Episode 54- Empire with Ajamu Baraka

Macro N Cheese – Episode 54
Empire with Ajamu Baraka
February 8, 2020

Ajamu Baraka [intro/music] (00:02):

They don’t want more young people to even think about let alone research, what is Socialism? You know, they don’t want any questions regarding their imperialist agenda. It’s quite clear from my perspective that the ruling clients, the minority is prepared to fight to the last drop of your blood in mine to maintain the status quo as it is, even if it means the complete obliteration of the human species on earth.

Geoff Ginter [intro/music] (00:39):

Now let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

Steve Grumbine (01:34):

And yes, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Today, I have a human rights defender, a member of the leadership, US Peace Council, the national spokesperson for the Black Alliance for Peace, a geopolitical analyst, United Anti-War Coalition member, and coordinator for the Venezuelan Embassy Defense Committee, former vice presidential candidate for the Green Party, none other than my friend, Ajamu Baraka. Welcome to the show, sir.

Baraka (02:05):

Thank you so much, Steve. We’re really happy to be with you again.

Grumbine (02:09):

It’s been a while, man. It’s been a while and I’m so happy to have a few minutes with you. Anyway, the current environment that brought me and you together for the show is a very perilous one to be quite frank.

We’ve got an incredible amount of geopolitical activity going on, a lot of militarism, and an incredible amount of human rights violations across the globe, much of which is led by our favorite country, United States, that seems to have an appetite for destruction.

And with that, I thought it was important for us to bring out the story of what exactly it is to be antiwar; to what is it to be against this sort of destructive foreign policy and what we’ll call ‘Empire.’ and to in fact, be someone that stands for peace.

I think that a lot of people just make a lot of assumptions, but you’re right there smack dead in the middle of these efforts. And I just felt like it was important to have you on to talk about this.

Baraka (03:17):

Well, you know, I appreciate that. And you’re right. These are very dangerous times. This is a very dangerous moment, as a matter of fact, here in the beginning of 2020. Because what we see is the intensification of efforts on the part of the ruling elements to normalize what is really an aggressive anti-people’s agenda to dress it up as some kind of moral crusade that justifies this enormous expenditure of resources for the Pentagon budget.

That gives a justification for US occupations in Iraq and Syria; for interventions in various parts of the world, including imposing sanctions on various nations that result in thousands of people losing their lives and all of this with very little opposition from the public in the US.

And then on top of the global machinations, we have locally or domestically an anticipation of repression, the closing off of discourse, so that the only acceptable political discourse takes place within a very limited range. If you question US foreign policies, question the direction of those policies, if you raise the issue of peace, then you can very quickly find yourself being accused of being this dictator’s or that dictator’s puppet or whatever.

It is a very strange environment where McCarthyism is the new norm and a commitment to militarism is a new religion. So yeah, this is the moment that we are trying to build an opposition to this madness because not only does it have an impact on all of us, not only does it have an impact on our humanity, our ability to live lives in peace and the US is having a devastating consequence for millions of people globally.

So, you know, now’s the time for us to really seriously talk about and think about who we are, what are our responsibilities to global humanity, being citizens of ‘Empire,’ and to chart for ourselves and for collective humanity, a path that would take us to a new future as opposed to being stuck in the status quo and the continuation of these kinds of conditions that are no more than organized barbarism.

Grumbine (06:04):

I see the way that United States does it, especially domestically. They starve the beast, that is the people and they fatten the military, which is the oligarchs. And then all of a sudden they use the poor to fight their wars for them. They use their poor as basically, you know, just disposable heroes, if you will.

They celebrate the deaths, they bring the veterans home and leave them destitute and completely without compass here in the United States or healthcare, you name it. I mean the war machine, there’s a million phases of this war. It’s not just the bombs falling. It’s all the other violence that occurs in support of this militarism.

To me, it’s really shocking that this isn’t better understood, but we are all over the world right now in this most recent attack on Iran. It seems like these things always happen with something like an impeachment or with something like an election or with some other distracting mechanism to keep our eyes off of the real crimes that our government commits in the name of freedom. Can you talk about that?

