Narratives of Hope: Ajamu Baraka at the American University in Beirut, with Daniel Drennan ElAwar

Rania Masri: So on behalf of the Arts and Humanities Initiative and the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, we welcome you to another event in the series called Narratives of Hope. This is a special event because we're discussing a very powerful leader who was assassinated almost 50 years ago. Specifically, he was assassinated 50 years ago, 2 days ago. And of course, he Over the past week, there's been a beautiful hashtag called #MalcolmTaughtMe. And I've been following it, and I just want to point out a few key quotes that individuals have brought up time and time again, because I think it speaks to the legacy that Malcolm X left for all of us. I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I am a human being first and foremost. Malcolm also said, they cripple the bird's wing, then condemn it for not flying as fast as they. He also said— and this is critical, because not only did he emphasize the essential need for people to contextualize racism to contextualize economic violence, to contextualize political violence. But he also stressed on the critical need to organize. An individual wrote, Malcolm said, we cannot unite with anyone until we first unite with ourselves. And bringing it home— and home, I mean, to our current state of time in 2015— Malcolm taught me that Black lives matter and that it's okay to say that our Black lives matter too. And I would argue as an Arab American that Malcolm taught me that Arab lives matter and it's okay to say that our lives matter too. His daughter, Malcolm X's daughter, Elisa Shabazz, wrote in the New York Times a few days ago, of course my father would be heartened by the youth-led movement taking place across the United States and abroad in response to institutional brutality. And here she's referring specifically to U.S. police brutality, though I have to say that U.S.— that police brutality is not limited to the United States.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Mm-hmm.

Rania Masri: And she continued, and she said, and he would appreciate the protesters' fervor and skillful use of social media to rapidly organize, galvanize, and educate. In a sense, his ability to boil down hard truths into strong statements and catchy phrases presaged our era of hashtag activism.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Yes.

Rania Masri: But he would be the first to say that slogans are not action. They amount to nothing but a complaint filed against a system that does not care. In his speeches, Malcolm did not simply cry inequality. He demanded justice. And he laid out the steps necessary to achieve justice. He would thus bemoan the lack of sustained and targeted activism. Malcolm was never one man acting alone. He didn't create black anger with his speeches.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Thank you.

Rania Masri: He organized and gave direction to it. He was a modern hero, but he recognized that a modern hero alone won't bring us a magic solution. The key to creating change is a critical mass of ready and angry people whose passion does not ebb and flow with the news cycle. 50 years after his assassination, And Malcolm's legacy is still controversial. The defense of Malcolm's legacy, both in the United States and worldwide, has been left to a very small network of those who followed or were inspired by Malcolm. It seems odd, wrote Daniel— wrote Ron Daniels, a veteran militant Black activist, it seems odd that very little attention is being devoted to the anniversary dates of the life and legacy of such an extraordinary leader. Daniels helped organize a large commemoration of Malcolm in 1990, and he's still complaining against the lack of a similar effort today, 50 years after his assassination. Yet the critical question becomes, how do we remember Malcolm? Among those who are determined to remember him and to demonstrate his ongoing relevance, are still ongoing debates as to what his legacy actually means. Was he a Black nationalist, even though he ultimately stopped describing himself in those terms in the final months of his life? Was he moving towards socialist conclusions, as some of his collaborators on the left have argued? Or would Malcolm have joined many of his contemporary African-American activists in electoral politics and And join the Democratic Party, as suggested in the exhaustively researched biography written by the late Manning Marable. And most critically, I would argue, for those of us here in the Arab world and in Lebanon, what is Malcolm's relevance and lessons for us today as we continue to struggle against racism, neoliberalism, division, and colonialism? So these are the questions we are posing to our speakers. On my left— politically, we are all on the same left, I would argue— but on my left, we have Ajamu Baraka, who is a human rights defender whose experience spans 3 decades of domestic— and by domestic, I mean United States— and international education and activism. He is a veteran grassroots organizer, whose roots are in the Black liberation movement and anti-apartheid struggles and Central American solidarity struggles, as well as solidarity struggles with Palestinians. He was the founding executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network from July 2004 until July 2011. This was the first domestic human rights network in the United States explicitly explicitly committed to the application of international human rights standards to the United States. Under his leadership, the network grew from a core membership of 60 organizations to more than 300 U.S.-based member organizations and 1,500 individual members who worked on the full spectrum of human rights concerns in the United States. During his tenure, the network initiated the Katrina Campaign on Internal Displacement, In New Orleans. In New Orleans. And he was the first to formally identify the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans as internally displaced people. In 2001, he received the Abolitionist of the Year Award from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The following year, he received the Human Rights Guardian Award from the National Center for Human Rights Education. He is currently on the boards of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Africa Action, Latin American Caribbean Community Center, and the Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights. He has taught political science at various universities and is also a contributor— contributing writer for various publications, including Black Commentator, Common Dreams, Pampa Zeka, People of Color Organize, and Black Agenda Report. He's currently an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies And is editing a new book on human rights in the United States entitled The Struggle Must Be for Human Rights: Voices from the Field. He's also, I've recently discovered, a comrade with— where we share numerous friends and acquaintances and comrades within the United States.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Thank you.

Rania Masri: And to my left, also, is Daniel Drennan, another comrade and activist and inspirational figure for many of us here in Lebanon, as well as in the United States. Daniel returned to Lebanon in 2004 and has worked as a professor of graphic design and illustration for the past 10 years. The designs that you see here, as well as the designs outside, are his creation. In 2009, he founded the artist collective Jamaa' Al-Yed. His research and pedagogy are focused on cultural representation, collective art, and craft production as well as revolutionary praxis. He's an extraordinarily humble individual. That's why the bio that he gave me is just 3 lines. But I have to say, for the record, Daniel is one of those few professors that recognize there is no separation within the classroom from the communities outside the classroom. And it's a lesson I hope that many of us fellow professors will continue to live and work towards and be inspired by. Ajamu's talk is entitled From Ferguson to Palestine: Malcolm X and Black Internationalism. After Ajamu, Danny will speak on Shadow, Body, Spirit: Malcolm X Imaged and Imagined. Please join us in welcoming our guests.

Ajamu Baraka: I would like to, to, to Thank you for that very generous introduction. Of course, I didn't give you that bio, so I want people to know I'm humble also. I'm so happy to be here this evening here in Beirut, and I'm really overjoyed at the fact that this kind of gathering was organized.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Thank you.

