Africa World Now Project

The idea of democracy and its attendant operative mechanism, democratic citizenship, specifically the right to belong, is often lauded as a gift of Greco-Roman sociopolitical thought and Western European and American cultural contributions to a specific conceptualization of what comes to be known, in academic discourse, ‘modernity.’ From this historico-cultural perspective, a concept was needed to determine what it means to be human and belong in a particular form of sociopolitical organization and economic logic. However, moving beyond rhetoric and paying critical attention to the origins of this worldview, democratic citizenship—as expounded by the Athenians, the lauded form of sociopolitical organization that was intellectualized by an Athenian elite class—was conceptualized to exclude others. The inclusion of ‘Others’ was seen as a negation of order and the rule of law. After all, was it not Aristotle who invoked the notion of ius sanguinis (meaning ‘right of blood,’ or ‘by blood’) to be an exclusionary tool serving the interest of the dominant class? This operative mechanism in the application of ‘democracy’ or democratic citizenship as formulated in this cultural worldview was/is structured in the fabric of political discourse we hear today. What is clear in our current historical epoch, as Modibo Kadalie aptly points out, younger people “are convinced that the nation-state is not offering them a future. Newer generations of researchers are now beginning to look for evidence of community and collectivity” (Intimate Direct Democracy: Fort Mose, The Great Dismal Swamp and The Human Quest for Freedom: 153). A collectivity that lies in the very fabric of Africana forms of knowing and ways of being, fully articulated in the various forms of resistance such as those found throughout the Americas, expressed as maroon communities. Dr. Modibo Kadalie is a social ecologist, movement intellectual and lifelong radical activist within the Civil Rights, Black Power and Pan-Africanist movements and the Founding Convener of the Autonomous Research Institute for Direct Democracy and Social Ecology (ARIDDSE). He is the author of Pan-African Social Ecology: Speeches, Conversations and Essays (2019); Internationalism, Pan-Africanism and the Struggle of Social Classes (2000); Intimate Direct Democracy: Fort Mose, the Great Dismal Swamp, and the Human Quest for Freedom (2022) and a number of other articles. During the 1960s, early and middle 1970’s, Modibo Kadalie was an active member of a number of radical formations. In the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), he served as a member of the Central Staff and Chair of the People’s Action Committee in Highland Park, Michigan. In the International African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC), Kadalie was a founding member of the National Steering Committee. He chaired the Detroit local committee in 1972 and 1973 and then continued as a member of the expanded International Steering Committee as a representative from Atlanta, 1973-1975. Within this Sixth Pan-African Congress, he chaired the Southern Regional Organizing Committee from 1974-1975 and was also a member of both the North American Delegation and the North American Left Revolutionary Pan-African Caucus. 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; Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. listen intently. think critically. act accordingly.

In the introduction of his recently published, Jacob H Carruthers and the Restoration of An African Worldview: Finding Our Way through the Desert, Kamau Rashid [2024] posits that: “One of the central concerns evident in the scholarship of Jacob H. Carruthers was the intellectual foundations of the modern world. Although he acknowledged the importance of studying systems of oppression, he argued that such structures rested upon the foundation of Western thought, forms of knowledge that facilitated the formation of our most current systems of domination. In addition, these forms of knowledge also serve the primary function to maintain a particular world order as their application is constantly being refined and reinforced through false ideas about reality [Rashid, 2024; Carruthers, 1972/1999]. Carruthers work is occupied by a fundamental question that asks: how can African people who hope to free themselves from these structural and reinforcing mechanisms of domination do so when their conceptions of reality are constantly measured and derived from these very same ways of knowing that support these mechanisms of domination? Kamau Rashid, thinking with Carruthers, writes further that “knowledge, its production, legitimization, and transmission are shaped by the power relations of a society and through this, society’s institutions, therefore “the elite members of the politically dominant culture strategically impose their knowledge and worldview priorities” in a way that legitimizes their authority through these institutions [Rashid, 2024; Shujaa, 2003, 18]. Accordingly, there is little room for debate when it is argued that “schooling in the United States is a principal instrument of this hegemony.” “It is a process that does not typically privilege critical thought and action, but instead encourages conformity to hegemony, rewards apathy to the status quo, and punishes agency with regard to ideation or advocacy for revolutionary social change. From this perspective, it is with no surprise then, that “the operationalization of schooling is little more than a means for sustaining the legitimacy for a specific form of sociopolitical and economic order [Rashid, 2024].

