Africa World Now Project

Abdul Alkalimat writes on a multimedia project that explores the work of Saladin Muhamad that “our movements for social transformation have often fallen victim to the tendency to oversimplify the struggle. Moreover, there is far too little self-criticism to learn from our “right” and “left” errors. This is particularly dangerous as we are at the beginning of a new generational awakening. We need to think about the past few decades of struggle by listening to those who have marched on and maintained a revolutionary perspective.” Labor, whether force or extracted through coercion has been a consistent cause of struggle for African/a peoples, globally. James Boggs, in a speech given at a Political Science Seminar in Atlanta University on February 17, 1974, argued that “we must be ready to recognize that as reality changes, our ideas have to change so that we can project new, more advanced aspirations worth striving for. This is the only way to avoid becoming prisoners of ideas which were once progressive but have become reactionary, i.e., have been turned into their opposite. The only struggles worth pursuing are those which advance the whole society and enable all human beings to evolve to a new and higher stage of their human potential”. Expanding this assertion, Boggs goes on to suggest that “knowledge must move from perception to conception; in other words, knowledge and struggle begin by perceiving your own reality. But it must have the aim of developing beyond what you yourself or your own group can perceive, to wider conceptions that are based upon the experiences of the whole history of Mankind. The only way that anyone can take this big step of moving beyond perception to conception is by recognizing and struggling against your own internal contradictions and weaknesses. Of these weaknesses, the most fundamental and most difficult to overcome, as a result of the specific history of United States society [and I will add the evolution of the global racial capitalist system], is the tendency not to think at all but simply to react in terms of individual or ethnic self-interest” [Boggs, 1974]. Reflecting more on the praxis of Saladin Muhammad, Abdul Alkalimat asserts that “there are many theoretical and practical issues involved in the experiences covered by the life of Saladin Muhammad and his experiences in struggle. Saladin is a proletarian cadre of the revolutionary movement. He served as chairperson of the Black Workers for Justice for over 20 years. While being retired from full time union organizing, he remains active on many battle fronts including the Southern Workers Assembly.” This is Part I of our recent conversation with Baba Saladin Muhammad. Saladin Muhammad is an organizer, theoretician, writer. He published a number of articles that explore issues ranging from exposing the structural and systemic racism in labor to ways to understand the interdependence of human rights and Black internationalism. Saladin Muhammad is the co-founder and national chair of Black Workers for Justice and until his retirement, he was an international representative for the United Electrical Workers [UEW]. His praxis has been forged in Black freedom work for than three decades. 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. Listen intently. Think deeply. Act accordingly. Black Liberation and Social Revolution: The Life and Legacy of Saladin Muhammad http://theblm.net/saladin/

Labor has changed. Its production. Its definition. Its control. But one thing that has not changed are the parameters within which labor has been defined, value extracted and dehumanized – mechanized – automated – artificially intelligeized. What does "labor" mean in a settler imperial world fortified by racial capitalist sociopolitical structures that maintain a social order that places the African/a worker, beyond the periphery of benefiting from their labor? What about decolonizing labor and labor movements? What about a world without work----What are the ideological frameworks that ‘labor’ is using to attempt to construct the material realities of our current world? What does (or will) this world look like in two-years…and what are its implications for the African/a world? What are the implications for the Earth and now more than ever, the heavens—space? Questions around black labor, usually pivot on the role of black education. However, most explorations are neither critical nor intellectually honest. Today, Dr. Kamau Rashid joins us in conversation where we meditate on black labor and 'the white architects of black education'. Our thoughts are centered on William H. Watkins work, the White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power, 1865-1954. In the White Architects of Black Education, Watkins “explores the body of ideas that undergird social, economic, racial, and educational beliefs about Black education in the U.S.: therefore, it is an ideological study. His stated objective is to "investigate the ideological construction of colonial Black education by examining the views, politics, and practices of the white architects that funded, created, and refined it” [1-2]. Therefore, “colonial education in the South must never be confused with the educational agenda of blacks in the south. In fact, these agenda conflicted” [2]. The central question asks: How far have we moved away from these foundational ideas and their ideological grounding? Dr. Kamau Rashid is currently Professor and Founding Director of the Urban Education, Ed.D. program at Northeastern Illinois University. Dr. Rashid earned his Ph.D. 