Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

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...

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.  H...

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, aft...

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...

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...

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 sh...

In this episode we interview Devin Zane Shaw. Shaw is the author of three books, including Philosophy of Antifascism , and Egalitarian Moments: From Descartes to Rancière , and a recent pamphlet on solidarity movements and Indigenous struggles, The Politics of the Blockade . He is co-editor, with LaRose Parris and Storm Heter, of the Living Existentialism series published by Rowman and Littlefield...

In this episode we interview Dr. Bedour Alagraa. Alagraa is an Assistant Professor of Black Political and Social Theory in the department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently she's working on a manuscript entitled The Interminable Catastrophe: Fatal Liberalisms, Plantation Logics, and Black Political Life in the Wake of Disaster . We center our di...

This is a special episode we're going to release through Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. Just to be clear, this episode is not about politics or social movements and falls outside of what we usually do here. Hanif Abdurraqib and Jay talk about Daniel Dumile, better known as MF DOOM. Like lots of people, we were really sad to hear of DOOMs passing and just wanted to reflect on his life and some...

Dylan Rodríguez is a Professor in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He is also a founding member of Critical Resistance. In this episode we talk to Rodríguez about his new book W h i t e R e c o n s t r u c t i o n : D o m e s t i c W a r f a r e a n d t h e L o g i c s o f G e n o c i d e .   Rodríguez explains the historical process of white...

This episode is an informal recap of the hellish year that has been 2020. Joshua and Jared discuss various major events of the year, including moments of promise and frustration.   We talk about how COVID has changed our world, talk about anti-Black state violence and the movement against it, revisit the NBA strike that almost was, and ask what we have to show for all this electoralism. We finish...

In this episode we interview Dr. Adom Getachew. Getachew is a political theorist with research interests in the history of political thought, theories of race and empire, and postcolonial political theory. Her work focuses on the intellectual and political histories of Africa and the Caribbean.   In this episode we discuss her 2019 book Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determina...

In this episode we interview Brandon Soderberg who along with Baynard Woods co-authored the book I Got A Monste r, The Rise And Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad. Soderberg is a reporter living Baltimore and was previously the Editor in Chief of the Baltimore City Paper and a contributing writer to SPIN. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Vice, The Village Voice and many other...

In this episode we discuss the movement to #EndSARS with Ani Kayode Somtochukwu, a 21 year old openly gay Queer Liberation activist, writer and journalist living in Enugu state Nigeria. His work focuses on using visibility, and journalism to combat the pathologization and demonization of queer identities in Nigeria. He is the founder of the Queer Union for Economic and Social Transformation( QUEST...

In this episode we interview Amandla Thomas-Johnson, about his new book, Becoming Kwame Tu re. Amandla Thomas-Johnson is a British-born writer of African-Caribbean descent. He is based in Dakar, Senegal, from where he covers West Africa.  He has reported from a dozen countries, and has covered social movements from Trinidad and Tobago to Chile to Mauritania. He has worked for the BBC, The Guardian...

This is a quick special report. In this episode we interview TeleSUR English presenter and Kawsachun News co-founder Camila Escalante. Camila shares with us the latest news coming out of Bolivia today October 19th, after the Movement Toward Socialism seemingly had a resounding victory at the polls yesterday October 18th, returning to power just a year after a US backed coup d'etat removed Evo Mora...

In this episode we interview Laura Whitehorn. Laura Whitehorn is a co-founder and organizer with the RAPP Campaign (Release Aging People in Prison). Whitehorn is a veteran organizer of numerous organizations, including Friends of SNCC, the Weathermen, Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, the May 19th Communist Organization, and the Madame Binh Graphics Collective...

In this episode we interview Craig Gilmore. Gilmore is a prison abolitionist, cofounder of California Prison Moratorium Project, and a member of the Community Advisory board of Critical Resistance.   Gilmore shares practical examples of prison abolitionists stopping new prison construction in California and how those examples have helped inform organizer approaches to stopping new prisons and jail...

Barbara Smith co-founded the seminal Black Feminist Socialist organization the Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. She is an educator, organizer, scholar and publisher and theorist of Black Feminist politics.   In this episode we talk about Barbara Smith's latest piece on the Hamer-Baker plan to dismantle white supremacy. We also discuss the work of the Combahee Rive...

In this episode we talk to author, scholar and educator Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly. Burden-Stelly is currently a visiting scholar in the Race and Capitalism Project at the University of Chicago. She also serves as an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College. Along with Dr. Gerald Horne, Burden-Stelly co-authored the book W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American H...

In this episode we interview prisoner movement historians Dan Berger and Toussaint Losier who co-authored the book Rethinking The American Prison Movement . Today is the 49th anniversary of the Attica Rebellion, and in this episode we honor the ongoing tradition of prisoner resistance by examining the history of prisoner movements, and discussing the challenges faced by prisoners as well as abolit...

In this episode we interview Edward Onaci. Onaci is an associate professor of history at Ursinus College. In this episode, we talk about Onaci's recent book, Free the Land:  The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State. In our discussion, Onaci traces the origins of the RNA, the New Afrikan Independence Movement, and this broader field of theory we know as New Afrikan Politic...

In this episode we interview SNCC Veterans Jennifer Lawson and Charles "Charlie" Cobb. They discuss their experiences organizing in rural Mississippi and Alabama with SNCC in the 1960's at the height of the era we know as the Civil Rights Movement. They discuss working in small towns and rural Southern communities, and connecting with organizing traditions with origins in the everyday resistance t...

In this episode, we interview Robyn Spencer. Robyn Spencer is a historian and the author of The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and The Black Panther Party In Oakland .  Our conversation is centered around Spencer's organizational history of the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party. Her work pays particular attention to the experiences and reflections of women who joined the Oaklan...

In this episode we interview Hanif Abdurraqib. Hanif is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. Among other things, he is the best-selling and award winning author of Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest, A Forture For Your Disaster , They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us , and The Crown Ain't Worth Much . We talk to Hanif about writing, music and influences. And...