Shows
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSUnsilenced: Poems for Palestine - Book LaunchUnsilenced: Poems for Palestine Book Launch On May 20, 2025, Daraja Press marked a significant literary and political moment with the launch of Unsilenced: Poems for Palestine, a stirring anthology edited by John P. Portelli. Bringing together the voices of 50 poets from across the globe, this collection weaves together art and activism, offering a lyrical testament to Palestinian resistance, resilience, and the enduring call for justice. This special podcast episode presents a lightly edited recording of the powerful launch event in Ottawa, hosted by Adrian Harewood—award-winning journalist, professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Commun...
2025-05-221h 37
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSAlliance of Sahel States Forges Ahead Between 2021 and 2023 West Africa saw three popular military coups. Assimi Goïta became the president of Mali in 2021, Ibrahim Traoré became the president of Burkina Faso in 2022, and Abdourahamane Tchiani, became the president of Niger in 2023. The three former French colonies expelled French and US military. They withdrew from ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, and confederated, forming the Alliance of Sahel States. In French, that’s the Alliance des États du Sahel (AES). They announced their intention to cooperate on regional security, integration, sovereignty, and economic independence. In January, they annou...
2025-04-0931 min
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSThe threats to Mother Earth from the Trump RegimeFiroze Manji and Nnimmo Bassey discuss the environmental threats posed by the Trump administration's policies, particularly the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the prioritization of oil and gas drilling. Bassey highlights the severe environmental degradation in the Niger Delta, including contaminated water and soil, and the health impacts on local communities. He emphasizes the need for African unity and transformative leadership to combat these issues. Bassey also notes the broader implications for Africa, including potential environmental genocide in other regions like Senegal and Botswana. He calls for cultural and environmental education to foster sustainable practices and solidarity among...
2025-02-1149 min
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSThreats to the Black Women's movement of the new Trump regimeThandisizwe Chimurenga talks about the threats to the Black Women's movement of the new Trump regime A society born of white supremacy and patriarchy must, by definition, ignore the voices of Black women. We know that unfortunately, such an attitude will also naturally seep into every stratum of that society. With the ascent of the Trump regime, a whole range of policies and practices are being implemented and more to be planned on both on the USA domestic scene as well as on the international arena. Thandisizwe Chimurenga is an award winning, Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and...
2025-02-0536 min
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSProspects for movements in the new Trump regimeKali, of course, hardly needs an introduction, but for those of you who have not been fortune to hear and engage with Kali, let me say a few words about him: Kali Akuno is the co-founder of Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi. He is the co-editor of Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi and of Jackson Rising Redux: Lessons On Building The Future In The Present. As many of you will know, we have had the pleasure of interviewing Kali on several occasions here on Daraja Press Podcasts. In our...
2025-01-2757 min
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSBeyond the Bill: What do elections have to do with freedom?Busia Senator and activist lawyer Okiya Omtatah recently declared his intent to run for president in 2027. Over his career, Omtatah has sued multinationals, government, politicians, and many others on behalf of the public interest and promises to focus on "anti-corruption measures" and executing the Constitution. We've spent many hours helping people understand the structural nature of what ails Kenya. Omtatah has certainly played an important role as an individual, but is this at odds with what would actually be necessary, structurally, to liberate Kenya from the root causes of its problems? How then should we think about electoral politics...
2024-12-1443 min
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSPalestine WailPalestine is personal for writer, Yahia Lababidi. His Palestinian grandmother, Rabiha Dajani — educator, activist and social worker — was forced to flee her ancestral home in Jerusalem at gunpoint some eighty years ago. As an Arab-American, Lababidi feels deeply betrayed by the USA’s blind support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. In Palestine Wail, he reminds us that religion is not politics, Judaism is not Zionism, and to criticize the immoral, illegal actions of Israel is not antisemitism — especially since, as an Arab, Lababidi is a Semite himself. Using both poetry and prose, Lababidi reflects on how we are neither ou...
2024-11-1852 min
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSThe Second ComingIn the remnants of a fractured UK, England is on the brink of collapse where far-right militias rise to power. As Islamophobia and English nationalism ignite brutal violence, 19-year-old Marah Sultana is thrust into a fight for survival. Hunted by forces seeking control, she carries a secret powerful enough to change the course of the war—and the future of the world. In a world in which America’s reign as a superpower has crumbled, its mercenaries now rule in its shadow, In The Second Coming, Tariq Mehmood delivers a searing, unflinching narrative that mirrors his own lifelong struggle for...