Ajamu Baraka: To commemorate, if you will, the anniversary, the sad anniversary, of the taking of Brother Malcolm X. But it's a testament to the political leadership here that this kind of gathering was in fact organized. As my friend Ron Daniels said from the U.S., it's really appalling, the lack of attention that's been given to this anniversary in the U.S. And it's interesting that we would have to come to Beirut to have the kind of conversation that we should be having across the U.S. on the occasion of this anniversary. So I want to thank Tariq, Rania, everyone involved in this event tonight. My comments are going to be hopefully Relatively brief. I want to get to our conversation. But I think that to get to the gist of what I want to talk about tonight, which is the contemporary importance of Malcolm, we still have to kind of walk through Malcolm X and his history. I know that a lot of you are aware of his background, aware of his evolution, so we won't spend a lot of time on that. But I want to set the stage, though, for the conversation. See, it's important that people understand that Malcolm didn't create the Black radical tradition in the U.S. Malcolm was a very effective articulator of what we refer to as the Black radical tradition. But the Black radical tradition is a tradition that developed Over the course of our experiences in the U.S., meaning African-American people in the U.S., that basically from the time that we were captured and brought to the U.S., we have been involved in struggle. We have been involved in resistance. The grand narrative of the U.S., however, is that as a consequence of the end of the so-called Civil War in the U.S., that there was a desire on the part of African people to integrate into what was developing as the American experience. But Malcolm represents a tradition that was on the other side of that narrative, a tradition of resistance, a tradition of a fight for self-determination.

Rania Masri: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: A tradition that said basically we're not going to be willing partners in the settler colonial experience that is the U.S. We recognized very early that we had different interests, a different experience. The notion that our greatest desire was to be part of an experiment— to be part of a process in which Yes. Settler colonial forces were progressively moving across the North American territory, systematically eliminating physically the indigenous population. That was something we didn't want to be a part of. As a matter of fact, at the end of the second— end of the war, the Civil War, many of our people tried to migrate As far away from the U.S. as possible. And that's why we ended up in places like Mexico, ended up down in, at that point, Spanish territory in Florida, went out to the west to so-called Indian Territory, and up in Kansas and Oklahoma, trying to move away from the U.S. as quick and fast as we could make it.

Rania Masri: Thank you.

Ajamu Baraka: Some of us even ended up back in Africa. Well, see, that part of the experience is something that many people aren't aware of. Many people know instead the narrative of the U.S. being a flawed, but a nation in which it progressively was moving toward justice, and part of that movement was the progressive incorporation And the rendering of social justice to African people, African American people. That's a narrative that many of us who come out of the resistance movement reject. What I'm going to touch on very briefly is the ideals of Malcolm and how those ideals helped to propel our movement forward, both in the U.S. and globally. You know, it's interesting that when you move around this world, And you go to various countries where there's progressive struggle, and you go to the different offices of organizations, political parties, you know, you usually have situations where you have, you know, all kinds of pictures of iconic revolutionaries, you know, on the walls of these offices. There are 2 iconic images.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: That's right.

Ajamu Baraka: That you see almost every place in the world, and that is an image of Che Guevara and Malcolm X. Now, there's a reason for that, I think. And I think that that reason is that people understood around the world what Malcolm stood for. People understood that Malcolm represented The revolutionary aspirations of not only African people in the U.S., but people around the world who had identified for themselves a common enemy, a common enemy rooted in the colonial enterprise. So Malcolm, for many of us, became the articulator of this revolutionary process. And that's what we have to stress. Now, Malcolm was a revolutionary. And what he brought to the table as part of a representative of the black radical tradition was the confluence of various elements of that tradition. And that is revolutionary nationalism, anti-imperialism, and what we call black internationalism. In his expression, it was primarily revolutionary Pan-Africanism. But Malcolm understood very clearly that what we had in the U.S. was a colonial experience. That radical revolutionary perspective suggested that for those of us in the U.S., we are not and cannot be defined just as so-called Americans, that our struggle was in fact part and parcel of a revolutionary global struggle. And that by defining ourselves as part of that struggle, by defining ourselves as part of the colonial world, experiencing a particular kind of colonialism in North America, that connected us with the struggles of people around the world. That's the essence, the thrust of the Black radical tradition. And that's what Malcolm articulated. But how did Malcolm get to where he was? How did he get to the point where he could articulate that kind of position? So it's important for us to understand how he got there. You know, Malcolm was born at a time in the 1920s, 1925. It was a very interesting time in the U.S. and really in the world. In the U.S. in the 1920s, you had the creation of A number of radical movements in the U.S. You had the Garvey movement. You had the African Blood Brotherhood. You had the New Negro movement, which was a movement of black radicals. You had around the world people beginning to rebel against the colonial experience that they had been subjected to. Um, Malcolm's mother and father were in fact part of the Garvey movement. The movement was the brainchild of Marcus Garvey from Jamaica, who came to the U.S., who created this organization. The name of it was the Universal Negro Improvement Association. It was a Pan-Africanist organization that had an anti-colonial perspective. That was Malcolm's earlier experiences. But Malcolm, being born in a colonial, racist, backward, oppressive environment, was subjected to the conditions that all of us were subjected to. When you are subjected to experiences where your humanity is not recognized, where you find yourself in a struggle for existence, where you find yourself enraged because of the conditions you are facing, and you Turn that rage inward, and you turn that rage against people in your own community. And so, as we all know, Malcolm engaged in a life of petty crime at one point. He ended up in prison, and that was the beginning of his evolution. In prison, Malcolm was connected to, introduced to the thinking of Elijah Muhammad. The Nation of Islam, and that was the beginning of his awakening, if you will. That process of radicalization, of personal transformation, is something that we see in many, many experiences of oppressed people. And it's interesting that it happens, in many cases, in prison, because that's the place where you become the most clear about the kinds of conditions you're up against.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Yes.

Ajamu Baraka: So, for Malcolm, he was introduced to the Nation of Islam. It resonated with him, the ideals of the Nation of Islam, the ideals of black nationalism, of self-determination, of pride and dignity in being black. And so Malcolm ended up in the Nation of Islam when he came out of prison in 1953. Malcolm had Some special talents. The Nation of Islam was an organization that had 3 temples at that point. But with Malcolm's aggressive activity, the nation expanded from 3 temples to more than 100. Now, we know the history, basically, that Malcolm was in the Nation of Islam. He began to develop himself. He began to develop the nation. But Malcolm, because of his experience with his mother and father, part of the Garvey movement, even though he articulated a certain form of black nationalism from The Nation, Malcolm also understood that the black nationalist tradition and the black nationalist perspective had to go beyond just the U.S. So Malcolm was following international developments. He was very much involved in what was happening globally. He followed it, even though the teachings of the Nation of Islam kept them from being directly involved in these kinds of activities. But Malcolm was very moved by what was happening in the world. A very pivotal event that happened for Malcolm was the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, where you had African and Asian revolutionaries coming together. And basically declaring for themselves that they were going to struggle for their liberation, that they were going to continue the anti-colonial fight. That was very, very important for Malcolm.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Mm-hmm.

