Groundings

In this special interview, we speak over the phone with two Black immigrants who are detained in Atlanta City Detention Center, as well as Kevin Caron, a local Atlanta organizer and abolitionist that does tremendous work with immigrant communities. Throughout the interview you will notice difficulties with telephone connection and communication; we decided not to edit these things out, and instead to leave these various difficulties in the audio as to expose the listeners to the vast difficulties that often come with trying to communicate with incarcerated people. Mohammed, who is from Ghana, discusses his journey of coming to the US, the difficulties he has faced being a Black, Muslim immigrant in jail, the impact incarceration has on mental health, and the impossible challenges he has faced in trying to navigate the US immigration system. The Richard, from Jamaica, discusses the inhumane conditions they face within the jails/detention centers, the legal battles that he has endured, and how these issues of immigration specifically impact African and Caribbean immigrants. Finally we end with an interview with Kevin Caron, a local Atlanta organizer and abolitionist who does tremendous work with detained immigrants and throughout many immigrant communities. Kevin works with both Georgia Detention Watch and A World Without Police. [DISCLAIMER: This interview was recorded in the beginning of May, and a few weeks after this interview was recorded we got word that Mohammed was freed in June and has safely returned to his home in Ghana.] listen to our other episodes at Groundings.Simplecast.fm follow Devyn on Twitter @HalfAtlanta and check out Christopher's radio show Rhythm & Resistance on WRFG.

Multi-disciplinary artist Bocafloja, one of Mexico's first rappers, discusses global politics and capitalism where they intersect with hip-hop. He also discusses his documentary Nana Dijo which explores anti-Blackness in Latin America. Along with this, we also have an in-depth conversation on navigating the capitalist music industry, cultural hegemony, and the social construct of the "conscious rapper."

"Your consciousness can come from anywhere. but the point is, it needs to come urgently." — Asha Rodney An Interview with Asha Rodney, scholar-activist, lawyer, and youngest child of Walter Rodney. Asha discusses the assassination of her father by the hands of an immensely repressive Guyanese government in 1980, describes what a "groundings" session is, and gives us suggestions for how to implement her father's work and legacy in our organizing today. Asha Rodney, along with the rest of the Rodney family, has spent many years seeking justice for the assassination of her father, the revolutionary Walter Rodney. Walter Rodney was assassinated in 1980 by an explosive device which was hidden in a walkie-talkie, provided to him by Gregory Smith who was later revealed to have been an operative for the Guyanese government. Asha covers not only meticulous details of her father's assassination, but describes the political climate and context in which it occurred: an incredibly repressive, western-backed regime eliminating and outlawing all forms of dissent. Along with covering the assassination, Asha also teaches us about the process of investigation surrounding the assassination; the decades it took to have an official commission of inquiry into Walter's murder, the hundreds of Guyanese people who testified for the commission of inquiry, how incredibly damning the results of the investigation are, and just how hard the Guyanese government has tried to suppress this information. Finally, Asha brings this fight for justice to the current day and discusses why the commission of inquiry, as well as Walter Rodney's assassination, are very important for activists and organizers around the world. We then discuss the 'groundings' concept, and putting Walter's theories into practice.

Organizer and educator Derek Ford gives a historical context for the current imperialist aggression surrounding the DPRK, explains the 'Juche' ideology, and recounts some firsthand propaganda-shattering experiences from his travels inside the country. The day after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced the travel ban for US citizens to North Korea, Derek Ford traveled to the country on a fact-finding delegation. In this episode, he shares many of those firsthand experiences with me, and discusses how what he saw in person was quite different from the propaganda he'd been told in the US. Along with this he discusses the 'Juche' ideology, which is essentially the guiding philosophical ideology of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and gives a quick history lesson on both the Juche ideology and the country itself.

Revolutionary Pan-Africanist writer, artist, and organizer Sobukwe Shakur gives a first-hand account of the history of the Black Art Movement, a movement which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and ran parallel to the Black Power Movement. Sobukwe Shukur is a multi-media cultural worker, the host of the Revolutionary African Perspectives radio show on Georgia's independent WRFG station, a cadre and organizer in Nkrumah’s brainchild, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) and a former chair of the National Network On Cuba (NNOC). The conversation begins with Sobukwe setting the context for the Black Arts Movement, one of global Black political consciousness at its height, before diving into first-hand experiences as a school student during the early 1960s before transforming into an organizer and cultural worker within the movement itself. In discussing the politics of the Black Arts Movement, he discusses how various ideologies existed simultaneously, at times in conflict, and how this was embraced and seen through the act of a multi-plural cultural revolution that took place. In the final third of the interview we discuss the legacy of the Black Arts Movement; how it has influenced us today compared to the Harlem Renaissance, and how Black arts of today reflect a deeply different dominant ideology being reflected in the art.