ep 110 - The Black Radical Tradition (Part 1) w/ Kazembe Balagun

This Wreckage

Sean KB and AP Andy

Arts, Music

4.2 • 980 Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2020

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we bring you a two part series on the American black radical tradition. Joined by educator and activist Kazembe Balagun we discuss some of the fundamental questions of black marxism and revolution leading to the current day. In this episode we talk about the Haitian revolution, Harriet Tubman, WEB Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Harry Haywood, CLR James and the Johnson Forest Tendency, James and Grace Lee Boggs, DRUM, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the Black Panther Party.

Many of the texts in question can be found in the Communist Research Cluster Black Radical Tradition reader: https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/2020/06/02/black-revolutionaries-in-the-united-states/

Other referenced texts:

CLR James and Grace Lee Boggs - Facing Reality https://libcom.org/files/James%20-%20Facing%20Reality.pdf

Finally Got the News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FarGHAO7h-c

Excellent analysis of Huey P Newton's conception of intercommunalism: https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/06/11/intercommunalism-the-late-theorizations-of-huey-p-newton-chief-theoretician-of-the-black-panther-party/

https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/06/11/intercommunalism-1974/

Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation by Angela Davis - https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/davispoprprblli.html

Viewpoint Mag reader on whiteness:

https://www.viewpointmag.com/2020/08/05/beyond-guilt-and-privilege-abolishing-the-white-race/

Closing song: Joe L. Carter - Please Mr. Foreman

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Antipada where unrest is best. I'm Jamie Peck.
0:12.0	I'm Sean K. B. I'm Andy and we are here with an excellent
0:17.0	guest today his name is Kazimbe Balagoon he is a writer cultural
0:21.8	producer and activist who lives in the Bronx. How you doing, Kazanbei?
0:26.0	I'm doing wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. I was glad to be here.
0:30.0	Thank you for coming. We were talking before this show. You've done a lot of cool things. You want to tell us a little bit more about yourself?
0:38.0	Sure. So once again, my name is Kizimbe Baladun.
0:42.8	I wasn't born with that name, but that name was given to me in 1990s.
0:47.8	I changed my name.
0:49.7	Kizimbe means a philosopher, why is a gifted leader in the Shona language.
0:55.0	And by lagoon means warrior in Europe.
0:59.0	And the last name I took from Quasi by Lagoon who was a member of the Black Panther Party and a member of the Black Liberation Army who was a bisexual freedom fighter who was a who was a who was also a prison activist and an anarchist.
1:17.0	You know, and so since I was a, so, you know, but before I get to that part of the story, you know, I was raised in Harlem.
1:25.0	I'm the son of, you know, I'm the first generation New Yorker, raised one of two parents, he came up to New York during the great migration in
1:35.0	1960s. I grew up in Harlem in lengths in the late 70s. I was born in
1:42.3	late 70s. So you know sort of transformation, you know, of
1:47.5	Harlem through the lens of like to discover your hip-hop, the crack epidemic, all that and all that led to me to be
1:56.2	very politicized. And around 1992 during the Los Angeles Rebellion, you know, I became quickly more politicized at that time.
2:08.0	If you were going up at Harlem at that time in the 19, like the 1990s, you know, saying like Harlem was very Sonic.
2:17.0	So like, you know, so things like, you know, so, you know, the ways that we saw, um, felt, you know the ways that we saw you know revolution and we felt politics was through our ears so
2:29.4	it was through like listening to public enemy listening to like you know
2:33.7	know Malcolm X mixtapes that were sold by like five percenters after school you
	...

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