IN SESSION #19: Imperial and Zionist capture of Blackness with Jamal Williams

I was so excited to be joined by a new comrade and brother, Jamal Williams. Jamal and I met when he reached out to connect about our shared political values in the decrepit and violent psy-disciplines. From our first discussion, I knew we had a LOT to talk about and more importantly, how it felt vital to share Jamal's work and commitments with the larger community. In this discussion we will get into Jamal's view on how imperialism and Zionism have worked hard to "capture" Blackness in a blackmailed relationally of "solidarity", the important community and political organizing Jamal does, the pressures to be anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist on campuses and in the medical world, and our own ongoing struggle for liberation. I am so excited for you to meet him!

Jamal Williams is a neuroscientist, professor, and child development activist whose work focuses on ADHD, autism, and broader neurodevelopmental processes in children. Williams critically examines the political economy of health and education systems. His scholarship and advocacy interrogate how universities, healthcare institutions, and nonprofit infrastructures extract value from poor and working-class communities while failing to address the structural conditions that produce inequity. He is particularly concerned with the co-optation of marginalized suffering through what he conceptualizes as the "Health Equity Industrial Complex". Williams also explores how health disparities across Black, immigrant, and rural communities are rooted in shared upstream conditions, like housing insecurity, environmental injustice, labor exploitation, and unequal access to resources — rather than isolated group-level deficits. Williams' broader aim is to reframe conversations about health, development, and justice away from individual outcomes and toward collective conditions, advocating for approaches that prioritize material redistribution, community control, and systemic transformation.

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