Baraka (07:21):

Well, you know freedom is a very powerful weapon. And if you convince people that their society represents the apex of civilization, the expression of a free society, and they accept that, and on that, are not asking the critical questions, when they see people in various parts of the world protesting against their nation, that is something that is quite useful to the rulers and they will continue with their agenda.

And, you know, they can do that Steve, because in your question you raise, you know, why is it that people are not better informed — you imply that in the question. Well, one of the reasons why the rulers are able to perpetuate their agenda to get the working class to fight for its interests is that the population, the vast majority of the public in the US, are not really exposed to any systematic, critical information.

The major newspapers and the sources of news, CNN, MSNBC, et cetera, these outlets are basically only presenting to the public a very narrow range of opinions and one particular perspective. One in which the US is the good guys, the exceptional nation, and the people are not exposed at all to any of the activity that the state is involved in that’s resulting in death and destruction.

Very few people for example, know about the incredible sanctions regime that has been put in place by both Democrats and Republicans over the last decade or so, that results in thousands and tens of thousands of lives being lost. S

ome people might recall the sanctions that were imposed on Iraq back in the 1990s that resulted in some estimates are half a million people, primarily children, losing their lives as a consequence of sanctions. Well, you know, Steve, that was just the beginning.

They have perfected the sanction process so that today, most people don’t know that there are something like 33 nations who are facing US sanctions and those sanctions aren’t just geared toward the top officials. They are structured to bring real pain on the innocent.

The objective is to put pressure on the population to cause real suffering of the population with the misguided belief that that is going to result in the people rising up and engaging in the regime change that they are trying to enact. The problem is that real live human beings are dying.

For example, in Venezuela, over 40,000 people have been reported to have died as a consequence of US sanctions just since 2017.So these realities are realities that most people don’t know about. They’re not going to be exposed to coming from the normal channels of information.

And it falls on us, these kinds of programs to present alternative information and alternative perspectives in order for us to wake people up and build independent structures where we can really begin to shift power away from the rulers and to the people so that we can not only live better lives in the US but so that we can ensure that this state, this government is no longer in a position to impose itself and to impose suffering on millions of people worldwide.

Grumbine (11:17):

So Ajamu, with that in mind, let me ask you, obviously we’ve gotten into wars under very false notions. I mean, Iraq is one of the primary ones that stands out. We know in just absolutely beyond the shadow of a doubt that was under fraudulent terms. But then we also have information now that Afghanistan was fought under completely erroneous terms.

Everything that was reported to the public was a complete farce. Every step along the way, we see that our government has lied to us about our involvement, not only in wars, but in disturbing democracies and other civilizations around the world. How do we deal with the disinformation machine that we recently talked about? How do we deal with that?

Baraka (12:07):

Well, you know, Steve, we have to figure out ways to go around the controllers of information. You know, in this country, we have basically six corporations that control over 90% of the news and entertainment that the American public is exposed to.

And then you connect that with the objective reality of now millions of people who are now on these various tech company platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter — and you have the enormous possibility of alternative information being exposed to the public.

The exchange of information is that they can’t be controlled by the rulers and the real possibility of a new kind of consciousness being built because of the exposure to more critical information. Now, the issue is this, though, because of the potential for subversive ideals, if you will, that’s subversive meaning ideals and perspectives not approved by the rulers.

They have been systematically reducing that space, reducing the ability of the public to be exposed to unauthorized ideals, if you will. One of the major instruments that was used was this whole Russian Gate fiasco that initiated a process of conditioning the public to accept censorship, to accept political censorship, policing of thought on the internet under the guise of protecting the public from false information.

So one of the most valuable new channels of information that could go around the controller, the control of the ruling class, is now being systematically clamped down on. But, you know, until they are able to completely clamp down on terms of information, we’ve got to utilize these channels to the best of our ability.

These kinds of programs, the program that you are doing are vitally important to reach people, to bring them to the public different ways of looking at the world, new information that will help them to understand the world.

So we have no other alternative because the objective reality is that we have a situation where through the use of the concept of freedom, we have a certain kind of intellectual totalitarianism that has really emerged here in this country and globally.

And the only way that we can go around that is by utilizing to the extent that we can while we can these structures that are now controlled by private corporations but have not yet been completely subordinated to the interests of the rulers.

