Africa World Now Project

What you will hear next is Pt II of a four (4) part series where we explore, autobiographically, the origins of Modibo Kadalie’s perspectives on direct democracy, autonomy, Black radical labor history, and Pan Africanism. Pt. II builds upon the autobiographical framework, Modibo outlined in Pt. I [so, do not forget to tap in]. This part of the conversation will explore, in more detail, Modibo’s experience in Detroit, paying attention to the efforts to develop a sharper analysis that can inform various movements more clearly, then and now. Pt. IV will provide a few thoughts on moving forward. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. listen intently. think critically. act accordingly.

What you will hear next is Pt III of a four (4) part series where we explore, autobiographically, the origins of Modibo Kadalie’s perspectives on direct democracy, autonomy, Black radical labor history, and Pan Africanism. Pt. I + II builds upon the Modibo’s autobiographical framework [so, do not forget to tap in]. Pt. III will explore, in more detail, Modibo’s experience in Detroit, paying attention to the efforts to develop a sharper analysis that can inform various movements more clearly, then and now. Pt. IV will provide a few thoughts on moving forward. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. listen intently. think critically. act accordingly.

The idea of democracy and its attendant operative mechanism, democratic citizenship, specifically the right to belong, is often lauded as a gift of Greco-Roman sociopolitical thought and Western European and American cultural contributions to a specific conceptualization of what comes to be known, in academic discourse, ‘modernity.’ From this historico-cultural perspective, a concept was needed to determine what it means to be human and belong in a particular form of sociopolitical organization and economic logic. However, moving beyond rhetoric and paying critical attention to the origins of this worldview, democratic citizenship—as expounded by the Athenians, the lauded form of sociopolitical organization that was intellectualized by an Athenian elite class—was conceptualized to exclude others. The inclusion of ‘Others’ was seen as a negation of order and the rule of law. After all, was it not Aristotle who invoked the notion of ius sanguinis (meaning ‘right of blood,’ or ‘by blood’) to be an exclusionary tool serving the interest of the dominant class? This operative mechanism in the application of ‘democracy’ or democratic citizenship as formulated in this cultural worldview was/is structured in the fabric of political discourse we hear today. What is clear in our current historical epoch, as Modibo Kadalie aptly points out, younger people “are convinced that the nation-state is not offering them a future. Newer generations of researchers are now beginning to look for evidence of community and collectivity” (Intimate Direct Democracy: Fort Mose, The Great Dismal Swamp and The Human Quest for Freedom: 153). A collectivity that lies in the very fabric of Africana forms of knowing and ways of being, fully articulated in the various forms of resistance such as those found throughout the Americas, expressed as maroon communities. Dr. Modibo Kadalie is a social ecologist, movement intellectual and lifelong radical activist within the Civil Rights, Black Power and Pan-Africanist movements and the Founding Convener of the Autonomous Research Institute for Direct Democracy and Social Ecology (ARIDDSE). He is the author of Pan-African Social Ecology: Speeches, Conversations and Essays (2019); Internationalism, Pan-Africanism and the Struggle of Social Classes (2000); Intimate Direct Democracy: Fort Mose, the Great Dismal Swamp, and the Human Quest for Freedom (2022) and a number of other articles. During the 1960s, early and middle 1970’s, Modibo Kadalie was an active member of a number of radical formations. In the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), he served as a member of the Central Staff and Chair of the People’s Action Committee in Highland Park, Michigan. In the International African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC), Kadalie was a founding member of the National Steering Committee. He chaired the Detroit local committee in 1972 and 1973 and then continued as a member of the expanded International Steering Committee as a representative from Atlanta, 1973-1975. Within this Sixth Pan-African Congress, he chaired the Southern Regional Organizing Committee from 1974-1975 and was also a member of both the North American Delegation and the North American Left Revolutionary Pan-African Caucus. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. listen intently. think critically. act accordingly.

