“We Cannot Work Under These Conditions” - Austin McCoy on the Radical Vision of the Black Workers Congress
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
Release Date: 11/05/2024
Eric Mann’s Radical Journey through the Long 1960s (Part 2)
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
This is part two of a two-part episode. This part of the conversation deals more with the actions that led to Mann's political imprisoment and his experiences as a political prisoner. In this two-part episode, we are joined by special cohost PM, and we speak with veteran civil rights organizer Eric Mann about his journey from his upbringing in New York to his involvement in political struggles during the 1960s. Mann discusses his early influences, including his parents' activism. He reflects on his work with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating...
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Eric Mann’s Radical Journey through the Long 1960s (Part 1)
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
In this two-part episode, we are joined by special cohost PM, and we speak with veteran civil rights organizer Eric Mann about his journey from his upbringing in New York to his involvement in political struggles during the 1960s. Mann discusses his early influences, including his parents' activism. He reflects on his work with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), highlighting key campaigns such as the Trailways boycott and the 1968 Columbia University student strike. Mann also recounts his time as a political prisoner, offering...
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“Individual Acts of Resistance Can Lead to New Terrains of Struggle” Garrett Felber on the Life of Martin Sostre
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
In this conversation we talk with Garrett Felber about their latest book . In discussing this new political biography, we cover Sostre’s ideological and political journey, history as a jailhouse lawyer, his forms of organizing practice, and the ways that people supported his campaign for freedom from political imprisonment. We talk about the influence of Great Depression era Harlem, Black and Puerto Rican Nationalism, Marxism-Leninism, national liberation movements, armed struggle, Women’s Liberation, and Anarchism on Sostre’s political thought and practice. Although much of what...
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“There Has to Be Some Consequences for These Horrors” - Tariq Khan on Settler Colonial Violence and Antileft Repression
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
This is the conclusion of our two part conversation with Tariq Khan on his book . In of the conversation we laid out many of the general dynamics between anti-indigenous settler colonial violence in the 19th Century and the development of the earliest iterations of anticommunism in the so-called United States, long before McCarthyism or even what’s recognized by historians as the first Red Scare. In this conversation we talk about some of the legal precedents that the Trump administration has dusted off for some of his attempts to remove or exclude people for political views. Because...
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The Obscurant Function of 'Artificial Intelligence' with Edward Ongweso Jr
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
In this episode, we speak with Edward Ongweso Jr about "artificial intelligence" and its implications, particularly concerning corporate interests and historical parallels with labor control. Edward critiques the term “artificial intelligence” for obscuring the underlying digital technologies and algorithmic systems that serve corporate agendas, emphasizing the narrow view of intelligence that excludes human cognitive elements. The conversation delves into the historical roots of computation, drawing parallels between modern AI and 19th-century plantation management techniques aimed at...
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Rejecting Neoliberalism & Neo-McCarthyism at US Universities with Charles HF Davis III
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
In this episode, we speak with Dr. Charles H.F. Davis III about the increasingly repressive conditions on university campuses, particularly in the context of Columbia University's caving in to federal pressures under the thumb of Trump’s administration. We explore the broader implications of these concessions at the expense of liberalized notions of intellectual and academic freedom, student activism, and the role of universities as sites of political struggle. Dr. Davis highlights the historical and ongoing repression of student activism, particularly pro-Palestinian movements, and...
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"Like We're at War with a Foreign Nation" - How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Anti-Left Repression with Tariq Khan
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
In this episode we interview Tariq Khan on his book The Republic Shall Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression. We’ll be releasing this conversation as a two part episode on this excellent book which studies how anticommunism within the US is deeply intertwined with settler colonialism, anti-indigenous thought, and genocidal violence. This helps us to reframe our often twentieth century centric view of anti-left repression in the US. Khan’s work on the 19th century in particular also helps us to see the ways things like race science, eugenics, and...
