1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

Arming Black Consciousness in Southern Africa with Toivo Asheeke

Dr. Toivo Asheeke who is a scholar-activist and author of “Arming Black Consciousness: the Azanian Black nationalist tradition and South Africa’s Armed Struggle.” In this episode, we discuss the armed liberation movements in Southern Africa, diving into Azanian Black nationalism, the black consciousness movement, and how they contributed to the liberation of southern African countries from Portuguese colonialism and white settler rule.

Welcome to the second episode of our Pan-Africanism series, our guest today is Dr. Toivo Asheeke who is a scholar-activist and author of “Arming Black Consciousness: the Azanian Black nationalist tradition and South Africa’s Armed Struggle.” In this episode, we discuss the armed liberation movements in Southern Africa, diving into Azanian Black nationalism, the black consciousness movement, and how they contributed to the liberation of southern African countries from Portuguese colonialism and white settler rule. This is an extremely fascinating era in African history that is essential for us to learn from as Pan-Africanists united in the shared objective of continental and diaspora unity and liberation. We have some more interviews and events on Pan-Africanism planned so please tune in for more if you're interested, or reach out to find out how to get involved with our organization.

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organization and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

Pan-Africanism 101: In Conversation With Layla Brown

Welcome to the first episode of our Pan-Africanism series, our guest today is Dr. Layla Brown who is a Pan-Africanist and organizer with the All Africans People's Revolutionary Party GC, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology and Africana studies at Northeastern University in the United States and co-host of the Life Study Revolution YouTube show. We have some more interviews and events on Pan-Africanism planned over the next couple of months so please tune in for more if you're interested, or reach out to find out how to get involved with our organization.

Welcome to the first episode of our Pan-Africanism series, our guest today is Dr. Layla Brown who is a Pan-Africanist and organizer with the All Africans People's Revolutionary Party GC, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology and Africana studies at Northeastern University in the United States and co-host of the Life Study Revolution YouTube show. We have some more interviews and events on Pan-Africanism planned over the next couple of months so please tune in for more if you're interested, or reach out to find out how to get involved with our organization.

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organization and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

Mohamed: Welcome to a new episode on 1919 radio. My name is Mohamed. In this episode I'm joined by Dr. Layla Brown, and we're going to provide an introduction to and background on Pan-Africanism, in honor of May 25th African Liberation Day. 1919 is a Pan-Africanist organization and while we are not currently affiliated with any specific party or philosophical trend within Pan-Africanism, we wanted to clarify our political foundations, address common misconceptions we hear about Pan-Africanism, and create an educational resource for our audience, members and readership. We also have some more interviews and events on Pan-Africanism planned over the next couple of months so please tune in for more if you're interested, or reach out to find out how to get involved with our organization. Our guest today is Dr. Layla Brown who is a Pan-Africanist and organizer with the All Africans People's Revolutionary Party GC, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology and Africana studies at Northeastern University in the United States and co-host of the Life Study Revolution YouTube show. So to start us off Layla, can you tell us how you define Pan-Africanism? 

Layla Brown: So this is an interesting question, because there are a multitude of approaches and understandings of what Pan-Africanism is, and what I won't do, which I know academics have a tendency of doing, is say that mine is right, but what I will say what my understanding of Pan-Africanism is based on the political and organizing trajectory that I come from. So for me, as a member of the All African People's Revolutionary Party GC, we don't understand Pan-Africanism as a philosophy or an ideology. We understand Pan-Africanism as an objective, and that objective is the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism. So a unified socialist Africa, one unified socialist Africa, that is how we define Pan-Africanism for us as an objective. 

Now that is not to say that Pan-Africanism does not have an ideology. For us, ideologically, we see ourselves as Nkrumah-Toureists, and hat is based on the philosophies, the teachings, the praxis, the lived words of Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture, but also Kwame Ture. And so for us, you know, Nkrumah was a philosopher. He studied philosophy before he became a statesman. Sekou Tere, not so much in that way, but based on him having run Guinea as head of state, we do follow him as well, right? What we call Nkrumahism is based on his own study of Marx and other folks, and so scientific socialism as opposed to utopian socialism, forms the basis of what we understand to be Nkrumah-Turism. But what's important I think about us understanding ourselves ideologically as Nkrumah-tureists as opposed to Marxist or Maoist or whatever else is a question of culture. 

It's a question of history and origin. And this is quite important because for Nkrumah and Ture , they were both religious people, right? Nkrumah was a Christian,Tare was a Muslim, and they understood that an ideology that disallowed African people to have a particular kind of relationship to their spirituality was not indigenous to us.

As a people, we tend to have spiritual beliefs. And so Ture even explicitly said that as a Pan-Africanist and as a Muslim you must be the most principled Pan-Africanist Muslim you can be. And that those things must go together. So that is for us how we understand what Pan-Africanism is. It is working towards one unified socialist Africa with an understanding of what is indigenous to us as African peoples through our culture, through the way we interact with one another, through our spiritual beliefs. 

Mohamed: So going a bit more broadly, how has the historical experience of Africans under colonialism and in the New World diaspora influenced the developments of current expressions of Pan-Africanism as movement and philosophy today? 

Layla Brown: So there's an argument that Kwame Tare made that even without the advent of transatlantic slave trade of colonialism and imperialism, we still would have moved toward a unified communal Africa. But then there are other folks who will say that Pan-Africanism is in some way a direct response to the ways we have been dispersed all over the world because of the way the diaspora has been created, and that the earliest manifestations of Pan-Africanism happened in the diaspora. I think Kwame Tare would refute that, and he would say no, there were already sort of existing understandings of that on the continent. However, the way we understand Pan-Africanism now is most certainly in a lot of ways developed in response to our predicament as diasporic peoples. In essence, we are attempting to push back against the ways that we have been dehumanized that we have been denied culture that we have been stripped of our languages stripped of our religions …you know all of these things in order to be able to see ourselves as a united people, both in the diaspora and on the continent. The work that colonialism has done on us has made us believe that we are so distinct, and that we are so different. So like I said, there is a dispute about whether or not pan-Africanism in this modern expression would look the way that it started to look as precolonial Africa was developing, but I would say the current expression is a response to our predicament as a formally or even presently neo-colonized peoples living under empire. 

Mohamed: I like the way that you frame that twin understanding of pan-Africanism as both a movement that arose in a particular moment as a unifying force and a reaction to colonial expression but also rooted in the idea that this could have been a possible path or alternative future indigenous civilizations and society on the continent may have just naturally undertaken irrespective of colonial intervention. So my question is nowadays I find that the common perception of pan-Africanism has been more so focused on hoteps and around Egyptian monarchies, el-es-so on some of the figures you mentioned earlier that have been influential in its political and philosophical development as a liberatory force like the scholar and former president of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah and of course the Ghana intro Kwame Turei formerly known as Stokely Carmichael. Why do you think that is and how can we recover the roots of pan-Africanism? 

Layla Brown:  I don't like the term ‘hotep’, I think we should really not use ‘hotep ‘in that way, because ‘hotep’ means peace. So when we use it disparagingly, we're taking on language that detracts from what it is and what we want to do. Now, we also know what we're referring to generally when people say’ hoteps,’ which I think is a particular kind of puppeting of western masculinity that I don't know is always indigenous to us as African peoples. 

In the early days of our coming to consciousness with ourselves as African peoples, there is a phase that we go through thats more of a cultural nationalism where we maybe adopt we we re-adopt names, or we might dress a particular kind of way, but when it comes coming back to a relationship with our with our understanding of Africa, I think what becomes problematic about that is that for a lot of folks in the diaspora, who don't have contemporary relationship with the continent, their understanding of Africa becomes only this sort of historical primordial understanding of Africa, and not of Africa as a current place where there are people living at the moment. 

Mohamed: I find the concept of Pan-Africanism can sometimes lead people to assume that emphasizing power through unity means ignoring all the historical cultural ethnic religious and linguistic diversity that exists on the continent and among African people around the world. How does Pan-Africanism acknowledge and respect that diversity in your view? 

Layla Brown: A lot of people have a problematic understanding of unity, and they think that unity means sameness. We understand that unity does not mean sameness. Ideally, we would be able to speak some common languages so that we could communicate with each other, but other than languages we do not need to be the same people, nor do we need to have the same types of practices. But we do need to understand that the contemporary nature of our oppression is a byproduct of the way we have been collapsed into one people, and so we do have to understand ourselves as connected in those types of ways. But that does not mean that we cannot be different people. One thing Nkrumah would always say is that he was fighting for the independence of Ghana as a territory, but the independence of Ghana means nothing without the independence and liberation of the rest of the African continent. So that's why Nkrumah, Ture, and Madhya Bokeita formed the Guinea-Ghana-Mali Alliance, because there was an understanding of the need to constantly go beyond this Balkanized Berlin Conference version of Africa. We have to move away from the tribalism and the micro nationalism. We have to understand that Haitians are still Africans and Jamaicans are still Africans, and recognize struggles that took place on that particular land, but also still recognize  that Africa needs to be primary in our understandings. Because as long as we lack a base, we will be disempowered throughout the rest of the worl. So I think what we need to make clear, is that unity does not mean sameness and that we understand that we are not the same people in all of these sort of small ways. In order to achieve our freedom, our liberation, and our full humanity, we have to unite on the basis of the material factors we have been oppressed based on.

Mohamed: so Pan-Africanism has its expression as an intellectual movement among scholars like in the first Pan-African Congress in 1919 in Paris following the aftermath of World War one but can you talk about about how you've seen it manifest as a movement beyond that you know as a political and cultural struggle carried out on the part of everyday people and organizers since then ?

Layla Brown: So the earliest iterations of Pan-Africanism that we see in terms of the modern expressions are mostly led by intellectuals and statesmen. We see its most modern form kind of really take shape in 1945 in Manchester England right when Nkrumah becomes a significant contributing organizer to that particular conference, and that is because he shifts the focus from intellectuals from statesmen to workers. This is the first time the Pan-African Congress takes on a distinctively working class character, as opposed to the kind of elite character of statesman and intellectuals. In this moment there are a lot of people there are a lot of people who want to continue to see the African Union as a manifestation of Pan-Africanism, which I do not understand it to be that, because I understand the African Union as it currently exists to be a neocolonial puppet. They are not doing the bidding of African people. So we also have to be careful about the fact that we see certain expressions of things that are called Pan-Africanism that are not true to the way many people who identify as actual Pan-Africanists understand Pan-Africanism. We need to distinguish between all of these different ways of contributing to Pan-African struggles, and to understand what it actually is again. and I think that that's why it's important for me that understanding Pan-Africanism is about that ultimate objective.

Mohamed: You mentioned diaspora wars, so I wanted to know what you think about when you see that kind of stuff online. 

Layla Brown: I do not experience the diaspora wars in real life, the way that we experience them online. Now I think the diaspora wars over like food and like all that's cool, that's fun. 

So because of my parents’ political organizing, I did grow up with folks from all over. For example, my name is Layla, Delulu Zanelli Seku Brown. My father was made an honorary member of the general union of Palestinian students at Shaw University, which is an HBCU. So he had friends who were members of the Fatah faction and the PLFP, And so Layla Khaled is still alive, a Palestinian woman who's known for hijacking a plane. And Delula Mugrabhi was a member of the Fatah faction who died in the coastal road massacre, which I believe was in 1968. 

I grew up in the South, my older brothers named after Patrice LaMumba, my younger brothers named after Kwamey Nkrumah. And, so I know a lot of people with lived experience like this. So while I won't deny there continues to be a lack of understanding of Africa in general for folks that can result ignorant comments, but I don't necessarily equate that with diaspora wars and the same kind of a way that I think we see online. I will also say that in 2006 was my first opportunity to go to the content of Africa and we went to Guinea to Conakry. 

We went there to both do some work, but also to establish connections on the ground. And when I went to Guinea, I did not have anybody telling me that I was not African. In fact, what I mostly heard was welcome home. I've been to Senegal like I've been all over Latin America Caribbean, you know all these different places and for the most part when I encounter other African African descended people. It's mostly a welcome. I don't have those same kinds of tensions.

Mohamed: On this point about diaspora wars and wars in the diaspora in general, we can't really talk about pan Africanism without talking about the assassination of major figures, like Thomas on Kara and Patrick from Mumba by Western powers, and even the jailing of people like Marcus Garvey in the United States. So why do you think this concept of African unity poses such a threat to the Western world? 

Layla Brown: Because our disunity is what allows Western imperialism to perpetuate. And so the notion of us actually being unified as African peoples is a threat to the US Empire. Western imperialism benefits from us fighting wars amongst ourselves and not understanding who our actual enemy is. So when people like Thomas Sankara, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales are pushing for us to see ourselves in a united struggle, that signals the beginning of the end of Empire.

Mohamed: One criticism of pan Africanism I've heard is this perception that it's dominated by men or patriarchal perspectives in general, or otherwise that women have contributed little to the development of the movements. How do you respond to that?

Layla Brown: So all of our heads of state who have claimed pan Africanism to this point have been men, because for the most part heads of state have been men. But we also know that there are so many tales of women doing this work. For the most part women are actually just doing a lot of work, and it's actually our responsibility to sort of recoup those histories. So because we live in a sexist and patriarchal world, obviously any manifestations of Pan-Africanism is prone to falling victim to that because of the world that we live in. But I also believe that, as Thomas Sankara said, “women hold up the other half of the sky.” There is no true revolution without women's revolution. Nkrumah said “the political maturity of a country is measured by the degree of its women's maturity.” Hugo Chavez says “no socialists is a true socialist without being a feminist.” So pan-Africanism is not distinctly masculine as opposed to any sort of other kind of way of being in the world. 

Mohamed: So there are those that perceive pan-Africanism as something that's exclusive to the continent, and specifically sub-Saharan Africa, which I find as a term is actually an external definition born out of racial and colonial difference, rather than something that maps on to real geographical and national and cultural differences. After all, border towns are generally more similar to each other culturally, demographically, and economically than the metropoles of the nations they're in. So my question here is, how does pan-Africanism relate to and go up beyond these nation-state divides? I'm also thinking about the kind of pan-Africanism advanced by institutional bodies, like the African Union and the ECOWAS here. 

Layla Brown: One of the reasons why Nkrumah chose to marry an Egyptian woman was because he was trying to symbolically model that there was no distinction between Africa north of the Sahara and Africa south of the Sahara. And so I think, again, that false distinction is a creation of the West. It is yet another of those tactics to create and divide us. And that is not to say that folks who live north of the Sahara don't experience a different type of anti-black racism in the places where they live. We cannot deny that. So I don't say that to negate those experiences, but true expressions of pan-Africanism include the entirety of the continent of Africa and the islands, South Ome, Mauritius, the Comoros, and beyond. If you understand pan-Africanism the way I understand pan-Africanism, which is the desire to create one unified socialist Africa, we know that the African Union and ECOWAS are making trade agreements that are betraying the people. So again, the ultimate question has to be who's bidding are you doing? And we see time and time again, ECOWAS and the African Union are not doing the bidding of the masses of African people. 

Mohamed: Lastly, part of the motivation of this episode was a recent development in the movements for pan-Africanism liberation, one of which being the Alliance of Sahelian States that was formed this past year. What are your thoughts on this current moment in pan-Africanism in 2024 we're living through? 

Layla Brown: So I first started doing my dissertation research in 2009 in Venezuela. But when I was doing work in Venezuela, every time I would be in Venezuela, I would be encountering black people from all over the world. And I was like, why are y'all here? And they weren't necessarily academics or anything. Like they were just like, I've been hearing about what's happening in Venezuela and I wanted to see it for myself. So to me, that's an indication of a kind of grassroots form of pan-Africanism. Like I want to know what it's about for myself. So then I realized, okay, but then they were also like paying attention to all of the police violence that was happening in the US. So then after Venezuelans in Venezuela were asking me what's happening with black people in the US. But then I was also trying to make these connections with like the OAU and the Bolivarian Alliance of American States, right, as state structures or super state structures. And so there are all these different ways I'm seeing these connections. 

I would say over the past like five to 10 years, I have seen pan-Africanism enter into our common lexicon in a way that I don't think I've seen at another point in my life. And there's such a growing desire for people to make those connections. Like the Alliance of the Sahelian States, right? Or even the kind of simultaneous uprising of formerly or Francophone African countries pushing back against Francophone rule. We saw the uprisings in Burkina Faso. And then we saw Mali and then  Niger and Guinea, right? They're calling that a kind of resurgence of the Guinea- Ghana-Mali Alliance of Nkrumah Ture and Keita. While I think there's a lot of discussions to be had about the validity of military coups, and the fact that so many of these folks have Western training, there is still a kind of calling back to some of the rhetoric we saw in a past era. And I think that that is in the interest of Pan-Africanism. And regardless of whether or not we are always taking the best steps all the time, I absolutely think at this moment we are seeing a rebirth of Pan-Africanism. So conversations like this are really important to clarify what it is that we mean by Pan-Africanism in this moment. 

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

Re-Introducing The Political Foundation of 1919

This conversation on our political foundation details the different projects and programs we have worked on, how to get involved with 1919, and why we are motivated to continue pursuing long term revolutionary action alongside our community.

Welcome to a special episode of 1919Radio. In this episode two of our organizers, Caleb and Shenhat, join our program to reintroduce the political foundation of 1919 and how and why we got started. This conversation details the different projects and programs we have worked on, how to get involved with 1919, and why we are motivated to continue pursuing long term revolutionary action alongside our community.

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organization and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

1919Radio Intro audio clip 0:00

I never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently experiencing.

I am mentally spiritually physically, emotionally, intellectually, and academically developed and acutely aware of the condition of African people throughout the entire world.

We don't want fortune, we don’t want popularity we want power, power. And power comes only from the organized masses.

CY  00:51

Wassup, everybody? Welcome to a very special episode of 1919 radio You might be hearing this for the first time on a couple of different platforms. But my name is Caleb. And I am an organizing member with 1919, and I am joined by...

Shenhat 01:14

Hi guys, my name is Shenhat. I'm also an organizer with 1919. And we're looking forward to this special episode on our radio platform today.

CY  01:27

 Thank you, as always for tuning in. I know it's been a while since we've uploaded on here, but we're hoping to change that. Got some cool stuff coming. But this episode kind of takes things back for a formal introduction of 1919. And kind of telling our audience and our community about who we are, just to give you a better understanding of what we do, who we serve, and our political manifesto. 1919 magazine is a independent critical and editorial publication run by a small group of Black students and organizers and youths, providing spaces for our community to produce cultural work, to organize and to ground together and to see like themselves experience themselves and their experiences are reflected in print and other art forms. To get started, I'll tell you guys about I guess how 1919 was started. So we're going on, so 2022 is five years at the end of 2023 it'll be six years that 1919 has been founded. And it's really, it really was a response to three different sources of frustration I was feeling in my community, at my university and my school and then just within the arts and within the arts institution and industry in Canada. So I think first and foremost, 1919 is a response to racist and elitist media organizations and art institutions in Canada that don't really value the history or stories of Black, and other indigenous racialized people's. 1919 responds to inequalities of access, Black and racialized people's space in the neighborhoods in regards to not just learning opportunities, and obviously the material conditions the state limits us to have and what we're forced to live through, but also just like learning opportunities and access to arts based practices and programs that simply do not exist if you grew up in poverty in the Western world. And lastly, 1919 responds to just the overwhelming, overwhelmingly Eurocentric and anti Black educational institutions, whether primary and secondary, post secondary, that institutionalized and monopolize knowledge production through a European canon, through a Eurocentric canon. I think this is a big thing that informs all the work we do. Our center isn't the Imperial Belly, where we live, our center isn't Europe. But we really direct that center or orient that center on the places and the histories and the people that have taught us before. So we challenge this idea in our magazine by only focusing on the knowledge production and knowledge transfer of Black communities. And we hope to continue or we hope for that, we hope for that to continue to be our center. And we hope for that to continue like to inform our work. And then lastly, I'd say, yeah, we're focusing on addressing the needs in these communities because we understand that our communities continue to feel the violent effects of global colonialism. And as we've kind of mentioned before, in a lot of our other like radio programs or episodes that like we still remain like subjugated under a multicultural state, like here in Canada, wherever you live in the Imperial world, in the western world where whiteness is still the key to opportunity and power and this force, this factor is reinforced by traditional media everyday. We hope 1919 to be a little bit of a challenge to that.

Shenhat  05:17

Yeah, and it's really interesting to see like, where this organization kind of started in 2017. And like how we're able to continue in our work just by the fact that we're kind of grounded on these central principles that Caleb is talking about. These are also kind of the things that brought me into this organizing group a couple years ago, just the same kind of like frustrations, the same type of exclusion or like, just kind of like my experience in like institutionalized education, and how I wanted to seek out like, kind of just knowledge building, and learning and grounding with people, like from my own background, people that are coming from the same conditions as me, and that are kind of trying to, pin themselves in certain principles and ideological understandings of what our conditions are, and how we seek to like, kind of build community.  So a lot of people always ask us about, like, what 1919 is, what we do, what's it about. So it's really important for us to have our political and ideological core goals very clear to our audience. Because these principles kind of ground everything that we do from our magazine issues, to our like community engagement projects. So first and foremost, we're grounded in anti capitalist, anti racist and abolitionist systems of thought. These are informed by critical historical class analysis of transnational struggle, and obviously, in the pursuit, the constant pursuit of decentralized and decolonial radical community building.  So what does this mean? It means that at the heart of 1919, is the need to partake in and encourage liberatory ways of thinking. And we do that specifically through encouraging dreaming and reimagination, which we find are kind of central principles to abolitionist thought. There's like a realistic understanding that we're currently not free in our conditions and freedom requires a collective rejection of our present, and the constant effort to reimagine a better future for us all.  And this means that our publication is grounded upon this history of freedom building and reimagination and thinks through what a print publication means for grassroots voices within African and African diasporic communities today. And fundamentally, going back to why 1919 started, there has always been this disconnection, a disconnection and an agenda of erasure sanctioned by the state and aiming to limit and restrict our African and African diasporic communities speaking and grounding with each other in public, and in private in the classroom and texts in our communities, and just in general. So our platform kind of tries to occupy the space, different spaces in media. And I guess we'll take a little bit of time now to explore how these different elements of our organizing kind of work together in tandem to help deliver our messaging and our programming in general.

CY  08:31

So I think, starting with our magazine makes the most sense. And that's what we're most known for. So we have a print and digital publication that brings together just the voices of all the different actors in our community. We have students, youth, elders, and adults just coming together to share the art, share their stories, share their critique, just in conversation with each other, in conversation with the reader and in conversation with their fellow community member. We've been publishing this magazine for the last five years. The first three were strictly digital, the last three were in print. And you could find these on our website. Some of the topics and issues that we explored includes reimagining community, transnational solidarity, communal care and healing, explorations of home, displacement, migration, abolitionists practices, incarceration, and many more topics and themes that I think you guys will enjoy. So head over to 1919mag.com after this. And yeah, we want to always focus on publishing work that allows artists and cultural workers, students, writers, again, all these people in our community to amplify their voice and to really open a space for dialogue, recognition and learning in our communities. I think one thing that like, like we really care about is generating collective spaces for learning in every outlet of our work. And that doesn't mean you're going to be arguing with someone who doesn't agree with you. But it does mean there's so much room for us to challenge each other and to really like work through difficult questions and difficult tasks. So we hope our platform could be a space for that. Especially too because there's so much yeah, there's sometimes so much that we don't agree on.

Shenhat  10:24

And the good thing is that, like our magazine is growing every year, which is really exciting to see. And that means like, kind of like what Caleb is saying, we hope to like expand alongside it and we're gonna try to like animate these magazines more and more, whether that's with like, screenings or film screenings, better launch events, hopefully, some like exhibits, kind of showcasing the work in our community. Because if you look at our magazines every year it's growing. And the quality of work has always been amazing. And it just showcases how much amazing cultural work people are engaging with in our communities, and that there's like a space for it to be shown and for it to be kind of celebrated. And we want to be the print magazine, the independent print magazine that gets to celebrate this work across, you know, Canada, across North America, across Turtle Island in general. And I guess when we're talking about print, and art and art being a very important place in which we can build community power and kind of learn together, it's coming from a place where we know that essentially art is the means by which we can kind of catalyze our community spirit, even stimulate political education, build community power and action.  Art and cultural production, utilized as a method of knowledge sharing and communication dissemination, has really historical roots for Africans and African diasporic people as like a really effective way, as well as a rapid way of spreading information and mobilizing people. So 1919 is kind of grounded on this idea that the print publication is not only beautiful, it's a great art form, but it's critical. We understand that the evolution of the printing press has been like a very fundamental tool, both for society and significantly the state, and their attempts to manufacture consent in the production of news and media. So we've seen like, historically, pamphlets, flyers, newsletters, these have all been critical elements, aiding Black freedom struggles internationally because of their ability to mass communicate messages, ask questions and critique political conditions in the public space. So black freedom movements have utilized art as well as the printing press, as principle instruments in our struggle. And 1919 team wants to kind of follow in this tradition and in this lineage, and use, like black grassroots press as like a way to connect art and resistance. And we know the potential it can have in mobilizing people to take action on our conditions, and kind of bridge that gap between art and political action.

CY  13:16

Yes, thank you, Shen for that. I think understanding the history of Black freedom struugles is very important for 1919 because I think one thing is that, although, like we said we're most known for our print magazines, and we are a print magazine, and we are a digital publication, that's not all that we are. We don't see ourselves as just an outlet for platform in culture production, we also see ourselves as aiming to be a voice to contributing to this movement, contributing to the grassroots work that's going on. And one of the ways we do that is through 1919 radio.  1919 radio was actually initially started probably back in 2018 or 2019, I don't remember. But it was started to challenge anti Black cultural spaces in Toronto, which is one of our, like home cities by hosting a community based platform for independent DJs. It's just kind of an initiative aiming to get back creative control to artists and DJs, who are looking for opportunities where their independence was respected, and their work was fairly compensated.  And we kind of took this original like, idea of 1919 radio and kind of incorporate it into the rest of the interdisciplinary framework we hold that has to do with education and cultural production. So we introduced conversations on our radio during 2020, and conversations with speakers, we had a couple scholars, shoutout to Jared Ball, Jemima Pierre, Simone Brown, all those guys. We brought them on at different points in our radio, and just to kind of ground and connect all of our projects is fundamentally rooted in anti colonial resistance, radical political education and actions like collaborative community power. Although, we didn't lose that element of music. The element of that art form, which is really important to our community was really important to us as well. And it's just important to Black people as well, because I think we, we know there's, like in every city not just Toronto, there's a growing, or I guess there's a shrinking list of safe spaces for Black people to gather, communal spaces where our art and presence is valued, where instead, most times we find our art mind as material, mind as an aesthetic, while we remain tokenized in institutions and in spaces by the establishment, by the industry, by staff, by owners and stuff like that. And yeah, this channel and our radio is really just the home for 1919 political education. Like I said, we have interviews, we have talks, and this year, we hope to really become more consistent and bring about different kinds of material and work to the radio that hopefully with your help and with your feedback, we could disseminate information that is critical to our community, to our collective that is interesting as well.

Shenhat  16:00

Yeah, and we also hope that like the evolving vision for 1919 radio will kind of grow, continue to grow alongside some of our other projects that we're working on. In this like effort to build, like we've said, kind of decentralized learning spaces, which is also just critical, just in terms of how 1919 is organized. Like Caleb said, we have kind of like two chapter cities, one in Calgary, and one in Toronto, and hopefully growing in Edmonton as well. So it's really important that we create and cultivate decentralized learning spaces. And 1919 radio along with like other projects that we're working on are kind of hopefully going to be the home for that. For example, in late 2020 up until this past year we launched what was the first iteration of a community learning initiative that we've been working on and trying to launch for quite some time called the Community Syllabus. And this was a space where we invited members in our community to read the text "Assata Taught Me" by Donna march in a five week reading circle program. We got to read and discuss the text and explore like major themes in the book, including policing, mass incarceration, war on drugs, youth mobilization, surveillance.  And we just like really kind of sat together weekly or bi weekly and interrogated like a lot larger themes, connections to abolition, revolution, internationalism, anti colonial struggle, all these things over the course of this reading circle, which is a really really amazing experience for all of us in a really like, interesting and exciting way to learn alongside our peers and alongside people in our community. And we understand that like the learning never really ends and it's our responsibility to be in constant pursuit of building these learning spaces. So yeah, we were able to kind of bridge connections to different materials we've encountered in our political education and exchange resources with people. And this year, we really hope to further this Community Syllabus program, bring more text and community activation experiences to our community members to bridging this gap between what we're reading and how we're taking action in our communities in an effort to create more spaces for Black youth, African diasporic youth that are excluded, shut-out and essentially miseducated by our colonial education systems and the people that are in charge of our learning. And kind of like, find a space where people can alternatively learn, learn with each other, teach one another, about our political conditions and seek radical pathways to alternative futures for ourselves. We really hope that these different ways that we activate 1919's political principles can kind of show themselves in these different projects, and continue to grow and be sustainable. And speaking of sustainability, I guess we can talk a little bit more about 1919, and how we sustain our work, and how you can support 1919 work. So Caleb, if you want to talk a little bit about that? 

