Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 18: The Importance Of Being Southern (w/ special guest: Cazembe Jackson)

Episode Date: July 21, 2017

In Episode 18, the Trillbillies report for duty for the upcoming race war, and talk southern socialist politics with Cazembe Jackson, national organizer with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and activist with Black Lives Matter Atlanta.

So how are we gonna do this? You want to do it like NPR style? How's that? Hello everybody. Welcome to the Trillbilly Workers Party podcast. We just wanted to remind you all that we have a Patreon page. No, you should do it like the Wobble. Oh, yeah. Hey, we got a Patreon. Hey. Hey, just come and give us some money.

Just put it in there. some money Just put it in there Just put it in there See we got a box Or we could do it like church Alright everybody This is the part of the show where we pass around The offering The offering plate

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What an old dream. Yeah. But, no, really, give us money. Patreon.com. How do they find us, Tom? Hit us up at HTTP. Well, I guess I'll just do that. You can find us at www.patreon.com

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to the Patreon page and throw us $5. Okay, let's start from the top here. We should put that I got five on it. Oh, that's good. There you go.

Cue it up so we can talk over it, can't we? Or we can add it later. Let's add it later. Let's add it in post-production. Because I'm going to include all of this. Might as well. Anyways. No, really. introduction okay um i'm because i'm going to include all of this might as well um anyways no really you want to stop start from the top for real okay hello everybody sorry i fucked you up hello everybody and welcome to the true billy workers party um your host and your co-host tom sexton joined by terrence ray and tanya turner we just want to

take this opportunity to remind y'all that uh if you like what you do what we if you like we like your job don't quit it i don't want to put my last name i should have done okay all right well here we go here we go here we Here we go. Let's start from the top. Thanks everybody for listening to Trillbilly Workers Party. Blah blah blah. Thanks everybody for listening in to the Trillbilly Workers Party.

If you're a fan of what we do and you want to help us keep doing that and maybe pay our phone bills, you can visit us at Patreon. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trill Billy Workers Party. All one word, no apostrophe. And put five on it.

Put five on it. Or one. Or one or two. Whatever you want. Or 600. You can put 600. That's what we need. We need. You can put 600. Ah. That's what we need.

We need some high dollars on it. Yeah. So, anyways, without further ado, let's start our episode for the week. We have Kazimbe Jackson from Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Yeah, and BLM. And BLM. Third Citizens of Chattanooga. This is the first actual. And BLM. Third Citizens. This is the first actual intro

we've recorded for a show. It does? It feels nice. We've arrived. We've arrived. Anyways, enjoy the show, everybody. Hello. Hello. Hey.

Hey, is this Kaz? Yeah, this is... Hey. Kaz, what's happening? Hey, Kaz. What's happening? Hey, Kaz. What's up? It's hard to hear y'all. Is it? Hold on one second.

Yeah, good to hear. It's amateur hour over here always. Okay, is that better, Kaz? Can you hear us a little bit better now? Yeah, I can hear you. Okay. Good. All right, let me turn that up.

Thanks so much for being on the show with us. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah. How's your day been? It's been good. Everybody's excited because the repeal for Obamacare didn't go through. Yeah.

Yeah. It was a good day. Republicans just running around with their dicks in their hands as usual. Lucky for us. Yeah. We had a local Republican literally get caught with his dick in his hand and got tased over the weekend. We've been celebrating that, too. Yeah.

In a Kingsport Belk department store. It's like you can't make it up. No, I wish we were. I wish we were making it up. It's the party of family values well Kaz so I think you probably are new Tanya but I'm Terrence and Tom so nice to meet you sorry we had to postpone on you last week right before the recording. We got insanity ensued. Our friends recently got married, and then a month later, the groom threw himself off a mountain, essentially. Yeah, he had a bad bike accident, but here we are today.

I hope he's better. Yeah, no, he's doing a lot better. He's doing a lot better. They thought they were going to get out of the hospital today, but I ain't heard of y'all. Yeah, he's out. They got out today? Or they're coming home.

Oh, thank God. Well, so, yeah, I don't know. Let's get this thing started for real. First of all, I wanted to say, Kaz, so Tanya was sending us some, like, I guess, guess like background material on stuff to talk to to talk about on this episode and one of the things one of the things that she sent was this article from i don't know some like i guess right wing or website called Noisy Room. What? Yeah, not a vice

block for vice. No, no. The motto of it, I have it written down, it says, what does it say? The motto is cherish those who seek the truth, but beware of those who find it. But it was an article kind of about you, but it said that you're trying to start

a race war in the south. Let's get to the bottom of this, okay? Are you trying to start a race war in the south. Let's get to the bottom of this, Kay. You trying to start a race war in the south? If so, where do we sign up, Sarge? Where's the recruitment office? I didn't even see that. I can't believe I sent you all that. Well, it was good preparation.

So. If I had hair, I would flip it. What's that? I said if I had hair, I would flip it. I would flip my hair. preparation so what's that well how about you just you know give us a little bit of a primer about your background you know where you live how you got into organizing, the good stuff. Sure. It's all good. So, yeah, I'm Kazembe Mercy Jackson. I live in Atlanta, Georgia right now.

