**This program is part of a collaboration between Africa World Now Project and the Institute of Race Relations and its journal of Race & Class, based in London, where we engage in transnational dialogue that intentionally disrupts dominant discourses around racial oppression. 

**These programs are designed to inform the ways we think about the persistent and evolutionary nature of global racial oppression in order to develop an analysis to radically and systematically address it.

Sophia Siddiqui in Racing the nation: towards a theory of reproductive racism, examines the “notion of reproduction, both biological and social, in relation to new forms of political and popular racism in Europe wherein the family and breeding to keep the nation white and ‘native’ are now centre stage. Whilst certain women’s reproductive capacities are being incentivised for nationalist ends, this goes alongside a rollback in reproductive rights as well as a series of exclusions aimed at those marked as demographic threats – migrants, Muslims and, increasingly, LGBTQ people. She demonstrates how migrant women, who are vilified as breeders who could threaten the purity of the nation, are essential to maintain the traditional nuclear family under capitalism, through caring for the young and old, but simultaneously denied their rights as workers and mothers.”

This intervention provides a “framework to understand how, in different countries and political contexts of Europe, ‘native’ women’s reproductive capacities are being incentivized for nationalist ends and how those same rights (to have children and family life) for minority migrant women are being restricted, whilst the hyper-exploitation of their labour is simultaneously essential to care for the young, sick and elderly of the nation under ‘advanced’ capitalism.”

I engage Sophia to explore the relationship with anti-blackness, specifically examining how the historical processes of creating the other are maintained in Europe today through a pattern that situates women now at the nexus of both defining the nation and also maintaining it, whilst excluding those who do not conform.” 

Sophia Siddiqui is Deputy Editor of Race & Class. As well as assisting the editors and managing the production of Race & Class, Sophia is the coordinator of Institute of Race Relations News. She writes and lectures on anti-racist feminism, both historically and in the present-day. Her most recent publication, the topic of our current engagement is titled, ‘Racing the nation: towards a theory of reproductive racism’.

Racing The Nation: towards a theory of reproductive racism w/ Sophia Siddiqui

This year represents an important historical conjuncture that has very important implications for our contemporary moment of crisis, yet extremely instructive of how we can move toward a different future. It is the 100th year recognition of the birth of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz [aka Malcolm X] as well as Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, and Medgar Evers. 

There are and have been, thus far, an assortment of panels, programs, conferences, talks, and consortium on the life of Malcolm. All of them are important in one way or another. We are not here to critique, diminish, distort any of them as they all offer something important, from entry points to study the life of Malcolm to conversations of political and ideological trajectory of Malcolm’s work with those who worked and knew him. 

What we intend to offer in this ocean of programs, talks, etc is an engagement with the political praxis of Malik El Shabazz, paying attention to the ways we can extend the work of Malik El Shabazz, asking: how are organizer-intellectuals in the long tradition of Malik El Shabazz and those who came before him - Hubert Harrison, Claudia Jones, Esther Jackson, Ella Baker, Vikki Garvin, Marvel Cooke, etc - are working at the contours of the collective work he [& they] left to be undertaken? 

Today, we hear a conversation on Malik El Shabazz, part of a collaboration between Africa World Now Project and the Kenyan Organic Intellectual Network, where we will intentionally think through the impact ofrevolutionary Kenya on El Hajj Malik El Shabazz’s thought and practice. Paying attention to Malik El Shabazz’s clarity on the role of revolutionary struggle as formulated through his relationship with revolutionaries in Kenya, specifically East Africa, more broadly etc …

We explore how Malik Shabazz is part of a tradition of African revolutionary thought and practice, which informs us collectively. Mapping the influence of revolutionaries in Kenya … such as the Land and Freedom Army, Pio Gama Pinto, Odinga Odinga, Mohamed Babu, and others on Malcolm? And what strains of Malik El Shabazz’s thought and practice are important to the current struggle? 

Joining us for the Mailk El Shabazz session of the collaboration [The Impact and Legacies of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, Frantz Fanon & Patrice Lumumba x 100] were:

Gacheke Gachihi, Coordinator of Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC) and a member of the Social Justice Centres Working Group Steering Committee in Nairobi, Kenya. Coordinator of the Kenya Organic Intellectuals Network. He is also involved in regional social movements and politics. He researches and writes about police violence, criminalization of the poor, social justice and social struggles, amongst others. His articles and video interviews are published in the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), Africa Is a Country (AIAC), Daraja Press, Verso Books, and others.

Mzalendo Wanjira Wanjiru is co-founder of Mathare Social Justice Center and a member of the social justice movement and organic intellectuals network. 