CY 19:26

Yes, I will. I think the only thing I mentioned before we get into that is, and I know we kind of talked a lot about our publication and like how we're grounded upon this history of what a print publication means for grassroots voices within African communities today, diasporic and on the continent. But going back to why 1919 started, there's always been a disconnection, right. There's always been an agenda of erasure sanctioned by the state aiming to limit and restrict African communities speaking and guarding each other in public, in private and like Shen said in the classroom and in text. And I think one thing that's important to us, we look back and we see these people that have laid the way for us, our ancestors have led us and so when we speak of groundings, we called back on the work of Walter Rodney, who coined that term, in his book, "The Groundings with My Brothers". To Rodney, like Groundlings, meant breaking out of academic isolation and engaging in mutual exchange of knowledge with those struggling on the ground. That's critical for us. I think, like Shen briefly talked about the Community Syllabus, we talked about the radio, we talked about the publication. Everything we do is for the people in our community, everything we do is for the people, where we come from, I think, we've all had our experiences in university and formal education, I think limitations are very clear. There's really not a space where we'll be getting free no matter how hard we try. And so I think it's critical for us to take the information outside the institution and into the street. And we've been able to do that, to an extent so far. Like I mentioned earlier, with all these scholars who are some of the leading scholars in Black geographies or in their field, like Jemima Pierre's studies and works on Haitian affairs, really want to bring that knowledge to our community. So yeah, just a last note on that Shen, as well as anything you wanted to say. 

Shenhat  21:34

I think it's really like what you're talking about in terms of our own personal experiences, whether in higher education or in workspaces. And the fact of the matter, is that a lot of information about our conditions, our political realities are really not accessible, but maybe the language is not accessible, or it's coded. But at the end of the day, Black people, African diasporic people, immigrant people in this country, are very aware of our conditions. We have the language to express the systems that we're living under, we're frustrated. And it's just a matter of seeking the community and the people that exist around you that also feel the same way and building knowledge and building power through that and our conditions, whether that's our whole lives and we're encouraged to seek or to exist in a space of alienation and isolation.  And it's really important for us to push the fact that this community exists, there are people like you, there are people that want to seek alternative futures that want to learn and ground and put what they know and understand about how we live, and what's wrong with the ways that we live. And you know, all those things, they want to put that into action, they want to put that into communal learning, and want to build community. So this is kind of hopefully going to resonate with some people and hopefully encourage you to seek out any type of revolutionary long term action. Whatever that looks like to you on whatever seems fit, whether that's like joining a book club, or reading radical literature, or seeking out community spaces like that, at 1919. You don't have to be a cultural worker, specifically, or an artist or an amazing writer, to seek out communities like this or to be part of our, community. spaces like this are really important, and to know that they exist. I know, for me, it was very important. It was really nice to know that a space like this existed, I'm sure for you Caleb, it's been like really critical to just your political education, to my political education. And it's really important for us to seek out community. So yeah, that's all we wanted to add. And yeah, and I guess, in terms of supporting us, supporting radical action and supporting long term kind of revolutionary action for leftist publications like 1919, there's many ways that we can kind of like cultivate sustainability for ourselves. And we want to do that in a way that kind of aligned with our principles and our best fit for what we're trying to do and our political goals and intentions. So yeah, we have a couple of different ways that we go about doing that. 

CY  24:11

Yeah, definitely. So I think, one, obviously, as an independent cultural production platform, we're struggling like everybody else. I think, the struggle is not something we run away from because I think if we're struggling, that means you have a pretty good idea of the contradictions we exist in. As a radical organization, as a Black radical organization in a capitalist neoliberal society, which is filled with contradictions and opportunities to sell yourselves, and to be bought and to be crushed by the institution. But all of these opportunities, I think, are also opportunities to reinforce yourselves and your values and your beliefs. And so like how we really sustain ourselves at 1919 is, in the past through some grants we received by the Canadian Association of Black Journalists, as well as New College at U of T. But even then, grants will never be a way to support the work we do. That's not something we're ignorant to. So one thing that has really supported us, has just been the donations from our community. Those donations went to paying the contributors in our magazines, they went to paying digitial contributors, photographers, artists, and other cultural workers, a fair and competitive rate. We also pay our freelance writers more than CBC, and they are a billion dollar organization, so they need to get it together, but they won't. They got, you know, billions from Justin Trudeau and all those guys.  We pay our DJs, everyone on 1919 radio, covering printing costs of our magazine, which is really, really expensive, but really important for us. I think, having that print is just is a great way to explore these ideas and to feel these ideas as well in your hands and as you flip through the pages, it's a really great feeling. And also small grants that we've used in our community organizing and community initiatives we hope to hopefully establish some kind of micro-grant or some kind of like revolving grant where we could send that out to cultural workers in need of assistance this year. And it's also helped in our community programs we've done, like we've partnered with the Prisoner Correspondence Project, we've done the book drive for federal prison libraries across Canada. We've done some smaller things like clothing drives for refugee claimants and asylum seekers in Toronto. And we need money to do all of this, so it's to circulate the funds, or whether it's to buy resources. I think that's the main thing, yeah, the main way, monetarily to support 1919.

Shenhat 27:13

All in the name of like redistributing this funding that we’ve received, all of the money that we've gotten in the past has been through these donations and for the sake of transparency we definitely have to make it clear that we've never received any money from any big corporations, and no organizations that don't align with 1919 in our goals, in our political ideologies. That has sustained us just in terms of what we were able to do for the last few years and in the past year actually we've decided to try to develop something that can sustain our organizing in a more long-term way and also in a way that kind of keeps us accountable to the people in our community that support us. So we launched in 2020, alongside our recent issue Homecoming, a membership subscription program. And this is a program that again supports our projects including our print and digital publication, all of this money goes towards the things that Caleb has said in terms of paying our digital and print writers. Everything, all the costs and expenses that go towards running this independent organization, this independent publication and we hope to honor the labour of cultural workers and like recognize that this money needs to be redistributed from within our community.

Shenhat 28:46

So our radio platform, 1919 radio is a space obviously for music, conversation, political education. We've done in the past our Abolition Arts and Writing Program and our youth arts writing workshops that we've done in the past. We have our community education platform, the Community Syllabus which we spoke about and all these things in our ongoing commitment to build community power through various grassroots community initiatives that we organized with. Like the partnerships that Caleb mentioned like the pen pal program, the book drive, these are all things that can be funded in support through our membership subscription. So we encourage people, people in our 1919 community, members and non members to contribute to this work how they see fit.

CY 29:37

One other thing I want to say, Shen, is that yes the 1919 membership is a way to support us through a small financial means. But it’s also a way for some people who don't have the means to support. We also really encourage our community just take part in revolutionary action in whatever way that is available to them. So engaging with radicalizing literature, community booklist online, reading lists, getting involved with local initiatives that practice solidarity with incarcerated people, spreading the word about Black publications like 1919. There’s just so many ways we can cultivate and develop an abolitionist community, and just a community in general because community’s really what’s going to save us and protect us from the violence of the state. The only way we can start to move away from the state is when we can show them that, you know, we have enough power, we have enough structure we have enough organization to make the state absolute. And it's important that everyone in our community and black Africans know that there’s platforms like ours that exist, as a space for collective learning, for art and for cultural work that's committed to making our struggle and our voices heard.

Shenhat 30:44

It's definitely important for us to note that most people will probably think that the primary way to engage or to get their art or work seen and kind of submitted is through our print publication. But like we said there's so many different kind of platforms that we operate from, so if you want to get in touch with us, if you want to have your work seen, if you want to develop a project, community members or non-community members, people in our membership or not in our membership we definitely want to see your work. We’re definitely always open to receive pitches for our digital publication, our next issue magazine call out for new submissions will be open. There are many ways that you can support or to be part of 1919. We want you to see this as a space where your ideas can kind of come into fruition, whatever that looks like. If you want to participate and organized alongside our team and our projects, and support the coordination of all events those opportunities also exist. It's just a matter of reaching out to us, there's many different ways people who are interested can engage with 1919 and the work that we do. All of our magazines, programs and projects will always continue to remain open access online. You can find all the work that we've done, all the publications that we put out in PDF on our website 1919mag.com. Those things are always there and will always be free and open to access.

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

Homecoming by Accra City Nice

Setting this year off with our first collab with ACCRACITYNICE who worked with us to curate a selection of mostly contemporary Afrobeats and Afro-fusion sounds that explored the why of our last issue homecoming for a new DJ set on 1919radio.

Setting this year off with our first collab with ACCRACITYNICE who worked with us to curate a selection of mostly contemporary Afrobeats and Afro-fusion sounds that explored the why of our last issue homecoming for a new DJ set on 1919radio. As always, thanks to everyone who continues to move with us through each year helping us maintain our commitment to being a symbol for art, community, political education, and discipline.

ACN Set Notes:

The 54min set seeks to sonically explore the Homecoming theme for the latest issue of 1919 magazine from our perspective. The sounds selected are mostly contemporary Afrobeats and Afro-fusion sounds. The curation primarily seeks to explore and tell a story for the ‘why’ of Homecoming. The sound scheme is broken down into 2 blocks: Blocks A and B. Block A runs for the first 26mins and transitions into Block B, 28mins.

Block A features sounds from some of the leaders of the Afrobeatssound. The block seeks to through the sound share the creative energy and youthful drive which is leading key innovations within the continent. It is the celebratory aspect of Homecomings, the bonds of family, and the unique energy of the black culture.

Block B seeks to emphasize another aspect of why a deliberate approach to Homecoming especially a return to what we call home is critical. The set explores sounds from artistes exploring themes of mental emancipation and geopolitical commentary amongst other important social themes which have and are adversely affecting the black race.

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

1919 Prisoner Justice Day Broadcast With Matthew and Fiona

To commemorate Prisoner Justice Day, we are hosting Matthew Campbell-Williams and Fiona Bailey to have a wide ranging conversation on the realities of incarceration in Canada.

Welcome to another episode of 1919Radio. To commemorate Prisoner Justice Day, we are hosting Matthew Campbell-Williams and Fiona Bailey to have a wide ranging conversation on the realities of incarceration in Canada. Matthew is a criminal defence/prison law student and organizer with the Toronto Prisoner Rights Project, and Fiona Bailey is a cook, entrepreneur, and formerly incarcerated mother.

Prison Justice Day started on August 10, 1976, to remember two prisoners who died while locked up in solitary confinement in a Canadian Maximum Security Institution. PJD has become an international day to recognize all those who have died unnatural deaths while in prison. Every August 10, prisoners hold a one-day work stoppage and hunger strike, while supporters on the outside hold community events to educate the public to the conditions of Canadian prisons.

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organization and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

Digitizing Blackness with Dr. Brian Jefferson

In the fourth and final episode of our Black Geographies Podcast Series, our host Mohamed Nuur sits down with Dr. Brian Jefferson, an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and author of Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age.

Welcome to 1919Radio’s Black Geographies podcast series! This 4-part Black Geographies podcast series brings together four authors in the emerging field of Black geographies to explore the conditions of Blackness across multiple spatial dimensions. The goal of this series is to bring radical ideas of race, space, and the politics of place out of academia and into our community and streets through an engaging and open access medium.

In the fourth and final episode of our Black Geographies Podcast Series, our host Mohamed Nuur sits down with Dr. Brian Jefferson, an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and author of Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age. The conversation starts off with Dr. Jefferson walking us through the main arguments of his book and moves into a more wide-ranged discussion on racial capitalism, the relationship between computing technology & mass incarceration, surveillance & biometrics, Foucaultian biopolitics, and the meaning of necropolitics. The conversation ends off with a discussion surrounding abolition as the only solution to digitized criminalization.

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organization and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

1919Radio Intro audio clip 0:00

I never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently experiencing.

I am mentally spiritually physically, emotionally, intellectually, and academically developed and acutely aware of the condition of African people throughout the entire world.

We don't want fortune, we don’t want popularity we want power, power. And power comes only from the organized masses.

MN [00:00:48]:

Welcome to another episode of 1919 Radio and the fourth and final episode of our Black Geographies podcast series. My name is Mohammed and I'm your host. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Brian Jefferson, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and author of Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age. Dr. Jefferson starts us off by walking me through the main arguments of his book, and we get into a wide ranging discussion on racial capitalism, the relationship between computing technology and mass incarceration, surveillance and biometrics for Koshin, biopolitics and the meaning of macro politics. We end off on a discussion of abolition as the only solution to digitized criminalization. I hope you enjoy the show.

MN [00:01:32]:

Can you start us off by walking us through the central arguments within your book?

BJ [00:01:37]:

Yeah, yeah. The overarching argument is that like all sort of government services, criminal justice is becoming computerized and as a result, the ways that mass criminalization and the ways that people are excluded from mainstream society for having things like criminal records, like the game is changing because the technology is changing. And one of the things that I'm really looking at is sort of in the US, of course, we look at mass incarceration starting in the 80s up until recently, and as many people now over two, I think three million people are incarcerated, over one over disproportionately Black and Latinx. And what I'm looking at is the way that that same game is adapting to the digital revolution and it's able to bring sort of different methods of punishing people, detaining people more out into the public, into the public space, into public housing, into streets, into communities, into educational facilities like high schools and specific, but not only so through technology. So for me, the book is looking at sort of how that's the sort of where the wedding of digital technology and mass criminalization in this country is transforming the ways in which we sort of penalize or surveil or sanction people of color, poor people of color, to such a disproportionate extent. And one of the main arguments is that this sort of shifts the game when it comes to abolition, activism, decarceration, decriminalization, immigrant rights, et cetera. You know, the different sort of activist movements that are looking at people, groups of people who are punished and penalized disproportionately. So what I was trying to say is this is the marriage of technology and these policies change the game. So they change sort of how we have to approach fighting it and looking for it. So that would be the basic argument.

MN [00:04:05]:

My next question is, how do the racist logics of the past continue to persist?

BJ [00:04:13]:

Yeah, so a lot of the work I was reading about algorithmic governance and about control society, which looks at how computers are changing the way that power operates, a lot of that work, especially from Western scholars and Western White Scholars. Western scholars argue that a lot of the sort of old categories by which people were organized or by which people were separated are starting to break down. And the basic argument is this: it's that, OK, power doesn't just look at you because of your race. It could be a race or gender, your credit score, your educational attainment. And it creates these profiles. And then and then it operates on this on an individual basis. So when I said that that line is trying to push back against the trend and say no, like, first of all, all of those different categories are proxies of race, at least in the United States. They all share correlations, positive correlations or negative correlations with racial identification. So that was sort of first the part of the argument. The second part of the argument is that if we think about it individualistically, then we sort of lose the ability to talk about our group disparities. And in my opinion, politics is about group disparities. It's not about individuals, it's about groups. And I think a lot of the sort of the algorithmic governance stuff. And even if you look at some arguments, say there are no more individuals, they're just individuals. Right. There are different data packets. And in my view, that's going too far, especially in the case that I'm looking at all categories race, gender, nationality. These things still weigh heavily upon the way people are treated, what opportunities they get and their relation to the state. So I just, at the time, I felt there is a trend of a lot of more of the digital studies and algorithmic governance studies, people in surveillance, capitalism. And Zuma spoke, she says quite bluntly that race is no longer a major factor in the way that power operates. And so that was really the line where I was like, oh, wait a second, that's clearly not the case. Right. So that line is sort of trying to push back against the idea that race is becoming less important or any like religion is not becoming less important. If you look around the world, so a lot of those categories that come from colonialism, like Indigenous People, they didn't call themselves indigenous. The Europeans call them indigenous Black people. We didn't call ourselves Black because black, et cetera, et cetera. Those categories are still alive and well. And what I was trying to do in the book is to not only say that the technology are used to reinforce those identities and the divisions between those groups, but also to show empirically, look, I can crack open the algorithm and show you that it actually does have race in it. So I think it's not even just having to say a racial logic race is literally programmed into the software I was looking at.

MN [00:07:48]:

What role does computer technology play in the rise of mass incarceration, given that the development of early computer systems coincided with the beginning of the war on drugs in the 1970s?

BJ [00:08:01]:

So mass incarceration. This might seem obvious, but but then it just became more obvious than doing the research, it would not have been possible without, well, telecommunications infrastructures first, but then secondly, computer systems, because one of the things that happened during especially in the 80s, you start to see towards the mid to late 80s in the US, is so many people are being incarcerated that the paper systems, file cabinet systems are being overloaded. And you're getting these bottlenecks in courts as pretrial, but also in prisons, trying to keep inmates all of their paperwork together. There's an overload because they're incarcerating so many people. So computer technology enabled coordination on such a mass scale of something like mass incarceration. First of all, that sort of the first argument that I don't know that well, if there was a. Digital technology did not exist, mass incarceration would have looked different, they kind of turned to it to save the system from collapsing because it was just it was becoming too big to make it more efficient, make it more cost effective, et cetera. So that's the first thing with the computer technology. And then as we saw. So that's like eighties. Then as we shift more into the 90s, this is one big tech really starts rising as one of the biggest sectors in the economy. And from there, the tech companies are, of course, coming to the authorities. Hey, we got this piece of technology. We got this piece of technology. And one of the things I talk about in the book that a lot of the technologies that the companies were making, were the research and development was funded by taxpayer money. So, you know, it's not only that the technology enabled mass incarceration and mass criminalization, but also there is an economic incentive from the IT companies to perpetuate these systems because they have to buy cameras, they have to buy offender databases and all the like.

MN [00:10:15]:

One fascinating element you describe within your book is the way in which smart city infrastructure is designed to allow cities to administer communities as carceral spaces. Can you--?

BJ [00:10:28]:

Yeah, yeah, so and this is you know, there's a lot of great work on this, but as a sociologist, I think there's some good sociology and they talk about the how the prisonization of communities, mostly Low-Income Black and Latino Communities in the US. And there's been a sense that in many different ways, the communities are becoming more like prisons. And a lot of the work that previously that I was reading, they were talking about the bars or the gates in public housing. They were talking about a little mini stations, police stations by poor public housing and these types of things. So what I was hoping to contribute was to show the infrastructure, the technical infrastructure, the cables, the cameras, the satellites, et cetera. The, of course, the ankle bracelets, the data centers, the real time crime centers. And what I really wanted to do was trace in a very sort of, you know, trace the actual infrastructure that was being and continues to be built up in these communities to sort of build off of this idea that they're becoming more like prisons. So, for instance, you know, a big thing, of course, is privacy when it comes to digital technology. And we get our personal data stolen and they sell it to others. But if you're in a low income public housing unit in the communities I was looking at, they have cameras inside the houses, inside their living spaces, inside the public housing units, right in the hallways. They have ankle bracelets. And these technologies are oftentimes becoming more and more automated. And what they do oftentimes is they can trigger an alert to the nearest squad car or something like that. And my argument is it makes it more like living in a prison. So it, I'm looking at an application of digital technology that I think is different than mainstream,a lot of mainstream concerns. And at least in the US, I'm looking at specifically how it impacts criminalized groups. And one of the ways that it does is it puts more of it enables the authorities to have a tighter grip of for people's living spaces over public spaces, particularly poor people, and then also in financial sectors.

MN [00:13:07]:

What are the material impacts of digitization of records on former offenders and those in communities with them?

BJ [00:13:14]:

Yeah, and so that's connected to the previous question as well, because now if you apply for a job, employers often times will do background checks. And, you know, I learned a little bit about the background check industry, which is another sort of tech industry that that's a player in this story. And what it does is if we go back to the 60s or the 70s, having a prison record was not as much as a scarlet letter as it is now. You could still possibly get work and you wouldn't be as ostracized as you might be now because that mark is available for everybody to see. So one of the things that the prison records does is it makes that person it makes your identity as an ex offender inescapable to a degree that I think that it has never been. And so again, so making one mistake, getting one prison record, I think can be much more detrimental because it's publicly about is becoming increasingly publicly available. And not only just prison records. I mean, a lot of I don't know if it's the same in Canada, but I would imagine that for us is usually the worst in these things. But like, you don't even have to be, you could be arrested and not convicted and the newspapers will put your mugshots online so you don't even have to be convicted of a crime. But you can have a mugshot going online. And then there are these other sort of parasitic companies that say, OK, pay me twenty, three thousand whatever dollars and we'll scrape that information. So the records and sort of the publicization of the records, it just I think it deepens the stigma of having a criminal record and deepens the stigma of having just been arrested, even if you didn't do anything. And these are sort of the things and now the punishment may be you can't get a job in some states like Illinois, you might lose your eligibility for publicly funded housing. You might not be able to go to universities. So the public's perception of the record and making them accessible through just a click of a couple of buttons, I think it deepens the stigmatization and closes off more life opportunities, you know, in a very alarming way. And so that's definitely something that I wanted to emphasize.

MN [00:15:51]:

In your book, you describe the Obama administration's response to the Ferguson uprising as a “technophile black version of Lyndon B. Johnson's response to the urban uprisings half a century prior”. Can you compare the--.

BJ [00:16:07]:

Yeah, so one of the things in the book that I tried to emphasize, and especially, obviously most of the people I interact with will be, of course leftists and activists. And most people know this but the story of the rise of mass incarceration is not just a story of evil, conservative white supremacists. Liberals have played a huge part in building it up. But Naomi M’s book talks about it really brilliantly, but so one of the things I wanted to emphasize was that liberals and liberal technocratic solutions to social problems is an old story in the US and that even goes back to the early nineteen hundreds using science and technology and thinking that if you that can solve a social problem like urban unrest, like poverty, etc, etc.. So the point with that line was Lyndon B. Johnson was the president in the 60s. He was a Democrat. By modern standards, he would have been relatively easy, was he was not a centrist. He would have been seen a little bit more to the left, to his social programs at least. And one of the things that he wanted to do was to use the emerging technologies at the time. So he opened this huge national agency, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, and it was the first time in the US history that local police departments got equipment and were trained by a national agency. And a lot of technologies like, for instance, the dispatch, automated dispatch comes through during that period. A lot of the sort of stuff with community policing and mobilizing the community to be the ears and eyes of the streets and to extend the police division that really starts to kick up in the 60s. And so looking at Obama, the thing is, he's a big Silicon Valley president, as the Democrats are, and a very, I think, very stereotypical liberal in the sense that thinking that in perhaps over relying on technology and and introducing technology, whether it's very well intentioned or not, but oftentimes has the effect of extending the government's reach when you when you introduce these technologies into people's private space. Yeah, so with that in mind, when I was really just trying to say was that this is a bipartisan monster that we built, so let's at least be accurate about it.

MN [00:19:02]:

Digitizing punishment makes clear the extent to which digital technologies have transformed, intensified the nature of carceral power. Can you highlight how the intersection of policing and data technology is impacting Black and Indigenous youth every day through unsuspecting means, like social media and surveillance and web technologies?

BJ [00:19:22]:

Yeah, it's extending it. And so this is an interesting thing. At several times at conferences I've had well, they've always been white dudes and they say, why? Why are you only talking about people of color? Why aren't you talking about anybody? Because technology and the surveillance is spreading throughout all of society. And I understand that. But my point is that the way the technology is being used and the way that the digital surveillance is being used with respect to crime control policy, immigration policy, students doing that as well, is used in a very different way. Because it's being used by police who are essentially a quasi military institution. I've never heard of like a wealthy suburban area being surrounded by a quasi military institution and putting cameras in people's living spaces with or without their consent. So when I'm looking at the sort of digital policing, it's in many ways it's moving the frontier, in my view of carceral governance, more and more into your private space rather than just a jail or prison or a court. It allows police to stop you on the street and punch your information into a mobile phone, which puts you in the system. And so the technology, it's an extension of criminal justice in the criminal justice system into people's homes. And that's the major thing. And I've learned not to predict anything after 2016 especially. But so I'm not saying that the that the mass imprisonment is just going to that it's inevitably going to crumble. But looking at trends and tendencies, it seems that it's a it's a much cheaper, cost effective and perhaps even more efficient way to control people, control their mobility is to use technology rather than to put them in jail, because putting someone in jail in the US or its equivalent every year, you could send them to college for cheaper. So it's an uneconomical system. And I think that's not out of morality or ethnic or ethical principles. But I think because of money, I'm sort of anticipating more and more of a shift of mass incarceration from these traditional institutions into technology via these various technologies.

MN [00:22:09]:

During last summer's rebellions, we saw a huge influx of police departments using surveillance cameras and cell phone data pings to track and capture protesters days and weeks after a protest. What impact do you see the rebellions of last summer having on the future of AI and racial digitization in--

BJ [00:22:29]:

Now, that's a great question. I think there will be multiple I think it affects. one effect, I think on a positive note is seeing the power of social networking and seeing the ability of, you know, a an organization which is BLM, which has exploded into a globally recognizable symbol that people with other struggles are able to identify with and making their struggles, making our struggles visible to one another, creating the conditions in which we can build bridges across our struggles. That's what I think the major upshot of this last round of rebellions is you had people, you know, Hong Kong people, you protesters were waving BLM, right. And then we got to see what they were doing right on through the technology. And so I would say if there's any sort, the hopeful part of me would like to think that that creates a new sort of playing field for us to cooperate to try to create more just and democratic and equitable institutions. The bad part is the surveillance will continue to extend and privacy will continue, I think, to be sacrificed. And what you post on social media and what you post on an abso--. Perhaps what you email when you text. These things more and more. Well, they already are accessible by the state. So I think when we think of activism, and especially if you're an activist, a radical left wing or even liberal activist, I think you're always positioned against the status quo. I think that's sort of part of that comes with the territory. So as the surveillance expands, I think that there's this cat and mouse game of activists are going to have to come up with new ways of skirting the dragnet, new ways of getting around their surveillance. But I think that's all. I am a firm believer that politics is never over. As long as you're a human and you're alive, there's going to be politics and there's going to be power and there are going to be unequal relations. And those relations are maintained by different tools. And I mean, this is sort of, I guess, the bigger part of the bigger argument of the book, which is not groundbreaking or anything, but the tools are changing. So the strategies of, I think, trying to circumvent them have to change as well.

MN [00:25:06]:

Is there anything we could do to mitigate our vulnerability?

BJ [00:25:11]:

I don't use social media. I mean, you could do that, but it's the surveillance state is affecting, let's say, in the US or in Canada, I would imagine it's affecting everyone. Rich, poor, Indigenous, White. So I think of all our privacy is being sacrificed. So, you know, I think one of the ways that to try to push back is to link these struggles against the extension of surveillance. And for some people, it's about personal data and Facebook. For others that might be forced to wear an ankle bracelet. These are very different circumstances, very different histories. But I'm just a firm believer in the way that you fight against power through numbers and just through finding common ground with different people. And I think, at least in academia, there's such an emphasis on difference, difference, difference that it becomes almost difficult for us to come up with a vocabulary to talk about equivalent and what we have in common. What do what does a poor black kid in Chicago have in common with with a peasant worker in India, a Muslim peasant worker in India? Of course, they're completely different histories and we can't use the same terminology. But what we can do is we can look at their struggles and the ways in which technology is being used. You know, I read a little bit about how the technology is being used essentially on marginalized people and perhaps to think of ways that we can build and obviously. We can't use class anymore as a single category that didn't work. So it has to be something different. But I don't think we should give up on the efforts to try to link ourselves across our differences because differences are important. But if we only see differences, then there's no incentive to link with one another. And if we don't link with one another, then divide and conquer, I think wins.

MN [00:27:29]:

What is the relationship between information or IT capital and racial capitalism broadly? And probably how do you use a racial capitalism framework in your work?

BJ [00:27:39]:

So I'll start by saying for me again, its W.E.B. DuBois, Ruth Gilmore and Cedric Robinson, Clyde Woods, Angela Davis, to me, these are the thinkers that created the framework for what we call racial capitalism, when in many ways among other people. But for me, these are the influential people, given the demographic groups that I'm looking at. And what they do is they look at the relation between different sectors of the economy and how they benefit from racism. Indigenous scholar, settler, colonial theorist do similar things right in there. It's anti Indigenous policies and practices and how people make money from them, to put it in the simplest terms. So it's in the US, it's obvious how the agricultural industry made money from racism during slavery. Gilmore does a great job, of course, probably the best at looking at how the industrial sector benefited from racism in the US. So for me, I just wanted to take their model and the agriculture industry. There's a lot of great work on real estate and housing and racism. So I just wanted to look at the IT sector and essentially Silicon Valley and how does it benefits from racism and racist policies. And the argument in the book is that it benefits. They want to sell cameras. They want to sell whoever makes the ankle bracelets, Taser International, or they make cameras like whatever makes this equipment, they want to sell it because they make money. So there's a policy that we should flood a certain community with patrol officers or segregate a certain community. That's an opportunity for them to make money. So for me, the question of racial capitalism and information capitalism, my question is just how has the IT sector made money from off of racism? And I can look at it primarily through black people and cities.

