Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

For this conversation we welcome Winston James to the podcast. Winston James is the author of A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay’s Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion, The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer 1799-1851, and Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twenty Century America. James has held a number of teaching positions, most recently as a professor of history at UC Irvine. James joins us to talk about his latest work, Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik. The book examines McKay’s life from his early years in Jamaica to his years at Tuskegee and Kansas State University and his time in Harlem, to his life in London. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, James offers a rich and detailed chronicle of McKay’s life, political evolution, and the historical, political, and intellectual contexts that shaped him. The work also locates McKay’s closest interlocutors, and those he debated with, as well as McKay’s experiences as a worker and within communist and anarcho-syndicalist organizations like the Worker’s Socialist Federation and the IWW.  In part 1 of the conversation, we focus on McKay’s early years in Jamaica up through the Red Summer of 1919. James begins with a discussion of McKay’s family, his life in Jamaica, his brief stint as a constable in Kingston, his early poetry and his influence on the Negritude movement. James also discusses the appeal of the Russian Revolution and of the Third International to Black people in this era, and contextualizes the terror of white vigilante violence in the post war period in the US and how Black people fought back against it. As a content notice some of this discussion is a brief but explicit examination of the abhorrent character of anti-black violence of the period. We close part 1 of the conversation with a discussion of McKay’s “If We Must Die,” the context of armed self-defense, the context of fighting back, from which it emerged and its global resonance with the emerging Black radicalism of the period and with radical movements decades after its release. In part two - which will come out in the next couple of days - we will focus on McKay’s debates, positions, and activism within the spaces of revolutionary Black Nationalism and the Communist left of the period. We will include a link to the book in the show notes. We both highly recommend it. If you would like to purchase Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik by Winston James consider picking it up from the good folks at Massive Bookshop. As for our current campaign, we have 8 days left this month and we are working towards our goal of adding 50 patrons this month in recognition of 5 years of doing Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. So far this month we have added 34 patrons so if we can add 2 or more patrons daily for the rest of the month we’ll hit that goal. You can join up all the wonderful people who make this show possible by contributing as little as $1 per month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

This is the second part of our two part conversation with Too Black on his piece “Laundering Black Rage”  which you can read over at Black Agenda Report. Too Black is a poet, member of Black Alliance For Peace, host of The Black Myths Podcast which can be found on Black Power Media, he’s a writer, and he is the communications coordinator of the Campaign to Free the Pendleton 2.  Here is part 1 of the conversation. We continue our conversation of “Laundering Black Rage” in this episode. In this part we talk about neocolonialism. We talk about class distinctions and some of the impacts of so-called desegregation, which did not really desegregate US society, but did make certain internal borders more porous to Capital, markets and elites. In that context we have some discussion about struggling against local elites or against elite capture. Too Black also offers some valuable insights on how people have been socialized in this neocolonial era. This conversation also includes about a 25 minute back and forth between Too Black and J about the way Too Black theorizes the state. While not a debate, there is some distinction between the two points of view that we seek to clarify in discussion. Ultimately there is a lot of overlap, but a slightly different conceptualization. We hope folks enjoy listening to us grappling with this theorization together. For an update on our October campaign. October marks the 5 year anniversary of MAKC. We are trying to add 50 patrons this month. 23 new patrons have signed on so far this month, so we’re almost half way to our goal as we reach the halfway point of the month. If we can add two people today we’ll be back on track. You can kick in $1 a month or more and support the sustainability of this show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism Additional links: The Black Myths Podcast Patreon  Campaign to Free The Pendleton 2 Previous conversation Too Black References from BPM along with Jared Ball, Brooke Terpstra, Erica Caines, Too Black, and Jared    

