Discourse that allows us to express a wide range of ideas, opinions, and analysis that can be used as an opportunity to critically examine and observe what our experience means to us beyond the given social/cultural contexts and norms that are provided us.
Joy Reid and her panel—Maya Wiley and Rula Jebreal—deliver a powerful analysis of Zohran Mamdani's historic victory as the first Muslim mayor of New York City. They break down how Mamdani built a "political tsunami," defeating a barrage of Islamophobic attacks and over $20 million in super PAC spending from billionaires like Bill Ackman and Michael Bloomberg. The conversation exposes the mainstream media's failure to cover this seismic story and the ADL's chilling decision to launch a "tracker" on the incoming mayor. This is a deep dive into the new multi-racial, multi-generational coalition that delivered a record-breaking turnout, the potent message of economic populism that defeated establishment Democrats, and what Mamdani's win signals for the future of the Democratic Party and the fight against fascism.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction: The Media Blackout on a Historic Win 1:17 Mamdani's Victory in the Shadow of Dick Cheney's Death 4:04 Breaking Down the Landslide and Record Turnout 8:01 Mamdani's Victory Speech and Direct Challenge to Trump 12:20 Maya Wiley and Rula Jebreal on the Media's Failure 20:21 The ADL's "Tracker" and Smear Campaign Against Mamdani 28:49 The Political Tsunami and Rejection of Donor Politics 35:06 The Authenticity and Coalition Behind the Victory 41:14 Rula Jebreal's Personal Reflection on the Moment 46:08 Joy Reid's Data Dive: The New Democratic Coalition 52:06 Closing Remarks and Call to Action
ABOUT JOY REID:
Joy-Ann Lomena Reid (AKA Joy Reid) is a best-selling American author, political journalist and TV host. She was a national correspondent for MSNBC and is best known for hosting the Emmy-nominated, NAACP Award-winning political commentary and analysis show, The ReidOut, from 2020 to 2025. Her previous anchoring credits include The Reid Report (2014–2015) and AM Joy (2016–2020).
John A. Williams, Frantz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Robert F. Williams
JOHN A. WILLIAMS b. December 5, 1925—d. July 3, 2015
FRANTZ FANON b. July 20, 1925—d. December 6, 1961
PATRICE LUMUMBA b. July 2, 1925—d. January 17, 1961
MEDGAR EVERS b. July 2, 1925—d. June 12, 1963
MALCOLM X b. May 19, 1925—d. February 21, 1965
ROBERT F. WILLIAMS b. February 26, 1925–d. October 15, 1996)
Featured today in our series is African Revolutionary activist, politician and independence leader Patrice Lumumba who served as the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from June until September 1960, following the May 1960 election. He was the leader of the Congolese National Movement (MNC) from 1958 until his assassination in 1961.
“History will have its say one day. Not the history they teach in Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations but the history taught in the country set free from colonialism and its puppet rulers. Africa will write her own history and it will be a history of glory and dignity.” ―Patrice Lumumba, Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba, 1958-1961
“All together, dear brothers and sisters, workers and government employees, workers by brain and by hand, rich and poor, Africans and Europeans, Catholics and Protestants, Kimbanguists and Kitawalists, let us unite and create a great nation.”―Patrice Lumumba, Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba, 1958-1961
“Neither cruelty, nor violence, nor torture will make me beg for mercy, because I prefer to die with my head raised high, with unshakeable faith... In my country’s predestination rather than live in submission forsaking my sacred principles.” ―Patrice Lumumba, Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba, 1958-1961
“My dear countrymen! In joy and in sorrow I will always be with you. It is together with you that I fought to free my country from foreign rule. Together with you I am fighting to strengthen our national independence. Together with you, I will fight to preserve the integrity and national unity of the Republic of the Congo.” ― Patrice Lumumba, Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba, 1958-1961
“I know that an overwhelming majority of the Belgian people are against the oppression of Africans. They disapprove of a colonial status for the Congo under which 14 million Congolese are exposed to the diktat of a tiny economic oligarchy. If the Belgian people were to have their say, the Congo would never have experienced the misfortunes which are affecting it now.”― Patrice Lumumba, Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba, 1958-1961
“Our dearest wish perhaps, some may find it utopian is to found in the Congo a Nation in which differences of race and religion will melt away, a homogeneous society composed of Belgians and Congolese who with a single impulse will link their hearts to the destinies of the country.”―Patrice Lumumba, Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba, 1958-1961
“We prefer freedom with poverty to wealth with tyranny.”
Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba by Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick Harvard University Press, 2015 Death in the Congo is a gripping account of a murder that became one of the defining events in postcolonial African history. It is no less the story of the untimely death of a national dream, a hope-filled vision very different from what the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo became in the second half of the twentieth century.