So we have to do this, Steve, because we have no other alternative. People are dying because of the hegemony of this ruling class program. People are around the world asking for the public and the US to stand up and to try to put a break on US interventions that are harming their people or their nations.

And we’ve got to listen to that and figure out a way in which we can be more supportive of these events globally.

We also have to figure out how to get alternative information to people around what is happening right here in the US as the repression continues, not only in terms of intellectual policing, but in terms of physical policing, the containment strategies being deployed by local authorities with the super militarized police forces, with the fusion centers where they are gathering information on a daily basis against political dissidents.

You know, we have a real task before us in having to try to convince people of the dangers that they faced to real freedom from their own government.

Grumbine (16:21):

Ajamu, tell me a little bit about Venezuela. You’re knee deep in that. Now this has been very much in the news. The Trump administration took a extremely fascist approach to this thing. What is your take? Tell us what you know about Venezuela. How did it begin? What’s the story there?

Baraka (16:40):

Well, you know, we have to put Venezuela in a broader context of the realities that nations face that have been subjected to the control of powerful economic forces beyond their borders. And what we’re talking about here, we’re talking about the development and expansion of the Western capitalist project that began with the invasion of the so called Americas, or what became the Americas in 1492.

The invasion of nations beginning in 1492 for Western Europe set into place a process that resulted in the enrichment of those peoples and emerging nations and the underdevelopment and impoverishment of people in what we refer to today as a global South.

You fast forward to the post war period, post Second World War period, and many of these nations that have been colonized and exploded for years, we’re involved in a process of attempting to gain control over their nations and resources to try to carve out a path of real national self-determination.

Those were difficult attempts because the US and many of the colonizer nations attempted to try to maintain their control. They undermined these efforts. They intervened politically. They attacked militarily to try to undermine the ability of these nations to express themselves and to exercise real self-determination.

That kind of struggle took place around the world. It was especially intensified in Latin America. And as a result, the US was able to support a number of dictatorial military governments throughout Latin America. Venezuela was one of those places also.

In the last couple of decades though, the military stepped aside and allowed for a fake democratic process, but the elements that came to power in places like Venezuela were those elements that were clearly aligned with the powers of the colonizers, the US in particular, and they had their own material incentive to keep the people down so that they can be exploited.

And that’s exactly what happened. It wasn’t really until the rise of Hugo Chavez in the late 90s, that allowed for a new kind of dispensation of political power in Venezuela. Chavez was committed to the poor. He was committed to social justice, and he built a process that was committed to that. And he came to occupy the office of the presidency and to try to have his aspirations realized.

And that’s what happened. But as the consequences of the US encouraging those ruling elements they put in place in Venezuela, there was an attempted coup. That coup was overturned by the people themselves and Chavez was able to deepen what they referred to as the Bolivarian Revolutionary Process. And so that’s what they did.

They started building a process in which they were attempting to shift power away from the ruling elements to the people. But before that process could be completed, of course, Chavez died. And Nicolas Maduro was installed as the new head of that Bolivarian Process in 2014, 2013, the Obama administration, after of course, years of subversion from the Bush administration against the Venezuela began to up the ante in Venezuela.

He claimed as his predecessor did that Venezuela represented a unique threat to US national security, and they began to apply the pressure even more pressure on Venezuela with sanctions. And he also unleashed more direct CIA attempts to undermine the process in Venezuela. After Chavez died, that process intensified.

Maduro was claimed to be as Chavez was before him a dictator, even though the Venezuelans had more recognizable democratic elections than almost any nation in Latin America, in many nations across the world, the planet, but yet, because they were trying to exercise some national self-determination of course, Maduro was classified as a dictator.

So what we have in Venezuela is an attempt by the people to try to transform themselves and their conditions and the ‘Empire’ attempting to undermine that. Then as well with part of a process, not only globally, but more specifically in Latin America, along with the process there in Venezuela, you had the people of Bolivia engage in a very similar kind of process.

You had the people in Ecuador also engaged in the process of trying to bring about conditions for real social justice. This is all part of the so called ‘Pink Tide’, if you will, in Latin America, but over the last few years, beginning, really in 2013 or so, much of that progressive effort has been undermined in Bolivia and Ecuador and Brazil, whether US helped under the Obama administration to bring about a quote unquote constitutional coup.

