The industrial complex is an industrial complex! Today we’ll be talking about the spread of industrial complexes, non-profits, so-called activist influencers, the controversy around BLM Global Network spending, and the whispers around Nikole Hannah-Jones and Kimberlé Crenshaw being problématique.
What's the Word? Industrial Complex. Popularized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the industrial complex refers to the profit-driven enmeshment of the state and private industry in a way that makes it more profitable to perpetuate the problem they claim to solve.
What We're Reading. “In The Shadow of the Shadow State” by Ruth Wilson Gilmore in The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. In this essay, Gilmore discusses the rise of the non-profit industrial complex as an industry that takes up "kindness" work for those the state has abandoned and operates to suppress revolution. Her solution is to take the money and run, without fooling ourselves into believing the state or capitalism will give us the keys to our freedom.
What in the World?! In this segment, we discuss our ongoing experience of forming a non-profit, the questionable financial decisions of Black Lives Matter, what Alyssa and Brendane would do if we came into $90 million, whether we really should be putting our faith or support in famous people or so-called "activist influencers," and why you should stay away from Teach For America.
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Discussed In This Episode
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (INCITE!, 2017)
Black Awakening in Capitalist America (Robert L. Allen, 1969)
Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship (Aimee Meredith Cox, 2015)
Re-Visions of Abolition: From Critical Resistance to A New Way of Life (Setsu Shigematsu, 2021)
Black Lives Matter Secretly Bought a $6 Million House (Sean Campbell, 2022)
ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 202 is here!
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Transcript will be available on our website here.
S3, E14 Reimagining Zora
Bonus Episode: Hot Takes
ICONversations, Pt. 4: Dr. Yolanda T. Moses
ICONversations, Pt. 3: Tracy Heather Strain
ICONversations, Pt. 2: Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole
ICONversations, Pt. 1: Dr. Irma McClaurin
S3, E9 You Asked, We Answered!
S3, E8 The Crown Chronicles
S3, E7 We Call Her Zora
S3, E6 Diary of Mad Black Women
S3, E5 It's Not You, It's Them: Tips for Academic Conferences
S3, E4 All Skinfolk Ain't Kinfolk
S3, E3 Looting the Womb: Black Birthing People and Reproductive Unfreedom
S3, E2 The Death of Sovereignty
S3, E1 Dangerously in Love with Celebrity
S2, E16 Practicing Zora
S2, E15 What In The World?!
S2, E13 No Body is Normal
S2, E12 Villain Origin Story
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