Africa World Now Project

Ayiti, in the Black radical imagination, is more than an idea. It is the material representation of African/a freedom. It is the exemplar of the promises, failures & potentialities of African/a liberation. It is the colonial knot that the African/a world must untie. Just as Ayiti represented freedom in the past, it also represents the potentiality of collective freedom today. The question of Ayiti is intricately linked to the global African/a movement against oppression, as fortified by the colonial, in all of its forms. I assert, that it is with Haiti, then and now, along with Afro communities in Colombia, burgeoning movements across the continent of Africa; Afro Brazilian communities, Afro and African descendant communities in Europe; critical thinking African descendants here in the U.S., along with our historically and ethnically oppressed allies who stand in the long tradition of collective resistance to the dehumanizing nature of racial capitalism to create another future. Maurice Jackson in his article, “Friends of the Negro! Fly with me, the path is open to the sea”: remembering the Haitian Revolution in the History, Music, and Culture of the African American People, writes: “As early as 1797, Prince Hall, an African American who had fought in the war against Great Britain, applauded events in Haiti and reflected on their implications for the United States. In a speech to the Boston African Masonic Lodge he declared, ‘‘My brethren, let us not be cast down under these and many other abuses we at present labour under: for the darkest is before the break of day…Let us remember what a dark day it was with our African brethren, six years ago, in the French West Indies. Nothing but the snap of the whip was heard, from morning to evening (60).’’ Sixty years later and a few years before the first battles of the Civil War, in 1857, the Reverend James Theodore Holly, the missionary, emigrationist, and first African American bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church, preached that the Haitian Revolution ‘‘is one of the noblest, grandest, and most justifiable outbursts against tyrannical oppression that is recorded on the pages of the world’s history (60).’’ Taking note of Ayiti’s interdependent impact on the sociopolitical conditions in the African/a world, specifically, Gabriel Prosser’s revolutionary program, Douglas Egerton has written: “Saint Domingue served as an inspiration to Gabriel and completed his development…The distant figure of Toussaint…seemed to clarify the domestic situation and told him that if he dared, success might be within his reach.” At the trial of Rolla Bennett, one of Vesey closest friends and an enslaved African of Governor Thomas Bennett, another black identified as Witness No. 1 swore that Rolla had told him that white men ‘‘say that, Santo Domingo and Africa will assist us to get our liberty, if we will only make the motion first.” Indeed, the ideas and material reality of freedom represented through the series of resistance filtered through Ayiti is important to contextualize for many reasons, reasons I will let you determine. But a clear historical consciousness is a prerequisite for addressing the inequities that pass, unabated, through time and space. Where are we now? Today, Africa Now World Project’s Mwiza Munthali recently caught up with our partners in Port-au-Prince, Ayiti to discuss what is happening on the ground. Today, we look at the People's Movement in Ayiti with Vélina Elysée Charlier, member of Nou Pap Domí movement in Port-au-Prince, Ayiti. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana and Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

[originally produced & aired May 2018] What is meant by the term “Pan-Africanism?” What do we – can we - make of “pan Africanism”? There have been various attempts by scholars, activist, artist, musicians, to develop a clear definition of Pan Africanism. While a clear and solidified definition of Pan Africanism has been the preoccupation of these thinkers, others have hesitated due to the vast diversity of thought and activity found among self-identified Pan-Africanists across time and space. According to Hakim Adi in his work Pan Africanism: A History, Pan-Africanism is considered a composed of ideas and movements “concerned with the social, economic, cultural and political emancipation of the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora.” Broadly speaking, it stems from “belief in the unity, common history and common purpose of the people of Africa and the African diaspora” and their interwoven futures. Finally, historically Pan-African “thought and action” emerges within efforts to connect and reconnect those in the African diaspora created, in particularly, through the forced dispersal of enslaved people from continental Africa simultaneously with the solidification and emergence of global racial capitalism, “European colonial rule and anti-African racism” (2). While containing a multitude of diverse ideological, political, cultural, and organizational expression, Pan-African thought and action share a commitment to resist “the exploitation and oppression of all those of African heritage,” rejecting anti-African and African-descent racism and celebrating “African achievement, history, and the very notion of being human through a positive construction of an “African” identity (3). Today, AWNP’s Josh Myers is in discussion with Dr. Hakim Adi on his new book, Pan Africanism: A History Professor Hakim Adi is Professor of History at the University of Chichester, focusing on the history of Africa and her diaspora. Author of a number of works, including West Africans in Britain (1998), Pan-African History: Political Figures from African and the Diaspora from 1787 (with Marika Sherwood) (2003), and Pan Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919-1939, Adi’s scholarship is grounded in understanding the historiography of various struggles for African liberation. We interviewed him about his latest effort to engage with the histories of that struggle, in his recent book, Pan-Africanism: A History. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!

The question of land as a fundamental aspect of African/a liberation movements is an often-neglected point of inquiry. Nevertheless, it is indeed, ever-present. Promisingly, there has been an uptick of more folk who are paying attention to the demands of Black radical thought and behavior that sought and seek to engage in understanding its role in material and nonmaterial ways. One such important treatment is Edward Onaci’s, Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State. In dominant discourse, however, the question around land as fundamental to liberation is often couched in a warped sense of capitalist ownership, which highlights the fundamental contradictions engrained in an imposition of a European modernism, and its attendant political philosophy of liberalism. All of which has produced, limited discourses around the idea and practice of rights, a discourse rooted fundamentally in what does it mean to be human as the development and maintenance of private property; all contradictions that radicals must, also, seriously engage when exploring questions around land and freedom. It cannot be lost nor taken for granted the totalizing nature of colonialism as a product of imperialist logics, as the neglect of internal critique often leads to the reinscription the very power dynamics that movements say they intend to disrupt. Ultimately, land, in the epistemic and ontological purview of African/a peoples is understood not in the limited capitalist sense of ownership but the transmission of communal practices of human stewardship as being primary caretakers of the planet. And when land as a fundamental component of Black liberation is centered, ideas around national identity, critical consciousness formation, human rights, citizenship…what it means to be human can be better mapped to understand the interconnectedness of the various manifestations of the global Africana (Black) struggle for freedom. a black internationalism becomes clearly defined. Today, we will hear a recent roundtable discussion, exploring the questions that Kurt Oderson presents in his documentary, We Rise for Our Land. Kurt Otabenga Orderson is an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Town, South Africa, whose work has been featured on Al Jazeera, SABC, ESPN, ZDF, and HULU. He has worked on six continents and has directed and produced over ten feature documentaries screened at international film festivals, universities, and colleges. Kurt Orderson is the founder of Azania Rizing Productions, a company that aims to inspire young people through creative storytelling about Africa and African Diasporas and is a member of the Africa World Now Project Collective. Others you will hear are: Savi Horne, Esq. Executive Director of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers Land Loss Prevention Project; Dr. Tasneem Siddiqui, member of the Africana World Now Project Collective and Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History, Political Science and Social Justice at WSSU; Dr. Yousef Al-Bulushi, Assistant Professor of Global & International Studies at the University of California, Irvine; Dr. Kamau Rashid, Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Inquiry at National-Louis University in Chicago. And yours truly…James Pope. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Enjoy the program!

