 03, 2021•44 min•Season 1Ep. 88
Dr. Yannick Giovanni Marshall writes and teaches in Black Studies. His research focus is on police power, colonial policing in Nairobi, the white supremacist state, anti-colonial movements and movements against anti-Blackness. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Knox College and has taught courses on Black Lives Matter and Deconstructing the Police for several years. He is also a prolific writer, who writes frequently for publications including Al Jazeera and Black Pers...
Feb 28, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 87
This is a special message and brief addendum to our conversation published earlier this week with Dr. Mamyrah Prosper. We had a great conversation with Mamyrah in which she gave a ton of history of US and European imperialism against Haiti. She also envisioned bolder and more direct forms of solidarity than our modern solidarity movements in the US currently deploy on a regular basis. However, after we finalized the conversation, she did want to note that there things people are working on curre...
Feb 21, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 86
In this episode we interview Dr. Mamyrah Prosper. Mamyrah Prosper is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College and the International Coordinator with Community Movement Builders’ Pan African Solidarity Network. Mamyrah discusses the current struggle in Haiti in connection with the long history of US and European imperialism after the Haitian Revolution. Specifically she addresses initial imperialistic responses to the Haitian Revolution, and focuses our attention on ...
Feb 18, 2021•1 hr 46 min•Season 1Ep. 85
In this episode we speak to Kamau Franklin. Kamau is the founder of Community Movement Builders a grassroots organization dedicated to creating sustainable Black communities through organizing and cooperative development. Kamau has been a dedicated community organizer for over twenty-five years, first in New York City and now based in the south. He has worked on various issues including community cop-watch programs, freedom school programs for youth, electoral and policy campaigns, large-scale c...
Feb 11, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 84
In this episode we interview Dr. Michael Sawyer. Sawyer is an assistant professor of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies in the Department of English at Colorado College. We spoke to him about his book, Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X which is part of the Black Critique Series on Pluto Press. Sawyer is also the author of An Africana Philosophy of Temporality. Dr. Sawyer shares with us the process of working to expand the academic field of political philosophy to accommodat...
Feb 04, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 83
In this episode we interview Devin Zane Shaw. Shaw is the author of three books, including Philosophy of Antifascism , and Egalitarian Moments: From Descartes to Rancière , and a recent pamphlet on solidarity movements and Indigenous struggles, The Politics of the Blockade . He is co-editor, with LaRose Parris and Storm Heter, of the Living Existentialism series published by Rowman and Littlefield. He teaches philosophy at Douglas College in British Columbia. Shaw talks to us about several aspec...
Jan 31, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 82
In this episode we interview Dr. Bedour Alagraa. Alagraa is an Assistant Professor of Black Political and Social Theory in the department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently she’s working on a manuscript entitled The Interminable Catastrophe: Fatal Liberalisms, Plantation Logics, and Black Political Life in the Wake of Disaster . We center our discussion with Bedour around her recent publication in Offshoot Journal, What Will Be The Cure?: A Co...
Jan 22, 2021•51 min•Season 1Ep. 81
This is a special episode we’re going to release through Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. Just to be clear, this episode is not about politics or social movements and falls outside of what we usually do here. Hanif Abdurraqib and Jay talk about Daniel Dumile, better known as MF DOOM. Like lots of people, we were really sad to hear of DOOMs passing and just wanted to reflect on his life and some of the many things that we will remember about DOOM. Jay's partner in this dialogue, Hanif Abdurraq...
Jan 13, 2021•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 80
Dylan Rodríguez is a Professor in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He is also a founding member of Critical Resistance. In this episode we talk to Rodríguez about his new book White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide. Rodríguez explains the historical process of white reconstruction, and the current phase marked by a shift towards what Rodriguez calls multicultural white supremacy. We talk about themes from multiple...
Jan 07, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 79
This episode is an informal recap of the hellish year that has been 2020. Joshua and Jared discuss various major events of the year, including moments of promise and frustration. We talk about how COVID has changed our world, talk about anti-Black state violence and the movement against it, revisit the NBA strike that almost was, and ask what we have to show for all this electoralism. We finish up by talking about some of the amazing conversation we had this year. As a quick note, we are six pat...
Dec 31, 2020•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 78
In this episode we interview Dr. Adom Getachew. Getachew is a political theorist with research interests in the history of political thought, theories of race and empire, and postcolonial political theory. Her work focuses on the intellectual and political histories of Africa and the Caribbean. In this episode we discuss her 2019 book Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination . In discussion she shares with us the historical development of the concept of Self-Determinatio...
