Ajamu Baraka - Remix Morning Show / Black Liberation Media Interview - The Uhuru Three Trial (2024)

Kamau Franklin: Yay. Ms. Keynes, do you want to do the intro?

Erica Caines: Yes, I can do the intro.

Kamau Franklin: You should do the intro.

Erica Caines: Yes. Peace, everyone. We are here. We are privileged to be here with the Ajamu Baraka, who is the coordinating... Oh my God, because I was going to say he's a national coordinator, but that is not you. He is the chair of the coordinating committee of the Black Alliance for Peace. So we're going to be talking to Ajamu about the recent Black Alliance for Peace statement on the Uhura III and the verdict that came out, and also some more about the overall repression of left and African voices that are pushing back against repression. And Ajamu, I also know that you are just returning from Iran, so we want to also ask you some questions about that. And I do want to sneak in a question about Medi and Jill.

Kamau Franklin: We have many things, many things.

Erica Caines: So we, you know, we have a lot to talk about. But how are you, Adjamo?

Ajamu Baraka: I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Thank you so much for inviting me. And, you know, I kind of assumed that the air doctor had made the connection between Big Daddy Kane and myself. That's why he clicked that button, you see. You know, because that is my error, in a way. So... You know, that's where we were coming from at that point, you know, before, you know, things got corrupted. So, no, I'm glad to be here. We have a lot to talk about. And we definitely can stay a little bit longer than 20 minutes. But, you know, and we have to because there's so many things happening, so many things that impact our people and impact the world. I mean, everything is happening so quickly. I mean, things we talk about. and decisions we make on a Monday sometimes get changed the very next day. That's how fluid and dynamic this moment really is.

Kamau Franklin: So I can start by putting the statement up, and we can be starting with the Uhu 3 decision. And you, Ajamo, you were there at the court. You guys do have a statement out. What should we learn from what just took place? Let me start that way.

Erica Caines: That's a good way to start it off.

Ajamu Baraka: What we... What was reconfirmed was the seriousness of the state in targeting Black liberation forces. The state understands, because they learn from their experiences, and that's what we have to learn from our experiences also, that when you target and attempt to undermine the leadership of Black liberation forces, you are in fact undermining the potential power of the left in general. in the U.S. And so this prosecution was, in fact, sort of a shot across the bow, if you will, of the Black liberation movement and the left in general. It was meant to silence and to intimidate. And the reality of that, I think, was reflected in the fact that the most serious charge that was leveled at the Uhuru movement, and by extension, the African People's Socialist Party, was was they were acquitted on. They were acquitted on that charge of being so-called foreign agents or agents of a foreign power, in this case, the Russians. But then, interestingly enough, convicted on this weird charge of conspiracy. We know how they use this conspiracy. I know you in particular, Kamau, knows how the state uses this conspiracy charge to loop in and collect all kinds of subjectivist nonsense to suggest that people are in collaboration and to win a conviction. In this case, it's even more bizarre because if the evidence was not there to suggest that there was some type of collusion between the elements of the Russian government and the Uhuru movement, then what is the conspiracy conviction based on? It's almost like there's no evidence to suggest that you are colluded, but the conspiracy conviction says what you wanted to. You were conspiring to become agents of the Russian Federation. So this is a very troubling, this is actually even more troubling than if they would have been convicted of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. This notion that they can pull together all of this disparate information, commentary, political opposition and claim that its genesis emanates from foreign sources. Very, very dangerous for all of us as individuals and as organizations that have connections with people's movements and sometimes various states around the world. All of us are now, really, we always have been vulnerable, but even more so with this conviction until it is, in fact, overturned. And we think that that is going to happen. Now, being in the courtroom was a very interesting experience because the judge was a Trump appointee, and it seemed to me that things may have happened after I had to leave, but there seemed to be some sensitivity on the part of the judge to the frivolous character of that prosecution, in particular, the fact that the defense was framed as a defense of free speech. And we know that the kinds of moves being made by the neoliberal state against the Trumpian right and the sensitivities that have now developed among that element, that seemed to be somewhat reflected in the attitude of the judge, at least initially. So it was a very interesting thing to watch unfold Those first few days of testimony clearly revealed that there was nothing there. There was nothing there. They were bringing in all these FBI agents and specialists who talked about the process of gathering information, but couldn't really nail down what this specific element was supposed to be to indicate some type of collusion, obstruction, direction, or whatever coming from the Russian Federation. You know, this is what we have to be aware of. This is how the state moves. It's very closely comparative to what happened right after the Second World War, the Second Imperialist War, where again, African forces were at the center of the repressive attempts to try to impose collaboration with the state by undermining domestic opposition to the U.S. a desire to extend itself and to consolidate his empire using military means and other means. And to do that, you have to have containment within the domestic sphere also. And then who comes, who's prosecuted? Boyd at 81, Omar Yusuf Till is 82. The issue of peace becomes a primary target. You have elements of the left who were prosecuted because of their membership in the Communist Party and their desires to raise issues like recharged genocide. So nine out of the 19 people who ended up going to prison in the early 1950s were, in fact, Africans. So this kind of containment process, this kind of intense repression targeting the African community, and African revolutionaries is part of the playbook. And that's what we see unfolding today.