I normally provide a textured, multi-leveled, quite frankly intentionally thick introduction to our programs. But today, we present a conversation I recently had with Amir Mohamed el Khalifa [aka Oddisee], as the conversation is textured, multi-leveled and thick itself… The son of Sudanese and African descendant American parents, Oddisee was born and raised in Washington DC, spending summers in Khartoum learning Arabic and swimming in the Nile. Growing up amidst the sounds of New York hip hop, his father playing Oud, Go-Go, and gospel, Amir took his first steps as an MC producer in the analog basement studio of his legendary neighbor, Garry Shider (of Parliament Funkadelic). Known for his independence, Oddisee consistently debunks myths, stereotypes, and limited ideas of what an artist, creative, curator is, or can become. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Enjoy the program! Links https://oddisee.bandcamp.com/ http://oddisee.co/ https://www.mellomusicgroup.com/pages/oddisee-1

[Originally produced and aired in 2019] Vodun, Voodoo, racialization into Black Magic as currently understood is a distorted figment of a Western imagination. Voodoo is narrated as a sensationalized ‘pop-culture’ caricature of voudon, which is an Afro-Caribbean spiritual system that was brought with enslaved Africans forced onto the plantations in Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, the United States and elsewhere. The fictitious associations with drinking blood sacrifices, voodoo dolls or zombies are directly a result of the same dehumanization processes innate in a system of chattel slavery, the lifeblood of racial capitalism. To be clear at the onset, Voudon is "an assortment of cultural elements: personal creeds and practices, including an elaborate system of folk medical practices; a system of ethics transmitted across generations [including] proverbs, stories, songs, and folklore... voudon is more than belief; it is a way of life," wrote Leslie Desmangles, a Haitian professor at Hartford's Trinity College in "The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal" (Prometheus Books, 1996). Voudon teaches belief in a supreme being called Bondye, an unknowable and uninvolved creator god. Voudon practitioners recognize many ancestral spirits (called loa), each one of whom is responsible for a specific domain or part of life. Followers of voudon see a universal energy and a soul that can leave the body during dreams and spirit possession. In Western Christian theology, spiritual possession is usually considered to be an act of evil, either Satan or some demonic entity trying to enter an unwilling human vessel, unless of course you go to black worship services. This is in contrast to the fact that in voudon, possession by loa is desired. In a ceremony guided by a priest or priestess, this possession is considered a valuable, first-hand spiritual experience and connection with the spirit world. In 1685, variations of a practice to forbid the practice of African religions and required all masters to Christianize their slaves within eight days of their arrival—which codified into various laws. Slavery was condoned by the Catholic Church as a tool for converting Africans to morally upright Christians. Furthermore, one Haitian scholar notes, "Many of the African spirits were adapted to their new environment in the New World. Ogun, for instance, the Nigerian spirit of iron-smiths, hunting and warfare took on a new persona... He became Ogou, the military leader who has led phalanxes into battle against oppression. In Haiti today, Ogou inspires many political revolutions that oust undesirable oppressive regimes." The practices of dehumanization and hiding Africans histories (it is a misunderstanding to say African histories are lost)…has contributed much to the survival of racist logics that promotes false notions and ideas of racial white supremacy. These practices were applied to Africana total existence. Nevertheless, the spiritual practices of the various peoples who were forced across the oceans have ancient origins. In fact, we can see ancient links between the Yoruba peoples and ancient Egypt…. Today, we are pleased to have filmmaker Onuora Anthony Abuah back with us to talk about another one his films, a two-part documentary that explores the Danhomé Kingdom. Part 1 is titled, Danhomé & Vodun and Part 2 is titled, Voodoo in Togo. As a filmmaker and under the banner of AEA Films UK, his projects include MONA, Catching a Thief, Woodfalls, Woolwhich Boys. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Film[s]: https://www.youtube.com/c/TalesFromtheMotherlandProductions/videos