Dec 14, 2020•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 77
In this episode we interview Brandon Soderberg who along with Baynard Woods co-authored the book I Got A Monste r, The Rise And Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad. Soderberg is a reporter living Baltimore and was previously the Editor in Chief of the Baltimore City Paper and a contributing writer to SPIN. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Vice, The Village Voice and many other publications. In this episode we talk about the remarkable corruption of Baltimore PD’s Gun Trace Ta...
Nov 12, 2020•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 76
In this episode we discuss the movement to #EndSARS with Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, a 21 year old openly gay Queer Liberation activist, writer and journalist living in Enugu state Nigeria. His work focuses on using visibility, and journalism to combat the pathologization and demonization of queer identities in Nigeria. He is the founder of the Queer Union for Economic and Social Transformation( QUEST), an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist radical queer organization working to combat homophobia, tra...
Nov 01, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 75
In this episode we interview Amandla Thomas-Johnson, about his new book, Becoming Kwame Tu re. Amandla Thomas-Johnson is a British-born writer of African-Caribbean descent. He is based in Dakar, Senegal, from where he covers West Africa. He has reported from a dozen countries, and has covered social movements from Trinidad and Tobago to Chile to Mauritania. He has worked for the BBC, The Guardian, Al-jazeera, and Channel 4, among others. Amandla discusses the myopic historical view US historiogr...
Oct 22, 2020•48 min•Season 1Ep. 74
This is a quick special report. In this episode we interview TeleSUR English presenter and Kawsachun News co-founder Camila Escalante. Camila shares with us the latest news coming out of Bolivia today October 19th, after the Movement Toward Socialism seemingly had a resounding victory at the polls yesterday October 18th, returning to power just a year after a US backed coup d’etat removed Evo Morales from power. We talk to Camila about the past year, the election, and concerns to watch for in th...
Oct 20, 2020•26 min•Season 1Ep. 73
In this episode we interview Laura Whitehorn. Laura Whitehorn is a co-founder and organizer with the RAPP Campaign (Release Aging People in Prison). Whitehorn is a veteran organizer of numerous organizations, including Friends of SNCC, the Weathermen, Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, the May 19th Communist Organization, and the Madame Binh Graphics Collective among others. A committed anti-imperialist, Laura Whitehorn spent 14 years incarcerated in federal p...
Oct 06, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 72
In this episode we interview Craig Gilmore. Gilmore is a prison abolitionist, cofounder of California Prison Moratorium Project, and a member of the Community Advisory board of Critical Resistance. Gilmore shares practical examples of prison abolitionists stopping new prison construction in California and how those examples have helped inform organizer approaches to stopping new prisons and jails. We also talk about possible lessons these abolitionist fights have to the fight to defund police. G...
Sep 30, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 71
Barbara Smith co-founded the seminal Black Feminist Socialist organization the Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. She is an educator, organizer, scholar and publisher and theorist of Black Feminist politics. In this episode we talk about Barbara Smith’s latest piece on the Hamer-Baker plan to dismantle white supremacy. We also discuss the work of the Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table. Smith talks about the challenges of coalitional politics and the need ...
Sep 24, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 70
In this episode we talk to author, scholar and educator Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly. Burden-Stelly is currently a visiting scholar in the Race and Capitalism Project at the University of Chicago. She also serves as an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College. Along with Dr. Gerald Horne, Burden-Stelly co-authored the book W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History . We talk to Charisse about her work studying the political theory of Black Marxist Leninists...
Sep 17, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 69
In this episode we interview prisoner movement historians Dan Berger and Toussaint Losier who co-authored the book Rethinking The American Prison Movement . Today is the 49th anniversary of the Attica Rebellion, and in this episode we honor the ongoing tradition of prisoner resistance by examining the history of prisoner movements, and discussing the challenges faced by prisoners as well as abolitionists on both sides of the walls amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the current movement for Black Li...
Sep 09, 2020•1 hr 29 min•Season 1Ep. 68
In this episode we interview Edward Onaci. Onaci is an associate professor of history at Ursinus College. In this episode, we talk about Onaci’s recent book, Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State. In our discussion, Onaci traces the origins of the RNA, the New Afrikan Independence Movement, and this broader field of theory we know as New Afrikan Political Science. Along the way, Onaci highlights the influence of former UNIA and CPUSA member Queen Mothe...
Aug 24, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 67
In this episode we interview SNCC Veterans Jennifer Lawson and Charles “Charlie” Cobb. They discuss their experiences organizing in rural Mississippi and Alabama with SNCC in the 1960’s at the height of the era we know as the Civil Rights Movement. They discuss working in small towns and rural Southern communities, and connecting with organizing traditions with origins in the everyday resistance to slavery. They each talk about the political evolution of the organization, changes in leadership a...
Aug 10, 2020•1 hr 35 min•Season 1Ep. 66