Ajamu Baraka: By the late 1950s, Malcolm was involved in helping the Nation to be involved in various activities in New York. He was instrumental in organizing when Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, came to New York, to make sure that the Nation was involved in that activity. When Fidel Castro, after the revolution, came to New York, and there was an incident where he had to leave the hotel and go up to Harlem, Malcolm made sure that he was taken care of in Harlem. Malcolm was very much involved in these international activities. And that's why he began to feel the constraints of the Nation of Islam. So that by 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated—

Rania Masri: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: And Elijah Muhammad gave the order to his ministers not to make any comments about the assassination. Malcolm ended up saying anyway that he believed that the assassination was a case of the chickens coming home to roost. That earned him a suspension from the Nation, a suspension that wasn't really that surprising to Malcolm because he understood that there were already tensions He was already outgrowing the Nation, if you will. There was jealousy among some of the leadership of the Nation because of Malcolm's popularity, the fact that Malcolm was known by people throughout the world. So when it became clear that his suspension was not going to end, Malcolm ended up, at that point, leaving the Nation of Islam. Now, this is important.

Rania Masri: Yes.

Ajamu Baraka: Because this one year of his experience, once he left the Nation in early 1960, And to the point where he was murdered in February of 1965. This is our expert. That's the microphone that's going to talk to you in a minute.

Rania Masri: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: I thought he was back for a second. So, this 1-year period really is the most important period, I think, for Malcolm, if us to understand Malcolm and his influence worldwide. I mean, but it's a period that for some reason people tend not to pay that much attention to. Even when you look at some of the popular depictions, like Spike Lee's movie on Malcolm X, he takes us all the way to Malcolm leaving the Nation. He gives us the impression that Malcolm was going through a transformation, and he was. But he doesn't really get into the real guts of what— where Malcolm was going politically. For us, for many of us, this was the period in which Malcolm really began to articulate the black radical tradition in a real way. That when he began to talk about anti-colonialism, when he understood that basically The black struggle in the U.S. was part of a worldwide struggle, when he embraced the notion of a revolutionary approach to human rights, when he told the civil rights individuals, the civil rights leaders, that they had to transform the fight for civil rights into one for human rights. This was the period of his most valuable contributions. But yet it's the period in which many, many people are not really That attuned to. So for many of us, this was where Malcolm made his contribution. When Malcolm left the country and went to various countries in Africa in 1964, it was that experience that really introduced him to the wider world and the wider world to Malcolm. Malcolm had a chance to converse with world leaders around the world. And in particular in Africa. And Malcolm began to really understand the depth of what we were up against. The other really important contribution that we need to talk about in that period when Malcolm left the Nation is this. Now we know that Malcolm moved away from the anti-white racism of the Nation of Islam. But we have to understand that Malcolm was not, in fact, becoming an integrationist, if you will. Malcolm understood, like Frantz Fanon, the consequences, the political and psychological consequences of white supremacy. And Malcolm was adamantly committed to the eradication of white supremacy. Malcolm understood that In order for people who were oppressed, people who had been exposed to the colonial experience and understanding that experience and all of its dynamics, that the only way that people were going to free themselves from that experience, the only way people were going to move toward authentic liberation, they had to also engage in a process of mental and psychological decolonization. And part of that decolonization process was to Rid themselves of what he referred to as whiteness. He recognized and understood, again, like Fanon, that whiteness was an ideology. It wasn't just the crude expressions of obvious racists, but it was a— it was part of an ideological framework that was part of the colonial experience. And it was so ingrained, so normalized, That many people failed to even see it, even when they were subjected to it. Malcolm, again, like Fanon, believed that we had to root out whiteness if we were going to ever be really authentically free. And so that notion of a consistent fight against white supremacy was the cornerstone of Malcolm's work. And that is why he's seen by many people around the world as the father, if you will, of black consciousness, something, a movement, an ideology, a perspective that was picked up by people around the world, not just black people, but people around the world who understood that we had to have a critical understanding of the full expression of white supremacy. The last thing that we'll talk about very quickly that Malcolm brought to us and became one of the most lasting contributions, I think, is his use of human rights, his approach to human rights ideal.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Mm-hmm.

Ajamu Baraka: Many of us are aware of human rights and the human rights framework Malcolm talked about the fact that the civil rights movement had to be internationalized. It had to move from civil rights to human rights. But what Malcolm was saying wasn't just that we were supposed to go to the United Nations structures and appeal to states, to appeal to the human rights text in order to be liberated. He thought that that was important to raise these kinds of issues. But Malcolm had a different approach to human rights. Malcolm understood that ultimately for human rights to be realized by the oppressed, they had to fight for the human rights. Malcolm articulated what we call today a people-centered perspective on human rights, a perspective that says that basically If you limit yourself to state-centered legalism, if you limit yourself to the human rights texts as we know them, then basically you are limiting your humanity and limiting your human possibilities. Malcolm understood that we had to go beyond those texts, that it was the people themselves engaged in struggle That define the range of what we call human rights. That if we're going to be able to fully realize human rights, we had to name the source of the human rights violations. So this idea of human rights being something that is apolitical, neutral, objective, is something that Malcolm and those of us who are part of the human rights movement, the radical human rights movement, we reject.

Rania Masri: Thank you.

Ajamu Baraka: We say that this movement for people-centered human rights is a political project. We name the offenders. We say that the source of global human rights violations in the world today is the white supremacist, colonial capitalist, patriarchal system.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Thank you.

Ajamu Baraka: We have no problem with that, that basically we say that if you're going to be able to fully realize human rights, You've got to understand that we're up against a structural edifice and that we have to transform these social relationships. That if societies are organized in such a way where your human rights are fundamentally violated, then the responsibility of a human rights activist and a human rights movement is to struggle and to fight to change the social relations, structures, and institutions of that society. So what this perspective does is put the idea of revolutionary change back at the center of the human rights question. And if you think about it, we have to, because if we don't differentiate ourselves from the human rights articulations of people like George W. Bush and Barack Obama, then what are we doing? We cannot be talking about the same range of human rights. We cannot give legitimacy to the mythology that the U.S. government is the strongest and most consistent protector of human rights.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: That is absurd.