And of course the real pressure has been applied to Venezuela, even to the extent of recognizing someone who was not elected by anybody, but a phony election and the national assembly, Juan Guaido, as the so-called president of Venezuela, a recognition that is not been followed by the United nations and a majority of the nations on the planet.

In fact, only about 54 nations recognize Juan Guaido, as the president, many of the European countries and all of their vassal States. So we have a situation where an illegitimacy on the part of this fake precedent and continued applications of murderous sanctions against the people of Venezuela.

This was the context for the occupation of the embassy as the Trump administration created conditions that forced the Venezuelans to break diplomatic relations with the US the Venezuelans; allow for activists to occupy the embassy because the supporters of this fake Guaido government were systematically raiding Venezuelan property and other parts of the country in the US and there was a fear that they were going to do the same in Washington.

And so the Venezuelans allow for these activists to stand with the Venezuelan people and to occupy the embassy while the US and Venezuela worked out an agreement in which the Venezuelan property would be protected. Those activists occupied the embassy for 37 days before the embassy was illegally invaded by the federal authorities, along with the police forces from Washington D.C.

Now those will be called embassy protectors are now facing serious criminal charges in court. They’re going to court February 11th, and they are facing the real possibility of incarceration because It’s quite clear that the Trump administration wants to make an example of them to dissuade any other opposition to their policies as they are marching forward, to impose themselves on more and more people across the planet.

So, you know, this is the situation we are facing today. We have a question before us, as always as citizens of this country, what is our responsibility vis-a-vis Venezuela? Do we agree with and support the bipartisan efforts to undermine that process? Or do we stand with the people of Venezuela, and indeed, most of the people of the planet in opposing this attempt to undermine democracy in Venezuela and to undermine their process.

So it’s quite clear what we have to do. In my opinion, we have to oppose the Trump administration and their Democratic supporters. We have to stand with the people of Venezuela, but we also have to raise another question, another issue Steve.

Grumbine (25:45):

What’s that?

Baraka (25:45):

How can one define themselves as a Progressive while they are also supporting US imperialist policies in places like Venezuela?

Grumbine (25:57):

That’s a great question. That’s a very good question. In fact, I would take it a step further and ask, as a whole, you know, going way back. I mean, going back to the Monroe Doctrine, even and further, we have never had such an aggressive policy in place for preventative, preventative war here, war by other means to create this kind of a culture.

And yet ever since this authorization of military force has been in place for 20 years, it has become “the way is just the way’ we do business here. And I think that you’re absolutely correct that it’s a very slippery slope because what I see happening at least on the main stage is the one guy who has a legitimate shot in this process, Bernie Sanders, is being attacked from every single quarter.

I mean, The View to you’ve got Elizabeth Warren up there taking her little coordinated attack with CNN, and then you’ve got the entire establishment trying to ransack him. And now as if it wasn’t already stacked against them, you’ve got Barney Frank, and can’t remember the other clown, um, within the DNC, that will be the on the rules committee, trying to ensure that he’s blocked there too.

And ultimately, you know, Sanders is probably not as antiwar as we would like him to be, but yet at the same time, though, the closest thing we got to having the kind of movement behind him to make a difference, the people are standing behind Sanders and already just his flavor of Democratic Socialism, which in the rest of the world would be center, right.

Maybe center. It’s not even left, he’s being opposed at every level. So I can’t even imagine what it would be like. I don’t even know you’d make it on the stage the way they’ve got it set up.

Baraka (27:49):

You know, Steve I’ve told people that if you all think that what you were saying in terms of the attempts by very powerful forces to attack Trump and that if there was a Sanders’s presidency, he will make what they attempted to do with Trump look like a picnic. And we already seen what they have planned for Sanders, even before he becomes the president.

They are committed to making sure that he does not win the nomination. And we see the playbook, the playbook was exercised in the UK against Jeremy Corbyn and the same kind of forces, both from the right. And also from the, I guess, we’ll call it the central left in the UK, the liberal newspaper, the Guardian was one of the fiercest critics of Jeremy Corbyn here in this country.

