All Thought Is Black Thought

G challenges O to think less about the political theory of organizing for a moment and think more about the personal events in his life that brought him to identify with other oppressed people and organize to fight back against that oppression. G & O share stories from their experiences that helped radicalize them and the love and joy they experience in struggle.

How do we survive capitalism while organizing its end? Thinking about violent events like the Flint water crisis, the police murder of Breonna Taylor, or the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 have many Black radical activists asking: As we organize to bring down the oppressive capitalistic structure, are we preparing ways to amass the resources and capacities we as Black people will need to survive this genocidal structure in the meantime? In this episode, G & O begin to think through these sets of questions. The brothers recorded this episode shortly after the 2020 election was called. The celebrations of November, which would soon be followed with the horrors of January, led the brothers to reflect on that moment, even before white supremacist terrorists tried to violently overturn the election and murder government officials. What the brothers saw, and still see even after the January 6 attacks on the capitol, is a moment way bigger than the election. In this moment there is an opening, a need for big ideas in critical Black thought, including Black self-sufficiency and self-defense, Black conversations about the role of government, surviving within capitalism while working to destroy it, and the importance of radical leadership from the Black  poor and working class.

The brothers review the classic Black revolutionary film The Spook Who Sat by the Door, directed by Ivan Dixon and based on Sam Greenlee's novel of the same title. Please find it on YouTube while it's still available!

Remember the "1776 Commission"? Started by Donald Trump late in 2020, its intent was to force feed students with so-called "patriotic education" and to counter the 1619 Project of new york times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones. In this episode, the brothers discuss the foolishness of trump's 1776 Commission. They point out that, even though trump lost, the Black intellectuals on the 1776 Commission represent an ongoing problem internal to our communities: Black intellectual misleadership appointed by white people and white interests to lead Black people to ignore our collective experiences and knowledge and to force us to conform our thinking to that which our enslavers and genociders will allow.

The brothers recorded this review of Shaka King's 2021 film Judas and the Black Messiah a few months before Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield were up for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (which Kaluuya won, but Stanfield should also have gotten an award). The brothers briefly discuss the actors' performances, casting, and writing, but mostly they focus on the film's contribution to Hollywood's long history of depicting Black love and Black radicalism, as well as the Black Panthers' historical role in politically organizing Black street organizations, the force of Black resistance to police murder, and the police infiltration of and war on the Black liberation movement. The brothers also talk about the building of Black leadership capacity through political education and the importance of preparing for self-defense, intelligence, and counter-intelligence capacities in Black movements.

NOTE: The brothers urge people to read Native American Studies scholar Ward Churchill and writer Jim Vander Wall's book Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement and check out episode #12 of this podcast, in which the brothers discussed that book.