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Against Western/Imperial Feminisms with Khadija Haynes
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
In this episode, we speak with Khadijah Haynes about her recent piece, "A Fetus on the Dirt Road” which offers a sharp critique of Western feminism's complicity in imperialism and its historical roots in racial violence. Haynes argues that Western feminism often obscures the struggles of both Black women and men, relying on colonial and anti-Black logics that fail to address the broader context of sexualized, gendered, and racialized abuses of all Black African people. We discuss other historical and contemporary critiques of feminism, argue that feminism does not have a...
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Counterinsurgency Urbanism with Ted Rutland
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
In this episode, recorded mid-2024, we speak with Ted Rutland about the evolution of policing from the mid-20th century's professional model to the counterinsurgency urbanism that emerged in the 1970s and 80s in Canada. Rutland discusses how community policing, initially intended to bring police closer to communities through multicultural training and social services, became a strategy to win over parts of the community while waging a larger war against the rest. We delve into some of the historical shifts in policing largely as a response to radical movements and urban...
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“What Does It Mean to Be at the Table?” - Maryam Kashani on Muslim Study and Survival
Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
This is the conclusion of our two part conversation with Maryam Kashani on her book Among other things, in this conversation we talk about the impact and meaning of 1492 to the Muslim world. We discuss Kashani’s concept of the Blues Adhan by way of Clyde Woods. We discuss the experiences of women muslims, and women scholars in Kashani’s book. We talk about the two jihads and other Muslim practices such as zakat and the contradictions between Islamic thought and practice and those demanded by the capitalist and carceral state. It’s a rich discussion that I hope folks find as interesting...
info_outlineIn this episode we interview Austin McCoy to discuss his piece “'Disorganize the State': The Black Workers Congress’s Visions of Abolition-Democracy in the 1970’s", which Austin wrote for the Labor and Employment Relations Association’s publication A Racial Reckoning in Industrial Relations: Storytelling as Revolution from Within.
Austin McCoy is a historian of the 20th Century United States with specializations in African American History, labor, and cultural history. He is currently working on two books: The Quest for Democracy: Black Power, New Left, and Progressive Politics in the Post-Industrial Midwest and a cultural and personal history of De La Soul.
The conversation allows us to once again return to the current of radical anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-racist labor organizing that emanated from organizations like DRUM (the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement), the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and - the focus of McCoy’s essay - the Black Workers Congress.
In this episode we talk about the BWC’s radical vision, which McCoy describes as in the tradition of what W.E.B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy.” And we discuss some of the organizing history of the various individuals and organizations associated with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as well as what happened to their vision over time.
We recorded this discussion on December 18th of 2023 so while we discuss the solidarity that these revolutionary Black organizers had with Palestinians and discuss the UAW’s ceasefire call and their proposal to examine divestment, there are some notes that are important to add as we release this discussion almost a year later (a delay that is entirely my fault).
The UAW has endorsed Kamala Harris despite her role in the genocide of Palestinians and her refusal to call for an arms embargo and they did so with no concessions whatsoever on that issue. This stance by the UAW in this moment in many ways reflects the very currents of racist and imperialist union organizing that groups like the League and the BWC were organizing against. So while we can talk about the folks within the UAW who organized for those statements and resolutions within their union as operating within the traditions we discuss in this episode, it is important to note - at least in my view - that the UAW as a whole has ultimately shunned that radical legacy and replicated the historical role of the labor aristocracy in this moment as they and other major unions in the US have done over and over again.
Nonetheless, I do think that it is important to not dismiss the power or potential of labor organizing in moments like this, even if that potential remains unfulfilled. I think about the lessons that Stefano Harney and Fred Moten pull from people like General Baker when they called us to “wildcat the totality” several years ago.
I’d like to send much appreciation to Austin McCoy for this discussion. If you would like to support our work please become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism
Links and related or referenced discussions:
Our two part conversation with Herb Boyd about this period and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (Part 1, Part 2)
"Finally Got the News" (film about the League)
Some archival documents related to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (visit FreedomArchives.org for more)
Our discussion with J. Moufawad-Paul on "Economism" which deals with some of the imperialist and racist trends within the labor movement (and within Communist or Socialist approaches to organizing the labor movement within empire at various times).