Africa World Now Project

The idea and practice of maroonage is an intriguing part of the vast story of African world resistance; a story that has deep implications on the idea and practice of freedom for the 21st century; it provides alternative models of social organization that challenge the current model of the nation-state; and a lens through which an African world future can be brought into sharp view—a sort of lens through which the thoughts and actions of those who say they are for liberation, justice, and equality can be measured. It must be noted that freedom was difficult to maintain for many maroon communities. For example, a settlement of rebellious slaves was razed on Hispaniola in 1522. In Peru, Gonzalo Pizzaro sent a force to conquer 200 maroons who were living in a marshy area just north of Lima. In 1545, a bloody battle was fought in which every one of these “blacks” was killed. In 1795, a large band of Venezuelan slaves from the Serrania de Coro region rose in revolt and established a close-knit chain of mountain retreats. Expeditions sent out by the Spanish quickly subdued them. A group of local planters reduced a runaway community near Mobile, Alabama, in 1827. The fugitives had inhabited the site for "years" prior to its destruction. At least four cases exist of Cuban maroon settlements that negotiated permanent treaties with the island's Spanish colonizers. Carlos Rojas, in the province of Matanzas, and Palenque, near Havana, are two examples. A third is the settlement of Poblado del Cobre in Oriente province. The origins of this last community went far back to the beginning of the seventeenth century. For two hundred years its inhabitants thwarted Spanish attempts to destroy them. In 1800, the blacks signed a treaty of freedom with the whites. The town they established is still occupied today. There are three documented instances in which maroon groups in Mexico were parties to enduring treaties with white colonizers. The first recorded example is a treaty agreed to in 1609, between Spanish officials from the port of Veracruz and a group of blacks under the leadership of an African named Yanga. As in all the previously cases, the whites agreed to this type of accommodation only after repeated failures to reduce the blacks. The treaty declared the maroons free men, and gave them a royal license to found a town, which they named San Lorenzo, or Yanga. Nevertheless, the anti-black root of the current discourse surrounding U.S. anti-immigration policy and rhetoric must not be lost. Here today is Dr. Beau Gaitors. Dr. Gaitors is an Assistant Professor of History where he teaches courses on Afro Latin American History and Latin American History at Winston Salem State University. He received his PhD from Tulane University, in Latin American History. Dr. Gaitors holds a B.A. in International Relations and a B.A. in Africana Studies from Brown University (2008). He received his M.A. in Colonial Latin American History from Purdue University (2010). He has been a Fulbright scholar where he studied in Mexico. He just completed his book manuscript titled, Presence and Persistence in the Port: African Descendants in Early-Independence Veracruz, Mexico Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock, Venezuela, the Avalon Village in Detroit; Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, cooperation Jackson in Jackson Mississippi; 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