Maureen (Mo) Kasuku is a feminist organiser and digital rights advocate based in Kenya. Her work is a dynamic exploration of the crossroads between feminism and technology. With a keen eye on the intricate interplay of gender equality, social justice, and technological advancement in grassroots communities. She is a member of Ukombozi Library, Nairobi. And Cadre with the Revolutionary Socialist League.

listen intently. think critically. act accordingly.


Pt. I  | on the praxis of Malik El Shabazz  w/ the Kenyan Organic Intellectual Network

This year represents an important historical conjuncture that has very important implications for our contemporary moment of crisis, yet extremely instructive in how we can move toward a different future. 

It is the 100th year recognition of the birth of Malik El Shabazz [aka Malcolm X] as well as Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, Robert F. Williams, and Medgar Evers. 

There are, have been, and will be an assortment of panels, programs, conferences, talks, and colloquium that explore and contextualize them, individually, and together. 

What we intend to offer is an identification of the continuities and discontinuities with the conditions and structures that produced the thought and practice of this group, not intended to isolate them for the many others, but to provide a lens to telescope up, down, above, and under the temporality of human geography, paying acute attention to how people resist in the face oppressive forces. 

Simply stated, we intend to connect the dots across time and space, attempting to read deeply the instructive details of how to construct a new society, a global society that undergirds these and other people’s thought and practice who resist the backwardness of capital, no matter the cost. 

With this, today, in this Part II of our collaboration with the Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Network, we explore Lumumba’s Pan Africanism. 

In this session, we intentionally examine the Pan Africanism of Patrice Lumumba, paying attention to role and importance of the Congo in African liberation struggles asking: 

•	What strains of Lumumba’s thought are important to the current struggles, globally? 
•	Why is the Congo region important in Africana liberation struggle?
•	What is the connection between ecological struggles and the Congo?  

We are, ultimately, for the entire series, in general, this session, in particular, interested in thinking collectively about: 

•	What are some of the ideas that each of these figures offer for expanding and informing our practice today? And 
•	Most importantly, how do we understand these figures in the long struggle for liberation in the African/a world?  

Joining us for this conversation are: 

Gathanga Ndungu is a community organiser with Mathare Social Justice Centre which is under the Social Justice Centres’ Working Group. He is also part of the Revolutionary Social League brigade that organizes political education in different political cells in the respective centres in Nairobi. As well as the Organic Intellectuals Network. 

Okakah Onyango is a member of the Revolutionary Socialist League, Organic Intellectuals Network and Social Justice Movement. He is a dedicated tech-driven community organizer, blending roles of revolutionary intellectualism and communications strategist. 

Gerald Kamau is an ecological justice activist based at Kayole Community Justice Centre as well as Organic Intellectuals Network.

Pt. II | Patrice Lumumba's Pan Africanism w/ the Kenyan Organic Intellectual Network

Colonial violence and colonial discourse are at the heart of Western modernity.

They are constituent features of Western European modern ontology, knowledge production and distribution, and sociopolitical thought and economic practice codified in the 14th century. The use of ontology is another way of saying, the study of the reality of ‘being’; in simpler terms, what makes a thing, a thing.

It is clear [or at least it should be] what and who the ‘monsters’ are, so it is not necessarily novel in itself. But it still bears repeating. 

To add more clarity, adding more perspective, hoping to make more sense, what I am suggesting here is that we are living in the 21st century with 14th century conceptualizations of reality produced from the subsequent violence inherent in the contradictions built over centuries through capitalist logic … all interdependent on supremacist notions of a constructed whiteness. 

A world where false notions of reality are attached to color [and class, culture, gender, and formations of consciousness]. 

This violence we are facing is what Fanon was unpacking. Structures of violence is what Fanon was intent to deconstruct, and one of his important contributions to a: decolonial imperative.

Therefore, it is, here, within the material and nonmaterial parameters of violence that we can explore and examine Fanon’s corpus to construct frameworks of analysis. 

Though we should never neatly apply, nor seek to use linear logic, without taking into consideration the historical evolution in the material [and nonmaterial] conditions over time and space, Fanon’s decolonial imperative stands as an important point of entry to understanding the current historical moment.  

Nicholas Mwangi is a writer, organiser, and member of the Ukombozi Library in Kenya. He contributes regularly to People’s Dispatch. Nicholas has co-edited Breaking the Silence on NGOs in Africa and Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Reflect on the Legacy of Pio Gama Pinto. He is currently working on a forthcoming book titled The Crisis of Capitalism in Africa with the Organic Intellectuals Network in Kenya.