It is folks from CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, who are quite clear that they would throw their support behind anybody but Bernie Sanders. And so with these reports that we see now coming out, digging back into Bernie’s history and trying to smear his character.

This is just the beginning. If he survives all of this, becomes the nominee, and I think if that happened, it would be a very strong possibility that he could in fact, defeat Trump. I think he’s the only one. If he did become the president, it would be, I think no holds, barred attempt to try to undermine his ability to implement any of his campaign pledges to the people in this country,

Intermission (29:48):

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Grumbine (30:37):

You know, it’s interesting you say that because this to me plays into a much larger discussion, and I’m just gonna bring it to you. I talked to many people in the Green Party in years past, I’ve talked with independents, I’ve talked with progressives, who are all in for Sanders, and I’ve come to believe, same way that you’re going to stop wars is the same way you’re going to enact bold, progressive policy.

And it’s going to require us not taking a day off. It’s going to require us taking a few lessons from France. It’s going to take us actually making demands and meaning it; and following through on them. It’s going to require an incredibly robust movement of people that are not party centric, even necessarily, just the people themselves have to rise beyond the propaganda machine that you spoke about destroyed Corbyn.

The antisemitism charges were bogus all based in his support of the Palestinian people to have rights and be treated with dignity. And they just destroyed them. They smeared him. And I suspect you’re exactly correct that they will do everything they can to block a Sanders campaign. Not just block a campaign, but if he gets in there to do everything they can to block us from enacting a bold, progressive agenda.

To me, you look down in Brazil at Bolsonaro, and you look around the world, Boris in the UK, and you see these right wing zealots that have taken the country by storm under a false populism and attacking what is seen as the ineptitude of socialism and government and so forth. And this is kind of the distraction that they’re using to really run this worldwide. You call it this capitalist project.

I would say it is pure unadulterated neoliberalism at its zenith. This is neoliberalism’s game and the war is just there to clear markets, man. It’s about keeping people desperate. And it’s about ensuring that resources are siphoned to the wealthiest people in the world, the corporations, you name it.

And I believe, and I could be wrong, but I believe that if we, as a movement, don’t stand together regardless of party and stand against the stuff that we have no choice, but to accept this as the new normal, and this will be the way it goes from the [inaudible].

And we will never see a Progressive agenda if we don’t realize that we’ve got to find a way to stand together on principles and policy, not personalities and parties; but stand for true North and what we really believe, establish that ethos and collectively fight back. I think that’s our only shot here. What do you think about that?

Baraka (33:27):

I think you’re absolutely right, Steve. And the most important element of what you just said too, is this notion of standing together on various platforms that are based in principles and a new morality, a morality that is committed to social justice and that be diverted by the theatrics of any personality. That is really the challenge.

That basically we’ve got to have clear ideals about who we are and what kind of world we want to try to construct and understand that both of these major parties are representing interests that are not ours. In fact, they represent interests that are opposed to our objective interests. So yes, we’ve got to go beyond the duopoly.

We’ve got to surface ideals about who we are, what we want to try to build. We have to talk about the principles and talk about a new ethics. And that’s why, in my opinion, the Sanders campaign is such a threat because even if he is unable to implement much of what he’s talking about during his campaign, what the rulers are afraid of is just the conversation.

They are afraid of the legitimation of ideals that question their legitimacy. They question the structure of a society that produces this enormous disparity in income and wealth between the 1% and everyone else. They don’t want more young people to even think about, let alone research, what is Socialism? You know, they don’t want any questions regarding their imperialist agenda.

So Sanders and the ideals he is pushing, even though they may not be as radical as some people would like for them to be, they represent a tremendous opening in the national discourse. And if he was able to win the nomination and to in fact, sneak in and become president, it would be a very significant turn in US history and US politics, and for the better.

Grumbine (35:46):

It’s interesting. You know, I remember one of our first conversations way back and watching you and Jill, every chance they got, they tried to tie Jill to Putin. Every chance they got to talk about you guys they mocked the stance as the platform.

