With last month's grand jury announcement that no charges will be filed against the IMPD officer (Dejoure Mercer) who killed Dreasjon Reed, members of the Indiana Racial Justice Alliance (Nabeela Virjee & Nigel Long ) join us for a conversation on how police bury victims through the bureaucratic process. We go in-depth regarding 'The Myth of The Perfect Victim.' A myth that blames the behavior of Black people instead of the system itself. Donate to Reed Familly: $DemetreeWynn

We are still joined by Dr. Charisse Burden and Dr. Jared Ball. In part two of our conversation on 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' we explore how the themes discussed in the first episode (Anti-communism, Black buying power, The Black bourgeoisie, etc) relate to our current political moment. We discuss the current propaganda machine, class dynamics of Black lives matter, the negotiating between organizing and ideology, and how red-baiting is ever so present in our political cycle. 

In part one of this conversation, we discuss the origins of the phrase 'Revolution Will Not Be Televised' coined by the late poet Gil Scott-Heron, how the phrase has been misunderstood, and the history that preceded it. Our guests are Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly and Dr. Jared Ball. They discuss Their subsequent works: "Black Cold War Liberalism as an Agency Reduction Formation during the Late 1940s and the Early 1950s" and "The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power."  Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly is an assistant professor of Africana Studies and political science at Carleton College. In 2020–21, she will serve as the Postdoctoral Research Associate for the Race and Capitalism Project at the University of Chicago. She is also the coauthor, with Gerald Horne, of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Life in American History, and she is currently working on a manuscript, The Radical Horizon of Black Betrayal: Anticommunism and Racial Capitalism in the United States, 1917–1954. Dr. Jared A. Ball is a father and husband. After that, he is a Professor of Communication Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. and is founder/curator of imixwhatilike.org a multimedia hub of emancipatory journalism and revolutionary beat reporting. Ball is also author of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power and editor A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable's Malcolm X

In part one we discussed how crime is an idea defined by the state, not by morality, how harm is a product of oppression, and most harm committed between black people is not racially motivated therefore the term black on black misleads us in understanding what occurred.  In part 2 we will be speaking with Jacques Lesure. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Earlier this year he had a piece published in Race-Baitr called "The Problem With Using Proximity in Poverty to Dismiss the Fallacies of Black-on-Black Crime." He essentially argues we need to move beyond the liberal and conservative binary of so-called black on black crime that either blames poverty or blames the victim for the problem. https://racebaitr.com/2020/08/05/the-problem-with-using-proximity-poverty-to-dismiss-the-fallacies-of-black-on-black-crime/?fbclid=IwAR3McHsfCXEYQtNCCp15ogglyepqskwbklvDDXTVpvwv98P28TxhhaX6qos

Black-on-Black crime is one of the most commonly held myths In relation to Black people. It pathologizes the harms that Black people commit and endure between each other into a racist myth about criminality. In this episode, we not only challenge the poor racial logic but the foundation of crime itself. We explore gang violence, underground economy, state repression, and how Black people care for each other beyond the definitions of the state.

For part two we are engaged in a hybrid episode. We both laid out a historical timeline covering the efficacy of voting with an examination of the Congressional Black Caucus and discussed we discussed the question of voting and the state with our guest Dr. Yannick Giovanni Marshall. Dr. Marshall is currently an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Knoxville College. His writing has been published in Al Jazeera and Black Perspectives of the African American Intellectual History Society. Dr. Marshall helps us understand why voting out the proud boys isn't enough for liberation from the settler colony.

We dedicate part 1 of this episode to Ms. Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer. We debunk the myth that Black people died so they could vote. We cover the reasons why Black people sought out the right to vote, the purpose of organizing for power beyond the ballot box, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Also, Too Black makes a confession. 

Continuing with our celebration of Black August, this is our last installment of the myth 'We Are Not Our Ancestors.' We had the wonderful honor of speaking with Dr. Joy James. Joy James is Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities at Williams College. She is the editor of several anthologies on politics and incarceration, including The New Abolitionists and Imprisoned Intellectuals.  She provides us with astute commentary on the Black ancestral struggle, abolitionism, the pitfalls of the academy, Black class politics, Captive Maternal, state, and police violence. In light of the recent police shootings of Jacob Blake and other black people This is a sobering interview.

This month we celebrate Black August in memory of George Jackson and Black resistance. In this episode, we spoke with the executive editor of the Black Agenda Report, Glen Ford. We held a robust conversation with Mr. Ford about Bill Clinton, Obama, Malcolm X, criticizing our leaders in the public, the Democratic party, Kamala Harris, political prisoners, his ideas about defunding, and abolishing the police, and if we should call for community control of the police. We did not enter this episode with a specific myth but we concluded with the myth that Dem. Politics is Black Politics. 

In part two of 'We Are Not Our Ancestors' we explore The significance of Malcolm X's "Message to the Grassroots" speech.  We discuss how the vision that Malcolm X articulates impacts the following generation in a way that completely defies the idea of docile ancestors. We also briefly discuss the Black Panther Party and the implications of radical politics today within the Black lives matter context.