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 149: "Forget What The Ruling Class Deems Unacceptable. Revolution Is Illegal" - Ed Mead On A Life In Struggle
In this episode we interview Ed Mead. Mead is a veteran of the revolutionary underground organization the George Jackson Brigade which operated in solidarity with prisoner, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist struggles. A prolific organizer and participant of prisoner struggles both inside and outside of prisons, Ed also co-founded the prisoner organization Men Against Sexism.
He also worked with a number of other organizations and struggles over the years including work with the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the Attica Brothers Legal Defense Committee, the National Lawyers Guild, Prison Legal News, and California Prison Focus.
In this conversation we talk about some lessons along the way of Ed’s political development, from social prisoner to jailhouse lawyer to organizer to revolutionary to political prisoner.
Ed offers unvarnished reflections from a life in struggle, characteristically with no holds barred for what he refers to as “the tamed left.”
Our conversation was informed by Ed Mead’s autobiography Lumpen and by Daniel Burton-Rose’s books on the George Jackson Brigade. We will include a full list of sources in the show notes.
Links:
Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead
Theory and Practice of Armed Struggle in the Northwest: A Historical Analysis
Creating A Movement With Teeth: A Documentary History of the George Jackson Brigade
Guerilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970's
Sundiata Acoli's Support Fund
Washington Prison History Project Oral Histories