Abolition Today

Max Parthas & Tribal Raine bring in 2021 and remember 2020 with the incredible music and poetry aired during season 1 of Abolition Today. Join Max & Yusuf for season 2 of Abolition Today beginning January 3rd!

“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men.”

Frederick Douglass - ― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

We (nationwide abolitionists groups) made history over and over again this election season. Abolishing constitutional slavery in 2 states (Nebraska & Utah), returning voting rights to the formerly incarcerated in California, opening up the Alabama constitution to remove racist and pro slavery language, Changed the name of a state (formerly Rhode Island Plantations), and oh yea... the wicked witch in the white supremacy house is dead.

Join Yusuf and Max next Sunday 7 PM EST US for the premiere episode of Season 2

"They would not call it slavery, but some other name. Slavery has been fruitful in giving herself names ... and it will call itself by yet another name; and you and I and all of us had better wait and see what new form this old monster will assume, in what new skin this old snake will come forth."

Frederick Douglas

Max and Yusuf are away preparing for Season 2. This week we revisit some tracks from Episodes 20 through Episode 28 that framed our discussions during those episodes. Season 2 returns on Sunday, January 3rd.

““Thus far I had outwitted him, and I triumphed over it. Who can blame slaves for being cunning? They are constantly compelled to resort to it. It is the only weapon of the weak and oppressed against the strength of their tyrants.””

Harriet Ann Jacobs - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

While Max and Yusuf are away preparing for Season 2, we revisit the intro tracks from the premiere broadcast up until Episode 19. Season 2 returns on Sunday, January 3rd.

I consider involuntary slavery a never-failing fountain of the grossest immorality, and one of the deepest sources of human misery; it hangs like the mantle of night over our republic, and shrouds its rising glories. I sincerely pity the man who tinges his hand in the unhallowed thing that is fraught with the tears, and sweat, and groans, and blood of hapless millions of innocent, unoffending people…

John Rankin, 1823, abolitionist, published in The Castigator, a local newspaper in Ripley, Ohio

While we are on break between seasons we'll replay all 19 segments of Ossie Reads Fredrick along with the amazing music it was paired with. Tonight is part two of 2 featuring the incredible "Final Word" by Fredrick Douglass.  

Hear his warnings for us today.

"They would not call it slavery, but some other name. Slavery has been fruitful in giving herself names ... and it will call itself by yet another name; and you and I and all of us had better wait and see what new form this old monster will assume, in what new skin this old snake will come forth."

Frederick Douglas