But you can look at indigenous people, you could look, of course, immigrants, etc. You can look at Islamophobia, all of these different expressions of discrimination and just look how have they made money off it. And so one of the interesting things was a lot of well, not a lot of but a handful of people have been going back and forth. Well, when I was first doing my work and they were saying, oh, we don't cause racism, we don't cause and my response was, I never say you are causing it. I'm just saying you're making money off. Got all these equations that you try to come. I don't care what the equations that I'm saying. I have studied the history of criminal justice in this country and I have the data to show that you don't even need to make an argument to show it’s racist. I mean, Chicago. Eighty-eight percent of all people arrested for marijuana were Black or Latinx. When you're black, it looks like I don't need you have to be a huge theorist to come to the conclusion that there's that that it's a racist policy. So my whole point was, well, if you gave them the equipment to enact those policies, then you maybe you should take self-responsibility. To some extent, and so racial capitalism and IT capitalism or information capitalism, to me, in the simplest terms, is how has the IT sector and IT companies benefited,iIn my case from the war crime, the war on drugs.

MN [00:31:25]:

Digitize and Punish is an obvious wordplay on the book, Discipline and Punish by French philosopher Michel Foucault. Can you talk about a bit about his--?.

BJ [00:31:36]:

It's funny, when I was writing it, I refused to read it because I don't want it to influence me, but I already read it in grad school and I was rereading it as I have. And it's like completely like I just sort of like but Foucalt's is super important in many ways in terms of his insights, but also his shortcomings for me. So, of course, you know, Foucault is one of the early people to talk about discipline seeping out into the public space. And he talked about discipline not only being in the prison, but also being in the educational system. And then he looked in the medical industry, you know, and he looked at all different types of the barracks, the military barracks, and the ways that these sort of disciplinary techniques spread out into society and to not only focus on the institutions, the prison. So he really gives this powerful vision, OK, don't just focus on the prison. So in terms of my work, that's what I'm looking at, how the sort of the functions that the prison performs from a political economy standpoint, from a social standpoint, are being sort of exported via technology. So that's in terms of Foucault’s sort of giving the paradigm the model for the main argument. But his shortcomings, in my view, are, well, he's Eurocentric. So is that, of course. And in Discipline and Punish, one of the key arguments was that power rely on violence as much because it's able to these micro political techniques that shape your subjectivity. And it's and it does it through knowledge production, which so many people write about. And so for me, the argument was by the group I'm looking at, these practices are seeping out into society more and more, like he said. But I definitely wouldn't say they're becoming less violent one thing. And so I'm trying to show how, like the discipline seeping out , itnot only sort of creates all these practices that people are constantly subjected to, to be a good citizen, a law abiding citizen or something like that. But how it's connected, in the case of my work, to like, again, a quasi military apparatus. So those shortcomings and that was really if you read Joy James, she's oh, my God, this book, it's called The Amazing The Spectacle of Racialized Violence always is her essay. And I really that gave me-- she makes this argument that I just actually said. So I'm taking from Joy James and of course, is a huge thinker, hugely influential in American and US academia. Even if you haven't read Foucault, I hear like oftentimes people are repeating Focauldian arguments. I've heard people say we can't we can't read white male theory, white male totalizing theory because power knowledge is everywhere. You're just repeating Foucault’s life the last time I checked. But like, he's had, of course, a huge impact. And one of the things I think that his legacy is we look at knowledge production, power away more, and we look at these insidious everyday micro techniques of discipline more. But here comes Joy James. And she says, wait a second, this is applicable to, you know, your white male or perhaps female citizen in mainstream society. She says this while Foucault is writing Discipline and Punish, you know, Attica prison is a prison, a prisoner uprising or resulting in, I forget the exact numbers, but the state essentially coming in and mowing down some of the uprisings like this is happening at the same time that Foucault is writing this book. And he was blind to it. And there's a great anecdote of him meeting, I want to say, Angela Davis in California and going to a prison and him realizing in the eighties and early eighties and he realized in the eighties, in the early eighties, oh, maybe powers haven’t become less violent. So, you know, the digitizer, I figure you sort of get where I'm going with it from the title that it's about power seeping out into society. But then also looking, I think, at a lot of black US scholars who have engaged with Foucault and trying to build on their work as well.

MN [00:36:33]:

You touch on nacro politics in your work briefly, can you explain what that is?

BJ [00:36:40]:

Yeah, so this brings us back to Foucault, of course, comes up with the idea of bio politics. And what he's looking at is the way Western governments have taken on what we would call in the US more some quality of life policies, but not only quality of life policies, but things that are necessary for us as biological organisms, the government being administering our access to food, health, medicine and all of these things that are necessary to us as biological organisms. And so his argument is that it's not just the old king who says if you defy me, I'll kill you, right. Which is essentially a negative power. The power to subtract someone's life by politics is more of a positive power to shape life through reproduction policies like abortion, right. The government takes our biological existences as a field of politics to intervene in. Nacro politics comes from Akem Membey who's looking at colonialism. And again, just like Joy James, it's sort of the same thing. It's like all of those things that definitely are true. But I understand his essay well in his book now, it's a book that was originally an essay to say the power to kill is still very central to Western governance, especially he's looking in colonies during a similar time period. So that's who Foucault is looking at. So the nacro politics is the idea that from the way I'm using it is to say, look, these technologies are just another way of ensuring that poor Black, Brown, Indigenous people are exposed to police officers, border patrol more than your ordinary White citizen. And if these are quasi military institutions, if the agents in Border Patrol or the police departments have guns and have the ability to kill you, the technology sort of maintains their exposed differential exposure to these institutions. So in that way, it creates the context or creates the conditions in which George Floyd is murdered to some extent or reinforces that is not deterministic, but it maintains those conditions. It does its part, the technology. So we don't buy the argument in the book was like this Technology is not like a lot of the European and Anglo, I think on the theorists are saying making power necessarily less violent, more knowledge based more insidious. It's also used to track and target people and then to send out patrol units near them. And that puts their life at greater risk rather than another technique. So, for instance, if there was another way of trying to address poverty and violent crime in the communes that I'm looking at, because there are other ways of doing it right, education, having educational policies, housing policies, job training policies. there are also grassroots ways of doing it, creating alternative ways of living and caring for one another. But the way we do it in the state, is we punish them and we put the the the sort of militant very or the violent branch of the state. We send them into the communities to fix the problem. And so when I say nacro politics, what I'm saying is the technology aids, that policy of punishing, surrounding and using violence or the threat of violence to try to try to remedy these social problems.

MN [00:40:52]:

Your book ends with the statement that to quote, If opposition to digitized modes of criminalization is to gain momentum, it must be abolitionist, unquote. What do you mean by this? And how can we put up an effective front against the digitized criminalization of Blackness, Black people and Black communities?

BJ [00:41:09]:

So, of course, abolitionism has become sort of a big a big word. When I use it, I'm using it howAngela Davis and Gilmore. I'm using it straight out of their books. And if we start with Angela Davis and she's looking at the prison industrial complex, and one of the things that she talks about is don't only look at the prison, you also have to look at, you know, she goes into all the industries who who what companies supply prisons with toilet paper or with bed sheets or with all the stuff, food, you know. And then she goes out beyond the prison and she says, OK, how is the medical institution of hospitals or how is the educational system such as the school to prison pipeline? How are they also linking to the prison? And what she does is she creates this sort of web of all of the different institutions and stakeholders who prop up mass incarceration. And for her, it's about not only just thinking about crime and punishment, but also medicine, health care, mental health, the domestic abuse, domestic violence. Like all of these things, how do they connect and how do we create an alternative vision to deal with violent individuals, many of whom are mentally ill or suffer some mental illness? Like how do we find a non-punitive way to deal with a domestic, a violent domestic partner without throwing them in a cage? Right. So abolitionism is first. I, as I understand it, and released from the Davis perspective, is looking at the web of institutions and actors that prop up the carceral state. And so for me, there's a small, powerful contribution was to show the IT sector in more detail, but also it's important with abolitionism. And this is where I think the word sort of can be misleading. She also says it's about creating alternative means, right? Because we still do need to protect battered spouses or partners. Yeah, yeah. We still need to ensure that there is a violent person that they're not able to harm their brothers and sisters. So it's but it's abolishing the way that we deal with those problems and trying to institute more life affirming ways. So, I mean, it's, of course, an open ended question. I would I would say or my answer like, you know, what does that mean for us? One thing I also believe, you know, it's very understandably common for academics, it was something you write an academic book. They say, OK, what's the solution to all of this terrible stuff you're talking about? And it's completely and I think that's a very good impulse. I would sort of say that I wouldn't only look to academics for that answer. I would look to communities, different communities are different. They have different local cultures, different local institutions, and maybe dealing with spousal abuse in one community. There's one policy or, or way of doing it in a less punitive or damaging way than it is in another community. But I just would say with the abolitionist framework, it's like going back to Davis. Do we have to punish these people? Do we have to put them in cages? Are there ways that we can help, especially people with mental health issues or people, of course, who are in deep poverty who might resort to, for instance, gangs or drug markets without putting them in cages and without punishing them? So abolitionist thinking, in my view, is doing away in this context of criminal justice with the idea that punishment is the first and perhaps only tool that you use to remedy these issues. I don't think that any academic can give an answer to what will replace it, but I don't think that we just as people in general, Black people at or otherwise, should have an expectation that that one book can tell you what to do. I think to find the answer, we're going to have to live the answer, and it has to be trial and error. And some things will fail horribly. And some unintended things that work out will happen. But I think there will be instances if we do tear down and abolish the punitive system where things go horribly wrong and we might and things might even be worse.

But the point is still pushing and still pushing through trial and error to find a more humane way of dealing with a lot of the problems that are connected to poverty and violence at least, and drug use, which are not, of course, which are not limited to Black, Brown, Indigenous, poor communities. Because in the US we see it now in rural white communities with the opioid epidemic and, you know, with militias who, well, are their gangs as well. They've got some function as gangs like the mobs that we saw, of course, on January six. So. But they're not. We don't deal with their problems by putting a military in Iowa trying to crack down on, you know, on the left, of course, there are authorities and they are getting higher incarceration rates. But another thing you actually see in the US is a lot of the opioid epidemic. There are a lot of stories of how police are trained, giving a little bit to give the right to medical treatment to opiate addicts, right? Yeah. So it seemed like, and we know like Portugal, for instance, there are other ways to deal with drug abuse or drug addiction than punishment. And maybe for that question, how should we think about, you know, alternatives? Maybe we should look at how white people treat white people with the same problems to some extent because they might have some good ideas, too.

MN [00:48:07]:

That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening along to the Black Geographies podcast series. It was a joy and an honor to speak to each of the authors we welcomed to our radio. I hope that you learn from the conversations just as much as I did. In other news, the 1919 Collective just put out our Abolitionist Arts and Writing Program, which is a fund for Black and Indigenous writers, artists, and cultural workers to create a series of work around abolition. Check out our website for more details and stay tuned for more radical and community-based content to be released all summer long.

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

Surveilling Blackness With Dr. Simone Browne

In the third episode of the Black Geographies podcast series, Mohamed sits with scholar, researcher, and author Dr. Simone Brown to discuss her book Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.

Welcome to 1919Radio’s Black Geographies podcast series! This 4-part Black Geographies podcast series brings together four authors in the emerging field of Black geographies to explore the conditions of Blackness across multiple spatial dimensions. The goal of this series is to bring radical ideas of race, space, and the politics of place out of academia and into our community and streets through an engaging and open access medium.

In the third episode of the Black Geographies podcast series, Mohamed sits with scholar, researcher, and author Dr. Simone Brown. Dr. Brown is the Associate Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a Research Director of critical surveillance inquiry with Good Systems, a research collaborative at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as the author of the 2015 book ‘Dark Matters. Listen as these two discuss life under surveillance, Black ways of knowing and surviving, and the governable worlds we live in. Dr. Brown invites us to think about how biometric technologies, regimes of surveillance, illegibility, and the politics of recognition shape and govern Black life in a post 9/11 era. Toward the end of the episode, Dr. Brown gestures to the work of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mariame Kaba & grassroots organizers on how to live and dream abolition as practices of liberation.

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organization and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

1919Radio Intro audio clip 0:00

I never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently experiencing.

I am mentally spiritually physically, emotionally, intellectually, and academically developed and acutely aware of the condition of African people throughout the entire world.

We don't want fortune, we don’t want popularity we want power, power. And power comes only from the organized masses.

MN 0:48

Welcome to another episode of 1919 radio, and the third episode in our black geographies podcast series. My name is Mohammed and I'm your host. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Simone Brown, Associate Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a Research Director of critical surveillance inquiry with Good Systems, our research collaborative at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as author of the 2015 book ‘Dark Matters,’ on the surveillance of blackness. In this conversation, we discussed the historical origins of surveillance and biometrics and its relationship to Black Studies, for non-ideas of prototypical whiteness and blackness in the post 911 surveillance state, and its implication for black people. I hope you enjoy the show.

MN: 1:36

My first question is, what do you mean by sous-veillance and how does it relate to surveillance?

SB: 1:44

And this is a great question. And for definitions, you know, often when I'm teaching, we get to the definition of surveillance probably by the end of the class, as opposed to at the beginning because I see it as basically the operating system of the you know, how we're governed of the world that we're living in, is around us surveillance. And so, I wanted to put this work into conversation with surveillance studies, and to think about my own citational practices there. And so, sousveillance comes from a researcher, Steve Mann, at the University of Toronto. He had this eight-point compass or mapping of the way various forms of veillance operated. And what struck me was this concept of sousveillance, but he saw it as, you know, the counterpoint or contrapuntal to surveillance, like the idea of under-sight.

But when he was describing it, he mentioned, you know, this one time, when basically everybody had a camera, around the 17-1800s. And I was thinking about the absenting of slavery and basically its afterlife when we think about surveillance And so I wanted to, you know, really think of it as, as the ways, the black ways of knowing and surviving, and around questions, not questions, but life under surveillance. But I also wanted to say that black ways of understanding can't be so easily mapped onto these Cartesian logics. Like one camera, plus two cameras, no camera, you know, these kinds of things are not, it's basically, you know, the Rastafari idea of ‘over-standing’. Like, how do you understand survival in systems of incarceration, of systems of enslavement, of systems of racial capitalism?

And so that's how I wanted to think about it. That we can't be, you know, there’s a quote, that we have been branded by Cartesian logic or something like that. And to think about how to disabuse us of that understanding of surveillance is to really think about how, in my book, looking at the archive of slavery, but contemporarily about how people contend and challenge and really demand different from the system that we have now, of exploitation.

M: 4:30

What were lantern laws, and what are their legacy and modern surveillance systems and studies today?

S: 4:36

So, lantern laws were these… New York is where I was looking in the 1700s, early 1700s. There are records of a law that regulated the movement of they said Negro or Indian slaves in the nighttime. So basically, this was a law that was put into practice, put into place that if any, black or Indigenous person was walking after dark in New York City and they weren't in the company of some white person, then they were mandated to carry with them a lit lantern. You can think of the lantern as a kind of prosthetic, a supervisory device, but something that, you know, was mandated that it had to be carried. And if someone was found, not accompanied by a white person, and without a lantern, they can then be subjected to being, you know, arrested, taken to the gull or to the jail. And so, that is what the lantern law is.

And this continued in spaces like Boston, continuing into the 1800s. And, you know, we can think about the kind of modern ways in which, you know, light functions as a supervisory device. Or, similarly, you can think about, like, how stop and frisk operate. And so, the idea that without, you know, kind of governing black mobility, governing walking while black, existing while black, breathing while Black has long histories, and I think lantern laws, you know, points to that. And, you know, a simple kind of…not simple, because these are all complex.

But, you know, especially now, when people are learning online or working from home, you have systems like Proctorio, which are this kind of algorithmic monitoring software to make sure people aren't cheating and cheating looks like looking away from the camera, right? So, there's a camera that monitors you while you're taking your LSAT, or your exam, or whatever it is. And there have been so many cases that arose within the past year of, you know, black folks that they were, you know, they had to shine the light in their face so that their face could be registered by this kind of automation, facial recognition. And that's, and that not showing up basically criminalizes you. Like they say you're cheating when it's like, who are they developing these technologies to serve best? What kinds of bodies become like a prototype for these things? And what bodies get produced as innocent? And what bodies get produced as guilty? Because of, you know, the lighting infrastructure.

M: 7:25

Your book dedicated a chapter to analyzing and interpreting the Big Book of Negroes. Can you tell us what it was? What significance does it hold in American history at large? And how did it play a role in the development of modern biometric systems?

SB: 7:39

So, the Book of Negroes, this is a late 18th century documents with the end of the war of independence, when the United States became the United States, there was a time in which a call was put up by the British that, you know, input, enslaved folks could self-liberate themselves, by with the caveat fighting for the British. And in doing so, they would then gain passage to places like, you know, what would become Canada, England, and what would become Germany. And so, the Book of Negroes is a document of about 3000 names of people who had registered and had travelled on ships, to these various ports. So not only did they, you know, not only like soldiers, but people that did various types of support, work, spies, cooks, these types of things. And so, this is a historical document. I think that this is digitized now, but you know, at the time, there's one in England, Washington, Nova Scotia, Canada, these spaces.

And what happens in it, they would have people's names, they would have the name of the claimant, the person who might make a claim that I own this black person who was free, and then they would also have various, you know, descriptors. Descriptors around race, around gender, around the damage that was done to people's bodies around labor, they could say something like, you know, a hand or a scar, or these various types of ways of, you know, how the body was recorded there. And so, you asked, like, what significance does that play in contemporary biometrics, and you can think about the ‘Book of Negroes’ as basically the first state regulated and state mandated document for border crossing across the Canada and US border that particularly linked biometrics to, to the rites of passage, and you could think of biometrics simply as bio the body or having to do with the body and metrics a type of measurement and biometric would be here, the, as I mentioned, like descriptions of somebody's body.

And so, we talked about having national ID cards, fingerprints, facial recognition, all of these, perhaps even DNA in these passports, to think about those claims, those demands that you need a body to prove your identity. So not who you say you are, but that your body will reveal the truth about you, despite what you say, that has like a long history in, in the surveillance of blackness, when you think about the Canada-US border.

MN: 10:43

How does Fanon’s work broadly influence your analysis?

S: 10:43

When I was starting to write this book, I wanted to tell a different story of surveillance and one that was not, you know, so much indebted to the work of Michel Foucault. And I wanted to think about, you know, Fanon’s biography. I read, you know, so many of them. And, you know, one thing that struck me was that he died on, you know, in the, in the United States. He had come to the US for treatment just outside of Maryland. And it was the CIA that was able to pass him there. I wrote to the CIA, and the FBI. I did a Freedom of Information Act, and I had, you know, the name of his CIA handler, Oli Islynn, and I got basically, you know, nothing from the documents, that was a thin file. Because, you know, they gave me that basically, we can't confirm or deny, and if we were to confirm, we still must deny—what they call, like the Glomar response. And so, I was left with, you know, the idea that Fanon was still an important, you know, source and methods when it comes to surveillance, like the FBI or the CIA. But I found that you know, Fanon would be and then epidermalization would be an important way of thinking about the ways that race gets, or blackness gets inscripted. Stereotypes of blackness— he says that I'm like, battered down by tom toms, by slavery, by shore good eating, and the way that this kind of distorted white gaze, the look of Negro distorts blackness and black people and makes blackness a distortion.

I wanted to think about how that applies to contemporary biometric technologies that distort, like the Proctorio surveillance system. And so, that is the kinds of, you know, the questions that I want to think about— the way that you know, if we have a prototypical whiteness, like the kind of body… and prototypical maleness, prototypical able-bodiedness—like what kinds of bodies are these technologies designed for? So the idea that in some earlier biometric technologies, you know, people who are elderly, so thinking of fingerprint technology, people who work with, you know, heavy hand washing, like in the medical profession or that work with chemicals, like, you know, mechanics, artists, nail techs, people that come use their hands for labor, massage therapist, their fingerprints, you know, might be illegible.

So like, what does that say around, you know, questions of labor and who can, you know, enter into these categories to be enrolled in biometric technologies. When you look at some of the earlier research and development of biometrics, they, they use, like some really messed up, you know, languages that we have naming practices like Negroid, Mongoloid, I mean, this is like contemporary research from the 21st century, using these types of terms. And so, if these are the terms and the forms, and the kinds of ideologies that are shaping biometric technology, facial recognition technology, then it's like, it's not a surprise, when we see that there's, you know, so many problems into how they get put into use to criminalize and dehumanize you know, various populations that have historically been the category that has been dehumanized criminalized.

MN: 14:51

Your book was released in 2015, and the surveillance state has continued to expand unabated. How has surveillance technology and opposition evolved since then? How does the uprising of last summer factor into the future directions of surveillance technology and studies?

SB: 15:07

Yeah. When I was, this is a great question, because the book came out in 2015, I was writing it in, you know, I think I started in about 2008 or so. Right when it was coming out, you were seeing the movement for Black Lives had been, you know, recently formed, we have, you know, the uprisings and the black insurgencies and demands for abolition, that was took place in the summer of 2020, along with, you know, the pandemic. And so, the technology, you know, has evolved, but it's also like the ‘changing same’. I remember seeing videos like a chopper being flown, you know, quite low at the time of the protests last summer, as a form of threat of violence, of intimidation, and, you know, and as a form of crowd dispersal. And so, you know, that is not a new technology that has been used in various fields of warfare, in the US and outside of it. So, you know, some things that have changed is that we have, you know, so many more people that are on the ground, recording, so many more demands that are happening, but also, you know, so for example, I, there was a time around, maybe around 2016 in the US, and also, you know, in Canada as well too, where the response was, you know, give a cop a camera, and the idea of like, let's have like, you know, body worn cameras, for police, which really gives, which really is a kind of police reform, that really puts more money into those that produce those products, like the company that was formerly a taser and into policing budgets.

But I'll tell you something that I saw recently has been happening— so people, okay, we're going film the police, we're going have records, we're going have this kind of viral Black Death, that is, you know, basically like lynching photography, that has been circulated. It was about last month I saw a video of this person recording the cop. The cop was playing music, like, the Beatles, or country music, they've been doing this a lot around the country. And what it shows is, like, the kind of calculated knowledge of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They know that people are going to record them, and it's going to go on YouTube, on Instagram, on whatever, but they know that the content moderators are really the algorithms that say you can't put copyright music on YouTube, on Instagram will then flag those videos and it would be removed. So like, record me all you want, you know, but you’re not going to make this go viral, you're not going to be able to put it online. And so it's kind of like whack a mole, with the way that people you know, one up and challenge these surveillance practices when it comes to policing, in particular. I guess, when you talk about, you know, the future directions, I really like the work that is being done by abolitionists, by the movement for Black Lives, that continues to do that work, that has to be the demand, right? For abolition, and that must be the future, knowing that, you know, it's not like, oh, we need to get more technology, we got to just stay one step ahead of the cops or the state, or I.C.E or whoever it is about. Let’s make demands for something outside of this system. Imagine something different. And that's why I think the work of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, of Marian Kaaba and so many others really continue to teach me about, you know, how to live and to dream abolition.

M: 19:35

My question is, what kind of impact has the post 911 War on Terror had on the material conditions of black people and blackness at large? And how about specifically black women in this context?

SB: 19:47

It was right in 2001 in the summer in Atlanta, a whistleblower who was working with what would be become the TSA, it wasn't called the TSA until after this omnibus bill that the US put through called the Patriot Act, but she was a whistleblower to show how black people were being, you know, criminalized at the airport, even though they weren’t the ones that were trafficking in contraband and other types of things, in from her experience. And so how has that changed? It's the ‘changing same’. One example, and, you know, even though I am Canadian, I think a lot of my references are from the U.S., because I've been living in the US for quite some time. But it was about, I think it was 2016, that some documents were leaked to the press. These were FBI and Department of Homeland Security training documents, but they came up with this new category. Well, not so new, because, you know, black people have been criminalized, you know, at least we have details from Cointelpro and earlier, but this new category called the black identity extremists, and I'm sure you've, you know, you've heard about it, and it really demonstrates the state's continued ability to index black resistance as criminal. It’s part and parcel of a whole slew of other types of practices that have happened, that particularly focused on Muslims, black Muslims, like the idea of, the kind of build-a-terrorist that the FBI did. They called it create and capture where they would basically have the making of an informant and so you have, you know, people that would be informants, but also agents that would be in mosques, basically trying to inveigle people to criminalize themselves. And so that was called create and capture. And so that is, the kind of parcels of the methods and sources that have been used prior to 911 and even continually. We know that the kinds of films that have been coming out, the documents that have been coming out about, you know, Fred Hampton, but also the FBI foyer releases of the various ways that movements have been, and continue to be, infiltrated with disinformation as well, too. And you're seeing that, of course, more and more now, especially when we have things like social media, and various types of like bots and other types of ways that there's disruption, disinformation, and ways that black freedom struggles continue to be a problem for a white supremacist state.

MN: 23:19

My next question is, what is prototypical whiteness? And how does it play a role in the development and accuracy of surveillance technology? What do you mean when you say it is, to quote, ‘reliance on dark matter for its own meaning’?

SB: 23:32

That’s a great question. I was using that to think about biometric technology. I guess a short primer on biometrics, basically, can be used for three purposes. Identification— who are you in the face in the crowd? It can be used for verification—are you who you say you are? Are you the person whose unique biometric is held in this ID card, or this passport? Or automation—is anybody there? Automation is like, you know, when you go to a public washroom and use a touchless faucet, and you run your hand, you know, over the capacitive sensor to kind of get the water to run. And sometimes it's a structural design that the water doesn't run from my hand when I wave it in front of it. This happened to me in Toronto this summer going into the stores where they had those automated hand disinfectants and I had on like, I tried to be fashionable and I had on like black gloves like black plastic gloves, you know, whatever latex gloves and it wouldn't work at all right? And because it's like how it's being reflected or again, it's like the you know, the need that you say you have to use a ring light so that your face can be read by this software to answer the question, is anybody there? Of course, you're there, my hand is there, but what kind of hand was it designed to expect? And that is the prototype of whiteness, right?

That's what I mean about white prototypicality to exist, it has to have that counterpoint. And that counterpoint is, like, this is invasive, kind of more intimate kind of biometric technology, is iris recognition. But there were times when the technology was designed that it could not register, brown irises, just blue. I mean, who designed something just for white faces, just for blue eyes? Well, we know who designed something—people who have white faces and blue eyes. Sometimes people want to blame it on the training data, oh, we only use these colour eyes or these people. Well, it's who’s designing that data set that didn't even like, or rather absented other people from making this technology something that could be they could be legible in. When I say that, its reliance on dark matter for its own meaning, I think we could extend that to think about the category of whiteness, relying on the dark of blackness, what gets categorized and then we go back to your question about Finon. He says, I'm splattered by black blood, they rendered my body back to me, in triplicate. So this is like the stereotypes, all of these things that have long histories in literature, in film, in the killing of Philando Castile, a few years ago, where his partner, Diamond Phillips, was recording it for Facebook.

And the cop said it was because of his wide-set nose. He was looking for somebody with a wide set nose. All of these, stereotypes I guess, is the shorthand, but you know, a lot of work, what goes into producing and reproducing and continuing these stereotypes. And so that is one way in which biometric technology does that. And the idea, it's like, I forgot the name of the person here. Meredith Broussard, and she talks about techno-chauvinism. Like, you know, it's a technology that's going to save us. This is her critique, right. The critique is of people saying that the technology is always right, it's true. It's what's going to liberate us. And it's so steeped in all of these histories, in its own formation. It's the formation of these technologies that, you know, we can't discount colonialism, we can't discount us slavery, we can't discount genocide. When we think about, you know, the states in which these technologies are created.

MN: 28:37

What is one thing, one concept that came up was white gaze and the black gaze? Can you compare the two?

SB: 28:47

I'm just thinking of an answer that might be somehow interesting, or relevant. And it reads basically, I feel like it's some of the same. I don't want to always rely on phenomics because there's so many things about that. It's not like white people and black people looking but all these things, all these histories, that shape the white gaze. Right now, this week in Minneapolis, we have the case of the cop who killed George Floyd. We have the 20 year old Daunte Wright, who was killed, murdered by a cop. And the reason for the stop was—it's illegal to have, this is not the reason—this is like the alibi given afterwards.

But the excuse is that it's illegal to have an air freshener on your rear-view mirror, which is also illegal in Ontario, Canada as well too, but that becomes the justification for the stop. So it's not about literal seeing, but like, how is this kind of oversight when you think about surveillance guards, all of these things, how are these ways of seeing blackness of reading blackness as always and already criminalized or some type of negative racialization a product of the white gaze. I mean, that could be one way of seeing it.

I think maybe another example, which I used at the end of the book was, you know, these two workers were testing out a camera at a store, this was a HP camera that also had automation. And you might use this for a conversation that so many of us are having now on zoom or whatever. And so the camera would be able to pan and move as the person was using it, making for a good user experience, supposedly. One worker, Desi, called himself Desi, and the other worker, black Desi, and white Wanda, they would both use it, and the camera would like, you know, move and work perfectly for Wanda, but for Desi, it was not able to like pan shift or tilt or anything. And so those are two separate ways in which one design for the computer was only made useful for one body. That is the white gaze or white way knowing, or like placing whiteness or white bodies or lightness, as, like, the prototype is one way. Another thing is like, you know, we've been seeing so much of Permit Patty, or Karen with the calling on the barbecue, or, you know, something, and the way that, you know, Karen is a cop and the way that the policing, that becomes another way of using 911 as like, you know, a policing customer service, as a right, as a demand. I think I'm kind of just getting that, like, the white gaze is about governing and policing who is in and out of place, it's policing categories of race. It cannot be sustained. We need to demand a whole new world.

MN: 33:01

Yeah, absolutely. My next question is—how can we, as black people, mitigate our vulnerability to the surveillance state, and they're also now proliferating, privatized, surveillance regimes.

S: 33:15

It’s an uphill battle, you know, when we think about mass incarceration, it is really an uphill battle. But the models, I think, must come from mutual aid. And knowing that the state is not going to save you. I think the example for that is what happened in a space like Texas, and so many other spaces as well too, just earlier this year, when you know, when we see that, that climate change could look like people dying. Well-resourced people even have to break down their fences and burn their furniture, to survive. And what people relied on in those time are the networks that were already in place of mutual aid to get unhoused people who are outside living into hotels, into shelters, to get people food, all of these ways that surveillance state will just—what Ruth Gilmore calls organized abandonment—it will just continue to abandon. The way to challenge that I think is collective. It's about abolition, and it's about mutual aid. On the flip side, you know, we don't have to have everything. Like the Super Bowl commercial with Michael B. Jordan? He was basically voicing the stalker state, what Hamid Khan calls the stalker state, of basically voicing one of these home digital assistants like, Alexa or an Amazon Echo or something.

And sometimes it's really cheap, or easy to use our fingerprints or our face to secure our devices, but we have to continually ask like, what happens to our data? Who is it being sold to? And if it's not being sold, like, who is it being shared or traded or rented to, when we surrender these things, you know, for convenience, for so called security. So, you know, sometimes it's good to take a pause on the new or the hot new thing and think about, you know, what are the potential harms of these things? And, you know, for me, you know, sometimes it's just like, oh, there's just so much stuff to, how am I going to manage all of these passwords, or like you'd like, rather than writing them down on a piece of paper? Or, you know, what's the big deal if I just use, IMessage rather than, you know, some type of secure messaging system, and you know, that there's, a lot of times people say things like, well, if you've got nothing to hide, then what's the problem? And those types of answers are so individualized and require a really involved, deep investment that you're like, you're on your own here, you just have to concern yourself with yourself.

And what got me to, you know, to think about really being mindful about my own kinds of security, when it comes to communication is like, what happens to the students that I speak to that are at risk, that could be, you know, without state documents, what happens when I put them at risk, because of the way that I might be sloppy or not concerned with secure digital communications? So to think about, like, the larger kind of community concerns, not just with using something like Signal or, you know, end-to-end encryption with WhatsApp or whatever, but to think about not yourself only, but like other people that you are in community with that you might not even know. I'm in community with the person that could see outside my window right now.

MN: 37:30

For my final question, I would like to flip the question you posed in your conclusions back on to you. What happens when blackness re-enters the frame? What is the frame and how is it necessarily reframed by censoring the conditions of blackness when we theorize surveillance?

SB: 37:48

Yeah, the thing is like, did the blackness ever leave? It’s a good question. And that question came from Desi, who was like, using the HP computer, and he says, watch what happens when my blackness enters the frame. And what happened is that the technology did not work for him, it wasn't able to capture him. And what's like revealing about that is like, you know, to get us to think about what it means to be uncaptured or illegible, like, there might be something liberatory about opting out or not, not calling for demands for, you know, we must make facial recognition, like work for everybody. Tech equity is not about all of us being able to be managed and governed by Google, or, you know, whoever it is.

And so, that question about what happens when we enter the frame was, in that case, for this, like little book was like to put black studies in conversation with surveillance studies, because I found that at the time, and this has, like, changed so much in the last, you know, few years or so, is that there was a real absenting into, like, how the conditions that the black folks, of black people globally in the diaspora, we're not being factored in to how we think about, you know, surveillance as a post-9/11 formation. Without thinking about how, like, the Panthers and other groups and other people were, you know, surveilled by the FBI. Long before, you know, something like the Patriot Act. So you're thinking about, like, C. L. R. James, you know, having a huge FBI having a huge file on him, and, you know, various other writers, the duration of theorists and other people. I just think it's, there's so much to learn about, and to think through and to move with when we think about, you know, you know, what happens when we centre the conditions of black people, when we when we think towards, you know, liberation?

MN: 40:20

On that note, do you have any suggestions for books or media that our listeners would be able to get more involved into learning more about surveillance studies and the work that you do?

SB: 40:34

Yeah, so this week I taught Nicole Fleetwood’s ‘Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration’ and it was like, ‘care full’. She talks about the methodology of care work, of the way that carceral aesthetics and people who are incarcerated mark things like penal time, time in prison, using what she calls penal matter—what kinds of ways are people creating art in clandestine ways to critique, to survive and to get through being incarcerated. People making art in solitary confinement. And I thought that was a fantastic book. There’s a film that came out a few years ago called Nas and Malik. And, maybe it’s not like, the greatest film, but I thought it really got to what we talked about in the ways that the FBI has and continues to surveille Muslims in New York City. Not only the FBI but the NYPD at the time, through acts of infiltration and other types of surveillance. There are also some great documentaries. I like Bee Street, which is a movement for Black lives activists. There's a really old documentary called Life and Death by Stephanie Black, that looks at structural adjustment policies and how they affect life in Jamaica. And I think that, you think about structural adjustments, whether it’s the World Trade Organization or IMF, is about surveillance, and governance, and management, and neo-colonial relations. So, I think those are a few texts that I would suggest.

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

Gentrifying Blackness With Dr Brandi Summers

In the second episode of our Black Geographies podcast series, Brandi Summers discusses her 2019 book Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post Chocolate City.

Welcome to 1919Radio’s Black Geographies podcast series! This 4-part Black Geographies podcast series brings together four authors in the emerging field of Black geographies to explore the conditions of Blackness across multiple spatial dimensions. The goal of this series is to bring radical ideas of race, space, and the politics of place out of academia and into our community and streets through an engaging and open access medium.

In the second episode of our Black Geographies podcast series, Mohamed Nuur sits down with guest Dr. Brandi Summers to discuss her 2019 book Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post Chocolate City. In this wide-ranging conversation she defines concepts such as gentrification and neoliberalism and analyzes how they relate to Blackness and Black people living across urban contexts from Washington DC to Toronto and beyond. We begin by exploring the history of the H-Street corridor in the post-civil rights era and the resulting impacts of gentrification. Near the end of the episode Dr. Summers discusses diversity and multiculturalism as tools used for the commodification and erasure of Blackness.

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organizaiton and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

1919Radio Intro audio clip 0:00

I never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently experiencing.

I am mentally spiritually physically, emotionally, intellectually, and academically developed and acutely aware of the condition of African people throughout the entire world.

We don't want fortune, we don’t want popularity we want power, power. And power comes only from the organized masses.

MN 0:48

Welcome to another episode of 1919 radio, and the second episode in our block geographies podcast series. My name is Mohammed and I'm your host. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Brandi Summers, Assistant Professor of geography and global Metropolitan studies at UC Berkeley, and author of Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post Chocolate City. Her book examines how aesthetics and race converge to map Blackness in Washington DC, with a focus on the H Street Corridor. In this conversation, we define and explore gentrification, and neoliberalism, critiques of diversity, and the commodification of Blackness. I hope you enjoy the show.

MN 1:28

Let's begin by setting the scene for our listeners. What is H Street? And what is its significance to Washington DC at large? How has gentrification changed the H Street?

BS 1:38

So, H Street was or is a popular commercial district in Washington, DC. And so in 1968, April 4, after the April 4 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, there were uprisings that took place in DC. And H Street was one of the locations where there was some damage, and just really like frustrations had come to a point at which people were really angry, saddened, of course, about his assassination. But in particular, there was this focus on the conditions and ways that Black people in Washington DC, were encountering, you know, various forms of systemic racism in relationship to not only, you know, commercial elements, or at least commercial districts, but also, you know, interactions with police, and, you know, substandard housing and substandard education. So, there are these ways that places like H Street became really foundational to understanding Black life in DC.

BS 2:49

And so I came to the area, it was accidental. I didn't intend on doing research on H Street, it was just that I moved to DC planning to do work on a political organization. And I put my clothes at a dry cleaner on H Street, and I'm walking around and I'm like, "What is this place?". It was, it just you had to feel it. Like, you just had to kind of sense it. There was just, you could tell it was in transition. Right, so I am, like I said, I put my clothes in the dry cleaning. And I'm looking around. And H Street was one of those places where you started to see certain types of businesses that were catering to a wealthier population, I saw more than one dog spa, I saw lots of you know, cupcake bakeries, or expensive coffee shops, next to an Ethiopian restaurant that had been there for years, next to a ramen shop, right. And so you saw this eclectic mix. And so I started to read up on it, because I was like, I don't understand this place. And that's when I found out about its history after Dr. King's assassination. But then also, that's when I found out that it was a primary location for Black people to shop, especially when segregation was being enforced. It was the most populous commercial district outside of downtown and Black people couldn't shop downtown. So it was really simple to getting a lot of service needs met, whether it's, you know, getting your, your vacuum cleaner repaired or getting basic items from a drugstore. But it was a really important corridor for Black life. And so I wanted to kind of see what had happened for it to have a beer garden and a coffee shop, but then also a rundown grocery store that wasn't getting a lot of love and attention. So it's gentrification. And I know we're going to get into that a bit. But for me, I wanted to understand why it felt so strange. I'm seeing the changes happen. I'm seeing changes

BS 5:00

To the built environment, but there was a feeling there was an affective, kind of, there was a feeling I was getting about transition and wondering where this particular story of this, of this corridor was placed in DC's larger history.

MN 5:15

What is the chocolate city? And how does it become post chocolate?

BS 5:18

Ooh.

BS 5:20

So, you know, in the 70s, and especially this was after a long decade of the 1960s, where there are various uprisings all over the country, Parliament Funkadelic, produced a song called Chocolate Cities, and the first chocolate city was Washington, DC. And so in thinking about what a chocolate city is, it is this place that basically Black folks run. So, whether that's through politics, culture, music, art, sound, everything, right. And so there, it's the celebratory space. But it's also very much place driven, in terms of where Black people can be free. And, and again, imagine, so in the song, several cities remained. And a lot of those cities were those that had had experienced uprisings. But, But Washington was especially important because it had the largest Black population of a metropolitan area in the country, or at least the first, right. And there were these ways that the political establishment having them Black, again, this large Black population, generally, but also large, mid Black middle-class population existed, it seemed as though there was, opportunities for prosperity in Washington, DC, but at the same time, there were extreme forms of poverty.

BS 6:42

We saw various instances of segregation rearing its ugly head, still years later, in the ways, that there was Black poverty that was, you know, exponentially greater than that of white poverty. And so, you know, we start to see a shift in the US Census in 2010, when the Black population dipped below 50% of the overall population. And that's when, you know, people, scholars, started writing about Washington, DC's declining Black population. But identifying as like, latte, or cappuccino or swirl or something like, there was some food metaphor that was always used to talk about the infusion of white into this chocolate mix, right? And so, you know, I thought about it, and I was like, Yeah, I could, you get another food, a cookie or something to include, but to be honest with you, I chose post chocolate because it's still, chocolate is still associated. So I don't think that the Black has been fully extracted from DC. In fact, I think it's been attached in these really effective ways. So whether it's positive or negative, of course, is up for interpretation. But there are ways in which the Black population is leaving DC or being forced out, displaced from DC. But Blackness still remains and is very much central to its identity. And so it's that combination that there's, there's friction, but then there's also this contestation over space, that I think more so it's best explained as post chocolate where we don't know what's going to come next, I'm not going to presume that DC becomes white, just because Black folks are leaving. And so I wanted to have a different temporal relationship with the concept rather than going for, for a food, a desert or something.

MN 8:43

One interesting element from your book is when you state that a new dog spa, or a craft brewery doesn't necessarily generate more capital than a beauty salon or a local drugstore. Yet, the replacements of the former for the latter is still representative of gentrification in the age of neoliberalism. Can you define the neoliberalism for us? And what it is? What is its relationship to gentrification?

BS 9:06

Yeah, so you know, for me, I'm really more focused on neoliberalism working with gentrification and commodification and how those together shape urban landscapes, right. And so, you know, my focus in particular is how Blackness plays a part in these processes and the practices that are associated with them. So neoliberalism is this theory of political and economic practices that promote the deregulation of markets. Also the reduction of international trade barriers, the privatization of state companies and also thinking about the growth of private investment, but also, the with, the overall withdrawal of the state. And so that involves laws and policies that expand private markets and spaces that, that end up also shrinking public services. And so thinking about the, the neoliberal imaginary, it organizes not just like political, economic questions, but also the social, cultural and spatial practices that end up being mapped on to the laws of the market and the logic of capital. Right. And so if we think about gentrification, which, you know, it's a term that's thrown around constantly. And it's one that I, you know, people talk about the gentrification of something, right. But, but really, you know, as it relates, specifically in the, in the urban context and thinking about cities, it's best understood as the series of processes in which there's a variety of actors, institutions, and again, practices and top down policies of financial decisions that end up controlling the amount, the price and the quality of, let's say, housing and real estate. But also, it's this set of processes that's propelled by the state policies of like housing financialization, infrastructural investment, deregulation, and also privatization. So that's when you start to see, you know, this emphasis on, on mortgage securities and various media portrayals, but also where I focus real estate development, right, and these kind of commercial corridors.

BS 11:21

So it's not just about residential, real estate. And so that's when you also involve financial actors, like banks and landlords, venture capitalists, hedge funds, you know, renters, etc. So, so scholars really are at least as I was doing research, for first my dissertation, and then my book, they were talking about urban gentrification as this inevitable economic phenomenon, right. That, that gentrification is about exclusion, it's about the invisible hand of the market coming in and taking things that were previously you know, accessible, and making them too expensive for folks who were working class, not only residents but also consumers. So they really focus a lot on the unregulated market, as I mentioned earlier, and also displacement, right, and how there's this push pushing out of current residents, and renters, and landowners. So I, though, instead of emphasizing the devaluation and the revaluation of physical assets and communities within the context of gentrification through various public policies. And so, you know, if we think about urban renewal, for example, historically, or what James Baldwin called Negro removal, if we think about redlining, in the United States, and also various forms of uneven development, it congealed this, this seemingly natural link between Blackness, under development place and poverty, because in the United States, specifically, urban almost always signifies Black. So in that way, neoliberalism and gentrification really go hand in hand. But I'm saying that it's really important for us to also consider race, but specifically Blackness and how it plays a part in the, you know, leveraging of certainly capital, but also how various markets are able to operate seamlessly by commodifying Blackness.

MN 13:19

How does neoliberalism make Blackness, but not necessarily Black people cool?

BS 13:25

I mean, it's that commodification question, right. So one other point that's important from the book is that I'm not just talking about Black people and what Black people are doing but I'm actually talking about Blackness and the fluidity of Blackness and ways that Blackness can be extracted from Black people's bodies, in order to be used to raise capital and really to develop land. And so in that way, if there's this emphasis on this unregulated market, then that means you can take the Blackness of, again, some someone's actual body. You can take the Blackness of sound, different sounds, you can take the Blackness as it relates to art, you know, public art, etc and you can just smash it on something, and then you can make it hot and popular and cool. But you don't actually want lack people to consume that thing. Right. And so as it related to H Street, that was kind of the weirdness I was seeing. I was seeing Black people on the street walking down the street and stuff, but I wasn't necessarily seeing them engage actual businesses. I didn't see them really inside the restaurants. I didn't see them inside the businesses. Instead, it was as if there was this kind of mixture that looked right. It looked multicultural. It looked at diverse, but it wasn't fully saturated as it related to the actual corridor itself.

MN 14:43

What do you mean by neoliberal urbanism, and how does neoliberalism shape urban spatial processes in general?

BS 14:50

Yeah, so neoliberal urbanism is this form of urbanism, that subordinated to the dictates of capital. So, I've pulled from geographers, or actually, you know, it's funny urbanists, I'll say because they all kind of fit in different categories. But Neil Brenner and Nick, Theodore, and others who talk about this actually existing neoliberalism, which ends up involving interventions by the state, first to destroy institutional arrangement, but then also to create these new infrastructures for capital accumulation. And so what's happened with neoliberal urbanism is that cities have become kind of like these, these labs, for neoliberal policy experiments in urban entrepreneurship or, or marketization and also various forms of competition. And so there's this way that, you know, neoliberal urban restructuring produces these new spatial, social and power relations. And you see this through history and, and this kind of push for a global city and ways that cities all over the world are trying to be that, you know, global city, right. And so what it ends up doing is it redefines, and also rescales, what we understand as urban or what we understand as global, but then also targets the unwanted bodies, right? That includes Black people or other people of color, it involves, you know, getting rid of the homeless, right homelessness and the look of it. And so it's in that way, the targeting means you have to actually get rid of them in this kind of environment. So you see, ultimately, what happens with neoliberal economic and social processes in the city, is that you see this concentration of wealth, you know, in a few hands, that ends up reshaping these cities, globally.

MN 16:50

Your point about the experimentation on cities is, hits home with Toronto. We had Google propose a whole sidewalk labs, where they were going to take over an entire, like quadrants of the city and basically take data from everything, the sidewalks, from who's going where, and what's doing what, which, thankfully, was, ended up being canceled in Toronto after like a lot of pushback.

BS 17:13

Oh Great!

MN 17:13

Thank God.

MN 17:15

It is great. Yeah. My next question is, how do discourses of diversity and multiculturalism, which are very big in Canada, work to erase structural and systemic inequalities in urban settings, as well as displace and erase Black people, working people, immigrants in urban settings across North America?

BS 17:34

Okay, so you're asking how do the discourses actually work to erase them? In terms of them being successful? Or? Because I don't think they are.

MN 17:45

How do they, how do they try to erase Black people, working-class people, and immigrants?

BS 17:51

Oh, yes. Okay. So they do right. So there are ways that discourses on multiculturalism and diversity claim to make everything equal and make everyone equal and make it so that everyone has opportunities, right. And so the presumption is, there are benefits to having diversity. So what it does is it allows, especially in the context of cities, it allows the city essentially to forget historical, you know, forms of inequities that have existed, and so say instead, okay, let's start now, let's, again, let's just throw in a whole bunch of different colors. And then everyone, we can turn out these results that again, enable people to have equal access. But if you don't actually address historical wrongs, then you're not going to achieve those kinds of results. And that I imagine is certainly the case with that several indigenous populations in Canada, especially where this is a question over land and rights and acknowledging settler colonial kind of ties that still exist in the present. So as it relates specifically to Black people, there's a way that Blackness is embraced, but still, Black people can be pushed aside. And you'll see that and that's why these aesthetics end up being really important to my formulation, as I'm thinking about it because it's with this emphasis on neoliberal capital. It's just more important to find something that's profitable. And if Blackness is profitable, then that's all you need. Why do you need a Black person if you can just use their Blackness instead? And so it's that kind of work, and at least claims of multiculturalism and diversity that end up being usurped and kind of taken from Black people where it might have been based on some kind of political you know, organizing and ways to find pride and especially in a particular, leaving an era where Blackness was always already negative, you know, debased, devalued to find value in Blackness now, but again, not being managed by Black people is more so a slap in the face. Even if there's this, you know, desire to be given equitable, not more equal and diverse.

MN 20:18

Can you define your term Black aesthetic and placements for our listeners? How is Blackness aestheticized in urban spaces? And how does this dynamic play out in cities across North America?

BS 20:29

Yeah, um, so I define Black aesthetic and placement as really this mode of representing the realities of Blackness with representations of Blackness, right. So it's the, it's the shortest means to get a Black face, or get a Black body, a Black limb incorporated to indemnify someone from criticism. So it's kind of like, hey, I'm showing a Black face so I'm not racist, right. And so I introduced this as a way to think about how Blackness is aestheticized, but then also deployed to increase the desirability of a particular urban location. And so I'm really saying that it's the strategic incorporation of Blackness as this aesthetic that ends up being essential to gentrification as an urbanizing process. And you can see this clearly in, in various institutions that provide daily services. So I talked about this in the book related to like an experience that I had at Whole Foods. But there are also other ways that, you know, you think of food establishments, generally lots of restaurants, but ways that certain types of Black businesses or at least those that are attributed to Black people, in some cases, you just kind of have the city decide how Black at wants to be.

BS 21:51

So you can have only a certain number, but then if you get too many, it becomes excessive. And so just earlier to your, your question, where you mentioned, how I discussed, like, you know, barbershops and beauty shops, which have been traditionally owned by Black people, especially in Washington, DC versus these beer gardens and cupcake, places that they don't necessarily generate, generate more revenue. So, the logic doesn't meet out where I thought the whole point was profit. If that's the case, then you should keep barbershops and beauty shops. But the reality is that that's not the only logic that determines the direction, that's when you start to see this emphasis on creative, creative placemaking, or innovative businesses that aren't necessarily attributed to Black business. So you see it in multiple ways. And really, it's, it's the market determining what to do with the excesses of Blackness. Interesting.

MN 22:44

My next question is, in your book, you quote George Lipsitz, who says, to quote, "the lived experience of race has a spatial dimension, and the lived experience of space has a racial dimension". Can you elaborate on what that means for our listeners?

BS 22:59

Yeah, so what Lipsitz is talking, or at least how he discusses it is, is the spatialization of race and the racialization of space. Right. And so, in terms of the, the specialization of race, you know, it's, it's really this process by which racial inequalities have essentially been, been spatialized or, or implanted and maintained through geography. So just thinking again of the example of, of segregation, right, especially that which was federally mandated, where you have the actual people having to be located in particular areas, or at least a process by which the land has these implications by whom is there or forced to be there. So again, segregation is the best example of thinking about the spatialization of race, but also practices of redlining, etc. In terms of the racialization of space, it ends up being this process, in which racialized groups are identified, and then also given, you know, stereotypical characterizations. And they're coerced into the, into specific living conditions, where you see the social and spatial segregation, right. And so that's when you see the ghettoization of certain areas or even see this as it relates to ethnic themes, neighborhoods, that not the trendy ones now, but the ones previously were, let's say, a Chinatown was a location where Chinese and Chinese Americans were expected to remain right. And so again, it's before this commodified form of, of placemaking, occurred. But instead of this way, that, that geographies inherently have racial connotations, or at least meanings in terms of how people are able to, be able to or not able to come in and come out, but then also the ways that there's always geography mapped upon the bodies of actual individuals around the world honestly, not just in the United States.

MN 25:01

My next question touches back on what you are mentioned about the urban riots of the 1960s. And I wanted to draw a parallel to today. How do you see, how do you foresee the last summer's uprisings impacting and shaping gentrification and urban development's at large?

BS 25:19

Yeah.

BS 25:21

You know, I've been thinking about that a lot lately, and, and hopeful that there is some change. However, I've also written about ways that cities in particular, and city leaders, as well, as you know, national figures and state leaders are still leveraging these Black aesthetics to show they're I guess, that they're allies, or that they're, or if it's the case of African American leaders to show that they are down for the cause. The problem, of course, is that the rhetoric doesn't match the practice. And so they're saying a lot just in terms of Black Lives mattering, which ends up really being, you know, pretty low bar. Like to say that, I mean, I think it's important, absolutely that especially because Black Lives Matter has been really central and calling attention to various forms of state violence. However, it's really basic to say Black Lives Matter, it's like, or that Black Lives should matter. So beyond that, the expectation is that those who are in power really should be taking extra steps to demonstrate how Black lives matter and not just say that Black lives matter. And so I have used the example of Washington DC, and I've written about DC's mayor, mayor Bowser and ways that, you know, certainly she was the first to put a Black lives matter street mural..

MN 27:00

I was just about to mention, about that's like that. Basically, what you were saying about Blackness being aestheticized and Black people, Black movements being erased,

BS 27:09

That's right.

MN 27:10

At the same time.

BS 27:12

And, both literally and figuratively. So in this case, where she incurred, like there's, you know, she essentially got people to paint Black Lives Matter on the street. And this was in contestation with the former president, but then activists added defund the police after it, and lo and behold, that was erased, right. And so in this way, so, so not only was that portion of the updated mural, erased, but also there, she put in a request to increase the city's police budget by $45 million.

MN 27:46

Wow.

BS 27:47

And so, if you actually pay attention to what people want and need, or you consider the conditions under which Black people are leaving DC at ridiculous rates, then you address those problems, rather than, you know, hanging on to particular slogans. And so I think there is real potential in terms of the visibility of the protests and recognition in some ways, but I just don't think that's necessarily enough. So they, I do think that there's been important movement as it relates to the defund movement and in thinking about abolition seriously, where it's not just kind of like this radical rhetoric that people cast aside. But instead, people are now starting to figure out ways to do it. So I'm seeing this here, my hometown, Oakland, where the Oakland Unified School District was able to get rid of the police department that was essentially, you know, operating in their schools. And so that's a huge step um..

MN 28:45

It is.

BS 28:46

To, right. If even if it's incremental in one location, it's certainly with, with Oakland having such a fractured and horrible history and relationship to specifically the Oakland Police Department. And it's a really wonderful thing to experience. But it also shows the potential that it can be small steps, but they really have a lasting impact. So I'm hopeful about these, these uprisings. But I'm concerned, that once I saw like all these corporations start blacking out their things on social media and again, saying Black Lives Matter, or going to wealthy neighborhoods and seeing the Black Lives Matter signs when they know they don't have any Black neighbors. Like I, that doesn't do anything for me. And the ones that really get me are the ones they have their kids paint and stuff. And so it's just wild. And I'd love to see some traction instead of kind of these aesthetic, these gestures. basically.

MN 29:41

Facts, we need to take BLM from Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation Movements.

BS 29:45

Yes!

MN 29:51

My next question has to do with, I guess, resistance. So how can Black people, poor people, working class, and immigrant people resist the forces of gentrification in their own, like local contexts? Do you have any pointers or suggestions?

BS 30:09

Well, you know, I think part of it, you know, I've been talking to my students a lot about this and, and some of my colleagues, that oftentimes we rush to solutions before we have a good grasp of the problem or at least the conditions that we're living in. And so lately, I think there's been a ton of people who want to push through legislation or, you know, support certain policies that we think are going to make a difference. But I don't actually think we've really reckoned with how class matters significantly, as it relates specifically to Black people. But then also ways that certain folks are shielded from against state violence and other forms of violence that occur on a daily basis, and that are also structural. And so I think we need to account for that. And not to say, I'm not one who says, oh, race is more I mean, on class is more important than race, or I'm not actually making that claim. But I do want us to reckon with the ways that class has this fundamental impact on how we not only see ourselves, but we'll be able to come up with solutions.

BS: 31:16

As I've been reading, actually lately, newsletters from the 1960s in Oakland, and one in particular, is focused on West Oakland, which was the Blackest region of Oakland, and especially during the war, the First and Second World War. It became a Black space and essentially, was segregated as such. And so in reading about West Oakland, and understanding activists who are in West Oakland, they were really fed up with the Black middle class, because they were saying you all aren't living this life. We don't have running water, we don't have, you know, adequate, we have terrible relationships with the cops. We don't have, you know, adequate spaces for our children to play, we live in overcrowded and, neighborhoods and blocks. And so, to not, and at the same time, it was the Black middle class who were instrumental in bringing the model cities programs and other urban redevelop, urban redevelopment renewal programs that essentially negatively impacted the Black poor. So if we're going to move forward, I think it's really important, again, that we reckon with that, and decide that we're going to essentially elevate and put poverty, and think about homelessness and the crises that occur because of those, and how that feeds into the criminal justice system, how that feeds into incarceration, how that feeds into prisonized landscapes before we start doing this, you know, wide scale, you know, we need policies that can help. Just basically get Juneteenth as a holiday or policies that, you know, instituted affirmative action alone or policies that, you know, try to reform police departments when we know they can't be reformed, and that they're still going to target the Black poor.

BS: 33:06

So I think it's important for us to really kind of understand the conditions first, before we can actually leverage important policies or answers to the, to the questions.

MN 33:17

What is the practice of placemaking? And how can Black people as well as poor immigrant and working class people use placemaking to reclaim urban settings?

BS 33:27

Yeah, so I'm, in the book, I'm critical of placemaking but a certain kind. I'm critical of like, the urban planning, creative placemaking strategies, which are supposed to be used to make people feel, feel more connected to their neighborhoods, or feel like they have more power in determining how they live and where they live, right. So what ends up happening is, you know, if the neighborhood that, if the land value has gone up, and the price of homes has gone up, and you know, people are being evicted, because they can't pay the rent that's just been, you know, elevated. Then all you're getting are upper middle class folks determining how the place should look. So the placemaking is made for people that look like them or have the same amount of money as them. And so it doesn't end up dismantling anything, it doesn't end up helping anyone who, who was there previously, or who might have issues as it relates to mobility in that space. And so I do think, though, there are forms of placemaking that disrupt that. That it's not just about landscape, in terms of like, like landscape architecture, it's not about making sure there's pretty flowers everywhere, or making sure there's space for farmers market. But instead, it's creating an opportunity, honestly, as I see it for Black people to just be and be in place.

