Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
We created this podcast in recognition that there are a number of podcasts for the American “left,” but many of them focus heavily on the organizing of social democrats, progressives, and liberal democrats. Aside from that, on the left we are always fighting a war of ideas and if we do not continue to build platforms to share those ideas and the stories of their implementation from a leftist perspective, they will continue to be ignored, misrepresented, and dismissed by the capitalist media and as a result by the general public.
Our goal is to provide a platform for communists, anti-imperialists, Black Liberation movements, ancoms, left libertarians, LBGTQ activists, feminists, immigration activists, and abolitionists to discuss radical politics, radical organizing and share their visions for a better world. Our goal is to center organizers who represent and work with marginalized communities building survival programs, defense programs, political education, and counterpower.
We also plan to bring in perspectives on and from the global south to highlight anti-capitalist struggles outside the imperial core. We view solidarity with decolonization, indigenous, anti-imperialist, environmentalist, socialist, and anarchist movements across the world as necessary steps toward meaningful liberation for all people.
Too often within the imperial core we focus on our own struggles without taking the time to understand those fighting for freedom from beneath the empire’s thumb. It is important to highlight these struggles, learn what we can from them, offer solidarity, and support with action when we can. It is not enough to Fight For $15 an hour and Single-Payer within the core, while the US actively fights against the self-determination of the people of the global economically and militarily.
We recognize that except for the extremely wealthy and privileged, our fates and struggles are intrinsically connected. We hope that our podcast becomes a meaningful platform for organizers and activists fighting for social change to connect their local movements to broader movements centered around the fight to end imperialism, capitalism, racism, discrimination based on gender identity or sexuality, sexism, and ableism.
If you like our work please support us at www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism
Our goal is to provide a platform for communists, anti-imperialists, Black Liberation movements, ancoms, left libertarians, LBGTQ activists, feminists, immigration activists, and abolitionists to discuss radical politics, radical organizing and share their visions for a better world. Our goal is to center organizers who represent and work with marginalized communities building survival programs, defense programs, political education, and counterpower.
We also plan to bring in perspectives on and from the global south to highlight anti-capitalist struggles outside the imperial core. We view solidarity with decolonization, indigenous, anti-imperialist, environmentalist, socialist, and anarchist movements across the world as necessary steps toward meaningful liberation for all people.
Too often within the imperial core we focus on our own struggles without taking the time to understand those fighting for freedom from beneath the empire’s thumb. It is important to highlight these struggles, learn what we can from them, offer solidarity, and support with action when we can. It is not enough to Fight For $15 an hour and Single-Payer within the core, while the US actively fights against the self-determination of the people of the global economically and militarily.
We recognize that except for the extremely wealthy and privileged, our fates and struggles are intrinsically connected. We hope that our podcast becomes a meaningful platform for organizers and activists fighting for social change to connect their local movements to broader movements centered around the fight to end imperialism, capitalism, racism, discrimination based on gender identity or sexuality, sexism, and ableism.
If you like our work please support us at www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism
Episodes
Mentioned books
Mar 20, 2021 • 58min
Harsha Walia's Border & Rule on Racial Capitalism, Border Imperialism and Global Migration
Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism and Border & Rule. She is trained in law, and is a community organizer and campaigner in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One Is Illegal and Women’s Memorial March Committee. In this episode we talk to her about her latest book Border & Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, which further examines border imperialism and the features of racial capitalism and imperialism which produce the conditions necessitating migration and then criminalize and punish migrants and refugees. Just a reminder if you are not yet a patron of the show and you have a dollar a month or more to spare, you can support us on patreon and help sustain and grow our work.
Mar 14, 2021 • 1h 3min
“An Uprising Against Capital” - Herb Boyd on Rebellion, Black Studies and The League of Revolutionary Black Workers
This is part 2 of our 2 part conversation with journalist, educator, author and activist Herb Boyd. In this part of the conversation we talk more about how Boyd and other politicized students used the 1967 Rebellion to launch Black Studies at Wayne State University, and develop it into a radical space for the political and cultural education of Black students living in Detroit and often working and organizing on campus, and in the automobile plants. We also ask Boyd several questions about the Revolutionary Union Movements (DRUM, ELRUM, FRUM CADRUM, UPRUM, etc) which came together under the umbrella of The League of Revolutionary Black Workers. We also talk about the importance of newspapers in the League’s analysis and organizing and some of the reasons that the League eventually splintered in different directions.
