We created this podcast in recognition that there are a number of podcasts for the American “left,” but many of them focus heavily on the organizing of social democrats, progressives, and liberal democrats. Aside from that, on the left we are always fighting a war of ideas and if we do not continue to build platforms to share those ideas and the stories of their implementation from a leftist perspective, they will continue to be ignored, misrepresented, and dismissed by the capitalist media and as a result by the general public. Our goal is to provide a platform for communists, anti-imperialists, Black Liberation movements, ancoms, left libertarians, LBGTQ activists, feminists, immigration activists, and abolitionists to discuss radical politics, radical organizing and share their visions for a better world. Our goal is to center organizers who represent and work with marginalized communities building survival programs, defense programs, political education, and counterpower. We also plan to bring in perspectives on and from the global south to highlight anti-capitalist struggles outside the imperial core...
http://millennialsarekillingcapitalism.libsyn.com/website
episode 127: "And Another Phase of Struggle Begins" - Kali Akuno and Kamau Franklin on Strategy and Liberation
In this episode we were honored to host Kali Akuno, co-director and co-founder of Cooperation Jackson and Kamau Franklin is the founder of Community Movement Builders and a co-host at Black Power Media’s Remix Morning Show.
We brought Kali and Kamau into conversation under a banner of discussing strategy. Strategy is something that Josh and I feel is both essential and often lacking within a lot of formations in the US left.
The conversation is wide-ranging and touches on a number of topics that may prompt folks to need greater context. In the show notes we will include some links to other readings and discussions with Kali and Kamau on what the Jackson plan is, why they left the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and what their current work entails.
Beyond strategy, in this episode we get into discussion of political education, neoliberal socialization, burnout, fickle organizers, reflection and criticism, Democratic Centralism, cadre and mass organizing, climate change, ecological collapse, food sovereignty, self-defense, revolutionary violence, and the capture of social movements through the nonprofit industrial complex and Democratic Party electoral politics.
It is our greatest hope that conversations like this one provide folks with tools, insights and provocations that they can bring with them into their organizing efforts so that we can build more effectively going forward for the alternatives are clearly bleak and dystopian.
Both Community Movement Builders and Cooperation Jackson do accept donations. So we will also provide links to both organizations in our show notes if people would like to give them a donation. And please support Black Power Media as well.
And of course, we need your support to continue to bring you these conversations freely, and in non-commoditized form. All of our work is available ad-free and none of our episodes are behind a paywall and we hope that we can always keep it that way so that all of these conversations are freely available to organizers, activists, students, workers, the poor, and the oppressed. To support our ability to do that you can contribute to our patreon for as little as $1 a month or for a yearly contribution of just $11 a year.
For more context:
Cooperation Jackson's Kali Akuno on the lessons of and the ongoing struggle in Jackson MS
Community Movement Builders and Liberated Zones Theory with Kamau Franklin
The Jackson-Kush Plan: The Struggle For Black Self-Determination and Economic Democracy
Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi