The Malcolm Effect

#45 "From Conservatism to Nkrumah" - Tristan Graham

An engaging conversation with Tristan, a thinker and activist from Jamaica as we speak about the things he is thinking through politically. 

 

Tristan Graham was born on January 15, 2001, in Kingston, Jamaica. He is a Revolutionary Pan-Africanist and young author who specializes in African/African Diaspora history, Philosophy, Gender Studies, and Political Science.

 

Tristan is a well-read young scholar who has an insatiable yearning for knowledge. He currently divides his time amongst, reading articles/books, university, and his love of sports.

The words of Malcolm X’s - You Can’t Hate The Roots of A Tree And Not Hate That Tree speech ignited a flame in his heart and mind at the age of 18. Since then, he has dedicated himself to rigid philosophical, historical, and political studies via his library of approximately 60 books.

Among his main influences are Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Ture, Marcus Garvey, Thomas Sankara, Dr Yosef Ben Jochannan, Cheikh Anta Diop, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Clenora Hudson-Weems, Dr. Cornel West, Karl Marx, Socrates, and Lao Tzu.

 

I.G. @TheGambian

Twitter:

@MomodouTaal

@TristanG300

#44 The Global Imprint of Imperialism - Yara Shoufani

What is imperialism? Which countries are imperialist? Listen in as I discuss with all things imperialism with Yara

 

Yara Shoufani is an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement in Toronto. She holds a master's in political science, with a research focus on colonisation and gentrification in Occupied Palestine. 

 

I.G. @TheGambian

Twitter:

@MomodouTaal

@Yaraxsh

#43 An Intro to Claudia Jones - Zifeng Liu

Listen in as Zifeng eloquently and succinctly introduces us to the life of the revolutionary Claudia Jones.

 

Zifeng Liu is an intellectual historian of the 20th-century Africana world with specializations in Black internationalism, anticolonial thought, and Afro-Asian solidarity. His current project "Redrawing the Balance of Power: Black Left Feminists, Mao’s China, and the Making of an Afro-Asian Political Imaginary" explores how Black leftist women’s understandings of race, class, gender, sexuality, and empire evolved as they sought Afro-Chinese solidarity within often difficult geopolitical contexts. His research has been featured in The Economist and CGTN. And his essays and reviews in English and Chinese on Black radicalism and African American political culture have been published in the Journal of Intersectionality, Journal of African American History, Journal of Beihang University, The Paper, Initium Media, and SINA News. Zifeng Liu is currently a doctoral candidate in Africana Studies at Cornell University.

 

I.G. @TheGambian

Twitter:

@MomodouTaal

@Zifeng_Liu

#42 "The Clever Blacks" - Nkazimulo Moyeni

In this weeks episode, I am joined by Nkazi from South Africa in which we discuss the all too often familiar phenomena of the black bourgeoisie/middle class, with a particular focus on the South African post apartheid context. 

 

Nkazimulo Moyeni is a Zulu storyteller who has been blessed with the opportunity to use corporate law, photography and writing as mediums of expressing his narrative. A father and a husband to a loving wife, who ensured that the whole house was silent while we did the podcast, ( it’s important that your listeners know this, or else that will be the last silence I experience)

 

I.G. @TheGambian

Nkosi_nkazi

Twitter:

@MomodouTaal

#41 Let's talk all things politics - Asad Dandia

Got to catch up with none other than Asad as we talk all things politics as it pertains to our current moment 

 

Asad Dandia is a Brooklyn-born writer, organizer, and teacher. He recently graduated Columbia University with an MA in Islamic Studies and holds a BS in social work from NYU. He was a co-plaintiff in the historic 'Raza vs City of NY' lawsuit which challenged NYPD surveillance on behalf of Muslim communities and organizations. He writes on modern Islamic thought, radical/labor politics, and post/de-colonial theory. He is co-host of the New Books in Middle East Studies podcast on the New Books Network and his writing has been featured in Al-Jazeera English, the LA Review of Books, the Washington Post, among other publications. His MA Thesis at Columbia was entitled, “Rethinking Islamic Studies: Muhammad Iqbal’s Philosophy as Decolonial Critique.” 

 

I.G. @TheGambian

Twitter:

@DandiaAsad

@MomodouTaal

#40 Let's talk Pan-Africanism - Dr. Layla Brown

Dr. Layla Brown joins me for another discussion on all things Pan-Africanism. Listen in as we discuss the pan Africanism as defined by Sékou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah, as well the problems with ADOS, Neo-colonialism and much more!

Layla Brown is a member of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party-GC and currently works as an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.  

Layla earned a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University in her home state of North Carolina where her research focused on Black racial identity formation in Latin America and the US and its impact on Black Radical Organising in the era of Black Lives Matter.  She is currently working on her first book manuscript Return to the Source: The Dialectics of 21st Century Pan-African Liberation based largely on her dissertation research.  

Layla spent all of 2020 as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study where her research expanded to examine the crisis of racial capitalism and the COVID-19 pandemic.  In the fall of 2021 she will be a Senior Research Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research. Her most recent scholarly work “The Pandemic of Racial Capitalism: Another World Is Possible” can be found in From the European South: A Transdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Humanities.

 

I.G. @TheGambian

Twitter:

@PanAfrikFem_Phd

@MomodouTaal

#39 What Are Our Sources for Struggle? - Dr. Joy James & Khadijah Diskin

In this episode I speak with Dr. Joy James and Khadijah Diskin in which we talk all things liberation. We spoke on black feminism today, sources of our struggle, how we can develop a language that speaks to the race, class and function dynamics and so much more

 

Joy James is the Ebenezer Fitch Professor of the Humanities at Williams College.

James is author of: Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics; Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals; Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender and Race in U.S. Culture. Her edited books include: Warfare in the American Homeland; The New Abolitionists: (Neo) Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings; Imprisoned Intellectuals; States of Confinement; The Black Feminist Reader (co-edited with TD Sharpley-Whiting); and The Angela Y. Davis Reader. James is completing a book on the prosecution of 20th-century interracial rape cases, tentatively titled “Memory, Shame & Rage.” She has contributed articles and book chapters to journals and anthologies addressing feminist and critical race theory, democracy, and social justice.

She is the recipient of grants, fellowships or awards from: the Fletcher Foundation; the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities; the Rockefeller Foundation; the Bellagio Fellowship; the Aaron Diamond Foundation/Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Ford Foundation; and the Gustavus Myers Human Rights Award.

 

Khadijah Diskin is a PhD Researcher in Psychology. Her research explores the psychosocial dimension of Black students experiences in British higher education, using Lacanian discourse analysis to interrogate the intersubjective convergences of race, coloniality and neoliberalisation.

 

I.G. @TheGambian

 

Twitter:

@MomodouTaal

@FanonIsCanon 

#38 How Can The Left Win? -Dr. Aurelien Mondon

In this episode, Aurelien and I discuss what the left needs to do to win.

 

Aurelien Mondon is a Senior Lecturer in politics at the University of Bath. His research focuses predominantly on the impact of racism and populism on liberal democracies and the mainstreaming of far right politics through elite discourse. His first book, The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia: A Populist Hegemony?, was published in 2013 and he recently co-edited After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, racism and free speech published with Zed. His new book Reactionary democracy: How racism and the populist far right became mainstream, co-written with Aaron Winter, is now out with Verso.

 

I.G. @TheGambian

 

Twitter:

@MomodouTaal

@AurelMondon

 

#37 Our Present Moment - Professor D. G. Kelley

A 3 way conversation with the legendary Robin Kelley. In this episode Christian and I discuss with Robin Kelley on matters related to our present moment and his works. 

Born in New York City, Kelley earned his Bachelor's degree from California State University, Long Beach, in 1983. By 1987 he had earned a masters in African history and doctorate in US history from UCLA.^[8]

After earning his doctorate, he began his career as an Assistant Professor at Southeastern Massachusetts University, then to Emory University, and the University of Michigan, where he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. He later moved to the Department of History at New York University, where he was promoted to the rank of Professor and taught courses on U.S. history, African-American history, and popular culture. At the age of 32, he was the youngest full professor at NYU.^[8] He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.

Kelley has spent most of his career exploring American and African-American history, with a particular emphasis on radical social movements and the political dynamics at work within African-American culture, including jazz, hip-hop, and visual arts.^[9][10][11]

Although influenced by Marxism, Kelley has eschewed a doctrinaire Marxist approach to aesthetics and culture, preferring a modified surrealist approach. He has described himself in the past as a "Marxist surrealist feminist who is not just anti something but pro-emancipation, pro-liberation."^[12]

Kelley has also used the concept of racial capitalism in his work

 

I.G. @TheGambian

@Ctayj

 

Twitter:

@MomodouTaal

@CtayJ

#36 Sham says read 'Pedagogy of The Oppressed' - Sham

What is revolutionary education? Sham and I discuss the current educational system and why reading Paulo Freire's Pedagogy can provide much needed insight into developing a radical education

 

Sham is a Baghdad born Masters in Law graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Development. Sham so the co-founder of A is for Activism, a local grassroots bookclub that focuses on works of radical Marxists

 

I.G. @TheGambian

@CurlyThug

Twitter:

@MomodouTaal

@BitterArab