Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

In this episode we once again get the opportunity to sit-down with Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army veteran Jalil Muntaqim. Muntaqim was a political prisoner of the United States for 49 years due to his involvement in the Black liberation struggle. He was released from prison in October of 2020 after eleven parole denials. He is the author of We Are Our Own Liberators, and Escaping The Prism… Fade to Black, which we discuss parts of in this episode. This is the second conversation we’ve had with Jalil Muntaqim and if you missed the first you will want to also check that out to get more information about Jalil’s personal history and what led to the Spirit of Mandela Tribunal this past October. In this episode we caught up with Jalil on December 13th to talk about the outcomes of the Spirit of Mandela Tribunal and next steps for the conveners of this historic event.  In this conversation Jalil Muntaqim discusses the legal outline of why the conduct of the United States of America constitutes genocide against Black and Indigenous people. Jalil talks about the relationship between white supremacy, capitalism and US imperialism. Muntaqim shares thoughts on the life of his Jericho Amnesty Movement co-founder Safiya Bukhari. We talk about recent releases of David Gilbert, Jaan Laaman, and Russell “Maroon” Shoatz. Maroon passed away 4 days after this episode was recorded, we send our condolences to his family, loved ones and comrades, and our own gratitude to him and his spirit for a life engaged in unrelenting struggle. We also talk about the current struggles for freedom of several political prisoners, including Kamau Sadiki, Leonard Peltier, Veronza Bowers, Dr. Mutulu Shakur and Sundiata Acoli among others. We discuss Mumia Abu Jamal’s struggle for freedom after the recent passing of the 40th anniversary of his capture. And we talk about Larry Hoover and why he is recognized by the Jericho Amnesty Movement. We will include several links in the show notes to the episode on how people can get involved and support these and other political prisoners. We also talk to Muntaqim more about Arm The Spirit the first national newspaper created and written by prisoners, which he was central to organizing. Muntaqim offers several recommendations for prisoner solidarity and prison abolition organizers. And we get Muntaqim to share a story of cadre and mass based organizing that he was involved in while inside. Jalil also shares his thoughts on resisting political imprisonment, and how to handle political imprisonment if you are incarcerated for your political activities. A couple more final notes, we will link to ways people can stay informed and get involved in the ongoing work of the Spirit of Mandela campaign, as they look to move their findings forward into a legal case and a broader international movement. We also want to again plug the Mutual Aid Fund For Veteran Black Panther Party Members.  Every month this fund brings in money and those funds are distributed to elders from the Black Panther Party, we contribute to this fund and we encourage others to do the same. There are links throughout this to support individual political prisoners and organizations. Below are some organizations & related efforts: Spirit of Mandela Jericho Amnesty Movement Northeast Political Prisoner Coalition Anarchist Black Cross Warchest Program  

In this episode we were honored to host Kali Akuno, co-director and co-founder of Cooperation Jackson and Kamau Franklin is the founder of Community Movement Builders and a co-host at Black Power Media’s Remix Morning Show.  We brought Kali and Kamau into conversation under a banner of discussing strategy. Strategy is something that Josh and I feel is both essential and often lacking within a lot of formations in the US left.  The conversation is wide-ranging and touches on a number of topics that may prompt folks to need greater context. In the show notes we will include some links to other readings and discussions with Kali and Kamau on what the Jackson plan is, why they left the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and what their current work entails.  Beyond strategy, in this episode we get into discussion of political education, neoliberal socialization, burnout, fickle organizers, reflection and criticism, Democratic Centralism, cadre and mass organizing, climate change, ecological collapse, food sovereignty, self-defense, revolutionary violence, and the capture of social movements through the nonprofit industrial complex and Democratic Party electoral politics. It is our greatest hope that conversations like this one provide folks with tools, insights and provocations that they can bring with them into their organizing efforts so that we can build more effectively going forward for the alternatives are clearly bleak and dystopian.  Both Community Movement Builders and Cooperation Jackson do accept donations. So we will also provide links to both organizations in our show notes if people would like to give them a donation. And please support Black Power Media as well.  And of course, we need your support to continue to bring you these conversations freely, and in non-commoditized form. All of our work is available ad-free and none of our episodes are behind a paywall and we hope that we can always keep it that way so that all of these conversations are freely available to organizers, activists, students, workers, the poor, and the oppressed. To support our ability to do that you can contribute to our patreon for as little as $1 a month or for a yearly contribution of just $11 a year. For more context: Cooperation Jackson's Kali Akuno on the lessons of and the ongoing struggle in Jackson MS Community Movement Builders and Liberated Zones Theory with Kamau Franklin The Jackson-Kush Plan: The Struggle For Black Self-Determination and Economic Democracy Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi  