2024-11-1249 min
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSNight Settles Upon the CityWritten with urgency out of a war-time Beirut, this poetry collection registers the griefs and the heroism of the Lebanese, under siege yet again. Sabbagh lends his lyrical voice here, to give a voice to the voiceless, trying to find some harmonic sense out of catastrophe. This book will compel readers, both Lebanese and those with any kind of human heart. While much of the work was written swiftly, on impulse, and almost like, as one of the poem’s titles has it, a ‘War Diary,’ in verse, this work aims nonetheless to last in its significance and resonance at a t...
2024-11-1234 min
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSThe rise of racism in the UKAs many of our listeners will know, there have been racist uprsings across England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The trigger for the riots was disinformation: that three small girls stabbed to death in Southport on 29 July had been killed by a Muslim asylum seeker. In fact, the suspected killer was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents and is not Muslim. It is true that rightwing mobilization and counter-mobilizations have been on an unprecedented scale, but has this not been building up over many decades? How is this related to Brexit, which some suggest that it was essentially the result...
2024-08-1648 min
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSImplications of the attempted assassination of Donald TrumpKali Akuko, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, Mississippi, is back to update us on the implications of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. His view is that there is a strong likelihood now that Trump will win the elections. The strategy of the right to transform the USA may well be resisted by the Pentagon and others, so we cannot predict what will happen. It is likely that Trump will want to put boots on the ground in Palestine and the Middle East, but he is likely to abandon Ukraine as a lost cause.
2024-07-1727 min
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSThe 2024 elections and the rise of fascism in the USAKali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, Mississippi, speaks to Firoze Manji about the way in which the US right has organized and developed a well-thought strategy for taking control and transforming the entire political and social structure, even to the extent of planning changes to the US constitution. He discusses the implications for popular movements in the context of the disarray of the left, which has simply, as he puts it, “not got its shit together”.
2024-07-161h 03
DARAJA PRESS PODCASTSBackground to the historic uprisings in KenyaJoe Kobuthi, senior editor of The Elephant (elephant.info), speaks to Firoze Manji on the background to the uprisings in Kenya. To understand why there has been such mobilizations, we have to look at the history of Kenya, the struggle for independence, the loss of real independence, the domination of neoliberal capitalism, and the situation in which the rich have got richer while the majority have been left destitute. What we are seeing is the potential emergence of a second independence movement.
2024-07-1646 min
BookRisingRadical Publishing Futures 5: Daraja PressIn our fifth episode of the Radical Publishing Futures series, Meg Arenberg interviews Kenyan publisher Firoze Manji, founder of Daraja Press. Reflecting on his 25 years in editing and publishing, including his work as founder and editor in chief of the prize-winning pan African social justice newsletter and website, Pambazuka News and its book publishing arm, Pambazuka Press, Manji describes the bridge-building and solidarity-fostering impulses that led to the founding of Daraja Press. Over the course of the episode, he talks about the difference between publishing academic work and fostering intellectual conversations, what it means to think of publishing as a...
2022-05-0338 min
A Correction PodcastFiroze Manji on the Failure of the Left in AfricaFiroze Manji, is Adjunct Professor at the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University. He is Kenyan with more than 40 years’ experience in international development, health and human rights, and is the publisher of Daraja Press. He is Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, and Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Pambazuka News and Pambazuka Press. He has previously worked as Africa Programme Director for Amnesty International, Chief Executive of the Aga Khan Foundation (UK), and Regional Representative for Health Sciences in Eastern and Southern Afr...
2021-10-2900 min
Organising in the time of COVID19RACIAL CAPITALISM and COVID-19The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the deep structural problems affecting 'non-white', racialized workers in the core and periphery. Yet, many social scientific analyses of the global political economy, at least in the pre-COVID era, have been race neutral or wilfully indifferent to the persistent racial pattern of global inequalities.
In this interview, David Austin, author of Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution, Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal, talks with Zophia Edwards, Associate Professor of...