The notion, assumption, and/or idea that the various peoples who were enslaved during the periods and processes of the solidification of the racial global economy that claims our ancestors were deprived of culture, strips of all associations with historical and ancestral groundings is a product of centering European historicity as the dominant expression of social, historical, political and epistemic knowledge systems. This argument is rooted in the fact that one of the most vibrant places to find the most articulate expressions of African/a humanity is in the way we resist injustice—inequity—violence. The way we conceptualize and engage in struggle against systems of oppression, the foundation of which is an advanced understanding of the praxis of being human. See everything Sylvia Wynter. African/a struggles operate on multiple and simultaneous levels of human existence. It always was, always will be a struggle to realize a world beyond. The material and nonmaterial praxis to balance forces seen and unseen. The science of African/a fighting arts…a commitment, conscious or unconscious, to embody resistance. Of becoming rebel. Building on the work of Dr. Kamu Rashid, I assert that of becoming rebel can be understood in the Swahili tradition as, “Harakati za Waasi”, translated as “Movement of Rebels”. For Dr. Rashid, it represents the tradition of radical resistance that is embedded in the history of Capoeira and other African Diasporic combat arts. These arts were used in the people’s resistance to state oppression throughout the Americas. Harakati za Waasi seeks to honor these traditions by seeking to engage in the rigorous study and practice of the theoretical and technical applications of African combat systems. Additionally, Dr. Rashid and the collective seek to broadly disseminate these arts within the African community for the sake facilitating cultural transformation. Today, embodied resistance: the science of African/a fighting arts with Kamau Rashid. Dr. Kamau Rashid is an Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Inquiry at National-Louis University in Chicago. Kamau earned his Phd and BA from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Arts degree from Northeastern Illinois University. Dr. Rashid work focuses on African American history and culture, particularly on the inter-generational dynamics of African/a social critique, which includes an exploration and theorizing of W.E.B. Du Bois as well as contemporary African-Centered scholars and critical race theorists. Undergirding this, he studies art (Hip Hop and comics) as a radical public pedagogy. He is co-developing an oral history and archival project focused on African American social movements in the Chicago area from the 1960s to1980s with Dr. Richard Benson of Spelman College. And is currently working on Finding our way through the desert: Jacob H. Carruthers and the restoration of an African worldview as well as The critical theory of W.E.B. Du Bois: The Struggle for Humanity. He has published a number peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and received various grant awards to support his work. Lastly, likely most importantly, Dr. Rashid is active in a number of community organizations in the Chicago-area including the Kemetic Institute of Chicago, a research and educational organization focused on mapping, exploring and applying the ancient and contemporary contributions of ancient Nile Valley civilizations. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Enjoy the program! Image: Statue of Zumbi

Today, we will listen to a thinking session I had with students where we engaged ideas around an argument I presented that suggested: Afrofuturism is an ancient idea that expresses itself as an African/a freedom principle. It is an articulation of a constellation of deep African/a ideas and practices of what I called Africa’s Ancient Future [a nod to Wayne Chandler’s Ancient Future]. Through historical and ancestral memories of magic; use of spiritual technologies; intentional philosophies of life; heretical temporality; creative nonlinear knowledge production; and a symbiotic connection with nature and the universe, Africa’s Ancient Future is articulated through a freedom principle which implies a constant struggle to delink one’s collective self from now moments, reconciling past moments, in order to create future moments. Seeking ways to express one’s humanity in resistance to forms of oppression, by moving through spaces of carcerality with fluidly. Primarily because time is understood ‘differently’. Or I should say correctly. What was of importance to our interrogation of the time concept was an exploration of its arrested expression as a Western European construct. The dominant temporal ticks used to mark the flow of human experience/s are mapped from distorted perceptions of a limited reality, perceptions that were born from a specific historical and ancestral cultural worldview…then forced upon the world through enslavement, colonialism, imperialism, language, and cultural violence. The argument as presented, then and today, suggests that in order to understand Afrofuturism/African Futures as an intellectual/theoretical frame or lens through which to recognize the place of Africa in a future as a very ancient idea. I argued that we must map provocations of human expressions [forms of resistance] at various moments to be rooted in the deep