The Cuban Revolution Reveals The Importance of Failure to The Movement

Off Duty NYC Cop Kills Teen Over Water Gun, Cuba Celebrates Anniversary of Pivotal Revolutionary Moment, Growing Ties Between Cops and Tech

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Kerbie Joseph, longtime police brutality, mass incarceration and community organizer in Brooklyn, New York with the ANSWER Coalition and SOS coordinator with the Audre Lorde Project to discuss the killing of Raymond Chaluisant by an off-duty corrections officer in New York City over his use of a toy water gun, how anti-Blackness and other biases fostered in police organizations contributes to the criminalization of children and teenagers that contributed to this case, Mayor Eric Adams’ full-throated support of the NYPD despite the long record of racist police terror perpetrated by the department, and the movement on the ground to demand justice for Raymond and to defund the NYPD.

In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Arnold August, a Montreal-based author of 3 books on US-Cuba-Latin America relations, award-winning journalist who publishes in English, Spanish & French on several continents, collaborates with teleSur, Cuban TV & Press TV Iran, is a Contributing Editor for The Canada Files, and a member of the International Manifesto Group to discuss the anniversary of the attacks on the Moncada and Cespedes barracks led by Fidel Castro and its significance to the Cuban revolution, how this failed attack contributed to the success of the Cuban revolution in a short amount of time, and the significance of the date to other important events in the Cuban struggle for liberation.

In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by technologist Chris Garaffa, co-host of the CovertAction Bulletin podcast to discuss the use of biometric data by police and their ability to compel people to use their body parts to unlock their phones, a lawsuit alleging that the Chicago police used the ShotSpotter warning system as evidence to convict someone of murder despite the system’s known issue of false positives, the disproportionate placement of these microphones in working class communities of color and why tech won’t fix the racist bias of policing, and the shortcomings of bills currently in Congress which promise to introduce antitrust regulations into the tech industry.

Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by James Early, Former Director of Cultural Heritage Policy at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian Institution and board member of the Institute for Policy Studies to discuss the lessons we as organizers can learn from the anniversary of the July 26th movement and its role in the broader Cuban revolution, how the current economic and political crisis presents an opportunity to shape the consciousness of our communities and envision a new system that meets the needs of society, and how we can organize people who suffer from the ravages of capitalism but who also continue to follow pro-capitalist ideologies.

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