In the introduction of his recently published, Jacob H Carruthers and the Restoration of An African Worldview: Finding Our Way through the Desert, Kamau Rashid [2024] posits that: “One of the central concerns evident in the scholarship of Jacob H. Carruthers was the intellectual foundations of the modern world. Although he acknowledged the importance of studying systems of oppression, he argued that such structures rested upon the foundation of Western thought, forms of knowledge that facilitated the formation of our most current systems of domination. In addition, these forms of knowledge also serve the primary function to maintain a particular world order as their application is constantly being refined and reinforced through false ideas about reality [Rashid, 2024; Carruthers, 1972/1999]. Carruthers work is occupied by a fundamental question that asks: how can African people who hope to free themselves from these structural and reinforcing mechanisms of domination do so when their conceptions of reality are constantly measured and derived from these very same ways of knowing that support these mechanisms of domination? Kamau Rashid, thinking with Carruthers, writes further that “knowledge, its production, legitimization, and transmission are shaped by the power relations of a society and through this, society’s institutions, therefore “the elite members of the politically dominant culture strategically impose their knowledge and worldview priorities” in a way that legitimizes their authority through these institutions [Rashid, 2024; Shujaa, 2003, 18]. Accordingly, there is little room for debate when it is argued that “schooling in the United States is a principal instrument of this hegemony.” “It is a process that does not typically privilege critical thought and action, but instead encourages conformity to hegemony, rewards apathy to the status quo, and punishes agency with regard to ideation or advocacy for revolutionary social change. From this perspective, it is with no surprise then, that “the operationalization of schooling is little more than a means for sustaining the legitimacy for a specific form of sociopolitical and economic order [Rashid, 2024].

The collectively generative nature inherent in the interdependent relationship between technology, the communal means of production and distribution and innovative physical and creative intellectual work is distracted and co/opted by the need to extract the value of this relationship as structured from the capitalist logic of labor. The sole purpose of this is to maintain an aggressive and exclusionary accumulation of capital in the hands of a few. The creative and inquisitive nature of human social and cultural capacities feed the extractive forces of capitalism. The necessity to disembody knowledge production and sever the symbiotic relationship between all sentient beings from nature and the universe is a muti-complex process of maintaining the supremacist ethic that organizes current political and economic relations. This fact, in its most theoretical and practical form, permeates the very cultural fabric of the dominant expression of global dis/order. In short, capitalism is the form that functions to create life itself, therefore work is re/defined as labor in order to extract its value in all forms, not for communal benefit but the aggressive and exclusionary aggregation of capital through intentionally violent processes. What are the material and intellectual contractions that indigenous African and African Diasporan communities must contend with in order to reconcile the social realities produced by capitalist logic today? At present, the dominant discourses of this reconciliation are centered around inherently detrimental practices, i.e., capitalism with a Blackface, the reproduction of the logic of private property as foundation to capital accumulation, etc. Where do we re/turn to find a path toward freedom as move down the road to liberation? Where do we find a platform or practice to reintegrate with our collective selves? It can be, and in the conversation with Georie Bryant you will hear next, found figuratively and literally with our hands in the soil. A re/connection with the Earth itself. In a material and non-material synthesis of struggle and building. The conversation you will hear next is a de/linking of capitalist logic of land as private property, food as African indigenous knowledge practices, and cooperatives outside of capitalist interpretations. In short, we explore African indigenous relationships with land and food, as inherited throughout the African world as means to freedom. Georie Bryant is a community organizer, chef, and agriculturalist native to Durham, N.C. Working both through his organization SymBodied and in collaboration with other organizations in the region, Georie seeks to address issues of historical and contemporary oppression, particularly those centered around food insecurity, cultural erasure and appropriation. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; Ayati; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.