BS 34:54

And so I'm really supportive of just that basic notion of Black folks just being able to hang out like, and not have it be called loitering. Where Black folks can or just hang in or just be out, right?

MN 35:08

Reclaim the corner...

BS 35:09

Right? Seriously! And so in this way where you're not presumed, where you're not criminalized or you're not presumed to be this violent figure or that your drug dealers or something like that. I, I've written about and also kind of teach my students about kind of sightlines right, and ways that in parks, they will plant trees in certain neighborhoods so that there are sightlines, so you can see if there's any criminal activity taking place, right. And so to think that you are shaping the environment, you're planting trees to make sure there aren't bad apples out there selling drugs and doing all kinds of nefarious things. It's kind of ridiculous. But they're able to use it as a way to say, well, we're beautifying this space. Oh, but yes, we do want to make sure it's safe. So, I, the placemaking component, I think it needs to be more basic than that. It is just, yes, reclaim the corner, just being able to hang out and really establish place by just being there. That is literally the basic thing that I want. I don't need it to be, you know, stone this and like a waterfall and all the other ways that I think creative placemaking kind of calls on or, you know, happy colors and stuff like that.

MN 36:22

Yeah. No, that's so crucial. We want to reclaim the corner and hang out on the block.

BS 36:28

Right, reclaim the block,

MN 36:29

How have the work of Black geographers such as Catherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods influenced your analysis? And how have you used the Black geographic lens in your book?

BS 36:39

Well, greatly. So, you know, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, part of this project started off as my dissertation. And you know, I, my PhD is in sociology. And so I was really trying to understand neoliberalism and Blackness. And I was looking at it, as it related to spaces and bodies. And so the body component was looking at high fashion imagery. But in terms of spaces, I was looking at gentrification, specifically in Washington, DC. So that was kind of the nexus of the project, the book project. So once I started writing the book and adding on to, to make a full book, that was when I dipped into geography, and really discovered the work of both Clyde Woods and, and Catherine McKittrick, and to be honest with you, it blew my mind. I didn't know I could think like that. I didn't know how much I was dancing around these spatial questions but couldn't find a way in through sociology.

BS: 37:48

So certainly, there's been a spatial turn in a variety of disciplines history, you know, even in English and other areas. But as it relates to geography, there was a different relationship that geographers and specifically Black geographers have to understanding various landscapes. And so why that mattered to me was, I could explicate what I saw, right. And so, when I know but I see Black people, but I feel differently in a particular space. It was, it was Catherine McKittrick talking about Black geographies that really helped me, specifically in demonic ground, that helped me articulate kind of what I was seeing and how to describe it. And so, their volume, their edited volume, especially the their introduction that they wrote together, was really again, what blew my mind, is they're talking about on Hurricane Katrina, and they were talking about elements of the unknown. So, Black geographies generally, I mean, I think people are still talking about it as if it's new. But I think what's been wonderful about Black geographic imaginaries is that we can look to the past and see where this work was already being done. It just may not have been named as such. And so, as I think about Black geographies with, with my students a lot, especially my grad students, I asked them to not necessarily see Black geographies as disciplinary, like as a discipline, but this, as a metric, or as a method through which we understand various, not only circumstances but disciplines. So what if you took Black geographies to I mean, we're seeing this in Black Studies. But what if you took it to anthropology? What if you took it to, you know, the classics, philosophy? What could Black geographies do to an analysis within those disciplinary boundaries? And I think it really could illuminate how important the spatial context is, and understanding spatial reproduction and understanding various practices that have so much to do with racialization but specifically, our concern of Blackness. So I still, you know, it's hard to pinpoint all the time. What is Black geographies? I think a lot of people struggle with, with coming up with a definition.

MN: 40:09

So do I.

BS: 40:10

Right? Yeah. I mean, I mean, I still kind of go back and forth in terms of how I'm not only thinking about it, but I'm certainly care about how I'm thinking with it, right, where it's always with me in terms of how I'm looking at different cities, or even, you know, rural contexts or understanding still urban sprawl. You know, even looking historically, if I still, you know, look at, use a Black geographic lens to think about, you know, suburbanization or economic restructuring in various ways. It's important to me, I'm still in my teaching, and it's still in my writing that's going on currently.

MN 40:46

My last question is do you have any books, or readings that you would suggest for our listeners?

BS 40: 53

So, you've already, I mean as I'm looking at my bookshelf. So, I already mentioned Catherine McKittrick in Demonic Grounds, but then also Clyde Woods Developed Arrested. If people, you know, I think, I’m also a fan of Saidiya Hartman in Lose Your Mother. But my favorite is Scenes of Subjection. I would also say Savannah Shange’s Progressive Dystopia. I will also, I mean, there’s so many. You already probably, Simone Brown’s book I’m sure you’ve mentioned before. Ruth Gilmore’s Golden Gulag, like there’s, you know there’s so many, I’m like, you see I’m looking. I’m a big Bell Hooks fan too so Black Looks. I think that I mean Bell Hooks is not a geographer, but I think she really is a geographer. Yeah, that’s a good start, right?

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

Spatializing Blackness With Dr Rashad Shabazz

In the first episode of our Black Geographies podcast series, Dr Rashad Shabazz discusses his 2015 book “Spatializing Blackness'' and the technologies of violence that continue to carefully contain, isolate, and restrict the free movement of Black people everywhere.

Welcome to 1919Radio’s Black Geographies podcast series! This 4-part Black Geographies podcast series brings together four authors in the emerging field of Black geographies to explore the conditions of Blackness across multiple spatial dimensions. The goal of this series is to bring radical ideas of race, space, and the politics of place out of academia and into our community and streets through an engaging and open access medium.

In the first episode of our Black Geographies podcast series, Mohamed Nuur sits down with guest Dr Rashad Shabazz to discuss his 2015 book “Spatializing Blackness'' and the technologies of violence that continue to carefully contain, isolate, and restrict the free movement of Black people everywhere. They discuss urban geographies and public infrastructure as an extension of carceral power, the histories of antiblack space-making from slavery to mass incarceration, the hyper surveillance of racialized cities, and the need to reimagine and recreate public spaces to reflect the basic needs of Black communities

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organizaiton and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

1919Radio Intro audio clip 0:00

I never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently experiencing.

I am mentally spiritually physically, emotionally, intellectually and academically developed and acutely aware of the condition of African people throughout the entire world.

We don't want fortune, we dont want popularity we want power, power. And power comes only from the organized masses.

MN 0:48

Welcome to 1919Radio's Black Geographies Podcast Series. My name is Mohammed and I'm your host. This four part Black Geographies podcast series brings together four authors in the emerging field of black geographies to explore the conditions of blackness across multiple spatial dimensions. Born out of the intersections of Black Studies and geography, Black Geographies are defined by Katherine McKittrick as "the subaltern and alternative geographic patterns alongside or beyond traditional geographies and amongst the terrain of struggle." The goal of this series is to bring radical ideas of race, space and the politics of place out of academia and into our community and streets through an engaging and open access medium. Grounded in a politics of Pan-Africanism and Black struggle, as is everything 1919 does, the questions we ask seek to link the text of these books to real world material implications for Black people and all African people around the world. The series begins with Dr. Rashad Shabazz introducing what it means to spatialize blackness and the links between carceral power and urban geography through a conversation on his 2015 book, "Spatializing Blackness. " In the second episode, Dr. Brandi Summers joins us to discuss gentrification, neoliberalism, and the ways in which blackness is commodified and aestheticized through discussion on her book, "Black In Place." In the third episode, Dr Simone Brown joins us to discuss her book, "Dark Matters," which explores the origins of biometrics and the surveillance of blackness across time and place. And finally, Dr. Brian Jefferson closes off this series with a discussion on his book, "Digitize and Punish," in which we examine the relationships between blackness, mass incarceration and digital technologies.

MN 2:29

In this episode I speak with Dr Rashad Shabazz, professor at Arizona State University and author of "Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago." We have a wide ranging discussion on his book, the relationship between mass incarceration and black urban geographies, carceral power and its origins, and what it means to spatialize blackness. Now, let's begin by welcoming Dr. Rashad Shabazz to the program.

MN 2:54

Can you begin by explaining what you mean by our term spatializing blackness? What do you mean when you say the ways in which we as black people move through the cities is racialized and gendered?

RS 3:05

So spatializing blackness is a term that examines the social and historical and to a certain degree cultural production that goes into situating black people in the place of that they're located. And the reason for the term was to make it clear that black people didn't simply have autonomy and where they had been, and where they are located in in many cases, that has been determined for them by public policy, by violence, for example. And so to spatialize blackness is to recognize that blackness as a racial category, blackness as a kind of historical phenomenon, blackness, as a kind of cultural and ontological form has been situated geographically in various locations in the Western world, for reasons that are beyond black people's determination. You know, transatlantic slavery, for example, moved black people all over the Western world, you know, the Americas, the Caribbean, places like Brazil, for example. And that spatialization process was created by colonialism and the slave trade. So, as a geographer, what I wanted to do was to create a term to capture phenomenon such as that. And in terms of, you know, how black people move around cities. And you know, why black people are located in cities in the Western world, particularly in places like the US and Canada, has everything to do with that process of spatialization. And where black people are located in the cities as an extension of that, and the way in which they move around cities is very much based on issues of race and gender to the degree that for example, when black men move in public space, being seen as the signifiers of danger and anxiety, and violence by the broader white world means that black men can't just move around public space in ways that white men can't – who are not seen as signifiers of violence, who are not seen as the sort of progenitors of fear. And so when black men move around public space, they do it highly conscious of their race, and of their gender. And it means that they don't, you know, physically bump up against certain people because of certain reasons. It means there's certain place that they simply just don't go because of what it could mean toward their safety. And so that kind of highly conscious consciousness of one's race and gender shapes how people move around physically: their mobility, where they go, how long they stay, the routes that they take, to get there, whether it be you know, public transportation, walking, a car. And it's that kind of highly conscious reality that shapes the way in which black people in general, and black men specifically, move around cities.

MN 6:50

What are the historical origins of carceral power? And can you provide a trajectory of how it shapes their urban landscape?

RS 6:56

So power, it's sort of modern formation. Because, you know, we can look at, for example, the Greeks – they had forms of containment and isolation where they were able to imprison people. But it's modern formation really grows out of transatlantic slavery and the plantation system. Those two mechanisms created a kind of historical and racialized attachment of blackness to containment. So whether we're talking about the belly of a slave ship, whether we're talking about the auction block, or the plantation system, techniques and tactics, technologies, mechanisms of isolation and containment and immobilisation were developed in and through transatlantic slavery, the auction block, plantation, Jim Crow systems, and so on and so forth. And so, carceral power has a very deep connection with blackness. And as black people became rooted in the places they did because of this sort of spatializing blackness phenomena, you know, the Caribbean, in various parts of the Americas, towns like, outside of Atlanta, and in various places, where the plantation system was established, carceral power reemerged in a different kind of format to isolate contain, surveil black people as enslaved people in various parts of America and Caribbean. And then in the 20th century, in the aftermath of enslavement when black people in the early part of the 20th century fled the South because of its virulent racism and because of its economic exploitation and they moved to cities like Chicago. The logic of black as the signifier of criminality, black as the signifier of dangerous and the specific way in which those things were attached to black men, follow them. So when black men, or when black people went to Philadelphia, when they went to Paterson, New Jersey, or when they went to Harlem, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, those ways of seeing blackness, as something that needs to be spatialized, isolated, contained, surveilled, followed them and those carceral mechanisms crept into the innocent spaces of their lives. And they emerged as things like highway construction that ran through black communities that created barriers between black and white communities. They emerged as intensive policing mechanisms that were situated in the heart of black communities. They emerge as segregation techniques that were built into housing, things like restrictive covenants, or not getting access to lending. And so all of those mechanisms began to really congeal in the everyday places that black people live. And then when mass incarceration begins, and a lot in the 60s, early 70s. Those mechanisms had already in many ways been present in black communities throughout the country, and have been present in many ways in black life for generations and generations over historical periods from, you know, transatlantic slave trade to plantation, to migration and ghettoization. Those things had already been there, and they were sort of congealed or reformatted in prisons, really in the 1970s as what we start to see the explosion.

MN 11:15

What is the relationship between mass incarceration and the forms of architecture and urban planning that arose and took shape under its context.

RS 11:22

So, you know, as mass incarceration emerges in the 1970s, black people have spent the 400 years They've been in this country up to that point totally spatialized. They were here, they were kept there, they were isolated, they weren't allowed the kind of mobility that that white Americans had access to. And in organising and containing them in places like the black belt on the south side of Chicago, that the evacuation of an industrial labour force, right, that all of a sudden the economy changes from being an economy that is kind of built on like working class ethics and working class skill set to build iron ore or to lay roads or to build bridges, those kinds of skills, and it shifts from being an industrial manufacturing labour force, to one that is really based on a different set of skills, and a different level of education becomes more of a kind of service sector labour force. And that switch between industrial to service sector threw millions of people out of the labour market, just sort of switched one day. And one day all these people worked in factories, worked in Goodyear or worked at Caterpillar or whatever. And even when the switch happens, those people are just thrown out of work. And they didn't really have a skill set that made them amenable to service sector labour. They didn't have education background. And so they became superfluous, they became extra. Some of those people found new work in a new economy that started to emerge. And that was sort of punishment economy, or what we call today, the prison industrial complex. Some of them became judges and others became police officers, others became PO's (parole officers), some of them worked in prisons, and many of them began to work in new economies that were emerging as the economy de-industrialised. And the rest of them, many of them poor and a significant number of them black and brown, became the raw material for the building of those prisons. So they became the people who went into them, who were contained, isolated, and punished. And then states just simply started to throw more money into building prisons because it became a kind of economic sector. But it also held this important political cachet because most of the country, particularly white Americans could get behind punishing black people and punishing poor people and punishing immigrants. They could get behind that as a kind of political project. And both people on the right and the left figured that out – that, "Oh, this has some political cachet." So, Democrat and Republican legislatures all over the nation threw their money into prisons at the expense of schools and public health, roads, and parks and rec, and you know, all of the other things that make life sustainable and make life worth living. They threw it into the punishment industry, and it just grew for 30 years. From about 1971 until, really, we're talking about 2010, so 40 years and it only grew and grew and grew. And because black people have been located in certain places, and because drugs became enemy number one and the nation launched this large decade's long useless drug war. And communities of colour, particularly black and brown communities use drugs like all other communities, those communities became the place where the drug war was fought. So it meant that the Southside of Chicago, certain places in Harlem and Brooklyn, certain places in Philadelphia, Paterson, New Jersey, South Central Los Angeles, East and West Oakland, you know, all of these black and brown communities. That was where the war was fought. And it wasn't as if White people aren't using drugs, they were using drugs just as much, if not more. But black people, poor people and people of colour in general was seen as a signifiers of drug use. And because they were seen as less valuable, punishing them and destroying their communities and lives became something the vast majority of people in the nation could get behind. So, that spatialization project mixed with the changing economy against the backdrop of this sort of long history of seeing black people as signifiers of danger and the sort of domestic Boogie men and women, if you will, ignited this multi-decade long punishment industry that place black lives really in the crosshairs.

MN 17:26

In your book, you describe the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated as having a second sight enabling them to bear witness to the quote unquote, prison ideation of non prison spaces. How is the work of prison intellectuals like George Jackson influenced your analysis?

RS 17:47

Oh, significantly. I do what I do today as a geographer because of their insights, and it was really reading people like George Jackson, and Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu-Jamal in the US context, and also people in South African context, like Govan Mbeki, Ruth First and Nelson Mandela. It was really their insights that created this entire research trajectory, that idea. And even though you know, people like Michel Foucault, the French thinker, was really one of the first to write about this in the 70s. He wrote about it in the way in which he writes about everything – it's this kind of genealogy, the moment in which things emerge. And so he provided a really useful kind of conceptual framework and he really helped me to recognise it, you know that something like this had been done before. But it was those largely black imprisoned intellectuals, that helped me to see what this meant for black people and how racism and white supremacy as a kind of political reality, as a social reality, and also as a historical reality. How it was deeply spatialized – meaning that they helped me to see that how racism worked was a geographic phenomenon. And at the core of it was always about developing tools, mechanisms, technologies to isolate, contain, restrict and immobilise black people. And that's just a thread that runs through black people's relationship with Western colonialism. It's at the base of it, you know of course, there's this sort of economic extraction. There's also this sort of ideological work that goes into it to cast black people as non human or subhuman therefore, subsequently justifying the the exploitation that they face. But you'd sort of strip all of that away. It's always a spatial phenomenon. It's always a spatial phenomenon. Slavery, plantation, servitude, segregation, mass incarceration, the kind of big four expressions of racism and white supremacy over the last 500 years have had been geographic at the core. It's simply geographic and the way in which historians, novelists, painters, filmmakers, sociologists, whatever, talk about racism, at the core of all of it whether consciously acknowledging or not, is this spatial phenomenon. And so what the book does, in general what my work really tries to illustrate is that race makes place and place makes race and racism is always in need of a spatial element to exercise its power. That's how it does. That's bad. It's simply how it does what it does. In looking at something like mass incarceration, it's a spatial phenomenon. But the way in which black people became the centre of that, that racist public policy was also based on a spatial phenomenon. And so what I'm really trying to do is sort of connect these histories, and really demonstrate how geography is crucial to the exercise of race, power, to the exercise of anti blackness, and as a result begin to develop strategies that are in and of themselves spatial. To push back against those histories of racism and anti blackness.

MN 22:20

My next question is, uh, how have the rebellions of last summer influenced your ideas of carceral power and spatializing blackness, broadly?

RS 22:31

Yeah I mean, I think I would say it's an affirmation of the work that I've been doing for for so many years, and you know, what all of the analysis from Black Lives Matter. What they all recognise is something that's at the core of my work: that black people are heavily policed, that we are heavily policed, in part, because we live under forms of segregation, where we are either forced to choose to live together. And that black people in confronting the realities of police violence means that we just don't have the same kind of mobility and bodily autonomy that white Americans do, you know, "walking while black," "driving while black", "sleeping, while black." These are geographic realities. So it's about simply being black (in a place – your bed or on the street) becomes an opportunity for the state to deploy violence on on black people, oftentimes, without any accountability. So I think what Black Lives Matter is saying when they say defund the police, one of the things that they're saying is that policing doesn't work, we need new strategies to address issues like public safety. And that the institution is racist, and it responds to black people in public as threats. As something that needs to be surveilled, contain isolated, policed or punish. And so I really applaud and support what BLM is doing. And if I had my sort of [inaudible], I would just sort of ask them to, you know, in thinking about policing, for example – and I think it's correct that they focus on policing. By looking at policing, it allows them to kind of scale things up and to recognise that the problems embedded in policing, vis-a-vis black people, extend to things like housing and education and access to health care, because it's simply about where black people are located. Adequate housing, adequate health care, and adequate education are evacuated from those places, wherever black people are, those things are evacuated. And if we want black people to be healthy, if we want black people to live quality long lives, then the places that black people occupy need to be invested with quality health care, quality education, and quality housing, and again, that is a geographic question because it's simply about where black people are located. And the logic is that where black people are located, those kinds of productive elements are evacuated from that life and what is invested is policing. And so you know, we have to flip that on its head. So what BLM is demonstrating is that where black people are located, policing is a problem and by attacking that and asking for that problem to be transformed or solved, it provides them a way of seeing what else is happening in the places that black people are located that they can begin to address, to affirm that Black Lives Matter and to provide material resources to make sure that they matter, and that they're able to live long, healthy and meaningful lives.

MN 26:59

One striking moment from the urban rebellions of last year was when Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered the bridges to be raised so protesters couldn't access the downtown. What does incidences like these were the public architecture is effectively being deployed against its citizens tell us about spatialized blackness? And I guess how do we contend with carceral power on the scale if we demand to live in a society organised around people instead of profit?

RS 27:26

Let me take the first part. Yeah, it was really disappointing that Lori Lightfoot did that. And I think one of the things that she was thinking was to make sure that there was no contestation between protesters and police. But it also is a sort of extension of what I've been talking about, which is that public infrastructure gets used as a way to bracket to contain, to isolate, in this case, black protest. And we've seen public infrastructure in the forms of expressways and highways being used to isolate and contain black people for generations. And so that's a really sort of troubling element that she is engaging with. So if we are really interested in dealing with carceral power, we have to recognise that, and I think Foucault had it right... When you create something like this, you can't simply deploy it in –you know it's kind of like the genie's out of the bottle. Once you create something like this –there's this movie from the 90s. I think it's about a prison in San Francisco... The Rock, it's called The Rock. And part of it had to do with this chemical weapon that the federal government created and one of the characters said, "look, when you create something like this, you can't wrestle control of it. It's in the world." Now, when you create a chemical weapon, you can't be sort of strategic with it, it's out there. Carceral power and recognizing that you can use architecture and other tools to render people immobile, to punish them, to discipline them to get them to behave in certain ways. You just can't undo that. You just can't sanction in one place. And that's been the lie that prisons tell us, that that kind of stuff only happens there. No, it's ubiquitous. It's all over Western societies. You're in Toronto, right? You know, when you walk down the street, and specifically in downtown Toronto, you're being recorded 400 times every step you take. And the kind of ubiquity of that surveillance that we in, you totalitarian governments like China, or even sort of liberal cities like Toronto. That is an extent, that is an outgrowth of this sort of carceral power. So I think in general, we have to recognise that that this sort of behemoth has been created, the genie is out of the bottle and if we are really interested in racial justice, or if we're just sort of really interested in pluralist democratic societies then we have to really re evaluate our use of these technologies. That's the first thing we have to do. And then we also have to recognise that if we're really interested in anti racism and racial justice, we have to understand how these tools have been used against people of colour, and how they're continuing to be used against people of colour. And from there, we have to develop strategies to decouple ourselves from the ubiquity of these kinds of techniques and technologies, and to re-think what public safety means because public safety is not recording the public when they're outside all the time. That's just not public safety, it's a profound breach of privacy. It is a sort of big brother period, 1984 totalitarian kind of framework, and it doesn't produce safety. It doesn't produce safety. But what we do know, that produces safety is things like health care, education, public transportation, access to meaningful wage labour. Those things really help in terms of public safety. And so, I think really throughout the West, but particularly in places that have large communities of colour, you know, I'm thinking obviously all throughout the United States, but Toronto, Paris, London –London has one of the largest camera systems in the world, I think, second to China, I think China is the biggest, but I think that UK that system they have is the second. We have to really ask ourselves, is this stuff working? If it is, then why are we still having these sort of issues around public safety? And what does public safety really mean? And how do we achieve that? Because the sort of large scale carceral approach is a waste of economic resources. It's a waste of human resources, and it lulls us into believing that somehow the problem of public safety has been achieved. And I think people like George Jackson and Assata Shakur, they know that doing this doesn't help, right? You stick a person in a cage, you surveil them for hours upon end. And they know that that doesn't approach, and so this is another reason why the voices of people who have been incarcerated should really be at the table and needs to be part of our public conversation about things like public safety, because they have the second site. They've experienced it and they know the negative implications that come from it, and they can offer us ways to address public safety in ways that are not totalitarian, invasive, and racist.

MN 34:35

We're recording this just as the news breaks that incarcerated Black Panther Party member, Mumia Abu-Jamal, has now contracted COVID-19. What relationships do you see between prisons and public health, given this context? I know you touched on Mumia Abu-Jamal as an inspiration earlier. So I wanted to have a comment on what's going on right now.

RS 34:57

That is...that is really troubling to hear. That is really horrible news. You know, this is another reason why prisons don't work because they have been, especially since the explosion of mass incarceration, but even in earlier periods, they've been incubators for disease. They're designed to isolate and contain as many people as possible. They are designed to move people in very particular ways and to sort of force them to walk this way as opposed to that way. They're not designed for things like airflow. They're not designed for what happens to all human beings, which is that we get sick. They're not designed to accommodate the reality of our lives. They're simply designed for punishment. And so if you create a place that is designed to punish, part of that punishment becomes something like disease. And American politicians know this. They've been conscious of this, since the explosion of HIV AIDS 30 years ago. They knew it then and they didn't care. They took no efforts to stem the tide. And now we have something like an airborne disease that can easily travel amongst people who are in close quarters. And so it's not at all surprising. But it's deeply unfortunate that Mumia Abu-Jamal has contracted COVID-19. I really hope for a speedy recovery for him, and really for all of the prisoners across the nation who contracted, we've had an epidemic, we're back here in Arizona where there's been numerous breakouts, and numerous prisoners have died as a result of it. And so this is, again, why Black Lives Matter is so important because they recognise that racist policing not only enables for black people to confront the violence of police officers, but in many cases, actually in most cases, they have to confront jails and prisons, and those become incubators for violence. They stagnate people's lives. They are opportunities for trauma. And they're also incubators for disease. And so if we are if we're really interested in anti-racism, if we really believe that Black Lives Matter, we have to fundamentally reevaluate our criminal justice system, and really move away from prisons because they simply wastes resources and lives.

MN 38:14

Yeah, we need to move all the way to full abolition. Your book ends on a generative note where you discuss the forms of urban agriculture that's begun to appear in abandoned lots across the city. So my question is, how can urban agriculture contribute towards building an architecture of life in Chicago, but also in any city?

RS 38:36

So that ending, I wanted to do two things. I wanted to show first that despite the way in which blackness was spatialized (so Chicago), and despite the history of isolation and containment that continues to mark the city to this day, that Chicagoans and Black Chicago, we're taking steps to transform that landscape into a kind of fertile ground into a landscape that could produce productive, healthy subjects. And that the south side just wasn't an island of containment, but that in and through that history that black people were reconstituting themselves, they were transforming their landscape, they were becoming architects of their own. They become architect's creating a kind of self determination for themselves. And so that was one of the reasons. And second is that places like Chicago are just epicentres for food insecurity. You know, whether we're talking about access to grocery stores, or whether we're talking about high concentrations of high cholesterol, high fat, sugary foods, that this is another problem that spacialization has created. And so in trying to illuminate that other problem that comes from spatializing blackness, I wanted to also show that, at least in this context, that black people were creating ways of resisting that have transformed the landscape. And I think there's evidence of this kind of thing happening all over the nation. Whether it be from an agricultural standpoint, that's one of actually the popular ones. Since I was doing the research writing that book, this kind of stuff just like exploded all over like in south Phoenix, which is historically black and brown here. There's a huge like 20 acre lot in south Phoenix that cultivates agriculture for the community. And volunteers come out, we work the land and you know get the produce going, so it's really, really taken off like I'm seeing it everywhere now and I got graduate students who are working on that kind of stuff. But in addition to sort of pushing back against the kind of food desert reality, it also shows that poor people, immigrants, black folks, can be geographers and that they can be architects have a new kind of community. And they don't need to rub elbows with people at City Hall, they don't they don't need to go to some wealthy developer like, "Can you do this?" They can get some shovels and some dirt and couple hoes and some some seeds and some water, it starts to really re-create their communities on their own terms. And so that to me is an important element of some re-spatializing blackness. And it's a way in which black people recognise like, we've been here, we've been put here and kept here. But we're going to make this place ours. We're going to make this place ours. So we're going to have this cultural life in the streets, we're going to have black businesses, we're going to have a kind of black life in this place, and we're going to do things in this place that are good for us. And that is a vital element of creating healthy and sustainable black communities.

MN 43:06

Thank you, thank you. I have one final question and it's touching on something you brought up a bit earlier about the ubiquitousness of surveillance nowadays. Do you see that as going to be a new terrain of contestation for us as black people, like having to manage and deal with this idea of always being publicly surveilled –also not just publicly surveilled, also our own skin colours not being perfectly calibrated to these surveillance machines in the first place, creating all this insecurity and fear. So I wanted to ask, is this going to be a new terrain of spatializing blackness?

RS 43:49

Yes, so a geographer at the University of Illinois recently published a book about the technological reach of carceral power. I think it's called "Digitize and Punish", that's what it's called. And he is sort of picking up where I leave off. And you know, whereas for me, the kind of cage if you will is about the sort of construction, it's about architecture, it about urban planning, all of these mechanisms to isolate, contain in a physical way. His work looks at the way in which digital phenomena that emerges in the 1970s as mass incarceration is growing, gang databases for example, and these sort of digital models that look at where crime [inaudible]. That for him is the sort of new cage. And so to answer your question, yes. I think looking at black life is important because black people's lives reflect coming problems for the nation, for the hemisphere, and for the globe. And that's one of the reasons that black lives matter. Because we're the kind of... our lives are the kind of racial canaries in the mine. And whatever happens to us, happens to everybody else. You know, in this country right now white people are dealing with mass incarceration and ways they never really had to deal with before because of the opioid crisis. And now, not surprisingly, white people in general and white politicians are starting to rethink, "do we really need all these prisons? Do we really need to start sticking people in prison because they have substance issue?" Well you know we've been saying that for like 50 years and nobody gave a shit because we were black people. But now that white people are getting caught up now it's like oh, "maybe we need to do something about this." And so, the same extends to technology. The same extends to the sort of broad scale surveillance that whatever happens to black people today vis-a-vis surveillance, vis-a-vis data accumulation or technologically will be the case for everyone else in the society. So, it behoves us all to listen to black people to, recognise that black lives are valuable and important and should be treated as such. And to also understand how black people are experiencing whatever it is –poverty, economic instability, health inequalities, because those very things are going to reach up and grab other people. And it's certainly not about if, but instead it's just about when.

