How Culture Has Been Commodified and How It Can Be Saved

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Abayomi Azikiwe, the editor of the Pan-African News Wire to discuss the attempted coup in Niger and how its development might shift the role of the US and the west in the region, how US imperialism both on the continent of Africa and elsewhere are exacerbating the food crisis in the Horn of Africa, and how the Russia-Africa summit may affect this crisis and continue the shift in relations between the African continent and Russia.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Tings Chak, researcher and coordinator of the Art Department of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, and a founding member of Dongsheng News to discuss how China address the problems of homelessness and poverty in its cities, how China has historically managed rapid urbanization as the economy developed and how that’s changed in recent years, and how these programs are connected to other anti-poverty programs in China which have lifted millions of people out of poverty and allowed many people to remain in the countryside.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Miguel Garcia of the ANTICONQUISTA Collective, also the host and creator of the Sports as a Weapon podcast to discuss a California Superior Court ruling in favor of a former University of San Francisco basketball player who made allegations of abuse in USF’s athletics programs, controversy over the Philadelphia 76ers planned stadium and the developer’s funding of an impact study, and the indictment of Tottenham Spurs owner Joe Lewis on charges related to alleged insider trading.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Musa Springer, cultural worker, host of the Groundings Podcast, digital outreach coordinator at the Walter Rodney Foundation and International Youth Representative for the Red Barrial Afrodescendiente to discuss the forthcoming book of poetry “Alive and Paranoid” and the value of culture under a system which seeks to commodify it and so many other things, why celebrities themselves do not encapsulate the essence of culture and how they can actually play into propaganda, and how the cultural practices of Cuba reveal what a revolutionary culture can look like.