The Bill of Rights is the ultimate receipt. The Founding Fathers did not mean to create such a banger of a document that helped enshrine equality and justice for all, they really only meant for landowning white men. Then social movements, wars, and freedom happened and Americans are still trying to live up to this document. Francesca sits down with acclaimed author and Professor Robin DG Kelley, a black radical historian whose work has been instructive for thinkers, organizers and activists.
They dive into how democracy in America has never truly existed, save for a brief moment in the Reconstruction; why fascism and capitalism work so well under one another, and how nationalism and nation-states in and of themselves lead to fascism.
They then discuss Kelley’s forthcoming book Making a Killing: Capitalism, Cops, and the War on Black Life” and how the police decide whose lives are disposable and whose lives matter. Kelley argues that organizing against police violence is part and parcel of the class struggle against the capitalists, and we’d be well served to see it as such. They also discuss the failures of black neoliberalism, from Obama to the many Black politicians in Atlanta who somehow support projects like Cop City.
00:01:09 Robin’s Fourth of July Message
00:08:49 Black Neoliberals and Cop City
00:13:32 Why Capitalism Loves Fascism
00:22:56 How Black Radicals Always Saw Fascism on The Horizon
00:29:27 All Goes Back to The Reconstruction 00:42:29 Robin’s New Book on Police Violence
00:50:05 The Limits of Identity Politics
00:54:14 What We Must Learn From Jesse Jackson’s Legacy
01:02:00 Why Robin is Quitting Academia
01:07:49 Hot Button Question?
Pre-order Professor Kelley’s book today: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250803078/makingakilling/
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