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

Haiti Will be Free: Dr Jemima Pierre and Dr Kevin Edmonds on the Ongoing Colonial and Manufactured Crisis in Haiti

In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Jemima Pierre and Dr. Kevin Edmonds to discuss the ongoing colonial and manufactured political, social, and economic crisis in Haiti.

Welcome to another episode of 1919Radio. In this episode, our host Caleb Yohannes is joined by Dr. Jemima Pierre and Dr. Kevin Edmonds to discuss the ongoing colonial and manufactured political, social, and economic crisis in Haiti. Dr. Pierre and Dr. Edmonds are community organizers, distinguished scholars, and hold a lifelong commitment to learning, grounding, and continuing to struggle for Haiti’s independence.

In this episode, our guests analyze Haiti’s current crisis and the illegal propping up of puppet president Jovenel Moise through a lens that discusses western led imperialism, the UN and Minustah occupation, forms of counter-revolution and neoliberal hegemony, and the history of propaganda and cultural warfare in Haiti from 1804 until today.

At the end of the episode, our guests share their thoughts about how we can support and lead an international Pan-African solidarity movement against the growing oppression of Black people everywhere.

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organizaiton and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

1919Radio Intro audio clip 0:00

I never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently experiencing.

I am mentally spiritually physically, emotionally, intellectually and academically developed and acutely aware of the condition of African people throughout the entire world.

We don't want fortune, we dont want popularity we want power, power. And power comes only from the organized masses.

CY 0:42

My name is Caleb Yohannes. I'm an organizer with 1919 as well as the founder. I'm lucky and honored to be the host for today's conversation on 1919Radio on the current political crisis in Haiti, in addition to a sharp commentary and historical analysis on the legacies upon legacies of colonialism Haitians have endured in pursuit of self determination. Joining me today, as our co speakers and leaders for this conversation is Dr. Pierre and Dr. Edmonds. Dr. Jemima Pierre is an anthropologist at the Department of African American Studies at UCLA, is an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace, and is also the author of The Predicament of Blackness: Post Colonial Ghana and The Politics of Race. Dr. Kevin Edmonds teaches at U of T specializing in Caribbean political economy, histories of alternative/illicit development foreign intervention and the region's radical political tradition. He's also an organizer with the Caribbean Solidarity network here in Toronto, and a faculty sponsor for the Caribbean Student Association at U of T. Kevin has also recently successfully defended his dissertation, legalize it, a comparative study of cannabis economies in St. Vincent and St. Lucia, so big up Congratulations to you, Kevin.

KE 2:19

Thank you Caleb, much appreciated.

CY 2:21

Of course, anytime. So that was a little bit of a brief intro but before we get into some of my questions, can you both tell our listeners about who you are, and how you're coming to this conversation, and then I'll also add in afterwards.

JP 2:35

I am Jemima Pierre, I teach here at UCLA, my research actually is on the African continent and knowledge production, racial formation, and white supremacy. You know, the histories of that on the African continent. I am Haitian born so Haiti is always on my mind and in my heart, and I traveled there all the time, I still have family there. My side project, which has actually now become my academic project, has always been about writing on Haiti and Haitian politics for a while now, and really paying attention to imperialism, US imperialism, and writing about Haiti outside of the context of like, focusing on like, you know, the black despots, and really more focusing on white supremacy and US and European imperialism. So that's, that's who I am. Over the past eight months, I've been working with the Black Alliance for Peace and I actually worked with them on the US out of Africa team to oppose the militarization of the African continent through Africom. It is through that we decided to have a separate Subcommittee on Haiti in particular. I'm happy to be here. Thank you so much, Caleb, for inviting me and happy to be in conversation with you and Kevin.

KE 4:02

Caleb, in terms of what I've been doing, mostly from a solidarity perspective. This is someone you know, Caribbean background, Caribbean roots, mainly because of St. Lucian roots that the Creole, kind of, when I would hear Haitians on a TV, I didn't really get it at the time, but when the earthquake had happen, it was mostly the coup in 2004 when that happened, and I was at York. I was like, sounds like it's my family talking, right. So it was always that kind of connection that drew me into the history and as you start learning about Haiti, you learn a lot about the rest of the world, right. So I think, and I always say that to students or anyone that's willing to listen, is that, if you actually want to understand how the world works, how imperialism works, white supremacy neocolonialism, you want to name it, food politics, you can look at Haiti and you'll learn so much about how things are deployed there, tweaked but also exported to the rest of the world. I've been, you know, drawn to the country, had the opportunity to visit there after the earthquake in 2010. That really kind of turned the light on for me in terms of connecting with some of the grassroots movements down there and seeing what they have been doing and continue to go through in order to, you know, fulfill these ideals that were put forward prior to the revolution. But, when they were put onto paper, when their revolution was successful. So doing that and Caribbean solidarity network, we're comrades with Haiti and the Haitian people and are trying to get the word out about what's what's going on. But that's it.

CY 5:47

You said that really well because I think that kind of touches on how I kind of come into this conversation, which is a little bit of a full circle moment for me, because in 2017, it was in Kevin's Caribbean Foodways in the Diaspora class, that I first got introduced to Haiti, through a lens that analyzed it's condition with a sharp focus on race, class, colonialism, and global capitalism, like you mentioned but this was really fundamental for me, like, honestly. I know we've talked about this a couple times but this fundamentally changed who I was and what I wanted to know, and sent me on my own political journey. Which led me to the African Studies faculty and a number of other Caribbean studies courses, as well as a lifelong commitment, like you said, to learn about and struggle over Haiti. So big thank you for bringing that material to your students, I was lucky enough to be one of them, and also taking part in this conversation outside of school. Thanks to both of you, you guys are both excellent examples of what Walter Rodney so brilliantly describes as grounding.

KE 6:50

Your heaping praise on us, but you probably don't want it, but to shout you out as somebody that has stood out for a long time and had, you know, this commitment to radical black internationalist politics that, and turning it into and working with people to make 1919 happen,

JP 7:08

Yes!

KE 7:09

you know, a youth led media organization and more than that, but, you know, respect to you and all the folks that are involved on your side, too, right.

JP 7:19

Yes!

CY 7:20

Yessir, Thank you, Thank you, Kevin. I really do appreciate that.

CY 7:26

Let's, dive right in with the first question and that is, Haiti offers one of the clearest examples of how perpetual conflict is a central pillar of imperialism. Can you reference the historical context of imperialism in Haiti, and how this agenda has been executed in a myriad of ways from political and economic destabilization to cultural and social directives aimed at co-opting Haitian thought and sovereignty? We can start with you Dr. Pierre.

JP 7:57

Well, there was a time, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, the Haitian anthropologist once said that Haiti is the longest Neo colonial experiment in the modern world and he's absolutely correct. There's this long history from the moment of the revolution of everyone, especially the white supremacist European powers, trying to keep Haiti down. So if you go from 1800 Saint-Domingue, which actually ended up, enriching a lot of people. The city of Philadelphia, much of Philadelphia's early wealth came from the profits of plantations from Saint-Domingue. I don't know if you know about this, and as the revolution began, and the French were running away, you had this guy named Stephen Girard, who was the wealthiest man in the US in the late 1800s or the mid 18 hundreds. They gave them all, a lot of the rich planters gave him their riches to hold for them, and then he kept them and moved to the US and so this way, you have the beginnings of the Philadelphia wealth. So there is that.

JP 9:02

In 1825 you have the indemnity that the French came, and forced Haitians, they surrounded the island with their gunships and threatened another war, if Haiti did not pay reparations, which is in the amount of these days, well back then $21 billion when Aristide tried to get it back. Then after that, you have the 18th century carpet guard factories that came in there, trying to get the wealth and then the 1915 US occupation on behalf of Citi Bank, right, in taking the gold from Haiti's coffers, putting it on a boat and taking it to New York, which is incredible, right? So you have a 19 year occupation, and then you have the support of Duvalier and the rewriting of the Haitian Constitution, which before that said, that no foreigner could own land in Haiti. Then, in 1915, the US military, re-wrote Haiti's Constitution, the US government rewrote Haitis constituion that opened it up. Then you have Duvalier and then you have, you know, coup d'etat after coup d'etat. Then one of the biggest plunders, is what happened after the 2010 earthquake. Where you have this, you know [Earthquake], that completely opened Haiti up for a complete fleecing of the so called international community. So the destabilization that we see in Haiti, and the conflict, the deposing of an elected president, and then installation of two presidents in a row, all that is part of creating a destabilized area, but also putting in place people that will open up this space for more plunder and more control of Haiti's riches and also Haiti's people. So I think, that's where we need to begin.

KE 10:54

I agree with absolutely everything that Jemima just said. I would say that, just looking at Haiti in a larger context, you know, zooming out, in terms of what had been said before about Haiti being the longest running neocolonial experiment. Within that, you can see how Haiti has actually made alliances amongst a lot of enemies at times. How it could have brought a lot of colonial powers to, you know, they were in stiff competition with each other, to come to agreements with each other, to put aside their wars, you know, the Seven Years War, 100 year war, these petty things that they were fighting in Europe, apparently, to deal with Haiti. It's the site where a lot of the racism, the neocolonial use of debt, isolationist politics, embargoing, kidnapping leaders, all of this would become institutionalized, and then spread around the rest of the world. So if you take it to the continent, you're gonna see other examples, whether it's in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Libya, you see elements of this and its like, that's Haiti, that's Haiti, or Cuba, right. Thats Haiti. Or what they're doing with Bolivia, or Honduras

JP 12:06

And Venezuela.

KE 12:08

Definitely. Haiti was where it started, because if you look at what Haiti wanted to do, they didn't just say, okay, we're free. That, you know, even if it's imperfect, and we're being isolated, what we're gonna do is, we're gonna do our best to spread revolution and freedom amongst the hemisphere. Whether that was even, buying people that have been enslaved in the United States to get their freedom to come to Haiti to be free, or fighting with the British and slave owners about a ship, to say the crew is free, because they touched foot in Haiti, that you can't take them back. They're not your property once any African people or indigenous people come to Haiti, they are free.

KE 12:47

Then extending that to, you know, Simone Bulevar, who would go and liberate a lot of, what's now Colombia, Venezuela. On the condition that you eliminate slavery, right, that's a huge risk for Haiti to take, you know, they had guns pointed to them. They could have said, you know, we'll just keep to ourselves, right. They didn't, they kept pushing for it and they've always been doing that. Whether that has took the form of a single political leader, it hasn't. It's been a movement, though, that Haiti has always represented, even though sometimes it can get derailed or becomes a bit quieter, or less visible to people on the outside, that force has always been there. I think that's why Haiti means so much to people that are studying the radical tradition, the black radical tradition. You need to understand Haiti and where it fits from that initial moment, up until the present. That's why I really am glad that you're talking about this topic today because there's so much going on and we're not talking that much about Haiti. I mean, we are, but broadly, we need to talk about what's happening a lot more.

JP 13:54

I wanted to add quickly, you reminded me Kevin, I recently was TAing and I had a Greek student who basically reminded me that the government of Greece, the only country that gave it's support when it came for independence in 1821, was Haiti. In fact, just last month, their Parliament passed a thing a law, it's not a law, but to actually recognize Haiti's support for its independence, which is incredible, right? And to think about this, this was back in 1821, or is it 1825, one of those two years, but the Greek government recognizing Haiti for it's support, that tells you the consequence of this Haitian revolution for the rest of the world.

KE 14:37

I didn't even realize that.

JP 14:40

yeah, in fact, and the other thing is when France lost Haiti, one of the things that it [France] did was when it invaded Egypt, It [France] said that they wanted to recreate a Saint-Domingue in Egypt. This is like late 1800s, right after Napoleon was defeated and so part of that, is they wanted a little Saint-Domingue. They wanted to recreate that on the African continent. So that tells you just the reverberations of the Haitian Revolution.

CY 15:15

Wow, yeah, I didn't know that as well. Even in that anecdote you hear, what Haiti meant for France, you know, as this prosperous colony not only enriching France, but like you mentioned, Philadelphia and other Metropole centers in the Empire. So that's, that's really interesting. Thank you both for that.

CY 15:36

Continuing on the cooptation, A lot of this work has been led by the Organization of American States, which is a multinational group of nations, including most notably US, Canada and France, and who have been at the forefront and intervening and destabilizing the Haitian quest for self-determination multiple times. What role does the OAS play in the present destabilization of Haiti and propping of Moise and does either Canada, US or France have a significant political or economic interest today that is different than what it was in 2004 when they ousted Aristide?

JP 16:18

Yeah, well, I guess the first thing I wanted to say, just in case, your viewers don't know, what's going on in Haiti is the fact that there's a president, so called, that's refusing to step down after his term has ended. He already had no mandate, because he was installed by the OAS, the core group, and the US. I think those things are important for us to know and beforehand, his predecessor was also installed, which created this political party. Moise, has no mandate and he's been ruling by decree since last year, his mandate ended in February. He also got into power under a lot of protests, under 20% of the population voting and the same with Martelly [his predecessor], who himself was imposed by Hillary Clinton, who left the Middle East during the Arab, so called Arab Spring, I call it the African spring because it's on the African continent, but that's another conversation. So who left the African spring, flew to Haiti, and threatened the sitting president, the same treatment, they would do Aristide, which means that they said to the sitting president, that we have a plane for you if you don't accept the OAS changing of the the election results. We have a plane for you that we can fly you out to Africa, the way we did Aristide. This is all in the wiki leaks papers, so you might want to check it out, It's really fascinating. So this is the importance of OAS, right? The Organization American States is an organization of 34 states representing supposedly the Western Hemisphere. The US has complete control over it because it provides more than 60% of the funding and it's always been long served as a tool of US imperialism, back to Cuba, not recognizing the Cuban Revolution. It does this through the so called idea of election monitoring, supervising, funding, and so on.

JP 18:27

So for Haiti, it overturned the election results in 2010, which is crazy, right? And if you think about it, they went and they removed balotts, stuffed balotts, and stopped the largest party from voting, from running. This is the Lavalas, Aristide's party. The US provided the $38 million to run these elections, which they forced on the people and so they overturned the election that's what OAS does. Most recently, the thing about Moise is that he's refusing to step down, the only way he can get away with that is because he has full support of the United States government, along with the core group. I don't know if people know the core group, the core group is an unelected group convened by by the UN Security Council in 2004, once they invaded Haiti, and established this occupation. The group has members that we don't even know, it's member states, Brazil, which we need to talk about, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, the US, the European Union, the OAS, and the United Nations. These are the members of the core group, an all white group, if you look online, they're the ones that actually meet and decide what happens in Haiti. The core group, which includes the Canadian government, the US government, and so on the OAS, they all do that decision. What that tells us then, this is a major form of destabilization or maybe usurpation of sovereignty of Haiti. This is where actually our actions should be targeted, right towards these groups who are meddling and doing everything they can to stop Haiti from, from asserting its sovereignty.

KE 20:15

I don't have much to add, beside from the fact that Canada does play a big role in the OAS. I think this is how US and Canadian imperialism in the hemisphere can kind of get like a shadow or ventriloquist, right, they'll look at the puppet and not the person that's that's operating it. The OAS will be used as a mouthpiece to give policy anouncements and then the US will be like, oh yeah, we like that we're gonna follow with that, that sounds good. When the US had been feeding them those lines the whole time, right. If you look back, as Jemima pointed out, the numerous times from 2010, but even going back past that, like it goes back, the Cuba expulsion and non recognition of the revolution and any kind of, whether it's goes from progressive or radical, political experiment, they've been against this. There's never been any kind of concession given to them. It's always been foot on the pedal, when it comes to trying to wipe out or isolate or discredit or defund these kinds of movements. Because, again, you can look at Bolivia, what happened with the counting of the ballots too early when it was with Evo. Now with Mosie in Haiti, you don't have to have parliamentary elections, you can do whatever you want basically and we're gonna extend your term by another year. That's the OAS saying that, they have no grounds to actually say that.

KE 21:50

That's something for domestic Haitian politics to sort out amongst themselves. It's quite clear the legal precedent with that because you see the hypocrisy there is that, it's the technical thing they're arguing about when the president should step down or end their term. Moise was supposed to be gone in February, right? The OAS is saying, well, according to our interpretation, there's a historical precedent with Aristide that was set, that even when he was gone for, I think, three ish years, that they said it doesn't matter, you don't get time back. You know, you did eight months, as President, we overthrew you and I think it was September, and then didn't get back for another three years. He only served a year in a bit, or whatever the math is with that, he didn't get to extend his term, right. There's no consistency on their behalf. It's just whatever fits at the time and suits their political agenda for for Haiti. So going to your point, if things have changed, not at all, their inconsistency is what's been the most consistent when it comes to dealing with Haiti and how it works. Because there's one set of rules with Aristide, or with even with Celestin, when he was there, or Neptune or whoever's there it doesn't matter. They have two sets of rules that they played by. They go by follow the book have elections when it's their opposition, not like their political opposition, in terms of the movement and who's in power versus their lackeys that, they have a lot of leeway with them. Right.

JP 23:22

Yeah and the consistency is, you know, imperialism and white supremacy, right. Luis Almagro is one of the most right wing Secretary Generals of the OAS. People say, he was flown in on a private plane, to meet with Moise right before February 7, and then came out. You can go on Twitter, and you can see, when the statements come out by itself, like I just met with Moise and he's gonna hold elections, we're going to do this referendum, because that's the other thing that's happening, Moise is trying to rewrite the Constitution. Which the US is funding, supporting and what it says is that Haitian presidents cannot run for more than one term, because we're trying to stave off the long history of dictatorship. He's trying to rewrite that so he can run another term, but also give himself complete immunity, but also increase the power of those of us in the diaspora to have a say, in Haiti, which is actually ridiculous. You know, I'm in the diaspora, I don't want to be able to have that much power, but then that will allow them to control Haiti from outside, right. The US is completely behind that, the UN, who we really need to talk about as well, because that's an occupation. We're an occupied country. Amalgro has been horrible, he's been horrible towards Bolivia. What happened in Bolivia, he was definitely behind that and I think we need to hold all these people accountable for what they've been doing in Haiti. It's not just about Moise, it's about Canada, the US, and Luis Almagro in particular I think.

CY 25:04

Yes, yes, absolutely. There's so much there and I think we're going to get to talk a lot about it as well. So thank you both for shedding light on a little bit of the factors and the context and commentary on what's going on right now.

CY 25:19

In juxtaposition to the imperial war waged against Haiti, Haiti has been a site and symbol of resistance movements and revolution from its inception as the first independent Black republic. Presently, Moise as well as the Haitian elite have benefited from the arming of gangs and rogue police officers to fuel proxy conflicts within Haiti that are directly infiltrating and setting a counter movement against the popular organizing of an anti-imperialist and pro democracy struggle. Can you expand on this counter revolution more and how it has become such a popular tactic of manipulation not just in Haiti but across the continent and other places?

JP 26:04

Well, first of all, you have to know who the Haitian elite are. The Haitian elite is a group of very light skinned and white, mostly from the Levantine nations and from France, and from Italy. Some of the families are the Bigio's, the Bretts, the Apaid they're white elite. It's fascinating and they're like about 10 families that own the ports that own all the major infrastructure and a lot of land in Haiti. In fact, one of the things that Moise did to pacify some of the elite, was one family in particular, was giving them 27,000 acres of land in the middle of the country, so that they can give Coca Cola a contract to get 25,000 acres, 27,000 acres in the middle of the country to grow stevia, the sweetener for their coke. Then gave $25 million, the Apaid family as if they needed more, in order to run the plantation that they're trying to build with Coca Cola. The elite is fascinating, the elite has always been, there's a dark skinned elite in the north an Agrarian elite, which I think has been surpassed by the new elite, which is a newer elite, which is like these foreign born, their generations now, but they're a white elite in Haiti, that own everything. The elite actually really did have a come up after the earthquake, because what happened is, a lot of the times they were land rich and cash poor, and they've been there for a long time. With the earthquake was what Naomi Klein calls, what do you call that disaster?

CY 27:49

Disaster capitalism.

JP 27:49

Disaster capitalism! When you say Haiti's open for business, Bill Clinton came in and hooked up the elite, because they got money to build ports money to build hotels, and so on and so forth. The elite have always been able to import arms, military equipment, and arm very poor gangs, right, to go do its dirty business. The other thing that happened in Haiti is under Aristide the military was dissolved. The military was dissolved, because when he came back the second time after the first coup d'etat the military was not trustworthy, right, the military was infiltrated. We know this, the US government does this all the time. The militairy was infiltrated so they dissolved the military. Once they got rid of Aristide, if you look at the WikiLeaks papers, one of the things that the US and the UN did was basically try to reintegrate the military, the former rogue people into the Haitian National Police. Then the other thing they did was basically allow Martelli, to reignite the military. So now there's a military again, after the military had actually been disbanded. What you have then, is the US and the UN supplying that military because there's no money, all the money comes from, the UN and the US. In fact, I remember when somebody sent me a list, when the UN supposedly, lowered its numbers and a lot of the military people left, turning over to the Haitian government in the same way that the US government, through the 1033 program, give military equipment to the local police, well they did the same thing to Haitian police.

JP 29:32

They gave ammunition, tear gas, all that stuff that the UN had, they turned it over. Not only that, in the summer, they're all these military tanks and all this stuff mported into the country by Trump, for the Haitian government. In addition to that, the elite control the ports, all the major ports. Every once in a while, it'll break the mainstream news that they're like tons of guns caught at the ports in Haiti and that's the Elite controlling the guns because you see all these young boys like 18-19 carrying these, massive machine guns, and you're like, Where's all this coming from? It is part of this process of counter, what you call it is true, a counter revolution, of trying to create and wreak havoc within the country in order to actually stop the flow of protests against imperialism. That's really what's happening in Haiti and we see it everywhere. We see it on the African continent, and especially these days, right, once NATO and the US took down Gaddafi. The infiltration of arms and pitting one group against another is working perfectly in Haiti, in the sense that, it's creating fear, it's creating a lot of violence, but they're targeting very specific people and we have to really be aware, that this is really a manufactured violence thats happening.

KE 30:57

What I would just add in terms of that, the history with paramilitaries or gangs in Haiti, it goes back to Duvalier's the Macoutes, terroizing people. Whoever was in opposition, or proceeds to be an opposition, they would make sure that either you didn't speak or if you did speak, you wouldn't speak for long, right. Either you'd be killed, put in prison, or you go into exile or tortured, right. The sad thing about that is that it worked to a degree because eventually the dictatorship fell. So it doesn't mean that you can silence everybody, but what we're seeing now is the use of the gang and the understanding that, having both formal ways to get around people with politics, and the stalling and the OAS on your side, another way to get people to stop coming out in the streets is by just threatening them with violence and not just threatening, following through with those threats of violence. As Jemima pointed out, it's targeted, it's not like there's gang warfare all across the capital. In this sense or in this concentration, there is targeted communities that have been these long time, strongholds for opposition, whether that means during the Lavalas period of Aristide that they were Lavalas communities, but now they were just like anti-martelly, anti Moise communities where they have a tough time, you know, enforcing their rule there, they don't get a lot of popular support there. So they're looked at as the enemy.

KE 32:34

That's where a lot of these gang wars have taken place. It's to take out people that are organizing in the communities, to take out a lot of people that wouldn't be rallying, these communities to come out in the streets, like with the end of March, there were a couple rallies that were held, and it was these communities where they're pulling people out. And the result is that once they see that you're bringing people from lastaline, or you're bringing people out from Belair in particular, those communities get attacked, right. We saw at the end of March, beginning of this month that both the police and gang activity in those communities resulted in a loss of a lot of life, like those things aren't disconnect. At least from the president, you can say that's not me, I don't know what's going on, we've lost some control. So on the other side of things, if we look how Aristide's so called connection with the gangs or the shimmers and particularly in his second term, he couldn't escape any of the accusations were so heavy, so consistent, saying that he has this private army of people to terrorize and you know, put tires around people's necks and do all this kind of stuff. What's happening now in Haiti is exponential. Now you have this alliance and you have former police officers that are openly admitting people that are responsible for massacres. There's these three figures Jimmy, the last name, Cherizier. Openly going around and admitting that yeah, we were responsible for killing 70 to 80 people in Lastaline, because we wanted to terrorize that community to enforce the political voice of the government, to make sure that they followed suit and didn't go out and protest. Because the other thing that can kind of get lost is that the protests that are happening now, happened last year, the year before, it was from when Moise basically came into power. He had about a year where people were still pissed off, but then in 2018, things really kicked off when they got rid of the fuel subsidies. Since then, he's been using the gangs in a very strategic way to try and silence the opposition, right, and then obviously, COVID hits and stuff like that, and things kind of calm down.

KE 34:56

He's been reorganizing his forces and having these alliances between gangs, it's not coincidental, it's not an accident that this is happening. This is another way to control because there was a thing before where Martelli and even Moise were not paying the police. They were going on strike about, we're not receiving our pay, but the gangs get paid. They're also less accountable to these corruption investigations or things that are gonna follow, and you do have some overlap between the two. That's been allowed to happen, because the whole time that the UN had been in Haiti, there were calls, occupation is illlegitimate. But saying if you are here to stabilize, which meant the UN supporting the assassination of community organizers, which also fits into this in a longer term perspective about how you do it formally and informally.

KE 35:49

He tried to control the popular movement in Haiti. You're not taking out necessarily a political party but it's the grassroots activists wing. Whether they affiliate with a party or not, they can be organizing in the community for water, or access to electricity or health care, things like that. But by doing that, you're also against the state, for the most part, because they're not helping you with those things. They're leaving you alone, despite them getting money, they're funneling it to get arms in people's hands and do these pet projects, like building sweatshops in the north coast of the island next to the Dominican, where there was no earthquake damage. This is a way to use violence to maintain control and it's successful, but it's also not because you see there's these breaks between and what's really terrifying is that the only way to really go against that is to fight fire with fire and the amount of loss that will lead to terms of people's lives, which is really scary, but it seems that's where it's at. Because there's no talk of holding Moise accountable for what what's happening right now.

JP 36:52

You're absolutely right. I do want to say, the gang thing has always been used in a particular way, now it's terrible, in the sense of having pitting gangs against each other. The gang thing was used, the UN when it first got there, it was and Bel Air. Where they used this idea of these gangs terrorizing people in order to raid poor towns were Aristide supporters were. There's a one thing that happened in 2006, where 1400 Munistah soldiers, Minustah was the UN occupation, fired 22,000 bullets towards this one tiny, really enclosed poor area of Bel Air and killed a bunch of people. Supposedly in search for gangs and gang leaders, right. They've always used the gang in a particular way, to demonize Haitians and to make Haitian people seem like, they're heartless, and cruel and so on. But this time, the fact the sitting president, that's supported by the US, supposed President, I call him the dictator in the making. Now that he's deploying the gangs in particular ways, also opens up the space for them to go in but I actually think it's opening up the space for another invasion. I mean, that's really what's happening. The point is that they're arming different gangs, the police's paying gangs, and then what's going to happened is, Haiti's too destable, Haiti's a mess. We need to go in and send more more troops and that opens up again, Haiti to occupation.

CY 38:38

Right, right. Thank you. Thank you both. I think Dr. Pierre you really touched on what Kevin said earlier, the inconsistencies and before it was used as a tool for demonization, and now it's used as a tool of proxy conflict.

JP 38:54

Right

CY 38:55

The constant agenda that fuels just the total domination of people and land like Fanon said, which is what colonialism tries to do.

CY 39:05

Continuing on, As a result of a thriving neoliberal system of governance that creates hegemony through the deployment of a diverse array of political instruments and tools led by NGOs and organizations such as the UN, World Bank, and IMF, USAID among others. As a result of this, global south countries experience colonialism in a myriad of different ways. Can you expand on some of the different ways colonialism manifests in Haitian material realities such as food security, public health, land degradation, climate change/disaster, and disaster capitalism, which we kind of touched on a little bit already.

KE 39:47

All the things that you mentioned, they have a long and unfortunate history within Haiti. If we could put it up like a timeline, if I had a way to do that right now, you can look at how these controls have been instituted at different times in different ways trying to get the same result, which is the extraction of wealth from Haiti. Also to limit that influence, like I said, that longstanding fear of an independent sovereign, self determined black Haiti, from basically being able to get itself on its feet and as an example, to the rest of the people around the world within the United States, within Canada, it's not just a global south thing it's across the board. You can look at how it's changed from, full out invasion Napoleon sending the armies, that's a traditional thing that imperialist's would do and then they switch it up, they do the trade embargo, right, and then they do the debt, then that takes us into the early 20th century and then there's another occupation, as Jemima had mentioned. Then you rewrite the constitution, and then you install a dictator and then after that breaks down, you have elections for a brief moment, and then you have a coup. What was really big with that coup, and what followed as well, particularly with the second one was the use of media. And again the inconsistency is there, because people have been talking about you could have the UN. When the Minustah was sent to Haiti in 2004, the same argument, I forget who made it, but they said that if we're using this basis of insecurity and violence in Haiti as the reason why we need to intervene and send the occupying military force to Haiti.

