Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

This week’s special report, features Hassan M. Hassan is a scientist and writer. He is a contributing editor for the Peoples Anti-Colonial Press and co-host at TheKulture.TV, a new weekly anti-imperialist roundup. He is currently researching the relationship between dialectical materialism and the history of the philosophy of science. In special reports, we interview journalists, activists, scholars and organizers on shorter pieces. These might be essays, articles, short stories or even poems. “Special Reports” will be typically shorter than our full episodes, ranging somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour and will have a limited focus. Our goal with these is to talk about current events and ways that people are analyzing and seeking to intervene in them.  In this episode Hassan joins us to discuss his recent piece published on Regenerationmag.org entitled “American Patriotism Or National Liberation.” In the piece, and in this discussion Hassan analyzes the question using the method of dialectical materialism and specifically takes up the question of where people and nations oppressed by US imperialism especially Black and Indigenous folks fit into the vision of “Patriot Socialists.”  As a reminder, with the addition of these special reports we’re hoping to increase our content to about 6 episodes a month. If you want to support our ability to do this please contribute to our patreon if you are able to do so.  In the photo collage is a piece of original artwork by Shenby @leftaesthetic (on Instagram)

In this episode we interview Alex Turrall, an independent researcher and primary school teacher. We talk to Alex about two reviews they've written for Liberated Texts. Liberated Texts is an independent book review website which features works of ongoing relevance that have been forgotten, underappreciated, suppressed or misinterpreted in the cultural mainstream since their release. Liberated Texts focuses on texts with anti-colonial, anti-imperialist themes and those related to the history of Marxism, communism and revolution globally. We ask Alex to talk about the work of Soviet pedagogues Anton Makarenko and Vasily Sukhomlinsky. In doing so Alex touches on the interventions of these Soviet educators at two key points in Soviet history, after the revolutionary rupture with the Tsarist Russian Empire and in the aftermath of World War II. Along the way, Alex touches on different techniques and strategies illuminated by the books they reviewed for Liberated Texts. Alex also talks about the influence of these pedagogical figures within the socialist world and among liberation movements. We’ll links to the articles, the video Alex references and some other resources in the show notes. We apologize in advance for all the mispronunciation in this episode, as we try to pronounce various names in unfamiliar languages to us. As of publishing this episode, we have hit our big goal of 1,000 patrons. Thank you so much all for your support. Both Josh and I are doing this work full-time now, and we couldn’t do it without you all. So if you are listening and haven’t become a patron of the show yet, it’s still a great time to do so. Now here is our conversation with Alex Turrall on Makarenko and Sukhomlinsky.  Links: A Pedagogy of Nature: Vasily Sukhomlinsky's My Heart I Give to Children by Alex Turrall (Liberated Texts) A Pedagogy of the Collective - From The Soviet Union To Latin America: Makarenko, His Life and Work by Alex Turrall (Liberated Texts) Sukhomlinsky's Lesson Las Makarenkas Educadoras (Cuba) MST, Agro-ecology and Pedagogy Makarenko Archives    

For this special report we talk to Jon Ben-Menachem. Jon is a researcher and journalist, currently working on his PhD in Sociology at Columbia University, where he researches political economy and punishment. As a journalist he’s published on policing, incarceration and austerity for The Appeal, Slate, Shadowproof, Current Affairs, Truthout and New York Daily News. Today we invite Jon on to discuss his latest piece “What Media Gets Wrong About Last Year’s Uptick In Murders” which was published at Slate. There’s been a deluge of local and national media copaganda pushing for more cops and increased police budgets since the George Floyd protests and calls to defund police and abolish police that came along with them. It’s important to disrupt these copaganda narratives, and we thought Jon’s piece is helpful in that effort. The "Special Report" is a new segment where we interview journalists, activists, academics and organizers on shorter pieces. These might be essays, articles, field reports direct from organizers and/or incarcerated people, short stories or even poems.  These interviews will be typically shorter than our full episodes, ranging somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour and will have a limited focus. Our goal with these is to talk about current events and ways that people are analyzing and seeking to intervene in them. Sometimes - as with this episode - there will be contradictions raised that we aren’t able to resolve neatly, but need to be grappled with.  This is part of our effort to bring you all more content. We are both doing this full-time now and we hope to continue to bring you all about 4 of our full episodes monthly, but also sprinkle in about 2 of these special reports or smaller discussions each month as well. To support this work we are on a current pledge drive to hit 1,000 patrons and we’re only 20 patrons away from that big goal as we publish this. So if you haven’t become a patron yet, now is a great time to do so. And thank you to all of the people who have been supporting us along the way.    