2021-07-171h 02
The Movements: A Podcast History of the MassesThe Weapon of Theory by Amilcar Cabral (Audiobook with Intro)An experimental episode! An audiobook adaptation of "The Weapon of Theory", by Amilcar Cabral. Brief intro and foreword by Comrade KG, host of The Movements.***The Weapon of Theory by Amilcar CabralPublished on the Marxists Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral/1966/weapon-theory.htmForeword, The War Comes HomeBy Comrade KGWritten September 2020 All references and quotes from the Foreword found below:https://libcom.org/files/Firoze-Manji_-Bill-Fletcher-Jr-Claim-No-Easy-Victories_-The-Legacy-of-Amilcar-Cabral-CODESRIA-Consei.pdfhttps://www.marxists.org/su...
2020-10-161h 31
Media NationMedia Nation - Sept 28, 2020 - Holding Charitable Organizations Accountable & Barbados Removing Queen Elizabeth as Head of StateKarlene Nation speaks to African Studies Professor Firoze Manji of Carleton University about WE Charity shutting down and how to hold charitable organizations accountable for the work they do. Robert Finch of the Monarchist League of Canada also talks about Barbados announcing it will remove Queen Elizabeth as head of state. Should Canada do the same?
2020-09-2847 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Trade union organising and outsourcing in the time of Covid-19I speak with Eurig Scandrett & Ros Walker, both active trade unionists in Scotland, UK.
Eurig talks about the pandemic reaching Britain whilst UCU was in a national dispute over pay and equalities, in the context of neoliberal commercialisation and new public management throughout higher education. During the national dispute, the relationship between local branch issues and national collective bargaining became a significant point of contention (we don’t need to go into this in too much detail). At Queen Margaret University, a well organised union branch, good inter-union cooperation, an...
2020-06-2853 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Gacheke Gachihi, Kenya, on repression in the time of Covid-19I speak to Gacheke Gachihi from the Mathare Social Justice Centre in Nairobi, Kenya. Gacheke spoke to us a couple of weeks ago, and we go back to catch up on news about the coercion and repression being used against people in the time of Covid-19
2020-06-2831 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Haiti in the time of Covid-19I speak to Joël E. Vorbe from Haiti. He is a member of the National Council for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled (CONARHAN), an entity which reflects on the problem of people living with disabilities in order to make proposals for public policies to improve their living conditions. This fan of Fidel Castro, of Nelson Mandela, is also a member of the board of the Fanmi Lavalas party of ex-president Jean Bertrand Aristide. In 1995, he said he had “eyes open on politics”. “If you want real change, you have to commit,” says Joel Vorbe, deploring the pressures on the famil...
2020-06-2838 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Covid19 and the debt crisisNick Dearden talks about a debt jubilee. As director, Nick Dearden manages the staff team and resources on behalf of Global Justice Now’s members. He is also the public face of the organisation. Nick started his career at War on Want where he became a senior campaigner. He went on to be corporates campaign manager at Amnesty International UK. As director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, he built strong relationships with campaigners in the global south. He helped win a new law to stop Vulture Funds from using UK courts to sq...
2020-06-2839 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Africans Rising for Justice, Peace, and Dignity in the time of Covid-19I talk with Coumba Toure and Lamin Mohammed about Covid19 in Senegal and in Africa.
Coumba is, writer, story-teller, member of the African Feminist Forum and the Per Ankh collective. She is a board member of TrustAfrica and an Ambassador of Africans Rising for peace justice and dignity. She has serve on the board of urgent action fund for women Africa. She is as an advisor to the Global Fund for Women and to International Development Exchange. She is a mother, a sister, and a daughter to many.
Lamin...
2020-06-2854 min
Organising in the time of COVID19COVID and the struggle for housing and shelterI interview Cesare Ottolini, global Coordinator International Alliance of Inhabitants, Italy, is a former squatter, engaged since 1977 in global / local struggles for the right to housing and the city, he was also the secretary of a Trade Union of the building, former world coordinator of Habitat International Coalition, also a member of UN-HABITAT Advisory Group on Forced Evictions. He is a member of the National Unione Inquilini Secretariat, the largest tenant organization in Italy that organizes every year the Zero Evictions Days in dozens of cities. He is a member of...
2020-06-2849 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in the time of Covid-19: MexicoRaquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, Researcher and Professor of Sociology at Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. She has done research about indigenous movements in Latin American and more recently about the feminist struggles. She has participated deeply in those struggles she writes and thinks about. Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia was published by Duke University Press in 2014.