Waringa Wahome is an organizer, political theorist, lawyer and also the coordinator of the legal empowerment hub at Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC). Waringa Wahome is a lawyer at Waringa Wahome & CO Advocates as well as member of the Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Network.

Pt. III | Fanon & the decolonial imperative Pt. I

https://savageminds.substack.com/p/joti-brar-0bf
Joti Brar, chair of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist CPGB-ML), discusses the compassionless media coverage of the genocide in Gaza and the obfuscation of the horrors of the siege in Gaza.

Savage Minds - S5 E1 Joti Brar

It was 1839 and Frank and Lucy McWorter were getting married for the second time. The wedding was a reaffirmation of their love and a recommitment to all they’d built together. They had come to Illinois with four of their children and built a farm of golden wheat fields and towering stalks of corn.

Though there was plenty of symbolism in their renewed vows, the McWorters remarried for a more pragmatic reason — they had been enslaved in Kentucky when they first committed to each other, but such marriages were rarely respected by U. S. courts.

They had still been enslaved when they started their family, but Frank quickly began to plot their way to freedom. Frank’s owner and father, George McWhorter, trusted Frank to manage his farm and gave him leeway to earn money doing extra work. So, Frank learned how to mine and manufacture his own saltpeter, a necessary component in gunpowder. He used the money he earned selling saltpeter to buy freedom for him and his family.

He began freeing his family in 1817. By this time Lucy and Frank were raising Judah, Frank Jr., Sarah, and Solomon, but Frank first bought Lucy’s freedom. She was pregnant at the time, so not only did he free Lucy, but his purchase also ensured that their son, Squire, would be born free. In 1819, he bought his own freedom, becoming Free Frank, and later changed his name to Frank McWorter — dropping the “h” from his former enslaver’s last name.

Frank and Lucy, along with several children they had managed to free, moved west to Illinois in 1830 to the land that would become their farm in Pike County. He traded his saltpeter operation for Frank Jr.’s freedom after Junior had fled his enslavement to Canada. Frank made trips back to Kentucky to purchase the freedom of each of his three remaining enslaved children and at least one grandchild. On each trip, Frank McWorter had to make the gut-wrenching decision of which child he would free and which he would leave behind to endure slavery. The McWorters spent $14,000 to free their family. Adjusted for inflation, that is nearly $500,000 in 2023.

Frank McWorter began his farm with 160 acres and eventually increased those holdings to over 500 acres. Along with his corn and wheat, he grew oats and raised cattle, hogs, and horses. In 1836, Frank divided forty-two acres of his land into town lots and founded the town of New Philadelphia. The town, the first officially founded by African Americans, prospered with both Black and white residents and formed part of a larger rural community of farmers. The town’s very existence as a biracial community in a state with repressive Black Codes on the books until 1865 was a defiant statement against racial inequality. New Philadelphia was an audacious project, a prelude to Black communities like Nicodemus, Kansas; DeWitty, Nebraska; Blackdom, New Mexico; and Boley, Oklahoma, founded in the West after the Civil War.

For more: New Philadelphia, Gerald A. McWorter and Kate Williams-McWorter

Sign the petition: https://chng.it/q5Q5XS9cFd

Free Frank McWorter, Freedom Seekers & New Philadelphia w/ Abdul Alkalimat

This cannot be repeated enough, as the dialectical relationship between anti-colonial praxis and the colonial logic of capital becomes ever more fascistic, we must be ever more clear on how violence is necessary to distort and make imperceptible … the possibilities of a future. 

Simply put, the ever more overt application of violence as a means to maintain oppressive social structures that guide the formation of consciousness, the more it arrests our ability to engage with ‘the beyond struggle’, beyond the now moment. 

The vast majority of us are caught within the cyclical patterns of manufactured realities of capitalist imagination. Capital needs the literal life-[blood] of those who are constituent parts of these manufactured realities; realities captured in incorrect notions of the inevitability of conflict, induced resource scarcity, the logic of private property, aggressive individualism, and the insolvability of the climate crisis. 

We are expected to spend majority of our time and energy surviving the daily crucible designed by capital. 

Ok, I can go on … but let’s not get lost in the rhetoric and now that you are probably equally lost in this long opening thought, we should, at this point, circle back to what I suggest cannot “be repeated enough” …: 

And that is…:

Colonial violence and colonial discourse are at the heart of Western modernity. They are constituent features of Western European modern ontology, knowledge production and distribution, and sociopolitical thought and economic practice codified in the 14th century. The use of ontology is another way of saying, the study of the reality of ‘being’; in simpler terms, what makes a thing, a thing.

It is clear [or at least it should be] what and who the ‘monsters’ are, so it is not necessarily novel in itself. But it still bears repeating. 

To add more clarity, adding more perspective, hoping to make more sense, what I am suggesting here is that we are living in the 21st century with 14th century conceptualizations of reality produced from the subsequent violence inherent in the contradictions built over centuries through capitalist logic … all interdependent on supremacist notions of a constructed whiteness. 
A world where false notions of reality are attached to color [and class, culture, gender, and formations of consciousness]. 

This violence we are facing is what Fanon was unpacking. Structures of violence is what Fanon was intent to deconstruct, and one of his important contributions to a: decolonial imperative.

Therefore, it is, here, within the material and nonmaterial parameters of violence that we can explore and examine Fanon’s corpus to construct frameworks of analysis. 

Though we should never neatly apply, nor seek to use linear logic, without taking into consideration the historical evolution in the material [and nonmaterial] conditions over time and space, Fanon’s decolonial imperative stands as an important point of entry to understanding the current historical moment.  

Nicholas Mwangi is a writer, organiser, and member of the Ukombozi Library in Kenya. He contributes regularly to People’s Dispatch. Nicholas has co-edited Breaking the Silence on NGOs in Africa and Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Reflect on the Legacy of Pio Gama Pinto. He is currently working on a forthcoming book titled The Crisis of Capitalism in Africa with the Organic Intellectuals Network in Kenya.

Waringa Wahome is an organizer, political theorist, lawyer and also the coordinator of the legal empowerment hub at Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC). Waringa Wahome is a lawyer at Waringa Wahome & CO Advocates as well as member of the Kenyan Organic Intellectuals Network.

Please forgive the quality of audio in certain parts of our conversation, the ideas and voices are essential and vital, so we choose to share with you. Not to mention one of our comrades/colleagues was outside of Nairobi at the time of the recording. 




Pt. III | Fanon & the decolonial imperative Pt II

The struggle of the LRBW was centered on the political development of Black workers inside
the development of global capitalism in the United States and within a leading sector of capitalist
production in the early and mid-twentieth century, which was then, the auto-industry. This socio-economic location molded a section of Black workers into working-class revolutionaries. The historical moment that shaped LRBW was located at the nexus of the post-World War II capitalist expansion and the beginning of capitalist globalization, rooted in the new technical evolution of the forces of production: a turn to industrial automation of the workplace. 

The very process of their pedagogy of revolution, was their study of theory and what is produced when this theory is applied to real-world experiences, which shaped their practice into workers power.

To study the intellectual processes of the LRBW in the context of a developing global capitalism, as they are identifying a pedagogy of revolution is an essential frame of reference that can offer contemporary working-class movements a guide of action. 

Meaning, the point of discovering the intellectual processes (theoretical development) of the LRBW opens space for us to understand the processes of how [and in what ways] they were intent to developing a worker’s movement. As we pay attention to their ability to identify and name the world around them and the steps they took to then engage their realities in a larger context is an important point of entry to building working class unity. 

This development, seen as a process, serves to situate them historically, while also guiding us to identify what to extract from their practice that can be applied to the [static] and evolving conditions workers find themselves in today. 

What questions were left for us to take up, what are the contours of their thought and practice that be extended and expanded? What are the similarities and dissimilarities in the conditions that workers find themselves across sectors? And What is to be done? 

The LRBW is an interesting and complicated expression of the relationship between Black
workers in Detroit and the global capitalist system. It was a struggle between autoworkers, the
union, and the automobile industry. It encompassed the struggles and contradictions between the workers and the bosses, as well as between workers and the union of which they were a
part. This period exposed the glaring internal and external contradictions of racism within and around the workers movement, historically and in that moment. 

Yet, the LRBW was able to develop a process of struggle combining both theory and practice. 

Today, we explore the story of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers with Jerome Scott and walda katz-fishman, authors of Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries: The story of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. 

walda katz-fishman is a scholar activist and professor of sociology at Howard University. A founding member and former board chair of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide, she is a contributing author or editor of popular education toolkits and books, including The United States Social Forum: Perspectives of a Movement and The Roots of Terror, among others.

Jerome Scott is a former autoworker, labor organizer in Detroit auto plants, and member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The founding director of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide, he is a contributing author or editor of popular education toolkits and books, including The United States Social Forum: Perspectives of a Movement and The Roots of Terror, among others, as well.



the story of the league of revolutionary Black workers

Nelson Mandela speaks up for the palestinian struggle in New York City Hall 1990. Hosted by Ted Koppel. Here, Nelson Mandela speaks truth to power and highlights the nature of true socialist internationalism and solidarity. 

