[This episode was conducted bilingually in French & English and there is also a French version of the episode here]

In this episode we speak with Inemesit Richardson and Wendlassida Simporé of the Thomas Sankara Center for African Liberation and Unity in Burkina Faso. They are also both members of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party.

The Thomas Sankara Center for African Liberation and Unity is a Pan-African library and political education center in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

The Thomas Sankara center is a free community lending library supplying books about Pan-Africanism, socialism and Third World liberation. They host film screenings, debates and other free events. They also run an after-school young pioneers children's education program for primary school students ages 8-14 and  have a work-study circle for adults which meets regularly to critically study revolutionary books and put theory into praxis in their community.

We talk to both of our guests about recent events in the region. In particular, about the most recent coup in Niger. They discuss the pulse on the ground with regards to Burkina Faso’s current leadership, these anticolonial coups, the region’s relationship to Russia, and the role of the CFA Franc in France’s neocolonial system in the region. We recorded this conversation on August 10th and there have been multiple developments since then, we’ll include some additional articles in the show notes. It should be noted that when we discuss a potential ECOWAS invasion during the episode, that this has not actually occurred yet, although ECOWAS is sanctioning Niger and threatening to use force to overthrow the current leadership. Mali and Burkina Faso have vowed to defend Niger’s leadership with military force. And there is ongoing discussion about the development of a regional federation.

We will include a link to where you can support the work of the Thomas Sankara Center in Burkina Faso. 

In this French language version of the episode, you will hear Inemesit translate the questions into French, and you will hear both Inemesit and Wendlassida answer the questions in French as well. There is also an English language version of this episode.

Links:

Thomas Sankara Center for African Liberation and Unity in Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso & Mali vow to defend Niger’s new leadership with force

The People of Niger Want to Shatter Resignation

Africa's Last Colonial Currency - The CFA Franc Story

[French version of MAKC, the English version of this episode is available here]

Dans cet épisode, nous parlons à Inemesit Richardson et Wendlassida Simporé du Centre Thomas Sankara pour la libération et l’unité africaine. Elles sont les deux des membres du Parti Révolutionnaire de Tous Les Peuples Africains.

Le Centre Thomas Sankara pour la libération et l’unité africaine est une bibliothèque panafricaine et un centre de l’éducation politique à Ouagadougou au Burkina Faso. Le centre est une bibliothèque de prêt, gratuite au public, qui fournit des livres sur le panafricanisme, le socialisme et la libération du Tiers-monde. Le centre organise et présente des séances de cinéma, des débats, et d’autres événements gratuits au public. Le centre dirige un programme de garde parascolaire des « Jeunes Pionniers » pour les enfants des âges 8 à 14 et organise également un cercle d’études-travail des adultes qui se réunit fréquemment pour étudier de façon critique des livres révolutionnaires et pour mettre en pratique la théorie dans la communauté.

Nos invitées discutent des actualités dans la région, y compris le coup d’état récent au Niger. Elles discutent des dernières nouvelles par rapport aux leaders actuels du Burkina Faso, de cette tendance des coups d’états anticoloniaux, de la relation entre la région et la Russie, et du­ rôle du franc CFA dans le système néocolonial français dans la région. Nous avons enregistré cet épisode le 10 août, et depuis cette date, plusieurs événements ont eu lieu. Nous allons mettre des articles supplémentaires dans les shows notes.

Il faut bien noter que notre discussion d’une invasion éventuelle de la Cédéao est en ce moment spéculative et qu’une invasion ne s’est pas encore passée. Cependant, la Cédéao a déjà imposé des sanctions et d’autres pénalités, et la Cédéao menace les leaders nigériens d’une intervention militaire pour renverser le gouvernement. Les pays voisins, le Mali et le Burkina Faso, s’opposent aux menaces de la Cédéao et font front commun pour défendre les militaires nigériens. Il y a un débat en cours sur l’établissement d’une fédération régionale.

Nous allons inclure un lien où vous pouvez aider le Centre Thomas Sankara au Burkina Faso. Dans cette version française, vous écouterez Inemesit qui traduit les questions en français. Vous trouverez les réponses en français d’Inemesit et de Wendlassida. Il y a aussi une version anglaise de cet épisode.

Afficher les notes et l'introduction traduites par Jacob Dennis

Links:

Le Centre Thomas Sankara pour la libération et l’unité africaine

Burkina Faso & Mali vow to defend Niger’s new leadership with force

The People of Niger Want to Shatter Resignation

Africa's Last Colonial Currency - The CFA Franc Story

In this episode we interview Cappy, an organizer from UprisingSupport.org. In response to massive state repression during the George Floyd rebellions, Uprising Support is a website that was founded by a small group of folks who have a background in doing anti-repression organizing and education. Three years after the George Floyd uprising many people are locked up behind the walls for taking bold action amid the largest mass protests of many of our lifetimes. 

We really encourage everyone to listen to this episode, it’s a great practical discussion about organizing, about anti-repression work and its relationship to political prisoner support and abolitionist organizing. There are many valuable lessons for people engaged in prisoner support work of any kind, but also to newcomers, and to people who organize in other areas where repression is ultimately inevitable if you are organizing in any way that challenges the state or capitalism. 

Along the way Cappy talks about anti-repression work as memory work. As a mode of becoming more effective as organizers, as a way of extending networks of care, and a method of building resilience in our organizations and movements. 

You can check out the website at uprisingsupport.org and get involved.

And if you like the work that we do, we did not hit our goal for the month of August, and we do need your support to keep the show going. For as little as $1 a month, you can be a part of the amazing group of people who have made it possible for us to bring you 44 episodes already for 2023 patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. You will get emails with each of our episodes as well as when we relaunch our study group in a few weeks.

The Final Straw interview referenced in discussion

Uprising Support Contact Page 

In this episode we talk about a forthcoming graphic novel adaptation of C.L.R. James’ play Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History. 

The text of this graphic novel is a play by C.L.R. James that opened in London in 1936 with Paul Robeson in the title role. For the first time, black actors appeared on the British stage in a work by a black playwright.

In this conversation we talk to Sakina Karimjee and Nic Watts who adapted James’ play into graphic novel form and illustrated it. We talk about how C.L.R. James dramatized the Haitian Revolution and its various contradictions and characters and how they sought to tell this story through a graphic novel, using James’ script.

Along the way we talk about many aspects of the revolution, about the story’s protagonist Toussaint Louverture, about the relentless imperialist pursuit of Haiti, which was ongoing throughout the revolutionary period and continues into the present day. And we also discuss why the Haitian revolution is so suppressed in popular culture and popular representations of history, despite being one of the single most important events in world history. 

The book will be out on October 10th from Verso Books, but in the meantime you can pre-order it wherever you buy books.

Mamyrah Prosper on the History of Imperialism in Haiti, the Current Crisis and Questions of International Solidarity 

“The Messages We Refuse To Learn From” - Felicia Denaud on the Unnameable War and Afro-Assembly

Jemima Pierre on Haiti's Significance in Our Americas

The Continued Occupation of Haiti - Jemima Pierre on Luqman Nation on Black Power Media

You can join the Black Alliance for Peace Newsletter, which will keep you updated on issues impacting Haiti and many other issues of Black Internationalism. There are many other ways you can get involved in their work too that you can find on their website.

And to support our work at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. This is our fifth episode of the month and unfortunately so far this month we have more non-renewals on pledges than we have new patrons. So if you’ve been thinking about supporting the show or increasing your support of the show, it’d be hugely appreciated at this time. 

In this episode we interview Anthony Dest. 

Anthony Dest is assistant professor of anthropology at Lehman College and currently a faculty fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics. He is also a member of the Colombia Freedom Collective.

We talk with Anthony about three of his essays about political economy, organizing and resistance in Colombia. This conversation primarily focuses on the organization of Black Colombians in formations like the Black Communities Process (PCN), as well as indigenous communities and other grassroots social formations. 

Dest touches on the history of the US sponsored war on drugs in Colombia, the Peace Accords process in Colombia between the FARC and the Colombian government and on the resistance of the Liberation of Mother Earth Process. We also talk about some of the contradictions created by neoliberal reforms in Colombia and through an examination of the dialectical relationship between inclusion and autonomy, how Black and indigenous communities have organized in light of those reforms, while also looking at the various contradictions that have arisen along the way.

Finally we talk about coordinated action and more spontaneous rebellion amid national strikes, and the election of the Petro and Márquez administration as well as other local electoral efforts. We close with an important conversation on the political prisoners who have been repressed in response to some of the uprisings we discuss, and ways that people can materially support the Colombia Freedom Collective, which we encourage folks to do.

You can support the Colombia Freedom Collective at colombiafreedomcollective.org we’ll include that link in the show notes as well as a place where you can access Dest’s writings.

And of course if you appreciate the work we do, please consider becoming a patron of the show. You can do so for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

In this conversation Josh interviews Zachary Levenson and Marcel Paret discussing their article on “The South African tradition of racial capitalism,” which serves as the introduction to a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies on the same subject.