Erica Caines: To your point, 1951, W.E.B.D. boys, Paul Rosen got his passport taken. And we're seeing currently with Lincoln, Lincoln just within the last week made that statement that RT News is attached to the Russian government. And that African Stream is being paid by RT News and the Russian government. And since then, we have seen African Stream get removed from YouTube and all other platforms. We've also seen RT be removed. And most recently, Hampton Think, after 11 years, has been removed without any notification. This is something that we've seen also at the height of the Ukraine proxy war in 2021. By any means necessary, it was removed from YouTube. There was a plethora of platforms that were removed from YouTube with no wording. There's a lot of platforms that have not returned to YouTube or Spotify since. So I just wanted to know, in terms of what we have seen, this historical precedence that has been set, and then what is happening with the Uhuru trial in terms of conspiracy, all of these platforms that have been removed that are left-leaning or African-centered or some kind of pan-Africanist, Black internationalist perspective, there's no evidence. of anything. They have provided no evidence. They have shown no evidence. So what does this mean in the context of what we're seeing with this conspiracy charge with the Uhuru, where they also have no evidence of that, but can say that, you know, there was a plot, too? And what does this mean in the context of Russiagate?

Ajamu Baraka: Russiagate, in fact, was the foundation. Russiagate provided the conditioning process for the people of the U.S. to begin to accept official narratives and the construction of those narratives as a process or a result of a collaboration between state agencies, the intelligence agencies, and elements of big tech and the media. And so this reflects the kind of panic that we see coming from the authorities as they see themselves as a grip on their own empire and their ability to influence the public, both in the US and globally, slipping. And so the response then is to try to constrict the flow of information to determine what information is acceptable to be disseminated and to criminalize opposition, speech, assembly, et cetera, et cetera. So their conspiracy to do this, their coalition is seen as the legitimate coalition to protect the interests of empire. And those of us who are in opposition, who are dissidents, who are attempting to protect and to expand and redefine the range of human rights, and what in fact are human rights, and who believe in the possibility that we can eliminate the scourge of war on this planet, we become the targets, we become the domestic terrorists. And what that means is, and what people need to be reminded of, is that in fact, we are on a war footing, that the state has decided that it is going to, there's waging war against us, is waging war against any internal political opposition and external. And that reality has to penetrate the consciousness of people in this country, especially those of us who are developing ourselves and becoming radicalized and trying to build radical organizations, that we've got to understand the seriousness of this moment. These white supremacists have decided that basically either they're going to maintain their global hegemony or they're going to blow up the world. And a specific target domestically for attempting to impose the hegemony is, in fact, the still existing Black liberation movement and the movement of colonized people in this country. And they are doing everything in their power to undermine that potential unity and to undermine our potential power. So this is what the Uhuru III case represents. This is what the state apparatus is involved in attempting to do, to silence us, to marginalize us, to have us begin to censor ourselves. We say that the way you defend human rights is you exercise your human rights. You don't allow yourself to be intimidated, but we have to build more effective organizations to protect all of us as we find ourselves in the crosshairs of this intensifying domestic repression.

Kamau Franklin: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me just jump in real quick here. The answer, obviously, I'm going to play a Jared role, is that we have to get Kamala in. Kamala, who will stop fascism from entering our door. The Democrats are our protectors to stop this fascist entity that's right outside. And we can bargain with Kamala. We can talk to her. She's empathetic to our cause. So how come that's not the answer? Or isn't it the answer for left forces?

Ajamu Baraka: Well, you know, if you talk to certain left forces, people like Bill Fletcher and even Angela Davis, we hear the same refrain every four years. We've been hearing this since the 1980s when we mobilized against Ronald Reagan, that that was the genesis of the lesser of two evils. and that the premise is that Democrats have a more progressive character. Therefore, even if they run a platform that is rightist in character, in nature, they still can be negotiated with. You can still put pressure on them to move them to the left. It hasn't happened. In fact, over the last 40 years, It's been a progressive march to the right on the part of the Democrat Party. People have to remember, we have to remind people that when we talk about neoliberalism, what was the mechanism for and structure in which neoliberalism emerged? It was primarily championed by the Reagan forces through what party? Through the Republican Party. Neoliberals have migrated into the Democrat Party. They, in fact, are representing the driving force the driving political and ideological force in their party. They have largely abandoned the Republican Party. The only neoliberals that still exist in the Republican Party are the so-called centrists. They're in the minority, but they are the internationalists. And so this is the reality that we are dealing with. Basically, the Democratic Party, there's no space for influencing that party. The responsibility and the task of the left, is to oppose their rightist tendencies. The driving force, we argue, the driving force of neofascism in the U.S. is emanating from the Republican Party, from the Democrat Party. They're the ones that have normalized censorship. They're the ones that are making arguments both in the U.S. and in Western Europe around the necessity to have forces in place that can determine what information can be disseminated. There's repressive legislation that was introduced in the EU just last week on that subject. Hillary Clinton just said the other day that people engaged in quote unquote disinformation should be subjected not only to civil penalties, but also should be criminalized. This is all coming from Democrats. The Uhuru movement was prosecuted under a Democrat administration. The Obama administration, the Obama-Biden administration, they were responsible for the prosecution of more journalists and whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all of the previous presidents combined. It was under the Obama administration where you had the normalization of the chief executive, the president, making arbitrary decisions to murder other U.S. citizens. Obama murdered three U.S. citizens, including a 16-year-old child, the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, with no consequence. It was under the Obama administration that under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 that they basically put in place the mechanisms for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens. These are the driving forces of of neo-fascism. Now, we don't seem to recognize that because they've been pretty successful in diverting our attention away from the neoliberals to the clownism of Donald Trump. Now, there's some dangerous forces in that movement. There's no question about that. But the control of the U.S. state, the U.S. state in its deepest levels emanates from this neoliberal ruling class. Neoliberals control this state. Neoliberals are the ones in collaboration with the intelligence agencies, the big tech companies, and the media. They are the ones that are basically driving this process of constricting information and imposing an official narrative that if you deviate from that, you find yourself, like in Atlanta, facing record charges. And you may even, like in Atlanta, lose your life when you oppose the expanding militarization. So this is the objective. This is the period that we're in. And again, that's why it's absolutely necessary for us to reinforce the fact that we are in fact at war. And it's not a war that we have asked for. It's a war that's been imposed on us. It's the consequence of us being brought to this land and enslaved and colonized. It's a war imposed on us as a consequence of the 50-year counter-revolutionary process in this country. Our responsibility, though, is to make sure that this war doesn't remain a one-sided war.

Speaker 4: I have a question around the idea of building organizations and building the organizations necessary to fight this war. And going back to what you were saying in terms of what is the advice for folks in building organizations? What's the advice for organizations in this moment that we're in? We have seen the use of the courts. We've seen the use of the legal system to tie up leaders going all the way back to the days of the 60s and 70s. to tie them up in court cases, to either throw them away in prison forever, or to just drain the resources of those organizations so that they can no longer function. We've seen the tying of the boogeyman of Russia, of China, in this most propagandized country that we live in today right creating these boogeymen um and using that again to tie up folks in legal cases to tie up their assets we've seen it done to dr jill stein around the russia stuff we've seen the new york times this piece earlier this year late last year in uh calling for congressional investigations into institutions like the people's forum right and their supposed ties to the chinese communist party we see it now kicked up with uhuru right what is the advice to organization and and backing up a little bit again me kamau as well who operate in this non-profit world also see it at the foundation philanthropic level where they are no longer giving the grants that they once gave to organizations because of fears of an upcoming trump administration the use of lawfare against them in tying up their assets right and all of that Given that reality that we are now moving into in terms of the use of the law, the use of the courts against organizations, institutions that they deem as working on behalf of foreign agencies, foreign governments that aren't Israel, what should organizations do to be able to, one, weather that reality, and two, build the capacity to fight that war? And not just fight that war, but win the war that you're talking about.