In this episode we interview Ashon Crawley. Ashon is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and African American Studies at the University of Virginia and author of Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility and The Lonely Letters. In this discussion we ask Ashon questions from both books. Ashon delves into the context in which both works were created. Along the way Ashon shares reflections on religion, doctrine, on spirituality, theology, sense capacity, aesthetics, Blackness, Queerness and the crises, breakdowns and breakthroughs created through incommensurability.   The conversation is also animated by joy, by love, by loudness, by thinking of ways to be together, and of the otherwise worlds we can imagine and those that already exist. Thanks to Ashon Crawley for sharing so much with us in this conversation.  If folks like what we do here at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism and want to support our capacity to do so. We are on a current pledge drive to reach 1,000 patrons for the show. As of this recording we only need 41 more patrons to hit that goal. Thanks to all who have contributed and those who will contribute in the future.

This is a special episode, as today - October 4th - is our 4th anniversary of releasing episodes of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. In this episode Josh and Jay look back on 4 years of doing the podcast, and on different contradictions and issues we’re thinking about currently. Some folks might read this as a bit of a pessimistic conversation, and to the extent that this comes across, neither of us want to encourage a pessimistic outlook. We simply don’t have the time for that. However, it is incumbent upon us and upon every person who cares about having a future, every person who cares about a livable world, much less a better world, to take a self-inventory of both ourselves as individuals and of our social relationships, relationships to Empire, and our own involvement in organization to build power to make our ideas a collective reality before it truly is too late. For any comments that come across as petty, our goal is not to call individual folks out, or to suggest that ones position within an institution or society precludes them from making revolutionary sacrifices. Rather, we want to encourage folks to think critically about the cultivation of revolutionary culture and how to be better stewards of that collectively. We would especially like to thank all of our guests, anyone who has shared time and thought with us over the last 4 years. We are primarily a guest driven platform and wouldn’t be what we are without so many amazing people sharing their time with us. So thank you.  We’d also like to express gratitude to all of the people who have used conversations we’ve had in their classrooms, in their organizations, in their study groups. It’s been really meaningful to hear that these conversations are generating others, particularly in movement spaces or in classrooms where teachers are committed to providing students with different discourses than they find within the mainstream. Lastly, of course to everyone who has contributed to the show monetarily, although we are both deeply committed to this work, it is likely that the show would not still be here - and it certainly would not have as many episodes - without the financial support that has made this possible.  We would also like to thank Televangel, who we neglected to shout-out in the introduction. Televangel has provided the music for a couple years now and you can check out his great work here.  It is our 4 year anniversary and we are on a current push towards sustainability, our goal is to reach 1,000 patrons for the show. As of recording this we are approximately 75 patrons away from that goal so if you like what we do, just know you can support us for as little as $1 a month, the same amount (without factoring inflation!) that Paul Robeson’s Freedom was requesting of readers in the 1950’s. Also we shout-out a lot of political prisoners and former political prisoners in this conversation. We encourage folks to contribute to the Mutual Aid fund for Veteran Black Panther Party Members and other organizations that support political prisoners and movement veterans.

In this episode we inter view Torkil Lauesen. Lauesen is a long-time anti-imperialist activist and writer living in Denmark. From 1970 to 1989 he was a full-time member of a communist anti-imperialist group, supporting Third World liberation movements by both legal and illegal means. In connection with support work, he has traveled in Lebanon, Syria, Zimbabwe, South Africa, the Philippines, and Mexico. In the 1990’s, during his political imprisonment, he was involved in prison activism and received a Masters degree in political science. He is also the author of multiple books, including The Global Perspective: Reflections on Imperialism and Resistance and The Principal Contradiction. He is currently a member of International Forum, an anti-imperialist organization based in Denmark. Today we talk to him about his latest book Riding The Wave: Sweden’s Integration into the Imperialist World System. Which is a thorough investigation into the development of the so-called “Swedish Model” considered by many to be the pinnacle of social democracy. Many US based social democrats, have even gone so far as to describe it this model as a form of “socialism.” Torkil explains the relationship of this economic model to colonialism and imperialism, arguing that the accomplishments of the Social Democratic Party, and trade union movement, would not be possible if one took imperialism out of the equation. We hope you enjoy this conversation, and definitely recommend Lauesen’s new book Riding The Wave, which is not only a great history of the conditions that produced the “Swedish Model,” but deals with many other global phenomena at some length, including how neoliberalism restructured the capitalist world system. A reminder that we are still slowly working our way toward 1,000 patrons for the show, which is our current goal. You can become a patron at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Our next episode will be a set of reflections between Josh and I on four years of doing Millennials Are Killing Capitalism as we’re a little more than a week away from our 4 year anniversary. Leftwingbooks.net, is having a 20% sale the rest of September on books on its “Against War and Empire” category. Use the code: AGAINSTEMPIRE all one word, all caps at checkout to get that discount. 

For this episode we offered our platform to some organizers inside and out, who put together a series of discussions on the state and needs of prisoner movements today. This is the third segment of a series of political discussions focused on building support for Jailhouse Lawyers Speak’s 2021 National Call To Action “Shut ‘Em Down” and looking forward to next summer’s 2022 National Prisoner Strike and Boycott. The first two panels were hosted by George Jackson University and Final Straw Radio, we’ll link to both in the show notes and people should really listen to all these conversations in dialogue with one another. From various New Afrikan perspectives, panelists discuss cadre development and political education as a crucial strategies toward building sustainable formations and community infrastructure. They discuss how these formations and related infrastructure can propel the prisoners’ resistance movement towards the abolition of prisons. The moderator of this panel is coco. coco is a conscious New Afrikan engaging in prisoner solidarity work along with political education & New Afrikan resistance. The panelists for this discussion are: Kwame “Beans” Shakur. Kwame is Chairman and Co-Founder of the New Afrikan Liberation Collective (NALC) and National Director for the Prison Lives Matter Movement. Kwame is a political prisoner currently being held in Indiana DOC solitary confinement (SHU) in an attempt to silence his work inside & out. Nomi Isaac, pronouns they/them/theirs, is an afro-futurist cultural organizer, and earth liberation advocate engaged in class struggle taking place on Pamunkey Land, or what is commonly known as Richmond Virginia. They co-produce the Black Feminist podcast Race Capitol and are a proud member and support the work of prisoner solidarity efforts within VA Prison Abolition Collecitive (VPAC), NALC, and the Richmond Community Bail Fund. Abbas Muntaqim is a New Afrikan Muslim educator and organizer who co-chairs People’s Programs, an Oakland based New Afrikan/Pan Afrikan organization. He also co-hosts Hella Black Podcast. One note on audio, apologies but there were some technical difficulties with the audio coming from Kwame Shakur who was calling us from inside. Those clear up after the first couple of responses, but I encourage folks to stick with the conversation despite the distortion in the audio in his first couple of segments. A reminder that as we publish on September 8th, tomorrow is the 50th Anniversary of the Attica Rebellion and a second set of “Shut ‘Em Down” demonstrations are scheduled around the country in response to Jailhouse Lawyers Speak’s Call to Action.  