There was always some knock, but you could tell that there was some definite resistance because it was clear that there were some people listening. And with Sanders having such an incredibly large footprint, you know, I oftentimes tell people, we just got to change the conversation. Really at the end of the day, the Overton window demands that all of us have a foothold in a new reality.

It changed a perspective of what the realm of possibilities are. And Sanders indeed has lit a fire under many people that probably never once thought about a lot of these things. The world has been dumbed down to the point where we don’t dream anymore. We just see shades of gray and bleak, and it just, there’s no possibility of a better tomorrow.

 And, you know, with climate change bearing down on us, I think to myself, this is the greatest crisis, I think, any of us has ever faced. This is like when the water draws back right before a tsunami and you feel that calm and there’s a tsunami coming, and you think about this Ajamu, this whole discussion about peace, this whole discussion about empire, closed borders, building walls, other people, people that are in a xenophobia and so forth.

With climate change coming there are going to be, an there already are, so let’s be clear — this is not some future thing. This is already happening. There are going to be climate refugees all over the world. I look at places, you know, I had Steve Keen on the other day and he was talking about what happens when the folks in Bangladesh start, you know, moving up into Pakistan.

And now all of a sudden we got Hindu and Muslim fighting over the same turf. And we have people vacating these horribly bad, arid conditions or water wars and so forth. His take on it quite frankly, was that he hates to say it, but we don’t really react until it’s too late.

And he sees a military takeover, kind of a command type setup to ration things because we simply didn’t react in time. And it terrified me then. And I think to myself, we’re just playing games with the warfare that we’re dealing with now.

I can’t imagine what happens as climate change bears down on us and some of the ill effects that we’re not prepared for because we were too busy trying to impeach some clown in the White House and try to play other reindeer games. We literally missed the opportunity to protect our children and the people of the world. It’s not just the other people. It’s going to be us.

Baraka (38:33):

Right.

Grumbine (38:34):

Can you kind of talk about that?

Baraka (38:37):

Well, I mean, you really almost said it all. This is the challenge. I mean, are we part of global humanity or not? Are we as a collective humanity prepared to do what we need to do in order to ensure our survival. It’s quite clear from my perspective that the ruling class, the minority or ruling class is prepared to fight to the last drop of your blood and mine to maintain their power, to maintain the status quo as it is, even if it means the complete obliteration of the human species on earth.

So we have to understand that the contradiction today is not just between capital and labor, as Marx talked about 150 years ago. To me, the major contradiction today is between the capitalist, imperialist system and collective humanity.

That basically, if we aren’t able to take power from these powerful sources, this powerful class, they are prepared to continue with policies that can only result in the complete destruction of humanity. Look, the fossil fuel industry. They have been salivating at the prospect that there’s not going to be a reduction in the use of fossil fuels.

They are looking at a 40% expansion of the use of fossil fuels. You know, so we talk about Medicare for All. The healthcare industry is continually realizing record profits, the pharmaceutical companies. There’s no objective interest from these forces to make any kind of changes the same with the military industrial complex.

You know, when Congress will give them $738 billion for the Pentagon budget, 1.4 trillion over the next two years, you know, there’s no material incentive for change from their perspective. So, you know, these policies that are resulting in climate change, full production, this industrialized the fossil fuel industry that’s still expanding.

And in secret opposition to the real development of alternative energy, a medical industry that is going to continue to support privatized healthcare. These people are not going to give up their power and their programming policies without a fight. The question for us is, do we want to live? I mean, you are absolutely right. They estimated over 800 million climate refugees in the next few years. And the global community is really doing nothing to counter that.

Grumbine (41:28):

They’re not even recognizing . . . Think about this. They’re meeting in Davos right now trying to about honestly, it’s like a who’s who, it’s almost like a red carpet event. It’s not even real. I wonder if people really truly understand how desperate this situation’s about to become.

And we are always being chided for being not good enough, for not working hard enough, or not doing something enough. It’s always put down on the little guy for them being the fault here. And then they try to put the rationing on the little people and try to put the pain and suffering on the little people.

When these wars start happening, you can rest assured there’ll be a propaganda machine there to try and tell you that this is peace. This is all in the name of peace. We’re trying to help freedom. It’s going to be some nonsensical, but we’re going to believe it. We’re going to believe it, short of us fighting back and really making change.