Ajamu Baraka: So we reject that, using this people-centered framework.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: A framework and an approach to human rights that is a fundamental part of the black radical tradition, going back to the Second World War. See, this articulation that Malcolm talked about and what we talk about today is not something that's new. When the UN was put in place at the end of the Second Imperialist War, African-American people understood that this was a site in which we could raise up 2 2 fundamentally interconnected issues: racial oppression in the U.S. and colonialism internationally. And so there was a series of petitions, first submitted by a group called the National Negro Congress in 1946. That was followed by the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, led by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1947. And then the last petition was in 1953, submitted by the Civil Rights Congress. And these petitions were petitions that said, basically, the U.S. is a human rights violator. It is responsible for oppression in the U.S. and responsible for oppression around the world. As a consequence of those activities, those petitions, in fact, by 1953, The U.S. suspended any of its so-called support for human rights for more than 10 years. So this tradition of a radical human rights approach is part and parcel of the black radical tradition today. Malcolm's approach to human rights, Malcolm's articulation of a political perspective that questions our relationship, our meaning African Americans, to the U.S. Malcolm's analysis that says that basically we're not going to be able to fully realize our human rights and human dignity as long as U.S. society is organized the way it is. These are the articulations and understandings that are driving the work of the contemporary activists. Activists who are now involved in the anti-police brutality movement, the anti-police violence movement, the people who are part of the Black Lives Matter movement, the folks who were organizing in Ferguson, the folks who were organizing in New York, these young people who are understanding that the issue of police violence is not something that can be just defined and contained in local cities like Ferguson or New York or Chicago or whatever, that is part of a process of systematic oppression.

Rania Masri: Uh-huh.

Ajamu Baraka: This understanding is very similar to the kind of understanding that we saw that occurred among the young people in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee back in the 1960s, who went south and were involved in and voter registration, organizing, fighting for democratic rights, who through their own experiences and analysis understood that they had to go beyond that, that it was something more systemic. And they're the ones that became some of the driving forces in the Black Power movement, in the revolutionary process in the U.S. Some of those people also ended up in places like, in organizations like the Black Panther Party, and all of them being influenced by Malcolm X's Articulations. But these young people, like those young people then, today are understanding that they have to connect up with the world, that they are in fact part of a broader worldwide process. And that is why one of the first— or not one of the first, the first places that these young people went to a few months ago was Palestine. It's not surprising that during the uprisings in Ferguson, there were direct connections made between the Palestinian resistance and the young people in Ferguson. The connection, though, should be obvious and should be understandable. That is, they got in contact with the young folks in Ferguson because they were saying, you know what, we know how to struggle against those kinds of tactics.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: And you need to understand that the tactics being employed against you in Ferguson were employed against us and are being employed against us back here in Palestine. And the reason that's the case is because the people who trained the police force in Ferguson are the folks who they were fighting in Palestine. We're talking about the Israelis.

Rania Masri: Mm-hmm.

Ajamu Baraka: Israel, the Israelis The ones that trained the Ferguson police force. So, the kind of aggressive, anti-people tactics that we saw in Ferguson was something that they had been taught by the Israeli police forces. So, that connection was made, that communication was made between Palestine and Ferguson.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: And therefore, beyond that, the first trip that these young people made— and I know these young folks, I worked with them— was to Palestine a couple of months ago to solidify those connections. This is all part and parcel of this international struggle that Malcolm helped to motivate, helped to be an inspirational leader of.

Rania Masri: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: This notion that we are part of a global struggle, that we never will identify fully with being a so-called American, that we have allies outside of the U.S., that we are part of a glorious struggle that is really on the momentum, that it is moving toward a victory. I think that's a very important point. A place where there will be real, authentic decolonization. That's where we are moving. That is a consequence of the influence of Malcolm. That's why Malcolm has the kind of global standing that he has, even if we don't see it in the U.S. that much. But that is why Malcolm means so much to so many people around the world, that Malcolm Stood for dignity. He stood for an unrepentant anti-colonial position. He stood for human liberation and human freedom. That is the model. That is the example of Malcolm. And that is why we hold and raise up Malcolm today, and we'll continue so.

Rania Masri: Thank you.

Ajamu Baraka: As we go forward. Thank you.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Can everyone hear me? It's good? Thank you all for coming out tonight. It's an honor for me to be here. I want to thank my good friend and comrade, Tariq, for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be sitting with my good friend and comrade, Rania, as well, and an honor to be sharing the table with Dr. Baraka. I welcome him, and I welcome all of you. We've had a little bit of history concerning Malcolm X and his role I will be talking a little bit about his image, and not just him, his image, but the image of the revolutionary and what does it mean in terms of how we present ourselves, how do we mediate ourselves. It's interesting that we're talking about Malcolm X in terms of his non-recognition in the United States. Start with the— by— this presentation talking about representation. I have 2 stamps here. One comes from a booklet of postage stamps produced by the United States Postal Service, African Americans on Stamps: A Celebration of African American Heritage. His family had to petition to have this stamp put out. There was no desire to have Malcolm X on a stamp. In fact, a friend of mine in the United States who teaches grammar school said to me, for Black History Month, she was giving out papers for the students to do, and the principal said to her, the students can write on anyone they want except the Black Panther Party, except Malcolm X. So we can see his erasure from the society. Compared and contrasted to a stamp that came— that comes from or came from the Islamic Republic of Iran after the revolution there. And I'm not making a political comparison between the countries. What I want us to look at is the portrayal of these figures. In the booklet, when you buy these stamps from the United States government, the booklet says Malcolm X was a lifelong criminal. He spent a lot of time in prison and converted to Islam. There's no mention that he was assassinated. There's no mention of his revolutionary stature in the United States, contrasted to an image where we see Malcolm X in the role of Bilal doing the call to prayer. And you can see the colors behind him representing the opposite of racism, inclusion. Of other races. And I find this very interesting in terms of a comparison. And so what I'm hoping to talk about today, not these representations in and of themselves, but what is their historical context, their medium, the audience, what were the dynamics of production, who produced these and why? Also analyzing them for what I will refer to as reductive Versus expansive potential. Here we see Malcolm X in the United States being reduced. I refer to this as creating a shadow of his self, if you will, as opposed to an expansive idea where you have Malcolm X portrayed as a leader and someone who struggles against racial discrimination. This is a quote from Gilbert Ofsosky from his book Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, and it's interesting to hear The history, because it's important to realize that the civil rights movement was Southern, meaning the Southern United States and desegregation coming from the South. It didn't mean that the North was this Shangri-La that everyone was trying to get to, as we heard earlier. The ghettos of the North, the crime and the ghettoization of Black Americans in the United States was happening in the North as well. Osofsky says, what was most striking about the Negro stereotype was the way it portrayed a people in an image so totally the reverse of what Americans considered worthy of emulation and recognition. The Black population at the time hoped for full acceptance in a culture which mocked their aspirations. So often you hear in the United States the American dream, lift yourself up by your bootstraps, it's there for you to take, right? And here we see that this is not absolutely true. Taking a step back historically, we often refer to today about cultural appropriation, Black cultural appropriation, taking culture from the Black community. I think it's important to realize that there was cultural application. What does this mean? This— we have 3 images here. Amos and Andy, these were white actors at a time when Blacks were not allowed on stage, not allowed to portray themselves. White actors smearing blackface paint on their faces, what we call blackface minstrelsy, portrayed Black Americans in a way which obviously not dignified, obviously not having much to do with, with the reality. When Black Americans were finally allowed onto the stage, White Americans had become so used to this image of the large eyes peeking out of this blackface that the black actors also had to put black makeup on their faces in order to please their white audience. So here we have Bert Williams in the middle in blackface, which, when I first read about him historically, I had to leave my house and walk around the block around 10 times, The idea of a black man putting black makeup on his face is just unbelievable, right? We also have here Paul Robeson, who was a great activist, also rendered into a postage stamp. But he was also tortured, held in front of the House Un-American Committee in front of Congress, reduced with shock therapy in a British hospital by the CIA and the FBI. To a shadow again of his former self. To understand is that Black Americans as slaves were not allowed to express themselves in their original language, were not allowed to express any cultural aspect of their being. And so the— I call these levels of existence, meaning Amos and Andy—

