Amilcar Cabral & the 21st Century w/ James Early

Note: This program originally aired in 2016, we were just starting! ______________________________________ Amilcar Cabral…one of the African world’s foremost intellectual—theoreticians is also one of the most marginalized in the study of the African world. If we were to try to encapsulate Amilcar Cabral influence into a single phrase it would have to be his insistence on the study of reality [the material conditions within which culture moves history]. He insisted that "one does not confuse the reality you live in with the ideas you have in your head"…he would frequently elaborate on this by asserting your "ideas may be good, even excellent, but they will be useless ideas unless they spring from and interweave with the reality you live in." What is necessary is to see into and beyond appearances: to free yourself from the sticky grasp of “received opinions”, whether academic or otherwise. Only through a principled study of reality, of the strictly here and now, can a theory of revolutionary change be integrated with its practice to the point where the two become inseparable. For Cabral, it is always necessary to “tell no lies, and claim no easy victories”! Africa World Now Project will bring you a community-based discussion [organized as part of a continuing series to remove the real and imagined barriers between the academy & community] on the impact and implications of Amilcar Cabral in the 21st century. We bring this organic forum which was after a screening of a documentary film titled Cabralista. This film was developed with the expressed purpose to be made publicly accessible to all that what to know. "Cabralista" is an ambitious documentary trilogy, chronologically divided in Past, Present and Future: Part I—Past, is a visual biography of Amilcar Cabral, based on historical facts and testimonies of his lifetime collected throughout the years and narrated by Val Lopes, the director and author of the trilogy. Part II—Present - Collective Memory, which explores the present, how Cabral is remembered, defining a non-formal zeitgeist around his ideology, showing an African Youth with strong Cabralist views. Part III—Future - Utopia, is a futuristic view, of a "better Africa", in a world where the early African freedom fighters have not been eliminated and our development has not been disturbed and distorted, but left in our own hands to grow freely. In today’s program…we will listen to the discussion after Part I of the Trilogy was screened. What you will hear is James Early, former Director of Cultural Studies and Communication at the Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. And Member of the Board of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), myself and the audience engage in a non-traditional, organic discussion that explored the legacy and impact of the praxis of Amilcar Cabral. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples! Enjoy the program!