I lived in Tennessee for about 10 years in Chattanooga, and I was originally born and raised in Austin, Texas. And, yeah, I grew up missionary Baptist. Oh, me too. Me too. Yeah. I always say that I don't remember a time where I wasn't organizing. You know, black kid in Texas, you want to have a sleepover?

The best way to get my parents to say yes was, like, I'm inviting somebody to go to Sunday school with me on Sunday. So I was always, like, organizing people to go to church as a kid, but I think organizing in the context of, like, social justice, I did some organizing in college around, like, queer kind of liberation, right, to adopt, gay marriage, that kind of stuff. But then when Trayvon Martin got killed in 2012, his death just struck me in a different way, and it was like, especially when George Zimmerman didn't get, didn't get, you know, like, actually, when he got acquitted.

Yeah. It just, it's like, I feel like I knew that there wasn't a reason to have faith in the criminal justice system, but that just solidified it for me, and it solidified what I should be doing with my life. I went to this rally in Chattanooga that a person, I know Tanya knows her, I don't know if the rest of y'all know her, but Ashley Henderson. Yeah. And she had thrown this rally in Chattanooga. About 500 people came to it, which is a lot for chat.

And at the end of it, she said, if you want to do more than have vigils and hold signs, stick around, and we can talk about how to change uh standard ground laws here in tennessee and i did and we ended up rebuilding an organization um called concerned citizens for justice that's still active uh right now in chattanooga that really um was the city's first uh black-led organization that fights police brutality um in the city um And from there I moved to Atlanta, did a lot of work with Fight for 15, mostly organizing child care workers to get $15 an hour and the right to have a union.

And I also started organizing with Black Lives Matter, explicitly Black Lives Matter Atlanta, which I still do now. And I also have done quite a bit of organizing with Southerners on the Ground, which is a regional queer liberation organization that kind of understands sexuality as it intersects with race and class. So, yeah, that's – oh, and also, I'm obviously a member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which is a huge part of my life and kind of what, like, is where I kind of have developed

my political theory and analysis. And I would say that BLM is really where I put the analysis that I have to practice. Yeah. Damn, you're what my mama calls well-rounded. Basically, too. Yeah.

So, yeah, no, so what is, so Kaz, what to you is socialism? How does, I mean, there's this, okay, so there's this big, I should dial it back a minute. There's this big sort of like debate right now, conversation going on among what you would call liberals who are discovering that they're liberals in the sort of like media punditry, whatever. There's this big discussion over the term neoliberal and then it's, you know, used as like an epithet and all this. Like, how do you define liberalism as opposed to socialism? And I guess the second question to that is, like, all the things that you just listed, queer liberation, anti-racism, and all that,

how does that square with socialism in your critique? And if it does, how does it improve those things? That's a heavy question. Yeah, it is. I was about to say. Through a three-parter out there. I don't think I can answer that, actually. That's all I do.

I like this a lot. I'm going to just do what I normally do. We'll circle back to a lot of this, so don't worry about it. I think, one, there are so many definitions for liberalism, and as a socialist and a Maoist, I think that my definition of liberalism is probably a different one than if you were talking about conservatism versus liberalism I think like when you think about that contrast like conservatives

typically want to keep things the way that they are and what it used to be is that liberals would be the ones that want to change that want things to change for the better for like larger masses people um and so for a long time people associated conservative or republican and liberal with democrats and i think in this age of neoliberalism um it's really hard to tell who is what um because of stuff like austerity like getting rid of um kind of like privatizing everything and not really having any public services for free anymore or wanting to attack those. And so I think as that happens

and we see like conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans all caring mostly about money and power, it's hard to differentiate between the two. But yeah, so I guess that's... So my definition of liberalism is more where Mal kind of talked about combating liberalism, which would be like maintaining... like not addressing issues in organizations or in other kinds of official structures

because you want to maintain a personal relationship or, like, you don't want to cause beef, and so you kind of, like, hold your tongue, but you hold your tongue on things that you really actually care about that are important, but you don't talk about them. that are important, but you don't talk about them. And these are, obviously, I'm giving super basic definitions because I'm pretty basic and a keeper. Well, I asked a very big question, so don't worry about it.

And I'm like, nobody want to hear no dissertation about what it is. But also, socialism, for me, the way I understand socialism is in a very Marxist way. And so I like to say, let's zoom out and not only talk about socialism, but let's talk about the current economic system that we're in now, which is capitalism, hopefully the late stages of capitalism. But we're in capitalism, which is a system that basically commodifies everything everything has a price whether it's property whether it's land air kidneys whatever everything

um is for prices for sale and nobody really cares about the use of it um people care about the value and so it explains why you can have loaf a loaf of bread on the shelf go bad if nobody has money to pay for it and still have millions of hungry people who could have eaten the bread. And so that's capitalism, right? It's evil. There always has to be somebody at the bottom, smaller amount of people at the top. But you always have to have poor people in order for it to function. Socialism is what I like to think of, and not just me, but like the people who I study, like to think of as kind of like a vehicle of change. And so it's like, how do we get from the current economic system that we're in into the one that we would ideally like to see?