Ajamu Baraka: There's a lot there. And I think a few things. First, not to become paranoid. We have to be concerned and concerned about issues of security, but not to allow those concerns to paralyze our ability to move. Secondly, is to get organized, is to build more effective organizations. And what does that mean? That means organizations that have clear politics, clear left politics. The period of diluting our politics, playing political games with the petty bourgeoisie is over. what we have to do is build structures that have a tighter ideological unity and to make sure that that becomes the foundation for how we build. So that is the frame, that is the, I think the foundation that has to be there in terms of how we build. Thirdly, we identified those issues that help us in the battle over ideals. Basically, we have to recognize that this process of building organization is not a technical one necessarily. It is a human one. And that the terrain of consciousness is the space of contention that we have to be able to enter into and, in fact, win. We've got to win it because we have these forces of obscuritism and opportunism And we've got to counter that with a decolonial process, a decolonized cognitive and psychological liberation process. And people have to recognize that it is this battle over consciousness, this battle over ideas that's paramount. That's why the enemy understands that. That's why they're moving against us in that way. That's why they're attempting to constrict and contain information. They recognize the importance of that. So this ideological struggle is central, and people have to understand that. So internal political education, but not in an abstract way, because it's no value of political education if you're not then engaging in practice. Practice is the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, okay? We're going to have more effective practice, and we have to have patience. to recognize that the process of building organization is just that, a process. And that is what Kamau was saying a little bit earlier. We've got to deal with this issue of the lack of humility that we are finding emanating from the culture, that people will read a book and be in a movement for two weeks and believe that they should be the leaders. It doesn't work like that. We've got to help people to develop a consciousness but organize them. Mobilizations are great. They demonstrate where one is. They give opportunities to build towards something, to engage in educational work in your local communities or whatever. But we've got to help people to understand that between the mobilizations, and mobilizations are really tactics, we've got to engage in the unglamorous and hard work of systematic organizations. and part of building organizations and building organizers is again to recognize the human component. 80% of the skills of an organizer are human. And so exercising patience, and you can't organize without having a love for the people because you're gonna run into so much bullshit that basically if you don't love the people, you should be out of the movement pretty quickly. So you've got to be able to have patience. You've got to be able to experiment with the language We reject the notion that our people can't understand certain things, that we've got to spoon-feed our people because they're so unsophisticated they can't understand things like capitalism and socialism. Oh, that's nonsense. And you only find that kind of attitude here in the U.S. You know, in the global South, you know, the level of discourse is so much more sophisticated because people don't have this kind of backward notions about what the people can understand. And, you know, I've always said, It ain't the people who are not ready. It's the organizers who aren't ready. They're the ones that are scared. They're the ones that don't really wanna push radical politics because it might jeopardize their source of income, okay? So all of these are elements that have to be considered as you build formation, as you build organization. The Black Alliance for Peace, for example, is an incubator space. It's a space where we're bringing forces together to give people an opportunity to struggle, to learn how to struggle, to build the consciousness we are talking about with a recognition that to build cadre, it's a process. It's a process, I think, it takes at least 10 years, 15 years for an advanced cadre. People have to have that kind of humility and understanding as they engage in work. And so this is what we have to do. We engage our people. We struggle with our people. We struggle with ourselves, but we recognize at the end of it that we have a historic responsibility to fight through this, that this is something that is our responsibility because we are standing on the shoulders of those people who came before us, those people who still can hear the drums, the drums of liberation. Our responsibility is to fight this enemy, not to collaborate with it. but the struggle against this enemy for ourselves and for global humanity. Because if we don't shift power away from these maniacs, these freaks, to the people, then basically we are facing an existential threat globally. Because these folks are determined that they're going to maintain the structures of white supremacy or they're going to blow all of us up. We're not going to allow that to happen.

