Africa

1960s, the world was set ablaze with protests and movements against racism, imperialism and institutionalized oppression. In a period when organizing against oppressive powers, this panel will cover the similarities between the Algerian Independence movement against French Colonialism and the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. From political organizing to guerilla warfare, revisiting two movements that helped shape the 60s revolution.

Black women are simultaneously expected and disrespected for their leadership. Meanwhile, the biggest, blackest life that matters most of all is Mother Earth. Miss Justice Jester offers an autoethnographic insight into why the environmental justice and environmental racism movements cannot reconcile their widening chasm.

The overwhelmingly Black South African working class has slipped into deeper poverty - measured at $4/day at nearly two thirds of the population, up from half at the fall of apartheid 1994. In response to a tightening World Bank-authored 1996 austerity plan, enacted by the ruling African National Congress (ANC), contemporary South Africa has become perhaps the world's most intense site of class struggle (as even the World Economic Forum admits in its annual reports on worker militancy). In 2012, 34 striking platinum Lonmin mine workers were massacred by cops who were emailed 24 hours earlier by current president Cyril Ramaphosa, who was Lonmin's main South African investor. So far no one has been punished. Moreover, charges of massive corruption, which included former President Jacob Zuma, have shaken the country. Ramaphosa is a former mineworker union leader but now is worth over $500 million. Ramaphosa has introduced intensified neo-liberal, anti-labor legislation and an austerity budget since his ascent to power in mid-February. A powerful new South African Federation of Trade Unions, spearheaded by the large metalworkers union (NUMSA), the largest union in the country with 350,000 members, says it is time to break with the status quo and capitalism. Meanwhile, a massive student struggle to democratize and de-racialize education has swept the country. Discussing these developments and more will be Patrick Bond, a political economist. Also speaking will be Glen Ford, editor of the popular Black Agenda Report, Marty Goodman, a writer for Socialist Action newspaper and others. Please join us for a unique and sometimes shocking look at South Africa today decades after the fall of legal apartheid.

Examination of the continuing neocolonial structures, imperial polices and designs of USA and Western imperial nations in creating and perpetuating crisis in political and social economies of Africa, Haiti-Caribbean, African descendants of slavery in USA and Western Nations and territories. A focus on those designs and instruments including that oppress and the refusal to honor UN call for Reparations.

Early in 2018 we saw Black Panther rise to become the 3rd highest grossing film in America, and there was no shortage of online conversations surrounding #WakandaForever. While this film made unprecedented history with its almost all-Black cast, our panel will get into some of the deeper themes of the film and how they have been perceived by everyday viewers. Discussion will be centered around how mass incarceration, toxic masculinity, economic inequality, and not only how it was addressed in the film but the longer lasting implications these ideas may have on society.

What forms of struggle are Africans using to fight the many-headed hydra of neocolonialism, and what forms of international solidarity are needed in response? This panel will examine the lawyer-led uprising Ambazonia, also known as the Southern Cameroons, which since fall 2016 has been garnering unprecedented participation and support. Panelists from Ambazonia, Cameroon, Nigeria and the US will discuss the roles of different sectors, the historical-political context of French neo-colonialism (la Francafrique), the Ambazonian refugee crisis and the role of Nigeria, and the organizing for political prisoner support including through House Resolution 718.