I'm a communist, so I would like to see communism at the end of socialism. There are other people who want to see a myriad of other kind of economic structures, anarchists, whatever. people who want to see a myriad of other kind of economic structures anarchists whatever um but for me i'm just i'm one of those folks it's like we are not even there to try to discuss that so i'm not having that fight but like so with socialism it's like we start doing the things that are anti like antithetical i guess to to capitalism so you can you you start seeing more cooperatives where it's like collective ownership of things, where larger groups of folks are determining what their governments do, like through people's assemblies and other kinds of collective groups that govern themselves.

You start seeing like collective living, land trust, just the, I guess the one word kind of description of capitalism, I would say individualism. And so in socialism would just be the opposite of that. And it's like this group of folks, larger, smaller, whatever, but people working together. And so it's about benefiting the whole collective versus, like, individuals in competition.

Yeah. It's kind of useful, and I think that one of the reasons why Tanya wanted to have you on was because we also wanted to talk about the Lumumba campaign. Yeah. And so, I mean, that campaign is kind of useful as a way to explore some of these ideas of like what privatization means and what neoliberalism is and all this. One thing that I had pulled out, like in these times, they had written that the

incumbent candidate, I guess his name is Tony Yarber you could probably tell us tell us a little bit about him but they wrote that his tenure has quote been a study in neoliberal patronage politics that benefits a tiny few at the expense of the many so I kind of just wanted to yeah pivot at this point to talk a little bit about that campaign like what can you tell us about that election and it's sort of broader implications for our current political moment okay so you want me to talk to you about the campaign do you want me to respond to what they said about Tony Arbor I have a bad habit of asking eight questions at once but but yeah no just talk about the campaign a little bit yeah and tell us um like what was at stake going into it i guess yeah okay sure so in order to talk about um

uh his whole name is chokwe antar lamumba but we call him antar folks that that know him because he's the junior um of who we uh refer to as baba chokwe uh lamumba um baba is just a term that black folks use as a kind of like a term of honor for older men and um and and he passed away uh in 2014 and so and he was mayor at that time, right? He was mayor. And that's what I was going to say. In order to talk about this election, it feels like we have to talk about Barbara Chokwe's election. Barbara Chokwe was this civil rights attorney, black nationalist, revolutionary, one of the co-founders of New african people's organization

republican africa malcolm x grassroots movement so he was just like a in the you know grassroots um black nationalist 30 years deep um kind of in the work uh moved to jackson as a political um like out of political discipline, understanding that Jackson was in the heart of the Black Belt South, and really felt like any organization that has an agenda for black liberation has to have an agenda for the South. And so he moved his whole family to Jackson and lived there for, you know, decades, raised Antar and Rekia there. And in 2012, I believe, is when he ran for city council, and he won.

And the whole idea of him running for city council was because the people's assemblies decided that he should be the one to run. And so they held more people's assemblies throughout the city when it was time to run for mayor, and he ran. He won. Then seven months into his tenure, he had a heart attack and died. And so immediately, like a month after his father passed away, Antar ran for mayor then three years ago and he lost he lost to tony arbor who um tony arbor was a familiar name he was on the city council already uh but he's born and raised in

jackson he has a lot of family who live there and in i was at canvas during that campaign three years ago and a lot of the people who i talked to who said they were going to vote for tony arbor said they were voting for him because he was their cousin or somebody that he went to school with. But nobody really said, I like his plan for the administration or anything like that. It was more out of obligation. But Antar ran on the People's Platform, which is the same platform that his father ran on. And so he spent the last hymn along with the other folks on the committee to elect Chuck Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the folks at Cooperation Jackson, the Grassroots Movement, and a lot of other folks in Jackson worked for the last

three years at, one, building up Antar so that folks would know who he was, but also having people's assemblies, educating folks in the community. There were mass canvases for multiple weekends over the last three years. Other organizations brought in to do cross-movement relationship building, folks to really kind of invest their time and energy in Jackson. And so when this election happened, I think so many people had donated money and time. Maybe a lot of it was based off of the love for Baba Chokwe.

Some of it was the love for the People's Platform and just really the opportunity to see something like participatory governance happen in a southern city but a city in such a racist state like mississippi of all places um for that because that's like the belly of the beast and um so yeah so a lot of people put in a lot of time i happen to be one of those people who's blessed to be able to go down a lot um during this campaign about four or five times and really kind of help hold down some of the media and communications like on Facebook and stuff. And, yeah, and Antar, he blew the other folks in the primary out of the water. Oh, yeah. That's like 55% of the vote he got, right?

Yeah. So much so that he didn't have to do a runoff. Even his father, who was much more well-known in the city, had to do a runoff in order to win. But Antar basically had the primary election. He won that. to win. But Antar basically had the primary election. He won that. And then he got like 93 percent of the vote in the general election. And so, you know, by far, like a landslide, that the folks of Jackson decided who they wanted to lead. And one of the slogans that he ran on was, when I become mayor, you become

mayor. And he took that very seriously. And the folks that put him in office took it very seriously. So there is a people's administration, aside from his cabinet, whose job is to make sure that the desires of the people of Jackson are met by Antar. And he's got some folks who I know a few of the folks who are on that committee, and the things that they're doing right now is kind of like going out and talking to folks in the neighborhood about what they want to see Antar doing in his first 100 days of office. They have been doing that and really trying to talk to people about, like, what power

and control that the mayor actually has to do things so they know what things to tell him to do versus what other avenues for the other things that they have concerns about, but they can close up those avenues also. So it's really about not only about listening to the people, but also making sure that they're informed enough to be able to tell you what they want. Yeah, that's beautiful. You've mentioned a couple times now the people's assemblies, movement assemblies, and participatory budgeting and similar things. I've been lucky enough to be at a few Southern Movement assemblies over the past few years, and most recently in Chattanooga, where we spoke.