Erica Caines: looking at the time but you know we said we'll extend it for you i did want to know come out if we wanted to get a question about iran um your most recent trip if you wanted to talk about that briefly um i'll give you the space to do that and in fact not just iran i mean i want to delve a little bit into with you the axis of resistance that's happening again all around that area um

Kamau Franklin: And obviously we've recently seen the technological advances that Israel has through the Western access of NATO and the work that it does to suppress the access of resistance. But I was saying this a few days ago, even with these setbacks, the access of resistance, if you look at sort of like historically a 10 year span, it is more powerful than it's ever been in terms of its ability to move people, to move resources, to have asymmetrical warfare in the West. I mean, on the Western colonial empire that is trying to situate itself through Israel in that part of the world or whatever. So curious about not only your thoughts on Iran's role in fighting back, But what is it that you see either in Iran as someone who's helping to spearhead that, that we can sort of take something out of or from in some way?

Ajamu Baraka: Let me say that basically what we found in Iran is what we find every place outside of the West. And that is people who want to live in peace, people who would like to have the ability to develop their own project along their own lines. But they are usually unable to do that because they have found themselves in the crosshairs of U.S. destabilization and violence. So the axis of resistance is a collaborative force that out of necessity has been created to in fact oppose U.S. imperialism in Asia, in West Asia. It is a structure that has not abandoned like so many other peoples and nations in Asia, they have not abandoned the Palestinians. In fact, they see Palestinian liberation as key to the liberation, to the decolonial process in West Asia. And for people who don't remember, when we talk about West Asia, we're talking about the European term of the so-called Middle East. And so this is what they are looking for. And they recognize that to counter the the ease in which the U.S. and the West can mobilize against Iran, that they need to have deeper relationships with the peoples of the world. But see, this is where the danger comes in, because when we connect up with the people and when we are attempting to build relations with the people, then the authorities that are our captives, they then recognize, identify that as subversive activity. And people are afraid to in fact engage in that. But we say that we, again, we are human rights defenders. We exercise our right to assembly and right to associate with anybody that we feel that we need to, okay? And so we're not gonna be intimidated by this. So this is important. The escalation of tensions right now is a consequence of the continuation of the slaughter of Palestinians of forces in West Asia have decided that they are going to continue to support the Palestinians and they have been engaging the enemy of Palestine militarily. And that has led to tensions and led to the real possibility of a military confrontation because forces in the Zionist occupation force, the Zionist state of Israel, find it convenient to escalate to a conflict between itself and the forces in Lebanon and other places in West Asia for their own particular reasons. So this is a very dangerous moment. It's even more dangerous from the point of view of the fact that there's no leadership coming out of the white people's house, out of the White House. Biden, we don't know who's in charge of US policies. We know it's not Harris. Harris basically, she says and does what the rulers tell her to do. And we know it's not Biden either. So it's not clear who it is besides the leadership of the intelligence agencies. There's a reason why you have the leadership of the CIA and Mossack, the Israeli intelligence agency, collaborating and playing games and pretending to be trying to bring about a ceasefire agreement. It seems like these agencies are the ones that are driving policy. These agencies who represent the deeper elements of the state. So this is a very dangerous moment. And, you know, we are connecting ourselves with helping people to understand what's in play and hope that we can do that for as long as we can before we find ourselves also are being shut down. And yes, let's talk about the quick election. I don't want to take all your time.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I had a quick question. We've seen the genocide in Palestine really throw a monkey wrench and just really shake things up in this election, especially with the Democratic Party. We have seen the rise of the Green Party and Dr. Jill Stein's popularity, especially with Muslim voters. And we have also seen an unprecedented response from the Democrats in them just really going out of their way to attack Dr. Stein, to attack the Green Party. with AOC, right, even going so as far as to even claim her working family's party affiliation as being down with third parties, right? Butch, Dr. Will was on Mark Lamont Hill's show yesterday talking a little bit about how to grow the Green Party, right, the approach to the Green Party. And if we wanted to just want to ask you, one, why do you think, right, the Democrats are... just kind of like waging this unprecedented fight against Dr. Stein and using all of the instruments of the state from their breakfast clubs to their media to everything, right, just to kind of really go at Dr. Stein to undermine her campaign. And two, if you can, what are the fundamental differences between the Green Party and the Working Families Party, who is also trying to like lift themselves up as an alternative to the duopoly, while at the same time oftentimes carrying the water for the Democratic Party with even one of their members, AOC, right, going at Dr. Stein the way she does?