Zachary Levenson is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida International University in the United States and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He is the author of Delivery as Dispossession: Land Occupation and Eviction in the Postapartheid City and a member of the Spectre editorial board.

Marcel Paret is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah and Senior Research Associate in the Center for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of Fractured Militancy: Precarious Resistance in South Africa After Racial Inclusion (Cornell University Press, 2022).

Levenson and Paret situate the South African tradition of racial capitalism against the organizational backdrop of the anti-apartheid movement, and outline the key theses of this South African tradition of racial capitalism.

They discuss how these activists, comrades, organic intellectuals and/or theorists within this tradition theorized the role of the state and capital in the development of racist policy, and the contradictions this created as well as the potential avenues of resistance it enabled. 

And if you like the work that we do here at MAKC, this month we’re trying to reach a goal of adding 50 patrons to the show. We should be launching a new study group in the coming months as we are winding down with our Wretched of the Earth study group so keep your eye out for that too. You can stay informed on that and support the show by giving as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Ethnic and Racial Studies Journal (the issue we discuss will be released in October)

Fractured Militancy: Precarious Resistance in South Africa After Racial Inclusion

Delivery as Dispossession: Land Occupation and Eviction in the Postapartheid City

Spectre

South African History Online

In this conversation we talk to Ivan Stoiljkovic. 

Ivan is the General Secretary of Katarokwi Union of Tenants, the Kingston Peace Council and a member of the Communist Party of Canada.

This conversation is a part of a newer series of conversations where we talk to people about texts that they find politically useful and important. It’s a different approach that moves beyond a typical author talk - which we will continue to do - to engage theory and history with people who are seeking to put theory into practice, or organize with others to deal with the concrete situation they face. Our first episode that came from this idea was last month our discussion with Thandisizwe Chimurenga and Yusef “Bunchy” Shakur on the political writings of Sanyika Shakur. 

In this discussion we are talking about E.P. Thompson’s essay “Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism” 

In that discussion we discuss the imposition of time and time discipline that came with the onset of industrial capitalism. We talk a bit about the various ways that workers resisted the imposition of this sense of time, and then began to fight over time itself. Ultimately however, the fight is to abolish time, which can only be achieved through the abolition of capitalism. 

Prior to that discussion, we start with a little bit of Ivan’s personal and political history, including his childhood in socialist Yugoslavia, and then delve into a discussion of multiple aspects of Thompson’s essay. 

If you appreciate the work that we do, for August we have an ambitious goal of adding 50 patrons to the show. You can help us meet this goal by either increasing your pledge or pledging as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. This is just our second episode of August, but we plan to feature at least four more discussions this month. 

Links:

Ivan Stoiljkovic's Twitter

Ivan's FB Page

Katarokwi Union of Tenants FB page and website

The Yugoslavian leftist group called ‘Crvena Dijaspora’ which he describes in the discussion

E.P. Thompson’s essay “Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism” 

In this episode we welcome an organizer who goes by Grandma to talk about the campaign to Stop Camp Grayling.

Encompassing roughly 150,000 acres of land, Camp Grayling is already the largest National Guard training facility in the United States. For about a year now there has been a concerted effort to expand it to an even larger area. In this conversation we talk to Grandma about the campaign to fight its expansion, about the environmental impacts of the current facility and the further devastation that could be generated by its expansion. We also talk about the relationship between the National Guard and settler colonialism, imperialism, and the fascistic management of human populations impacted by the worst impacts of climate change. 

Of course, many around the country have also become more familiar with the national guard’s role in domestic counterinsurgency and pacification during times of social unrest such as the rebellions in 2020 in the wake of the extrajudicial killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others.

Understanding these roles of the National Guard and also Camp Grayling’s utility to the testing and development of new technologies of warfare and to the training of military and police forces domestically and internationally, Grandma also situates this intended expansion within various attempts to build new “cop cities” including but not limited to the struggle in Atlanta.

We also discuss some of the actions that folks in the movement have taken, some of the repression they have faced, and some of the contradictions of local politics that create different spheres of opposition to the project than for instance the cop city project in Atlanta.

I apologize that I did not get this episode out in time for the week of action, as I recently took a short vacation from production work, but hopefully there will be more of those coming in the future. You can follow them at @GraylingCamp on the website formerly known as twitter or email them at stopcampgrayling at proton dot me.

This is our first episode of August, our goal for the month is get 50 people to either become patrons of the show or increase their pledge to the show. We’ll be looking to publish at least 6 episodes this month. So if you’ve been thinking about either increasing your pledge or becoming a patron you can do so for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism.

