...What we finna do come tomorrow?

...especially if the overseer of your choice doesn't win

...will you fear power or contest with it?

A hallmark feature of any presidential election in a racist country is the continued psychological warfare against the colonized, especially Black people, who, along with Arab Muslims, will be inevitably blamed, scapegoated or strategically pitted against one another in service of the powers that be, for no other reason than if we were to coalesce our efforts toward our own interests and liberation, that could signal the end of empire and all the symbolism, pomp and circumstance that they hope will keep us distracted and placated.

We are living in a lie, a constant paradox:

Black people are no better off from the open theft and profiteering of our culture by white people but appropriation masked as "multiculturalism" in the media is at an all time high and judging by the decreasing numbers of Black folks in physical public space in major metropolitan cities, is showing no signs of slowing down (if you can just "be" Black, why would you need Black people?). Record numbers of white people are using tiktok and other technologies to fine tune their mimicry of what they think Blackness is while at the same time decrying we won't be "replaced"; Vanity fair is publishing articles about the "radicalization of america's white young men" and giving a well known white supremacist a whole spread about how wealthy "conservative extremists" are calling themselves "anti-imperialists" in a fake populist rebrand while a privately owned newspaper is upset at its billionaire owner for blocking their presidential endorsement and also regularly publishing Israel centric propaganda around freeing the hostages when there are twice as many or more Palestinians held captive before oct 7? This is sometimes peppered with actual unbiased coverage of the genocide here and there (to some individual writers' credit).

The US says it is committed to protecting Ukrainian sovereignty after Russia's attempts to annex their land but not that of the Palestinian people...who also had their land stolen?

In 2021, Kamala Harris was quoted saying wars are fought over oil but in a few years it’ll be over water

Elon Musk is building what will be the world's largest supercomputer in South Memphis, TN in a predominately Black community and authorities there greenlit the project with no community input or oversight in a part of the city that is currently plagued by a water crisis, replete with lead and other pollutants. This is 3 years after the community started a successful grassroots resistance movement that stopped two companies who were planning to build a major oil pipeline right in the middle of a historic Black neighborhood. They did the bulk of their organizing during and despite of a Trump presidency.

European investors are buying farmlands in water rich areas, mostly in Africa and even in parts of the US to sell to areas that are water poor and dividing up last remaining farmland on earth to take advantage of what they call...

“Empire crops”

This has been happening under democractic and republican administrations. So again, what's going to be our answer? Will it b a departure from what colonialism wants, thinking about something other than yourself? What's it going to be after you slip that paper in that box?

Recommended Reading and Resources Forthcoming at www.patreon.com/ihartericka

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Rashad Pridgen (Soul Nubian). Rest in Power, my love

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-rashad-pridgens-artistic-life-celebration

Intro: Fannie Lou Hamer's Credentials Committee Testimony (1964) for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which she co-founded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRCUUzpfV7k

Alt episode titles: Vote and/or Die

The Revolution Will Not Be TikTok'd at the DNC

Voting in this country was created as a means of giving those least empowered the veneer of control over a democratic system that was designed to be autocratic really and only with the interests of a small few white people in mind. And by those—I mean those constitutionally considered human.

The constitution and declaration of independence could have been written w the blood of Black indigenous and Indigenous/First Nations so much of it was spilled to birth the current system whose efficacy and legitimacy we all find ourselves in constant debate about online and elsewhere.

So yes ima think voting is the only means to achieve change or the most powerful change in a system that tells us routinely how to go about change and how not to go about change so that nothing will ever change, because if I stopped believing that, I’d have to actually do something more than what I’m told, I’d have to imagine, I’d have to create, I’d have to divest from whiteness, I might not make a million dollars, I might make a million enemies, I might have to go out after I vote and hit the streets and never leave, I might have to care about people the system has deemed undesirable and disposal

I mean that’s a tall order for the average person in a white supremacist capitalist society that works me til I’m broken and breaks me til I’m dead

I’ll take the fucking sticker instead!!

Is that how the song goes?

Join us for a special election episode exploring:

Electoral College Origins and Inexplicable Explanations for Its Continued Use 200 plus years later

Kamala Harris criticism - unprincipled and legitimate, misinformation and who it serves surprisingly, a critique of Harris is an endorsement of trump? The anxiety and fear around critiques of Kamala being co-opted and bastardized by white supremacists

People online defending electoral politics by positing that there are no revolutions happening despite the fact that current revolutions happening everywhere...maybe even next door.

