Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

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 Me...

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 Strik...

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...

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...

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...

In this interview we talk to Dr. Joy James. Joy James is the author of Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics, Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals, and Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender and Race in US Culture . Her edited books include: Warfare in the American Homeland, The New Abolitionists: (Neo) Slave Narratives and Contemporary...

In this episode we interview Dr. Soyica Diggs Colbert about her recently published book, Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry . Most well known as the playwright behind A Raisin In The Sun , Hansberry was a journalist and editor for Paul Robeson's Freedom , which covered domestic and international politics and social movements from a Black Radical perspective in the 1950's. In the 50'...

In this episode we talk to Peter Cole, historian and author of Ben Fletcher, The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly .   Fletcher was among the most successful union organizers in the early 20th century, and a Black leader of the Local 8 union - a component of the Industrial Workers of the World - which organized on the docks in South Philadelphia beginning in 1913. Local 8 of the IWW's Marine Transp...

In this episode we talk to Dr. Rinaldo Walcott. Walcott is a Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Walcott is also the author of many books, including Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada , Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora , and Black Studies , and the co-author of BlackLife: Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom . In this episode we p...

In this episode we interview Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army veteran Jalil Muntaqim. Muntaqim was political prisoner for nearly half a century due to his involvement in the liberation struggle. He was released from prison in October of 2019 after eleven parole denials. He is the author of We Are Our Own Liberators , which we discuss some in the episode, and Escaping The Prism… Fade t...

In this episode we interview Max Ajl, author of the new book A People's Green New Deal .   Max Ajl is an associated researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and a postdoctoral fellow with the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University. He has written for Monthly Review, Jacobin and Viewpoint. He has contributed to a number of journals, including the Jou...

In this episode we interview Rawan and Fathi, co-founders of decolonizepalestine.com . Rawan is the co-founder of decolonizepalestine.com . While studying political science, Middle Eastern studies and Arabic at university, Rawan organized for Students for Justice in Palestine and the Democratic Socialists of America before moving to Palestine and working for a feminist organization in Ramallah. Fa...

In this episode are joined by Dan Berger, Emily K. Hobson and Barbara Smith to discuss the recently published book Remaking Radicalism: A Grassroots Documentary Reader of the United States, 1973-2001 edited by Berger and Hobson.   Dan Berger is an associate professor of comparative ethnic studies at the University of Washington Bothell and the author of Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in t...

In this interview we talk to Joseph R. Fitzgerald, associate professor of history and political science at Cabrini University and author of The Struggle Is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation . Perhaps most known today as the subject of an iconic photo where she pushes away a bayonet and stares down the national guardsman whose wielding it, Gloria Richardson was a dynamic leader of the...

This is a dialogue between Hanif Abdurraqib and Fred Moten. Hanif Abdurraqib has been on the show twice before, but we really have not done a proper episode to honor his work. So we wanted to figure out a unique way to commemorate the release of A Little Devil In America: Notes In Praise of Black Performance . It dawned on us that a lot of Fred Moten's work was wrestling with many of the same ques...

In this episode we talk to Zoé Samudzi. Dr. Samudzi has a PhD in Medical Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco. Her dissertation was about German colonialism, the Herero/Nama genocide, and the afterlife of that genocidal structure in the present. Her writing has appeared in Art in America , The New Republic , The New Inquiry , Jewish Currents , and other outlets. She is co-aut...

In this episode we interview Hy Thurman, founding member of the Young Patriots, and the Rainbow Coalition.   Our conversation focuses on his recently published memoir Revolutionary Hillbilly: Notes From The Struggle On The Edge Of The Rainbow .   We begin the conversation discussing growing up in a family of poor white farm workers in Appalachia and the conditions in Tennessee that lead to his mig...

In this episode we interview Devyn Springer. This is the third episode we've recorded over the years with Springer, but the first since the summer of 2018.   Devyn Springer is a cultural worker, community organizer, and independent researcher. They are a member of the Walter Rodney Foundation and the host of the Groundings podcast. In this episode we revisit some of our discussion from 2017 on Wal...

In this episode we interview Justine Teba, Orien Longknife, and Demetrius Johnson from The Red Nation. Our discussion centers around the book The Red Deal: Indigenous Action To Save Our Earth, which is the first book release from the Red Media imprint on Common Notions. The Red Deal is a call for action beyond the scope of the US colonial state.  It's a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and...

This is part two one of a two-part conversation with Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, editors of the book Venezuela, The Present As Struggle: Voices From The Bolivarian Revolution. The book is a collection of interviews with Chavistas, communards, campesinos, and a variety of activists, organizers, intellectuals and workers from the grassroots in Venezuela.   Cira Pascual Marquina is Polit...

This is part one of a two-part conversation with Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, editors of the book Venezuela, The Present As Struggle: Voices From The Bolivarian Revolution. This book is a collection of interviews with Chavistas, communards, Campesinos, and a variety of activists, organizers, intellectuals and workers from the grassroots in Venezuela.   The book offers a view of both th...

Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of U n d o i n g B o r d e r I m p e r i a l i s m and B o r d e r & R u l e . 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 B o r d e r &...

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 an...

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 p...

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,...