From Phosphate Mining to Forever Chemicals With the Lowcountry Action Committee

Josh: Welcome to Millicent Even Capitalism. This is Josh. In this episode, we're joined by organizers from Lowcountry Action Committee to discuss climate justice in South Carolina's Lowcountry. We begin with a climate discussion about reparations and go on to explore the history of phosphate mining and its exploitation of newly emancipated Africans, the ecological destruction it caused, and its legacy of environmental racism. We then turn to hurricane season and the anxiety it provokes in vulnerable working-class and poor Black communities, followed by the toxic legacy of military pollution and Form for Chemicals in North Charleston. Finally, we reflect on political consciousness, the fight against capital, and whether the Gullah Geechee are punished for their self-determination, echoing Haiti's long revolutionary legacy. If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this, please consider becoming a patron. You can do so for as little as $1 a month We bring you these conversations totally independently with no corporate state or grant funding. Now, here's Lowcountry Action Committee discussing some of their work. I'm here again with Lowcountry Action Committee, and I would like to start off by allowing you guys the space to introduce yourselves and also talk a bit about your organization and the type of work you guys do.

Mosiah Assad: Okay. My name is Mosiah Assad, and I'm a member of the Lowcountry Action Committee, which is a Black-led grassroots Organization that's dedicated to Black liberation through service, political education, and community engagement.

Josh: All right.

Rashad: And my name is Rashad, and I'm a member of the Lowcountry Action Committee as well.

Josh: Peace.

Karl: My name is Karl. Once again, also a member of the Lowcountry Action Committee. Just an overall community servant, long resident of Charleston, South Carolina.

Rashad: Awesome.

Josh: Okay. So the first article was written by Akwaeah Page, and funny enough, a good friend of mine, Akwaeah, also read it and they were going to come on to talk with you guys as well, but was unable to make it. So I'm going to read this question off from them. But yeah, so the first article directly tackles reparations in regards to climate justice, but it also seems to be a point of emphasis throughout the piece, or throughout the issue, I should say. Climate reparations is defined by Akwaeah Page As compensation to those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis while also bearing the brunt of the impacts of exploitative environmental practices. So Salafu Mack tells us that we have a state and federal government with no real commitments to protecting the South Carolina Lowcountry. Instead, their priority is upholding the profits of golf resorts and wedding destinations.

Mosiah Assad: So I would like to begin this by, you know what I'm saying, allowing you a free space to discuss the connection between I can begin by saying that it's really crucial that we bring back the Akua's point that, quote, climate reparations refers to the idea that those who have contributed the least to climate change but are suffering the most from its impacts should receive compensation. So we understand that as Africans in this country, especially Africans that are tied to coastal areas, We are under threat constantly of the environmental destruction as well as the destruction by which the city allows the sort of land loss, the sort of infrastructure that contributes to land loss, and so on and so forth, right? So this idea that people should be reparated for a sort of like mentality and a sort of system by which it's also destroying them.

Rashad: Yeah.

Mosiah Assad: I think that— I don't think it's far-fetched, right? I think Salifu says it point blank, period. He says that the menta— this mentality of destruction, of environmental decay, of environmental neglect is in direct opposition to Gullah Geechee culture, which is born and rooted in cultivating a non-exploitative relationship to the land. It's like our grandmas and our grandpas were natural conservationists, right? We use what we need. We throw away things in a way that's respectful to the land, right? We have multipurpose items. So reparations is about recognizing that we are gonna be the first ones underwater when we are probably the only ones who have been working with the water in a respectful way.

Josh: Definitely. So yeah, the issue, I think, is the importance of transforming everything, right? Because even as you're uplifting immediate needs, like downvoting propositions and signing petitions, you're also clear in your competitive analysis of Cuba, for example, that communities are best engaged or best able to engage in this process of climate justice when they have transformed the state such that even though they still have to contend with, you know what I'm saying, the genocidal conditions of the US, of course. So talk about this kind of relation or whatnot and how you guys have been able to navigate these contradictions.

Mosiah Assad: And just to provide clarity on the question, you mean the contradictions of us living in a genocidal state While being a certain people that, with a culture that's tied to the land.

Josh: Yes. And also like how you're able to like organize around those, like I'm saying, under those conditions, if that makes sense.

Karl: I can jump in. I feel the work that LA, the work that LAC is doing, I think, as Messiah said, when we first started, our focus is political education and service for the liberation of African people. And I think with us being a young organization, A lot of our work of educating ourselves, doing things like this, working on this article where we do extensive research on different climate catastrophes and their connection to African people, with the ultimate goal of taking this information and packaging it for the people in Charleston and in the Lowcountry to educate them. I think that's where we are as far as the work. And you say help people meet their material needs. Just generally in the Lowcountry, And the history of African people in the Lowcountry, and on a larger scale, just America and how the Lowcountry— like, the part that the Lowcountry played in introducing Africans into this country, and just majority of African people in America having some kind of family in the Lowcountry, or just in general, making that connection with people and help raising the consciousness of African people in the Lowcountry is our goal. Yeah. So just speaking to how we're organizing currently, that's one of the— if you ask any LAC member about what should be our main focus, we are trying to educate the African people here locally in the Lowcountry, sharing this article with them. Like I said, just taking this information and just— because once you make that connection, the people here that work every day, African people are still one of the main labor forces in the Lowcountry. And just as someone who's leaned on for labor, Knowing your power and the power in organizing and knowing the history of this area and how our ancestors directly contributed to pretty much all of the industry in America and in South Carolina, it empowers you and it makes you feel, it gives you something to come together about. And I think that's what, that's how we want to take this information and kind of use it. Yeah, I'll stop right there.

