[TEASER] Alliance of Sahel States Pt. 4: The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara w/ Amber Murrey
Upstream
Upstream
4.9 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
This is a free preview of the episode "Alliance of Sahel States Pt. 4: The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara w/ Amber Murrey." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast
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In this episode, Part 4 of our series on the Alliance of Sahel States, Amber Murrey joins us for a conversation on Thomas Sankara. In this conversation, we discuss Sankara's early life and how his experience with French colonialism shaped his politics and philosophies. We talk about how those philosophies were implemented into policy after a 1983 coup d'etat that put him into the presidency. We explore his fight against French imperialism and for sovereignty of the BurkinabĂ© population. We discuss his assassination, who was responsible, and why it's more important than ever for us to share about his work and uplift his legacy here in the West.Â
Amber Murrey is Associate Professor in Human Geography, Fellow and Tutor at Mansfield College, and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Geography & the Environment at the University of Oxford. taught at universities in Ethiopia, Egypt, Cameroon, the US. Amber is also the editor of 'A Certain Amount of Madness': The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara and Associate Editor of The African Geographical Review.
Further resources:
- A Certain Amount of Madness The Life, Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara
- Thomas Sankara An African Revolutionary, Ernest Harsch
- The International Campaign of Justice for Sankara
- Who Killed Thomas Sankara? by Bruno Jaffré
- Interview with Aziz Fall on the assassination of Thomas Sankara, by Koni Benson and Mukoma Wa Ngugi
- Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa, by Brian J. Peterson
Related episodes:
- Our onging series on the Alliance of Sahel States
- A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations w/ Vijay Prashad
Artwork: Sanyika
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A quick note before we jump in to this Patreon episode. |
| 0:03.7 | Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making upstream possible. |
| 0:08.4 | We genuinely couldn't do this without you. |
| 0:11.2 | Your support allows us to create bonus content like this and provide most of our content for free |
| 0:16.8 | so we can continue to offer political education media to the public and help to build our movement. |
| 0:23.7 | Thank you, comrades. We hope you enjoy this conversation. |
| 0:27.9 | Oh, oh. |
| 0:36.9 | Oh. There is no There is no pure revolution, and it is deeply risky risky and he had to make incredibly challenging decisions in real time |
| 1:04.9 | and that we can continue to learn from the manner in which he was able to remain committed to this sense of needing to be accountable to the people, of needing to live one's life with integrity, and needing to live one's life with an orientation that is absolutely |
| 1:30.3 | faced towards and geared towards and animated by the needs of the people. |
| 1:37.5 | You're listening to Upstream. |
| 1:39.7 | Upstream. |
| 1:40.7 | Upstream. |
| 1:42.1 | Upstream. |
| 1:43.1 | A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. |
| 1:51.5 | I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. |
| 1:54.7 | You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. |
| 1:59.5 | In this case, it comes from nonconformity, |
| 2:02.6 | the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. |
| 2:08.7 | Besides, it took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. |
| 2:15.9 | I want to be one of those madmen. |
| 2:18.3 | These are the words of Thomas Sankara, |
... |
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