KE 44:50

You would have an occupying force in Washington DC, you would have one in Dade County, you would have one all across the US. So, where are you getting this from and that kind of fear and WikiLeaks exposed it, of a populist anti market left I think that was what they termed it. It's just saying that Haitians should have control of their own economy. If that means we have to use NGOs or we have to use a foreign occupying army to do it, or we're going to use sanctions, or we're going to use the media to demonize them or anything that we can do, we're going to try and do it so that we can make it seem like we're helping, no matter what we do. We send the UN we're helping. We're starving you we're helping, we're giving you food aid we're helping now. We're decimating your farmers, we're helping. Right, so they're always able to take this supposedly, I mean you can see through the bullshit, but it's like this moral high ground where you're helping. Right. Whereas, they're never taking from Haiti and that's one of the things I think a lot of people kind of get confused about what's happening with Haiti because they're like okay, they're not growing sugar anymore. You know, they don't have oil, what's happening, there's that example of Haiti but then there's also, very much. There's a lot of mineral resources that's there. There's a lot of labor power, there's a lot of disgusting studies that have come out from, you mentioned it USAID, about this new thing that we always talk about comparative advantage in economics this is a way that countries will build themselves up. You're going to embrace your comparative advantage whether you have oil, sugar, lithium, whatever it is, what they rewrote for Haiti was that poverty can be the comparative advantage of Haiti.

KE 46:30

That it can be where the sweatshops can consolidate, again after the earthquake, because poverty will allow them to actually make money because they'll sell their labor for so cheap, Mexico can't compete, Honduras can't compete the Dominican Republic can't competeGuatemala can't compete. And it's so close to the US. That was the idea they've had so they're trying to bring, jobs back from China, their geopolitical enemies and put it in Haiti. For the most part it's not working. You just see a lot of these ideas and theories they're thought through, but they use Haiti as this laboratory for it to go through and it gets deployed to other places. That's why Haitian history is so important or understanding Haitian politics because you'll see trends, you'll see patterns or policies emerging from there and deployed elsewhere.

JP 47:20

Yeah, I mean there's so much going on. Thank you, Kevin, because there's so much and I want to start with your point about the UN invasion of Haiti in 2004. Because there is a distinct difference of sending the UN so called peacekeeping mission under Chapter six verses chapter seven. One of the key things is that they sent the UN under Chapter Seven, which meant that it did not need the permission of the Haitian state to use force, and to do whatever the hell they wanted. So, let's think about what that means, this means that this is a foreign occupation, this is colonialism. When you can be in a country, and you have no say to what happens in the country and which is why when they brought cholera; so let's talk about the UN dumping their dirty water, their shit water into the main water source in the middle of Haiti. They dumped feces and dirty water in the main river source, cholera is a dirty disease, right, so then it fits the thing of Haitians being dirty because, if you have cholera, you know you cannot control your internal movements and people die from that. So, it killed like 30,000 people and sickened almost a million. The UN never really apologized never compensated Haiti and they said they didn't have to, because that's not their, they don't owe the Haitian people that. That's thinking about climate disaster health, you know, what does occupation means for people, right, and how genocidal it is right, in that particular way.

JP 49:02

We can also go back to the Haitian pigs. In 1981 for example, there was a Creole pig in the Caribbean right, it's a black pig and it can survive throughout the island. That was what really was saving the farmers, it doesn't need a lot of support, it can survive off or whatever and that was the main thing. Some of the pig stocks were infected by what they call, the so called, they always called it African swine flu Right, right. So, Reagan with the help of these so called international institutions are working together. The OAS, the US government come together through the USAID and they're like, you guys have to kill all your pigs. So they slaughtered hundreds of 1000s of pigs and replaced them with what? A white pig, coming from the US, I mean the symbolism is just ridiculous right. This white pig was so weak that they required a lot more food, a lot more treatment, a lot more medicine and even the farmers were saying that these pigs eat better than we do! They need more help, right, and so the farmers were barely compensated right for that.

JP 50:21

Then you have rice! In 1987, and Bill Clinton apologize for this but what are your apologies when you've already decimated the agriculture of the country. The other way that they got to the farmers were, Haiti produced it's own food, it had it's own rice, it's clothing and so on. In 1986 right after Duvalier left, the military Junta was supported by the IMF with a loan, in return for killing tariffs on imports, shifting Haitian agriculture to export, and basically opening up the port to US foreign goods. At the same time the US was giving its rice farmers in Arkansas, this is Clinton right, major subsidies so that they can sell the rice below market value. Haitian government now does not have tariffs, so they flooded the Haitian countryside with American rice. They called it Miami rice in Haiti because it was being shipped from Miami. Within 10 years 75% of local rice production was done. We have to think about how the USDAID, the IMF, the World Bank, the US government the OAS, they all work together. Even through a military Junta, the IMF is still giving money. If you look at the Haitians now, if you look at the Haitian government's budget, the money comes from the IMF. These people are making money because the International Development Bank, just decided that, you know, $61 million for COVID in Haiti. Haiti does not have a lot of COVID, theres not a lot of COVID cases. Then your like where does that $61 million go? Who's getting this money, there's money that's being sent that is spent on Haiti and none of it goes to the people. Right.

JP 52:25

The other thing I just saw, just yesterday, is that Haiti has received zero COVID vaccines. At the same time they've received arms, they've received supplies they've received visits from the State Department. The US government said Columbia police to go train Haitian police. So they're receiving all kinds of stuff to ferment violence but nothing to help with COVID, not one vaccine has been sent to Haiti. That tells you, this is a neocolonial, I don't even know if it's a neocolonial, it is a colonial situation.

KE 53:00

Something I'll just add, because a lot of times they'll talk about there's no resources for for Haiti when it comes to public infrastructure. Water, even telecommunications, electricity, those kinds of things. Ministuh, on average was funded close to a billion dollars a year.

JP 53:18

Thank you!

KE 53:20

2017 they left, right, so that would have been over $10 billion, that could have gone because they had the money, it came from somewhere. They could have given to Haiti to build these kinds of things and there were proposals that were made by the Cubans after the earthquake. Where they said that we can build a primary health care system across the island, and they said they costed it was like just under $2 billion. It's not hospitals everywhere but primary clinics and to help with hospitals training, those kinds of things. They also costed it after the UN admitted guilt for cholera but then just said, so what are you going to do about it. I think it was for the whole island for the Dominican side and Haitian side, again it was like $1.6 billion for the entire island to get sanitation and clean water infrastructure put in place. But yet, you have $10 billion to have Uruguayan, Brazilian, Sri Lankan, Nepalese soldiers come there shoot at students that are protesting, introduce cholera which the strain was from Nepal. How many Haitians are traveling to Nepal and back? To a small village in Nepal to catch a stain right.

JP 54:33

Well you know what they did build was prisons, the Canadian government built a prison in Haiti, the US government built two prisons right after the earthquake. The things they built in Haiti were prisons and hotels. Right, so what does that tell you.

KE 54:48

It's the signs of the very unequal societies. They say you want to get rich you invest in the dollar store and luxury brands right because everyone in the middle is gonna be getting screwed. It's the same in Haiti, you got prisons you got hotels so what's happening here? They're setting up the infrastructure for the continued pillaging of Haiti but those people have more comfortable conditions. They're going to be staying at five star hotels and stuff like that now. I don't know if they're going to do that now because you can do all your pilfering from zoom apparently, you dont have to be in person so.

JP 55:17

Right.

CY 55:22

Right, right. Thank you. Thank you both. I think there's so many things you guys touched on that really emphasized imperials as well as was political domination but this has real material effects. There are millions of people in Haiti who feel the effects of a UN World Bank, IMF, US led occupation. So, Thank you. I think that was really good.

CY 55:45

For the next one then will go to; Not only has the Haitian revolution and history been completely erased by western institutions and curriculums, but imperialist media corporations in these western countries have participated in the demonisation and censorship of Haitian popular struggle for freedom and self-determination. Can you expand upon how successful and insidious the cultural warfare and systems of propaganda waged against Haiti's quest for self-determination has been?

KE 56:17

Sure so, its a big question, you’re coming with them Caleb!

JP 56:23

Very good questions by the way.

CY 56:26

Thank you!

KE 56:27

When we think about how history is told to us. We need to be very careful about how we're taking it in, because even if we were to look at something like liberal democracy. I'm not taking credit for this, I saw something like that yesterday, where they were talking about how we even learn about liberal democracy, anything that's good about it came through, violent, illegal struggle. Right. Then we'll look at that and say okay this is how we got to where we are now so everything's perfect. If people are protesting in the streets now, no more, no more of this protest no more of this struggle that's going to happen. We're told that even liberal democracy, how we have it now is very peaceful and organized through certain means and institutions to have what we have now. I'm not a fan of it, I'm not defending it. What I'm saying is that if you look at the Haitian Revolution then, that becomes something that they don't even want to begin speaking about, right, because then it's like, what happened?

KE 57:22

That the revolution was successful, you had the first instance where it was African peoples that had beat a colonial power they had their own Republic, they beat Napoleon's army, which we forget at that time, was busy and conquering the rest of Europe. Going eastward, right, and then they come to Haiti, and then people their had their machetes and finished them. They couldn't go there, even if they're trying to invade from the Dominican Republic, they made alliances with the United States with France, or not with France, with England, stuff that you never see happen. Haitian people were able to beat them. That lesson in and of itself if the revolution just stopped there, 1804, nothing else happened. That lesson for people about taking history and matters into your own hands to free yourself; It's something that they don't want people to get, that you need to be like what happened with the rest, not the rest, but most of the Caribbean, that your independence is granted to you, where you have a nice ceremony change over the flags, the Queen does a little thing in her convertible and all your flags look like Scottish flags and stuff like that, it's no no big difference. The reality, the material reality, the economic connections don't change. What Haiti did is they severed those ties and they've been punished for that, obviously.

KE 58:50

When people talk about what the revolution has achieved since, you take the good parts but the bad parts, the bad parts are not on the Haitians, that's on the international community and how they received the Haitians, they didn't want to receive them. The good things that they couldn't contain was that example about self determination, fighting white supremacy, fighting colonialism, spreading freedom to other people. Then people were like okay, they could do it then, they didn't have the internet, they didn't have news, telling each other what's happening. They have cell phones. They organized and built networks, if you start studying the Haitian Revolution it's fascinating. How they were able to coordinate across the islands have the Maroons with the militaries, the more formal militaries. A lot of women were involved in it, I think it was up to at least 1/3 who were fighting were women. There's a lot of positives and negatives out of the constitution that emerged, but they said, one of the most important things is that Haiti is going to be a sovereign black land.

KE 59:48

That there not going to allow foreign investment to come in because that's the way that you can recolonize us. There's so many things just within that initial moment that, Haiti knew what was up knew what was up. What was gonna happen in Jamaica in 1962, is that you allow the foreign investment, it never goes away. You can have your flag, you can have your national anthem, you can have Ackee and saltfish and you can have the John Crow as your bird or whatever. When it comes to what actually matters, the land and the money, it's ours. It's not yours, we can call the shots, whenever we want. You see similar things happen with the United States with Cuba like the platt amendment stuff. You can have your independence but when it actually comes to something that matters, we will intervene militarily to do it. Haiti had set that precedent for all of the other countries, where they're very weary about it. Haiti took the whole piece of the pie, right, and normally what you're supposed to get is the crumbs. That scared, all of the colonial powers afterwards, and trying to figure out new ways to engineer control over their colonies because they didn't want another Haiti to happen. The Egypt example is incredible, now I'm thinking in my head about when the French went to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, those places they're probably trying to do the same thing. I wonder if that was something in their head because, it [Haiti] was so profitable to them. Even though it was so brutal for everyone else that they just couldn't imagine it, not existing anymore. Right. I think that's really powerful because that's what people were able to do, is to take that control back. Right.

JP 1:01:27

That's very true and there's something to be said about Napoleon, saying this is not about money. This was about, not letting these blacks have power and he came out and he said that. Thank you for covering all that because I think there are two things I think that's work to demonize Haiti to make people dehumanize Haitians. There's Voodoo, which is always you know black magic, and we see it in US propaganda like the serpent and the rainbow if you remember that. I just remember like even reading through the Wiki Leaks files when the Vatican was against Aristide talking about, how he's not a real Catholic priest and how these people are Satanic and Voodoo. The Vatican is talking about Voodoo, like this Voodoo country right, this idea of demonizing African religions. By the way, that is a Voodoo flag behind me [Laughs]. Talking about African religions as something that's so backwards and demon and they're worshipping demons. It is a way to link black people with everything that's bad and whatever, so Voodoo has always been used against Haiti. Also by the Catholic Church early leaders who were embarrassed by the fact that these Haitians practice African religion, including other countries in the Caribbean. Who always still have this stereotype of Haitians, as these Voodoo, these super black practicing satanic religions so there's that.

JP 1:03:05

More recently, what's really shifted the discourse around Haiti is the fact that the US has gotten away with demonizing Aristide. As the first elected man of the people. The most popular figure in Haitian history in a long time and also the largest party of the poor people. I don't know if you remember this Kevin, but after the first coup d'etat, which was backed by the CIA, there are all these stories in US newspapers about how Aristide is crazy, he has mental illness, he's doing all this. He's telling people to go and burn tires and he was running games. There are all these stories you can look back 90-93, all these stories about how crazy Aristide is, he's like lost his mind.

JP 1:04:01

The demonization of Aristide was so powerful that it actually impacted the way that the Haitian diaspora sees Aristide. A lot of US leftist's, North American leftist's, turned on Aristide buying into this demonization, all the propaganda war against this one man. That to me was the most effective form of propaganda against the Haitian struggle for freedom and self determination, because you take this one person and his party, and you turn him into this evil monster, and then you link him to like Duvalier. Make it seem like he's similar to a Duvalier, or even to Martelly. We still hear a lot of this stuff amongst some of the left, the older generation, including the Haitian left who really bought into this demonization, and some of them supported the 2004 coup d'etat. I really want to push back against that, and the Haitian intellectual elite as well, who went after, including Raoul Peck, who turned on Aristide. There's a middle class elite who never felt comfortable with this poor preacher and his support among the really poor. There's a intellectual elite, an Elite elite, they all bought into this demonization and they were embarrassed by Aristide. Embarassed by these poor people. The man who said we're going to be poor, but we're going to live with dignity. I do think that, itself, has really been very effective propaganda wise for the West in really killing this really large movement for self determination that Haitians have had since 1986, with the oust of Duvalier.

CY 1:05:49

For the last question I think this will be something to kind of internationalize it a bit and just to talk about Haiti in general and our current context where we live, Canada. I know Dr Pierre you're in the States. So, how do we lead, and more significantly support, an international Pan-African solidarity movement, how do we fight and struggle in our homes and maintain the fight and struggle for others globally? Additionally, with so many struggles occurring right now or recently in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Somalia, Haiti, and the americas amongst many other places outside of africa; is the growing oppression against Black people everywhere, the stimulus needed to command an international solidarity movement?

JP 1:06:33

Yeah well you know I'm a pan Africanist so I always see these struggles connected. When I think about Haiti, the first place that's a comparison to me is Somalia, because the destruction of Somalia. After this Somali embarrassed the US in 1991, took down that Black Hawk and killed the occupation force. The US has never gotten over that, we have movies, we have, sorry I'm about to curse, about Somali pirates. First of all, the idea of piracy is ridiculous in terms of, they're stealing fish off the waters they're doing all this but they're calling the Somali the pirates right not that European trawlers that are stealing fish and and taking stuff from them. That's become normalized in academic discourse, theres books of Somali piracy, when we know the original pirates are the Dutch, who were stealing Africans from from ships in the Caribbean. That's where the pirates were, the Europeans stealing people and doing all of that, I've gone on a tirade.

JP 1:07:52

The point though is that these are very much connected and my worry now is the entrenchment of the US military throughout the African continent. My other worry is Haiti is very significant, as always, for the US and its pivot to China which happened under Obama, because one of the things is theres Mole St Nicolas, which is an island which is owned by Haiti but it's north of Haiti. What the US always wanted for a military base and they got Guantanamo Bay, but I think they're gonna have to return Guantanamo. I think they're looking for a place to put that and Haiti is the perfect location, because from there you can have access. You can have the Indo Pacific, the US Southern Command, which is the command region to go against Venezuela, all the leftist governments in the Americas. Then to go through the Panama Canal to get to Asia. So then you start seeing the connection between AFRICOM, which is the Africa Command which is in 54 countries right now, with bases under humanitarian guise, whatever, we're bringing aid for cholera. Not Cholera, were bringing aid for COVID, why do you need a military? why do you need military exercises for aid for COVID?

JP 1:09:08

They're already entrenched so think about the proxy wars that are going to happen on the African continent, on behalf of the US as they fight against China. The empire is done, the US is done, let's be real. You have rising China, so you have that. It's like the African proverb when elephants fight it's the grass that suffers. Were the grass right and we're the people, upon which these powers are going to fight. They're going to use us and I think in the moment thought, this is the moment where we need solidarity the most.

JP 1:09:43

I think we need to support what's going on on the African continent, I think black people are at the bottom of thi structure. We are set up to be the ones that are going to suffer the most from this and we can see it in relationship to what's happening to Haiti, Somalia. What happened in Libya, right, and then also all the proxy stuff that's happening on the African continent right and these Neo colonial governments, these puppets that are put in to sell off all the minerals. The Green Revolution, for example, the green New Deal is about extracting more resources from the Congo and then Bolivia because of lithium. My thing is we need to come together and realize that this is a global struggle, you can't do it within a national framework. I've never thought the nationalist frame of works for us, because those of us living in settler colonial states, we don't have a stake in these states. Our liberation comes through linking with other oppressed people throughout the world. I think that's what we first need to do is recognize that these are very similar struggles, that we're all in this position because of this modern moment of European hegemony throughout the world. The first thing we need to do is come together and destroy it, right. That's the goal for me. That's one of the main reasons for example I joined the Black Alliance for Peace, because I live in the heart of empire. Those of us who live in the heart of empire, in the heart of these settler colonial states, need to attack these states from within. We have access to them. We need to talk about them and we need to tell them to leave the rest of the world alone and then reach out to our brothers and sisters in these other places.

KE 1:11:28

What can I say? [Laughs]. That was incredible, I was writing stuff down. I'm like this is stuff that we need to spread, because the sentiment about pan Africanism and not taking this national framework which I feel a lot of times, I get it, but I'm also repulsed by how neoliberal they can become. That these movements for black lives and stuff that they,

JP 1:11:51

Oh yeah,

KE 1:11:52

They don't see people pass themselves, what's happening in Haiti, or what's happening in Sudan or what's happening in Zimbabwe or Brazil, it's like that's off the map. I think that's a real disservice to people because you only see yourself and then it's like if we can move up in that corporate diversity and inclusion representation kind of mind frame, nothing's gonna change. That's what I think a lot of people want and the alternative that Jemima and yourself Caleb, that you're pushing out there by doing these kinds of initiatives, I think like keep doing what you're doing and what people have been doing. I mean, obviously, the forces that be we're outnumbered, but it's always been that way. I think it's about organization and keep building and bringing people in and putting that alternative on the table, because I think a lot of times that people fundamentally understand that things are wrong, like racism is a given, but then when you can point to, a global system and how it works, it's hard to ignore that. To be like you know you don't want to be integrated as an equal into a very shitty system.

KE 1:12:54

Our goal should be to surpass that. We're thinking forward. That's what we need to do and that's why talking about Pan Africanism talking about revolution and being quite open about it. I think it's, we're not asking for anything that's unreasonable, for people to have dignity, self determination, to have democratic practices however we define them. If it's through elections or if not, through direct democracy and through other ways of cooperating. None of the things that we're asking for are crazy. If it's talking about being able to have food, not being able to go to work and still not being able to feed your family or to worry about being kicked out of your house. Look at the continent, look at Haiti, how much Haiti had made for France and for all the other exploiters. Now, for Haiti to be put in that position where people have to struggle to be able to get a meal or that food aid is even a thing. That doesn't make sense unless you can understand that system, because then you'll just look at Haiti or you're looking at Haitians and say that's the problem. It's not how the richest colony, I think for its size that ever exists, could be immiserated in that way. You need to understand the system. Right. That's why I think Haiti is so important on opening the door, like the continent, what's going on there, Congo. That's the second example I'll give to people, you want to learn how the world is off the rails. Look at the history of Congo, from the beginning to now and you'll learn so much about that.

KE 1:14:23

I think getting those examples out to people because US history is incredibly important for the movement and how it's done, but the people that have been most impactful in my opinion, have those that have always stepped passed and had that internationalist perspective. Whether it's when Malcolm, ends up stepping into that framework where he no longer is like a nationalist he becomes an internationalist right, through his traveling to Africa, the Black Panther Party. Even Garvey, if you look at it in that sense about talking about, even if there's black capitalism stuff like that, the idea is seeing people as more than just what we are in this one place. That's something that needs to be embraced a lot more, and I think the media projects y'all involved in is really central to doing that. You can see the reaction that there is to it like Hood Communist getting taken offline.

JP 1:15:15

Right!

KE 1:15:16

It’s like why you worried about this stuff? Because they're spreading that kind of message about pan Africanism and a revolutionary alternative. People will just say, aw it's a bunch of leftists in their basement banging away on the keyboard, but people are listening, and they're afraid. You know. That alternative has always been kind of squashed right and they hope that you don't reach pass the university. That you'll just keep it on campus because that's a relatively sheltered place but if you take it out to the streets or you expand your reach then thats trouble.

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

Free Them All: An introduction to the Prisoner Correspondence Project

The Prisoner Correspondence Project (PCP) organizes to facilitate communication between LGBTQIA2S+ prisoners in Canada and the United States with individuals of their communities outside of prison.

Welcome to another episode of 1919Radio. In this episode, our host Caleb is joined by Stevie from the Prisoner Correspondence Project (PCP). This episode is a part of our outreach program to provide support for their penpal initiative. 

Established in 2007 in Montreal, The Prisoner Correspondence Project (PCP) organizes to facilitate communication between LGBTQIA2S+ prisoners in Canada and the United States with individuals of their communities outside of prison. They view their work as an opportunity to draw the wider LGBTQIA2S+ community into prison justice organizing and build upon gay liberation legacies and the larger prison justice movement.

Their work emphasizes that letter writing is the basic first step of any kind of prison support and has a tangible impact on the isolation of a prison sentence. If you are interested in initiating a correspondence and helping link incarcerated folx to resources, education and community support not reachable in prison, check out the PCP website. 

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organizaiton and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

1919Radio Intro audio clip (0:00)

I never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently experiencing.

I am mentally spiritually, physically, emotionally, intellectually and academically developed and acutely aware of the condition of African people throughout the entire world.

We don't want fortune, we dont want popularity, we want power, power, and power comes only from the organized masses.

CY (0:49)

Welcome to another episode of 1919Radio. My name is Caleb, and I'm your host for today. In this episode, I'm joined by Stevie from the Prisoner Correspondence Project. This episode is a part of our outreach programs to provide support for their pen pals initiative. Established in 2007 in Montreal, the prisoner correspondence project or PCP, organizes to facilitate communication between LGBTQIA2S+ prisoners in Canada and the United States, with individuals of their communities outside of prison. They view their work as an opportunity to draw the wider LGBTQ plus community into present justice organizing and build upon gay liberation legacy to end the larger prison justice movement. Their work emphasizes that letter writing the basic first step of any kind of prison support and has a tangible impact on the isolation of our prison sentence. If you or anybody you know are interested in initiating a correspondence and helping link incarcerated folks to resources, education and community support, not reachable in prison, check out the PCP website or visit nice 1919mag for a link to their website on ours.

Could you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to this work?

Stevie (2:08)

Sure. Well, I'm My name is Stevie. And I've been a part of the project, I believe. It's probably three ish years as well. I got interested, I started reading a book called captive genders, which is about trans inprisonment and the prison industrial complex, I think it's called anyways, at the back of it, they had PCP as one the resources in the back. And I was like, Hey, I live in Montreal, so I just sort of joined it. And here I am.

CY (2:49)

That's, that's beautiful. Can you tell our listeners about what the prisoner correspondence project is? The significance of this project and your role as an organizer with this team?

Stevie (3:01)

So the prisoner correspondence project is a pen pal, project for incarcerated LGBTQ plus people we've been around for I think it's 13 years now. It's definitely over 10. There's about 2000 people waiting on our database right now to be matched up. I'd say we're about seven or so volunteers at the moment. And most of us are based in, in Montreal, but we do have other people be in BC taking care of our newsletter, we also have about 40 or so inside collective members, so people who are currently incarcerated or recently released, we basically send out our meeting minutes to them, and they are a big part of the decision making process and offer insight and stuff.

CY (4:04)

yeah, thanks. Thanks. That's a good background. What are some of the barriers or obstacles prospective pen pals have faced joining this solidarity program?

Stevie (4:17)

So I think one of the biggest, I guess one of the most common things that we get, from people who want to sign up are usually people who've gotten past the reading the expectations and guidelines, and now they're able to choose their own pen pals. But the thing is, a lot of the profiles that pop up immediately are usually people who are seeking romance and I think that is what turns a lot of people off. Just remember that there are 2000 people waiting , so I am sure that if you go on to the website and you just, you know, do the first two or three pages, which tend to be the people who have been waiting the most. They are really romantic in nature. So I would, I guess the way to get around that barrier would be to just keep looking and really go through all the pages really well. Even if somebody says that they are looking for a romantic relationship, chances are they're are super isolated. So they would probably be willing to correspond with anyone. I guess another issue. This one is more like, if you've already started the correspondence, one thing that comes up a lot is people discussing not discussing their boundaries, clearly. So, for instance, if somebody is, if their relationship is too sexual or romantic in nature, you would have to sort of be able to communicate those boundaries with that person. Also make sure that the other person knows how often you're willing to correspond. Because often people will be very enthusiastic about doing it. You know, sending letters two or three times a week when obviously, that isn't within everybody's capabilities. So yeah, just another way to get around that.

CY ( 6:40)

Thanks. That was really helpful. And I could, I think an important word that came out to me while you're talking is patience as well. You guys have a really thoughtful and meaningful collection of frequently asked questions on your website that I think is, is a really great resource. So definitely recommend anyone to check that out. Check that out as well.

Stevie (7:05)

Yes.

CY (7:06)

What have been some of the benefits inside and outside members have experienced during their time as a penpal with the PCP?

Stevie (7:16)

I guess, the most obvious one, I guess, the biggest thing is that what we keep getting back from our from letters is that the project is 100%, life saving for a lot of people. People have told us so many times that just receiving letters, or just having communication with the outside world is obviously super important for mental health. But um, yeah, so I would say that a lot of people in the program don't have access to the outside world at all. So being queer or trans, a lot of their families will have abandoned them, especially like post incarceration. So really, a lot of people do not have access to the outside world, and being able to provide that to people being able to provide some kind of emotional support, or even, I guess, not only just emotional support, but sending letters to people on the inside, who otherwise don't have communication with the outside world. Also signals to people that that the person is being cared for and looked after. So let's say somebody who isn't receiving letters would be more of a target to both other inmates and like, corrupt guards or whatever to, you know, targets of violence or hate crime or whatever. Just just having the letters go in signals to everyone around them that there's somebody paying attention. Otherwise, the other benefits for I guess, outside members. I guess the obvious one would be just friendship. I've had a couple of pen pals over the years, and I've met some really incredible people that I would have otherwise never have gotten to know. If not.

CY (9:30)

Absolutely, I definitely agree with you. I think the benefits arent really just benefits because we're talking about saving lives. We’re talking about helping people as well as helping ourselves.

Stevie (9:42)

Yeah, exactly. If people are looking for a way to get into solidarity work or looking for a way to really help people and in really direct and concrete ways, it's definitely a very good way to do that.

CY (9:57)

Can you walk us through the process of getting a penpal, initiating the correspondence, sending the mail and other mail related or other concerns or restrictions that may incur in the initial process.

Stevie (10:14)

So the signup process is pretty simple, you basically just got to send an email to, to the PCP email saying that you're interested, then we just direct you to the website to read the expectations and guidelines, like you were saying before. And once a person has read through them, they basically get access to the database, which is everyone's profile. And they get to pick whoever they want to be matched up with. And then basically, we just send you their address, and then it just kind of starts off like that.

We've had had quite a few people ask how to start the conversation, or what to include in the first letter, and it's really a lot more simple than people might think it out to be. It's like, if you've ever written a letter to someone in a classroom, or if you've, you know, even written an email, it's basically the same thing. You just introduce yourself, you tell them, what interests you in talking to this person. And like I said before, the just sort of setting the boundaries about what is expected. Yeah, just setting up boundaries and talking about yourself, honestly, just like I said, it's it's a lot of isolation in there and it's a lot of people who need to connect with people on the outside. A lot of people are willing to talk and ready to do that with whoever basically chooses them.

CY (11:54)

Thanks. Thanks. That was really great as well, this kind of touches on some of the things you've talked about. But I think it's an important question, especially since it kind of outlines why this solidarity work is so important.