John Holloway is a lawyer, Marxist-oriented sociologist and philosopher, whose work is closely associated with the Zapatista movement in Mexico, hi...
2020-06-281h 01
Organising in the time of COVID19Industrial food systems and Covid19I talk to Silvia Ribero about the role that industrial food systems give rise to viruses such as swine flu, Covid19 etc. What are the processes involved that lead to this happening? Who are the corporations involved? How wide spread has this become? What is being done to challenge these kind of food systems? Why is corporate media so silent on this upstream problem? What is AMLO doing about it? What are the constraints his government faces?
Silvia Ribeiro, born in Uruguay and resident in Mexico, is the...
2020-06-2835 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in the time of Covid-19: MozambiqueI spoke with Boaventura Monjane on the situation in Mozambique. He has a degree in journalism (Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo). His journalistic – and analysis – work was published in Mozambique, South Africa, Brazil, Spain, France and Portugal. He was the Portuguese editor of Pambazuka News. He is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). His research areas include land, the agrarian questions and social movements.
2020-06-2831 min
Organising in the time of COVID19WHat COVID tells us about racism and white supremacy in the USAWe spoke to Kali Akuno of Coorperation Jackson about what the distribution of Covid in the USA tells us about the nature of racism and white supremacy. Kali highlights the organising that is happening across the USA towards May Day events and the building of a movement that can give birth to a new world.
2020-06-2848 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in the time of Covid-19: Experiences of UgandaI spoke with Lyn Ossome, Senior Research Fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University, in Uganda. She received her PhD in Political Studies from Wits University. Her specializations and taught courses are in the fields of feminist political economy and feminist political theory, with particular research interests in land and agrarian studies, gendered labour, queer feminist histories and the political economy of gendered violence. She is the author of Gender, Ethnicity and Violence in Kenya’s Transitions to Democracy: States of Violence (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).
2020-06-2848 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in a time of Covid-19: Zimbabwe Congress of Trade UnionsNathan Banda heads the health and safety project of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions is the primary trade union federation in Zimbabwe. Currently Mr Japhet Moyo is the Sectratary General and Mr Peter Gift Mutasa is the President.The former General Secretary was Morgan Tsvangirai. Nathan discusses the challenges of developing a strategy for organising under conditions of COVID-19
2020-06-2841 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in the time of COVID-19: Eco-feminist perspectivesRuth Nyambura is a feminist political ecologist and activist from Kenya working on the intersections of gender, economy and ecological justice. Ruth is a founding member and the convener of the African Ecofeminists Collective and also works with several regional agrarian and climate justice movements to track and challenge the privatization of the agrarian commons. She describes her work and activism that uses a feminist political ecology lens to critically engage with the continent’s and global food systems, challenging neoliberal models of agrarian transformation and amplifying the revolutionary work of...
2020-06-2840 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in the time of Covid-19: Big farms make big fluRob Wallace, is author of Big Farms Make Big Flu (Monthly Review Press, 2016). He is an evolutionary biologist and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota. This discussion will look into how viruses such as the new coronavirus get generated. We also discuss the extent to which, despite the virus being lethal, people are dying because of the failure / inadequacies / absence of health care.
2020-06-281h 02
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising on incarceration in the times of Covid-19I spoke with Soffiyah Elijah, ED of Alliance for Families for Justice, whose mission is to support, empower and mobilize those impacted by the criminal justice system so they can marshal their collective power to create a just world. We discuss organising on incarceration in the time of Covid-19 in the USA and specifically in New York.
You might be interested also in reading this: A Public Statement on Coronavirus and Mass Incarceration
2020-06-2831 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Food in the time of Covid-19I talk with Andries du Toit: Director: Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of Western Cape. Food in the time of the Coronavirus: Why we should be very, very afraid. We talk about why we should be “very, very afraid”.
2020-06-2833 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in Cabo Verde in the time of COVID19Today (Saturday April 4, 2020) I spoke with Alexssandro Robalo from Cabo Verde, an island country spanning an archipelago of 10 volcanic islands in the central Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Mauritania & Senegal. It was colonised by the Portuguese and became a major source of wealth from The Atlantic slave trade. As a result of the mass organising of the liberation movement PAIGC, led by Amilcar Cabral, it achieved independence in 1975, precipitating the downfall of the fascist regime in Portugal. Cabo Verde split with Guinea Bissau.