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. 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 of 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; Ghana; Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Image: Romare Bearden - Factory Workers - 1942

The range and scope of manifestations in the Black freedom struggle are varied yet connected by a common thread…it does not matter where you look, pick a point on the map of human geography, pick a geographical landmass or region -- the continent of Africa, the Caribbean or somewhere in Northern part of the Americas, you will find a common thread. And that thread is the radical imagination of young people. You will find a historical path that reaches into the present. You will find the beginnings of a road built with vibrancy of young folk who envisioned a world beyond struggle. SNYC We can see the materiality of this fact in the continuum of African/a resistance. In 1937, the Southern Negro Youth Congress [SNYC] was created [We demand Our Rights: Southern Negro Youth Congress, 1937-1949]. Assembled in Richmond, VA, for the first Southern Negro Youth Congress were some 534 delegates representing 250,000 young people in 23 states, and an estimated crowd of 2,000 observers. They represented "sharecroppers from Alabama and Mississippi; domestic workers from Georgia…and every other representative of Southern Negro life." [We demand Our Rights: Southern Negro Youth Congress, 1937-1949]. SNYC lasted for 12 years, 1937 to 1949. SNCC On February 1, 1960, Black students in Greensboro, North Carolina launched sit-ins challenging segregation in restaurants and other public accommodations. SNCC was founded just two and a half months later on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Ella Baker was the gathering’s organizer. [SNCC Digital Gateway]. On SNCC’s international dimensions, highlighted by Fanon Che Wilkins, in his article The Making of Black Internationalists: SNCC and Africa Before the Launching of Black Power, 1960-1965, were embryonic as “the founding conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, the delegates declared unequivocally: "We identify ourselves with the African struggle as a concern for all mankind" [468]. To add more clarity, Miss. Baker organized the conference which led to the formation of SNCC “just three weeks after the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa” [Wilkins, 2007: 471]. I present this snapshot, paying attention to historical continuity in African/a student resistance to provide an impetus to engage in more intentionally and consciously mapping of the range and scope of the Black freedom movement. Today, we present a conversation with SNCC activist: Courtland Cox. While a Howard University student, Courtland Cox became a member of Nonviolent Action Group [NAG] and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He worked with SNCC in Mississippi and Lowndes County, Alabama, was the Program Secretary for SNCC in 1962, as well as the SNCC representative to the War Crimes Tribunal organized by Bertram Russell. In 1963 he served as the SNCC representative on the Steering Committee for the March on Washington. In 1973 he served as the Secretary General of the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Tanzania. Additionally, he co-owned and managed the Drum and Spear Bookstore and Drum and Spear Press in Washington DC. In our conversation we explored: Freedom Schools; CLR James; Jamil Al-Amin; Black internationalism; Sterling A. Brown; scholars w/o portfolio; independent political parties; Sékou Touré; Tanzania; Marion Berry; and the Sixth Pan African Congress. 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. Image: Courtland Cox (second from right), Marion Barry, and others sitting-in at Atlanta Toddle House, December 1963, [https://snccdigital.org/people/courtland-cox/]