Ajamu Baraka: Well, you know, the Democrats are panicking because of the numbers in some of these key states. They understand that if there's significant resistance to their lesser-to-evil strategy, their fair monitoring around Trump, and that people actually seriously consider a third-party vote, then that can seriously threaten their ability to win the electors in some of the key states, places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina. Now we see that Georgia is also in play. And so the first thing they did was they began to sue the Green Party and try to get it knocked off the ballot. And they have been largely unsuccessful as a consequence of that. I think the last suit was in Nevada that they ended up losing. And so this is about power politics. This is to try to maintain the possibility of Kamala Harris winning the presidency. And it's also about the politics of what this country may look like going forward. For those people who involve themselves in the electoral process, It's important for people to understand that there are, in fact, differences. That the Green Party platform is a platform that is fairly progressive. In fact, there's elements that are, in fact, radical. And that it presents an alternative view of how politics and the society can be organized. And that is a real threat because it goes further than the kind of soft social democracy represented by the Sanders campaign, for example. And so they are really concerned because they also know that when the electoral cycle began, something like 40% of the electorate was open to the possibility of supporting a third party. And with the reactionary positions of the Democrat Party giving a green light to Israel, They have undermined themselves in these key states, in particular in Michigan. And we see even with the contradictions of the uncommitted movement, where the leadership, when they placed these individuals on top of the leadership of the uncommitted movement that came out this week statement the other day that suggested that they, in essence, they still are collaborating with the Democratic Party. and going to sell their own people down the road. It shows you how opportunistic they are, and it just kind of reminds us of some of the Black neocolonial leaders that would sell us out in a moment's notice. But the uncommitted movement in Michigan and the support from Arabs and Muslims for the Stein campaign is absolutely significant. And so people have to recognize that with that, With that movement and with the articulation of a policy platform by the Harris campaign that clearly indicates they're going to continue their policies of warmongering, your vote is a statement of your values and your principles. And we should not be worried about the consequences of some kind of Trump returning to the office. Who cares about Trump? There's African people. When have we been afraid of any one white person, no matter what office they may occupy? Trump was in office for four years. What impact did that have on us? And this struggle that we're engaged in is a protracted struggle. We got to wage no matter who sits in the white people's house. This notion that Trump would be worse than the Democrats is absolute nonsense, especially when you look at, again, the elements driving the fascistic forces in this country. So we should be about our principles, our values, and not worry about something like that. We have to watch it because there will be some significant negative consequences like this deportation plan that Trump has. And we see the kind of inroads that the Trumpian forces have made among unconscious Africans who are now some of the most belligerent voices against so-called immigration. These are all real phenomena, but real phenomena that we can deal with ourselves through our organizations. So we're not gonna be distracted and confused by this intro bourgeois struggle between the national bourgeoisie and the international bourgeoisie represented by the neoliberal forces. We understand the class dynamics of that. We've got to recognize what our interests are and organize around those interests. So the electoral process is an opportunity to engage the people, to elevate certain kinds of perspectives or certain issues and to build our forces. That's all we can do with this electoral process. And understand this, it shouldn't just be the focus on the national level or on every other level. There's opportunities there for us to engage this process. We're not saying you put all your eggs in that basket of electoralism, but it's irresponsible to pretend like with millions of our people participating in that process that we're supposed to stand aloof from that. That's petty bourgeois elitism. And I reject that on a personal level because basically it makes no sense and it plays right into the interests of the enemy.

