Juneteenth image by breefulmelange, public domain, courtesy of Pixaby: https://pixabay.com/users/breefulmelange-16833170/
Patricia Kullberg hosts this Juneteenth episode of the Old Mole, which includes the following segments:
Juneteenth, George Floyd and Black Resistance: Sky Wilson interviews Kent Ford, co-founder of the Portland Black Panthers, longtime community activist, public intellectual, and People’s historian, who helped organize the Memorial Fred Hampton People’s Health Clinic and organized and volunteered for years at the Panther’s Free Breakfast Program. They discuss the history of Juneteenth, the hard-won gains of the George Floyd Uprising, and the critical importance of street protests in struggles for liberation.
Stay Woke: “Woke” is a Black slang term referring to the capacity to understand the nuances of racism, a word that originated in the Black community during the early 20th Century. The term has been co-opted and twisted and stripped of its complexity and flung back like at the Black community like a slur. Our Well Read Red, Sharon Grant, reads from an article published in (UN)BANNED on February 1, 2023 by Kathleen Newman-Bremang. The article is titled “When did ‘woke’ lose its meaning and how do we get it back?’”
Slavery, Property and Revolution: The abolition of slavery was seen as an assault on property rights, and so it was, as millions of enslaved people valued in the billions of dollars ceased to be property on June 19, 1865 (Juneteenth). This constituted a radical change that points the way towards abolishing the dependence of workers on capital by abolishing private ownership of social wealth. Clayton Morgareidge explains in this commentary, which originally aired on 6/19/17. Clayton, long time member of the Old Mole collective, died in 2020.
Saber-rattling with China: Several top military officials are predicting that mutual U.S. and China provocations by warships and fighter planes on and over the South China Sea especially near Taiwan will devolve into full scale war within the next two years. And U.S./China conflicts, now know known as the New Cold War, are not just military; China is challenging U.S. domination of international economic structures. Bill Resnick’s guest this week, Jake Werner of the Quincy Institute on statecraft, his research and writing examines the emergence of the great power conflict unto war between the US and China and he develops policies to rebuild constructive economic relations.
- KBOO