2020-06-2822 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Discussion on the sovereign African response to the Covid-19 pandemicI spoke with Elimane Kane, Founder and Chairman of LEGS-Africa (www.legs-africa.org), a pan African think tank based in Dakar. Elimane is a Governance and Development analyst and contributor to the Alternative report on Africa (AROA).
The Alternative Report on Africa is a structuring initiative for new milestones towards the complete decolonization of our minds, our economies and regaining our sovereignty. … Its purpose will be to inform, generate and share knowledge, and to motivate those who want to transform Africa. They recently issued a report Declaration for a sovereign Af...
2020-06-2833 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in the time of COVID19: Abahlali baseMjondolo Womens League speaks out on evictionsWe as the Women’s League of Abahlali baseMjondolo see the need to express our pain and fear, and our deep disappointment and anger at the eThekwini municipality. We need to issue a clear warning that we will not continue to accept oppression.
Abahlali as a movement teaches respect. Men must respect women. People of different generations must respect each other. People who are born in different countries and people who speak different languages at home must respect each other. We have struggled for years in our movement to ensure th...
2020-04-1411 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in the times of Covid19: Nnimmo Bassey on NigeriaTODAY April 2 at 1pm (GMT+1) Nnimmo Bassey is a Nigerian architect, environmentalist activist, author and poet, who chaired Friends of the Earth International from 2008 through 2012 and was Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action for two decades. In 2010, Nnimmo Bassey was named a Laureate of the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2012 he was awarded the Rafto Prize. He is Director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, an environmental think tank and advocacy organization.
An amazing interview — "what is needed is building community not creating distance"
2020-04-1435 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Uprisings in the time of COVID19: AlgeriaWe discuss the impact of the COVID19 epidemic on the Algerian uprisings with Hamza Hamouchene, a London-based Algerian scholar-activist, commentator, researcher, and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), and Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA).
2020-04-1436 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in the times of COVID-19: The potential role of community radio stations in the USASally Kane talks about the role of community radio stations in the USA. Sally Kane is Chief Executive of the US National Federation of Community Broadcasters. She has twenty years of experience in the field of community radio. Based on her travels across the USA, she will speak about the conditions facing people in rural USA
2020-04-0848 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Organising in the times of COVID 19 amongst shackdwellers in South Africa: Abahlali baseMjondoloS'bu Zikode, founder and former president of Abahlali base Mjondolo, the shackdwellers movement in South Africa, speaks to Firoze Manji about the challenges of organising amongst shack-dwellere in South Africa in a time when there are attacks by police on settlements of shackdwellers and in the time of lockdown in the face of COVID19
2020-04-0525 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Gacheke Gachihi speaks to Firoze Manji about conditions facing shackdwellers in Nairobi in the times of COVID19An enlightening discussion with Gacheke Gachi from the Mathare Social Justice Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, about the situation facing shack-dwellers in the face of COVID-19.
2020-04-0321 min
Organising in the time of COVID19Kali Akuno speaks about COVID-19 and Jackson, Mississippi Video: Kali Akuno speaks about COVID-19 and Jackson, MississippiKali Akuno is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson and co-editor of Jackson Rising: the struggle for economic democracy and black self-determination in Jackson, Mississippi.
Kali served as the Director of Special Projects and External Funding in the Mayoral Administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. His focus in this role was supporting cooperative development, the introduction of eco-friendly and carbon reduction methods of operation, and the promotion of human rights and international relations for the city.
Here he speaks about the challenges of organising in the...
2020-04-0338 min
Needs No IntroductionSo a theorist, an activist and a journalist meet in Dakar after a protest...On Feb. 4, journalist Firoze Manji walked in on Egyptian theorist Samir Amin and Mamdou Habashi, a well known Egyptian activist talking politics, and joined right in. Here's the recording he made. Hello and welcome to Needs No Introduction on rabble.ca. What you're about to hear is an impromptu conversation between Egyptian theorist Samir Amin, Pambazuka editor Firoze Manji and Egyptian activist Mamdouh Habashi. Amin is probably best known for developing the theory of Eurocentrism. Habashi is a well-known Egyptian left-wing activist. And Manji's publication Pambazuka is produced by a pan-african network of over 2,600 volunteers...
2011-02-0850 min