January 30
GUEST: Colin Jenkins, researcher, political writer, and founder of the Hampton Institute, a working-class think tank named after Fred Hampton, talks about neoliberalism, the war economy, and his own political awakening as a US veteran.Colin Jenkins' articles
How is it that African American writers and theorists can expose the empire much more effectively than white academics can. The Fred Hampton Institute connects all the dots to describe what motivates neoliberal America in the twenty-first century: greed, militarism, and media complicity.
It is interesting to note that the two most influential thinkers of the 1960s were both African Americans assassinated in the prime of their lives at age 39. Martin Luther King, Jr. had come to realize the full malevolence of the empire of his day, and called attention to US imperialism in his later speeches. Malcolm X had an epiphany after traveling to Mecca, and saw his people's struggle in a similar way, as a fight against capitalism and imperialism.
Fred Hampton, murdered by the Chicago Police and the FBI when he was only 21, had come to believe that racism was dependent on militarism and colonial exploitation. Three visionary leaders telling it like it is. We as whites just can't seem to bring ourselves to look at our "democracy" in that way. Maybe it takes a history of being oppressed to recognize the empire.