Josh: Yeah, definitely. I appreciate that. So that kind of leads us specifically into the article you wrote, Carl, this essay titled Digging Toward Death. Phosphate mining through a Gullah Geechee lens. It was recently published in a local climate magazine. So I would like to start off by providing a general overview of the discovery of phosphate rock in the late 1700s in the South Carolina Lowcountry, if you can.

Karl: Yeah, pretty much when this land was occupied by European people, their number one goal was to find any way they could to exploit this land. Part of that is what we know about is slavery. They planned to Relocate some Africans over here because the climate wasn't ideal for growing certain things. But the other side of it, even during slavery, even before slavery, they had began doing archaeological surveys, trying to understand what minerals were present in this land, what could they exploit, what could they extract to export. It wasn't— there's a lot of gold in America. So everybody's always— when they came over here, the different European countries, companies, whatever you want to call it, everybody was just—

Rashad: Yeah.

Karl: While they were having plans to get into agriculture, they also brought scientists with them. But anyway, they discovered phosphate along the coast of South Carolina. And I think simultaneously over in the UK, scientists were discovering ways where you could take phosphate and you could convert it into fertilizer to be used in agriculture to help increase yields, plants, larger crops, more crops, to just Overall, just trying to enhance the whole agriculture industry to increase output. But when they discovered it, they didn't immediately start. The active mining of phosphate rock didn't begin until the late 1800s, but they knew it was there for a while. It just, it wasn't, you know, I don't know the ins and outs of why they chose to just prioritize agriculture, but that's just what it was. And so yeah, they found it early on. And after the Civil War, in the article I talk about this, but pretty much plantation owners right after slavery, they're The amount of profits you have when you have, like, when you're buying human beings and using them to perform the labor, you have insane profits, which is why those people were really wealthy. But after they lost their labor force, the profits got cut. These guys had large plantations that they couldn't manage anymore, and they started— they were on the brink of going bankrupt. A lot of them started selling their land. But some of the plantation owners who had a relationship with the scientists, they immediately switched to trying to Understanding that these plantations being along the rivers in South Carolina, because from Beaufort, the phosphate industry really boomed in Charleston and Beaufort, but all along the coast, even down to Florida, you could find phosphate along the coastline. And these former plantation owners took advantage of that and they started mining. Former plantations became mining companies, and later on they became fertilizer manufacturing companies. That's like the history of how it started.

Josh: For sure. So yeah, you, you touch on this, but the emergence of the phosphate mining industry and created this, these new demands for mining companies and, and worker towns. You also make note of how the preferred labor source in the industry were newly emancipated Africans because they were seen as conditioned to work in the harsh subtropical environments and resistant to some of the rampant mosquito-borne diseases that plagued the area. So yeah, I just wanna, want you to talk about this historical process a bit.

Mosiah Assad: A big arc of Carl's point and the point of the article is that the industries of enslavement were taken over by way of industrialization, right? So in the same way that we understand that the system of literal enslavement was taken over by Jim Crow, which was then taken over by neoliberalism and so on and so forth, right? So a big part of what SURJ was trying to do or is attempting to do is to put us in historical conversation with why our material conditions are the way they are. So why is Ashley, phosphate? Why don't Ashley, phosphate got no trees? Why is Ashley, phosphate historically Black as hell? Like, why is there so many industries, forgotten industry? Like, so we're really tying in this idea that the destruction of the environment and our bodies is by the same force. It's by way of capitalism. It's by way of racism.

Josh: Yeah.

Mosiah Assad: a system that prioritizes growth and extraction and exploitation over humanity and life.

Rashad: Absolutely.

Josh: I appreciate that.

Karl: To answer your direct question about why the African people were preferred as the lyrical source, Gullah Geechee people, we know the reason why they were able to maintain so many of the— so much of their African heritage and their Africanisms was due to the isolation. That was created due to the fact that in the summertimes or in the hotter months where it was really hot, it was humid, and there were a lot of mosquitoes and people were getting sick and dying of malaria, a lot of the rich plantation owners, they didn't live in Charleston during the summer months, and African people were left alone. So when the phosphate industry started booming and they wanted people that could work in the sun all day, it just ended up being some of those same things. We know They wanted cheap labor, and there were immigrants coming in. There were unskilled laborers coming from Europe around the same time that were available for work, but those guys weren't used to working in that tropical environment. All of those, just the different, like I said, like the temperatures and the humidity and the mosquitoes, they weren't used to that kind of thing. So it was hard for these companies to find anyone other than liberated Africans to fill these roles. It just ended up Essentially, they needed them, which is ironic because the industry, it was so successful. Not successful, it was so profitable. The industry was so profitable and they got so rich off of it. It's the same as slavery. And we are just the ones who are just taking all of the brunt of all the physical labor.

Josh: Definitely. I appreciate that.

Rashad: Real quick, I just want to say real quick, About the malaria, a lot of Africans, it was seen that the Africans were resistant to it in a way that the Europeans wasn't. They could deal with it a lot better. So that's another reason that over there by the marshes and everything like that, they would prefer to have Africans who were more able to survive malaria than the Europeans. Yeah, certainly.

Josh: And we see that Obviously across different contexts too, like colonial contexts, like Africans are seen as being able to withstand abuse and brutality in a way that other racialized or even non-racialized people aren't able to ultimately. But that kind of leads to our next question too. If you guys can maybe say a word about the working conditions of the Katagichi laborers and the wages and the experiences of those who lived in mining towns.

Karl: I know when I researched and what What the individuals responsible just kept in their notes, which is so crazy. I don't have any direct knowledge from any elders or ancestors that passed anything down. I just want to say that. But just from what I understand and how the technology that was available during the time, and it was brutal. It was very brutal. It was taking like a pickaxe and just like slamming it against the ground all day. And they were mining rocks.

Rashad: Yeah.