Ajamu Baraka: Yes.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Absent, non-agentive, meaning there's no Black self-representation here. This is whites putting on blackface. Bert Williams is present, but he's still acting against himself, if you will. And finally, you have Paul Robeson, who attempted to be present and also agentive. Some might say he succeeded. Some might say he failed. It upsets me that He's also little known. I think people remember him from his musical career more than his political career. Bert Williams famously said, stage Negro dialect to me was just as much a foreign dialect as that of the Italian. So what was starting to happen at the time, Black Americans coming into their own, Wanting a better sense of self-representation. And we start to see it. We mentioned W.E.B. Du Bois, and I'm going to speak about the cultural side of what he did. Here we have a stage play called Haiti about Toussaint Louverture, the— what they referred to as the Black Napoleon, who freed Haiti from French dominion.

Rania Masri: Right. Wow.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Again, someone we don't know so much about. Dizzy Gillespie, the jazz musician, and some posters from the Black Panther Party, one of which celebrates Brother Malcolm. There are a couple of things we need to realize, especially now when we're dealing with things like Charlie Hebdo and all of this. There are aspects of agency when we're talking about representation. It is not an even playing field. What does this mean? Meaning everyone, in terms of physical ability, more or less has the ability to speak, has voice, right? But there are legal constraints, and it's important to understand that those legal constraints are targeted. They're not equally applied. So, for example, making graffiti illegal Certain groups wanting to represent themselves using graffiti as a means of expression, they are targeted in this way. Some within society have the privilege to rise above these constraints, right? So, your class privilege allows you to say something or do something that other people might not have the ability to do. Social conditioning or mores, where you might limit yourself based on your community, things that are not often said. I've included some references here for where this talk is coming from because I know people often ask me that as a question, so I included them here. It's a bit heartbreaking when you realize that W.E.B. Du Bois really felt that it was possible to create a national Black theater, if you will. He saw the roots of it happening. People were lifting themselves up, expressing themselves, and what's interesting is that they were expressing themselves— what he referred to as a new and inner demand has arisen, which is only partially satisfied by the vaudeville actors. So here we're talking about speaking within a group, not looking for the dominant Society to recognize, but we're portraying ourselves to ourselves, and how do we do that? Later, when his theater projects did not receive funding and were— and did not succeed, you had white authors, white musicians standing in. So we have Porgy and Bess, operetta. We have Showboat, a stage musical. Showboat. And I talk about them, and it almost sounds laughable, and it would be laughable that these are the portrayals of Black Americans in the United States if they weren't taken historically. These are taken to be the historical record, as opposed to the history of Malcolm X or W.E.B. Du Bois or Dizzy Gillespie, for that matter, who was an activist and produced some shows, again, for a local audience. Here we move to cultural assimilation. So, beyond the ability to make one's way or to carve one's space, okay, well, now I'm going to try and fit into this culture, which is more or less imprisoning me. These are acceptable as long as they are held in check. I referred to the Black Napoleon. It was appalling to me when Barack Obama was referred to as the Black JFK, right? He's not a man in and of himself. He is the shadow of somebody else who came before him and who was white. So, Barbara Hendricks, the opera singer, was referred to as the Black Maria Callas. Nina Simone spent her life wishing to be a classical—

Rania Masri: Singer.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: pianist and was not allowed into the academy or the canon and was expected to be the jazz singer. This is your music. Why do you want to play Bach? Right? And she lamented that till the end of her days. So, the one striving to get ahead is often held back. I have an image here from the COVID of The New Yorker, illustrated by Barry Blitt.

Ajamu Baraka: Right.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: He stated he was trying to show the ridiculousness of the Republicans who said that we had a Muslim in the White House. And I looked at his cover, and I feel bad because I know him, I've worked with him in the past. What we end up with is not only— on 2 levels, one showing the fears of not only the Republicans but the Democrats who shared his class position. Who is this person we have in the White House with his wife Michelle Obama dressed up as the radical '60s, the American flag on the fireplace? The second thing that disturbed me was, to me, the most dangerous character in this illustration is the White House itself. It doesn't matter who is in this room, right? It's the White House that is The destroyer, if you will. And I contrast this with a t-shirt that I found in Bloomfield, New Jersey, a hip-hop clothing store. And it was very interesting to me because you would walk in and on the wall, Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, variety of figures, Black Panthers. And there was this t-shirt, my president is black. And it struck me that there's no mention made—

Rania Masri: Right.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Of Obama, right? There's no mention made of him by name. It wasn't a shirt for him. To me, it was more a reminder, okay, you need to stand up to your— what, who do you represent? The powers that got you into office or those of us who elected you from the grassroots? Here, a quote from Nina Simone: I've been singing protest songs for 30 years and I'm still singing them. Because they are just as applicable in 1991 as they were in the 1960s. Here we move into images that, out of context, we kind of laugh at, but I find them to be very serious. Cultural co-optation. This whole lecture is from an article I wrote for Dissident Voice called Sasha Cohen and Arab minstrelsy. These are representations. Here we have the Mikado, which is an operetta as well, often staged by white actors portraying Japanese. We have a Washington Redskins fan in full regalia. Again, the makeup on the face, but more important to me is the formalized destruction Of the original, meaning when I go to imitate you, in the back of my mind is the desire for your literal destruction. When I decide to imitate you or to play a role, in my mind, I don't want you there anymore, right? So this is what we see in movies like The Dictator. This is a continuation of a certain kind of minstrelsy performed to display power.

