This is part two of a two-part episode. This part of the conversation deals more with the actions that led to Mann's political imprisoment and his experiences as a political prisoner.

In this two-part episode, we are joined by special cohost PM, and we speak with veteran civil rights organizer Eric Mann about his journey from his upbringing in New York to his involvement in political struggles during the 1960s. Mann discusses his early influences, including his parents' activism. He reflects on his work with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), highlighting key campaigns such as the Trailways boycott and the 1968 Columbia University student strike. 

Mann also recounts his time as a political prisoner, offering insights into the carceral system and the impact of incarceration on his life and activism. He emphasizes the importance of building a black-led united front against imperialism and shares his ongoing work with the Labor Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles. Mann's narrative highlights the importance of organizing, strategic alliances, and the ongoing liberation struggle. Eric Mann is the co-director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in South Central Los Angeles. He is the author of Comrade George: An Investigation into the Life, Political Thought, and Assassination of George Jackson, Playbook for Progressives: The 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer, and the forthcoming We Made the Revolution with Our Bodies on the Line. PM Irvin is a PhD candidate researching the political thought of W.E.B. Du Bois and 20th-century Black radicalism   This episode was edited and produced by Aidan Elias. Music, as always, by Televangel. If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month. We bring you these conversations totally independently with no corporate, state, or grant funding.

In this two-part episode, we are joined by special cohost PM, and we speak with veteran civil rights organizer Eric Mann about his journey from his upbringing in New York to his involvement in political struggles during the 1960s. Mann discusses his early influences, including his parents' activism. He reflects on his work with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), highlighting key campaigns such as the Trailways boycott and the 1968 Columbia University student strike. 

Mann also recounts his time as a political prisoner, offering insights into the carceral system and the impact of incarceration on his life and activism. He emphasizes the importance of building a black-led united front against imperialism and shares his ongoing work with the Labor Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles. Mann's narrative highlights the importance of organizing, strategic alliances, and the ongoing liberation struggle. Eric Mann is the co-director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in South Central Los Angeles. He is the author of Comrade George: An Investigation into the Life, Political Thought, and Assassination of George Jackson, Playbook for Progressives: The 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer, and the forthcoming We Made the Revolution with Our Bodies on the Line. PM Irvin is a PhD candidate researching the political thought of W.E.B. Du Bois and 20th-century Black radicalism   This episode was edited and produced by Aidan Elias. Music, as always, by Televangel. If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month. We bring you these conversations totally independently with no corporate, state, or grant funding.

In this conversation we talk with Garrett Felber about their latest book A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre. 

In discussing this new political biography, we cover Sostre’s ideological and political journey, history as a jailhouse lawyer, his forms of organizing practice, and the ways that people supported his campaign for freedom from political imprisonment. We talk about the influence of Great Depression era Harlem, Black and Puerto Rican Nationalism, Marxism-Leninism, national liberation movements, armed struggle, Women’s Liberation, and Anarchism on Sostre’s political thought and practice. Although much of what we know about Martin Sostre has to do with political letters and writings during the time of his incarceration, Felber also shares insights that few know about Sostre’s life, community organizing, and institution building on the outside.

Garrett Felber is an educator, writer, and organizer. They are the author of Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State, and coauthor of The Portable Malcolm X Reader, with Manning Marable. Felber is a cofounder of the abolitionist collective Study and Struggle and is currently building a radical mobile library, the Free Society People's Library, in Portland, Oregon.

Yesterday we hosted Garrett Felber along with Russell Shoatz III on a livestream where we talked about some of the resonances between Martin Sostre’s life, political thought, and approaches to political prisoner defense work and that of Russell “Maroon” Shoatz and we also discussed CURBfest which is expanding to the West Coast for the first time this year. 

Tomorrow Thursday the 29th we will host a livestream on Sundiata Jawanza’s Freedom Campaign including a quickly approaching parole hearing. We encourage all of you to go to the website and send letters of support for his release. The website says that letters were due on May 19th, but there is still just a little time if you can get a letter in the mail today or at least submit one electronically or contribute to the legal support fund that would be great. 