The collectively generative nature inherent in the interdependent relationship between technology, the communal means of production and distribution and innovative physical and creative intellectual work is distracted and co/opted by the need to extract the value of this relationship as structured from the capitalist logic of labor. The sole purpose of this is to maintain an aggressive and exclusionary accumulation of capital in the hands of a few. The creative and inquisitive nature of human social and cultural capacities feed the extractive forces of capitalism. The necessity to disembody knowledge production and sever the symbiotic relationship between all sentient beings from nature and the universe is a muti-complex process of maintaining the supremacist ethic that organizes current political and economic relations. This fact, in its most theoretical and practical form, permeates the very cultural fabric of the dominant expression of global dis/order. In short, capitalism is the form that functions to create life itself, therefore work is re/defined as labor in order to extract its value in all forms, not for communal benefit but the aggressive and exclusionary aggregation of capital through intentionally violent processes. What are the material and intellectual contractions that indigenous African and African Diasporan communities must contend with in order to reconcile the social realities produced by capitalist logic today? At present, the dominant discourses of this reconciliation are centered around inherently detrimental practices, i.e., capitalism with a Blackface, the reproduction of the logic of private property as foundation to capital accumulation, etc. Where do we re/turn to find a path toward freedom as move down the road to liberation? Where do we find a platform or practice to reintegrate with our collective selves? It can be, and in the conversation with Georie Bryant you will hear next, found figuratively and literally with our hands in the soil. A re/connection with the Earth itself. In a material and non-material synthesis of struggle and building. The conversation you will hear next is a de/linking of capitalist logic of land as private property, food as African indigenous knowledge practices, and cooperatives outside of capitalist interpretations. In short, we explore African indigenous relationships with land and food, as inherited throughout the African world as means to freedom. Georie Bryant is a community organizer, chef, and agriculturalist native to Durham, N.C. Working both through his organization SymBodied and in collaboration with other organizations in the region, Georie seeks to address issues of historical and contemporary oppression, particularly those centered around food insecurity, cultural erasure and appropriation. 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; Ayati; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.

ADIFF DC Aug. 2, 2024 on Latino Media Collective @ WPFW ADIFF DC 2024 film NEGRITA is featured on WPFW'S Latino Media Collective. Guests include Magdalena Albizu the director and producer of NEGRITA and Eddie Bailey producer and editor of NEGRITA and CEO of the Savoy Media Group. NEGRITA is a documentary about the Afro-Latina identity and experience in the United States. In their own words, empowered, self-affirming educated Afro-Latinas, located around the United States, share their experiences of living with a changing, often contested identity in a racialized society and how it affects their personal and professional lives. Originally broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM, Washington, DC. Tune into Latino Media Collective live on WPFW 89.3 FM in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area or visit www.wpfwfm.org on Fridays from 1:00 to 2:00PM (U.S. Eastern).

ADIFF DC Aug. 1, 2024 on #UMustLearn @ WPFW ADIFF DC 2024 film ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE? is featured on WPFW'S We The People guest Maximina Juson the director of ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE? ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE?--Throughout American history, the Electoral College has dramatically impacted American politics and society, particularly with respect to vote erasure of the minority party vote. Featuring commentary by scholars Dr. Jelani Cobb, Dr. Carol Anderson, and Dr. Paul Finkelman, cameo performances by Kelly McCreary, Boise Holmes, Tyee Tilghman, Veralyn Jones, Peter Jerrod Macon and stunning animation by Pierre Bennu. Originally broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM, Washington, DC. Tune into #UMustLearn live on WPFW 89.3 FM in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area or visit www.wpfwfm.org on Thursdays from 6:00 to 7:00PM (U.S. Eastern).

ADIFF DC Jul. 31, 2024 on We The People @ WPFW ADIFF DC 2024 film THE WALL STREET BOY, KIPKEMBOI is featured on WPFW'S We The People. Guests include Charles Uwagbai the director of THE WALL STREET BOY, KIPKEMBOI and Diarah N'Dow Spech Co-Founder and Co-Director of African Diaspora International Film Festival. THE WALL STREET BOY, KIPKEMBOI--With his life in jeopardy and jail almost a certainty, one question remains, how could a farm boy bring down the global financial system and how far is the international world order willing to go to silence his story? The Wall Street Boy, Kipkemboi tells the story of a young math genius from rural Kenya who uses his understanding of patterns in nature to develop a successful stock market algorithm. His remarkable success from a makeshift setup in his village draws attention from international financiers and local authorities, forcing him and his girlfriend Chepchirchir to flee. “The Wall Street Boy, Kipkemboi has a strong socially conscious subtext as the village youth becomes a political prisoner. If redistribution of wealth to the least of these among us is a socialist principle, suffice it to say that “Kipkemboi” cleverly achieves this – but through exploiting the capitalist system. The film also is very positive about the role of women as strong equals. Not only is Kipkemboi’s mother supportive, but Chipchirchir is no mere cheerleader. She does more than inspire Kipkemboi; she drives their getaway vehicle and this village lass has dreams of her own, aspiring to become an attorney. Watching the romance of the appealing leads blossom is also beguiling." ~ Ed Rampell, The Progressive Populist Originally broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM, Washington, DC. Tune into We The People live on WPFW 89.3 FM in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area or visit www.wpfwfm.org on Wednesdays from 11:00AM to 12:00PM (U.S. Eastern).