[produced and aired, 2016...note...our production gets better post 2017... : )] In a 1968 in the March edition of Negro Digest titled, the Nature and Needs of the Black University, Gerald McWorter [Abdul Alkalimat] writes…and I must quote in its entirety here: “Revolutionary change for the liberation of a people from oppressive social structures is not the special function of one course of action, but, more likely, the result of several. And while education is generally hoped to be a liberating force on our minds and bodies, often it has been used as a debilitating tool in the interests of an oppressive society." Quoting Kwame Nkrumah, from his work Consciencism, McWorter, compares the colonial student who is educated for "the art of forming not a concrete environmental view of social political problems, but an abstract `liberal' outlook," with the revolutionary student who is "animated by a lively national consciousness, seeks knowledge as an instrument of national emancipation and integrity." The university is an active agent in the world (including all of the socioeconomic and political contradictions inherent), therefore it must meet the challenge of responding creatively to whatever needs exist now for people, not profit. I wanted to highlight this article, of a series articles, that was printed in the Negro Digest from 1968 to 1969, primarily to show the continuities and salience of the questions that were overtly presented then, are still prominent now. To be clear, the center of this historically-bound, contemporary discussion still asks: What is the role, in this present moment, of Diasporic institutions in African world resistance? In part 1 of this series, we explored the intellectual praxis of Diasporic thinkers… Today, in part 2…We will explore, more deeply, the ideas presented in those historical conversations about nature, function, and role of the Black University with Josh Myers. Dr. Josh Myers is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. In addition to serving on the board of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations and the editorial board of The Compass: Journal of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, he works with a numbers of community-based social justice and cultural restoration organization. His research interests include Africana intellectual histories and traditions, Africana philosophy, and critical university studies. His work has been published in The Journal of African American Studies, The Journal of Pan African Studies, The African Journal of Rhetoric, The Globalization and Human Rights Law Review, Liberator Magazine, and Pambazuka, among other literary spaces. His current book project is a history of the Howard University student protest of 1989. Enjoy the program!

[produced and aired, 2016] We are living in a time of great challenge and opportunity. Across the African world people are challenging their historically rooted contemporary conditions. The practical work of the long tradition of African and Diasporic freedom fighters has provided the frame work for these various manifestations of Africana resistance to find a way forward---to think, reason, and see that another world is not only possible, but absolutely necessary. The current sociopolitical, economic, and cultural organization of global society is truly not sustainable. Amie Cesaire writing in 1950—in Discourse on Colonialism brings this notion to sharp clarity when he asserts that “A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it created is decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization…” (Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism: 31) Thinkers and fighters such as Amilcar Cabral, in a 1972 speech during one of his visits to the US argued that: “An objective analysis of imperialism insofar as it is a fact or a “natural” historical phenomenon, indeed “necessary” in the context of the type of economic political evolution of an important part humanity, reveals that imperialist rule, with all its train of wretchedness, of pillage, of crime and of destruction of human and cultural values, was not just a negative reality. The vast accumulation of capital in half a dozen countries of the northern hemisphere which was a result of piracy, of the confiscation of the property of other peoples and of the ruthless exploitation of the work of these peoples will not only lead to the monopolization of colonies, but to the division of the world…” (Cabral, 1972: 57 in Selected Speeches of Amilcar Cabral). How are we to understand this long tradition…that is finding material expression in the various movements around the African world? What is the role of Diasporic institutions, such as the HBCU? More importantly, as Vincent Harding once asked what is the vocation of the Black scholar and their praxis? I would expand this question to include what is the vocation of the Black and their praxis in relation to the entire African world? I recently sat down with Corey Walker, Dean of The College and the John W. and Anna Hodgin Hanes Professor of the Humanities at Winston Salem State University for a wide-ranging discussion of the role and responsibility of the Black scholar in this current phase of global African resistance. Enjoy the program…. Audio credit: Africa is a Country - mini-documentary - Shutting Down the Rainbow Nation - available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksgrJyOrd7A Image credit: Rob Siebörger. The Rhodes Statue at the UCT-ground. Photo taken 28 March 2015.

Originally produced and aired in 2016...: The great political theorist, cultural philosopher, revolutionary, C. L. R. James once said that he is black, number one, because he is against what they have done and are still doing to us; and number two, he has something to say about the new society to be built because he has a tremendous part in that which they have sought to discredit.— C. L. R. James, C. L. R. James: His Life and Work. In the article The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney start their analysis with this powerful quote: “To the university I steal, and there I steal.” They go on to write that this is the only possible relationship to the university (American) today. In fact, this may be true of universities everywhere. It cannot be denied that the university is a place of refuge, and it cannot be accepted that the university is a place of enlightenment. Their analysis is centered on a sharp critique of how we produce and reproduce a certain forms of knowledge. And the role and responsibility of those who step into this dialectical process of who has the right to know and what they should do with what they know. Moten and Harney go on to suggest that in the face of these conditions one can only sneak into the university and steal what we can. To abuse its hospitality, to spite its mission, to join its refugee colony, its gypsy encampment, to be in, but not of—this is the path of the subversive intellectual in the modern university. The authors are attempting to peel back the cover of knowledge for knowledge sake. They suggest that in this present moment, we must begin to take the path of heretical thinkers. The "maroons knew something about possibility. They are the condition of possibility of production of knowledge in the university—the singularities against the writers of singularity, the writers who write, publish, travel, and speak. It is not merely a matter of the secret labor upon which such space is lifted, though of course such space is lifted from collective labor and by it. It is rather that to be a critical academic in the university is to be against the university, and to be against the university is always to recognize it and be recognized by it, and to institute the negligence of that internal outside, that unassimilated underground, a negligence of it that is precisely, we must insist, the basis of the professions. And this act of against…always excludes the unrecognized modes of politics, the beyond of politics already in motion, the discredited criminal para-organization, what Robin Kelley might refer to as the infrapolitical field (and its music). It is not just the labor of the maroons but their prophetic organization that is negated by the idea of intellectual space in an organization called the university" [31]. Next we will hear an further elaboration of the ideas set out by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney with Dr. Claudrena Harold, author of New Negro Politics in the Jim Crow South from University of Virginia, Dr. Will Boone, Dr. Corey Walker, and myself of Winston Salem State University. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock, Venezuela, Brazil, 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…! Image: Toward a Black University Conference 13-17 November 1968. Hilltop, 8 November 1968...available here: https://www.dc1968project.com/blog/2018/12/27/12-november-1968-amp-toward-a-black-university-conf-hu-begins-tomorrow

Image: Female literacy volunteers return to Havana at the end of the literacy campaign in December 1961 On June 23, 2021, a total of 184 countries on voted in favor of a resolution to demand the end of the US economic blockade on Cuba, for the 29th year in a row, with the United States and Israel, being the only countries voting against resolution. Three countries - Colombia, Ukraine, and Brazil - abstained. Wednesday, July 7, of last week, the world received news of the assassination of then Haitian president in the midst of already tense conditions on the ground. On this same day, a historic press conference with the Cuban Permanent Representative to the UN, H.E. Ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta presented a review and response of the recent vote against the blockade as well as the challenges and promises of the recent development of the Cuban COVID vaccines. On Saturday, July 10, reports via mainstream media outlets began proliferating images and a narrative that suggested that the Cuban people were protesting against the ineffectiveness of the government. However, more detailed and clear journalism shows this was not the case, as the mass majority of the protestors were clear in their disdain for the embargo which in turn has caused deleterious impact on the population. According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “the economic sanctions on Cuba were imposed by the United States of America in 1960 and were subsequently amended by the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996. These acts essentially ban all commercial ties between the United States and Cuba and severely impair the right of United States citizens to travel, to communicate with or carry out cultural exchanges with Cuba. Every year since 1992, the General Assembly has passed a resolution calling for an end to the embargo. The most recent resolution on this issue (A/67/4) was adopted on November 13 2012 by 188 votes against 3, with 2 abstentions. Since the United States is the major regional economic power and the main source of new medicines and technologies, Cuba is subject to deprivations that impinge on its citizens’ human rights. Moreover, the US makes its own foreign trade policy extraterritorial, through a system of secondary sanctions which force third-party countries also into imposing an embargo on Cuba.” For your benefit, and in accordance to the central mission of Africa World Now Project which is to provide a platform that allows you to intentionally organize information toward understanding the root causes of issues that impact historically and ethnically marginalized peoples, paying specific attention to the African/a world, today we will play the recording of the historic press conference organized, in part, by yours truly having nominal input, under the leadership of Obi Egbuna, Jr and a collection of other concern communities and organizations. Next, you will hear the Cuban Permanent Representative to the UN, His Excellency Ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta present a review and response of the recent vote against the blockade as well as the challenges and promises of the recent development of the Cuban COVID vaccines. 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.