There are a number of other initiatives we want to share related to this episode, the campaign to free the Mississippi 5 which Garrett Felber mentions in this episode and the exoneration effort for Martin Sostre and his codefendant who is still with Geraldine (Robinson) Pointer. Links for that are in the show description.

If you like the work that we do, please contribute to our patreon or BuyMeACoffee accounts. These episodes each take hours of preparation, recording time, and production time and listeners like you are the only means of support for that work. Over the last month we’ve seen a 10% decline in recurring support. We know people are under financial strain right now, but if more of you who listen are able to contribute even a dollar a month it helps make this show possible and sustainable. Thank you for your support!

Links: 

Martin Sostre and Geraldine (Robinson) Pointer's names should have been cleared after they were framed. By signing and adding your name, you're supporting our effort to make what's been delayed for far too long a reality for these two transformational former political prisoners (Petition / for more information)

Sundiata Jawanza (livestream, legal support fund, website, Jericho Movement page)

Free the Mississippi 5

Garrett Felber along with Russell Shoatz III on a (MAKC) livestream

Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State (MAKC episode)

A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre (version for people outside the walls/ incarcerated readers edition)

Martin Sostre - Letters From Prison

Orisanmi Burton episode on the Rx Program 

 

 

 

This is the conclusion of our two part conversation with Tariq Khan on his book The Republic Shall Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression.

In part one of the conversation we laid out many of the general dynamics between anti-indigenous settler colonial violence in the 19th Century and the development of the earliest iterations of anticommunism in the so-called United States, long before McCarthyism or even what’s recognized by historians as the first Red Scare. In this conversation we talk about some of the legal precedents that the Trump administration has dusted off for some of his attempts to remove or exclude people for political views. 

Because we recorded this conversation in December before Trump took office for his second term, we did not directly address several of his actions that draw from this history. The renaming of Denali as Mt. McKinley, drawing directly on laws used to deport anarchists to go after immigrants for their political views, and continuing the genocidal legacy of this settler colonial empire in fueling the genocide in Gaza. In addition to McKinley who was assassinated by an anarchist motivated in part by the US’s war in the Philippines, we talk about contrasting figures like Teddy Roosevelt, John Hay, and Albert and Lucy Parsons and the influence that the later half of the 19th century, and 1877 in particular, had on their political trajectories. In addition we talk about the history of lynching and sexual violence and the relationship this practice had to disciplining anarchists alongside its roles for white society and as a repression mechanism against solidarity across racial lines. 

Dr. Tariq Khan is a historian with an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the intertwined forces underlying and shaping our social, political, economic, and cultural institutions. He has wide-ranging research, writing, and teaching experience in the fields of global capitalism, transnational studies, U.S. history, psychology, sociology, ethnicity & race studies, gender studies, colonialism & postcolonialism, labor & working-class history, radical social movements, history “from below,” public history, and community-based research and teaching.

A few things to shout-out. Recently I had the pleasure of joining the good people of Tankie Group Therapy on the East is a Podcast. I also recently joined Nick Estes from the Red Nation Podcast for a discussion of J. Sakai’s book Settlers and went on Saturdays with Renee with Renee Johnston and Jared Ball. Recent episodes on our YouTube channel include Freedom Archives, Abdaljawad Omar, Momodou Taal, Steven Salaita, and a couple of discussions on Pakistan, India, and Kashmir. Make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel so you can catch all of that work as well.

If you like the work that we do, please support our show via patreon you can do so for as little as $1 a month and now you can also make a one-time contribution through BuyMeACoffee. Your support is what makes this show possible. 