- [ ] Mayamar

- [ ] Kenya

- [ ] Venezuela

- [ ] Cop City

- [ ] Land back campaigns

- [ ] Palestine

Outro: el Hajj Malik el Shabazz

"Democracy is Hypocrisy Sticker"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNfAFfu6VD0

Recommended Reading and Resources Forthcoming at www.patreon.com/ihartericka

Alt episode titles: Somewhere Over the Chase Bank, There is Community and Solidarity

They Just Want Our Money, Not Our Pride: The Rainbow Capitalism Episode

Intro Audio Excerpt: Sylvia Rivera (Rest in Power) interview from NYC Pride 2001

https://x.com/ben_0207/status/1800675695661842651

Who does rainbow capitalism benefit most? Who does it protect?

What it is and what it is not

Who gets seen in rainbow capitalism and who gets left out?

What do we do without white cis het corporate crumbs? Will we be forced to rely and lean on each other, community, village and return pride to its roots as a riot, a protest?

Rainbow capitalism is racism, facism, the anti-thesis to queer. It's not the queer celebrities making millions from marketing to and profiting from Black and Brown queer and trans folks on the margins that are going to save us, just US.

If we are fighting for us to take back our resistance and liberation from the very apolitical, corporate, white pride structure. And we're fighting to liberate ourselves and to liberate one another, and we're doing so with a strong framework of solidarity, the question is not necessarily what's our responsibility, what's our response to anti-blackness, transphobia, cisheteronormativity, imperialist capitalism that attempts, with gusto, to pervade our movement and end our lives?

The Origins of Pinkwashing and its connection to the apartheid state of Israel

For a free list of recommended readings, materials and resources, visit www.patreon.com/ihartericka.com

To purchase merch: https://ihartericka.com/shop/

Portion of the proceeds go to Celebration of Black Transwomen Cookout, Within Our Lifetime, Friends of the Congo and Hometax Sudan. Let's run it up for them.

This episode is sponsored by Bookshop.org

Find a local Black queer and/or trans owned bookstore near you:

https://bookshop.org/pages/bookstores

Editors note: the podcast about the genocide in Sudan I referenced is called, Society of Strife, NOT Society of Destruction.

No Pride without Black Trans Liberation and Reparations--Not Rations, Pooh.

Black trans liberation, much like Black liberation and the liberation of all oppressed peoples across the globe, requires a complete redistribution and reorganization of the current power structure/status quo--is GLAAD ready? Is GLSEN ready? Are you ready?

Alt episode titles:

How do we respond to white violence? (aka what's the proper procedure?)

Coddling of the dominant narratives and who gets permission to be tardy to the party?

The faux care economy and celebrity machine--who actually cares and do we, as marginalized peoples, need them to?

Hoodrat to Headwrap to Lacefront ft Elle Moxley

What resistance will require of us? What does solidarity demand of us?

Recommended Reading and Resources:

Go see the I'm Your Venus film, executive produced by our homegirl, the artist, filmmaker, director and icon Jonovia Chase:

Tix here:

https://tribecafilm.com/films/i-m-your-venus-2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/arts/design/kiyan-williams-whitney-biennial-white-house.html

BK's own Ms. Boogie's newest slapper, The Breakdown: https://open.spotify.com/album/1FOqdClvDEVvUajf7wjz7j

Subscribe and check out: FQ Crazy, Sexy, & Cool Podcast hosted by Asia Snowden, Tabytha Gonzalez and Tempress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLxAFIKLKEc

Episode dedicated in loving memory and honor of Tamir Rice

Places to Support:

Tamir Rice Foundation:

https://www.tamirericefoundation.org/donate

Within our Lifetime:

https://wolpalestine.com/donate/

Marsha P Johnson Institute: https://www.flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/NjY0OTc

Black Trans Femmes in the Arts:

https://www.btfacollective.org/

Episode this month sponsored by Bookshop.org, use code PRIDE24 for 15% off select LGBTQIA+ titles

For more recommended reading materials and resources, visit patreon.com/ihartericka

For Hind, For Dexter, For Wadea, For Jordan and all others whose names go underreported, whose lives are undervauled, whose resistance is met with no fanfare.

Support Within Our Lifetime, Palestinian led NYC based community organization: https://wolpalestine.com

The genocidal settler colonial regime of Israel will be brought to heel, the genocidal settler colonial United States government will be brought to heel.

We must do this together and resist the allure of anti-Black divisive voices and agents of the state, would be movement detractors seeking to undermine and silence hundreds of years of Black and Palestinian coalition building and solidarity. We will win.

Source: Audio excerpt from YouTube, “Kwame Ture’s Debate with a Zionist” (1973)

Recommended Readings/Resources

https://www.aaihs.org/coke-money-and-apartheid-divestment-in-u-s-higher-education/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41067218

https://www.wsj.com/finance/dear-columbia-students-divestment-from-israel-wont-work-48c56f57#:~:text=The%20divestment%20campaign%2C%20along%20with,their%20government%20to%20change%20direction.