Karl: Right? They had shovels and pickaxes. That's all it was, shoveling all day, using pickaxes to chip away at rock, digging huge trenches all day long. So it was very brutal work. It wasn't— a part of the reason why mining towns were created, because early on, a lot of the field workers from the islands, they had to come over, they had to take boats over to the mines to get work, or people had to travel long distances. But a lot of Africans, they preferred to work on the farm. The labor on the farm wasn't as brutal as just digging all day with a shovel or just taking these axes and just chopping away at earth all day. It was much more brutal. But then also even— so there were river mining sites and there were mining sites that were further inland. So during more inland, where they're just digging all day and chopping away all day, on the riverside, so these guys were in the mud.

Mosiah Assad: Yeah.

Karl: Digging through the mud, going in during low tide. There's a quote that I took directly from one of the— another article that I found is more like one of the Europeans, their diaries of just an excerpt from one of their diaries where they just talked about what they had experienced. People tying— Africans tying ropes to their waist and diving into the water during low tide or just diving to the— holding their breath and going down and digging for the phosphate rock, which is insane when you think about it. There were more land mining companies, but the river mining sites were because the phosphate found at the river was thought to be more rich. And also, I don't know if I put this quote in the article, man, but there's also some quotes about that I was just doing in my research. It's almost like they found it weird that people didn't want— Africans didn't want to work all day.

Rashad: Yeah.

Karl: They really didn't like the work and there was constant resistance. Really, some examples of early labor organizing, they came together, they realized that, hey man, these are some really big companies and it's mostly Africans out here. It's us. Without us, this industry can't thrive. We identified this early on and organizing came on and you start seeing companies really pushing back against it and breaking, finding any way they could to disrupt these, which essentially were They're just labor units was what they were. Breaking them up, finding ways to push them to the side. And some of the ways they did that was, like I said, they eventually started using more of those European immigrants that were looking for jobs. You see them using them more and actually just prison labor. That's around the time that jails started renting out prisoners to mine owners.

Rashad: Yeah.

Karl: And they could pay them sometimes even less than what they were paying the Africans. So they found ways to get around the fact that African people wanted to fight for better conditions and more pay. They realized that they needed them. And we know what capitalism does. They break up unions. They don't support unions. They want to find any opportunity to pay you as little as they possibly can. People working for $1 a day. It was real. It was really bad. It was terrible.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that breakdown for sure. And you make note of how the phosphate industry thrived in South Carolina Lowcountry for about 20 years before dying out, and in this short time was responsible for about 50% of the phosphate used worldwide, absurd profits, and the destruction of tens of thousands of acres of riverbeds. So can you talk a little bit about why it was so ecologically destructive and what effects are still being felt today?

Karl: Just in general, right? You think about how many acres they were mining. Like I said, it was tens of thousands of acres. That was just in some areas. But man, just digging away at the earth, disturbing ecosystems, it's just destroying marshes, like miles of marshes, like digging up marshes for miles and miles in search of phosphate. But the biggest part though, because I talk about mining a lot, and I know the article is called Digging for Death, but the worst side of it was when they started manufacturing the sulfuric acid. Phosphate mining was negative, right? It's just mining the earth that way. It was negative. It had negative impacts on the worker, just the trace amounts of, like, just uranium and just breathing in all of those toxic fumes from the earth when they're— the same thing that we see in the Congo right now, in the cobalt mines and all those different mines where those guys are just in a big hole, Africans in a hole digging away at the earth and breathing in those chemicals. So a lot of the negative impacts are on the people themselves.

Josh: Right.

Karl: Which is a huge reason why environmental racism, or just reparations to African people for the role of being used as labor in a lot of these acts of violence against the environment, is so important. But then when we start, when we think about how quickly they ran to just finding ways to maximize profit, let's manufacture sulfuric acid and let's do it as quickly as we can. Like I said, it was only 20 years that this industry was booming in South Carolina.

Rashad: Yeah.

Karl: But they were fertilizing, manufacturing plants, and they were mining plants. And they wanted to save money because they didn't want to keep buying sulfuric acid, manufacturing it. And think about what manufacturing was like in the late 1800s. The technology wasn't that advanced. The boilers that were leaking on these properties, spills, chemical spills, rainwater runoff. When it rains, all of these chemicals that are just present at this site washing back into the water, which is why the water's contaminated. And the actual fertilizer manufacturing plants, that's the main contributor of the environmental destruction that we see, to go along with just like the amount of earth that was dug up and removed and the land that was destroyed in search of the phosphate. And because you see even today, like the company that I called out who is still open today, there's a fertilizer manufacturing company in operation making money in the city of North Charleston. I think they're like a Germany company.

Rashad: Yeah.

Karl: I don't know. I really don't give a damn where they from. But then there's Lanex, and they manufacture fertilizer. So we don't have any active mines, but we have a fertilizer manufacturing company, and they've had 32 spills over the last couple of decades. And this is after industry and manufacturing technology has advanced so much, and they're still recording spills. So the people of Rosemount, they still have to— I don't know if they've had any in 2024, But they have sirens to this day that'll go off to alert the neighborhoods that are less than a mile away from this plant that there was some kind of spill and they should have some kind of concern. And there's flooding in that area. So you can imagine the active runoff that's going into the river. And the EPA had identified so many Superfund sites or sites in the general area of North Charleston, the area that I grew up in, That these sites had elevated levels of contamination. And that's currently to this day, right? So imagine OSHA and DEHAC before those organizations were around and they weren't being regulated as much as present-day regulation around industry is way more than it would've been in the 1800s. So a lot of stuff we can speculate about because we don't know exactly how much harm was done to the environment. But there has been studies from the EPA, from the DHEC. They do know these sites. They've taken samples from these sites, and they've detected elevated levels of toxic chemicals. And fertilizer manufacturing companies were huge in that area. And like you said, one of the companies in Charleston made— they supplied the most— what was the direct— they were the largest manufacturer of phosphate in the world. This was global. This was a global operation, man. This wasn't small at all. It was a huge operation. So yeah, I'll stop right there, bro.