According to 'Trane himself, as written in the liner notes to A Love Supreme, “The music herein is presented in four parts. The first is entitled "ACKNOWLEDGEMENT", the second, "RESOLUTION", the third, "PURSUANCE", and the fourth and last part is a musical narration of the theme, "A LOVE SUPREME" which is written in the context; it is entitled "PSALM".” It is also this Psalm, this meditation, part of which I read at the outset, that Coltrane would place on a stand and play as he performed, producing/reproducing what he said is a musical narration of – Love Supreme. Alice Coltrane, a multi-instrumental genius and enlightened spiritual leader is not just Coltrane’s wife. She started her journey before meeting Coltrane. And because of this set her path to cultivate rhythms that can heal the world just as John Coltrane discovered he could do. It could be surmised that her presence in John Coltrane life was divine. It was guided by universal law - a law that states everything is in rhythm, everything is in constant motion. Everything is vibrational. And as we move through life this constant hum, this vibrational hum is sure to attract its tonal partners. In the November 1967 issue of Ebony in an article titled: Requiem for ‘Trane, Archie Shepp suggests that “he [‘Trane] was a bridge…the most accomplished and comprehensive of the so-called post-bop musicians to make an extension into what is called the avant-garde…” (Shepp, 1967). Something else to consider, specifically in relation to John Coltrane being a bridge, standing in a deeper tradition, according to Youngquist in A Pure Solar World Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism, “in the mid-fifties Sun Ra gave a broadsheet entitled “Solaristic Precepts” to John Coltrane. On the broadsheets Sun Ra wrote “Warning this treatise is only for Thinking Beings..." (238). A thinking Being, indeed… In an interview years later, Coltrane would state that, “I think music can make the world better and if I’m qualified, I want to do it. I’d like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcend words. I want to speak to their souls”. And it was with Alice Coltrane who not only accentuated and amplified Coltrane’s ability to synthesis the rhythmic patterns he put together, as he listened to vibrations most of us are unable to, they both became eternal beings, thinking beings who were able to conceive of the Negative reminiscences of Space-Time, as is expressed in Is, Are, Be and reconcepted “AM”. Today...: uninterrupted conversations with our eégún: thinking about the Coltranes [John and Alice] w/ Dr. Anyabwile Love A Philadelphia native, Anyabwile Love completed his graduate studies in Africana Studies at Temple University, receiving his PhD in May 2014. Currently he serves as Associate Editor for the literary journal A Gathering Together and is an Assistant Professor of History + Black Studies at Community College of Philadelphia. Anyabwile is the founder of The John Coltrane Symposium-a community centered annual celebration of Coltrane’s life and his musical legacy, its second annual iteration will be in session, September 22-25, 2021 with a possible extended day until the 26th. For more, follow the symposium’s Instagram page and/or visit the website - https://www.thecoltranesymposium.com/ 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.