 

 

In this episode, we speak with Edward Ongweso Jr about "artificial intelligence" and its implications, particularly concerning corporate interests and historical parallels with labor control. Edward critiques the term “artificial intelligence” for obscuring the underlying digital technologies and algorithmic systems that serve corporate agendas, emphasizing the narrow view of intelligence that excludes human cognitive elements. The conversation delves into the historical roots of computation, drawing parallels between modern AI and 19th-century plantation management techniques aimed at maximizing productivity and control. 

We also explore the exploitation of global south workers in AI development, likening it to racialized regimes of chattel slavery. Furthermore, Ongweso critiques the concept of surveillance capitalism, arguing that surveillance has been integral to capitalism since its origins, particularly post-World War II, through marketing revolutions, the military-industrial complex, and financialization. The discussion concludes with an analysis of techno-authoritarianism, highlighting Silicon Valley's historical hostility to democracy and its prioritization of technologies that advance surveillance and social control. Edward is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. Most of his work centers around tech criticism, labor and financial reporting, and book reviews. He is also the co-host of This Machine Kills, a podcast started in 2020 to discuss the political economy of technology. Support us via Patreon or BuyMeACoffee   Relevant Links:   Surveillance capitalism vs techno-feudalism vs techno-authoritarianism   A Materialist Approach to the Tech Industry: From Household to Military Tech with Dwayne Monroe      

 

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Charles H.F. Davis III about the increasingly repressive conditions on university campuses, particularly in the context of Columbia University's caving in to federal pressures under the thumb of Trump’s administration. We explore the broader implications of these concessions at the expense of liberalized notions of intellectual and academic freedom, student activism, and the role of universities as sites of political struggle. Dr. Davis highlights the historical and ongoing repression of student activism, particularly pro-Palestinian movements, and critiques the legal and institutional frameworks that perpetuate these violences. We also delve into the limitations of liberalism in fending off fascist infringement and the active participation of universities in maintaining these structures of domination. We also touch on the historical collaboration between Zionist organizations and U.S. universities, the erosion of diversity and inclusion initiatives, and the broader implications for the future of higher education. Dr. Charles H.F. Davis III is a third-generation educator, organizer, and artist. He is a faculty member in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education and director of the Campus Abolition Research Lab at the University of Michigan. His research and teaching broadly explore the racialized consequences of higher education on society, including the role of colleges and universities in limiting the life-making possibilities of Black and other racialized communities.

Edited/produced by Aidan Elias, music as always is by Televangel

If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron or supporting us at BuyMeACoffee.com/MAKCapitalism. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month at patreon or by making a one time contribution through BuyMeACoffee.  

Longer bio: 

Dr. Charles H.F. Davis III is a third-generation educator, organizer, and artist committed to the lives, love, and liberation of everyday Black people. Dr. Davis is a faculty member in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education and director of the Campus Abolition Research Lab at the University of Michigan. His research and teaching broadly explore the racialized consequences of higher education on society, including the role of colleges and universities in limiting the life-making possibilities of Black and other racially minoritized communities. Dr. Davis has produced nearly three dozen scholarly publications, which have been cited in amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court of the United States and included as expert testimony before the California State Assembly. He is co-editor of Student Activism, Politics, and Campus Climates in Higher Education (Routledge) and author of the forthcoming Campus Abolition and Police-Free Futures on Johns Hopkins University Press. For his intellectual contributions, Dr. Davis been nationally-recognized by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, as a 2020 Emerging Scholar by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, a recipient of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, a 2024 Inductee to the Martin Luther King, Jr. College of Ministers and Laity’s Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College and, most recently, was named a Senior Fellow at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. At the institutional level, Dr. Davis’ teaching and service have been recognized as the 2023 recipient of the John Matlock Cornerstone Award for his contributions to the success of African American students at the University of Michigan and the 2024 Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, and Equity Award at the U-M Marsal Family School of Education.

In this episode we interview Tariq Khan on his book The Republic Shall Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression. 

