2020 has been a year of African resistance - resistance to police violence, poverty and mass incarceration.
This episode looks at the role that culture plays in the “war of ideas” - how books, movies and music can express the worldview and serve the interests of the oppressor or those of the oppressed.
Aundrey Jones, Ethnic Studies doctoral candidate at UCSD, and Curtis Howard, early Crips member who was incarcerated for decades in California prisons - both organizers with "All of Us or None" ex-prisoner advocacy organization - discuss the political and psychological impact of:
Curtis Howard is a writer, blogger, public speaker and activist from San Diego, California. One of the earliest members of a local San Diego Crips set, Curtis spent decades in various California prisons including Salinas Valley and Pelican Bay. He is the author of the popular book Cellmates and Cellouts, a collection of stories of life on the streets and behind bars, and the forthcoming book Crips and Politics. Curtis recalls the books found in the prison library that influenced his political development, including on Malcolm X and Assata Shakur.
Aundrey Jones earned received a degree in African-American Studies from UC Riverside and has done extensive research on black cultural expression, policing and mass incarceration. His doctoral project, “A Dream Eclipsed: The Cultural Politics of War and Carcerality in Black Los Angeles” argues that "Los Angeles...signifies not only a geopolitical region enabled through war, but an entity whose total socioeconomic structure has depended on the preservation and reproduction of discourses of war” and makes the case that the Cold War, the War on Poverty, the Vietnam War, the War on Drugs, and the War on Gangs were all wars on Black people.
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Episode #101: Malcolm X and Anti-colonial Struggle: The Importance of May 19
Episode #100: African Liberation Day 2022 - 50 Years of Leadership Towards African Redemption
Episode #99: Reparations Series Part 2 - A Profile of Queen Mother Moore w/ Prof. Tiffany Caesar
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Episode #97: The Role of the Artist in the African Revolution w/ Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets
Episode #96: Africa and the Russia/Ukraine Conflict
Episode #95: The Politics of Hip Hop with Jermaine ”Complex” Simpson
Episode #94: Colonialism as The Mode of Production
Episode #93: Covid-19, Pop Culture and the Anticolonial Turn in Africana Studies
Episode #92: Project Black Ankh continues leadership in the fight against Covid-19
Episode #91:The Role of Black Students and Intellectuals in the African Revolution
Episode #90:The Colonial Origins of Santa Claus
Episode #89: Keep the Spear Burning! The Oldest Black Power Newspaper Turns 53 Years Old!
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