ADIFF DC Jul. 30, 2024 on Voices with Vision @ WPFW ADIFF DC 2024 film CLAUDE MCKAY: HARLEM TO MARSEILLE is featured on WPFW'S Voices with Vision. Guests include Matthieu Verdeil the director of CLAUDE MCKAY: HARLEM TO MARSEILLE and Diarah N'Dow Spech Co-Founder and Co-Director of African Diaspora International Film Festival. CLAUDE MCKAY: HARLEM TO MARSEILLE--Rebellious figure of the Harlem Renaissance, precursor of literature and of the black cause, this unclassifiable author wandered for more than 10 years in Europe, frequenting the artistic and political avant-gardes. Originally broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM, Washington, DC. Tune into Voices with Vision live on WPFW 89.3 FM in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area or visit www.wpfwfm.org on Tuesdays from 9:00 to 10:00AM (U.S. Eastern).

The use of forum, colloquium, and festivals to center African/a intellectual creative cultural production flows rhythmically alongside the long tradition of Pan-African tendencies. This historical continuity and our duty to move within its legacy is a project that the International Colloquium at the International Black Theatre Festival, that we [AWNP collective] have the pleasure to coordinate, is the explicit dictum that guides it creation. Furthering our work in this Pan-African genealogy is intentional. Our theme this year was titled: ‘Echoes of FESTAC ’77’. The primary objectives of FESTAC ’77 was to “provide a forum for the focusing of attention on the enormous richness and diversity of African contributions to world culture and the ‘opportunity for recounting the achievements of [their] ancestors’ (quoted from Lt.-General Olusegun Obasanjo, Head of the Federal Military Government and Patron of FESTAC, in Africa, No. 65 [January 1977], p. 6 FESTAC).” For the 2024 iteration of the international colloquium, as we continue think deeply about form and function and its relationship to critical consciousness formation and radical practice in the use of the arts to map and proliferate Black/African sociopolitical and cultural life, we had the pleasure of being in dialogue with Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, who was at FESTAC ’77 [for more, visit https://www.alkalimat.org/festac/]. In fact, you will hear his presentation given at FESTAC ’77 in this program. As part of a consortium of cultural workers, intellectuals, activists/organizers, Dr. Alkalimat along with Dr. Ron Walters, Dr. Maulana Karenga, and a host of others took part in the colloquium. Dr. Abdul Alkalimat is one of the founders of Black Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. A lifelong scholar/organizer with a PhD from the University of Chicago, he has lectured, taught, and directed academic programs across the U.S., the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and China. I would be remiss to not highlight that along with Dr. Alkalimat, we were joined by artists and cultural scholars from Nova Scotia, Canada, where they explored the continuities in the histories of people of African descent in Canada. We had the pleasure to be in conversation with Walter Borden as he presented: The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time, a powerful autobiographical play and the story of Walter Borden’s life, his life’s work, and his letter to the world. An artist and cultural worker, Mr. Borden is an internationally acclaimed and nationally honoured African/Indigenous actor and activist born in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. His activism spans six decades while his professional acting career is in its 54th year. He has performed throughout Canada, Europe and the United States. We look to bring you his thoughts and meditations in the coming programs on Africa World Now Project. As you prepare to engage this program … we share this meditation we hope will guide you as you share your time and energy with us … The universe of thought and ideas are the playground of Africana creativity. Black life lives on the fulcrum of the seen and unseen, constantly merging theory and practice … Effortlessly creating, recreating – through radical acts of remembering moving in and out of the deep well of Africana ways of being and forms of knowing, this is the essence of Black cultural production, the production of life itself. 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; Ayati; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly. Link to paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h_NFkkpy8dSySP6PtmqjBF5aM-3aTM8m/view?usp=sharing