Josh: Yeah, I appreciate that, Carl, so much for that. But yeah, lastly, and I know you already started touching on this, but if you want to say a final word about the historic relationship between Africans and environmental racism generally.

Karl: Sure. All right. The motivation behind all of this, and I said this already, is to take all of this information And to directly engage the people, the African people of the Lowcountry in South Carolina, and to get them to understand that we have to organize, right? And specifically to environmental racism, the fact that a lot of who we are as Gullah Geechee people, as African people, is directly tied to the land. Messiah said this too. We have respectful relationships to the land. We live in harmony with the land. We are conscious about how We use the land for our wellbeing, just to sustain ourselves. And that relationship has been damaged throughout the years. We've been forced to have not much regard for the land. And because we've been used in capitalism as a labor source, here we talking about in the 1800s, even now to today, we are used as a labor source. But we have to remember our relationship to the land.

Josh: Yeah.

Karl: And we look at when it— so when the environment's threatened, we have a really huge, a divine responsibility to get involved and understand that when the land is hurting, we are hurting, and we have to organize and fight for the environment.

Josh: Right.

Karl: But at the same time, and not just in the South Carolina Lowcountry, all throughout the South of the United States, on what they call the Black Belt, This is the place where currently, just like the manufacturing industry, a lot of global manufacturing companies are still coming to the South. Automotive manufacturing, so many manufacturing companies are coming to the South, and Black people are still being used as labor. And we are living next to these plants. They're coming in our communities to— even present day, even in North Charleston, they're still trying to build manufacturing companies. And African people here locally, we are organizing around it. We're giving them pushback. And so it's already happening, but they're coming into our homes to build these plants, and they have no regard for how these industries are harming the environment. And because we live off the land, because we go to the waters and we fish, we got our plants in our garden, we growing food, it's negatively affecting us. And it's important that we understand this, we make this— we acknowledge this, and we organize, and we push back against it with everything that we got.

Josh: Yeah. Definitely. Appreciate that. Shifting gears a little bit, I know it's an article that FlaFu wrote in particular, and they're not here today, but if you all want to say a word about the essay titled Cuba's Life Task in the Lowcountry, but you are all concerned with hurricane season, right? And how it disproportionately harms Africans in this case in South Carolina, Lowcountry, right? Which is where a lot of the low-lying areas that are vulnerable to rising tides and shore erosion.

Mosiah Assad: Yeah.

Josh: happens, right? And so talk about this a bit and the type of anxiety hurricane season provokes in Africans in the region.

Rashad: I'll say it's definitely getting worse as time goes by because it's not even the hurricanes that we're seeing now. We just seen a tropical storm cause multiple days of flooding, a storm that was weakened as it went through Florida. In Georgia before it even got to us. So all it takes these days are king tides, high tides, rain, casual thunderstorms for Black communities in the Lowcountry, impoverished communities in the Lowcountry, to be flooded. So a hurricane definitely would cause a whole lot of devastation. We haven't had a strong Category 4-type hurricane since '89 when we had Hugo. But if we had something like that today, with the amount of flooding that we see during normal rains, it would cause a whole lot of devastation. Someone died last year by being submerged in their vehicle during flooding, just during a regular thunderstorm.

Mosiah Assad: Wow.

Rashad: We can only imagine the toll that a direct hit from a hurricane will take to the Lowcountry, because a lot of times when we see these storms on the news around the world affecting the Lowcountry, those are only the outer bands of the storm skipping by us, or maybe a small Category 1 at the most. So the city is actually sinking. The city is built on a lot of wetlands. A lot of marshland. And at the same time, sea level is rising, of course. So it's, for many of us, it is a lot of anxiety and wonder what the future would be like, because we see it getting worse every year for sure.

Karl: And I add to that, it's funny, some people say that they exaggerate, and I say they, I mean like the news, the Weather Channel or the meteorologists. It almost seems like now They'll talk about how detrimental the storm is going to be, and it does, and the flooding is real bad, but people go out and they spend a lot of money. Or even like the idea of how much does it cost to really flee from a storm? Do you have money to hop in your car and drive or to book a hotel? Do you have family somewhere? Can you miss work? Is your job going to be understanding to you having to leave from a storm? Like some jobs, they may not care about you leaving for a storm.

Rashad: Yeah.

Karl: That's the other side of it. It costs money to flee. You know, the government give enough checks for you to vacate for a storm. They ain't going to care about how many days you miss from work. So you see a lot of people saying they not going to leave for a storm. My family didn't leave for Hugo and every other storm or tropical hurricane or tropical storm that came since then. A lot of people are absolutely not going to leave, whether they just don't feel like they should leave or need to leave or they can't afford to leave.

Mosiah Assad: Yeah.

Karl: If a big storm does come, you gotta really dig deep to leave. And then also, you may not have nothing to come back to, depending on how bad the storm is.

Mosiah Assad: Yeah.

Rashad: And leaving, like he say, he explained, leaving is a luxury. And another thing I could think about, like when we was talking about a lot of Gullah Geechee people being next to the marsh, with the Europeans thinking that they didn't want to be in those areas where the mosquitoes were or to deal with the malaria. A lot of Black areas like Solid Green and a lot of the areas, even in West Ashley, Gullah Geechee communities, North Charleston as well, next to the Ashley or Cooper Rivers, next to the marshland. So a lot of our communities are vulnerable. And if you look at the homes in a lot of these areas, they're sitting on the ground in areas where nowadays, Homes can't be built on the ground. They have to be built up in the air because it's already the anticipation of flooding throughout the year. So these homes that were built early in the 20th century, in the mid-20th century or so, back in the days when the sea level wasn't what it is now, where the flooding wasn't as bad as it is now, and people can't afford to just lift up their homes—

Karl: Right.