We’ll be releasing this conversation as a two part episode on this excellent book which studies how anticommunism within the US is deeply intertwined with settler colonialism, anti-indigenous thought, and genocidal violence. This helps us to reframe our often twentieth century centric view of anti-left repression in the US. Khan’s work on the 19th century in particular also helps us to see the ways things like race science, eugenics, and phrenology were formed a backbone of the original assumptions of US policing, anti-anarchist repression, lynching, and regimes of deportation. Alongside and related to settler colonial violence against indigenous people, and anti-Black violence, we also through this conversation really get into how central the repression of anarchists in the 19th century was to the development of logics and technologies of anti-left repression in the so-called United States. 

It is also important to see the resonance between US genocidal violence and state repression and that of the so-called State of Israel on Palestinians, something we explore a little bit more in part two of this discussion along with delving into William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt and more.

This conversation was recorded this past December so we don’t reference a lot of what has happened in the last couple of months, but pairing this conversation with a discussion we hosted on our YouTube channel a week ago with Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly (CBS) helps us to see how many things we are constantly told represent the crossing of new red lines, or the onset of a fascism that is foreign to the US, are actually foundational pillars of US statecraft, warfare and policing with very long histories. 

On the subject of our YouTube channel, we have once again been very busy over there, releasing eight episodes over the last two weeks. We are only 13 subscribers away from 10,000 on our YouTube page, so now is a great time to sign up for free if you haven’t, and help us to hit that milestone. And you can catch up on all the conversations we’ve had over there recently and over the past year and a half if you’ve been following us there.

We also set-up a “Buy Me A Coffee” account which allows people to offer us one time support if they prefer doing that instead of the recurring contributions of patreon. You can support us in either place, and that is the only financial support we receive for these audio episodes, so we really appreciate whatever you can give to keep these conversations coming. 

Music by Televangel 

Guest bio:

Dr. Tariq Khan is a historian with an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the intertwined forces underlying and shaping our social, political, economic, and cultural institutions. He has wide-ranging research, writing, and teaching experience in the fields of global capitalism, transnational studies, U.S. history, psychology, sociology, ethnicity & race studies, gender studies, colonialism & postcolonialism, labor & working-class history, radical social movements, history “from below,” public history, and community-based research and teaching. A few examples of his published works are his chapter “Living Social Dynamite: Early Twentieth-Century IWW-South Asia Connections,” in the book Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW,  his chapter “Frantz Fanon,” in the forthcoming anthology Fifty Key Scholars in Black Social Thought, and his new book The Republic Shall Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression

In this episode, we speak with Khadijah Haynes about her recent piece, "A Fetus on the Dirt Road” which offers a sharp critique of Western feminism's complicity in imperialism and its historical roots in racial violence. Haynes argues that Western feminism often obscures the struggles of both Black women and men, relying on colonial and anti-Black logics that fail to address the broader context of sexualized, gendered, and racialized abuses of all Black African people. 

We discuss other historical and contemporary critiques of feminism, argue that feminism does not have a monopoly over women’s liberation struggle, and try to offer some clarity on what this might mean for Black feminisms and other forms of feminisms that are trying to encompass a progressive or transformative philosophy.  She emphasizes the need for a more inclusive and revolutionary framework that integrates the liberation of all oppressed peoples, critiquing both Western Marxism and feminism for their limitations. We also discuss quite explicitly the sexual violences faced by Palestinian and Black men, challenging the dominant narratives that obscure these experiences—and how the dogmatism and essentialism of Western feminism has more often than not played a role in obscuring these experiences.

Khadija is a tenant organizer in Brooklyn, writer, poet, and emcee. As a Marxist-Leninist, her works centers the revolutionary struggle of oppressed people both in the underbelly of the imperial core and globally.

If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month. We bring you these conversations totally independently with no corporate, state, or grant funding. You can also support us on Buy Me A Coffee now!

This week on our YT channel we also had conversations with Alex Aviña, Adnan Husain from Guerrilla History, Charisse Burden-Stelly (Dr. CBS), and Sina Rahmani of The East Is A Podcast.