Our guest for the episode is Too Black. Too Black is a poet, member of Black Alliance For Peace, host of The Black Myths Podcast which can be found on Black Power Media, he’s a writer, and he is one of the organizers of the Campaign to Free the Pendleton 2.  In this conversation we welcome Too Black to discuss his recently published 2 part essay “Laundering Black Rage” (part 1, part 2) which we will link. The essay was published at Black Agenda Report. It’s a provocative analysis of the process through which Black Rage gets laundered towards other ends. The piece looks in particular at this process through the recent example of the 2020 uprisings, but it also looks at other examples. More than just a guest, Too Black is an interlocutor of ours. We’ve worked together on the Journalism For Liberation & Combat series (audio, video). We’ve had conversations about organizing and about theory that go beyond the bounds of podcast work. Due to length we split the conversation in two parts. Part 1 mostly covers the basic themes of the essay and the structure of the process of “Laundering Black Rage,” part two is a little more conversational, but there are conversational elements in both. Most importantly we will include a Link Tree for the campaign to Free the Pendleton 2 in the show notes, please check it out, and if nothing else sign the petitions, but I also encourage you to check out some of their media work, and to see if there’s some way you can get involved or support the campaign. Free The Pendleton 2 Campaign Link Tree. We also encourage you all to check out The Black Myths Podcast, they have some excellent conversations, with many guests you’ll recognize from our platform as well. And support them on patreon as well. Also shout-out to our friends over at Black Power Media who host the Black Myths Podcast videos. Support that work as well. And lastly for an update on our October campaign. October marks the 5 year anniversary of MAKC. We are trying to add 50 patrons this month. Currently we’ve got 22 new patrons for the month, so we’re almost half way to our goal as we approach the half-way point of the month. You can kick in $1 a month or more and support the sustainability of this show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Additional notes: In conversation there's a mention of a Kali Akuno video. 

In this episode we interview multiple people who’ve been involved in the struggle to Stop Cop City and Defend the Forest in Atlanta. What started as a political struggle against an extremely unpopular massive new police training facility has morphed and evolved in many different directions. We welcome Kamau Franklin from Community Movement Builders back to the platform for the third time for this conversation. He brings with him several folks with knowledge of the movement to stop cop city and what has become known as the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. This is a conversation that touches on modes of liberal city governance and counterinsurgency against radical social movements like the uprisings that took place across the country in the summer of 2020 in response to many instances of police violence including the police lynching of George Floyd and in Atlanta specifically the police execution of Rayshard Brooks as well. Kamau along with Sara, Paul and River discuss some of the current political economy of the greater Atlanta metropolitan area and discuss different phases of the struggle to prevent the political approval and physical construction of the massive police training facility. Along the way we also get into conversations about some of the dynamics coalition which is diverse both in terms of political tendencies and traditions, but also in terms of its racial composition. We talk about of some of the tensions and issues that can arise from these circumstances. And there is some discussion of tactics and strategy as well that is specific to this struggle, which warrant broader consideration contingent of course on the conditions of other struggles. You can learn more and support at https://defendtheatlantaforest.org You can also contribute to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund as Sara recommends in the show: https://atlsolidarity.org to support folks who are facing repression and legal cases. And you can learn more and support Community Movement Builders at https://communitymovementbuilders.org. Also in Kamau’s other role, he is a co-host of the Remix Morning Show on Black Power Media, make sure you check them out and support their work as well, this conversation would not have been what it was without Kamau’s support and facilitation. Apologies that due to the number of guests and internet connections some of the audio cuts out at a couple points in the conversation. In all cases it resolves and hopefully minimal meaning and information is lost. But we encourage folks to stick with it even if the audio is a little frustrating in parts because the conversation offers so many important insights. And last but not least, if you like the work that we do here at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. If you want to hear more conversations about dynamic social movements, revolutionary history, political theory, and tactical and strategic discussion, then join up with the awesome folks who support our show currently by becoming a patron of the show. This October marks the 5th anniversary of doing the show. We’ve hosted over 165 conversations in that period. And for those 5 years we’re looking to add 50 patrons this month to help us sustain this work. 50 is a lot, but you can be one of those folks helping to support by just kicking in a dollar a month or by making a small annual contribution at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.  