A prisoner correspondence provides, much more than emotional support. In the frequently asked question section of on your website, you describe it as a link to resources, education and community support, not reachable and prison. Can you expand upon the importance of this idea for our listeners?

Stevie (12:26)

Yeah. So in addition to just being a pen pal project, we also have a biannual newsletter that we send out, which, is sort of like a compilation of news articles that we put together with themed responses to past call outs, we have horoscopes, it's basically just a regular newsletter that we send out. But I think that in and of itself is also a life saving aspect of the project. And that for all these 2000 or so people who are waiting on the inside, who don't have a pen pal, it gives access to the community, it gives access to information. And yeah, we also have a resource library, which we carry. Basically, it's only zines. But it's zines from people from inside the project people from outside the project, we have zines about mental health, we have zines about physical health. What else, we have queer history, we have spirituality stuff that you can't necessarily find very easily at all from inside prisons. So it becomes a very valuable resource library for a lot of people on the inside.

CY (13:57)

Thank you. I think I'm glad you touched upon that because I think your resource library is not only a great resource to learn about what the unique and intensified struggles of LGBTQ plus trans prisoners, it also talks about abolition and from the eyes of formerly incarcerated people. I think one question we get asked a lot, is people ask how can we either participate or offer solidairty to prisoners without, without contributing to the system without holding it up without perpetuating it? And I think this project is a really great way because you're, you're getting to the grassroots without necessarily offering your labor to the prison in like a volunteer form or something like that.

Stevie (14:47)

Yeah, I would say the only way that we do kind of contribute to the system would be through J pay or j mail, which is like email services that the prisons have that we unfortunately have to pay money to. But other than that,

CY (15:02)

and that's a part of their really exploitive communication practice.

Stevie (15:06)

Right.

CY (15:08)

The last question that I have is that is there any other ways community members can contribute or support the PCP if they aren't interested in writing letters?

Stevie (15:18)

There definitely is. I would say that the best and easiest way is to become a pen pal. But I know that's not available for everyone. The thing is with pen pals is we really try to encourage people to sort of foster like really long term relationships that their pen pals only because again, it offers just so much help and support to them. And having them kind of go in and out of our database really isn't helpful at all. And it could get messy and blah, blah, blah.

So really, I totally get that people can't always become a pen pal. But there are other ways. Especially if you're in Montreal. We used to do box checking hours, so it was like volunteer drop in hours, but we don't so much do that anymore because of COVID. But I do think we prepare small packages for people that they can take home and go through some of the mail and answer it. We also have like some transcribing tasks, I believe, that are always sort of ready to be done. Obviously you can donate to us. We also encourage people to hold their own fundraisers or ad campaigns. If you want to create merch for us, that's always an option. If you really want to help out, and you don't really know what to do, you can always send us an email and I'm sure somebody will find something for you to help.

Read More
1919Radio 1919 1919Radio 1919

The Gentrification of Black Music and Media and The Myth of Black Buying Power with Dr Jared Ball

Scholar, professor, and activist Dr Jared Ball joins us to discuss his books, mixtape radio, emancipatory journalism, & the gentrification of Black music and media.

Welcome to a special re-introduction of 1919 radio; In this episode our host Mohamed Nuur is joined by Dr Jared Ball, scholar, professor, and author of I mix what I like: A Mixtape Manifesto as well as The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. I speak to him about his books, mixtape radio, emancipatory journalism, & the gentrification of Black music and media.

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organizaiton and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

1919Radio Intro audio clip 0:00

I never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently experiencing.

I am mentally spiritually physically, emotionally, intellectually and academically developed and acutely aware of the condition of African people throughout the entire world.

We don't want fortune, we dont want popularity we want power, power. And power comes only from the organized masses.

MN 0:48

Welcome to a special edition of 1919 radio. My name is Mohammed and I'm your host. In this episode I'm joined by Dr. Jared Ball, scholar and author of I mix what I like a mixtape Manifesto, as well as The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. I speak to him about his books, mixtape Radio emancipatory journalism and the gentrification of black music in media.

1919 radio was first started to challenge the gentrified club spaces in Toronto, by hosting a community based platform for independent DJs. We wanted to host an educational interview with Dr. Ball to reintroduce our radio platform as multimedia projects rooted in anti colonial resistance emancipatory journalism and cooperative community power. I hope you enjoy the show.

Can you begin by introducing yourself, your platform, and the work that you do?

JB 1:41

Sure. Well, my name is Jared Ball and professionally. I am a professor of media and African American, African Diaspora studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. And I curate the multimedia website, I mix what I like.org and try to support as many grassroots political and cultural and media journalistic movements and efforts as I can.

MN 2:07

My first question is about I Mix What I like, A central concept in your book is this notion of a colonized rhythm nation. Can you describe what you mean by it? And what does internal colony theory on this idea of a cohesive African America mean for Black music and media broadly?

JB 2:26

Well, the colonized colonized rhythm nation phrase comes from Professor is it Norman Kelly, it's not Robin DG. Kelly, I think it's Norman Kelly who I got that from. But the sources obviously cited in the book, I just can't remember exactly off the top of my head, I think it is that, which I thought fit perfectly within what I was trying to do with that work, which was to center this concept of internal colonialism for Black America here in the United States.

The idea is just simply that to the extent there is a black community or a black nation, it is colonized internally in the United States, and that the point I was trying to make is that similar to many others, I was trying to extend the tradition of those who are saying this internal colonialism meant or means that the more or less the traditional relationships that are established through a colonial process exists here. Extraction, exploitation, physical and social and economic and political distance and difference.

Then in the context of hip hop or music or cultural expression, the same processes exist, that a black community here that is socially and physically segregated, still, to this day, has its cultural production mined like any other natural resource, packaged, produced, owned and redistributed, sold by a dominant mother country. With all of the wealth and benefits accruing to that mother country, while the colony itself devolves. In summary, over the course of the history of hip hop in this country, 50 years or so, the black community has produced billions and I think at the time we're talking about $40 billion a year all told. But the conditions in those communities have actually worsened. So that's what I was trying to just quickly identify and I think more appropriately contextualize that process.

MN 5:04

What is the role of mass media and American cultural production in shaping and erasing political consciousness? And what role does independent black media play here?

JB 5:16

Well, media and propaganda in the United States play the dominant role more than any other force in managing consciousness manipulating public opinion, or as has been popularly said, by Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent. That is their primary and I would argue even sole function. Independent black media, to the extent that it has ever existed or exists today, has been to offer up messaging and cultural expression that encouraged different forms of organization in response to the conditions faced by black people. I don't know how much you want to get into it. But there's, I think, a lot of room to argue, again, to what extent is there? Or has there ever been an independent black media and to what extent that media performs, you know, sort of the roles they're popularly conceived of performing that is encouraging something other than a dominant narrative or expression. But that has at least traditionally been part of what independent black media has done. Has provided space for people to communicate ideas and culture that are not accepted or sanctioned and that has been invaluable to political struggle.

MN 6:49

In your book, you also talk about mixtape radio as a tool of anti colonial resistance. Can you expand on that and what you mean by emancipatory journalism?

JB 7:00

Well I'll start backwards, emancipatory journalism is a concept that was coined and developed largely by Professor Haman, Shaw, a professor of journalism in the University of Madison, Wisconsin, and simply put is just is just a historical application of journalism or a philosophy of journalism applied by those who were colonized in response to colonization. That argues that journalism and media must be produced and practiced by and for those in anti colonial political struggle. So not that you shouldn't be sound and researched and honest, but that you should not be biased, or that you should not, eschew bias, you should not avoid bias, that you should be biased in favor of your political struggle, and you should be performing your work as part of an organized effort to end that oppressive relationship.

I saw mix tape radio, you know, at the time I was arguing, and hopefully you and your crew can do this, but it would have to be re rebranded and reformed because the mixtape that I was primarily talking about was an analog hardcopy, low tech, offline, literal CD or cassette that would be distributed that would contain art and content and music and power and journalism and politics that you couldn't get in terrestrial radio, or mainstream media. It was just to borrow from or extend the history of the hip hop mixtape which is an underappreciated history, that is without the mixtape, without DJs being able to create cassette tapes and CDs with music, and blends and messaging that could not be found on radio, there would be no explosion of hip hop. That was as Angela Ards put years years ago, hip hop's original mass media.

So as a lover of mixtapes, my whole life and then at one point, a producer of at least a journalistic form of them, you know, I wanted to just to try to make an argument around politicizing that history. And, honestly even more than anything practical, I think, to make the argument that an approach of this history and recognition of this history would help I think better interpret the current condition and offer other analyses and explanations and responses to it. In other words, the history of the mixtape, I think does expose the colonial relationship that black people have in this country and elsewhere to the state.

MN 10:11

Can you elaborate on that last point?

JB 10:15

In the history of hip hop you have the core and original elements of DJing, B-boying emceeing, and graffiti emerging out of the poorest, most impressive black and brown communities in the United States that are themselves comprised of an African Diaspora that is coming from the Caribbean that's coming from the continent, it's coming from up your way, in Canada down to New York and down to the east coast of the United States, where Harlem historically had become the pan African, African Diaspora Mecca, pun intended, so to speak, for the African world.

So within the United States, with all the internal migrations forced and otherwise north to south, west, to East, east to west, etc. You have, at the time, the creation of this black Mecca, in Harlem, in New York City, more broadly, etc. Where and of course, in the Bronx, where it's said, although there's some debates around that, you know, Bronx and some argue even in previously in Queens, you know, in many ways in New York, it [Hip-Hop] emerges. But it's emerging as a response to Colonial conditions. Whether it's black people having the programs cut that would have more people being taught traditional musical instruments. You know, you have that cut and then you have people start moving towards stereos and you have the technology coming from Europe of mixing boards and turntable technology, and new music coming from other parts of the world. You have all of that sort of coalescing in a moment, where black and brown people here, would start taking these and combining them other traditions.

Also, in the context of not having access to any sort of mainstream media, black radio, didn't even want to play rap music initially. And then saying, Well, okay, fine. We're going to steal electricity from streetlamps, we're going to set up in the park since we don't have, stadiums and clubs to play in, since we can't get on the radio we'll record to a mixtape or record to a cassette and we'll distribute that throughout the community all the way up and down the East Coast of the United States. Even to where I was in Maryland getting mix tapes from New York as a kid, hearing music there was no radio for. So that's how it creates this underground medium where the mixtape literally carried hip hop beyond its original boroughs and communities into the United States and made it grow to a point where it had to be, as I would at least argue, colonized, co opted, and turned into the commercial bastardization that we have now at least in terms of its mainstream form. So that's what the mixtape to me always represents, it is the underground newspapers of other places and times. It's the underground, cassette tapes of people in Eastern Europe trying to communicate when an overreaching communism was suppressing them. It's the the Radio Free Dixie of Robert Williams broadcasting from Cuba, to the southern part of the United States advocating black liberation. It's the Underground Railroad communication, that was intercontinental, through the Western Hemisphere, that somehow enabled Africans to escape up and down the continent. So to me, the mixtape just represents an extension of all of that of underground journalism of the radical kind of broadcasting and media that is unsanctioned that leads to and supports radical political movements

MN 14:30

10 years on, from publication, corporate power is only consolidated even further. The so called musical OPEC is now three after universal purchased EMI in 2012. How have things changed and how have streaming services like Spotify affected everyone or everything I should say.

JB 14:52

Look, Harold Ennis was right years ago, talking about a Canadian, who wrote the bias of communication in the 50s and he was right. Advances in media and communicative technology, enhance or enable further consolidation of power. So from the printing press to today, the more highly technical communication becomes, the more consolidated the power is that controls it. So now, just in terms of the context, we're talking here, with Spotify, and, you know, iTunes, and now youtube music, which is the number one music distribution network, now you have an even increased consolidation. YouTube is owned by Google, YouTube's music is run by Leo Cohen, who was the same horrific corporate destroyer that people have been pointing to in hip hop, going back to the 80s, who's right back on top. So it's about what hasn't changed, it's literally the same man has even more power today to influence who becomes famous.

People have to understand fameis political it has nothing to do with talent, although talent is important. So I shouldn't say it has nothing to do with talent, I should say talent is not the number one determinant and it is not necessarily required, as there have been plenty of untalented people who have become enormously popular. The mechanism of popularity is political. Celebrity is political. As I've often said, you cannot be rich, famous and radically political, history is clear. There is no example of someone sustaining, being rich, famous and radically political all at the same time, maybe one of the three, maybe two of the three, but I'm literally unaware of any exception to that rule. Once you become rich and famous, if you are radically political, your career is going to get destroyed or worse snd history is replete with examples of that. Aren't we about to celebrate Bob Marley's, isn't Bob Marley's birthday coming up? I think we're getting close to Bob Marley's birthday. I don't know. Anyway, he's a perfect example. As soon as he's rich, and famous and radical, he's gone and he's rebranded as someone who is every little thing is gonna be all right and let's just smoke a lot of weed. All of the radical messaging is wiped away and rebranded and repackaged. Michelle Stevenson has done some great work on that, by the way, if anybody wants to go back and look at that. Simply that, the process of popularity is managed.

So musically to get placed at the top of Spotify or YouTube or any other platform, it is a payment relationship. It's a payola relationship where someone is paying for that placement. It's a relationship that is manicured. over decades, people like Paul Porter have done great work on this, Rolling Stone even put out an article I think last year or a couple of articles within last year or two talking about how even as we move to digital platforms that process of payola or pay for play has remained. So really, theres only three record labels that can afford to do this Universal Music Group, which is number one, Sony number two, and Warner, number three, a distant number three, but still number three. They can pay to have their artists promoted and placed so that when you click the algorithm tells you that this artist will show up and that artist will show up and that artist. The experience that we have online, which is another conversation, is an entirely manicured experience in itself. So this idea that we're just entering a free and open Internet, is entire mythology, particularly at this point. So this makes it, despite what many I think argue and claim, makes it harder for alternative so called or different artists to be heard or seen. So when you are able to do all this promotion, you're also to create a marginal space for everybody else to be pushed into. So you know, we can have this conversation, anyone can have a conversation, but those that are promoted and paid and placed, will get more attention. It's the same way with music. I was even just looking at it a couple of weeks ago for another presentation and I'm sorry, I don't have this specifics right in front of me, but if you look and if you want, I'll dig it out real quick, but if you look carefully, you'll see that artists are paid less per digital download or stream today than they were paid for spins on radio traditionally, historically, or sales of CDs, or records historically.

So in other words, artists are more exploited today for their product than they have been historically, despite this appearance of everybody's out here, everybody can get it, everybody has an opportunity, it is, unfortunately, something very different. It doesn't matter if you can walk away with a hard copy of a CD or a record or you just lose your stream because they shut down your account. To me, what's more important is the process that would have encouraged you to buy the album or the CD or the cassette, historically, is the same process fully intact, that encourages you to stream or have a playlist of certain artists on a digital platform today. And that process is controlled by a handful of very wealthy white men. That's why they say Lucien Grange, who was the head of Universal Music Group, they still to this day, call him the most powerful man in the music business. So how is this white French man who has got to be in his 70s, or something, at this point, literally has more control over the music you and I hear, and that the students that end up in my classroom hear than anything you and I could do. He's determining the artists that they are introduced to, and that they are, through imposition, encouraged to believe that they like. That's done I think even more easily today than it was done when I was coming up.

MN 22:05

Let's shift gears to talk about your newest book, The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. Can you define what you mean by black buying power? And how is it a myth?

JB 22:15

Well, what I mean by black buying power is that it doesn't exist. What people are encouraged to believe that black buying power means is that there is this 1.3 or four or $5 trillion pool of money that black people sit on, and foolishly spend on frivolous goods, when instead they could become more quote, unquote, financially literate, and save and deposited, invest that money and increase their wealth and close the racial wealth and income inequality gaps. That what I'm saying, and I think, not I think, I have proven and it's not a matter of arrogance, it's a matter of simplicity, it's really not a complicated issue. If you look at the way the claim of the 1.3 trillion is made, it's easily dismissed as false and then if you look at the actual data of the condition of black people in this country, economically, you see that there is no quote unquote power in that economic relationship. Power in the phrase buying power is defined based on those who created the phrase, which are marketers and advertisers. So it means the ability to spend money and enrich those who own various goods and services that you'll buy, which are not black people. So power and buying power is a phrase is a measurement of the ability of black people to enrich white corporations.

So what I've done in the book is just outline the history of it, and the method and mechanism by which, just as I was saying [before], in terms of music, popularity and celebrity. I outline the process by which this myth is propagated and popularized, and the context in which that it's done and why it's done. Then I show how it is, in fact, created out of a single, literally one source, whose data is itself based on, as they say themselves 'estimates and projections'. It has nothing to do with income and wealth and I just show why it all happens, in other words, to say, ultimately, that black people cannot get free through what is always encouraged through a black capitalist enterprise of starting a business supporting a business or banking black or buying black.

That is not how wealth is created. That's not how white people became wealthy. So to tell black people, within a white supremacist capitalist society that, that's how they can become wealthy is in fact, mythology. And the ultimate point which I talked about, is to discourage black people from engaging the only power that anybody has which is political power, organizational, movement, or building power. So instead of saying we should politically organize and assume political power, we're told to start businesses and support banking institutions, etc, and so forth. And that's the mythology that helps maintain this wild and increasing inequality.

MN 25:21

What is the role of hip hop in the music industry at large in shaping and promoting this propaganda?

JB 25:27

Well it's tremendous. I talked a little bit about it in the book, but historically and going back even to the I Mix What I like book, is where I talk about the developed trend over some decades ago of promoting products and commercialism within the lyrics of rap music. Where there were literal business relationships between products, and rappers to promote those products. Whether it's a liquor or clothing, or some other kind of item. So hip hop does the same thing in terms of promoting black capitalism and black buying power and black banking. Because the popular form, the commercial form of rap music is meant to satisfy the ideology and political needs of the commercial world. So they don't want discussions of socialism and pan africanism and armed struggle, and you know, all of that stuff that's replete in black history. They want a discussion of one form of black struggle, which is black entrepreneurialism, mainstream politicians, and the fantasy of inclusion. So as long as there is this fantasy of a lottery victory of inclusion, it reduces the likelihood of radical formation and political revolution.

MN 26:52

What is the path forward for us as creatives and consumers now that the illusion is basically shattered?

JB 26:59

I try to, at least on some level, ethically consume. I have my own personal boycotts, there are places I don't go and there are businesses and places I do intentionally go to. The argument that, that can lead to radical change, that's mythology. We should all look to work collectively and look to support one another, that's a given. To turn that into an argument that, that is in and of itself, a political movement, or platform or strategy or path to liberation, that's a different and for me, disagreeable point, that doesn't work. So I don't argue that my boycotts in support of this or lack of support of that, is going to lead to revolution. We should do cooperatives and co ops and buy black and bank, do all of that. I had a whole ethic of [supporting] artists that I knew or who are radical, I would make sure to buy their work, even if they tried to give it to me for free. That's great.

That didn't make anybody rich and it wouldn't have kept anybody from being more poor. What we need is what the those in power have always understood is necessary, you have to have political power and you have to set public policy to address the needs of the people. Between, what did I just read, between 2008 and 2019, the financial elite in this country were given through public policy redistribution, and a whole bunch of mechanisms like $19 trillion. This past summer, the hope and cares act here in the United States gave, four to $6 trillion to the financial elite to cover their losses during the pandemic and gave nothing but pennies to the people. That's public policy. Wall Street wasn't smarter than anybody, they didn't work harder than anybody. They didn't set up businesses and small businesses and talk about support our wallstreet, no. They went to the politicians and said hey, create money redistribute money do whatever the hell you have to do just make sure that we get our money. Then they tell us, you go start a business you go shop responsibly, you go support your underground rapper. That's how you'll build wealth; that's what I'm saying is ridiculous in mythology.

MN 30:02

One thing I also liked about I Mix What I Like was the Fanonian aspects to your analysis. So I'm wondering if you could maybe touch on propaganda and the Fanon aspect of your analysis in your first book.

JB 30:16

Just as I was saying, we can't shop our way to freedom, we can't music our way to freedom. This is part of a political struggle and as Fanon pointed out, colonialism is about total conquest of land and people. And as he said, that's all that's it, that's what it is, we can get deep, he could obviously get deep, but that's what it is. So what I was trying to point out is, we are in a colonial situation, that means we can't just simply write a good song where a good shirt vote for a good politician, I mean, theres something more intense that has to take place here. What we're having to deal with even more immediately, despite maybe appearances than the physical violence, is the psychic violence that Amos Wilson and and Fanon and others have talked about in different ways that comes right afterwards.

So we've already gone through the initial physical conquest, they enslaved our ancestors, they wiped out the indigenous people, they suppressed hundreds of rebellions, imprisoned hundreds and 1000s and millions of people subsequent to all of that. There counter intelligence programs assassinated and exiled our radical leaders and destroyed the movements, you know, and all of this is still ongoing. They've wiped out the military wing of the revolutionary struggle at this point. So far, they destroyed the Black Liberation Army, they've, they even just re-upped the bounty on Assata Shakur, again, last month. What comes after that is a never ending wave of propaganda and psychological warfare. Obviously, we don't have time to get into it now but one of the many underappreciated histories of this country is the history of the rise of propaganda in the communication system in this country. And the point I made about Harold Innis earlier is perfectly appropriate to this history, those in power have looked to consciously develop mechanisms to manage our consciousness and our public opinion or, manufacture our consent, as I said earlier, as Chomsky and Herman had pointed out. This is the primary way that they manage people's behavior and keep us more or less in line. So, we cannot under estimate, and we should not under appreciate the levels or the extent to which that those in power have worked to do this, whether it is literally writing thousands of television shows and films to put a positive light on the military and the police. Whether it is it is placing, you know, CIA assets in media outlets and journalism outlets, whether it is assassination and psychological warfare operations that have gone on. Whether it is simply the consolidation of the commercial media apparatus into a handful of corporate entities whose literal legal mandate is to simply make money for their stockholders. You know, all of this creates a situation where depth and substance and breadth of ideas and radical ideas are not going to find a lot of room not going to find a lot of time. And this is done intentionally, because, as those in power have mentioned, they want what they call full spectrum dominance.

The internet is military technology in its origins. As you talk about hip hop, as Jay Rue said decades ago, the same chip that powers my video game console powers nuclear arms. We're using a version of the technology that is powering satellites and remote drone strike capabilities and surveillance capabilities. I mean, that's why I emphasize Fanon. The real purpose here is to conquer land and people to extract resources and wealth from the labor of others to dominate, to set up a situation where the colonized have a psychological protective network that assures that their white supremacist colonial status will not be assaulted.

Former CBS executive or was it an ABC executive Les Moonves said during the Trump campaign in 2012, 16 rather, he said that, Trump's campaign may be bad for the country, but it's good for CBS or good for ABC. In other words, we're here to make money, we're not here to provide necessary information and sound logic and reason [even] ff it means destroying the country so that our profit margins will go up. That right there, I think crystallizes the ethic of the media, because they would rather have Trump spouting nonsense, then have a more substantive conversation with anybody else, even though they recognize that he is disagreeable. They would rather give him airtime for their own other nefarious political financial reasons, then allow for more logical and substantive conversation that might threaten their ideological and financial position.

MN 36:06

How does the gentrification otherwise known as forced relocation, impact hip hop and underground press broadly? And as a follow up, what are the ways in which the internet is implicated in this process of gentrification?

JB 36:18

Gentrification, obviously, points to the colonial status as is. One of my favorite professors, Dr. James Turner had pointed out years ago, the colonial reality of black America is evident in the gentrification process, is colonial removal. I mean, the inability for communities to protect and maintain their their possession of land or territories, that's colonization right there. When you can dislocate and nterrupt and divide and disperse communities, obviously, it's going to interrupt cultural transmission. As I pointed out, I think actually, and others have pointed out, it's kind of like what Huey Newton once said about inter communalism, that there that there are no real protected boundaries or borders anymore. One of the things that those in power can do, the United States in particular, is project its messaging across any border into any community. So it's not only the physical gentrification and colonial removal of black populations, it's the inability of any population to protect itself intellectually or cognitively, from dominant messaging. As all of that is imposed through us, through this incredibly sophisticated and penetrative and pervasive media apparatus.

So more I think interruptive even than the physical dislocation has been the ability for record labels and their lawyers to copyright in particular, which is something I tried to write about, to literally redefine and reframe, and repurpose and rebrand and reform hip hop. As others have pointed out, Chuck D and others, you know, from Public Enemy many years ago, the beats that were produced for Public Enemy with all the sampling that is now owned not by other artists, but by white lawyers and corporations who bought up the rights to those other artists music. You can't make beats like that anymore. So literally, the sound the sound of rap music, the sound of hip hop has changed. From my boom, bap era to whatever, whatever it is today. Like it or not, it doesn't matter, that's irrelevant. The sound from today is less likely to rely on multiple samples is a product largely of an early 2000s era 90s era shift in corporate control over copyright and intellectual property. Which is again, part of the process of the music industry, that assures that artists have no control over and don't make the lion's share of the wealth that they produce. It's even worse now, artists used to be able to count on going on tour to make their money. Now with 360 degree deals where everything someone does under their brand is taxed, so to speak by their label. It's even harder for artists to do that.

Again, the internet, I want to say what is the late 60s I forgot the exact year but the internet was initially created by the military, US military to allow it to communicate between computers on the private network. As it got expanded and commercialized, it has taken on much of that same kind of work. I mean, people like to think of it as a free or at least used to be a free open space. It has always, and ever increasingly so, become the tool of intelligence agencies, the military industrial complex. I mean, there's all kinds of people, there's operation sock puppet, there's all kinds of examples of how that's done. But as I said, they want full spectrum dominance, they're saying that, again, communication in general, nevermind just the internet, even what we call entertainment, in the language of those in power has been a mechanism for maintaining political order and projecting American dominance globally. Whether it's putting black people even in the background in movies in the 1950s, that would be exported all over the world to make it seem like black people were doing better here than ever, or sending jazz artists around the world in the 50s to promote an open American democracy in the post World War Two era, or sending rappers on the same mission in the 2000s to promote a positive America to the world. The use of art and entertainment, so called entertainment, and media as propaganda for the state is as old as the state itself. I mean, even as Patricia Bradley pointed out in her great book on propaganda and slavery, I think that's the exact title. She talks about, you know, people drink the beer, Sam Adams. Well, Sam Adams was a white supremacist propagandist who only used the word slavery in reference to what he and his white colonists suffered from the British and never talked about what was going on with the Africans he was enslaving and others were enslaving here in the United States. So from the beginning of this country propaganda, as my brother, Dr. Todd burrows. Todd Stephen burrows pointed out to me years ago, you got to look at this history its deep. When Crispus Attucks was killed at the Boston Massacre, The so called Boston Massacre was a handful of people were killed, but one of them was black. When Paul Revere went on his famous ride to encourage the colonists to fight against the British and he was a pamphleteer he was a media maker, and he printed all these pamphlets, and he wanted to use the Boston, so called massacre as propaganda against the British. But he knew. You can't put a black man on the cover of a pamphlet to inspire white people to fight other whites so he literally changed Attucks to a white man for that pamphlet.

So my point is from the beginning, even before this country was a country, propaganda has been, more than its military, even more than then, I know this sounds crazy, even for me to say, but even more than the lash, the whip, and the chains. It was the propaganda of, there is nowhere else for you to go, there is no better world for the enslaved to have. Or the propaganda of the version of Christianity that was more of a mechanism of social control, then the physical and all of it ultimately failed as everybody was rebelling all the time which is why they were forced into a civil war that the claim was to free black people but it was really to manage the freedom that black people were going to get themselves one way or another. Again another conversation, I say all this to say that propaganda and dominant messaging has always been essential in the music industry, certainly in entertainment, what we call entertainment has always played a part in that. Listen, Before he died, Zbigniew Brzezinski one of the main power players here in the United States, he said that one of the things that was going to protect America as an empire unlike any other empire of the past, was the internet. He said specifically because most people use the internet , t's dominant language is an English, which is a cultural imposition that reorients people to the west, and allows them to project their messaging into the world at the speed of a click, in ways that could never have been done when the Roman Empire or the British Empire were the empires of the day. Now, the United States has the internet, as he argued and would be protected and I think that's largely correct as again, as wonderful and expressive as it can get on the internet as radical as it can get. It gets plenty right wing and plenty vicious on the other end as well. And it's much more well organized and funded on the other side as well, and managed. The internet is absolutely a tool is allowed for expansion of drone strike programs, surveillance technology, advertising, it is presided over an increased gap and divide in race in wealth and income. What is it 50 years of the internet. Have we seen an end of war? have we seen a reduction of war even have we seen an end of sex trafficking, slavery. I mean, name it, name it and certainly the gaps in wealth and income have only gotten worse.

MN

that's all for today. 1919 is launching our fifth magazine issue, titled Free Dreams next Friday February 26 and will feature afrofuturist artwork, essays, interviews, poetry and more. It was a labor of love, and powered by community and collective struggle so huge thank you to all who contributed to making it a reality, pre orders are up so make sure you order your copy today.

Read More