https://www.instagram.com/africaworldnowproject/ https://linktr.ee/Africaworldnowproject The use of forum, colloquium, and festivals to center African/a intellectual creative cultural production flows rhythmically alongside the long tradition of Pan-African tendencies. This historical continuity and our duty to move within its legacy is a project that the International Colloquium at the International Black Theatre Festival, that we [AWNP collective] have the pleasure to coordinate, is the explicit dictum that guides it creation. Furthering our work in this Pan-African genealogy is intentional. Our theme this year was titled: ‘Echoes of FESTAC ’77’. For the 2024 iteration of the international colloquium, as we continue think deeply about form and function and its relationship to critical consciousness formation and radical practice in the use of the arts to map and proliferate Black/African sociopolitical and cultural life, we had the pleasure of being in dialogue with Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, who was at FESTAC ’77 [for more, visit https://www.alkalimat.org/festac/]. In fact, you will hear his presentation given at FESTAC ’77 in this program. As part of a consortium of cultural workers, intellectuals, activists/organizers, Dr. Alkalimat along with Dr. Ron Walters, Dr. Maulana Karenga, and a host of others took part in the colloquium. Dr. Abdul Alkalimat is one of the founders of Black Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. A lifelong scholar/organizer with a PhD from the University of Chicago, he has lectured, taught, and directed academic programs across the U.S., the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and China. I would be remiss to not highlight that along with Dr. Alkalimat, we were joined by artists and cultural scholars from Nova Scotia, Canada, where they explored the continuities in the histories of people of African descent in Canada. We had the pleasure to be in conversation with Walter Borden as he presented: The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time, a powerful autobiographical play and the story of Walter Borden’s life, his life’s work, and his letter to the world. An artist and cultural worker, Mr. Borden is an internationally acclaimed and nationally honoured African/Indigenous actor and activist born in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. His activism spans six decades while his professional acting career is in its 54th year. He has performed throughout Canada, Europe and the United States. We look to bring you his thoughts and meditations in the coming programs on Africa World Now Project. As you prepare to engage this program … we share this meditation we hope will guide you as you share your time and energy with us … The universe of thought and ideas are the playground of Africana creativity. Black life lives on the fulcrum of the seen and unseen, constantly merging theory and practice … Effortlessly creating, recreating – through radical acts of remembering moving in and out of the deep well of Africana ways of being and forms of knowing, this is the essence of Black cultural production, the production of life itself. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; Ayati; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly. Link to paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h_NFkkpy8dSySP6PtmqjBF5aM-3aTM8m/view?usp=sharing

On August 31, 1967, several thousand delegates gathered at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago for the opening rally of the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP) convention. This event was an ambitious attempt to develop a broad coalition of over 200 different organizations, that included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Students for a Democratic Society, the Socialist Workers Party, and the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. According to Arun Kundnani [2023] in ‘The New Malcolm X’: Who was Jamil Al-Amin – The Forgotten Radical of the Civil Rights Movement?, “On the opening night, Dr. King outlined an anti-capitalist politics that had become essential to his worldview.” This, of course, has been erased from dominant discourses on Dr. King. For King: “Capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of Black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both Black and white, both here and abroad.” The only solution: “a radical redistribution of political and economic power” (Kundnani, 2023). Another key point to highlight was that there was talk at the convention of running King as an independent candidate of the Left in the following year’s presidential elections.” Despite the prominent role of King and SCLC, the leading Black organization at the NCNP convention was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), chaired by Jamil al-Amin, then known as H. Rap Brown. Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jamil al-Amin worked with the civil rights movement in Alabama and Mississippi in the mid-1960s. He was only twenty-three years old when he was elected SNCC’s national chair, four months before the NCNP convention. As he traveled the US that summer, federal agents and informants constantly tailed him. In the month and a half before arriving in Chicago, he had been shot in the face with buckshot by a deputy sheriff and arrested twice, on incitement to arson and riot in Maryland (a state attorney later admitted to fabricating the charges) and on firearms charges in Louisiana (these were voided on appeal when it emerged that the judge had announced at the state’s Bar Association convention before the trial that “I’m going to get that ni**er”). A few days before the NCNP convention, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sent a memo to all the bureau’s field offices, instructing them to establish new, secret “counter-intelligence endeavors,” to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings.” Arun Kundnani is a writer interested in race, Islamophobia, surveillance, political violence, and radicalism. Born in London, he moved to New York in 2010 and now lives in Philadelphia. Kundnani is the author of What is Antiracism? ([published by Verso Books, 2023), The Muslims are Coming! (Verso Books, 2014) and The End of Tolerance (published by Pluto Press, 2007), which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year. He has written for the Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Vice, and The Intercept to name a few outlets. Educated at Cambridge University, he holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University. He has been a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and a former editor of the Race & Class, the quarterly journal of the Institute of Race Relations in London. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; Ayati; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.

