Dayvon Love and Lawrence Grandpre from Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS) explore the value of Afro-pessimism from the perspective of grassroots activism. They correct mischaracterizations of Afro-pessimism as a prescriptive call for academic nihilism and explain it as a political lens to understand how Blackness functionally historically as fuel for people’s fears and fantasies. They also discuss how this knowledge has helped LBS navigate the political terrain and achieve on the ground political victories.

Black advocates are demanding A “Red, Black, and Green” new deal to address environmental racism and fund Black advocacy around environmentalism. While the advocacy is being branded as a Pan African, race concious alternative to the Green New Deal – an investigation of the advocacy reveals the limits of foundation-driven advocacy and the need for genuine study of Pan Africanism to develop autonomous political institutions which provide better solutions for our movement and our climate.

In this conversation with the founder of Fight Blight Baltimore, Nneka Nnamdi, we will discuss the politics of urban space, gentrification, and predatory wealth extraction policies of Baltimore City.

The hosts discuss how Critical Race Theory is a critical heuristic and tool to analyze power and understand Black history. We engage the history behind critical race theory and explain how it comes out of a Black radical tradition hostile to the nonprofit industrial complex and simplistic liberalism increasingly trying to co-opt the term.

Dayvon Love sits down with Dr. Brian Morrison for conversation about the history of Black education advocacy and practice in Baltimore and the lessons from that history that we can use for social movements today.

Lawrence and Rasheem discuss Howard University professor Ivory Toldson’s book No B.S. (Bad Stats), with a focus on debunking popular yet false “statistics” around Black education, explaining the role of data in furthering the oppression of Afrikan people, and presenting tips for how to avoid falling into B.S. (Bad Stats) trap.

Dr. Tara Bynum a scholar of African American Literature and a Baltimore native. In this interview we discuss the narratives that are highly circulated in mainstream spaces about Baltimore and the politics of those narratives.

We analyze “The Whiteness of Wealth” by Dorothy A. Brown – which argues homeownership fails to fulfill its promise to stabilize Black communities and build wealth for Black families.

Heber Brown is the director of the Black Church Food Security Network. We discuss his work regarding food sovereignty and address larger issues of revolutionary praxis and Pan African nation building.

Reparations for slavery have gone from a third rail issue to a mainstream Democratic Party talking point. While much of the conversation has focused on HR 40 and local/statewide task forces – has the reparations movement left a critical tool in the reparations battle of off the battlefield?