In this conversation Charisse Burden-Stelly returns to the podcast, and is joined by Jodi Dean to talk about their new book Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writing.  Charisse Burden-Stelly is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University. Along with Gerald Horne she co-authored W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life In American History. She is a co-editor of the book Reproducing Domination On the Caribbean and the Postcolonial State. She is also the author of the forthcoming book Black Scare / Red Scare. She is a member of Black Alliance for Peace and was previously the co-host of The Last Dope Intellectual podcast. Jodi Dean teaches political, feminist, and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited thirteen books, including The Communist Horizon, Crowds and Party, and Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging. She is also a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The first collection of its kind, Organize, Fight, Win brings together three decades of Black Communist women’s political writings. In doing so, it highlights the link between Communism and Black liberation. Likewise, it makes clear how Black women fundamentally shaped, and were shaped by, Communist praxis in the twentieth century. Organize, Fight, Win includes writings from card-carrying Communists like Dorothy Burnham, Williana Burroughs, Grace P. Campbell, Alice Childress, Marvel Cooke, Esther Cooper Jackson, Thelma Dale Perkins, Vicki Garvin, Yvonne Gregory, Claudia Jones, Maude White Katz, and Louise Thompson Patterson, and writings by those who organized alongside the Communist Party, like Ella Baker, Charlotta Bass, Thyra Edwards, Lorraine Hansberry, and Dorothy Hunton. Dr. CBS and Dr. Dean introduce the text further in the discussion, and read some excerpts from it along the way as well. In conversation we talk about a number of the interventions made by Black Communist Women that are collected in Organize, Fight, Win. We also talk about how many of these women have often been written about, frequently to further intellectual frameworks that are not the Black Communist analysis and modes of organizing that they themselves espoused. We discuss the interventions these women made in relation to unionization efforts, anti-imperialism, anti-fascism, and the struggle for peace. We also discuss the difference between common manifestations of identitarian politics  today and the materialist analysis these Black Communist Women deployed.  We also talk about the internal critiques that they leveed against certain positions of the CPUSA, not in attempts to destroy the party, but in dedication to its mission. Organize, Fight, Win is available for pre-order from Verso Books and it will come out on this coming Tuesday. Black Alliance for Peace has a webinar kicking off the International Month of Action Against AFRICOM on Saturday October 1st. We’ll include links to those as well as to pre-orders for Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future all of which are named in the episode. We’ll also include links to some previous discussions that relate to topics covered here. And as always if you like what we do, please support our work on patreon. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.  Relevant links: Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future   Black Alliance for Peace webinar on AFRICOM  Black Alliance for Peace's International Month of Action Against AFRICOM  Our previous conversation with Dr. CBS which provides a lot of useful context on anti-communism and anti-blackness and other terms and frameworks that are relevant to this discussion. Our previous discussion on Lorraine Hansberry’s time at Freedom Our conversation with Mary Helen Washington (who was also referenced in the show)    

In this conversation we speak with Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson  Robyn is the author of the bestselling and award-winning book Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. She is also an assistant professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at University of Toronto. She also has a lengthy history of writing about and organizing with social movements against borders, state violence and for abolition. Leanne is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, musician, and member of Alderville First Nation. She is the author of seven books including A Short History of the Blockade and As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. In this conversation we discuss their latest book Rehearsals for Living. This will be part 1 of a 2 part discussion with the authors. Robyn and Leanne discuss world-endings and world-building as realities and practices of Black and Indigenous existence and resistance. They talk about grappling with building a necessary relationality and solidarity between Black and Indigenous movements in so-called Canada as well as internationally against white supremacy, capitalism, settler colonialism and other structures of violence and domination. They also talk about ways of living that are necessary to recall and to continue or renew practices of in the face of already existing climate change and devastation. And they discuss how social movements build upon each other continuing to produce knowledge that grows and sustains and builds their capacity for stronger bonds of solidarity and more effective modes of resistance.  As a note there is a portion of this episode and of Rehearsals for Living that builds on a conversation we published with Stefano Harney and Fred Moten back in July of 2020. Here is a link to that conversation for anyone who wants that context or wants to revisit it after hearing Leanne’s reflections. Rehearsals for Living is a really powerful read and we encourage you to pick it up from Haymarket Books or from your local bookstore. This is our fourth episode of the month, we’ve just hit our goal of adding 25 patrons for the month. We want to thank everyone who signed up to support the show this month. It is only through the support of our listeners through patreon that we are able to sustain this work. If you would like to join them in supporting the show and its hosts and continue to grow our work, you can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

