All Thought Is Black Thought
By Lionel Poorly
All Thought Is Black ThoughtJun 23, 2021
EPISODE #27: The Personal Side of Radical Political Organizing
G challenges O to think less about the political theory of organizing for a moment and think more about the personal events in his life that brought him to identify with other oppressed people and organize to fight back against that oppression. G & O share stories from their experiences that helped radicalize them and the love and joy they experience in struggle.
Episode #26: FILM REVIEW: "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" and August Wilson's Black Life
Episode #25: FILM REVIEW: Black Fatherhood and the Movie "Fences"
Episode #24: Organizing to Survive Capitalism in the Time of Biden, Harris, and Trump
How do we survive capitalism while organizing its end? Thinking about violent events like the Flint water crisis, the police murder of Breonna Taylor, or the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 have many Black radical activists asking: As we organize to bring down the oppressive capitalistic structure, are we preparing ways to amass the resources and capacities we as Black people will need to survive this genocidal structure in the meantime? In this episode, G & O begin to think through these sets of questions. The brothers recorded this episode shortly after the 2020 election was called. The celebrations of November, which would soon be followed with the horrors of January, led the brothers to reflect on that moment, even before white supremacist terrorists tried to violently overturn the election and murder government officials. What the brothers saw, and still see even after the January 6 attacks on the capitol, is a moment way bigger than the election. In this moment there is an opening, a need for big ideas in critical Black thought, including Black self-sufficiency and self-defense, Black conversations about the role of government, surviving within capitalism while working to destroy it, and the importance of radical leadership from the Black poor and working class.
Episode #23: The Homelessness Crisis and Pandemic Capitalism
Episode #22: Jailbreaking Black Thought from the Academy
Episode #21: “Don’t Quit until You Either Win or You Die”: Film Review: "The Spook Who Sat By the Door"
The brothers review the classic Black revolutionary film The Spook Who Sat by the Door, directed by Ivan Dixon and based on Sam Greenlee's novel of the same title. Please find it on YouTube while it's still available!
Episode #20: The 1776 Commission and the Attack on Black Thought
Remember the "1776 Commission"? Started by Donald Trump late in 2020, its intent was to force feed students with so-called "patriotic education" and to counter the 1619 Project of new york times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones. In this episode, the brothers discuss the foolishness of trump's 1776 Commission. They point out that, even though trump lost, the Black intellectuals on the 1776 Commission represent an ongoing problem internal to our communities: Black intellectual misleadership appointed by white people and white interests to lead Black people to ignore our collective experiences and knowledge and to force us to conform our thinking to that which our enslavers and genociders will allow.
Episode #19: REVIEW: "Judas and the Black Messiah" and the Education of Black Leadership
The brothers recorded this review of Shaka King's 2021 film Judas and the Black Messiah a few months before Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield were up for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (which Kaluuya won, but Stanfield should also have gotten an award). The brothers briefly discuss the actors' performances, casting, and writing, but mostly they focus on the film's contribution to Hollywood's long history of depicting Black love and Black radicalism, as well as the Black Panthers' historical role in politically organizing Black street organizations, the force of Black resistance to police murder, and the police infiltration of and war on the Black liberation movement. The brothers also talk about the building of Black leadership capacity through political education and the importance of preparing for self-defense, intelligence, and counter-intelligence capacities in Black movements.
NOTE: The brothers urge people to read Native American Studies scholar Ward Churchill and writer Jim Vander Wall's book Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement and check out episode #12 of this podcast, in which the brothers discussed that book.
Episode #18: REVIEW: "Exterminate All the Brutes" and the Language of Genocide [PART 2 of 2]
Episode #17: REVIEW: "Exterminate All the Brutes" Exposes the white Heart of Darkness [PART 1 of 2]
Episode #16: "Two AKs Up!" Can Django Unchained & 12 Years a Slave Inspire Struggle? [Part 3 of 3]
Episode #15: O'Shea Jackson (Ice Cube) and the Ethics of "Stepping Up"
Episode #14: Is Django Unchained "Working Class" and 12 Years a Slave "Middle Class"? [Part 2 of 3]
Episode #13: Black TV Is Showing Up for Us Just in Time for the Fight!
Episode #12: This Is Not Unprecedented! Black Thought's Lessons for the Present (Fascist) Moment
EPISODE #11: September 11th, 1851: Black Folk Unite and Fight Off Slavehunters
Episode #10: Black August: Why Understanding George Jackson Is Essential to Our Survival Today
Episode #9: How Did We Get Here? Taking the Long View of the Electoral Politics Trap
Episode #8: "It Makes You Feel Like You're Going Crazy"
Episode #7: Comparing Two Films: Django Unchained (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013) [PART 1 of 3]
In the first of 3 episodes, G & O begin a discussion of the films Django Unchained (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013). G explains how fantasies of freedom can be constructed by film, and that his first impression of Django focused on its potential to construct a fantasy of violent resistance to slavery that could be useful for Black liberation. "People's imagination is shaped," G explains. "It's not just that you imagine yourself as being free even if there's no representation of your freedom... Look at how long there's been a representation of Black people being unfree and that being normal." But O begins to ask whose fantasies filmmaker Quentin Tarantino really cares about and serves. TO BE CONTINUED...