Rashad: Like, people who have the wealth and the resources to do that or to destroy their home and build a new home, they just live vulnerable to constant flooding every year.

Josh: Yes, absolutely. Man, I think you both touched on something really important here too. And I'm glad that the connection to Cuba was made in this piece by Solafu, because that's something I draw back to quite often, thinking about— I remember years ago, it was a big major hurricane happening in South Florida, but also it was also going to touch Cuba as well. And we saw efforts for Cuba to get people out and to move people away. And there was legitimately state funds dedicated to preventing the devastation, preventing needless deaths and things like that. There was preventative measures in place already by the state, by the socialist state, in order to get people prepared and get people out of their homes, the people who would be most impacted by the most devastating ripple effects of the hurricane.

Karl: Right.

Josh: And we see in the US, in most cases, that doesn't exist. And we know every year there's a hurricane season. We know that, you know what I'm saying, we just had— it wasn't a hurricane, like you mentioned earlier. I'm in North Carolina at the moment, and there was just like a major storm, right, that just happened. And it was like— and it hit a lot of regions really, you know what I'm saying, in a really rough way. And of course, right, it wasn't as devastating as it could have been, but you know what I'm saying, there's not as much ingrained infrastructure because the state does not You know what I'm saying? Prioritize preventative measures in the case of mental healthcare, in the case of like housing, in the case of even natural disasters or even, you know what I'm saying, pandemics, for example. The ill-preparedness is built into the capitalist system, of course. And I think you both highlight that in an incredible way. So yeah, thank you for that.

Karl: Sure, man. Profit is always first, man. That's what it— profit always comes first.

Josh: Of course.

Karl: Of course. We know, like, the people didn't really live on the coast like that. For this very reason. They didn't— like, we didn't build permanent homes out there. Even going back to the indigenous people, they didn't live— they didn't stay on the coast during this time of year. They moved more inland.

Rashad: Mm-hmm.

Karl: You know, people, they were nomadic. I think outside of Gullah Geechee people just culturally being tied to the land, the fact that we were forced to live here— this land was thought to be inhabitable. It was swampland. They looked at it like a jungle. We assumed the role of being those crazy people that lived in the woods. Some people live off the land. They ain't got no electricity out there. no running water. And we really found a way to make that work. So people have— we have a real— we care about our land. People really are passionate about the land that they live on and how long they've cared for it. It's not even the fact that we own it outright. It's just the fact that the memories that they have there. And yeah, I don't know where that came from, but I just wanted to say that.

Josh: No, it's great. It works. I appreciate that. I appreciate you bringing that up. Thank you for that. But yeah, and this is— there's another piece too, Trouble in the Water. Forever Chemicals and Lowcountry Military Bases. And I think Rashad wrote this one, right? So maybe start off by discussing some of the conditions that provoked the Great Migration, for one, which oversaw large numbers of the Gullah Geechee people relocating from rural areas surrounding Charleston to the industrial north area of present-day North Charleston.

Rashad: It was a lot of chaos after the Civil War, just trying to— people just trying to get on their feet. And figure out life after the plantation. And a lot of people end up in crop lien situations where they was indebted by former plantation owners, slave masters, and such, where merchants pretty much extended credit to farmers who borrowed against the value of their future crops. And when harvest was made, they had to repay the merchant from the proceeds. And if they couldn't pay, then they'll continue the cycle of debt, working on their farms to sell crops and try to pay slave masters and stuff like that. So it was definitely different classes of Africans in the Lowcountry, because you even had Africans who were free before slavery. So I'm not going to say everybody was in that situation, but tons of Africans, they've been impoverished, poor farming, harsh conditions, and a lot of people left with the lack of opportunities in the rural areas and went far up north to Northeast. But opportunities to find wages in the Lowcountry, in North Charleston, was a great opportunity for people to still stay in their local area. No, I wouldn't say a great opportunity, but it was an opportunity for them to stay in their local area. And find a way to survive. So the country areas around North Charleston, a lot of people came from the Sea Islands and from west of Charleston and north of Charleston, different areas in the rural parts to find labor, to find opportunities to work, because Naval Yard became the biggest employer in that area.

Mosiah Assad: Right.

Rashad: At one point in time. And a lot of the Gullah Geechee neighborhoods and communities in that Lower End and North Charleston, they developed alongside the Naval Yard, like Union Heights and Dominican and Wenzel and all these different neighborhoods up and down Spruill Avenue and that surrounding area. People came to live there because they knew they could work and feed their families and Find housing in them areas. Yeah.

Karl: Let's not let it just be somebody says something. But no, definitely a thing for African people to move to— move to North Charleston for— to work at— to work during that time, whether they were at one of those— at the Navy Yard, like Rashad said. My great-grandfather born— he was born in 1910, but one of the reasons why he was able to drop out of school in the 3rd grade and just be employed for his entire life— he eventually ended up retiring from the Navy Yard, but all of the different All of the different industries around that Navy Yard. And I grew up like a couple of miles from the Navy Yard on the land that my great-grandfather bought with money that he made working at the Navy Yard. And his family come from Berkeley County. So people was definitely moving down to that area because they knew they could get some work at the Navy Yard. And the Navy Yard being there allowed the African people there to really make the money to sustain their communities. Liberty Hill being one of the The oldest African community in North Charleston, a lot of the people that had money were buying homes there. All of them worked on the Navy Yard. But yeah, a lot of thriving communities got their money, was able to buy homes and own land due to the work that they found there.

