Socialist Responses to The Pandemic Highlight Capitalist Failure

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Kerbie Joseph, longtime police brutality, mass incarceration and community organizer in Brooklyn, New York with the ANSWER Coalition and SOS coordinator with the Audre Lorde Project to discuss New York City mayor-elect Eric Adams’ proposal to reinstitute solitary confinement in Rikers Island, the allocation of resources to incarceration and locking people away instead of social programs, and the portrayal of Eric Adams as a progressive despite his record.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by El Senzengakulu Zulu, a former organizer with SNCC, Founder and Father of the Independent African Schools in the USA, Director of Ujimaa School in Washington, DC teaching education through African culture to preschool through high school for 54 years to discuss the effort to save the Ujimaa school in Washington, DC from gentrification, the history and importance of African-centered education, and the importance of the school in providing a context for Black students to learn in an African-centric context.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Carol Gokee, National Co-Director for the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee to discuss the effort to free political prisoner Leonard Peltier as his health continues to deteriorate, what the incarceration of Peltier has denied to movements for indigenous resistance and to movements for justice, the inconsistencies of the accusations against Peltier by the FBI, and why the release of Peltier is an important goal for many different movements for justice.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Gloria La Riva, coordinator of the Cuba and Venezuela Solidarity Committee to discuss the failure of the COVID-19 response in the United States and the success of Cuba’s response to the pandemic, the murderous impact of capitalist pandemic response as exemplified in the meatpacking industry, and the cruel treatment of women detained in ICE facilities in Louisiana.