Alyson Escalante, J. Moufawad Paul, and Devin Zane Shaw discuss pacification and capture in response to the rebellions of 2020, unequal exchange, the climate crisis, settler colonialism, and the nuances of racial regimes in the US and Canada. They also touch on liberal pacification, declining ranks in movement work, the dangers of state support for settler vigilantism, and the re-emergence of proletarian patriotism. The podcast explores the impact of the uprisings on American politics, responsibilities within the global capitalist system, and the preservation of radical movement texts.

In this episode we speak to three of the contributors to On Necrocapitalism: A Plague Journal, which is available from Kersplebedeb and you can find that at leftwingbooks.net.  On Necrocapitalism was collectively authored by a writing group known as M.I. Asma which included J. Moufawad-Paul, Devin Zane Shaw, Mateo Andante, Johannah May Black, Alyson Escalante, and D.W. Fairlane. In this conversation we speak with Alyson Escalante, J. Moufawad Paul and Devin Zane Shaw.  The authors introduce themselves in a little more detail in the episode, but Alyson Escalante you probably know as the co-host of Red Menace Podcast and J. Moufawad Paul and Devin Zane Shaw have both written multiple books.  First written in blog form, On Necrocapitalism was written through weekly entries throughout the first year of the pandemic.  The authors approached the pandemic as an occasion to think capitalism according to what it always has been, what the pandemic reveals about its current ideological deployment, and how we can think about a communist alternative in the face of exterminism. As we deal with the omicron surge and in the US as we deal with dimensions of capitalism that have only continued to become more necrotic after the pacification of the electoral process. This two part conversation and the book On Necrocapitalism are as timely as ever. Reminding us of the death worlds of the pandemic we’re still in, the possibilities of rebellion and the ways in which our uprisings can ultimately be pacified.  By the end of the year, we will have put out 49 episodes of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism this year.  With all of the planning, outreach, reading, editing, and recording time we put into this it has become a full-time endeavor for us. A reminder that if you enjoy these conversations, and can afford to give even $1 a month towards our patreon, it all adds up and goes a long way towards sustaining the level of output we’ve been able to maintain this year. In this part we talk about the origin of the On Necrocapitalism project. Discussing the necrosis that is always within capitalism. The bad bourgeois and “left pundit” frames that were trotted out in the beginning of the pandemic. The way the pandemic most impacted groups of people on specific margins of bourgeois society. We touch on the authors’ use of proletarian feminism and social reproduction theory. We talk about how the pandemic shifted amid rebellion, talk about the entry of abolitionist demands into the mainstream and begin to discuss the onset of pacification - an issue we will delve into more deeply in part 2. Links to some (not all) of the work of our guests, beyond On Necrocapitalism: Alyson Escalante - Red Menace Podcast Some of Alyson's writings at Cosmonaut and Regeneration Beyond Negativity: What Comes After Gender Nihilism? J. Mouwafad-Paul - MLM Mayhem Blog A Communist Necessity Continuity and Rupture Critique of Maoist Reason Demarcation and Demystification Methods Devour Themselves Austerity Apparatus Devin Zane Shaw Politics of the Blockade Philosophy of Antifascism Egalitarian Moments We also had a conversation with Devin Zane Shaw on Philosophy of Antifascism earlier this year.  

In this episode we speak with veteran of the Black Panther Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and co-founder of the Black Autonomy Federation Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin. A former long-time political prisoner, we talk to Ervin about the recent release of the definitive edition of his book Anarchism and the Black Revolution on Pluto Press. Anarchism and the Black Revolution was written during Ervin’s political imprisonment, and is considered a foundational text for Black Anarchist traditions. We talk to Ervin about what he drew out of his experiences with SNCC and the Black Panther Party that contributes to his understandings of Black Anarchism or Black Autonomy. We ask about the circumstances that led to his political imprisonment, and critiques of state socialism. Ervin also shares reflections on his political mentor Martin Sostre.  Ervin discusses the sit-in movement as a form of autonomous action taking up by the youth in the 60’s, which he describes as oppositional to both the establishment and the politics of major civil rights organizations at the time. In conversation Ervin also pushes back against notions of chaos, disorganization, individualism, and nihilism that are often associated with anarchism, and which some folks identifying themselves as anarchists take up. In contrast Ervin provides concrete explanations of the types of mass organizing he believes Black Anarchists should be engaged in, in the development of their own struggle.  Ervin discusses the subversive trap of electoral politics. We also ask about fascism, anti-fascism, dual power and problems with unaccountable leadership and celebrity as well as what differentiates a political revolution from a social revolution.  If you’ve never read Anarchism and the Black Revolution or want this new definitive edition which includes new sections, a new introduction, a recent interview  and new Forwards from Joy James and William C. Anderson, you can grab that on Plutobooks.com. If you would like to learn more about Black Autonomy from Lorenzo along with his partner Jo’Nina Ervin and William C. Anderson, check out their work at the Black Autonomy Podcast.  This book is part of the Black Critique Series on Pluto Press. Black Autonomy Podcast has a patreon of its own which benefits Lorenzo and JoNina, we encourage folks to support them directly.  And as always if you like what we do, and want to sustain our ability to continue to do this work please become a patron of our show on patreon if you are able to do so. You can do so for any amount, even $1 a month if that’s what you can afford.

In this episode we interview António Tomás, author of the recently published biography Amílcar Cabral: The Life of a Reluctant Nationalist. Tomás is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He is a native of Angola, and holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. He has worked as a journalist in Angola and Portugal and has written extensively on issues related to Lusophone Africa.  Recently we held a study group on Cabral’s Return To The Source, but one of the things that stood out to many of us in the group was how little we really knew about Guinea Bissau, about the PAIGC and about Cabral and the context in which his writings and thought were produced.  The official archives available to scholars on Cabral and the PAIGC are limited due to the fascistic nature of the Portuguese state at the time among other factors. In 2020 we did an interview with Sónia Vaz Borges on the PAIGC’s Militant Education program which filled in some gaps, and we hope that this interview will fill in more.  There are more questions we’d like to ask about his relationships with Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, and Sékou Touré all of whom were influential to Cabral important to the PAIGC and are discussed in the book. And more broadly about the network of African liberation movements at the time. Perhaps when our schedules permit we can record a part two to fill in some of those gaps.  Hopefully this conversation will deepen our understandings of Cabral, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and the liberation struggle of the PAIGC. And ultimately of the contradictions which deepen our understanding both Cabral’s fate and the developments of the years after his death. Understanding the inner workings of Portuguese colonialism, counterinsurgency, and of the contradictions of the revolution led by the PAIGC, demonstrate just how relevant many of Cabral’s theoretical contributions and insights are to struggles against the global capitalist system, and against different forms of colonialism and counterinsurgency.  While the unity Cabral sought to lead between Cape Verdeans and Guineans may have been fraught, it is perhaps in this struggle against its own contradictions that we can find important lessons for movements that at times seem impossible or incommensurable.  Reminder, if you like what we do, please contribute to our patron if you are able. Even if you give $1 a month, it is through many people making contributions like that, that we sustain this show. We are still trying to sustain at least 1,000 patrons of the show, and currently we are at 977, so we can get back to that goal this month, and hopefully sustain that going forward with your support. Now here is António Tomás on the Life of Amílcar Cabral and the Struggle of the PAIGC

Orisanmi Burton is a social anthropologist, his research examines grassroots resistance and state repression. He is an assistant professor of anthropology at American University. Currently, as he will discuss briefly in the episode, he is working on a book on prisoner organizing in the New York State prison system, and the Attica Rebellion.   In this episode we are talking about Burton’s recent essay, “Captivity, Kinship & Black Masculine Care Work Under Domestic Warfare.” It was published in the scholarly journal American Anthropologist so if listeners are unable to access a copy and would like to get their hands on one feel free to hit us up or reach out to Orisanmi directly. His twitter is @orisanmi.  In this discussion we talk about understanding prisons as a zone and technology of domestic warfare, about the Black radicals who have theorized this understanding and their place within current academic thought on the prison system. We also talk a bit about Joy James’s concept of the captive maternal, and how letter writing with prisoners has informed Burton’s own intellectual work, specifically around the role that care work or socially reproductive labor has among Black incarcerated men  as a mode of resistance to the war waged against Black familial, kinship and communal structures. Just a reminder, that if you like what we do, running this podcast is a full-time project for us at this point. Becoming a patron is the way that you can ensure our ability to continue to bring you these conversations every week with these amazing guests. You can do that at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism and you can do it for as little as $1 a month, or become an annual patron for less than $11 dollars a year, all of it adds up to make this show possible.