Nelson Mandela speaks on Palestine

We are honored to have with us, again, The Honorable Fravia Marquez Silva, 2nd Advisor To Venezuela’s National Assembly and Spokeswomen for Cumbe International and recently launched Bring The Back Movement and Venezuela’s Charge D’Affaires to Belgium and Venezuela’s Preeminent Trade Unionist H.E. Ambassador Marcos Garcia. 
  
This program explored:  

1) The effects of US imperial aggression on the working class in Venezuela? 
2) The [immediate and long term] impact on the working class throughout the hemisphere? 
3) What are some ways the working class in the Americas can support the working class in Venezuela that can possibly be expanded to other regions under attack? 
4) How can we think about this moment in a way that can increase class solidarity in the hemisphere and throughout the world? 

This program is a collaborative project between Shirley Graham Du Bois/William Worthy Media and Friendship Collective & Africa World Now Project Collective.

the question of Venezuela and the role of the working class

What we you hear next is a recent community dialogue [led by james pope of Africa World Now Project Collective: https://linktr.ee/Africaworldnowproject] that explored the impact of Africa on El Hajj Malik El Shabzz’s thought and practice and Malik Shabazz’s impact on Africa. 

What we are concerned with, specifically, with this dialogue is the impact of East Africa, generally, revolutionary Kenya, in particular on Malik Shabazz’s thought and practice. 

We pay attention to attention to the evolutions of Malik Shabazz’s clarity on the role of revolutionary struggle through his direct relationship with revolutionaries in Kenya [East Africa more broadly]. 

The question[s] that framed this dialogue were:  

1.	What was the influence of revolutionaries in East Africa, generally, Kenya, specifically on Malik El Shabazz political, cultural, and economic praxis? 

Here, we mapped the Land and Freedom Army [known in colonialist discourse and historical memory as the Mau Mau Rebellion as well as was his relationship with Pio Gama Pinto, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, and Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu? 

2.	What strains of Malik Shabazz’s praxis are important to contextualizing current geopolitical and national questions, and are applicable to this current moment? 

Here I think it would useful to suggest to you, our listeners, to explore some of his work; intentionally engaging his speeches, lectures, and/or talks as well as his project to take the U.S. [in relation to the colonial question that includes people of African descent in the US, and ultimately Western nations] to a world court, his developing application [and it can be argued implicitly, critique] of human rights [where there is a clear sharpening of human rights theory and practice to engage an African world perspective]; his contributions and attempts to extend Pan Africanism, challenging Black Internationalism as framework to understanding national oppression, autonomy, and personhood. 

For more, it is highly recommended to explore the work of Africa World Now Project Collaborative … as well as the
•	Kenyan Organic Intellectuals [a very important collective of revolutionaries in Kenya who are extensions of this history and more!]
•	Engage an article titled: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz: the Continuity and Legacy of a Critical Africana Human Rights Consciousness [an article that extends and expands on many of the points made in the lecture, which is also available if you follow Africa World Now Project Collective’s social media and look in the bios of our various social platforms for access to the this article and extensive archive]
•	Visit https://alkalimat.org/ and https://www.brothermalcolm.net/mxcontent.html, where Professor Abdul Alkalimat has developed a series lectures called MalcolmX100 as well as an absolutely incredible archive of work on and by Bro Malcolm complied by Abdul Alkalimat] [Selected Work on Malcolm X]. 
•	Black Men Build where you can find work on contemporary implications of Malcolm X as well as a re/released and update of a Study Guide on Malcolm developed by Abdul Alkalimat and co. 
•	Of course, you can explore the work of Africa World Now Project Collective, where you will find a playlist of programs that explore, in more depth, some of these questions. As well as explorations and extensions of Africana sociopolitical thought and practice. 

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.  Enjoy the program!

the impact of africa on malcolm x & malcolm x’s impact on africa

Africa World Now Project is a multimedia educational project that produces knowledge about the African world through a series of methods that include: radio, podcast, publishing, film festivals, webinars, social media, etc.

Africa World Now Project is, in essence, a multimedia open-access 'classroom' that provides actionable information which explores continuities and discontinuities in the history, culture, and politics of the entire African world.

AWNP does this by engaging in organic discussions with scholars, artists, journalists, activists, organizers and others who are intentionally disruptive in assessing the various issues that exist in the entire African world.

Racing The Nation: towards a theory of reproductive racism w/ Sophia Siddiqui

Africa World Now Project Collective

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