Links:

Follow them on X/Twitter or instagram

The Base Among the Jack Pine: notes on the Camp Grayling Expansion on Anishnabewaki (zine we discuss in the podcast)

In this episode we discuss the brand new authorized English translation of Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend, pre-orders are now being fulfilled, from Iskra Books. 

Joining us for this conversation are the translators of the text Henry Hakamäki and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro. 

Henry Hakamäki is best known as the co-host of the Guerrilla History podcast. And of course among many other things, he is also the co-translator and editor of the book we will be discussing today. You can follow him on Twitter at @huck1995.

Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro is Professor at the Geography Department of SUNY New Paltz and is chief editor for the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism.  His book Socialist States and the Environment is available from Pluto Press. 

We talk to the two translators about why this book has taken so long to receive an authorized translation into English. How Henry and Salvatore got involved in the project. We also talk about how the book helps us deconstruct and reorient ideas and understandings about Stalin’s legacy and in doing so hopefully helps to pave the way for better understandings of the larger social processes during a critical era of Soviet History as well. 

We talk about how Losurdo addresses the false equivalence often made between Stalin and Hitler. Which also sets up a false equivalency between fascism and communism. Our guests discuss problem of comparing abstract universalist ideals with concrete attempts to build socialism. How Losurdo deals with and situates the purges and terror with regards to Stalin’s legacy as well as contradictory charges that Stalin was both bumbling and incompetent and an absolute dictator that made every decision of any importance across the whole of the USSR. We close with some discussion of Stalin on the national question and his stance on language in the early USSR.

The book is available now for pre-order and we will include a link in the show notes where folks can purchase the book. The free pdf should be available through the Iskra Books website by August 9th.

We also just want to send a shout-out to Guerrilla History the podcast which Henry is a regular co-host. They have another episode on the book that is out that goes in more detail over some of the aspects of the book that we do not touch on as much so check that out and while you’re there subscribe and check out their other content and support their work if you appreciate what they do.

And lastly this is our fifth episode of the month of July. We did hit our goal for new patrons for the month, so thanks to everyone who contributed to that. And if you have been thinking about becoming a patron of the show we can always use your support to sustain what we do here. You can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Purchase the book (paperback)

Purchase the book (hardback)

Free PDF will be available here in the coming days

Guerrilla History episode on the book 

This is the conclusion of our two-part discussion with Dr. Jared A. Ball on the release of the second edition of his book The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. Part one can be found here.

Once again, Jared Ball is the host of imixwhatilike and co-host of Earn Your Liberation and the RemiX Morning Show over on Black Power Media. 

He works as Professor of Africana and Communication Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. His decades of journalism, media, writing, and political work can be found at imixwhatilike.org. 

In this part of the discussion we talk a little bit about hip hop and its modern relation to corporations and social media influencers. Content warning on that conversation especially for fans of modern hip hop music, as Jared Ball and Jared Ware both turn into old men shaking our fists at clouds and telling children to get off our lawns during that portion of the discussion.

Jared Ball talks a bit more about how nonsensical it is to confront his work around “Black Buying Power” with a demand for an alternative solution. From there we get into the After Party concept that Dr. Ball has shared on his platforms over the years, and get into some discussion of Green Party politics and Dr. Cornel West’s campaign. All in all it’s a pretty free ranging conversation where we discuss a variety of different topics. We had a lot of fun doing it and we hope you enjoy it half as much as we enjoyed recording it. 

We did record it a month ago back on June 20th. So you’ll note at the end we referenced the launch party for the second edition, which unfortunately we weren’t able to get this episode out in time to help promote, but we will link a recording of that in the show notes.

We will link to some other places folks can learn more about the book, as well as a link to where you can purchase a copy. 

We do want to mention that Black Power Media did get a strike from YouTube for their H8 Awards so their new content this week will be on Twitch, Twitter and Facebook, until they have served their 7 day sentence for that. You can also find all of the relevant links and information at blackpowermedia.org including ways to donate and support their work.

And last but not least if you like what we do, please become a patron of the show if you have the means to do so. You can do that for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Links:

Launch Party for the second edition of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power

Our first conversation with Dr. Ball on the The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power

Discussions on the Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power

Purchase the hardback or e-book of The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power

Our conversation with Dr. Ball from the Journalism For Liberation and Combat Session 1: Internal Colonialism & Emancipatory Journalism with Dr. Jared A. Ball

"A Threat To This Day" Jared Ball on the Distortion and Erasure of Black Revolutionaries in Corporate Media