But it’s devastating to me to think about, as your eyes become open and your heart becomes open, see this coming and you feel sort of powerless that there’s just nothing you can do, but you fight anyway. And I think. You know, it’s been said a million times: we fight fascist not because we’ll win, but because we got to fight back regardless. I want to believe that we have hope.

I believe that there’s a way to hope, but right now we just don’t have the strength of numbers, of people that are aware of our circumstances to create that kind of pressure to make the substantive changes that you were talking about. $738 billion for the military, but yet we can’t pay for schools or healthcare Get outta here. Nope. I ain’t buying it.

Baraka (43:17):

No, but you know what? I’m gonna tell you. I have hope. I even have a certain degree of certainty that basically either we’re going to win or we’re not going to survive, but I really believe we’re going to win. I mean, I see signs of resistance, effective resistance all around us.

You know, I think we were talking earlier about what has been unfolding in places like France, the struggles of people in Venezuela to protect their project, the people on the move in Chile and Bolivia, you know, there is real resistance. There is not just resistance, but that resistance is based on a new conception of what we can be as human beings.

You know, there are people around the world who are now awake and are struggling to try to address this issue of climate change who have now understood and made the connection that we’re not going to be able to address climate change without a equal socialist program. That is in fact, the way in which the economy is organized is private property.

It is these capitalist industrial processes that’s killing the planet and that we have a collective responsibility to take power from those forces in order for the collective humanity to be able to survive. So people are making the connections. They are getting more and more involved. They are building organizations.

The only issue we have is that we haven’t seen the kind of responses we need to see in the US but there’s still organizing taking place. And there will be even more as we go forward. And that’s again, why this Sanders campaign is seen as such a threat. And that’s also why, you know, we haven’t talked about this much. The Green Party is now in the cross hairs again, over the last few days where Progressives are saying that the Green Party should stand down.

But one of the most effective roles of the Green Party plays in the US is that it is Green Party ideas that end up being the framework for the entire Progressive movement. And we saw what happened with the so called Progressive Democrat who stole lock, stock and barrel the Green New Deal, even though they gutted big pieces of it in terms of fossil fuels and militarism.

But because the Democrats had no coherent message, they had no framework for defining themselves as a Progressive movement or party, it was the activities, the constructions from the Green Party that they took, and which is now the foundation for driving Progressive discourse in the US.

So you look at some of the positions today that’s going further than Medicare for All in talking about socializing of medicine. There’s talking about the absolute need to nationalize the commanding heights of the economy in order for us to survive.

And we’re going to see those ideals gradually bleed into the broader Progressive movement and probably continue to influence the Progressive discourse here in this country. So I’m optimistic. I see difficulties, no question about that, but I see real motion and real possibilities.

Grumbine (46:39):

You know, I love that. I mean, I typically try to frame my policies of economics and policies on social programs and social justice and so forth through the lens of hope, because I believe it’s achievable. You bring up the Green Party and I think it’s worth noting. I’ve oftentimes looked at the Green Party functionally. I think you actually said it better than I will, but I’ve always looked at them functionally as the activists of America.

They’re the people pulling us left bound and they may not have the electoral power right now. They may not have the organization to be able to break through this first past the post structure, but they’re doing incredibly important work by changing the narrative, by changing the conversation, by being agents of change.

So to that extent, I think this is kind of where I was going. Whereas, you know, while I don’t even want to begin to speculate on what happens with the Green Party, it’s not really the focus of mine, although I love the Green Party in terms of what it brings to the table.

I think my focus really is I’ve noticed inherently that we get into our own bubbles. And we think that narratives that we’re hearing are the only narratives that are out there. And lo and behold, you realize there’s an entire spectrum of, I hate to use this word, but there’s a spectrum of wokenness throughout the US.

People are having various aha moments at various levels and not everybody’s caught up to the same spot because there’s so much propaganda to carve through — years and years and years of propaganda baked into our sitcoms, baked into our school system, baked into every aspect of our lives that we have to detangle from and decouple our minds from.

And you know what, I’m not going to victim blame. I mean, the people have been lied to. It’s not been an accident. The propaganda campaign has been coordinated for more than a century. I mean, you go back to World War I, World War II. We’ve had propaganda.