Parts 1 and 2

If the shoe fit, go grab some socks

"without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and [their] oppression."--Audre Lorde

Join us for a special episode of Black People Tell Black History (yes, it's giving very much Anita Baker 365 days of the year same ol love) with our love Elle Moxley talking about community, how some of ya;ll wouldnt know what it is if it fell and hit you in the head and how market forces, capitalism and white supremacy are driving us away from each other, the theft of our culture is driving us away from each other in an attempt to lessen our pride in our shared identity and even that's not enough to assure solidarity, gentrification is physically doing the job of isolating Black folks from one another. So what do we do?

When it comes to liberation, everybody won't come (and don't want to)

Everybody is not your friend and how we (mostly Ebony) are resisting all of that and subsequently learning the hard way.

Thank you, ReesaTeesa.

Alternate episode titles:

-Be a Revolution or Keep it Moving, either way don't step on a n*gga toes

-Just Circling Back to Next Steps from 2020

-Ijeoma is about to go chill and write mysteries cus a lot of yall dont want to be a revolution nor talk about race

Join us for a very special episode with Ijeoma Oluo talking about her new book, "Be a Revolution", out now, the racism in the publishing world as a Black writer and a path forward.

https://www.ijeomaoluo.com/

Ijeoma Oluo is a writer, speaker and internet yeller. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America and, coming in January 2024, BE A REVOLUTION: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World - and How You Can, Too. Her work on race has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among many other publications. She was named to the 2021 TIME 100 Next list and has twice been named to the Root 100.https://www.ijeomaoluo.com/

Intro Music: @patience.sings on IG

Consider becoming a patron to support this podcast: www.patreon.com/ihartericka

...and can save your life. Join us for a very special episode of Black People Tell Black History with the one and only Tricia Hersey (IG @thenapministry) as she gives you a quick 30 minutes of necessary game on this Monday afternoon made for wage theft and dream death on how imagination was a requisite for our ancestors' freedoms, the blueprint they laid out for revolution and how to take back your body from the State from can't see in the morning to can't see at night.

Support for Tricia and more resources:

www.thenapministry.com

If you don't do nothing else today, please check out her new book, Rest is Resistance, a guide and manifesto on Black liberation's departure from white supremacist capitalist grind culture

Playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/51E6lgtFIq0vdQYuHf3Tap?si=e14d54cf12f94d24

Tricia is the founder of The Nap Ministry, the originator of the ‘rest as resistance’ and ‘rest as reparations’ frameworks, and creates sacred spaces where the liberatory, restorative, and disruptive power of rest can take hold. Tricia’s work is seeded within the soils of Black radical thought, somatics, Afrofuturism, womanism, and liberation theology, and is a guide for how to collectively deprogram, decolonize, and unravel ourselves from the wreckage of capitalism and white supremacy. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto and The Nap Ministry’s Rest Deck: 50 Practices to Resist Grind Culture.

Intro Music: Patience Sings (@patience.sings on IG)

Consider becoming a patron to support this podcast: www.patreon.com/ihartericka

...it is now a multiracial collaboration, an amerikkkan "folk" tradition, if you will.

From its pseudoscientific, colonial roots to nick cannon, join us for another episode of Black People Tell Black History and a deep deep conversation with one of the leading voices drawing attention to and upending colorism as it iterates itself in all facets of life, across the globe, @mayowasworld. We cover what it is, what it's not and how to stop it.

Mayowa is a writer, stand-up comedian, and discourse girlie who has spent the past decade between London, Berlin, Lagos & and now back in Atl. Their work discusses anti-blackness and how it shows up within: colorism, texturism & desirability.

Support for Mayowa:

Instagram: @mayowasworld

venmo @mayowasworld

PayPal.me/Mayowasworld

linktr.ee/mayowasworld

Intro Music: Patience (@patience.sings)

Consider becoming a patron to support this podcast: www.patreon.com/ihartericka

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

― Audre Lorde

Join us in discussing the Black intersex revolution, imagination beyond violence visited upon our bodies and community as home with our dear love Saifa Wall.

Sean Saifa Wall (he/him/his) is a Black queer intersex activist and rising scholar. Born and raised in the Bronx, Saifa attended Williams College and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Huddersfield in England examining the erasure of intersex people from social policy in Ireland and England. Saifa is the former Board President of interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth and a former advisor to the Astraea Intersex Fund for Human Rights. Above all else, Saifa is determined to end harmful and invasive genital surgery on intersex children and advocate for affirming healthcare for all people with intersex variations. In addition to his work and activism, he is a loving dad to his dog, Justice.

Support for Saifa:

Every Body film: https://www.focusfeatures.com/every-body/watch/

Personal Website: https://www.seansaifa.com/

Black Intersex History: https://www.them.us/story/little-jimmy-scott-black-intersex-history-profile

Venmo: @seansaifa-wall

Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/seansaifa

Consider becoming a patron to support this podcast: www.patreon.com/ihartericka