DARAJA PRESS PODCASTS

Firoze Manji talks to Bill Fletcher Jr about his ideas for organizing against the right. What are the weaknesses of the left? What lessons are there from organizing in the labour movement? What are the possibilities of creating a mass movement against the right? Bill Fletcher Jr has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, there...

Firoze Manji, publisher of Daraja Press and Adjunct Professor in the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, argues that asking how Africa can stop being an "afterthought" in global negotiations is the wrong question. Africa is already central—a theater of competition between superpowers. The real issue is internal: which Africa? Three billionaires hold more wealth than half the contine...

In an era defined by neocolonial capitalism, resurgent fascism, and the horrifying spectacle of genocide, the need for a new emancipatory politics has never been more urgent. Our guest today, Professor Michael Neocosmos, confronts this global crisis head-on in his groundbreaking new work,  Beyond the Neocolonial: Africa and the Dialectics of Human Emancipation . Refusing the comfortable confines o...

What if the poetry that inspired revolutions, that gave voice to the colonized and the exiled, that was watched by the CIA and funded by the Kremlin, had been almost entirely forgotten? This podcast is a journey into that hidden history. In the wake of the historic Bandung Conference, a revolutionary literary movement was born. Poets from across Africa and Asia—from Palestine to South Africa, from...

In the final part, James describes the long legal battle for his freedom and his eventual release. Following three traumatic parole denials, his luck began to turn in 2001 when a Supreme Court ruling allowed him to appeal his deportation order . Despite the anxiety of 9/11 occurring while he was still incarcerated, he successfully won a 212C waiver hearing in 2002, effectively stopping his deporta...

This second part of a three-part podcast focuses on James's time at  Coxsackie (the "Cat") and Greene Correctional Facility , where he began to "decolonize his mind" through the guidance of mentors . At Coxsackie, he met an elder named Pops , a former Black Panther who introduced him to revolutionary thinkers like George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, and Amílcar Cabral . Pops taught him the vital philoso...

In the first part of the interview, Dr. Kirk J. James discusses his arrest in 1994 as an 18-year-old college freshman with no prior record. He explains that his book title, 94A6325 , represents his transition from a human being into "state property": 94 is the year of his arrest, A refers to the maximum security processing track, and 6325 identifies him as the 6,325th person processed that year at...

Since the catastrophic destruction in Gaza began over two years ago, the world has witnessed an unimaginable assault not only on human life but on the future itself. Every university in Gaza lies in ruins. Students and scholars have been killed, displaced, and cut off from their dreams. This systematic erasure of education and hope is what we call scholasticide . Yet, amidst the rubble and the gri...

Today I have the honour of speaking to the author of this extraordinary novel, Flames of the Cherry Tree. It's a sweeping, intimate portrait of a young woman's coming of age against the backdrop of colonialism, rebellion, and indeed the birth of today's occupied Kashmir—at once tender and unflinching. It traces the story of one family through oppression, repression, and resistance, illuminating th...

Unsilenced: Poems for Palestine  Book Launch On May 20, 2025, Daraja Press marked a significant literary and political moment with the launch of   Unsilenced: Poems for Palestine , a stirring anthology edited by John P. Portelli. Bringing together the voices of 50 poets from across the globe, this collection weaves together art and activism, offering a lyrical testament to Palestinian resistance,...

Between 2021 and 2023 West Africa saw three popular military coups. Assimi Goïta became the president of Mali in 2021, Ibrahim Traoré became the president of Burkina Faso in 2022, and Abdourahamane Tchiani, became the president of Niger in 2023. The three former French colonies expelled French and US military. They withdrew from ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, and confederat...

Firoze Manji and Nnimmo Bassey discuss the environmental threats posed by the Trump administration's policies, particularly the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the prioritization of oil and gas drilling. Bassey highlights the severe environmental degradation in the Niger Delta, including contaminated water and soil, and the health impacts on local communities. He emphasizes the need for Af...

Thandisizwe Chimurenga talks about the threats to the Black Women's movement of the new Trump regime A society born of white supremacy and patriarchy must, by definition, ignore the voices of Black women. We know that unfortunately, such an attitude will also naturally seep into every stratum of that society. With the ascent of the Trump regime, a whole range of policies and practices are being im...

Kali, of course, hardly needs an introduction, but for those of you who have not been fortune to hear and engage with Kali, let me say a few words about him: Kali Akuno is the co-founder of Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi. He is the co-editor of J ackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi and of J ackson Rising Redux: Lesson...

Busia Senator and activist lawyer Okiya Omtatah recently declared his intent to run for president in 2027. Over his career, Omtatah has sued multinationals, government, politicians, and many others on behalf of the public interest and promises to focus on "anti-corruption measures" and executing the Constitution. We've spent many hours helping people understand the structural nature of what ails K...

Palestine is personal for writer, Yahia Lababidi. His Palestinian grandmother, Rabiha Dajani — educator, activist and social worker — was forced to flee her ancestral home in Jerusalem at gunpoint some eighty years ago. As an Arab-American, Lababidi feels deeply betrayed by the USA's blind support of Israel's genocide of Palestinians. In Palestine Wail, he reminds us that religion is not politics,...

In the remnants of a fractured UK, England is on the brink of collapse where far-right militias rise to power. As Islamophobia and English nationalism ignite brutal violence, 19-year-old Marah Sultana is thrust into a fight for survival. Hunted by forces seeking control, she carries a secret powerful enough to change the course of the war—and the future of the world. In a world in which America's...

Written with urgency out of a war-time Beirut, this poetry collection registers the griefs and the heroism of the Lebanese, under siege yet again. Sabbagh lends his lyrical voice here, to give a voice to the voiceless, trying to find some harmonic sense out of catastrophe. This book will compel readers, both Lebanese and those with any kind of human heart. While much of the work was written swiftl...

As many of our listeners will know, there have been racist uprsings across England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The trigger for the riots was disinformation: that three small girls stabbed to death in Southport on 29 July had been killed by a Muslim asylum seeker. In fact, the suspected killer was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents and is not Muslim. It is true that rightwing mobilization and...

Kali Akuko, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, Mississippi, is back to update us on the implications of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. His view is that there is a strong likelihood now that Trump will win the elections. The strategy of the right to transform the USA may well be resisted by the Pentagon and others, so we cannot predict what will happen. It is likely th...

Kali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, Mississippi, speaks to Firoze Manji about the way in which the US right has organized and developed a well-thought strategy for taking control and transforming the entire political and social structure, even to the extent of planning changes to the US constitution. He discusses the implications for popular movements in the context of t...

Joe Kobuthi, senior editor of The Elephant (elephant.info), speaks to Firoze Manji on the background to the uprisings in Kenya. To understand why there has been such mobilizations, we have to look at the history of Kenya, the struggle for independence, the loss of real independence, the domination of neoliberal capitalism, and the situation in which the rich have got richer while the majority have...