Rania Masri: Right.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: And we— it resorts to what I call the face, blackface, and now often referred to as yellowface, brownface, and redface. It has not gone away. Minstrelsy still existing. An interesting quote from a Filipina-American soprano. She says, I've always felt extremely uncomfortable about productions of Madame Butterfly in Toronto. And this is even as opera producers are nowadays keen to cast somebody who looks the part. Goh says she opted out of the chorus section of a Madame Butterfly production in order to avoid a space where an Asian American's worst Halloween nightmare can happen nightly in rehearsal, as she put it. Locally, here in Beirut, every time I go— well, 10 years ago, The first and last time I went into a sushi restaurant and there was a Filipina woman attempting to portray a geisha girl, I, you know, I said, you know, what time warp have I stepped through that this has happened? Again, the point, and getting back to Charlie Hebdo, the quote-unquote right to free speech that allows for this image to be put on the COVID of That newspaper has nothing to do with the right to free speech. Why? Because it represents 2 things. One, a power differential in terms of who has the ability, the right, the luxury in order to use the media and get a message across. This is not the Muslims of France. Okay? We need to be clear. 2, it's followed up— And this gives us a prison population hugely skewed in terms of minorities in the United States. We also see this here in terms of t-shirts worn by the IDF. I don't know if anybody remembers these, the one shot, 2 kills, with the target trained on a Muslim woman's stomach, pregnant stomach. I remember that. James Baldwin, in The Fire Next Time, said, whether in private debate or public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about and how it achieved such force was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with their perceptions or their lives or even their knowledge. It revealed, in fact, that they could deal with the Negro as a symbol.

Rania Masri: Right.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Or as a victim, but had no sense of him as a man. And so, here, the corporal dismissed. We're looking at the shadow of the individual packaged and reduced, as we are discussing. I hate showing these images, but I think it's very important to understand the historical context of what's happening recently in this part of the world. There are picture postcards that you used to be able to buy in the United States that were basically lynching parties, right? Men would be lynched, the white townspeople would show up, pictures would be taken, often with smiles, right? Like our friend here in Iraq. But I also remember in the last election, The linguistic remnants of this legacy that comes from the vaudeville days, when Andrew Cuomo says of then-candidate Barack Obama, we don't want to put up with his shuck and jive, right? Shuck and jive. These terms come— for those of you who don't understand, to shuck is to take a piece of corn and to pull the leaves off, right? So, jive is a kind of dance step. It's referring to the vaudeville stage. The police character would come, grab the white man dressed as a black person, and very skillfully, this person would escape. So, it means to be able to be fleet with one's words, to be able to dance one way out of a situation. And this was a Democrat talking about another Democrat. And so, this brings up the smiling foxes and the— The foxes. Malcolm X referred to liberal Democrats as smiling foxes, worse than the wolves. We know them. We know their teeth. We know what they mean when they are growling at us. The smiling fox comes at you, hi, how can I help you? We're here for you, right? More dangerous. It was a Republican state senator in the South who referred to Obama as uppity. Those of us who grew up with American English, we know the only word that follows uppity in the American language I will not use it. But we know what it is. So when he says he's uppity, this phrase continues. He was also told to know his role, which, again, when we're talking role in terms of acting, the point here, these are not aberrations, but logical conclusions of the culture. There's no getting past this era. It is tied inherently to economics and politics.

Rania Masri: I'm sorry.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Right? We're talking capitalism, neoliberalism. And again, this follows through in our education in the academy. Much in the way of theory is non-agentive, meaning it does not provide for any revolutionary praxis. It's about discussing a problem. And so the question then becomes, what do we do? Here I have a quote from Hamid Dabashi. One possibility has always remained open, a reconstitution of cultural character and agency from a range of poetic and aesthetic possibilities.

Rania Masri: Excuse me.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Where the notion of the beautiful is violently wrested out of the banal, the sublime forcefully out of the ridiculous, agency defiantly out of servitude, subjection combatively out of humiliation. And I'm, I'm taken by the words that he has chosen to use: violence, force, defiance, and combat, right? It's not going to come easy is basically what he's saying. So how do we create a non-reducible image? 3 photos here. One, if anybody remembers Howard Dean from the 2004 presidential elections when he came to New York to do a—

Rania Masri: Campaign.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: To give a kind of speech at Bryant Park, he had some graffiti artists— this is the work of KEO— come in and do this big banner behind him, right? Kind of street cred. I'm coming to New York. I need the graffiti to show me where I am. As soon as he was finished with this presentation, New York politicians started going after him. This is urban blight. This is a celebration of the ghetto. This is— and on and on and on and on and on. Here was a white politician attempting to plumb street culture in a way that backfired against him and likely cost him the ability to run as a candidate for the Democrats. In the middle, we have a book by Sue Coe, a British illustrator. This came out— the art director of this is now the art director of The New Yorker, interestingly Enough. And I include this because, as well-intentioned as it might be, similar to Howard Dean, who spoke mostly to white yuppie professionals in New York City, the audience that it needs to reach is not reached. It's designed for a class up here, and people who need to see this don't see it. And so it becomes a kind of entertainment.

Rania Masri: Thank you.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: And then finally, a t-shirt from Futura 2000 featuring Malcolm X in his by any means necessary stance. You know, the Sue Koe book intrigues me because Malcolm X is portrayed as a victim, the bad system coming after him, and he, this kind of person, just dealing with this as it comes at him, as opposed to the—

Rania Masri: The victim.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: revolutionary that we know. Malcolm X said, if you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. So we move to a kind of going on the offensive, and this touches back to what we were listening to before. How do we move from a reductive image to an expansive one, giving importance to the communal over the individual, Union over separation, this internal dialogue. I don't need France to recognize what I have to say in terms of Charlie Hebdo. I really don't care what the French government thinks of me or their media, right? Who am I talking to? Why do I beg recognition from people who don't care whether I exist or not, if we think about it, right? Important, too, to avoid identity politics and splinterings of identity. Intersectionality, as it's often referred to, seeking crossovers that undo reductions of racism, sectarianism. And I have a collection of images here, one from Ferguson, from Ferguson to Palestine, a Cuban poster from the Revolutionary War saying that union is victory for the Lebanese, Palestinian with his Che shirt, 1977 Zionism is Racism shirt printed by a good friend of mine, Juan Juan Fuentes from California. Malcolm X said, one of the tricks of the West is to use or create images of a person who doesn't go along with their views and then make sure that this image is distasteful, and then anything that that person has to say is rejected. I have another example here. This is Amadou Bamba from Senegal, from the Sufi Islam tradition there. And what intrigues me about him is the— it's just taken for granted the anti-colonial nature of the struggle there. And his representation in these painted glass paintings show him in the face of the French colonizer. We also see his face or image rendered in terms of Arabic calligraphy, and then I found this image of Malcolm X rendered in Arabic calligraphy, and I'm trying to track down the artist, but it just struck me as a very interesting parallel. These images are not in reply. They are not reactive or in reaction to. They are not begging for recognition. They make a statement with local— what I call local spiritual value. They're speaking above the heads of the dominant mode. And this is what one of the things that inspires me most about Malcolm X when he's engaging with the media in the United States and an interviewer is talking to him. He's not talking to this interviewer and he's not talking to the audience watching the television show. He's talking to everyone else who's forced to sit in the back of the room, right, who hear his voice, right? Amadou Bamba said, the only weapons I will use to fight my enemies are the pen and the ink that I use to write my poems in the glory of the Prophet. I wish— well, this takes us to a kind of— people react against Malcolm X in terms of this idea of violence. I have a feeling this was said for the benefit of people in control.