Josh: Yeah, definitely. I appreciate that, especially bringing up the Navy Yard, because that leads into our next question. If you can, discuss some of the toxic chemicals people were exposed to in the region as a result of the Navy Yard or naval base, the largest employer in North Charleston at the time. What type of impact did this have, and does it continue to have on people in the region?

Rashad: Definitely one of the main ones that I pointed out was the PFAS, the forever chemicals. And not only that, but asbestos as well. was discovered on the old naval yard. And this comes— the forever chemicals not only come from the naval yard and naval base, the weapons station, but also the Air Force base, which collectively they call the military complexes in Charleston installations in North Charleston and Goose Creek Joint Base Charleston now. Put them together. The old naval yard closed down in '96. So now they have the naval weapons station further up the river, and they have the naval— the Air Force base close to the Ashley Riverside. So pretty much, Charleston is a peninsula set in between the Ashley and Cooper River. And on the Cooper Riverside, Once you go up the peninsula from downtown and into North Charleston, you have a naval base on the riverside, and you got the Air Force base closer to the Ashley riverside, off of Dorchester Road. And it's African communities on both sides.

Karl: Also, I'll add to that, man. Similarly to what we were saying earlier about the people who was in the mines, A lot of the chemicals they were exposed to was directly on the laborers, not always on the environment. So like I was saying, my great-grandfather worked at the Navy Yard. He died of mesothelioma, right, through the asbestos on those ships and on the Navy Yard. They constantly working around asbestos. It wasn't until later on, we ended up getting a check due to the fact that he contracted that disease while working there. So there was a lot of asbestos there.

Mosiah Assad: Wow.

Karl: Also had a family member that dealt with it directly.

Rashad: Yeah, that's real. The people who worked there, the laborers who worked there, and their families in the immediate area were affected by it. So forever chemicals, pretty much, they stay in the area for thousands of years. They take thousands of years to break down. They accumulate in the bloodstream and the liver and the kidneys. And it caused several types of diseases, from birth weight to obesity, early puberty, different liver damage, kidney cancer, prostate cancer. So there's just a whole list of effects. And this, like I said, stays in the community. It even goes from mother to child through the placenta and the different connections to the child from the mother. So it's a generational thing. So we haven't even seen all of the effects. We won't see all of the effects in our lifetime. And as he pointed out, him growing— well, Carl pointed it out, growing up in the area and having his family members exposed to it. I can recall my uncles who worked on that naval yard. My grandma worked there too. But both of my uncles, they died of cancer.

Karl: Wow.

Rashad: And the type of cancers that is caused from PFAS in this whole area from 526, which the Air Force base is close to, down to Rosemount and that northern part of downtown down the peninsula, is some of the highest cancer rates in the area, disproportionate number from not only the phosphate industry, to the military industries in the area, the people are affected by these chemicals.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm going to say a little word because you guys touched on it both in your answers but also in the article itself. It's become a cliché because it says so much, but it's still true, that the US military is one of, if not the largest, institutional world polluter. And so there's oftentimes being made between US military and its endeavors, imperialist endeavors abroad, As a means of polluting and devastating the environment, right? Entire ecosystems and things like that. But these same processes can be seen domestically too. And this is why I think about, right, I would maybe make this connection about, you know what I'm saying, Black African people in the US making up a distinct, you know what I'm saying, it's a semi-colony, right? Or semi-nation or whatever you wanna call it. We can debate the terminology later, but I like how you all make this clear too in your analysis.

Karl: Yeah.

Josh: So I would like for you to talk a little bit about the US military polluting the environment domestically, and as something that we should place close attention to because we're already seeing the ripple effects of this devastation to ecological environments and specifically amongst African and Indigenous peoples, if that makes sense.

Rashad: Yeah, it's crazy when you think about it. You look at Agent Orange and the stuff that the Vietnamese and different foreign people had to deal with. From the poisons from the US military. And we dealing with it as colonized people here in America, back home, the disregard for our health. And it recently came— it just came out today that the US Air Force had refused to comply with the EPA cleanup order after the Air Force polluted drinking water in Tuscan, Arizona.

Karl: Wow.

Rashad: With chemicals, including PFAS, the forever chemicals. So they cited the Supreme Court's ruling, which overturned the decades-old Chevron doctrine earlier this year. And so they pretty much getting away with it.

Josh: Before I let you go, I want to allow Josiah to read a poem that I really appreciated that was also published in this issue titled Ringworm. And yeah, I'll allow them opportunities to read this off, and then I can continue on with the questions afterwards.

Mosiah Assad: Ringworm. The water bring we and the water gone take we back. As close as we live to the ocean, ain't nobody got gas for the beach. So we be excited for rain, for floodwater. My mama don't be. Come you out that water, fool ass. She won't say it, but I listen, so I know. Our elders were eaten alive. Done by cancer, they say. But we say a body betrayed, zoned for sacrifice by a poisoned land and overworked hand. They had the best recipes and the meanest truths. Now they haunt the air. They heavy it, sitting prematurely on a humid spirit plane. They whisper, ringworm, ringworm. But I don't want to turn my head. I don't want to see my granny receded into herself, a deflation of the woman who had mastered the earth's ways of wastelessness and the water's ways of weightlessness. With them went our greatest rituals. We were church people outside the church. We used to meet in the clearing. the swamp-like land water with our new African waterways. I want to step in their pluff mud prints, sink and sink until I find lost ingredients. Sweetgrass, bulrush, pine, palmetto. Is it not ours? The river roads have our prints. As many of us drowned here, the rivers that ride 'em are body-filled, bountiful, But I hear my mama now. That boy planning that floodwater again. Turn be missing what they never held themselves. Yeah, we smell the brackish on our daddy's breath, the smell in the wake of his steps. We be ready to pull jumping fish scales from our skin to be robed in light dirt and the attention of unknowing fathers. Our mothers, they speak of running the yard barefoot. Sugarcane in mouth, honeysuckle in sight, watermelon on deck, hands stained with Granny's berries, the water calling them by nickname. Now all we get is, get out that floodwater. That's why them boys call you ringworm now. And, don't drink that tap. And they can't answer our pleading, how comes? Maybe it's the same way we can smell the sky about to open and can't help but clot our play. Our brown water baptism reminds us of how they shipped Nan and them from marsh field to factory, how we were stream softened and river rough people who better reintroduce themselves to the tides that will swallow us first. Thank you.

