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Becoming Kwame Ture with Amandla Thomas-Johnson

Becoming Kwame Ture with Amandla Thomas-Johnson

FromMillennials Are Killing Capitalism


Becoming Kwame Ture with Amandla Thomas-Johnson

FromMillennials Are Killing Capitalism

ratings:
Length:
48 minutes
Released:
Oct 22, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

In this episode we interview Amandla Thomas-Johnson, about his new book, Becoming Kwame Ture. Amandla Thomas-Johnson is a British-born writer of African-Caribbean descent. He is based in Dakar, Senegal, from where he covers West Africa.  He has reported from a dozen countries, and has covered social movements from Trinidad and Tobago to Chile to Mauritania. He has worked for the BBC, The Guardian, Al-jazeera, and Channel 4, among others. Amandla discusses the myopic historical view US historiography has of Kwame Ture (who the US generally remembers as SNCC activist Stokely Carmichael), limiting his life’s work predominantly to the 16 years he lived in the US rather than looking at it from a wholistic and international perspective.  In the conversation, we cover Ture’s Pan Africanism, his relationship to Sékou Touré and Kwame Nkrumah, and the development of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP). We talk about his commitment to Palestinian solidarity and support for social movements around the world. We also discuss Ture's involvement in attempts to return Kwame Nkrumah to power in Ghana, and his involvement in the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG).  Along the way Amandla tells fascinating stories, including Ture’s connections to the lives of figures such as Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Amilcar Cabral. This conversation and the book, reveal pats of the life, politics and organizing of Kwame Ture that have largely been neglected by most biographers operating from a US centric lens.  
Released:
Oct 22, 2020
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

We created this podcast in recognition that there are a number of podcasts for the American “left,” but many of them focus heavily on the organizing of social democrats, progressives, and liberal democrats. Aside from that, on the left we are always fighting a war of ideas and if we do not continue to build platforms to share those ideas and the stories of their implementation from a leftist perspective, they will continue to be ignored, misrepresented, and dismissed by the capitalist media and as a result by the general public. Our goal is to provide a platform for communists, anti-imperialists, Black Liberation movements, ancoms, left libertarians, LBGTQ activists, feminists, immigration activists, and abolitionists to discuss radical politics, radical organizing and share their visions for a better world. Our goal is to center organizers who represent and work with marginalized communities building survival programs, defense programs, political education, and counterpower. We also plan to bring in perspectives on and from the global south to highlight anti-capitalist struggles outside the imperial core. We view solidarity with decolonization, indigenous, anti-imperialist, environmentalist, socialist, and anarchist movements across the world as necessary steps toward meaningful liberation for all people. Too often within the imperial core we focus on our own struggles without taking the time to understand those fighting for freedom from beneath the empire’s thumb. It is important to highlight these struggles, learn what we can from them, offer solidarity, and support with action when we can. It is not enough to Fight For $15 an hour and Single-Payer within the core, while the US actively fights against the self-determination of the people of the global economically and militarily. We recognize that except for the extremely wealthy and privileged, our fates and struggles are intrinsically connected. We hope that our podcast becomes a meaningful platform for organizers and activists fighting for social change to connect their local movements to broader movements centered around the fight to end imperialism, capitalism, racism, discrimination based on gender identity or sexuality, sexism, and ableism. If you like our work please support us at www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism