Editor's note The following article was written by Walter Rodney for a 1971 issue of Maji Maji, the quarterly journal of the youth wing of the Tanganyika African National Union. The text is held at the Robert W. Woodruff Library in Atlanta, Georgia, under the...
Walter Rodney: A people’s professor
Introduction In a recent book on the ongoing relevance of Walter Rodney’s work, Karim F. Hirji notes that, “as with scores of progressive intellectuals and activists of the past, the prevailing ideology functions to relegate Rodney into the deepest, almost...
Study, fast, train, fight: The roots of Black August
Introduction In August 1619, enslaved Africans touched foot in the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States. The centuries since witnessed the development of a racial system more violent, extractive, and deeply entrenched than any other in...
Toward a third Reconstruction: Lessons from the past for a socialist future
“The price...of slavery and civil war was the necessity of quickly assimilating into American democracy a mass of laborers...in whose hands alone for the moment lay the power of preserving the ideals of popular government...and establishing upon it an industry...
A weapon against radicalism: Debunking the myth of the conservative Black voter
Nina Turner’s loss, the primary results of Bernie Sanders, India Walton’s win—and then loss—the victory of Eric Adams, and the triumph of Cori Bush’s sit-in once again ignited the political discussion around the political make-up of the Black electorate. The general...
George Jackson’s “Blood in my eye:” A critical appraisal
This article accompanies our Liberation School study guide for George L. Jackson's Blood in my Eye. Originally from Chicago, Ill, George L. Jackson grew up in California. In 1961, a young Jackson convicted of armed robbery for allegedly stealing $70 from a gas...
PSL Course: A Marxist perspective on prison abolition
Marxists fight for the overthrow, dismantling, and complete replacement of the core institutions of the capitalist state, including namely the police, prisons, military, and courts. These elements of the state must be abolished through revolution. Yet can we abolish...
Afro-Asian solidarity: Building the multinational unity needed for liberation
Editor's note: The article was originally published in the Winter '21-'22 issue of Breaking the Chains magazine. During the summer of 2020, tens of millions of people took to the streets to participate in the largest uprising in this country’s history. From the...
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Militant journalism from behind enemy lines
This article accompanies Liberation School's new study guide for Mumia Abu-Jamal's book, Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? Mumia Abu-Jamal has spent nearly 40 years unjustly imprisoned after he was framed and convicted of killing a white police officer in Philadelphia....