Josh: No, thank you. That was great. I appreciate that.

Karl: That was amazing.

Josh: Definitely. So I want to— maybe this is a general question, but maybe starting with Mosiah a little bit discussing this, but what are the— what do you find What are you noticing about the political consciousness, the general awareness, and the capacity to engage in this obviously extended fight against capital, right? And this struggle that you guys are participating in, and how are you seeing the responses from the people themselves, if that makes sense? I was thinking this is really interesting, something I've been thinking about recently, specifically with response to, you know what I'm saying, obviously Palestine, is seeing just how much it feels we're behind the scope, even recently speaking, when thinking about Kamala's, like, presidency and how many it feels African people are apathetic to what's going on abroad at times. And, or even it's a lot of African people have been able to, you know what I'm saying, get excited about this moment, get excited about, you know what I'm saying, another neocolonial, another neocolonial individual leader, right? Like Kamala, like we just had under Obama, of course. And so I'm really interested in how you guys are seeing, like, consciousness being developed and what role that you're playing in that process, right, in trying to ignite a kind of more radical consciousness, specifically amongst African people. So yeah, I don't know if that makes sense, and if not, I'll try to re-explain it, but hopefully you catch my drift here.

Mosiah Assad: I'll say that right now, as I believe it was Rashad, maybe it was Carl, excuse me if I'm wrong, but that LAC, the Lowcountry Action Committee, is We're about 4 years old, I believe, this year.

Josh: Of course.

Mosiah Assad: So we're moving from a stage where— and I don't want to release any sensitive information, but we're really moving into a stage where we're growing from a very small handful of people to a group of community members who are turning into organizers through the political education that we're both doing internally and giving out externally to the community. So I think that as we move out of this stage of building, like doing the very good work of slow building an organization that can withstand neocolonial tides, a Black woman who might drop more bombs on a foreign colony or just falling for any sort of neocolonial trap. I think that we're at the stage now where we have this, where we're building this sort of infrastructure to do that. And that looks— and I say infrastructure, meaning gathering resources to model what it would look like to be a liberated people within the empire. So that looks— again, I don't want to release any sensitive information, but on the community level, it looks like turning our programs from community teach-ins to culturally relevant ways that we tap into the African masses. So whether that's Engaging them politically through a fish fry or a drum circle or back-to-school drive, summer camp where we take the youth through the national heritage sites, the Gullah Geechee sites, and just doing the sort of work that models and takes care of people's material needs in a way that is divorced from the system. I think that this election is particularly Hard to watch because a lot of—

Josh: Definitely.

Mosiah Assad: Right, a lot of us, a lot of the Africans in the United States of America are grasping at whatever this evil empire puts in front of them to make their lives better. It is desperate. We are desperate out here. So I think it's important for LAC And any, anybody who's serious about organizing Africans or anybody, any demographic in this country has to be serious about modeling autonomy and modeling liberation, modeling institutions that are going to take care of our community materially. So that looks like our freedom bag drives, that looks like our summer institutes, that looks like, that looks like a lot of things. And it, but more importantly, it looks like something that we're still developing. That in a way that's culturally relevant and long-lasting.

Josh: Of course. Absolutely. Yeah. Brilliant answer right there. I appreciate that.

Karl: I just wanted to add to that real quick. It also looks like us having, at any event that we throw, we try our best to have a kids' corner because we know people are—

Rashad: Exactly.

Karl: Struggling under capitalism. They're working every day. They're still, we're still making families, building families. We still have children. And it looks like while we want to ask people, or we're trying to raise everyone's political consciousness, we're trying to organize them, people still need— people are fighting every day for survival, which we're competing in just to meet our material needs. So anything we can do to make coming together easier for them, we have to try to do that. Yeah, I just wanted to add the fact that being open to having— receiving people with their children, receiving them how they are, having each Doing the best we can to meet people where they are and tailor any kind of program or outreach to just to, to suit them the best, the best we possibly can.

Josh: Absolutely.

Karl: Yeah.

Josh: I appreciate you all. This was great. You're all brilliant and I have such reverence for the work you're doing, which is why I'm just, you know what I'm saying, excited to get you back on here again. So we'll probably have 2 episodes of it. But yeah, it's, if you guys, you can talk a bit about How folks can find you, you know what I'm saying? How folks can support the work that you're doing and just, yeah, and just generally keep up with, you know what I'm saying, whatever you have coming out culturally speaking. Like Dakota, you said you guys just released these articles in this special issue from a local magazine. But yeah, just if there's any procedures in place that people can like keep up with the work you're doing.

Karl: You can follow us, LAC, @LCTakesAction on Instagram, and we post regularly. Anything we got going on, you can almost 100% of the time, because yeah, I said almost, but you can definitely find it on our Instagram page where we post regularly.

Josh: Right.

Mosiah Assad: I'll also add that you can volunteer with us at our food drives. We also ask for help with our Free 'Em All campaigns, which are letters to political prisoners. And we ask that people either, if you're a Low— if you from the Lowcountry, if you from Charleston, We ask that you come check us out and join us. And if you're not from here, join a radical organization that's fighting capitalism and imperialism in your town or in your city. That's how you can connect and support us.