Mar 14, 2021 • 58min
Herb Boyd On Black Detroit In The Years Before The 67 Rebellion
This is part 1 of a 2 part conversation with journalist, educator, author, and activist Herb Boyd. Our conversation with Boyd centers around his book Black Detroit, with particular attention paid to the middle of the 20th Century, leading up to the development of The League of Revolutionary Black Workers. In this part of the conversation Boyd talks about moving to Detroit, the strains of Black progressive and radical politics going on at the time. We ask about the importance of figures like Malcolm X and MLK to Black organizers in Detroit. Boyd shares some of the issues facing Black workers in the working class city of Detroit at the height of its relationship to automobile manufacturing, and the contradictions that arose in the union movements for Black workers specifically. Boyd also shares some personal history of key Black organizers, activists and politicians in this era, leading up to the Rebellion of 1967.
Mar 7, 2021 • 1h 3min
400+1 On The Struggle For Orisha Land And The Case For The Black Vanguard
400+1 is a Black, cooperative federation that exists to leverage vanguardism, destabilization, and Black and autonomous alternatives to build a world beyond survival. The federation is currently engaged in a protracted struggle against the state for Orisha Land, an autonomous zone in Texas. We talk to them about their organization, how it’s structured, what political education looks like to them, and their analysis, which argues for the necessity of the Black Vanguard at this historical moment. We also talk to them about their struggle for Orisha Land in the area commonly known as Austin Texas, and about their mutual aid work during the recent winter storm that left people in Texas without heat and basic necessities for days.
Mar 3, 2021 • 44min
“In The Spirit of Abolition” - Jailhouse Lawyers Speak Calls For Shut ‘Em Down Demonstrations
In this episode we catch up with representatives from Jailhouse Lawyers Speak. They talk about the state of the prison abolition and prisoner support movements from their perspective. JLS describe an exodus of liberals from prisoner support movements with the election of Joe Biden. A dangerous trend given Joe Biden's track record as a key figure in the expansion of prison, jails and police power historically. They also talk about the weaponization of COVID-19 inside prisons as well as the insufficient response from people outside the walls, in light of the genocidal policy COVID-19 policies in US prisons. This summer, JLS is calling for national “Shut ‘Em Down” demonstrations at jails, prisons, and detention centers around the country on August 21st and on September 9th. In addition JLS provides updates from their International Law Project with the National Lawyers Guild. They also talk about changing demand number 9 of the 10 demands to include the immediate release of all political prisoners. Finally we talk about other concerns coming from inside prisons today, and JLS challenges folks on the outside to move in the spirit of abolition in solidarity with prisoners on the inside. To be added to the endorsement list for the Shut ‘Em Down campaign: email outthemud.jls@protonmail.com For media inquiries related to that campaign: media@incarceratedworkers.org Reminder that we are 100% funded by our listeners, if you’d like to become a patron of the show you can do so on our patreon page.
Feb 28, 2021 • 40min
"Myths Are Being Placed On The Murder" - Yannick Giovanni Marshall On The Colonial Present
Dr. Yannick Giovanni Marshall writes and teaches in Black Studies. His research focus is on police power, colonial policing in Nairobi, the white supremacist state, anti-colonial movements and movements against anti-Blackness. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Knox College and has taught courses on Black Lives Matter and Deconstructing the Police for several years. He is also a prolific writer, who writes frequently for publications including Al Jazeera and Black Perspectives which is published by the African American Intellectual History. He has also published multiple volumes of poetry. You can find links to many of his publications on yannickmarshall.net. In this episode we discuss several of his writings over the last couple years, particularly on questions of coloniality, liberalism, policing, fascism and marronage. You can support MAKC on Patreon.
Feb 21, 2021 • 13min
Special Message: On Being In Solidarity With Haiti Now With Mamyrah Prosper
This is a special message and brief addendum to our conversation published earlier this week with Dr. Mamyrah Prosper. We had a great conversation with Mamyrah in which she gave a ton of history of US and European imperialism against Haiti. She also envisioned bolder and more direct forms of solidarity than our modern solidarity movements in the US currently deploy on a regular basis. However, after we finalized the conversation, she did want to note that there things people are working on currently that can be supported, and forthcoming calls for solidarity organizing that people can tap into more immediately. We’ll add this addendum to the end of our previous episode with Mamyrah, but we also wanted to release it as a special message since many of you had already hear that message. So here is our special message from Dr. Mamyrah Prosper on current solidarity work in support of the Haitian people. If you would like to stay in touch with the Pan-African Solidarity Network from Community Movement Builders, fill out this form to get on their mailing list for actions and updates related to Haiti. Also there is a sign-on letter circulation on Black Alliance for Peace's website, which is demanding that the United States, the United Nations and the Organization of American States end its illegal, colonial interventions into Haiti.