But when I come back from them, I'm riding such a high, but I often find it difficult to describe, even to Tom and Terrence. I've tried before exactly what happens because it's such a visual it's just such a full-body visual experience you know and just to be just to like build a small community with people in those spaces and so just for clarification since we've referenced it a few times I don't think it's an easy thing to describe, but can you describe the assembly model for us? Yeah, I think the people's assemblies that have happened in Jackson compared to the Southern Movement assemblies that you're talking about,

they're a little different. So with the people's assemblies in Jackson, I've been to a few people's assemblies in Chattanooga and also here in Atlanta. Those typically involve going into a specific neighborhood. It could be a zip code. It could be a ward or district, however they have the neighborhood sectioned off in the city. But you go into an area you invited many people that you know that can come to it to come there typically is an agenda of things that

you want people to vote on or to discuss but a lot of the times even that agenda has been built by polling the neighborhood about what problem or what issues are going on and then you really just give people the opportunity to speak about the issues, but then you break up into groups and kind of drill down in the small groups, the discussions that get had, some people might say, well, we like having the police around because we feel safe because they're there there might also be some people in that group that say no police actually make me feel unsafe and so and then we synthesize it and from that you could get something that's like people are feeling unsafe in their community and so then you you have you continue to split up into these different groups to keep drilling down the question, which could ultimately come to something like the plan is to figure out how to protect and defend our community,

but it started out from a problem of police presence in neighborhoods. With the movement assembly, it's very similar. it's very similar it's a very similar um decision making uh process we're starting with this wide um kind of um broad uh amount of topics like there might be three or four at a movement assembly of things that you want to drill down about how um to act or how to move on it and it's a very collective decision making process that's very similar the biggest difference for me about like a movement assembly and people's assembly is not just uh not just uh um the size of the group but also the types of um the types of decisions that will get made uh so like with the southern movement assembly it's a regional assembly and a lot of

the folks that are on the governance council usually represent all of the organizations that are part of the Movement Assembly, and they meet every week all throughout the year. And the assembly is usually an annual event. And so you have folks year-round building and implementing the campaigns that are decided on at the assembly. And they try to spread that throughout the region, but you can imagine in the south with so many rural places and folks spread out,

it doesn't all the time end up reaching everyone throughout the year. And so the assembly is kind of a way to kind of come back and collect information about what has happened throughout the year as well as make plans for the next year. And the People's Assembly is usually things that are more kind of close to the needs for people's everyday kind of needs. Like, for example, a decision that came out of the People's Assembly in Jackson was a 1% tax increase, but they agreed to raise their taxes by 1% so that they could get the potholes in the city fixed right away. And so it's usually

something that's more close to home, whereas with the movement assemblies, because it's a larger group of folks, it's about campaigns to build, you know, like a plan for something that's really large that's going to change the conditions for a lot of people. Yeah. And so, like, you know, as you've kind of said that the these assemblies, people's assemblies are a tested and, you know, like a tried and true method that we've been using for years now that we see works to move us out of late capitalism, as you mentioned, right? Like as a process in this toward socialism, to whatever ends people, the world that people envision. And so what do you feel like is some of the holdup where that where participatory governing isn't happening, which is, you know, basically most places. So even here in Wattsburg, there's been, you know, trinkling talks of some some smaller participatory budgeting. And it just it just like fizzlesles out it just hasn't taken off um and so I guess

I'm just wondering if you would share just a little bit about what you think some of the initial challenges are to get people's assemblies off the ground um yeah I think well I mean I know and I think I think y'all know, too, that the people who are in power benefit from capitalism. They benefit from all of the systems that are in place, including systemic racism, you know, patriarchy, all of these things. And so the folks who are the richest, the richest, whitest folks that are in power, and not just white people, everybody that's rich and that's in power, especially in the South, they are benefiting. They're benefiting from the type of budgeting that we have. Most of these city budgets, over half of the budgets go to the police department or some other kind of repressive entities or go to, like, other, like, things that don't have to do with taking care of the masses. budgeting or a people's administration or whatever the folks at the top um who are the few they they don't it's not like they don't they don't end up getting their needs met they get

their needs met but it takes money out of their pocket because it's like you know we have enough we have enough their scarcity is a myth of capitalism there is enough resources to take care of everybody but that means some of these larger cats got to let go of some of it, and they don't want to. And so they make all kinds of rules and pass laws, create systems. When we talk about systemic racism, I'm talking about, like, the electoral cards,

like, all of these things that are set up in place to keep a certain amount of people and a certain type of person in power making the decisions and calling the shots. And so it's hard. It's hard to switch it. And so, like, in Jackson, for example, that's the reason that they went for the mayoral office versus, like, governor or, like, a state representative or something like that because the idea of the people's assemblies and even the movement assemblies is like local power um local power and building up is an easier way when you have less money um and so the the the mumba campaign both of them ran

off of like they um the newspaper was trying to be shady about Antare, like, turning in his donation records or whatever, like the day before the election. But it ended up that the reason that the Lumumba campaign hadn't turned in their donations that day was because they had gotten about $100,000 in PayPal donations like the last three days before. Wow.

