Langston Hughes, the great African American poet, said decades ago, “Fascism is a new name for that kind of terror the Negro has always faced in America.” Fascism can and has led to genocide. Progressive African American intellectuals, writers, poets, and musicians have had a long tradition and history of solidarity and resisting fascism and genocide, from Frederick Douglass to Gil Scott-Heron, from Sojourner Truth to Angela Davis, from W.E.B. Du Bois to John Lewis, from Paul Robeson to Amiri Baraka, from Ida B. Wells to Malcolm X, from Ella Baker to Dr. King, from Harry Belafonte to Sonny Rollins, from James Baldwin to Cornel West and up to the present moment where Robin D. G. Kelley warns “We're witnessing the consolidation of a fascist police state.” Recorded at the University of Massachusetts.

We are at an inflection point. A chill is sweeping the country. We ignore it at our peril. The warning signs are everywhere. Alaska GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski says, “We are all afraid.” Massachusetts Democratic Governor Maura Healey says, “The fear is real.” New York Times columnist Masha Gessen writes, “America’s Police State Has Arrived.” A Columbia University dean told students, “Nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times.” Conservative PBS commentator David Brooks calls for “a civic uprising to fight back and adds: “We have nothing to lose but our chains.” Dissent is being criminalized. People are being deported without any kind of due process. Court rulings are being ignored. Democracy, civil liberties and free speech are all under attack. What can be done to reverse cowboy authoritarianism in America? Recorded at the University of British Columbia.

April 24th marks the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. I grew up in the 1950s in New York in the shadow of that tragedy. I was surrounded by survivors named Garabedian, Giragosian, Hagopian and others who always spoke fondly of “yergeer,” the country they were forced to abandon. My mother, Araxie, was from Dubneh, a village near Diyarbakir, and my father, Bedros, was from Nbishi, a village near Palu in what is now Eastern Turkey. Their memories, and those of others from the “old” country, filled my ears as did their tales of how they escaped death and got to America. I’d listened to their stories in Armenian, not understanding everything, but knowing for them, “yergeer” was a special place. It was home. Houshamadyan are precious memory books of a millennial-old civilization virtually lost but not forgotten. Recorded at the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR).

Monopoly isn’t just a board game it is the animating dynamic of our economic system. Really existing capitalism, which relies heavily on taxpayer support, embodies a near genetic drive to consolidate, to dominate and ultimately to eliminate competition. This leaves people with fewer choices and higher prices, exactly the outcome desired by the monopolists. Democracy, particularly in the U.S., has largely morphed into an oligarchy run by and for plutocrats. As corporate control of media increases and as inequality widens, and as the eco-crisis continues apace, one can expect a future of social unrest.

Noam Chomsky calls the Israel, U.S., and Palestine relationship a “Fateful Triangle.” He says,“ In no other region of the world are the problems so likely to lead to devastating regional conflict.” He adds, those problems “have only been aggravated by the irrationality and intolerance that has dominated discussion in the U.S. It will be unfortunate if this state of affairs persists,” he warns. Alas, Chomsky wrote those words more than 50 years ago. The U.S. has given Israel hundreds of billions in aid over the years. In addition, Washington provides crucial diplomatic, political and military support. Internationally, because of Gaza both the U.S. and Israel are increasingly isolated. General Moshe Yallon, former Israeli chief of staff and defense minister, says Israel is committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing. Interview by David Barsamian. Recorded at the Boulder Public Library.

Parts of the U.S. are an eco-disaster, a sacrifice zone. Take Newark, NJ. If you travel down a one-mile stretch of Doremus Avenue in Newark you pass a natural gas plant next to a sewage treatment facility next to an animal fat rendering plant next to a series of ominous-looking chemical storage containers behind acres of fencing. Airplanes pass overhead every two minutes, their engines rattling windows, while a putrid smell wafts from the open pools at the sewage treatment plant. Nationally, where are these polluters located? Overwhelmingly in poor communities of color like the Ironbound section of Newark where activists are organizing and fighting back to create a just, vibrant and sustainable community.

Bigotry and hatred, fear and loathing, are on the rise. Vulnerable groups are being targeted. It’s happened before. Decades ago, speaking to the National Jewish Congress, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr said, “My people were brought to America in chains. Your people were driven here to escape the chains fashioned for them in Europe. There are Hitlers loose in America today, both in high and low places. As the tensions and bewilderment of economic problems become more severe, history's scapegoats, the Jews, will be joined by new scapegoats, the Negroes. The Hitlers will seek to divert people's minds and turn their frustrations and anger to the helpless, to the outnumbered.” Recorded at the University of Colorado.

History, “The past” as Faulkner wrote, “is never dead. It's not even past." Trauma, a Greek word for wound, takes on myriad shapes and forms. It often remains and reverberates through generations. There is individual trauma and collective trauma. However, just because you suffered does not give you permission to inflict suffering on others. Angela Davis said, “Victimization cannot be permitted to function as a halo of innocence.” Empathy is the ability to take on another person's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience. Victims need our empathy, our compassion but not according to the world’s richest man. Elon Musk has said, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, is led by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. It operates in virtual secrecy. Its slash and burn tactics have resulted in thousands of government workers losing their jobs, sometimes with little or no notice. Budgets are being hollowed out to pay for massive tax breaks for the oligarchs. Activist, organizer, politician Kshama Sawant warns, “We cannot understate the damage being done by Trump, Musk and company. It is austerity on steroids, deregulation on steroids, imperialism on steroids” and along with that she says it’s “the most dramatic concentration of executive power” in memory. There’s only one thing that will stop the Trump-Musk juggernaut. Collective citizen action. Workers! Fight Back! Recorded at the Langston Hughes Center for the Performing Arts.

When faced with adversity one can look away and do nothing. But for our own dignity and self-respect we must fight back and resist the depredations of the state and corporate sector. Historically speaking this is one of those critical inflection points. A lot of people are deeply concerned about the Trump regime and Elon Musk. The social safety net is being shredded while the gazillionaires make out like bandits. Tariq Ali says, “What the United States needs today is an opposition, which fights back politically, intellectually, and culturally with arguments, and, when necessary, comes out on the streets to defend democracy, a grassroots uprising. We need activists more than ever before.” Recorded at St. Thomas University.