In this episode we interview Ray Luc Levasseur. During his time underground Levasseur was a purported member of the United Freedom Front, and the Sam Melville Jonathan Jackson Unit. Prior to that Levasseur organized in several above ground formations, including the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), Vietnam Veterans Against The War, and SCAR. We talk to Ray about his early life, and the influence of his experience in Vietnam on the development of anti-imperialist politics and commitments.  He also shares his first incarcerated organizing experiences in Tennessee. And we have brief discussions of his time in SSOC, Vietnam Veterans Against The War, and SCAR. After that we discuss Ray’s time underground, and the claimed activities the Sam Melville Jonathan Jackson Unit and the United Freedom Front.  Specifically he discusses IBM’s involvement in Apartheid, and the targeting of the military and prison industrial complexes by those underground groups.  We end with a discussion of Ray’s time in Marion and the refusal there by Levasseur and other political prisoners to build weapons for the federal government. Ray also shares thoughts on his experiences during 13 years of solitary confinement at Marion and later at ADX. And discusses why small acts of generosity and care on the outside can mean a great deal to people experiencing extreme repression.  He leaves the discussion with several ways folks can get involved in supporting political prisoners. We will include links in the show notes for folks who want to get involved in that necessary work. One quick urgent note, political prisoner David Gilbert goes before the parole board this month. He needs letters of support. They must be submitted by Wednesday September 8th at 6pm Eastern Time. Please go to friendsofdavidgilbert.org to get full details on the process and do that for him.  And just a quick reminder that if you like what we do and want to support our ability to continue to do it. Become a patron of the show. We’re still working on our current goal to get 1,000 patrons of the show. Get involved with: Sundiata Acoli (he needs his petition signed!) Jericho Movement Spirit of Mandela Tribunal Anarchist Black Cross Federation Write to Jennifer Reznicek Support Eric King Check out Freedom Archives for ways to support political prisoners, and also for their amazing archives of radical movements, which including communiques from the UFF.

In this episode we interview SNCC veterans Jennifer Lawson and Dorothy Zellner. This is our second conversation with SNCC veterans we encourage folks to listen to this along with our conversation last year with Jennifer Lawson and Charles Cobb Jr.  SNCC is about to host it’s 60th Anniversary conference, you can register at sncc60thanniversary.org. We encourage folks to do that and connect with these amazing veterans of the Black Freedom Struggle. In this conversation we talk about communications work as an aspect of SNCC’s organizing, interfacing with the press, communicating with community, and elevating stories of resistance and struggle.  We talk about the climate of imminent danger that organizers navigated and confronted together, touching on the Freedom Summer, the Lowndes County Freedom Party, segregation, anti-communism, solidarity with Palestinians, and the 1964 Democratic Convention. If you appreciate the work we do, we’re currently working to hit a goal of 1000 patrons, we only need about 80 more patrons to hit that goal. You can become a patron here.  Music for this episode is provided by JayOhAye (former two time guest of the show), from his new album Pride. Here is the piece Dorothy Zellner references, that she recently wrote about Palestine. Hands on the Freedom Plow is also referenced in the conversation.

In this episode we speak with Da’Shaun Harrison. Da’Shaun is a Black trans writer, abolitionist, and community organizer. Da’Shaun serves as Managing Editor for Wear Your Voice Magazine.  In this conversation we speak with Da’Shaun about their recently published book Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. We talk to Da’Shaun about their analysis of how the logic of anti-fatness works in relation to anti-blackness. This includes a discussion of Da’Shaun’s perspectives on “pretty privilege” and desirability politics. They also talk about the relationship between anti-blackness anti-fatness and sexual violence and abuse.  Da’Shaun touches on the lack of analysis that exists related to the particular relationship police violence and state violence have to the overlapping identities of Fat, Black and poor. Josh and Da’Shaun discuss the necessity of applying the abolitionist lens to gender politics. And we speak to Da’Shaun about the influence of afro-pessimism in their work. If you appreciate the work that we do please consider becoming a patron of the show. We’re on a current drive to reach 1,000 patrons and we’re less than 100 patrons away from that goal. You can help us get there for just a dollar a month.