Image: Original artwork by @ultravivre There are many attempts to explore and examine who Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, was and is. there are books, documentaries [focused on his life and his assassination], movies, songs, poems, etc. They all explore and examine various aspects of El Shabazz, dissecting his very being. But no matter the complexity of or simplicity in the treatment of El Shabazz’s life, mind, or work…they all lead back to one answer: El Hajj Malik El Shabazz is all of us. Many of us adhere to the idea that nothing ever dies, it only transforms. This is based on what many may call a universal principle, which says that: energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If the idea articulated by this universal principle can be tested…made knowable, then it requires a deeper look into various phenomena. The evolution of the human, its totality, is based on a few factors, which are related to geographical location, the groups understanding of their place, role and responsibilities in this geographical location and the range and scope of the group’s ability to evolve its philosophical and cultural foundations. Important to note this is all based on the response to systemic implications caused by a balance/imbalance dialectic in the midst of this evolution. Ok, ok…what does all of this mean?…the conditions within which a people develop is based on their understanding of their relationship to each other, the environment and the universe. An interdependent process that directly impacts who they are in relationship to more than themselves. What is important to note about this process of becoming is, its ability to imagine. To create ways of being...ways of knowing that transcend the structures of the current or immediate conditions one finds themselves, whether voluntarily, through coercion, or by force. Key to any way of knowing is the ability to develop one’s imagination. It was [and still is] the platform, upon which a people can adequately deal with the balance/imbalance dialectic. It is the most attacked part of the African ways of being. Why? Because we find that the Black imagination is the place best suited to find the most articulate expression of basic human capacities to create, maintain, evolve…to negate the negation. I present this all to say, this is what is meant when we say El Hajj Malik El Shabazz is us. He is the measuring scale upon which we deal with the balance/imbalance dialectic. He is the archetype and most articulate expression of a Black radical imagination. The most articulate expression Black possibilities. What you will hear next is a recent discussion centered around an exploration of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz as critical Africana human rights consciousness with Tasneem Siddiqui, Josh Myers, with reflections from: Dr. Kamau Rashid and Dr. Iyelli Ichile. 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. Listen intently. Thinking deeply. Act accordingly. Link to article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12111-020-09486-3

Image: Malcolm X in 1964, w/ leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Dr. Ahmad Shukeiri. What we are witnessing, in this global moment, is not unprecedented, it is European modernity coming apart at its seams. The loosely tied myths that has kept it together are unraveling, delinking…but it intends to not go easily. The reverberating effect of it fits and fissures are being articulated in its violence. The contradictions are materialized through its human vessels, like a virus seeing its inevitable demise. It is with the unity of struggle, that we can inoculate the praxis of liberation, to ensure this time, as with times we struggled and continue to struggle collectively against imperialism and its attendant colonialism/s, chattel slavery, Apartheid, to follow in the tradition of resistance set before us. Today we look at a component of this unity of struggle…we pay attention to Black and Palestinian intersectional experiences with the violence of the colonial. When thinking about Black and Palestinian liberatory continuities we have plenty to explore, but a good place that we can find its most articulate expression is with Brother Malcolm [El Hajj Malik Shabazz]. As far back as the late 1950s Malcolm had been speaking out in international support of Palestinian liberation. According to Michael Fischbach, “several factors accounted for this. As a member of the Nation of Islam (NOI), Brother Malcolm felt a natural inclination to cultivate a kinship with other Muslims, including Arabs. Arabs had long been involved or in contact with the NOI, among them Jamil Shakir Diab, a Palestinian who immigrated to the United States in 1948 and taught Arabic at the NOI’s University of Islam in Chicago. Of particular note in Malcolm’s pro-Palestinian leanings were two visits he made to the Palestinians’ homeland...He returned to Cairo and attended a press conference given by, Ahmad Shuqayri, the chair of the newly created Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), after which he published a scathing critique of Zionism titled “Zionist Logic” in Cairo’s English language newspaper, the Egyptian Gazette” (Michael Fischbach, The New Left and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in the United States; Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color. Today, we explore Black and Palestine...its history, challenges, and opportunities with Ajamu Dillahunt and Dr. Tasneem Siddiqui. Dr. Tasneem Siddiqui is an assistant professor in the Department of History, Politics, and Social Justice at Winston-Salem State University. She has a PhD in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California (USC). She is currently working on her manuscript; Freedom is a Place: Black Self-Determination and Land-Based Struggles in the Lowcountry and Sea Islands. Dr. Siddiqui is also a valued member of the Africa World Now Project collective where she is a senior researcher and associate producer. Ajamu Amiri Dillahunt is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of History at Michigan State University. He is a member of Black Workers for Justice (BWFJ) and a board member with the Interreligious Foundation of Community Organizations (IFCO). He is also a former intern with the SNCC Digital Gateway Project at Duke University. In May of 2019, Ajamu graduated from North Carolina Central University with a B.A. in History and a B.A. in Political Science. Ajamu also participated in the historic Demilitarize! Durham2Palestine Coalition. 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. Listen intently. Think deeply. Act accordingly.