cultural fabric of African/a people, an interdependent relationship between the material and spiritual as an epistemic frame through which we can see all African/a ways of knowing reassert itself on a global stage as the progenitor of all human knowledge. Communities, the peoples that inhabit the geographical spaces referred to as continental Africa have always been acutely aware of the future…the cultural practices in current religious forms and functions are rooted in a deep African spiritual understanding/worldview. This is not a profound acknowledgement. However, the future, the concept of the unseen, a moment that is to come, is prevalent and vital to highlight. The relationship to land, the universe, and ancestors are centered around an understanding of the seamless interconnectedness of past, present and future…and we have a duty and responsibility to maintain it in balance…which is and can be important to apply as a sociopolitical organizing principle [this is another point and foundation for another program altogether]. African/a forms of knowing and ways of being are about the formation of the collective being. But it is important to highlight, nonetheless. Especially if we situate this argument in discourse around sociopolitical and economic relations to highlight the limits of rights discourse, which are currently rooted in individualist notions where duty and responsibility can be negated by the rule of law birthed in the [re]conceptualization of the human as a justification for the maintenance of private property. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Image: Madonna - by MANZEL BOWMAN (@artxman; support here: https://manzel.biz/ & https://society6.com/manzelbowman)

Image: Pauulu Kamarakafego As we have explored in previous programs, in fact, as we have attempted to unpack in every program, Black internationalism is an intentional disruption; a radical intervention in the global terms of order [nod to Cedric Robinson]. In order to understand Black internationalism as a critical disruption, a radical intervention, we must unpack it. The concept, international, as understood in dominant discourse [opposed to discourse on the periphery, discourses from below] is related to the creation and forced imposition of the nation-state, birthed from a European historiography/historicity as the dominant mechanism that organizes human life. The imposition of mechanisms, such as colonialism and chattel slavery, for instance, rooted in a specific epistemology was necessary to structure institutions and forms of knowledge that [re]conceptualized what it means to be human as the justification for and maintenance of the idea private property. Being so, international indicates a relationship at various levels of communities of people across [artificial] boundaries. It is from here, Black international/ism, then, is understood as a radical disruption of these systems and institutions. What must not be lost in this praxis, is the fact that this radical disruption is simultaneously a clear articulation and theorization of Black Power. Cedric Robinson asserts that “[Physically and ideologically, and for rather unique historical reasons, African peoples bridge the decline of one world order and the eruption (we may surmise) of another. It is a frightful and uncertain space of being.] If we are to survive, we must take nothing which is dead and choose wisely among the dying. [The industrial nations are self-destructing. Others, too, of course, will be affected]” [Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition [1983]), 316]. This assertion is certainly true on many levels but requires a simultaneously developed alternative foundation to build upon, as the wise choices must be planted into something. Today, we explore the ideas and argument in, Pauulu’s Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice as presented by Quito Swan. Properly situated, we can see Pauulu's Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice presents a framework for that alternative. The possibilities of inventing the future. Pauulu’s Diaspora is a mapping of Black internationalism across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Ocean worlds, through the life and work of twentieth-century radical Pauulu [Powlu] Kamara-kafego. In this work, Dr. Quito Swan is disrupting and challenging limited conceptualizations and understandings of Black Power by situating it, properly, in an international context. Dr. Swan offers us a map on how Pauulu was following in the long tradition of those who came before. A genealogy of Black internationalism’s praxis of resistance. Quito Swan is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he directs the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture. He is a historian of Black internationalism, global Black Power and the Black Pacific. Dr. Swan is the author of many articles as well as, The Struggle for Decolonization: Black Power in Bermuda. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Enjoy the program!