Today, we will listen to General Baker from a 2010 talk he gave at the U.S. Social Forum held in Detroit where he maps the history of struggle in Detroit, the formation of radical workers movements, and the legacies of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 6, 1941, right after his family had moved north from Augusta, Georgia. General Baker’s father worked for Midland Steel in the 1940s, and later in a job with Chrysler. The Baker family settled in a home in Southwest Detroit. Gen Baker grew up in a union household, and often attended union events with his father. Baker graduated early from the nominally integrated Southwestern High School in 1958. General Baker is one of the founding members of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) in 1968 and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in 1969. Baker’s involvement in radical politics dates from the early 1960s. He had been a member of UHURU and the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and later the Communist League. Following the Detroit riot of July 1967, an event known to some as the Great Rebellion, General Baker and his fellow radicals sensed an opportunity for new organizing efforts. In September 1967, Baker, John Watson, Mike Hamlin, and Luke Tripp started a newspaper called the Inner-City Voice. The paper focused on issues of concern to Detroit’s Black population, including working conditions, housing, health care, welfare programs, and schools, all from a Marxist perspective. In addition to publishing the Inner-City Voice, Baker, Hamlin, and other Inner City Voice staff members formed a study group to discuss how to implement revolutionary political change. On May 2, 1968, in response to a work speedup at the Dodge Main plant in Hamtramck, Baker led several thousand workers out of the plant in a wildcat strike. On May 5, the Chrysler Corporation dismissed Baker from his job for violating the no-strike clause of the collective bargaining agreement between Chrysler and the United Auto Workers (UAW). As a result of this strike, Baker and his fellow activists formed DRUM. DRUM saw both Chrysler and the UAW as enemies of workers of African descent, and from 1968 into the early 1970s, DRUM worked to gain more power for African American workers and to improve working conditions at Dodge Main. General Baker is and will continue to be one of our important sociopolitical and cultural theoreticians of the 20th century that provided essential perspectives for the 21st century. As part of the collective of revolutionary workers who sought to organize the Black working class in conjunction with addressing issues in the larger Black community, Gen Baker was a living example of theory and practice in context of Black liberation, globally. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; Ayati; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.

re/posting from our archive ... from 7+ years ago. a lot to grasp here!

This discussion features Mukasa Dada and Obi Egbuna Jr. We focus on contemporary struggles of youth and student movements, globally. With a focus on the ongoing fight for Black liberation and the need for solidarity across different oppressed groups. In order to accurately understand the potentialities of the moment, the development and maintenance of a historical consciousness alongside organizing efforts that challenge imperialism, neo-colonialism, and police brutality through direct action and community engagement are presented for discussion.

