Groundings

I spoke with scholar, writer, and professor Charisse Burden-Stelly about W.E.B. Du Bois. Charisse recently co-authored the new book W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History with historian Gerald Horne, and has an extensive amount of insight, knowledge, and research on the life of Du Bois. Moreover, she's apt to think deeply on the intellectual, political, and ideological history within his life...

Philadelphia based community organizer and writer Steven Powers helps run a community based, free, socialist gym, the People Power Gym, and is involved in a number of other community survival projects. In this episode we discuss how his organization was able to turn these survival programs into a Covid-19 mutual aid grocery program, delivering free groceries throughout their neighborhood. We also...

Professor Johanna Fernandez introduces listeners to the Young Lords, a revolutionary Puerto Rican organization that radically shifted international discourse on Puerto Rican politics. Fernandez recently publish The Young Lords: A Radical History , a groundbreaking and foundational new book which compiles 20 years of research to create the authoritative history of the Young Lords. In our conversati...

I speak with community organizer, researcher, and writer Taiza Troutman to discuss urban development, trap music, Tyler Perry, activism, homelessness, neoliberalism, displacement and, above all else, gentrification in Atlanta.  Audio used throughout the episode was provided graciously by Eva Dickerson, activist, educator, and all around comrade. Watch the full video in which this audio is from her...

We explore the philosophy and theoretical work behind the actions of Amílcar Cabral , African revolutionary from Guinea-Bissau who helped lead a succesful anti-colonial movement against the Portugese in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. Reasearcher, writer, and organizer Zeyad El Nabolsy discusses Cabral's approach to culture and cultural liberation, dispels some eurocentric and racist myth surroundin...

If you don't know the story of #KeithDavisJr. , make sure you listen to this episode of the #GroundingsPodcast . Keith is being framed for murder by the Baltimore police and the state of Baltimore. Police shot at Keith over 44 times, hitting him in the face and neck. Keith has been in jail for a crime he didn't commit since 2015. Keith has been through FOUR trials because Marilyn Mosby, the state...

In this episode, activist and writer Bilphena Yahwon get into the nitty gritty details of the school-to-prison pipeline, racial disparities in school disciplinary actions, how these disparities send Black children to prison, and the ways she uses restorative justice processes to combat it.

Haiti is an island in perpetual revolution, and over the past few months massive island-wide mobilizations have been taking place as Haitians protest to oust their corrupt, neo-colonial, U.S.-installed government. I speak with lawyer, activist, and director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti Brian Concannon , who gives a general overview of why Haitians are protesting, and how t...

This is part two of a special report on Venezuela, in collaboration with Venezuelanalysis.com . First I speak with Christina Schiavoni, scholar and activist who deals with issues of food, food sovereignty, and agriculture. Her work in Venezuela has been very important to dispelling misinformation about food, food shortages, and agricultural production in Venezuela, as well as the great strides tow...

In collaboration with Venezuelanalysis.com , this is part one of a two-part special on current events in Venezuela, as well as the historical developments which have led to the country being the target of an international imperialist campaign, conducted by the U.S., to remove the popularly elected President Maduro and install a Western puppet via a coup. We remove the imperialist propaganda domina...

Writer, academic, and activist Max Ajl discusses his critique of the Green New Deal , which particularly looks at the ways in which the Green New Deals intentionally leaves out the Global South and functions to preserve a "green" version of industrial capitalism. Then he explains what ecological catastrophe like global warming could mean for the Global South if left in our current state...

Documentary filmmaker, activist, and writer Rebecca Pierce discusses her work documenting the resistance of those most oppressed by the Israel apartheid state. We discuss the ways her work highlights the oppression and resistance of African migrants in Israel, how Palestinians exercise solidarity with those migrants, and how many groups that are oppressed by Israel form linkages of solidarity and...

Organizer and academic Annie Olaloku-Teriba discusses her recent essay , which is a critique of Afro-Pessimism, "anti-blackness" theory, and how these two things often negatively impact organizing spaces. We try to break down lots of academic jargon and wordy concepts to dive into a conversation which is crucial right now for Black studies and the movements it represents. This is one of...

(This episode was a Patreon exclusive for several days prior to release elsewhere. ) In this episode, Native activist and writer Dani Miller breaks down the various ways that the brand identity of Coca-Cola, a brand known and admired worldwide, is built on a mountain of anti-Indigenous tropes, racism, and what she calls " conglomerate imperialism ." She then discusses the need for a Nati...

Co-host of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism Jared Ware joins me for a conversation on the material practice of prison abolition. Prison abolition is such an imaginative theory, but beyond simply discussing Abolition as an idea, we target the question of what does abolitionist organizing look like, and what are we doing to work towards abolition? More than just this, we discuss what abolition mea...

In this episode I speak with writer, activist, and academic Yasmin Nair , who is highly critical of liberal narratives of "diversity" and TLGBQ+ "inclusion" inside of violent and imperialist institutions like the US military. Recently, Nair co-wrote a piece with Eli Massey which gave a radical left and queer critique of the mainstream push for trans inclusion in the military, a...

In this special interview, we speak over the phone with two Black immigrants who are detained in Atlanta City Detention Center, as well as Kevin Caron , a local Atlanta organizer and abolitionist that does tremendous work with immigrant communities. Throughout the interview you will notice difficulties with telephone connection and communication; we decided not to edit these things out, and instea...

Multi-disciplinary artist Bocafloja , one of Mexico's first rappers, discusses global politics and capitalism where they intersect with hip-hop. He also discusses his documentary Nana Dijo which explores anti-Blackness in Latin America. Along with this, we also have an in-depth conversation on navigating the capitalist music industry, cultural hegemony, and the social construct of the "consci...

"Your consciousness can come from anywhere. but the point is, it needs to come urgently." — Asha Rodney An Interview with Asha Rodney, scholar-activist, lawyer, and youngest child of Walter Rodney. Asha discusses the assassination of her father by the hands of an immensely repressive Guyanese government in 1980, describes what a "groundings" session is, and gives us suggestions...

Organizer and educator Derek Ford gives a historical context for the current imperialist aggression surrounding the DPRK , explains the 'Juche' ideology, and recounts some firsthand propaganda-shattering experiences from his travels inside the country. The day after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced the travel ban for US citizens to North Korea, Derek Ford traveled to the country on a...

Revolutionary Pan-Africanist writer, artist, and organizer Sobukwe Shakur gives a first-hand account of the history of the Black Art Movement, a movement which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and ran parallel to the Black Power Movement. Sobukwe Shukur is a multi-media cultural worker, the host of the Revolutionary African Perspectives radio show on Georgia's independent WRFG station, a cadre an...