You don’t have to go any further Civil War and on and on and on. I mean, propaganda has been the rich man’s, power elites’, primary tool at maintaining power and keeping the little people divided at the bottom.

And from my vantage point, I think it really does take what you guys are doing in the Green Party mixed with what I think I’ve always stood for this inside outside strategy only because right now there is a first pass the post. I don’t want to give everything up, but yet at the same time, it’s rigged half the time anyway.

The lack of credibility in our electoral system is unbelievable. The lack of confidence an the ability to change the system through the electoral process has gotten to an all time high. I can’t even imagine what will happen if the optics are that Sanders should have won and they still find a way to rig it against him.

I’m hoping they are stupid enough to do something like that, that we’re smart enough to rise up. I don’t see any way out other than that. I mean, I think we’re right at that boiling point. What are your thoughts on that?

Baraka (49:46):

No, I think you’re right. And the reports that have been circulating that suggests that the DNC is putting in place a process to deny Sanders is a very dangerous strategy if that’s what they intend to do, because they will split that party.

And that may not be a bad thing. Like, some of us have been looking for that to happen for quite some time because this two-party monopoly has been the major instrument used against us for developing a broader Democracy in this country. So that might be the consequence that will result in us building a movement to expand the Democratic process in this country.

To allow for more voices to be heard and expanded the range of policies to be considered. So, you know, this is all part of the crisis that we are facing, Steve, that basically what we see with the two parties and the desperation on the part of neoliberals to try to deny the left wing of the party from consolidating and winning power.

All these things are the result of the continuation of the political crisis and the crisis of legitimacy. And so this is going to continue and it’s going to become worse. And that’s why it’s so vitally important for Progressive forces to be organized, to find ways in which we try to find some convergence of interests, a convergence of program so that we can begin to consolidate our power and to be able to advance our forces at those critical moments where we have an opportunity to do so.

So again, this is the basis of my optimism. I see critical mistakes being made by the rulers. I see that the Democratic Party is getting ready to make a critical mistake if they deny Sanders the nomination, but also see some very dangerous times also ahead of us. But in the end, I think that we are going to find a way forward. I really do.

Grumbine (51:47):

I love it. I love your optimism, and I gotta tell you, it’s contagious. So with that, first of all, thank you for taking the time with me today and tell us how we can find you. Tell us some of the things that are going on right now that are of interest that you’re putting your focus on.

Baraka (52:03):

Well, the main thing right now is we’re building support for the Embassy Defenders. They’re going to trial, the pretrial motions on October 29th in Washington. So please folks go to the Embassy Defense website, but we want people to be at the trial on the 29th. And then the real trial starts February 11th in Washington, and want people to be there.

We want to pack the court because they’re going all the way, that is the Defenders and there’s a real possibility of them being convicted and receiving some time. So that’s the major piece. The other piece that we’re working on, of course, is continuing to resist any efforts to intensify the struggle between the US and Iran, but connected to that is this outrageous decision on the part of the US to net withdraw its forces from Iraq.

This is absolutely outrageous. This exposes in an ultimate and clear way that the US has become a rogue state. So we are working on that. And thirdly, many people have now heard that the Trump administration announced what is in effect, a domestic military surge under the guise of fighting crime.

They announced this a couple of months ago, and they have now announced a few weeks ago, the first seven cities that will be surged if you will, with more federal dollars and military assistance with the primary target being Black and Brown working class.

So we are trying to make people aware of that reality also. And for that information, you go to https://blackallianceforpeace.com/ to read up about the surge and the efforts that we are making to try to make people aware of the surge and to stand with us in opposition. And we say no militarism abroad and no militarism domestically.

Grumbine (54:03):

Thank you very much for that. I really appreciate it. This was a great conversation and I hope that I can have you back on again, sir.

Baraka (54:11):

It’s my pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed this. Thank you so much, Steve.

Grumbine (54:15):

All right. Thank you everybody. This is Steve and Ajamu from Macro N Cheese. We’re out!

Ending Credits (54:26):

Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy. Descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts and promotional artwork by Mindy Donham. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressive Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.