Black working-class contributions to the Cuban revolution are immense, yet somehow often neglected in discourses around revolutionary Cuba. The long history of African resistance and cultural contributions to Cuban society, which has been intricately connected to global Black freedom movements has been in rhythmic continuity til present day. The continuities are clear and important on many levels – that is on the level of internal, as confronting internal contradictions specifically the necessity to fight the colonially structured vestiges of racism in Cuban society is an added terrain of struggle. As well as external, the constant assault on the Cuban peoples by U.S. and its ally’s imperial logic, captured in the current embargo and attendant sanctions. It is here, the dialectical process of liberation finds its most articulate expression, now that the process of decolonialization has been initiated it is the continued anticolonial struggle that takes precedence. The struggle to heighten the internal contradictions, which is a struggle, in its totality, a struggle against the coloniality of being. Where the vestiges of old forms of oppression are presented in new ways. In the case of Cuba, where the colonial structures of race/racism are used to try to undo the revolutionary processes. Today, we present a conversation from a few weeks ago with Pedro Sarduy where we engage in a discussion that is in its essence, a mapping of the anticolonial process through an exploration of Race and Revolution in Cuba: from an Afro Cuban Working Class Perspective. Pedro Pérez-Sarduy is a poet, writer, journalist, and broadcaster living in Puerto Rico, London and Havana. He is the author of Surrealidad (Havana 1967), Cumbite and Other Poems (Havana 1987 and New York 1990). He is also co-editor with Jean Stubbs of Afro-Cuba: An Anthology of Cuban Writing on Race, Politics and Culture (1993) and co-author for the anthology No Longer Invisible/Afro-Latin Americans Today (1995). His Journal in Babylon is a series of chronicles on Britain. His first novel, Las Criadas de la Habana (The Maids of Havana), is based on his mother's life stories about pre-and post-revolutionary Havana. This is the first novel by a contemporary Afro Cuban writer on family life in Cuba. He has written numerous articles, some of which we present on this site. Together with Jean Stubbs, he wrote Afro-Cuban Voices on Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba (2000), a book based on interviews with Afro-Cubans (living in the Island), which has been published by the University Press of Florida. He also co-edited with historian Jean Stubbs Afro-Cuba: An Anthology of Cuban Writing on Race, Politics and Culture (1993).[5] Sarduy has read his work internationally and lectured regularly on race, politics, and culture at academic institutions, globally. He was Writer in Residence at Columbia University, New York (1989), on the CUNY Caribbean Exchange Program at Hunter College (1990), a Visiting Scholar at the University of Florida, Gainesville 1993), in 1997 at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, and on the Rockefeller Fellowship Caribbean 2000 Program. He has also been a Charles McGill Fellow & Visiting Lecturer at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut (Fall 2004), and Associate Fellow of the Caribbean Studies Centre at London Metropolitan University. Awards he has received a number of awards for his poetry. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti, and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.

Matthew Quest in CLR James and George Padmore: Hidden Disputes in The Black Radical Tradition, examines the collaboration between James and George Padmore since their partnership within the International African Service Bureau in the 1930s. Despite their joint activism in Pan-African affairs, political rifts emerged on democracy, socialism, and revolutionary strategy. Quest specifically explores James’ portrayal of Padmore to highlight the political tensions underlying their friendship. James’ and Padmore’s different perspectives on anti-imperialism reveal hidden disputes in the Black radical tradition, disputes that promoted evolution in thought and practice that must be taken up today. CLR, the elder, was not always able to rigorously explain, save for the most attentive, where he came from politically. James began to recognize the fact that, for youth who wanted him to tell stories about the Black radical tradition, chronicles which included George Padmore, the distinctions of ideological and party affiliation among the Red and Black were irrelevant — it was all “communism” because the white racists and capitalists said so, and because conservatives appeared to be threatened by such ideas. The next generation did not understand that many of the Old Left had also come to this conclusion, to the qualitative detriment of how one viewed white workers, imperial nations, and national liberation in colonized nations. This conflict between workers’ self-management (increasingly seen as a “white” idea) in metropolitan centers and national liberation struggles tore apart the last manifestation of the Facing Reality group, James’s last small revolutionary organization in 1970 — this was expressed through internal uncertainty about where Mao Zedong and Kwame Ture [Stokely Carmichael] were going. Ironically, it was at this moment the direct democratic tendency of the Caribbean New Left (in Trinidad, Antigua, Guyana, Grenada, and Jamaica — many who met each other in Canada) and certain dissident currents in Detroit’s League of Revolutionary Black Workers began to see the merits of direct democracy and workers’ self-management for Black post-civil rights and post-colonial revolt. These are evidence of other hidden disputes in the radical tradition stimulated by CLR James. Today, we present Pt. III, the final installment of our three-part series where we unpack C.L.R James’s thought, paying specific attention to his articulation of notions of direct democracy, worker’s self-emancipation/management, and meditations on autonomy with Matthew Quest. We intentionally explore CLR James as a frame of reference in the context of current labor struggles, the opportunities, and potential limitations of demands within labor movements [where we think through the limitations of labor demands being divorced from direct critique of imperialism and colonialisms]; and how does CLR James’ conceptualization of autonomy and direct democracy have an important part to play in conceptualization of labor movements today. Matthew Quest is an editor of Clash! a collective of writers who advocate for Caribbean unity from below. He has taught African, African American and Caribbean History at universities in the United States. He is known as a scholar of the legacies of CLR James. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti, and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.

