Tuesday, March 09, 2021

Ep. 61: "The Vital Need to Decolonize" feat. Ajamu Baraka

 

A human rights defender whose experience spans four decades of domestic and international education and activism, Ajamu Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles. He is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S. for more than 25 years. He is now a National Organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, whose activities we discuss. Baraka has taught political science at various universities and has been a guest lecturer at academic institutions in the U.S. and abroad. Baraka has appeared on a wide-range of media outlets including CNN, BBC, Telemundo, ABC, RT, the Black Commentator, the Washington Post and the New York Times. He is currently an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and a writer for Counterpunch. We talked about the recent airstrikes by the US on Syria; how foreign policy was virtually ignored during the 2020 presidential campaign; the bloated US military budget; the global reach of US imperialism; neoliberalism as an expression of fascism; alternative media and social media; decolonization and the need to dismantle the United States; the structures of white supremacy; the dependency of technoindustrial culture on colonialism; following indigenous leadership; the necessity of revolutionary change; the weak organizational culture in the US; and the importance of acting in solidarity with social struggles around the world. Ajamu Baraka's website: https://www.ajamubaraka.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajamubaraka Black Alliance for Peace: https://blackallianceforpeace.com/ * * * Music in background of introduction assembled from samples by: MieliTietty https://freesound.org/people/MieliTie... and jaffa1970 https://freesound.org/people/jaffa1970/ * * * RADIO FREE SUNROOT: Podcasting by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume https://radiofreesunroot.com KOLLIBRI'S BLOG & BOOKSHOP: https://macskamoksha.com/ ONE-TIME DONATION: http://paypal.me/kollibri https://venmo.com/Kollibri * KOLLIBRI'S PATREON: Get access to members-only content https://www.patreon.com/kollibri