In this episode we host Joshua Myers, to talk about his recently published book Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition. Folks will recall that last year we had a conversation with Josh Myers about Cedric Robinson much of which centered around the content and concepts within Black Marxism.  While there is a slight overlap between this conversation and that one, the two are quite distinct and mutually inform each other. So we invite folks to revisit that alongside this conversation, or to listen to both for the first time to get a more complete picture of Myers’ extensive knowledge and analysis of Robinson’s life and work. Beyond that of course we encourage folks to pick up this book as it really does a great job of grounding Robinson’s intellectual work within the context of his life, organizing and relationships. In this conversation we talk more about young Cedric’s developing anti-imperialist and anti-colonial consciousness. His disenchantment with the aims, strategies and tactics of the Civil Rights Movement. His critiques of leadership, and analysis of charisma, which set the ground for his first book The Terms of Order. And we discuss how Robinson’s work has always aimed to assault the foundations of academic disciplines. We discuss the relationship between Robinson and CLR James, and the practices of study and development of undercommons spaces for colleagues and students. We also talk about the relationship between Cedric and Immanuel Wallerstein and Modern World Systems Theory.  We talk briefly about the arguments Robinson takes up in An Anthropology of Marxism and Forgeries of Memory and Meaning and of course we can’t resist a couple of questions on recent readings, mis-readings, and non-readings of Robinson’s most well-known work Black Marxism. We are only six patrons away from returning to 1,000 patrons, so if you have been waiting for that moment to become a patron of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, it’s a great time to join up and help sustain the work that we do here, bringing you conversations like this.

In this episode we speak to Geo Maher. Maher is an educator, organizer, political theorist and the author of four books, including We Created Chavez, Building the Commune, and Decolonizing Dialectics. In this episode, we talk about Geo’s latest book, A World Without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete. In this discussion we talk about Maher’s grounding of the abolitionist struggle in W.E.B. Du Bois’s seminal work of history Black Reconstruction in America.  Geo discusses the specific relationship between whiteness and policing which develops through history in the US context. From there we get into a discussion of how to break police power in the US, starting with expelling police associations from labor unions and federations. Geo also talks about abolition in an international context, examining international struggles we can draw from, while also discussing about why abolitionist struggle has a specific relevance and relationship to revolutionary struggle in the US.  Along the way we examine other important questions for the abolitionist movement today at a time when the ideas of abolition have as much popular resonance as ever, but there is still a need to develop the political forces to fight for and implement them. The “Camden Model” Is Not a Model. It’s an Obstacle to Real Change by Brandon McQuade A Critical Analysis of the Demand to Defund The Police by Max Rameau and Netfa Freeman Editing note: there are a few moments of slight distortion or static in the audio, in each instance the clear up pretty quickly and hopefully are only a minor distraction And as always if you like what we do, please consider contributing to our patreon. We are still down several patrons from last month, so if you’re able to join it’ll help get us back on the right track, building towards the sustainability of this platform and our ability to bring you all these conversations.  

In this episode Josh interviews Eric Stanley about their most recent book Atmospheres of Violence: The Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable. Eric is also the co-director of two films, Homotopia and Criminal Queers. And the co-editor of Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility and Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex.  In this conversation, Josh interviews Eric about their latest work. Discussing the continuum of anti-trans and anti-queer violence, and grappling with what it might take to end it. They briefly discuss the lives of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, and the marketing of their likenesses and hollowing out of their political memory.  Eric also shares the historical link between colonialism and HIV and reflects upon suicide not as a set of “individual losses of broken children,” but rather “as evidence of a murderous world.“ While the conversation does not go into detail, I do just want to acknowledge for folks that obviously based on the subject matter there are discussions of anti-trans and anti-queer violence and of suicide along with other heavy subject matter in this episode. And a quick reminder, if you like what we do here at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, we are back working on our goal of hitting 1,000 patrons. We hit it briefly last month, but lost some patrons with the start of the new month. We need 27 new patrons this month to return to that goal. So join now if you haven’t.