That were like $50, $100, stuff like that that so this campaign was really funded by regular people with regular jobs we had to wait for their payday to be able to donate um which i think is a lot right yeah and so it's like we that's what i mean when i'm saying like scarcity is a myth that capitalism sees us if all of us give fifty dollars for something we can do a lot and that's what happened in Jackson. Like a lot of people just gave, I know I gave a, I gave a significant amount, but I gave like $25 at a time over a period of three years. And so it's like, you know, we, we have the resources to do it. Um, but, uh, it takes, it takes some kind of, you have to convince people that we have the power and, like, that we have a plan that will actually help us to be able to leverage our power.

And we can't do that on Facebook. We can't do that just by, you know, like, writing these catchy think pieces or whatever. Like, we actually have to go and, like, knock on people's doors and have conversations with them, build relationships with them. If folks need a ride to the grocery store, have a relationship strong enough to be able to take them to the store or watch their kids. You know what I mean? Like, build actual relationships. That's what they did in the civil rights movement.

That's what they've done in other countries when it has been time to build resistance. It can't just be about us talking to each other once a week at a meeting, but we have to actually get to know each other and build with each other. And that's when people start trusting plans and start trusting leadership, when they can actually see you practicing the politics that you talk about. Practice liberation. Kaz, it sounds like you're saying the retweets aren't going to get us to the promise line. I think they help.

I'm a fan of morality of tactics. That's one of my favorite things to say. I'm like, if Twitter is your thing, tweet all day. But do that if you have the ability to actually go outside and tweet while you're actually doing something else, do that.

But I don't hate on Twitter. You know, I'm not hating. Usually. I got politicized on Twitter. The way I found out about the Trayvon Martin rally was because I tweeted about it. And so, you know, I think that it definitely serves a purpose. Folks are getting all kinds of ideas about the books to read and the people to talk to, videos to watch and stuff like that from social media. I mean, I, you know, I'm a member of Black Lives Matter,

and Black Lives Matter would not be an organization or a movement if it hadn't been for the ability to create hashtags. Right. You know, I think social media definitely plays a part, but social media is about mobilizing. Right. Mobilizing does not get power. That just is not something

that that happens right and even during the civil rights movement like rallies and marches is not what got power that was to scare people to say listen to these folks on what we have to say but there was actually lawyers and strategists and stuff like that were saying this is the policy that we want or these people are not leaving you know know what I mean? And so it's like we need everybody all hands on deck. We got lessons to learn from you, Kaz. We usually just use our platform for dirty jokes and harassing journalists. Listen, I'm about that life, too. One thing we wanted to ask you about, Kaz, is just to pivot a little bit,

is we talked about what a successful left campaign looks like with Lumumba and Jackson. We also want to talk about what an unsuccessful, and I hesitate to call it a left campaign, looks like down there in Georgia with the Ossoff campaign. Getting your thoughts on that. I definitely think it was unsuccessful. Gee.

What makes you say that? Y'all petty. You're trying to have me on a record. That's true. There was a lot of folks, actually. There were quite a few folks, mostly labor folks that I know, that were really supportive, actually. And I don't think he's not a bad guy, obviously.

And of the options that we had, it would have been better for him than other folks. But, like, yeah, I think what we learned from his campaign, I think we also, it's a very similar lesson that we learned from the Bernie Sanders campaign, too, is, like, if you want to build enough power to shift things, and I don't necessarily know that that was his goal. I think he just wanted to be in a hospital. If you want to shift power for real change, you have to have race analysis that is central to your campaign. And if not not it's not

it's not going to work um and you can't you can't add it on at the last minute and like say the right thing but it has to organically be a part of what you're trying to do and if not it's not going to work especially in the south especially in atlanta. A lot of places, but yeah. Yeah, we were curious. I think it's funny this guy's taking a lot of heat for his fundraising

because they were sending out like the DNC was sending out all these like desperate emails and we've made the joke on Twitter

that it was almost like these televangelists on TV that used to say like, if you don't send me money then God's gonna call me home

or whatever the case may be. And it kind of devolved into that. But I could appreciate your view of it from where you're at. So earlier this year, Kaz, you got to build a little global community traveling overseas. Is that right? Oh, yeah. I went to the U.K. Yeah, I saw MTV covered it.

So you're basically a rock star now, I guess. I guess. That's just your cross to bear. I don't think so. I don't know. You know, yeah. I mean, it was, I mean, it was interesting.

Black Lives Matter, the global network, has been building relationships with quite a few organizers in different countries, but in the UK, we have been building this relationship with this group, National Union of Students, or the NUS,

which is a really progressive student union in the U.K. They've got thousands of members. I can't remember off the top of my head how many members, but they're the largest student union over there. And so they had this summit called Trump, Brexit, and Beyond, and they asked for me to come and speak about what was happening in the United States with Trump and how it, like, what the comparisons were to Brexit. And there were a few other folks that spoke at the summit,

and then there were, like, workshops and stuff like that. And then we went on a speaking tour to a few universities in the U.K. And really just kind of talked about the way that BLM organizes in the states, like, relationship building. A lot of the students got to ask questions and stuff like that. A lot of the students got to ask questions and stuff like that. There is a BLM UK chapter that is building. So we got to talk with them a little bit and kind of build with them for a few days.

And just the context of blackness is just different in the U.K., but then also just like the way that structural racism shows up, the way that police brutality happens, it's just very different. And so, for example, like most of the police, unless they are guarding a member of parliament, they don't usually have guns. a member of parliament, they don't usually have guns. So most of the interactions with people when it comes to police brutality, especially death, is death in custody. So people are not usually getting shot on sight like the way they do in the U.S., but a lot of the deaths are just as brutal because it's like they are getting beat with billy clubs to death or whatever, and there has not ever been one police officer uh in history of the uk that's been charged um with a death like criminal charges with the death

uh policing for for like a death in custody um and so there are organizations that are organizing this as the survivors uh the families of the victims of police brutality in the UK, and they support each other by going to the inquest and stuff like that, where basically it's like they decide the cause of death for the person that died in police custody, and even if they decide that the police officer is the cause of death, that still doesn't bring charges against them. That's a whole other process. And so, you know, it was just kind of learning about what it's like to be black

in other parts of the world and seeing what the differences were and then also what the similarities were. But that trip changed uh life and way of thinking about a lot of things um but i think the the thing um that stands out to me is the most relevant to bring up here with you all is a lot of the like on my bio all the time it's the first thing that it says is black, but then it says southern. After that, and I always just have felt like it's really important for me to be identified as a southerner, because I think that says a lot about how I organize, about who I am, about what my personality will be, if I'm going to eat your food or not, you know?

That kind of thing. Right? You know, like, you're southern, so, like like yeah you offer us something to eat we're gonna eat it we're gonna taste it and be nice about it like it says something to be a southerner but when i got and i've never had a question about why southerner is on my bio but when i got to the uk everyone wanted to know what what why it mattered that i was from the south and they're like you're from the states and i was like yeah but I'm from the Southern part of the United States, and that matters.

And so it just really made me do a lot of thinking about my environment that I've grown up in and kind of learned to organize in and how much of the environment has affected the development of my analysis, as well as the books and the, you know, the other theory and stuff like that that I've read in the practice. And because I would have normally said that organizing is kind of the sum of theory and practice, but I would think now that I would probably describe it as a sum of theory and practice and environment.

Yeah, for sure. That's so interesting. The only time I've been out of the country, I went to London, too, a couple summers ago and then spent a bunch of time in Wales. But they pinned me immediately. As soon as I would start talking, they'd be like, are you from the American South? And they just looked disgusted. They were just disgusted with this. That was the most immediate.

I thought I was going to go over there and be this exotic bird and get laid and have this great vacation. And people were like, oh, God, this is just disgusted with me. Oh, Lord. great vacation and people were like oh god this is disgusting oh lord um i had another question that totally escaped me now um i want to backtrack just a second um you were saying using bernie sanders as an example you can't run a campaign like that without also having a sort of robust race analysis. Could you explain a little bit what that looks like in combination with socialist politics? Does that make any sense? Is that too broad of a question?

No, I think it fits um it fits for me so like you know if i was talking about the the the reason that i'm a member of freedom road um socialist organization is because when we talk about the fight for socialism national oppression is at the center of our theory and so it's like we understand that either folks have been oppressed um it's either either you've been oppressed you know there's there's black folks there's indigenous folks there's uh chicano folks who have been um whose nations existed in this um in this country that have been oppressed by um by this by this country and then there's also folk who have lived in other places some of those folks have come to the u.s

but either way they've been affected by u s imperialism uh... an oppression at this uh... tempted in that way for the other press nationalities or you know so that the national oppression. And so when we talk about black people, when we talk about other folks of color, we believe that in order for us to be able to shift society into, you know, to get to socialism, that the most directly impacted folks, directly impacted from capitalism and white supremacy um are the ones that will lead that and the reason you know i think i think is is

okay it's not obvious i think the reason is obvious but i think the reason for like the most directly impacted people um leading that fight because like when you think about when you think about a poor even a a poor white woman, for example, who has got a couple of kids and is trying to make it, her understanding of capitalism and why it's wrong and why another system is necessary, organically, without any theory, without any background in education, she's already going to understand based on her experience why something different than capitalism is necessary. And when you explain to her what actually goes down in capitalism and what life could be like under socialism, she is going to be much more motivated and have more at stake

in order to fight for it. And so when we talk about who we think will be leading those kind of things, we are talking about folks who are kind of at the intersections of a lot of things. And so in communism, there's quite a few folks who talk about, like, united fronts and things like that. In Freedom Road, we do talk about a united front that we feel needs to be built, and it's called the Strategic Alliance. There's a few people who talk about the Strategic Alliance. And what that is is a united front of working class, like the multinational working class movement combined with the press nationality one. And so you've seen kind of a united front like that be pretty successful

when you think about 5 for 15, because in 5 for 15, the majority of the folks who are organizing within Fight for 15 are poor, black and brown people. But they're not only fighting for a living wage. You typically see them when they're speaking or any other campaign are centered around race and a living wage, because it doesn't matter if you have $15 an hour if your kid gets shot with impunity, right? And so, yeah, I'll keep, I guess I'm being long-winded about that, but I guess that's

what I mean. And so, like, if you, you tend to have, there's a number of even socialists and other leftists where you have folks who want to be like, we need to deal with the economic system first, or like class is the most important issue. And that's what a lot of Bernie folks said. And that's what a lot of people say, is that once we can get rid of capitalism, then we can deal with everything else. But here's the thing.

Capitalism in the United States started with black people. Black people, enslaved Africans, were the first capital. We were the first ones to be the—we were the stock that was getting exchanged. And so you can't separate something that's inextricably linked. Race and capital has always been linked in the United States, and so you can't attack one without attacking both. And that's in anything. When you are trying to build people power,

if you're trying to build people power in the South, the most black people in the country reside in the South. So you're not going to build power without censoring black people, without censoring other people of color, without censoring women and queer and trans people, because we're the masses. And, you know, that's it. Like, we're the masses, and, like, we actually are the ones who have –

we actually do have the power, even though sometimes it seems like we don't. We do. We just are learning how to leverage it. Yeah. Amen. Yeah. No, that's a good one. Let the choir say amen.

Amen. Yeah, well, thank you for that, Cass. Thank you so much. And even you mentioned that. You got Tanya in tears over here, Cass. for that, Kaz. Thank you so much. And even you mentioned that. You got Tanya in tears over here, Kaz. I know, I know. Well, what I think is so helpful is that the way you talk about these things are ways that I can talk to my mom about these things, you know? And I don't really get that from the retweets.

I'm not getting that from um even the books i'm reading and i struggle to figure out how to talk to my mom about stuff like this and just people like my mom i guess um my mama too yeah yeah well i think or go ahead i was gonna say that's it that's part of it it's like it's it's you know, I think that's a great calibration, the relationship with my mom, my grandma, my nieces and nephews. It's like if they don't understand what you're talking about and what you're fighting, they're the people. You know, we always are talking about we want to be fighting for the people, but you know people.

They relate to you. And if they don't understand the work you're doing, you probably need to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to talk to your folks about it. So if you're in a relationship with them, I hear so many of our elders talk about all the time for multiple different reasons about why you need to have relationships with people who are not a part of the movement. And if y'all could see me, I put movement in quotation marks. But you need to have people who are your friends who are outside of that for so many different reasons. But a good reason is so they keep you grounded.

They keep you grounded. And it's like you can use all these words that everybody else who is an organizer and who is in movement knows or who has had the privilege to read those books. But, like, the Chinese Revolution was won for multiple reasons. And people say Mao was crazy or whatever, but Mao wrote the Little Red Book at a sixth-grade level, a sixth-grade reading level, so that peasant farmers could understand what he was saying. And that's how they won. And so, you know, I'm just like, that's how, you know, this is how the spread of right-wing populism happened in this country and across the globe also. But these folks are speaking in really accessible language. And so it's like, y'all want to continue to prove who's the most revolutionary and who's read the most books,

or you want to win power. Right. Because people are listening to what they can understand. Yeah, you're absolutely right. There is like an element of like sort of Hipster culture involved with it And also I think Liberal Corporate power structures really benefit from

That sort of level of gatekeeping Of using that sort of language Because they don't actually want To change anything You know they just want to remain the sort of Loyal opposition and not actually Do anything with the power that they have and it's so insane because it's like

all of these folks especially in the south will swear to you that all of these policies they'll swear that they love to use the bible or Jesus or Christianity as the reason for these policies and, like, wanting to keep everything the same. But one of the most beautiful things that I've learned about biblical history is that there was not ever one prophet in the entire span of the Bible who fought to keep things the same. Every single prophet fought to change something for the better of the Bible who fought to keep things the same. Every single prophet fought to change something

for the better of the people. It was like just like the second greatest commission to Christians. And so it's like, if you actually are standing up for biblical views and y'all are the party that cares about people in kind of like a religious way, why are you not fighting for change for the least of these? Because that's what it says. And so I just, you know, I just, I find it hard to take any of them seriously. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I like you saying that talking to your mom is a good calibration before, because I definitely do. I often will say, well, you know, you can say this all the time, but I don't, my mom is not, I don't think this is bullshit. Like my mom's not gonna care what, about what you're saying. And I don't even know how to, how to translate this in a way

that she would even give a damn about because you're not making any sense. But the most recent example, which I was telling the boys about before we gave you a call, we sense um but the most recent um example which i was telling the boys about before we gave you a call we were just shooting the shit and because of an earlier episode i mentioned pegging on an earlier episode and my mom heard this word's fixing to go off the rails cast we've had this high level discourse and now it's getting ready to go down here and i had to explain to my mom pegging yeah i had to tell my mom what pegging was hey i don't know if i know what pegging well let me tell you how i told my mama so i said well mom it's just when you know you have sex with a man with a strap on or a woman or anyone with a strap on.

So I'm sure you do know. But my mom was like, what are you even talking about? You know, I don't even know what you're doing. Anyway, but the point is, there are a lot of a lot of there's a lot of practice out there for how we can get that calibration just right about talking to our moms. just right about talking to our moms. I didn't know that that is what they call it. I just thought that anytime you're, I thought that was just anal.

Is that just not anal? Yeah, but maybe pegging is more. That's just because masculinity is fragile and they don't want to call it homosexual unless they're gay. There's a power dimension to it, I believe. Maybe it's a feminist term. I don't know. Yeah.

But yeah. I just... I do, like, one of the things that I... that drew me to not just the sort of cause and philosophy of socialism but it as an actual force of movement is that like it operates on very simple premises and one of which is that all human beings want to be free of oppression you don't have to have an academic degree or or like some robust um like framework of theory or anything

to understand that. It's just a basic truth about the human condition. All human beings wanna be free of oppression. And I like that idea that you speak in simple truths to people's material conditions and they listen to it and it resonates with them. And the right, you're exactly right, Kaz. The right is very good at speaking in that language with that rhetoric and those

sort of like rhetorical techniques yeah it's just a good it's just a sort of observation about anyways anyways yeah um yeah they're good at it they're also good they're also good at this whole like over what do you call it over saturation of just like nonsense but like we don't even get we're getting numb uh hearing that trump has done something outrageous because it's like something outrageous happens every day yeah that's right so we don't even it's like something outrageous happens every day. You don't even really get a serious response from folks when something outrageous does happen and he does

because he does something literally every day. Right. Yeah, you just get desensitized to it. Absolutely. Well, we've taken up quite a bit of your time already a good hour do you all have

anything else you want to ask or talk about well I just wanted to you talked a lot about your work with BLM and so I just wanted to ask well what I wanted to kind of get at is asking you some examples of how you practice liberation like how you enjoy yourself

and what you like to do to have a good time because I think we can easily forget how to have a good ass time but we don't forget but my lead into that actually was that BLM just celebrated its fourth birthday yeah and so that was very exciting. And I can't believe I didn't know this already. But so obviously BLM is a cancer or sun sign, obviously. And so did you do any special celebration around the birthday? that we all have been working on for the last few months where we talked about different ways that we, like each chapter gave a report. We talked about the work that we've been doing over the last few years, but also how we celebrate Black joy,

how we build community with each other and stuff like that. So that came out on our birthday. And then we also share, blm shares his birthday with byp 100 which is a black-led youth organization um that a lot of us are pretty close to also and we all work together in movement for black lives the coalition um and so we share our birthday with them and uh and so you know we had had like some fundraising goals. Folks made videos and stuff like that to share with other people, just kind of like being silly and talking about Black Lives Matter. Also, it was a heavy day because it was also the day that Sandra Bland

was killed two years ago. And so, you know, we, you know, it's dialectical or dialectics is kind of like, you know, it's, one thing good is happening and something bad is kind of happening at the same time. And so, you know, we recognize that we have to kind of hold those contradictions. But, yeah, I think I felt an immense feeling of pride and joy on our fourth birthday, because BLM is very visible, and visibility doesn't always translate to wins or to people giving us just positive feedback. We also get a whole lot of negative feedback, and not just from people who don't like BLM because we are black, but just kind of from everywhere. And so it felt good to be able to say, this is what we've been doing and what we've done over the four years,

and we're proud of ourselves. And we kind of gave ourselves a pat on the back. And it felt nice to not be worried about what people would think if we bragged on ourselves a pat on the back. And it felt nice to not be worried about what people would think if we bragged on ourselves a little bit. So, yeah, it was fun. And we're continuing the celebration. We'll keep having some things come out over the next couple of weeks. Awesome. Thank you, Kaz.

Could you tell us all the ways that people can learn more from you, get in touch with you, or whatever you would like to share? Your Twitter handle, if you have one. Oh, now you're going to make me seem old. I don't even know where my Twitter is.

You don't want to follow me on Twitter. I'm pretty sure my Twitter is... I don't know. I think it might be Brothers in Pay. I'm not sure. See, I should have wrote that down. But you can find me on Facebook. I use Facebook pretty much every day.

That's probably the best place to follow me anyway. And I'm just Kazembe Jackson or Kazembe Murphy Jackson. And, yeah, that's the best place. Or, obviously, what was that place you said? Noisy Room. Noisy Room. Go there. You can learn more about how I'm starting to race.

Had you seen that article? No, I haven't. I'm starting to race. Had you seen that article? No, I haven't. I'm going to go find it, though. It made me tear it out of my face. Yeah, hell yeah. Amazing. Well, Kazimbe, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks so much, guys.

It was fun. And we hope to meet you in real life, IRL, very soon. Let's make it happen. It was my pleasure. Thank y'all. All right. Yeah, for sure. Have a good evening.

Thank you. You too. Bye. Bye. Bye. Love, love, love, love Long as we got Love, love, love, love Long as we got Down with these niggas

Don't love these niggas I don't stop these niggas Do it for fun Don't take it personal Personally, I'm surprised you Called me after the things I said Skirt, skirt on niggas Skirt up on niggas Skirt down, you acting like me Acting like we

Was it more than a summer fling? I said farewell, you took it well Promise I won't cry or bust, spill milk Give me a paper towel, give me another valium Give me another hour or two, hour or two Why you bother me when you know you don't want me? Why you bother me when you know you got a woman? Why you hear me when you know you got a woman? Why you hear me when you know you know better? Know you know better Know you cruel better than you do

Got me looking for ya I be looking for ya Got me looking forward to weekends But you baby, but you baby But you baby, but you We do whatever we want Go wherever we want Love whatever we want, go wherever we want, love however we want, it don't matter You do whatever I want, get whatever I want