In this episode Dr. Jesse Benjamin returns to the podcast. Like our previous conversation with Jesse we’re connecting to talk about a recently released book by Walter Rodney, in this case it’s Decolonial Marxism: Essays From The Pan-African Revolution, which is a previously unpublished collection of Rodney’s essays on race, colonialism and Marxism. Jesse Benjamin is a scholar, activist, publisher, and board member for the Walter Rodney Foundation, and he is the co-editor of Decolonial Marxism. We talk about how Decolonial Marxism showcases Rodney’s range as a theorist and a thinker, as an educator, and as an activist. This collection of essays across a range of topics really provides practical examples of what we think Rodney meant by the term “guerilla intellectual.” It also gives us a glimpse of how Rodney assessed some of the movements and key theorists and leaders of his lifetime, particularly with respect to anticolonial nationalists and socialists on the African continent. Jesse Benjamin offers insights into how he reads Rodney’s work in these pieces with respect to pedagogy and epistemology. We also talk about the title Decolonial Marxism and how Rodney takes up the questions of the relevance of Marxism to African peoples and other peoples of the so-called Third World. Jesse also talks about the significance of many of Rodney’s interventions in a range of areas and approaches that are really groundbreaking or, at the very least, would’ve been quite cutting edge during Rodney’s lifetime. And all of us marvel at how relevant and insightful Rodney’s contributions remain decades after his assassination. We strongly recommend the book for anyone who appreciates Walter Rodney’s work and if you’re not familiar with Rodney’s work it’s really essential stuff and we highly recommend it. Verso Books has published this text and they also have editions of 3 other Rodney books all of which are authorized by the Walter Rodney Foundation and Rodney’s family. And everything is 40% off over there at Verso for the rest of September. Make sure you get connected with the Walter Rodney Foundation every year they host a Walter Rodney Symposium which is an amazing event. And if you like what we do here we hope you will consider joining up with all of our wonderful patrons in supporting the show. We currently have a drive to add 25 new patrons this month. We only need 10 more to hit our goal for this month, so head on over to patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism and become a patron if you can spare $1 a month or more. Also while you’re there we currently have a poll to determine our next study group book, so make sure you vote on that and be on the look out for updates because we will be reconvening our study group in October. Our previous conversations that deal most directly with Walter Rodney's work and life (from most recent to oldest): “Almost As If Their Spirits Are Still There” - David Austin on The 1968 Congress of Black Writers "Our Enemies Know the Power of Books" - Louis Allday and Liberated Texts "The Wealth of Europe is the (Stolen) Wealth of Africa" with Devyn Springer Walter Rodney's Russian Revolution - A View From The Third World with Dr Jesse Benjamin Devyn Springer Discusses Walter Rodney  

