In this episode Josh interviews Amba Guerguerian and Harry to discuss the New York War Crimes project and their efforts to get people to Boycott, Divest, and Unsubscribe from the New York Times.

Amba Guerguerian is an associate editor at The Indypendent and a contributor at The New York War Crimes.

Harry is a writer, educator and organizer with Writers against the War on Gaza and a contributor at The New York War Crimes.

The New York War Crimes is a project dedicated to de legitimizing the imperial mouthpiece that is The New York Times through focused contemporary and historical critique, while providing an alternative platform for Palestinian and Arab authors, poets and artists — precisely what you won’t find in the pages of The Times.

If you would like to support our work the best way to do so as always is to become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We are also still working to increase our subscriber base over on the YouTube channel so subscribing to that feed is another great way. We have four, possible five live episodes coming this upcoming week so make sure you are subscribed there or on patreon to catch all of that content.

This episode was recorded on March 31, 2024

This episode was co-edited/produced by Aidan Elias and Jared Ware

Music is provided as always by Televangel

Links:

The New York War Crimes

The Indypendent

Writers Against the War on Gaza

U.S. Media Control and October 7th with Bryce Greene

Electronic Intifada

Mondoweiss

The Anti-Empire Project with Justin Podour

MAKC YouTube Channel

In this conversation we welcome Eugene Puryear back to the podcast to talk about the recently published book The Black Belt Thesis: A Reader which was compiled by The Black Belt Thesis Study Group and features a foreword by Eugene Puryear.

The reader itself was published by 1804 Books, and they have published a lot of really good stuff recently that I just want to take a moment to shout-out. They recently along with the Palestinian Youth Movement translated and published The Trinity of Fundamentals which hopefully we will be hosting a conversation on at some point soon. They also recently published a translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine and of course the collection of Hugo Chavez’s speeches that we discussed with Manolo de los Santos last year and much more. So I just say that to say if you go pick this book up from them, that there is a bunch of really good stuff you can grab while you’re there.

Eugene Puryear is a journalist, activist, politician, and host on Breakthrough News. He is a founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and is the author of Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America.

In this discussion we ask Eugene to contextualize the origins of the Black Belt thesis, to discuss some of the articulations and development of the thesis as undertaken by Comintern and the CPUSA. We discuss some of the organizing implications of it, its role in the development of the US communist movement particularly with regards to Black people, and the challenging of the problem of white racism as it exists within the history of the US left and white workers as well. Also Eugene discusses the centrality of national oppression within the political economy of US capitalism.

Along the way we talk about some of the contributions from figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, Harry Haywood, Louis Thompson Patterson, Claudia Jones and others.

A couple of other things I want to highlight is that we have been hosting a lot of conversations over on our YouTube page recently the majority of which we have not released as audio episodes. We will link that in the show notes, but also you can just find it by searching Millennials Are Killing Capitalism on YouTube.

The other thing I want to note is we do have another round of our study group starting back up. For this cycle we will be reading Orisanmi Burton’s amazing book Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression and the Long Attica Revolt. I can’t wait to read that text and discuss it with folks so sign up for that if you’re interested it will be on Wednesday nights at 7:30 PM ET starting on April 17th it is for patrons of the show and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. And as always the best way to support our work is to become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

The Black Belt Thesis: A Reader

Millennials Are Killing Capitalism on YouTube

Tip of the Spear Reading Group (for patrons)

Credits:

This episode is co-hosted by Joshua Briond and Jared Ware. It is co-produced by Aidan Elias and Jared Ware. Our guest for this episode is Eugene Puryear. Our music is from Televangel.

In this episode we interview Tammy Kovich and El Jones to discuss the book Antifascism Against Machismo

Published by our good friends at Kersplebedeb, and described as

“An intergenerational dialogue on the meaning of feminist antifascism.

Anti-Fascism Against Machismo collects and continues a conversation begun by Tammy Kovich (as “Petronella Lee”) in 2019. Four feminist, antifascist revolutionaries jump off from each other’s reflections and bring the particularities of their varied contexts to bear on one central problem: What has and will a women’s war against fascism look like?”

We pick up this conversation with Tammy Kovich who wrote the original zine upon which the book is constructed as well as El Jones who wrote the introduction. The book itself also includes contributions from Veronica L and from the late great Butch Lee who became an ancestor in 2021, and who we all spend time honoring in this conversation.