Rania Masri: Yes.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Right? In order not to end up in prison or not to be done away with. Because the fact is that the systemic violence that is slow and endless of poverty, of hunger, of colonization, et cetera, et cetera, much more destructive than the instantaneous violence of someone fighting back against this in any resistant way. Okay. A few— Expressions of what I refer to as voices lifted. I have this— if any of you are familiar with the documentary Rise, it's about a dance movement in California called clowning and also crumping, started by a man called Tommy the Clown. It intrigues me to see him with whiteface, right? And he started this tradition of how to save the kids of LA from—

Ajamu Baraka: Poverty.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: What is their ghettoized intended fate? And I also have here Renée Marie, a jazz singer, who, when asked to perform the national anthem at the imposition of the mayor of Denver, instead sang what we refer to as the Black national anthem, Lift Your Voice and Sing.

Ajamu Baraka: Lift Every Voice.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Lift Every Voice and Sing. She was decried greatly. How dare you? How could you possibly do something like this? Who do you think you are? Uh-uh-uh. But I think it was a very brave act.

Ajamu Baraka: Uh-huh.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Uh, bell hooks quotes Malcolm X, saying, never accept images that have been created for you by someone else. It is always better to form the habit of learning how to see things for yourself. Then you are in a better position to judge For yourself. And here, this is where I— what has been intriguing me in my research here is the everyday imagery that we see. It is not mediated in any spectacular way. I have a mural here from the Burj al-Barajneh camp, handala on the back of a car. I love this picture from Palestine, a Zaatari mountain with the Dome of the Rock sitting on top.

Rania Masri: Yeah.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: This Shahada plate with American flag bombs dropping on a mosque. And one of the posters we did for the events of today, the original image of Malcolm X shows him with his film camera. He was self-documenting his way as he made his way around Africa and this region. And finally, To sum up, we can— they can destroy the physical body, right, but the spirit lives on. And as much as the physical is attempted to be rendered into shadow or the 2-dimensional, the 3D can disappear, but the spiritual is untouchable. Malcolm's spiritual dimension was left largely unexplored And this is where I believe there is hope. We're talking about from Ferguson to Gaza, and there is hope here in a kind of unity of effort. Greece and Spain, all of these places, I feel that where there is transcendence, we have the ability to transform. And so leaning in the direction of the spiritual becomes my advice to all of us.

Rania Masri: Thank you.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: All of us present here. Thank you for your time.

Rania Masri: Thank you both. You have reminded me how absolutely beautiful the word comrade is again. So thank you both. Comrade Ajamu. And comrade Daniel, I open the floor to questions from the audience for our 2 speakers. And if I could just trouble you, if you could please introduce yourself when I, when I point to you. I just wanted to ask if we could move the questions to a larger space so that everyone is accommodated. My worry is, one, if the space is ready, 2, if we may lose people in the process.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Yes.

Rania Masri: And 3 is the room inside would actually need a microphone versus I think here we may be able to hear everyone without a microphone and we don't have microphones to pass. So, any—

Ajamu Baraka: Well, let's do these 3 first. And really, I really thank you for the questions. First, the notion of Black internationalism. Is a recognition of the objective reality that Black people are part of the world, that what created us weren't— cannot just be defined by any one national process, but that the very fact that African people became African people was a consequence of a historical process, and that process was first slavery and the slave trade, and then the effects of colonization. The fact of the matter is that African people were dispersed throughout the world, primarily in the Americas. African diaspora was created. And because of that reality, there was a recognition that We had some common experiences, and that we needed to link up among ourselves. We had a transhistorical experience, a transnational experience, and that we were compelled to link to each other in the various parts of the world that we found ourselves, one, but that secondly, the processes that created Africans — was also the process that is responsible for creating all kinds of other peoples, and that that process is identifiable. And that process is the creation and evolution of the white supremacists, colonialists, capitalists, imperialists. patriarchal system. So, for us, there's no mystification for that. And it goes to the question concerning issues of power. I think that the sort of the post-structuralist, postmodernist contribution to understanding the complexity of power is important. But I also think that for those of us who are oppressed, it becomes sometimes a mystification.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: You see, I'm concerned about power in all of its various dynamics and relationships, but I'm more concerned about the power of certain groups to be able to take my life when I leave this campus with impunity. I'm concerned about the fact that there are peoples and nations who are in unequal relationships that allow for people in the West to grow rich and fat and comfortable while people are starving every day. I'm concerned about those kinds of power dynamics. And that kind of understanding is the basis of the relationship between— or understanding between the people in Ferguson and the folks in Palestine, that there's no comparison. Well, the comparison is that basically we look at these experiences and we conclude That what we have in the U.S. is a settler-colonial experience, a settler-colonial reality. And we look at Israel-Palestine, and we see a settler-colonial experience. So, we see the connection. We see that we have some common enemies and that if we don't break those fundamental power dynamics, Then none of us are going to be free. We won't be in a position to address all of the other oppressive power dynamics we find in contemporary society. So, in other words, one has to simultaneously struggle against all forms of oppression, all unequal power, but that in that process, though, there's still some power dynamics that take precedence.

Rania Masri: Thank you.

Ajamu Baraka: And I'm concerned about the power dynamics that continue with the domination of the European West, European capitalist West, and all the rest of us. So, those are the kinds of insights that we, who are part of the Black radical tradition, embrace. We understand the complexities of the world. And I think that's the positions that the brother Malcolm articulated. Who was responsible for killing Malcolm? Well, we do know that there was a— he was murdered. He was shot 21 times on February 21st. We know that there were people in that audience who were part of the Nation of Islam. But is that the end of the story? Is that the whole story? It's not clear. We know that, and it's been surfaced in terms of evidence, that J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S., sent a note to his agents in New York saying, do something about Malcolm. Now, what that something is, we don't know. We do know that, and we have evidence that Malcolm was constantly surveyed by the CIA. He was followed in his travels in 1964. Every movement was detailed by the CIA. So, who was behind the fact that in most of Malcolm's events there was security, extensive security, provided by the New York Police Department, but yet on that day, on February 21st, that security was in fact reduced?

