Africa World Now Project

The use of forum, colloquium, and festivals to center African/a intellectual creative cultural production flows rhythmically alongside the long tradition of Pan-African tendencies. This historical continuity and our duty to move within its legacy is a project that the International Colloquium at the International Black Theatre Festival, that we [AWNP collective] have the pleasure to coordinate, is...

On August 31, 1967, several thousand delegates gathered at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago for the opening rally of the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP) convention. This event was an ambitious attempt to develop a broad coalition of over 200 different organizations, that included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Students for a Democratic Society, the Socialist Work...

Today, we will listen to General Baker from a 2010 talk he gave at the U.S. Social Forum held in Detroit where he maps the history of struggle in Detroit, the formation of radical workers movements, and the legacies of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 6, 1941, right after his family had moved north from Augusta, Georgia. General Baker’s father work...

re/posting from our archive ... from 7+ years ago. a lot to grasp here!

This discussion features Mukasa Dada and Obi Egbuna Jr. We focus on contemporary struggles of youth and student movements, globally. With a focus on the ongoing fight for Black liberation and the need for solidarity across different oppressed groups. In order to accurately understand the potentialities of the moment, the development and maintenance of a historical consciousness alongside organizin...

Black working-class contributions to the Cuban revolution are immense, yet somehow often neglected in discourses around revolutionary Cuba. The long history of African resistance and cultural contributions to Cuban society, which has been intricately connected to global Black freedom movements has been in rhythmic continuity til present day. The continuities are clear and important on many levels...

Matthew Quest in CLR James and George Padmore: Hidden Disputes in The Black Radical Tradition, examines the collaboration between James and George Padmore since their partnership within the International African Service Bureau in the 1930s. Despite their joint activism in Pan-African affairs, political rifts emerged on democracy, socialism, and revolutionary strategy. Quest specifically explores J...

According to Renault in Toward a Counter-Genealogy of Race: On CLR James, it is argued that James always stressed the fundamental importance of the notion of class struggle, and closely followed developments in revolutionary working-class struggles in Europe and the United States. “This did not prevent him, however, from analyzing and taking part in movements for decolonization: In 1938, he author...

In an article for Insurgent Notes, Matthew Quest asks, What Type of Historian Was CLR James? CLR James, native of Trinidad, was a historian with a speculative philosophy of history. He brought these methods to his narrative of Haiti in The Black Jacobins (1938), and later in his Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (1977). James was influenced by historians of the French Revolution, while his approach...

Image: Fran Beal Thank you for tapping into Reflections on Malcolm X through the … 1990 Malcolm X: Radical Tradition and a Legacy of Struggle conference … this is the final installment, Pt. III – Applying Malcolm In this series, Africa World Now Project is sharing some of the sessions from this conference in an effort to engender serious engagement, in this very moment, a moment where it is essent...

Thank you for tapping into Reflections on Malcolm X through the … 1990 Malcolm X: Radical Tradition and a Legacy of Struggle conference … this is Pt. II - Black Workers & Malcolm X In this series, Africa World Now Project is sharing some of the sessions from this conference in an effort to engender serious engagement, in this very moment, a moment where it is essential to be intentional with o...

In November 1990 [1-4], more than 3,000 people from 25 countries attended the Malcolm X: Radical Tradition and a Legacy of Struggle conference held in New York City. More than 100 speakers led 24 sessions that deeply explored, contextualized, and situated El Hajj Malik El Shabazz in the genealogy of Black radical internationalism as a Pan Africanist. There is an argument that can be made that El H...

Form the archives [2017]! Enjoy.

Pt. III - Poetics of Revolution: Autonomy, Land, Visions of Freedom & the Kurdish Freedom struggle [a discussion of 1979 struggle] Thank you for listening to Terrains of Struggle: continuities in freedom dreams [a mini radio documentary] that was designed to explore possibilities; radical possibilities and how they become material. How they become alive [brought to life] through resistance – r...

Pt. II - A luta continua, vitória é certa: Conceptions of Autonomy, the Black Panthers & Zapatista Check out Pt. III. Thank you for listening to Terrains of Struggle: continuities in freedom dreams [a mini radio documentary] that was designed to explore possibilities; radical possibilities and how they become material. How they become alive [brought to life] through resistance – rooted in the...

Part I - Radical Considerations & Revolutionary Possibilities: Towards a Black University in the 21st century Check out Pt. II. Thank you for listening to Terrains of Struggle: continuities in freedom dreams [a mini radio documentary] that was designed to explore possibilities; radical possibilities and how they become material. How they become alive [brought to life] through resistance – root...

Kamau Rashid writing in Jacob H. Carruthers and the African-Centered Discourse on Knowledge, Worldview, and Power posits that “whether we are interrogating the conceptual imperatives of the state or capital, the mandates of school curriculum, or even the policy directives of white supremacy and the worldview orientations that it seeks to impose, we are still speaking of knowledge, its social const...

We are in conversation with Frank Chapman, organizer & movement architect. The anchoring poles in this conversation revolve around the formation of National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression, movement intellectuals and their development and the importance of struggle. What you will hear over the next hour are the words, ideas, reflections, and meditations by one of our importa...

Clip from recent conversation .... full conversation coming soon!

In, The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the U.S., James posit that it is Black workers and the Black working-class that was central and unique in the fight against capitalism. Specifically, James outlined the following: We say, number 1, that the Negro struggle, the independent Negro struggle, has a vitality and a validity of its own; that it has deep historic roots in the past of Ame...

Support Now ...: ****https://www.historymatters.online/save-mres-campaign**** Walter Rodney once wrote in African History in the Service of the Black Liberation, that “African history must be seen as very intimately linked to the contemporary struggle of black people. One must not set up any false distinctions between reflection and action. We are just another facet of the ongoing revolution. This...

Dr. Hendricks writes in The Life of Madie Hall Xuma: Black Women’s Global Activism During Jim Crow & Apartheid that “when the Society for the Study of Afro-American History in Winston Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina, issued a call in June 1994 for community assistance with research and memorabilia for a 1995 historical calendar on Black women “who made distinctive contributions to the co...

The IWW was born in 1905. On January 2, 1905, several dozen people identifying as “industrial unionists” met in Chicago and issued a call to form a new labor union. That June several hundred people belonging to more than 40 unions and radical organizations returned to Chicago, where they founded the Industrial Workers of the World [Wobblies of the World: A Global History, 3]. On July 8, attendees...

"“We are surrounded. We who are in the academy, looking for community, like June Jordan and her students in 1969, are still surrounded. We have also made it inside the gate, but we are now cornered. This place, the university, is the destination, they said. We were told that we had to be inside or else. And now that we are here, they lie to us. Just as they lied to Jordan’s students. Just as they...

Today we will hear from Sudanese diasporan activists who are maintaining vital attention on the conflict which has been taking place in Sudan since April 15. The human cost of this current iteration of conflict is immeasurable from those observing from a far, but very measurable to those impacted directly, whether in Sudan or in the Diaspora. It is vital we direct our empathy into action. Our comp...