Among other things we discuss different variants of fascist or far right patriarchy and misogyny, the problems of the politics of representation and neocolonialism, and histories of the resistance of women in antifascist movements including in Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, and Spain.

I will add that we recorded this conversation back in August, and I am sure that if we had recorded it after October 7th we would have talked about what an antifascist war against zionism might look like and the contributions of women and children in the Palestinian struggle against genocide.

We very much appreciated this book and encourage folks to pick it up from Kersplebedeb’s retail arm which is leftwingbooks.net/. It is currently 40% off for the month of March along with over 400 titles at their online bookstore.

If you appreciate the work that we do, becoming a patron of the show or increasing your pledge to the show if you can afford to do so, are the most meaningful ways you can help us keep it going. We would not be able to bring you these episodes on a weekly basis and the livestreams we put out multiple times per week without the support of our listeners. We also will be starting a new study group in April and the best place for you to find out more about that and track everything we release is to become a patron for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

For this episode we interview Ernest McMillan to discuss his memoir Standing: One Man's Odyssey During the Turbulent '60s which came out last summer. McMillan grew up in the highly segregated heart of Dallas, Texas. We talk to him about his childhood experiences within his segregated Black community, and his experiences organizing against white supremacy in Dallas and across the South with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

McMillan’s story is one of the power of organizing, but also of fierce state repression, police raids, trumped up charges, and a j ourney to find refuge in West Africa, time in the underground, political imprisonment, and prison organizing. There are many more aspects of his life story of course, but those are some of the ones he discusses in Standing and in this episode as well.

A couple of notes, McMillan offers a few words on solidarity with Palestinians, and on the importance of this today. This conversation was recorded in September, and I say that just to underscore the long history of solidarity between SNCC members and the Palestinian Liberation struggle. If we had recorded it after October I’m sure we would’ve talked about that solidarity in more detail, but I’ll just say it’s a common thread that has come up in most of our conversations with SNCC veterans.

We do have a number of new episodes on their way soon. I apologize to the audio listeners that I have been a little busier on the video side in recent months, but Aidan Elias - who co-produced this episode - is helping to produce and release the audio content we have and more is on its way soon.

We encourage folks to pick up Ernest’s book to learn more about his life and political odyssey.

To support our work please consider contributing to our patreon. You can do so for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism

Other conversations we've had with SNCC veterans or about SNCC (or SNCC members) in some capacity.

In this episode we speak to Pulitzer Prize winning composer and musician Henry Threadgill and the co-author of his autobiography Brent Hayes Edwards. The book we discuss, which was published last year is entitled Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music.

Henry Threadgill was born in Chicago in 1944. He is one of the most significant and innovative composers of the 20th and 21st Century. In addition to being an award winning composer is an amazing saxophonist and flautist. He also is known for his percussion work, in particular the invention of the hubkaphone, a marimba like instrument made out of hub caps. He has been a leader or co-leader of the bands Air, Ensemble Double UP, Make a Move, The Henry Threadgill Ensemble, The Henry Threadgill Sextett, The Situation Society Dance Band, Very Very Circus, X-75, Zooid and 14 or 15 Kestra: Agg and probably some others I didn’t track down.  If we went into all the bands and groups Henry was a part of the list would be three times as long. In recent years Threadgill has established a completely new chromatic system for musical composition outside the confines of diatonic harmony. In 2016, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for In For a Penny, In for a Pound, an album he composed for his sextet, Zooid. He currently lives in New York.

Brent Hayes Edwards is a Professor at the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and the Director of the Scholars-in-Residence Program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.

So why this episode, it’s a bit outside of most of our content here. Perhaps the closest things we’ve done to a conversation like this would be the dialogue we hosted between Fred Moten & Hanif Abdurraqib or the interview we did with Dionne Brand last year. But although I didn’t ask it directly, the guiding question that animated this interview and engagement with Henry and Brent’s book for me was: what insights might a truly revolutionary composer have for aspiring revolutionary organizers or for cultural workers seeking to maximize the revolutionary possibilities of their work? 

We hope you enjoy this conversation and that it proves as meaningful to you as it was to us. It was a tremendous honor to sit down with Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards to discuss their beautiful book which is available now everywhere.

Thank you to Aidan Elias for co-producing this episode.

If you appreciate the work that we do, as always you can support our work for as little as $1 per month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. Our podcast is fully supported by individual contributions of folks like you and we encourage you to join the amazing folks who make it possible for us to bring you these conversations on a weekly basis.