This program is intent to push the boundaries of Black thought as Black Critique. What do I mean? Contextualization is an art, an art that I find an affinity with and seek to perfect. Not for a personal gratification, but to discover and map a “rhythm” ---much like John Coltrane or an African shaman---that can serve as a spark of our critical consciousness. Black critique is a process of organic and evolutionary resistance to complicity, racial capitalism, colonialism/neocolonialism, imperialism, neo-imperialism sexism, racism, as well as any and all forms of discrimination/marginalization against people historically and contemporarily marginalized, centering the African world experience, and mapping outward. To understand Cornel West’s critique of Coates, one must engage with the long genealogy of Black Critique centered on Black Reason. Social media has its way of Christopher Columbus-ing things that have already been (for centuries in fact). The critique of West on Coates is in line with a long tradition of intellectual and ideological engagement; an invocation of critical dialogue and reasoning to discover paths towards freedom. To find ways to correct sociopolitical wrongs, with economic rights, cultural degradation with spiritual revitalization. Black Critique is built upon Black Reason. This argument is not simply aesthetically— racial. Black is used, here, as qualifier of resistance. An assertion of African world humanity. A notice that declares---it has always been. To understand Black reason is to understand the nature of the universe of thought and action itself. Both, its negative and positive reactions and responses. As Achille Mbembe writes in Critique of Black Reason, to understand Black reason is to understand what constitutes reason as we know it— the reason of state, the reason of capital, the reason of history. Today, we intend to start a critical conversation that moves beyond the aesthetic of critique ... Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, 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 conceptual and practical use of racial capitalism by many young activists who were shocked and ignited by their exposure to the events that spurred Ferguson, the uprising in Baltimore, continual state violence at the hands of a hyper militarized police force…and the many reflective actions produced in settler colony seeking to still become a nation-state…has taken on a life that I would argue is less a tool of analysis, but simply a catch phrase. The work to bridge the gap in intellectual engagement and the work it necessitates once understood, is still wide. However, this work is not something that Africana thinkers and activist have shied away from. The long tradition of radical thought and revolutionary practice is found in the cultural membrane of African peoples wherever they are found. The struggle—internal and external—to express and evolve ones’ full humanity is the eternal beacon that motivates Africana social, economic, political, and cultural life—whether consciously or unconsciously. So, what is racial capitalism? What did Cedric Robinson mean when he highlighted and explored the development of racial capitalism? Cedric Robinson challenged the Marxist idea that capitalism was a revolutionary negation of feudalism. Instead capitalism emerged within the European feudal order and flowered in the cultural soil of a Western civilization already thoroughly infused with racialism. Capitalism and racism, in other words, did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of “racial capitalism” dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and genocide. In addition to this, Robinson was acutely aware of Du Bois’s articulation of racial capitalism in his work Black Reconstruction, where he wrote that “The giant forces of water and of steam were harnessed to do the world’s work, and the black workers of America bent at the bottom of a growing pyramid of commerce and industry; and they not only could not be spared, if this new economic organization was to expand, but rather they became the cause of new political demands and alignments, of new dreams of power and visions of empire, Today, we will take a deep dive in expanding and solidifying our understanding of racial capitalism in the context of this temporal space we call…right now…with Robin D.G. Kelley. Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor of History and Black Studies & Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA, and current Chair of the Department of African American Studies. He is author of a number of books, which include Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times; Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class; His latest book project is tentatively titled, The Education of Ms. Grace Halsell: An Intimate History of the American Century. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, 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! Image: Johana Londono

Program originally produced and aired: 2016 In his poem “Countries want independence, nations want liberation, and the people, the people want revolution”, Amiri Baraka writes: “Revolutionary Unity gained only thru struggle long sought for must be fought for Revolutionary Unity a fiery beacon in a world made perpetual night by imperialism The basis of struggle Unity Revolutionary Unity Unity gained thru struggle The basis of the party yet to be built in a land of "instant everythings" (Oct, 1979) On today's programs, we will hear Critical Reflections on the Organic Nature of Africana Sociopolitical Thought and Cultural Resistance: Contributions from Amiri Baraka w/ Tom Porter. This program is a mix of poetry, music, and various interviews with and on Amiri Baraka that focus on exploring the organic nature of and practical application of forms of resistance. The underlining premise of exploration is centered upon asking the simple question: How can culture be used as a platform for critiquing and creating a world beyond struggle? This organic process of thinking and doing is central to Africana sociopolitical thought that informs its resistance. The cornerstone of critical consciousness formation. The program ends with a conversation I had with Tom Porter, who represents the Black Radical Tradition in all of its manifestations. A close friend of Amiri Baraka, Professor Porter is still, today, an important activist intellectual who has contributed his life to fighting for a world beyond struggle. A veteran activist, educator, radio host and jazz critic, Tom Porter has run for political office in Ohio, served as Director of Antioch Graduate program, and runs a jazz music promotion organization. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, 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! Music and Other things: 1.J Dilla—African Rhythms 2.Outkast—Wailin 3.Snippet of the introduction of Leroi Jones by Maulana Karenga at UCLA, April 5 1967 4.Amiri Baraka—Against Bourgeois Art 5.Vallis Alps—Young - Interview 6.Hugh Maskela—If There’s Anybody Out There 7.The Roots ft. Amiri Baraka—Something in the Way of Things