For this episode we welcome Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad back to the podcast. This is our second conversation on The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power (Part 1 is here) As we noted in our previous conversation we weren’t able to get to all of our questions in the first discussion, but Noam and Vijay were generous enough to agree to record a part 2. We recorded this conversation on September 2nd, which is interesting because some information on the war in Ukraine had been revealed between our two conversations and we get into that in discussion. We will link the article they reference in the show notes. This conversation, begins with discussion of the Tet Offensive and Noam facing potential trial for his resistance during the US war in Vietnam. Vijay talks about Noam’s piece “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.”  From there we get into discussion about “the Pentagon System,” and the military industrial complex.  They both share some thoughts on Manufacturing Consent and the role of the media, and discuss a few examples of how this functions. Talk about imperialism with regards to resources and power. And Noam discusses how NATO and the Pentagon rebranded their purposes after the Cold War. From there we get into the invention of “humanitarian intervention,” and how concepts of human rights and genocide have been manipulated by the US despite US’s total lack of accountability within the frameworks of international law.  We close with some discussion on how to recompose and reconstitute movements in the imperial core, against imperialism and toward better horizons. Both this conversation and our previous conversation with Noam and Vijay are based on questions developed on their book The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. Which is on sale now and we definitely recommend it. We will also link the previous discussion the authors had with Guerrilla History that we reference in the episode. If you don’t listen to Guerrilla History check them out, we really like the work they do and hopefully you will as well. We’re down a few patrons this month. We’re working to maintain the sustainability of the podcast in these difficult times. To that end we have a goal of adding 25 patrons this month. You can become one for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year. All support, adds up and makes this show possible and keeps us completely independent, ad free, and able to bring you conversations like this every week. So head over to patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism and help out if you can. The Hill and Stent article (the one that references the April peace agreement) Reflections on a Political Trial  The Responsibility of Intellectuals 

In this episode we are honored to host a conversation with Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad, to discuss their brand new book The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.  Part 2 of the conversaiton can be found here. Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historical essayist, social critic and political activist. While we couldn’t find a complete bibliography, from what we could gather, it seems that at this point he has written over 100 books, on a wide range of topics.  Vijay Prashad is an executive director of Tricontinental: institute of Social Research, the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books, and a senior non-resident fellow at Chonyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He is also the author of over 20 books and a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). In this conversation we talk about the recent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the so-called “China threat,” The Godfather attitude of U.S. imperialism, the war in Ukraine, sanctions, and international law. We also question whether we should look at the U.S. as a declining power or just an empire in transition. As you will see we were not able to get through all of our questions in this conversation, but Noam and Vijay were kind enough to record a part 2 with us as well, which we will release in the coming days. This part of the conversation was recorded on August 30th. We want to thank all of our patrons for making our show possible. It’s a new month and we have a new goal to add 25 patrons again this month. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month. All of the support for our show comes from listeners like you as we have no grant funding and we don’t sell any ads. You can become a patron by signing up at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism And be on the look out for part 2 of this conversation in the coming days.

In this episode we interview Marika Sherwood. As she mentions in the episode, Sherwood was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary in 1937. After World War 2, the surviving members of her family emigrated with her to Australia, she was briefly employed in New Guinea, and eventually emigrated to England, finding employment as a teacher in London. She will discuss on the episode how she became dedicated to researching and publishing Black history. Along with Hakim Adi and others, Sherwood is one of the founders of the Black and Asian Studies Association in the UK. For us, this conversation was primarily spurred by our reading of her book Kwame Nkrumah and the Dawn of the Cold War, The West African National Secretariat 1945-1948. In this conversation Sherwood touches on some of the methods used by British government and the British press to suppress the organizing Kwame Nkrumah - along with others like George Padmore - was engaged in, during this crucial post-war period. She also talks about areas where she sees a need for further research on anticolonial movements and counterintelligence operations against them. Sherwood also stresses the need for the UK to release more documentation on its own counterintelligence operations against Nkrumah, Padmore and others. We encourage people to check out Sherwood’s other work as well. To give you an idea, she sent us a list of her publications and it was 8 pages long, including over 20 books. In addition to Kwame Nkrumah, her books include work on Pan-Africanism, Claudia Jones, and Malcolm X. In many ways this is a conversation about dedication, for Sherwood we get some understanding of why she has dedicated so much of her life to studying African movements and Black History. It also hopefully give us some sense of the dedication that Kwame Nkrumah had to all the peoples of Africa. And it also highlights the dedication of British Empire to undermining the conditions for true self-determination on the African continent and their dedication to deliberately hiding that legacy out of public record.  We hope you enjoy this episode. This is our fifth episode of August, we already have a bunch of really exciting conversations slated to come out in September and October as well. If you’d like to become a patron of the show, you can become one for as little as $1 a month. It is with the generous support of our listeners that we can continue to bring you these conversations every week.