Rania Masri: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: Who's— what's behind that? We don't really know. But we do know that Malcolm was murdered, and we do know that the agencies of the U.S. state have a history of being able to creatively rid themselves of opposition.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Nadia, I wanted to keep up a little bit on the question I wanted to answer just a little bit because I think historically it's important for us to remember that Michel Foucault met with the Black Panther Party in prison before he came up with many of his theories. And I find it interesting that this is little known, right? This takes us back to the fact that when translated through that stand-in, theoretical or otherwise, This flies, but the Black Panther Party targeted for assassination, eradication, expulsion from the country? It seems to me, when I look at— and I remember, I'm old enough to remember when we transitioned from liberation theory and Third World theory, as we used to call it, to the poststructuralists and the postmodernist And this took the fore. I remember this. And I remember for these past 30 years thinking, God, when will this end? When will this spinning of wheels constantly end? You brought up an interesting point, which was, we are oppressed. You know, we can all say we are oppressed. But the certain— let's— how to put it? Those who profess a kind of political ideology Poststructuralist way of thinking do not say we are oppressed; they say I am oppressed, right? It's an individualistic mentality versus a communal or a collaborative one, and this is very, very, very important to realize. For me to say I'm oppressed because of this, this, this, this, this, it doesn't matter my connections with anybody. This is much different than say the Black Panther Party. If you look through their newspaper. We are oppressed. We join in with other movements. We celebrate the revolution in Vietnam or Mozambique or, or, or, or, or. So we need to be careful of how we frame this. And just in terms of, you know, if I had— should I do this?

Ajamu Baraka: Yeah.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: If during the 8 years I worked here I had constantly gone on about Michel Foucault, I'd probably still be working But the fact is I didn't, and I'm not. So anyway.

Ajamu Baraka: For approval, which happens in many Arab countries, or Arabs, or Arab Americans around the world.

Rania Masri: Thank you. For the benefit of the people in the back, I just want to very briefly paraphrase the 2 questions that were stated here. The first lady raised a question about new methods of activism. Have there been new methods of activism? Have they connected? Connected across different sectors in our communities. And the second question— forgive me for really summarizing very shortly— raised the issue of patriarchy and the importance of gender analysis and placing feminism back into the clarity of the struggle itself. The new lady is the first African American professor at the AUB, so maybe not the new yet. My apologies for not knowing your names. I apologize for that.

Ajamu Baraka: Well, first, on the question of the issue of strategy in terms of using legal—

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: We can't hear you.

Rania Masri: Oh. No, no, this is mic.

Ajamu Baraka: Oh, okay. On the issue of using or looking at the question of how law can be used for social change, I'm not opposed to that at all. I think that what we had in the U.S. was something— was a multi-pronged strategy. There was a legal component. It was part of addressing the desire on the part of many people to address some of the legal contradictions. Those of us who are involved in radical struggle understand that It's a process. And that while we might be prepared and would love to be able to storm the citadels of power and to take power, that, you know, you have to build power first. And if that means pursuing certain kinds of routes of struggle, including the legal one, then we do that. So, For me, it's the— what determines strategy is really based on historical circumstances and conditions. So, in Beirut, if people believe that it's important to try to institutionalize certain kinds of legal protections for people, I think that's fine. I mean, folks in this environment have to determine whether or not that's effective or not.

Rania Masri: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: But for those of us in the U.S., again, it really depends on the conditions. We see that in the U.S. now that the question of legality, the question of democracy, is one in which it appears to me that the system is prepared to jettison any real commitment to legalism. We see the almost institutionalization of lawlessness. For example, the very fact that the Obama administration can engage in an aggressive war in the territory of Syria without any authorization. See, there was a point they would pretend to try to seek out some type of legal excuse.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: Be it through the Security Council, whatever, or through a domestic piece of legislation. But this time, they just said, you know, we're going to engage in a military activity in Syria, and, you know, we're going to do it, because we're the U.S. And nobody said anything. So, that's— the legal piece is something that we have to take a look at.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Thank you.

Ajamu Baraka: In terms of the very, very important issue in question of the character of the movement in the 1960s and the contradictions relating to gender, that's very real. Everybody— and that's recognized as a contradiction. And we know that part of even Malcolm's development was one in which He recognized his own contradictions and was trying to move toward— in a different direction, if you will. Who knows where he would have ended up being? But, I mean, for example, when he came back from his second trip to Africa, he said to his people in the New Organization of African American Unity, his new organization, But that he was, quite frankly, wrong on the question of women, if you will, and that he— his analysis was that what he saw around the world was that when you had a society that was backward, you also had a place where women were consciously, structurally oppressed and held back. And so, he was rethinking his position. But in terms of the general movement itself, led by conscious revolutionary women, there was a movement toward addressing these issues. There was no question there was a lot of patriarchy, a lot of sort of masculinist sort of behavior.

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Right.

Ajamu Baraka: But I think the movement recognized that, like most movements, that if we were going to have authentic and real liberation, it had to include everyone. It could not be one in which we liberate men while everybody else was still oppressed. So, led by the conscious interventions of revolutionary black feminists, there's been a real serious theoretical and then practical development among the African-American movement. And so you have people like Sister bell hooks and others who have been leading this effort for us to understand, you know, the interconnections of all the forms of oppression— Patricia Hill Collins and other folks like that who have been pushing the notion of of intersectionality. And that's been a positive contribution to our understanding and to our movement. The issue of anti-black racism is something that is real, and we recognize it. And we have to engage and struggle, and we do engage and struggle, with With our comrades around the world and here in the Arab world also. You're right, there are contradictions that have to be confronted. I mean, when you come to— you all live here in Beirut, you know, you have to be able to root out the extent of the colonial influence. You know, if your heart skips a beat at the thought of going to Paris, Yeah. Um, you might need to, to, to, to think about some things, you know. Um, you know, again, that's what was so, so marvelous about, about Brother Malcolm, that he was— he sort of personified, if you will, the sort of decolonial mentality, because there was nothing that white society held for him that— he didn't have to be validated in any way by white society. Um, but this process of Decolonizing ourselves mentally is a lifelong process. But it has to take place, because without that kind of decolonization, we're not going to be able to effectively decolonize ourselves in political, economic reality. But it's a struggle, and we engage in it. We engage in it honestly. And I'm glad to see, in other parts of the world, various parts of the world, that people are effectively—

Daniel Drennan ElAwar: Yes.

Rania Masri: I'm being told by our playwright that the play Malcolm X Returns is all set, and they're encouraging us to move to the auditorium. Before you all get up and go, though, If I could encourage you once more just to thank our 2 guests, particularly for coming.

Ajamu Baraka: Thank you.