On August 31, 1967, several thousand delegates gathered at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago for the opening rally of the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP) convention. This event was an ambitious attempt to develop a broad coalition of over 200 different organizations, that included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Students for a Democratic Society, the Socialist Workers Party, and the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. According to Arun Kundnani [2023] in ‘The New Malcolm X’: Who was Jamil Al-Amin – The Forgotten Radical of the Civil Rights Movement?, “On the opening night, Dr. King outlined an anti-capitalist politics that had become essential to his worldview.” This, of course, has been erased from dominant discourses on Dr. King. For King: “Capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of Black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both Black and white, both here and abroad.” The only solution: “a radical redistribution of political and economic power” (Kundnani, 2023). Another key point to highlight was that there was talk at the convention of running King as an independent candidate of the Left in the following year’s presidential elections.” Despite the prominent role of King and SCLC, the leading Black organization at the NCNP convention was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), chaired by Jamil al-Amin, then known as H. Rap Brown. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jamil al-Amin worked with the civil rights movement in Alabama and Mississippi in the mid-1960s. He was only twenty-three years old when he was elected SNCC’s national chair, four months before the NCNP convention. As he traveled the US that summer, federal agents and informants constantly tailed him. In the month and a half before arriving in Chicago, he had been shot in the face with buckshot by a deputy sheriff and arrested twice, on incitement to arson and riot in Maryland (a state attorney later admitted to fabricating the charges) and on firearms charges in Louisiana (these were voided on appeal when it emerged that the judge had announced at the state’s Bar Association convention before the trial that “I’m going to get that ni**er”). A few days before the NCNP convention, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sent a memo to all the bureau’s field offices, instructing them to establish new, secret “counter-intelligence endeavors,” to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings.” Arun Kundnani is a writer interested in race, Islamophobia, surveillance, political violence, and radicalism. Born in London, he moved to New York in 2010 and now lives in Philadelphia. Kundnani is the author of What is Antiracism? ([published by Verso Books, 2023), The Muslims are Coming! (Verso Books, 2014) and The End of Tolerance (published by Pluto Press, 2007), which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year. He has written for the Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Vice, and The Intercept to name a few outlets. Educated at Cambridge University, he holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University. He has been a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and a former editor of the Race & Class, the quarterly journal of the Institute of Race Relations in London. 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; Ayati; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.

Today, we will listen to General Baker from a 2010 talk he gave at the U.S. Social Forum held in Detroit where he maps the history of struggle in Detroit, the formation of radical workers movements, and the legacies of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 6, 1941, right after his family had moved north from Augusta, Georgia. General Baker’s father worked for Midland Steel in the 1940s, and later in a job with Chrysler. The Baker family settled in a home in Southwest Detroit. Gen Baker grew up in a union household, and often attended union events with his father. Baker graduated early from the nominally integrated Southwestern High School in 1958. General Baker is one of the founding members of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) in 1968 and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in 1969. Baker’s involvement in radical politics dates from the early 1960s. He had been a member of UHURU and the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and later the Communist League. Following the Detroit riot of July 1967, an event known to some as the Great Rebellion, General Baker and his fellow radicals sensed an opportunity for new organizing efforts. In September 1967, Baker, John Watson, Mike Hamlin, and Luke Tripp started a newspaper called the Inner-City Voice. The paper focused on issues of concern to Detroit’s Black population, including working conditions, housing, health care, welfare programs, and schools, all from a Marxist perspective. In addition to publishing the Inner-City Voice, Baker, Hamlin, and other Inner City Voice staff members formed a study group to discuss how to implement revolutionary political change. On May 2, 1968, in response to a work speedup at the Dodge Main plant in Hamtramck, Baker led several thousand workers out of the plant in a wildcat strike. On May 5, the Chrysler Corporation dismissed Baker from his job for violating the no-strike clause of the collective bargaining agreement between Chrysler and the United Auto Workers (UAW). As a result of this strike, Baker and his fellow activists formed DRUM. DRUM saw both Chrysler and the UAW as enemies of workers of African descent, and from 1968 into the early 1970s, DRUM worked to gain more power for African American workers and to improve working conditions at Dodge Main. General Baker is and will continue to be one of our important sociopolitical and cultural theoreticians of the 20th century that provided essential perspectives for the 21st century. As part of the collective of revolutionary workers who sought to organize the Black working class in conjunction with addressing issues in the larger Black community, Gen Baker was a living example of theory and practice in context of Black liberation, globally. 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; Ayati; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.