According to Renault in Toward a Counter-Genealogy of Race: On CLR James, it is argued that James always stressed the fundamental importance of the notion of class struggle, and closely followed developments in revolutionary working-class struggles in Europe and the United States. “This did not prevent him, however, from analyzing and taking part in movements for decolonization: In 1938, he authored the famous history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins; in the 1940s, he was seen as a specialist on the “Negro Question” within North American Trotskyist movements; he also had ties to African independence leaders – Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, and later, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania – and he became involved in “party politics” himself during the time leading up to Trinidadian independence. James strove to reposition Pan-Africanist struggles within a global revolutionary history, by interpreting them in light of Marxist theory and historiography; the latter, in turn, was reshaped through the lens of the experience of (de)colonization. He foregrounded and thematized the relations between class oppression and racial oppression as well as the connections between struggles for emancipation waged by subaltern groups with their own autonomous demands.” But does this necessarily mean that as a Marxist, James thinks of race in the same way he thinks class? Does a concept of race exist in his writings, one invested with a specific theoretical and/or political function, beyond the attention he pays to actual instances of racial domination? In Observing Properly Changing Forms of Spontaneity and Organization: Creative Conflicts in C. L. R. James' Hegelian Dialectics and Political Philosophy, Matthew Quest writes that C. L. R. James argued philosophy must become proletarian, not, importantly, that philosophy must be brought to the proletariat (James, Dunayevskaya and Lee, 1986, 128-132). James suggested he had no interest in teaching, and thought it not productive to teach, popular audiences’ pure epistemology [a theory of history … put other way, what makes up the ways we produce knowledge] or the function of categories of cognition. For James, one can think correctly without knowing dialectics (James, 1971a, 27). His Notes on Dialectics are instead grounded in political concerns. James asserted that we must be careful not to be stuck in our principles. Politics, or "the organic life of thought forms," must come "out" of contradictions or one's thought is "no good" (1971a, 20, 40). James tried to use his study of dialectics to figure out the relationship between the spontaneity of ordinary people's self-organization and the tasks of a political party or revolutionary organization whose intention was to "propagate” the destruction of bureaucracy" (1971a, 243). Opposed to further inculcating it or expanding it. we present Pt. II of the three-part series where we are unpacking CLR James’s thought, paying specific attention to his articulation of notions of direct democracy, worker’s self-emancipation/management, and meditations on autonomy with Matthew Quest. Matthew Quest has taught African, African American and Caribbean History at universities including Georgia State University in Atlanta, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He is known as a scholar of the legacies of CLR James. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti, and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.