In this episode.... we can listen to Pt. 2 of the conversation I had with Fred Moten where we explore the ideas set forth by radical thinkers ranging from anti-colonialist such as Sylvia Wynter and Aimé Césaire to scholar-activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Amiri Baraka. You can catch Pt. 1 of our conversation on our SoundCloud archive. Professor Fred Moten is currently Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, where he teaches courses and conducts research in black studies, performance studies, poetics and literary theory. He is author of number of books including, but not limited to In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition; B. Jenkins; The Feel Trio, A Poetics of the Undercommons; consent not to be a single being; and co-author, with Stefano Harney, of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. We then shift our mental energy a bit… In a January 2017 article in the Boston Review, Robin D. G. Kelley asks: So what did Robinson mean by “racial capitalism”? Professor Kelley answers this question, by arguing that: Cedric Robinson, building on the work of another forgotten black radical intellectual, sociologist Oliver Cox, challenged the Marxist idea that capitalism was a revolutionary negation of feudalism. Instead capitalism emerged within the European feudal order and flowered in the cultural soil of a Western civilization already thoroughly infused with racialism. Capitalism and racism, in other words, did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of “racial capitalism” dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and genocide. Capitalism was “racial” not because of some conspiracy to divide workers or justify slavery and dispossession, but because racialism had already permeated Western feudal society. The first European proletarians were racial subjects (Irish, Jews, Roma or Gypsies, Slavs, etc.) and they were victims of dispossession, colonialism, and slavery within Europe. Cedric Robinson goes on to suggest that racialization within Europe was very much a colonial process involving invasion, settlement, expropriation, and racial hierarchy. Insisting that modern European nationalism was completely bound up with racialist myths… " What we will hear next, Professor Kelley reflect on race, class, and movements using Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Cedric Robinson) in the wake of the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives. Dr. Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor of History and Black Studies & Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA, and current Chair of the Department of African American Studies. His work explores the history of social movements in the U.S., the African Diaspora, and Africa; black intellectuals; music; colonialism/imperialism; organized labor; constructions of race; Marxism, nationalism, among other things. He is author of a number of books, which include, but not limited to, Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times; Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class; and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, 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. Music: J Dilla-African Rhythms Amiri Baraka-Why's/Wise De La Soul-Stakes is High John Coltrane-Kulu S Mama Robert Glasper-Somebody Else ft. Emeli Sandé

Black radicalism [consequently] cannot be understood within the particular context of its genesis. It is not a variant of Western radicalism whose proponents happen to be Black. Rather, it is a specifically African response to an oppression emergent from the immediate determinants of European development in the modern era and framed by orders of human exploitation woven into the interstices of European social life from the inception of Western civilization. . .Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism (79) How do we map the Black Radical tradition? How can we understand its praxis? If we are to truly to refashion the world…to make it better…to remake its institutions…to address its systemic inequities. Find justice. Seek peace. What language can we use to transmit it once we are able “see” it? What are the concepts that it will produce that will allow us to see the world differently? How can we codify the thoughts and practices in an effort to create a new vision of the world while simultaneously resisting the present? What questions do we need to ask that begins to provide insight, and foresight to muddle through the Man vs. Human conflict explored in the work of Sylvia Wynter. Aimé Césaire argues that we cannot look to Western notions of “man”, as this man has been forged out of an arrested understanding of humanity. A narrow conception which consistently depends on the systematic degradation of non-European men and women. He writes in Discourse on Colonialism: “At the very time when it most often mouths the word, the West has never been further from being able to live a true humanism—a humanism made to the measure of the world” (73). More than this…Where do we look? Fred Moten and Stefano Harney suggest that we pay attention closer attention to the undercommons. It is the space in between space that we should look to study blackness. According to Jack Halberstam in Chapter 0 of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study: “If you want to know what the undercommons wants, what Moten and Harney want, what black people, indigenous peoples, queers and poor people want, what we (the “we” who cohabit in the space of the undercommons) want, it is this – we cannot be satisfied with the recognition and acknowledgement generated by the very system that denies a) that anything was ever broken and b) that we deserved to be the broken part; so we refuse to ask for recognition and instead we want to take apart, dismantle, tear down the structure that, right now, limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond it and to access the places that we know lie outside its walls” (6). In this episode, we present a recent conversation I had with Professor Fred Moten where we explore the ideas set forth by radical thinkers ranging from anti-colonialist such as Sylvia Wynter and Aimé Césaire to scholar-activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Amiri Baraka. Professor Fred Moten is currently Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, where he teaches courses and conducts research in black studies, performance studies, poetics and literary theory. He is author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Hughson’s Tavern (Leon Works, 2009); B. Jenkins (Duke University Press, 2010). Moten is also co-author, with Stefano Harney, of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, 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. Music: J Dilla--African Rhythms Tribe Called Quest--Vibes and Stuff A Tribe Called Red--The Virus Feat. Saul Williams & Chippewa Travellers De La Soul--Drawn ft Little Dragon