Latest Video Classes

Dannie Glover Talks with Harry Belafonte. An hour long, PBS-TV program provided a rare look inside the life and times of the legendary Harry Belafonte. Taped on November 2, 2000 at The Art Institute of Chicago.

David Harvey on the Grundrisse and Becoming A Marxist David Harvey recalls the formation of his Marxist ideas, intellectual influences, and writing. He also talks about the growth of the populist right and how that is connected to geographical electoral splits

Amiri Baraka’s Blues People Very Important Book! Amiri Baraka (1934 – 2014), widely considered to be the father of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), was an award-winning poet and playwright, educator, activist, and critic whose career spanned 52-plus years; his over 35 published works played an innovative, essential role in transforming Black America. 60 minute YouTube discussion.

Black History Special: 130 Videos on the Civil Rights Movement. The Vimeo Archive was created by veterans of the Southern Freedom Movement (1951-1968). It preserves and makes available original-materials, histories, narratives, remembrances, and commentaries related to that movement. It is where we tell it like it was, the way we lived it, the way we saw it, the way we still see it.

CANNIBAL CAPITALISM Leading Marxist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser charts the voracious appetite of capital, tracking it from crisis point to crisis point, from ecological devastation to the collapse of democracy, from racial violence to the devaluing of care work. 90 minutes, with Q&A;

Amílcar Cabral is introduced here as a radical anti-colonial theorist and National Liberation Marxist revolutionary. We discuss his early life and education, his formation of the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), and his writings. Video, 30 minutes.

DEACONS FOR DEFENSE is a 2003 television drama film directed by Bill Duke. The film stars Forest Whitaker , Christopher Britton, Ossie Davis, Jonathan Silverman, Adam Weiner, and Marcus Johnson. Based on a story by Michael D’Antonio, the teleplay was written by Richard Wesley and Frank Military. The film is loosely based on the activities of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in 1965 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The Deacons were an African-American self-defense organization founded in 1965 to protect activists working in the Southern Civil Rights Movement. One hour, 40 minutes.

Karl Marx – Smashing Documentary Learn a lot about Marx in 30 minutes.

King in The Wilderness (2018) This feature film, nearly two hours, chronicles the final chapters of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, revealing a conflicted leader who faced an onslaught of criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. While the Black Power movement saw his nonviolence as weakness, and President Lyndon B. Johnson saw his anti-Vietnam War speeches as irresponsible, Dr. King’s unyielding belief in peaceful protest became a testing point for a nation on the brink of chaos.

Miliband, Poulantzas and Laclau Discussion and debate on governing power in the advanced capitalist state. 30 minute introduction.

The Real Story of the Black Panther Party. Dr. Curtis Austin tells his story of being labeled a ‘felon’ as a result of his research on the Black Panther Party. Dr. Austin details the major successes of the Black Panther Party and the key action behind those successes. 13 minutes, good discussion starter.

BILL FLETCHER JR: RACE AND LABOR. Fletcher enlightens us with some little known history of how racism has been used since Europeans first came to the western world to control the working class. This analysis illuminates precisely why Capitalism cannot exist without racism. Contrary to what many may think, the concept of “white” which did not previously exist was invented for this purpose, and did not necessarily refer to skin color. The first Africans were brought over as indentured servants and became chattel slaves only later as the American caste system evolved. 80 minutes.

Covid, Capitalism & Ecology Mike Davis and Rob Wallace, each of whom has new books out on this subject, are the two leading left wing writers on the issue of the pandemic in the world. 90 minutes

Eric Hobsbawm: The Consolations of History In this 80 minute video, Anthony Wilks traces the connections between the events of Eric Hobsbawm’s life and the history he told, from his teenage years in Germany and his communist membership, to the jazz clubs of 1950s Soho and the makings of New Labour, taking in Italian bandits, Peruvian peasant movements and the development of nationalism in the modern world, with help from the assiduous observations of MI5.

Capital, All Three Volumes? Let the best teacher today, David Harvey, take you though it, chapter by chapter.

10 Documentaries for Teaching African American History since 1865. These documentaries focus on African American history since 1865. They are short (2 hours or less), accessible, emotionally powerful for viewers, and not overly specialized in their focus. Students can stream, either through Netflix, YouTube, or the educational film database Kanopy, which also includes film transcripts

David Schweickart: What’s Wrong with Capitalism? One-hour video lecture. SCHWEICKART is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He holds Ph.D’s in mathematics and philosophy. He is the author of After Capitalism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). His primary focus has been on developing and defending, as both economically viable and ethically desirable, a socialist alternative to capitalism, which he calls Economic Democracy.

JERRY HARRIS, GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY. 75 minute presentation of the author’s new book, with Q&A;, covering the history of the interconnected development of democracy with economic systems of the centuries, and the role of democracy in anti-capitalist strategy. Excellent for study groups reading the book.

THE PRECARIAT, THE NEW YOUNG & DANGEROUS CLASS An 11 minute discussion starter. Author Guy Standing points in this interview the emergence of a new class structure that starts when neoliberals took control over the economy and politics back in the 80s and it´s consolidated with the actual global crisis. The common element of this new class is its rejection of neo-liberalism and social democracy and is becoming aware that it is a class for itself, favoring the emergence of new political forces like Podemos, SYRIZA and Left Ecology and Freedom in Italy. Guy Standing is an economist, professor at the University of London and founder / co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network.

THE WORKING CLASS TODAY. David Harvey explain that organizing workers today might better be done by urban neighborhoods than factories. 20 minutes.

DEMOCRACY, NATURAL RIGHTS & 21ST CENTURY SOCIALISM. A 20 minute video talk by Carl Davidson at the US Social Forum in Detroit. Good discussion starter.

Carl Davidson at Berlin’s Rosa Luxemburg Foundation on Mondragon’s Impact