In an article for Insurgent Notes, Matthew Quest asks, What Type of Historian Was CLR James? CLR James, native of Trinidad, was a historian with a speculative philosophy of history. He brought these methods to his narrative of Haiti in The Black Jacobins (1938), and later in his Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (1977). James was influenced by historians of the French Revolution, while his approach was shaped by Leon Trotsky’s A History of the Russian Revolution, Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, and the Edwardian radicals GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, both literary men who wrote polemical histories sympathetic to the social motion of commoners. James’s Notes on Dialectics explored the intersection of Hegel and Lenin as applied to the history of the international labor movement. But his original view of dialectics was just as much informed by how he understood the craft of writing history. For James, dialectic did not mean simply history moved by contradiction. Rather history was a series of ruptures with hierarchy and domination. At his best, he did not read history in a manner that placed the development of the nation-state as the primary unit of study. For James, the working classes, be their wages high or low, and the unemployed possessed a hidden depth, a latent understanding, and a creative genius. Ordinary people, not professional leaders of official society, were the chief actors of history. Humans faced institutionalized oppression, but also partial hindrances they placed in their own path as part of pursuing freedom. History did not move simply by materialist laws, but by romantic elemental drives where the dispossessed pushed from behind those who aspired to lead or rule. Highlighting another important contribution of CLR James to Black radicalism, Matthew Quest unpacks his political economic analysis. Quest writes that CLR James is recalled as a Pan-African and independent socialist. A colleague and critic of anti-colonial politicians and activists (Trinidad’s George Padmore, Eric Williams, and Stokely Carmichael, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, and Guyana’s Walter Rodney) James’s political economy was fundamentally different than his associates. While there are apparent moments of unity, especially around how the empire of capital underdeveloped Africa and the Caribbean through slavery and colonialism, or how federation might help enhance peripheral nation’s sovereignty, James was distinctive. He saw the state, party politics, democracy, and the working class in contrast to Pan-African and Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. Today, we will explore CLR James’s thought, paying specific attention to his articulation of notions of direct democracy, worker’s self-emancipation, and meditations on autonomy with Matthew Quest. This conversation will be presented as a three-part series where we specifically explore CLR James as a frame of reference in the context of current labor struggles, the opportunities and potential limitations of demands within labor movements [where we think through the limitations of labor demands being divorced from direct critique of imperialism and colonialisms]; and how does CLR James’ conceptualization of autonomy and direct democracy have an important part to play in conceptualization of labor movements today. To understand the depth and range of impact of CLR James’s work, I would describe him as your ‘rappers’ favorite rapper’. Your favorite theorist, revolutionary, radical, Pan Africanist had to or at some point must come to terms with CLR James’s work. His influences are both undeniable and misunderstood. Matthew Quest has taught African, African American and Caribbean History at universities including Georgia State University in Atlanta, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He is known as a scholar of the legacies of CLR James.

Image: Fran Beal Thank you for tapping into Reflections on Malcolm X through the … 1990 Malcolm X: Radical Tradition and a Legacy of Struggle conference … this is the final installment, Pt. III – Applying Malcolm In this series, Africa World Now Project is sharing some of the sessions from this conference in an effort to engender serious engagement, in this very moment, a moment where it is essential to be intentional with one’s political practice with Malcolm. Not in the narrow confines of him as an individual or pigeonhole him to moments and soundbites, but to identify the tradition that produced Malcolm as a nexus, a point of entry for many into the seriously trying to figure out: what is to be done? More than this, we encourage you to visit Abdul Alkalimat’s website to explore, read, and hear more of the conference. Link to archive: https://www.alkalimat.org/brothermalcolm/1990_conf_contents.htm We will hear, in the following order, is: Barbara Ransby, Fran Beal, Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu & William Sales. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti, and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!

Thank you for tapping into Reflections on Malcolm X through the … 1990 Malcolm X: Radical Tradition and a Legacy of Struggle conference … this is Pt. II - Black Workers & Malcolm X In this series, Africa World Now Project is sharing some of the sessions from this conference in an effort to engender serious engagement, in this very moment, a moment where it is essential to be intentional with one’s political practice with Malcolm. Not in the narrow confines of him as an individual or pigeonhole him to moments and soundbites, but to identify the tradition that produced Malcolm as a nexus, a point of entry for many into the seriously trying to figure out: what is to be done? More than this, we encourage you to visit Abdul Alkalimat’s website to explore, read, and hear more of the conference. Tap in here: https://www.alkalimat.org/brothermalcolm/1990_conf_contents.htm What we will hear next, in the following order is: Ashaki Binta [Black Workers for Justice], General Baker [Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW)], and Saladin Muhammad [Black Workers for Justice] Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti, and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!