Feb 18, 2021 • 1h 46min
Mamyrah Prosper on the History of Imperialism in Haiti, the Current Crisis and Questions of International Solidarity
In this episode we interview Dr. Mamyrah Prosper. Mamyrah Prosper is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Davidson College and the International Coordinator with Community Movement Builders’ Pan African Solidarity Network. Mamyrah discusses the current struggle in Haiti in connection with the long history of US and European imperialism after the Haitian Revolution. Specifically she addresses initial imperialistic responses to the Haitian Revolution, and focuses our attention on the struggles of the 20th and 21st Century against the US’s determination to recolonize Haiti politically, militarily and economically. In light of this history, Dr. Prosper challenges people in the US to broaden our imaginations and practices of solidarity to the Haitian people. And she also discusses her work with Community Movement Builders and their Pan African Solidarity Network, on working to materially support a Haitian left in ways that might be similar to their work in Atlanta. A couple quick notes. At the end of the show, Mamyrah references a conversation that was held this past Monday at the People’s Forum. Check it out here. We are close to our February goal for Patreon support. Just a reminder that we are completely funded by our listeners and if you like the work that we do you can support us on Patreon. If you are interested in learning more about Community Movement Builders, check out our last conversation with Kamau Franklin. Content Notice: This episode includes discussion of sexual assault, murder, rape and dismemberment If you would like to stay in touch with the Pan-African Solidarity Network from Community Movement Builders, fill out this form to get on their mailing list for actions and updates related to Haiti. Also there is a sign-on letter circulation on Black Alliance for Peace's website, which is demanding that the United States, the United Nations and the Organization of American States end its illegal, colonial interventions into Haiti.
Feb 11, 2021 • 50min
Community Movement Builders and Liberated Zones Theory with Kamau Franklin
In this episode we speak to Kamau Franklin. Kamau is the founder of Community Movement Builders a grassroots organization dedicated to creating sustainable Black communities through organizing and cooperative development. Kamau has been a dedicated community organizer for over twenty-five years, first in New York City and now based in the south. He has worked on various issues including community cop-watch programs, freedom school programs for youth, electoral and policy campaigns, large-scale community gardens, and programmatic alternatives to incarceration. He is also the co-host of the Renegade Culture podcast. Franklin has written many essays and articles for various publications. Notably his essay “An Ivory Tower Assassination of Malcolm X” appears in the book, A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manning Marable’s Malcolm X. He also wrote an essay entitled “A New Southern Strategy” which was published in the book Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Ms. Franklin was the first campaign manager for Chokwe Lumumba’s successful mayoral election, in Jackson, Ms and practiced law in New York for many years. We talk to Kamau about the work of Community Movement Builders, the theoretical basis for their model and various examples of their organizing practice and vision for development. If you are interested in supporting the work at Community Movement Builders please check out their website Communitymovementbuilders.org. If you want to support our work at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, just a reminder that you can become a patron of the show on Patreon for as little as $1 per month.
Feb 4, 2021 • 1h 2min
"All Roads Lead To Revolution" - The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X with Dr Michael Sawyer
In this episode we interview Dr. Michael Sawyer. Sawyer is an assistant professor of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies in the Department of English at Colorado College. We spoke to him about his book, Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X which is part of the Black Critique Series on Pluto Press. Sawyer is also the author of An Africana Philosophy of Temporality. Dr. Sawyer shares with us the process of working to expand the academic field of political philosophy to accommodate the critically important contributions of Malcolm X to Black thought. We talk about how political prisoner and SNCC veteran Imam Jamil Al-Amin helped inspire this project which works to acknowledge the role of Malcolm X’s political philosophy between that of W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. Through the book and our discussion Sawyer deals with how Malcolm X’s thought handles questions of Blackness in relation to ontology, embodiment, geography, and revolution. If you are able to support our work monetarily, you can do so here: http://www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism
