Episode 13: No More Heroes (An Interview with Jared & Josh, Moderated by Da'Shaun Harrison)

This episode was recorded as a reward for us reaching 25 patrons on patreon. Sorry that it took us a while to find the time to record it, but we want to personally thank all of you who are patrons, you have no idea how much that means to us and encourages us to keep the podcast going. If you haven’t become one yet, we will be setting a new goal of one hundred patrons and we will be setting a new reward for when we reach that goal. We’re looking for your thoughts on what the reward should be so feel free to hit us up on twitter @MAKCapitalism if you have some ideas.

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

Both Jared and Josh discuss how state violence compelled them into political activism, organizing and protest. Josh also talks about how for him the murder of Trayvon Martin and the lack of justice in that case was very impactful for him, growing up in same area of South Florida.    Josh spoke about the dangers of reformism as it applies to state violence and the short-sightedness of many of the reformist demands that came out certain strains of the Black Lives Matter movement, including the big push for body cameras.    Both Josh and Jared discuss how working within anti-racist and state violence reform organizing and watching the rise of hyper visible (neo)liberal figures out of those platforms who built their own fame sometimes at the expense of the movement as a whole.