This episode was edited by Aidan Elias. Music by Televangel. 

A Fetus on the Dirt Road: Against Imperial Feminisms, Claims of Mass Rape, and Exploring the Theory of Sepulcherality - Khadija Haynes

the color of jade and timber (for my sisters) - Khadija Haynes "On Why I'm Leaving the Party" [CPUSA] - Socialism For All Rupturing the Aesthetic - Black Power Media Deception of the People - Khadija x August Fanon Some other episodes related to or cited in the discussion:   Losurdo's Western Marxism with Gabriel Rockhill

Bury the Corpse of Colonialism - Elisabeth Armstrong on Women’s Internationalism at the Dawn of Anticolonial Movements

Neocapitalism According to Michel Clouscard 

 

In this episode, recorded mid-2024, we speak with Ted Rutland about the evolution of policing from the mid-20th century's professional model to the counterinsurgency urbanism that emerged in the 1970s and 80s in Canada. Rutland discusses how community policing, initially intended to bring police closer to communities through multicultural training and social services, became a strategy to win over parts of the community while waging a larger war against the rest.    We delve into some of the historical shifts in policing largely as a response to radical movements and urban rebellions. We also examine the role of progressive urban governments in maintaining counterinsurgency policing, the impact of neoliberal policies, and the influence of white nationalism in shaping urban governance. Ted and I further explore the concept of counterinsurgency urbanism, showing how it has become central to not just policing but city-making processes in its entirety where supportive and punitive measures are blended in order to maintain control over urban populations. Ted Rutland is an associate professor of geography and urban studies at Concordia University in Montreal. His research explores how capitalism and white supremacy intersect in contemporary urban politics, planning, and policing. He is the author of Displacing Blackness: Planning, Power, and Race in Twentieth-Century Halifax and the co-author (with Maxime Aurélien) of Out to Defend Ourselves: A History of Montreal's First Haitian Street Gang.   This episode was produced and edited by Aidan Elias & Jared Ware. Music by Televangel.   To support our work contribute to our patreon at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism!   COUNTER-INSURGENCY URBANISM (Draft chapter from in-progress book) 

Frank Kitson's Low Intensity Operations with Orisanmi Burton

Pacification with Mark Neocleous

This is the conclusion of our two part conversation with Maryam Kashani on her book Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival

Among other things, in this conversation we talk about the impact and meaning of 1492 to the Muslim world. We discuss Kashani’s concept of the Blues Adhan by way of Clyde Woods. We discuss the experiences of women muslims, and women scholars in Kashani’s book. We talk about the two jihads and other Muslim practices such as zakat and the contradictions between Islamic thought and practice and those demanded by the capitalist and carceral state. It’s a rich discussion that I hope folks find as interesting as I did. 

Make sure you also catch the first part of this conversation which is linked in the show notes.

Kashani is an associate professor in Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is in the leadership collective of Believers Bail Out, a community-led effort to bailout Muslims in pretrial and immigration incarceration towards abolition. 

Believers Bail Out has a fundraiser to bail out Muslims during Ramadan which we will link in the show description. We really encourage folks to kick in what they can to support that initiative. 

If you like the work that we do please become a patron of the show. It’s the best way to support our show, and in addition to gaining access to our study groups the next time one opens up, you’ll also get an email for each episode we release. Whether an audio episode like this one and the episode on the writings of Brendan Hughes we released earlier this week or a YouTube livestream like the ones we hosted with Orisanmi Burton, James Kilgore, and Mark Neocleous earlier this week, you’ll always be notified when we have new conversations to check out. You can become a patron for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism 

Links:

first part of this conversation

fundraiser to bail out Muslims during Ramadan

Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival

More on the Blues Epistemology in this interview with César “che” Rodriguez

Zakat fir-Riqab: Becoming Muslim in Colonial Racial Capitalism and its Carceral Regimes by Maryam Kashani