In November 1990 [1-4], more than 3,000 people from 25 countries attended the Malcolm X: Radical Tradition and a Legacy of Struggle conference held in New York City. More than 100 speakers led 24 sessions that deeply explored, contextualized, and situated El Hajj Malik El Shabazz in the genealogy of Black radical internationalism as a Pan Africanist. There is an argument that can be made that El Haj Mailk El Shabazz is an archetype of what I have argued elsewhere as a critical Africana human rights consciousness. This praxis [the intellectual production and the Black radical and revolutionary practice that it produces, is in fact a critique of and expansion on dominant human rights theory and practice. When we turn attention to his evolution as an internationalist activist-theoretician, we can begin to truly grasp the breadth, depth and the rhythms of the various manifestations of Africana peoples struggle for freedom. Africa World Now Project will share some of this conference in an effort to engender serious engagement, in this very moment, a moment where it is essential to be intentional with one’s political practice with Malcolm. Not in the narrow confines of him as an individual or pigeonhole him to moments and soundbites, but to identify the tradition that produced Malcolm as a nexus, a point of entry for many into the seriously trying to figure out: what is to be done? More than this, we encourage you to visit Abdul Alkalimat’s website to explore, read, and hear more of the conference. Link to archive is available here: [https://www.alkalimat.org/brothermalcolm/1990_conf_contents.htm]. The archive is rich, we did not include sessions with important revolutionary organizer-intellectuals as well as academics such as: Dhoruba bin Wahad, bell hooks, James cone, Chokwe Lumumba, Linda Burham, Molefi Asnate, john Woodford, Timonthy Johnson, Estella Vazquez, Sylvia Hill, Clarence Lusane, Akinyele Umoja, etc What you will hear next is Pt I – Contextualizing El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, which will be Pt. I of a series on this conference. Engage Pt. II & Pt. III [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6yfy_-nLyNTqnVyqjpuU1BJJ813-3o-K] What you will hear next in Pt. I is Amiria Baraka opening the conference with a series of meditations on 10 why we need this conference and then a poem titled Today for Malcolm. We then will hear, in the following order is: Abdul Alkalimat, Lou Turner, Vikki Garvin, and Yuri Kochiyama contextualize El Hajj Malik El Shabazz. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti, and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly …!

Form the archives [2017]! Program was conceived and produced by Josh Myers [https://www.joshmmyers.com/]. Enjoy.

Pt. III - Poetics of Revolution: Autonomy, Land, Visions of Freedom & the Kurdish Freedom struggle [a discussion of 1979 struggle] Thank you for listening to Terrains of Struggle: continuities in freedom dreams [a mini radio documentary] that was designed to explore possibilities; radical possibilities and how they become material. How they become alive [brought to life] through resistance – rooted in the assertion of a people’s collective humanity. And how this process is transmitted in time [history] and across space [geographies]. More importantly, we were interested in what can they tell us about ourselves, each other and our relationship with land as a fundamental component of freedom; what are the continuities in conceptualizations of autonomy; and the role of culture in struggle. We hope something was shared that will inspire you to think critically. And act accordingly. To build a global commons of struggle, where we move beyond symbolic solidarity, to material exchange! Until we meet again … In struggle!

Pt. II - A luta continua, vitória é certa: Conceptions of Autonomy, the Black Panthers & Zapatista Check out Pt. III. Thank you for listening to Terrains of Struggle: continuities in freedom dreams [a mini radio documentary] that was designed to explore possibilities; radical possibilities and how they become material. How they become alive [brought to life] through resistance – rooted in the assertion of a people’s collective humanity. And how this process is transmitted in time [history] and across space [geographies]. More importantly, we were interested in what can they tell us about ourselves, each other and our relationship with land as a fundamental component of freedom; what are the continuities in conceptualizations of autonomy; and the role of culture in struggle. We hope something was shared that will inspire you to think critically. And act accordingly. To build a global commons of struggle, where we move beyond symbolic solidarity, to material exchange! Until we meet again … In struggle!