Josh: Absolutely.

Rashad: Yeah.

Josh: Couldn't have said it better myself.

Karl: Real quick, George, I appreciate you. I think this is the second time me and you has talked, but I don't do things like this a lot, but I definitely enjoy it. I'm glad that you're doing, that you're doing this and that you care enough to even reach out to us and give us the opportunity to talk about the important topics. Yeah. So I, I just wanna say thank you. I really appreciate you.

Josh: I appreciate that. Yeah. It's like I said, I have great reverence as someone who's been politically involved for what, nearly a decade at this point. And I just have such great reverence for organizers. And like you guys, I see you guys like as like these organic intellectuals, you know what I'm saying? And we gotta tap deeply into that, especially in these moments, right? I feel like there's so much confusion, right? And so much like this bourgeois bullshit going around, you know what I'm saying, happening at this point in society.

Mosiah Assad: Mm-hmm.

Josh: Specifically amongst our own people, you know what I'm saying? And so there's something about, um, we're always drawn, coming back, you know what I'm saying? Um, Amiri Baraka always says like the return to the source, right? And I think the resor— the source has to be like our Black radical roots, right? 'Cause that's what always can keep us grounded. That's all can actually help us understand and analyze this current moment that we're in. And I think you guys embody that shit too. And so that's why I was happily— I'm happily gonna always, you know what I'm saying, leave space for you guys to come on here and talk your shit, you know what I'm saying? And, or read your poems and shit. And we make sure we got to keep tapping into that as much as possible with the work we're doing. And because that's what I'm— that's the tradition I'm in, right? I'm from South Florida, but I've been living in South North Carolina for what, 15, 16 years? Until last year, I moved to Illinois, but I'm back— my family's still in North Carolina, so I'm in North Carolina pretty often. I'm from the South, you know what I'm saying? That's my roots, right? The Black South. And so I have such a special connection to the work y'all are doing, everything I read about y'all, everything I hear about y'all. And yeah, I just want to make sure that we keep that shit, like, you know what I'm saying, at the forefront of this shit, because I feel like a lot of the radicalism gets, you know what I'm saying, a lot of petty bourgeois or bourgeois, like, shit gets, like, at the forefront of, like, radicalism and radical politics. And we need to get back to the people, right? The workers, the people who are actually struggling.

Karl: Yeah.

Josh: Struggling. So yeah, like I said, great reference for you guys, and you're always welcome on the show. And we're going to try to get this out as soon as possible for sure. But yeah.

Karl: Yeah, we be radical.

Josh: Yeah.

Karl: The root definition of radical. Solving—

Mosiah Assad: Yeah, man.

Karl: Identifying the root of what's going on.

Josh: Of course.

Karl: We have a culture of trying to be reactionary and—

Josh: Of course.

Karl: Talk about the symptoms. But no, listen, you reaching out, it really made me feel better about just speaking out loud and speaking from my chest when I feel a certain way about something. Whether it be posting more on social media or writing these articles or—

Rashad: Definitely.

Karl: Being in the meeting with you. Because a lot of times, Black people, personally, just on my journey of just reading up on radical movements or revolutionary movements, I'm like, damn, why we got to read stuff from so long ago?

Josh: Yeah.

Karl: Yes. Where are the people that— where's the updated struggle? Where are your real-life, everyday people taking a look at what's going on and then using their Intelligent minds speaking on it.

Rashad: Certainly.

Karl: It's making me feel better about speaking on it because I know sometime, at some point in time, somebody going to want to know what Black people doing during this time period. Right. Yeah, man. Like I said, I'm going to thank you again.

Josh: Yeah, I appreciate that.

Karl: I was kind of nervous writing this article.

Rashad: Yeah.

Karl: Putting your words up there for everybody to read.

Josh: Oh, yeah.

Karl: I piece from the heart. I'm going to be real with you. It was real. And also, we gonna put out more content, and I wanna, 'cause the part, the article that I wrote, it, it was, it was edited to fit like needs of the newspaper, 'cause it was an actual like physical paper. There was a longer version where I get way more personal in it, and that we plan to release again, LAC, either through LAC or through different mediums.

Josh: But for sure.

Karl: But yeah.

Josh: Yeah, definitely. Definitely send it my way when it's out. As soon as it's out, please do. But yeah, I definitely do think, I think I have to keep Keep writing, man. Keep writing and keep witnessing and documenting these moments, because that's what I'm trying to do too, the same thing. But the moment that shit is on the internet, it's forever. And so that's why we had to take our time with it. But I do also believe that, you know what I'm saying, that shit is so necessary because there's so much shit, you know what I'm saying, so much that we got to analyze, you know what I'm saying, and understand. And again, in a world of so much, right? That's what neocolonialism is to me. It is just a strategic means of confusion, right? It is a means by which— because there's no way, you know what I'm saying, so many people's minds work Right? There's no way a Black woman could betray us. There's no way a Black man can betray us. It's like, no, actually, that's exactly what it's gonna— that's exactly what they're gonna do. And we don't need to wait till they do it to understand that this is gonna happen. We have history to back this up, and we— there's so much literature out there, right, that we can tap into and see these same tactics being mobilized by empire. You feel what I'm saying? And so, if we're not the ones, like the intellectuals, right, these organic intellectuals, the organizers, we're not gonna analyze this shit, then who is, right? Empire isn't.

Karl: Right.

Josh: I'm looking forward to it. We got to find a way to make sure we keep this out in circulation for sure. But yeah, I appreciate you all greatly, and we'll definitely have you back on in the future. And I really want to keep in touch with what you guys are doing. Please let me know how I can support you, like, personally speaking. But yeah, thank you again for all of this.