Prison Death-Worlds, COVID-19, and the Fatal Convenience of Crisis with Dalton Lackey and Teagan Murphy
In this episode, we are joined by Dalton Lackey and Teagan Murphy, co-authors of the article "The COVID-19 Murders": Prison death-worlds and the fatal convenience of crisis. Their work offers a piercing critique of how carceral institutions weaponized the pandemic—not as an unprecedented emergency, but as a tactical opportunity to deepen control, dehumanization, and death. We'll begin by hearing from Dalton and Teagan about their political motivations, the methodologies they employed, and the intellectual scaffolding behind their analysis. From there, we'll unpack their challenge to the dominant narrative of "failure"—a framing that presumes the prison system was simply overwhelmed by crisis. Instead, they argue that the pandemic revealed not incompetence, but calculated cruelty. We'll also examine how disaster operates as a tool of tactical evolution within prisons. As the authors write, "Rather than revealing entirely new challenges, our findings demonstrate how the pandemic instead exacerbates what the literature has suggested are the preexisting goals of carceral punishment." We'll discuss how incarcerated people themselves narrated these shifts—how they recognized the charade of "safety" and named the degradation that exceeded even the brutal norm. From psychic death and coerced docility to the punitive treatment of those living with HIV/AIDS, we'll trace the historical continuities and contemporary parallels that shape this death-world. We'll ask how social distancing protocols, meant to protect, instead expanded estrangement—and how preexisting conditions of confinement intensified the crisis. Teagan Murphy (any/all) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Their research, conducted primarily through qualitative interviews, ethnography, and content analysis, focuses on institutional and carceral logics and the reproduction of inequities via narratives of deservingness. Their dissertation, which draws on data collected from their time as an active courtwatcher in Prince George's County, presents a critique of the distinction courts draw between criminalized defendants and "the community," resulting in a pretrial system where Black bodies are deemed public safety risks that antagonize the moral sanctity of white civil society. They also argue for a literary reframing of "courtwatching," moving from reformist interpretations to an antifascist one aligned with broader abolitionist goals. IG: @veganmurphy Dalton Lackey (they/them) is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Their research broadly concerns structural anti-blackness, carcerality and punishment, revolutionary social movements, and Fanonian psychopolitics. Dalton is currently working on their dissertation project, which explores the complexities of invention and signification that emerge in the haze of radical collective action against the anti-black social order. IG: @daltonjared American Prison Writing Archive The COVID-19 Murders": Prison death-worlds and the fatal convenience of crisis Some related/referenced MAKC conversations: Joshua Myers discussion on Robinson's rebuttal to "Social Death" Conversations with Andrew Krinks Orisanmi Burton on Black Masculine Care Work Under Domestic Warfare Charlie Frank on AIDS & COVID-19 From the Free Alabama Movement to The Alabama Solution featuring Renee Johnston "Everybody Changes In The Process Of Building A Movement" - Ruth Wilson Gilmore on Abolition Geography (responding to the question of the 13th Amendment & prison conditions) Dylan Rodriguez on Domestic Warfare & prisons
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1:30:22
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1:30:22
A History of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement (1800-1958) with Francisco A. Santiago Cintrón & Sebastián Castrodad Reverón
This episode is part of a two part project covering the Puerto Rican Independence Movement from the beginning of the 19th Century until the present. For this conversation our guests are Francisco A. Santiago Cintrón and Sebastián Castrodad Reverón. Francisco A. Santiago Cintrón was born in Guayama, Puerto Rico. He is an activist that currently forms part of Democracia Socialista and works as a labor lawyer. He is also the founder of the journal "Critica: Cuaderno de Discusión Política" Sebastián Castrodad Reverón, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is an organizer, documentarian, activist, and writer currently working out of Moca, Puerto Rico.
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2:36:38
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2:36:38
"Remember to Blot Out the Memory" - The Biblical Recipe for Endless Genocide with Reverend Darren
In this episode we interview Reverend Darren who is a minister in the Presbyterian Church USA in Wisconsin. This conversation started as a text and google doc exchange around the story of Amalek within the Old Testament of the Christian Bible and the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible. We talk about how we should understand the relationship between these biblical stories and documented history, their relationship to the Gaza genocide, and how we might fit our analyses of these narratives into the relationship between US imperialism and zionism. Along the way, Darren engages with questions of faith practice, the relative absence - and silence - of particularly Euro-American liberal Christian congregations among those standing in defense of Palestinian lives, and Palestinian sovereignty. Darren also discusses how the gears of US fascism - called for in documents like Project 2025 and Project Esther, and being enacted through the Trump administration - are being lubricated by the absurd and ethically vacuous nature of US liberalism. A couple things to mention, this conversation was recorded 10 days ago, so the 8th year anniversary episode we mentioned is currently out on our YouTube channel. In addition to reflections from Josh and myself, it featured special appearances from Stefano Harney, Renee Johnston, Fred Moten, Sina Rahmani, and Lara Sheehi This episode was also recorded before the 2nd anniversary of Tufan Al Aqsa and before the ceasefire agreement. We have episodes on the YouTube channel about those developments as well, one putting Abdaljawad Omar and Lara Sheehi in conversation together and the other with Nora Barrows-Friedman from Electronic Intifada and Sina Rahmani from the East is a Podcast. As always the absolute best way to support us and to help us continue to sustain our work and hopefully grow as a project is to become a patron of the show or support us through our BuyMeACoffee page. Shout-out to all the people who gave us a little something for our 8th anniversary. Related conversations: "The Book of Genocide" Nick Estes w/ Justin Podur "The Crusades: Then & Now" MAKC with Adnan Husain "Christian ZIonism & Zionist Settler Colonial Ideology" MAKC with Adnan Husain The original background for the thumbnail image (slightly re-colored) is available here
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2:20:30
2 Years of Genocide, 2 Years of Resistance (Live-stream Audio) with Abdaljawad Omar & Lara Sheehi
Abdaljawad Omar and Lara Sheehi joined us on the 2nd anniversary of the beginning of Tufan Al-Aqsa! From the youtube livestream (which I encourage people to watch): We will remember the morning of October 7th 2023. In the two years since then there has been a genocidal counterinsurgency war waged against the whole Palestinian population, most acutely through the apocalyptic decimation of the Gaza Strip. There has also been constant resistance in many forms. How do we consider the present moment, the possibilities (once again) of "ceasefire," the attempts to end the "Palestinian Question," the actuality of resistance and the possibilities for a resistance that will produce a liberated Palestine, and more broadly a world that we all want to inhabit. Remind yourself of some of the images from Tufan Al-Aqsa. Abdaljawad Omar is a Palestinian scholar, educator, and theorist whose work focuses on the politics of resistance, decolonization, and the Palestinian struggle. He has written extensively in Arabic. In English, in addition to being a frequent contributor to Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, he has contributed to Electronic Intifada, Ebb Magazine, Material, Mondoweiss, Communis, Monthly Review, and Rusted Radishes among other outlets. Lara Sheehi is a Research Fllow at the University of South Africa. She was the founding faculty director of the Psychoanalysis and the Arab World Lab. Lara's work takes up decolonial and anti-oppressive approaches to psychoanalysis, with a focus on liberation struggles in the Global South. She is co-author with Stephen Sheehi of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022) which won the Middle East Monitor's 2022 Palestine Book Award for Best Academic Book. Lara is the author of the forthcoming book, From the Clinic to the Street: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto Press, 2026) Support Palestinians through the Sameer Project or Lifeline4Gaza"
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2:29:27
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2:29:27
The "New" US Assassination Program & the Hybrid War on Venezuela with Joe Emersberger
Recently the US Military has been bombing boats in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela. This marks a major escalation, and a new development in the US Empire's hybrid war on Venezuela that has been waged over the last 20 years. In this episode we speak with Joe Emersberger who along with Justin Podur authored the book Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela for Monthly Review Press. "All Elements in Place for a US Strike on Venezuela" by Joe Emersberger and Richard Harris on Venezuelanalysis We talk about the origins of this tactic of aerial assassinations, its deployment in international waters, and whether we could see the US expand its assassination program to target government leaders like Nicolas Maduro as we have seen the so-called state of Israel do - with full US backing - across West Asia. We also discuss the merging of war on drugs policies with the policies of the war on terror, and contextualize these so-called wars. Finally, we talk about some of the dynamics that hem in progressive and socialistic projects in Latin America, using Joe's long engagement with Ecuador as an example. Joe Emersberger is based in Canada. He is co-author of Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela. His work can be found on Substack "Unedited Anti-Imperialism". Older articles of his can be found on VenezuelAnalysis, Counterpunch, Fair.org, Znet and Mint Press News As always if you like the work that we do, the best way to support the show is through either to become a patron of the show at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism or through either an ongoing pledge or one time donation through BuyMeACoffee.
We created this podcast in recognition that there are a number of podcasts for the American "left," but many of them focus heavily on the organizing of social democrats, progressives, and liberal democrats. Aside from that, on the left we are always fighting a war of ideas and if we do not continue to build platforms to share those ideas and the stories of their implementation from a leftist perspective, they will continue to be ignored, misrepresented, and dismissed by the capitalist media and as a result by the general public.
Our goal is to provide a platform for communists, anti-imperialists, Black Liberation movements, ancoms, left libertarians, LBGTQ activists, feminists, immigration activists, and abolitionists to discuss radical politics, radical organizing and share their visions for a better world. Our goal is to center organizers who represent and work with marginalized communities building survival programs, defense programs, political education, and counterpower.
We also plan to bring in perspectives on and from the global south to highlight anti-capitalist struggles outside the imperial core. We view solidarity with decolonization, indigenous, anti-imperialist, environmentalist, socialist, and anarchist movements across the world as necessary steps toward meaningful liberation for all people.
Too often within the imperial core we focus on our own struggles without taking the time to understand those fighting for freedom from beneath the empire's thumb. It is important to highlight these struggles, learn what we can from them, offer solidarity, and support with action when we can. It is not enough to Fight For $15 an hour and Single-Payer within the core, while the US actively fights against the self-determination of the people of the global economically and militarily.
We recognize that except for the extremely wealthy and privileged, our fates and struggles are intrinsically connected. We hope that our podcast becomes a meaningful platform for organizers and activists fighting for social change to connect their local movements to broader movements centered around the fight to end imperialism, capitalism, racism, discrimination based on gender identity or sexuality, sexism, and ableism.
If you like our work please support us at www.patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism
South Africa