Kamau Franklin: So you bring, I mean, you talked about this a little early and I think, I don't know if most of us on the screen right now. So like we have friends, comrades, allies who are in the sort of the intermediate camp who think of themselves, they're leftists, they're radicals. but who are still pushing this idea of Kamala over right-wing Republican fascism. And then there's others of us, and I put myself in this category, who are like, you need to make a break. We need to make a clear, hard break. And I don't engage in a lot of electoral work, particularly at the national level, but I'm like, even if you were to take yourself seriously as an electoral force, if you don't break away from the people who are constantly shitting on you, who are constantly grabbing up what you consider to be your constituency and having them vote for you and you get nothing out of it. And you can't tell those people, close the door on those people for one election cycle at the least and tell them to go to hell and make them come back to you so that you can have your demands even thought about. Then you're not even engaging in struggle. You're basically being pushed into something or being led into something because you either get monetary benefit out of it ideologically, you're weak. You like access. You like resources. I can't even understand at this stage, again, the idea that you don't make a hard break from the neoliberal fascism that we are seeing happening right now. It's not even, you know, it's not like just some talk on the side. It's like it's in our face. Actual genocide is happening. As you said, the State Department, other organizations, Democrat-operated localities or going after organizers, activists, radicals on the ground as we speak, all by this neoliberal wing of the one-party, two-wing system. So when folks don't even challenge the idea that they need to break away from from the Democratic Party and do something outside of it, to me, it just speaks to, again, either the sort of elite capture or the weakness that we feel, or the, I don't know if it's the scarcity or the, again, I guess all these factors play a role in what keeps people like, you know, still at the table of the Democratic neoliberal.

Ajamu Baraka: They don't want to come off the plantation. Master makes it very convenient for them to stay on the plantation. Look at the amount of money that's sloshing around in the society today. Obscene amounts of money. And these are investments. They're investments to blunt the radicalization of the masses of the people. You're able to co-op and pay off and corrupt the petty bourgeoisie. that you leave working class organizations by themselves and basically you can undermine them and attack them, okay? So this is part of their strategy of maintaining their power and maintaining the status quo. But see, in their panic, even the issues like the Workers' Party, there's really, there's always been an addendum to the Democrat Party because the Democrats are suggesting there can be no opposition, no even appearance, of anything other than complete support for the Democrats, then the Workers' Party becomes a target of their undermining. We have to make no mistake that the fact of the matter is that Kamala is in fact a fascist. Neoliberalism is fascism, the particular form of fascism, okay? We've got to be clear about that and say it, the perspective that the Democrats are driving for us on fascism is a relatively new one. Because again, they've been successful in getting happiness diverted against or toward this Trumpian phenomenon. And, you know, we've got to maintain our own values and principles. Even then, for example, the Green Party and the Jill Stein campaign, you know, we can't put all our bags, all of our eggs in any kind of electoral basket. Because just the other day, I think it was yesterday, unfortunately, the Stein campaign came out with a commentary that It's just objectively reactionary. You know, because they went on this show with Mahdi Hassan, one of the best, he's a liberal, but he's one of the best interviewers out there on the planet. You go on here and you get twisted up and he's putting pressure on you to demand that Putin's a war criminal and Assad's a war criminal. And then you come back with a statement like what we saw, I think, yesterday coming out. basically an attempt to try to put everybody in this one basket of the so-called war criminals, which speak and play right into the ideological positions of the empire. We can't allow that. It doesn't mean that you won't support the Stein campaign as an alternative, but at the same time, we maintain our political and ideological independence, and we critique and criticize anybody that is playing a role cautiously or inadvertently is propping up the ideological legitimacy of this system, including Jill Stein.

Kamau Franklin: So we got time for maybe one, if folks have one more statement or question, anything else they want to end on?

Erica Caines: No, I think he's covered what I needed.

Kamau Franklin: Jamal, thank you so, so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. You should be a regular on Fridays, by the way. What are you doing on Fridays?

Ajamu Baraka: you can't come on like eight to ten and go ahead and come into something else go ahead yeah yeah no he should he should talk a little talk a little big daddy kane some music bust out the ear dock you know what i'm saying i'm gonna come whenever y'all whenever y'all call for me i i come i don't know about two hours but i would definitely come and chop and chop it up with you i really appreciate the invitation this is a very very important outlet And I'm so glad that we have it for us, for our people. So I really, really appreciate all of you.

Kamau Franklin: We appreciate having you, brother.