[Program produced and aired 2016] Image: Frontispiece to Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble….1829 Maroon derives from Spanish cimarrón. Cimarrón originally referred to domestic cattle that had taken to the hills in Hispaniola. It was gradually expanded to be applied to enslaved Indigenous peoples who escaped from the Spaniards as they colonized South and Central America as well as the Caribbean. By the end of the 1530s, the concept had taken on strong connotations of being "fierce," "wild" and "unbroken," and was transferred to be primarily applied to Africans and people of African descent---or the runaways as they were referred to. For more than four centuries, the communities formed by escaped enslaved peoples dotted the fringes of plantations throughout the Americas, from Brazil to southeastern United States, from Peru to the American Southwest. Known variously as quilombos, mocambos, or mambeses, these new societies ranged from tiny bands that survived less than a year to powerful states the numbered thousands of members who survived for generations and even centuries. Maroon communities consisted of escaped African/a peoples with origins from a wide range of societies in West and Central Africa...Their collective task was to create new communities and institutions, through various processes of integrating cultural elements drawn largely from a variety of African societies [never forget, home was their destination]. Kwame Gyekye work on the deep continuities of cultural elements that link African societies is important to note here. For generations, historians believed that even the most remarkable of maroon settlements in the North America did not rival the achievements of maroon communities in South and Central America as well as the Caribbean. However, according to a number of scholars such as Cedric Robinson; Gerald Mullin, as well as Hebert Aptheker, and most recently Sylviane A. Diouf, evidence of the existence of at least fifty such communities in various places and at various times, from 1672 to 1864, has been documented. Herbert Aptheker’s points out that the 1st maroon communities pre-dated Jamestown settlements by 82 years. They were African insurrectionists who secured gained their freedom from abortive Spanish colonizing efforts in North and South Carolina. Maroon communities were a real presence in the U.S…as Aptheker documented their 19th century presence in VA; Georgia; Alabama; Louisiana; South Carolina as well as in Wake, Gates, Onslow, Bladen, Sampson, Jones, New Hanover, Dublin, Wilmington, Robeson, Nash counties, North Carolina. Today, will listen to a conversation I had with Dr. Nubia Kia where we discussed her recent historical novel, titled I spread my Wings and I Fly. Dr. Kia is a cultural worker, artist, activist, scholar, retired professor from Howard University. Her work has been published in Black Scholar, Black American Literature Forum, and Journal of the African Literature Association. As historian and poet, Dr. Kai has also won numerous honors, which include the Michigan Council Arts Awards, D.C. Commission of the Arts Awards, and National Endowment for the Arts Awards, just to name a few. Her work is an important meditation and contribution on previous and current work that is being done to explore the connections between culture, resistance, the science of metaphysics [spiritwork] as a source liberatory practice as a historical and cultural product of the Maroons. All of which were cultivated within conditions that African peoples were thrust into. This process and its elements are found within every corner of African Diasporic sociopolitical thought and cultural practices from Brazil, to Colombia, to the Black Church to hip hop. Africa as more than a geographical landmass, lives. It lives in the mind, bodies, spirits, intelligence of African/a peoples. Enjoy the program

[Program produced & aired in 2017] While there have been many explorations of the histories and figures in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, little attention is paid to the role that Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe played as a leading thinker and activist in resisting its deeply entrenched racist structures. While Nelson Mandela is normally given highest status in the discourse around the movement, often presented as the primary symbolic representation of South African anti-apartheid resistance. What is often lost is the deep influence and standard set by Robert Sobukwe not only on Nelson Mandela, but more importantly the youth movements within the struggle that coalesced into what we know as the Black Consciousness Movement. It is lost, in this dominant discourse, that Robert Sobukwe was a mentor to Steve Bantu Biko. His inspiration, ideological leadership, and example to seeking an advanced framework toward liberation in South Africa was captured in the praxis of Steve Bantu Biko and his comrades. The framework as it was articulated by Biko and many young South Africans was the Black Consciousness Movement. For Biko, Black Consciousness and the defeat of the inferiority complex instilled by apartheid institutions is a necessary precondition for progress in South Africa (for the African world for that matter). For Biko and those young folk resisting, the fact that apartheid was interdependent with white supremacy; capitalist exploitation and deliberate oppression made the problem much more complex. Black Consciousness both inspired and parallels decolonization in the African/a world; a decolonization process that is very much still in process. Our show was produced, today, in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!