When Belgium relinquished colonial control in June 1960, a charismatic thirty-five-year-old African nationalist, Patrice Lumumba, became prime minister of the new republic. Yet stability immediately broke down. A mutinous Congolese Army spread havoc, while Katanga Province in southeast Congo seceded altogether. Belgium dispatched its military to protect its citizens, and the United Nations soon intervened with its own peacekeeping troops. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, both the Soviet Union and the United States maneuvered to turn the crisis to their Cold War advantage. A coup in September, secretly aided by the UN, toppled Lumumba’s government. In January 1961, armed men drove Lumumba to a secluded corner of the Katanga bush, stood him up beside a hastily dug grave, and shot him. His rule as Africa’s first democratically elected leader had lasted ten weeks.
More than fifty years later, the murky circumstances and tragic symbolism of Lumumba’s assassination still trouble many people around the world. Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick pursue events through a web of international politics, revealing a tangled history in which many people―black and white, well-meaning and ruthless, African, European, and American―bear responsibility for this crime.
Lumumba (2000) | A Film on Patrice Lumumba | With English Subtitles
This film is biographical film on Patrice Lumumba that shows his rise in politics in Belgian Congo, his days in power just after the Belgian Congo gained sovereignty/independence from Belgium and his eventual fall from power (as an outcome of an international conspiracy and presence of power hungry people around Lumumba). Director: Raoul Peck. Released: 2000. Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961) was a Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Republic of the Congo) from June, 1960 to September, 1960. An avid anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist Lumumba dedicated his life for the liberation of Congolese people.
The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination by Stuart A. Reid Knopf, 2023
The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Economist, Financial Times
“This is one of the best books I have read in years . . . gripping, full of colorful characters, and strange plot twists.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN host
It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.” Dag Hammarskjöld, the tidy Swede serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission in history. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN and spurned by the United States, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of Communism in Africa, the CIA sent word to its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go.
Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle out, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup, transferred to enemy territory in a CIA-approved operation, and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjöld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-fire with the Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960–61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.
Patrice Lumumba, the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was assassinated 50 years ago today, on 17 January, 1961. This heinous crime was a culmination of two inter-related assassination plots by American and Belgian governments, which used Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad to carry out the deed.
Ludo De Witte, the Belgian author of the best book on this crime, qualifies it as "the most important assassination of the 20th century". The assassination's historical importance lies in a multitude of factors, the most pertinent being the global context in which it took place, its impact on Congolese politics since then and Lumumba's overall legacy as a nationalist leader.
For 126 years, the US and Belgium have played key roles in shaping Congo's destiny. In April 1884, seven months before the Berlin Congress, the US became the first country in the world to recognise the claims of King Leopold II of the Belgians to the territories of the Congo Basin.
When the atrocities related to brutal economic exploitation in Leopold's Congo Free State resulted in millions of fatalities, the US joined other world powers to force Belgium to take over the country as a regular colony. And it was during the colonial period that the US acquired a strategic stake in the enormous natural wealth of the Congo, following its use of the uranium from Congolese mines to manufacture the first atomic weapons, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
With the outbreak of the cold war, it was inevitable that the US and its western allies would not be prepared to let Africans have effective control over strategic raw materials, lest these fall in the hands of their enemies in the Soviet camp. It is in this regard that Patrice Lumumba's determination to achieve genuine independence and to have full control over Congo's resources in order to utilise them to improve the living conditions of our people was perceived as a threat to western interests. To fight him, the US and Belgium used all the tools and resources at their disposal, including the United Nations secretariat, under Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche, to buy the support of Lumumba's Congolese rivals , and hired killers.
In Congo, Lumumba's assassination is rightly viewed as the country's original sin. Coming less than seven months after independence (on 30 June, 1960), it was a stumbling block to the ideals of national unity, economic independence and pan-African solidarity that Lumumba had championed, as well as a shattering blow to the hopes of millions of Congolese for freedom and material prosperity.
The assassination took place at a time when the country had fallen under four separate governments: the central government in Kinshasa (then Léopoldville); a rival central government by Lumumba's followers in Kisangani (then Stanleyville); and the secessionist regimes in the mineral-rich provinces of Katanga and South Kasai. Since Lumumba's physical elimination had removed what the west saw as the major threat to their interests in the Congo, internationally-led efforts were undertaken to restore the authority of the moderate and pro-western regime in Kinshasa over the entire country. These resulted in ending the Lumumbist regime in Kisangani in August 1961, the secession of South Kasai in September 1962, and the Katanga secession in January 1963.
No sooner did this unification process end than a radical social movement for a "second independence" arose to challenge the neocolonial state and its pro-western leadership. This mass movement of peasants, workers, the urban unemployed, students and lower civil servants found an eager leadership among Lumumba's lieutenants, most of whom had regrouped to establish a National Liberation Council (CNL) in October 1963 in Brazzaville, across the Congo river from Kinshasa. The strengths and weaknesses of this movement may serve as a way of gauging the overall legacy of Patrice Lumumba for Congo and Africa as a whole.
The most positive aspect of this legacy was manifest in the selfless devotion of Pierre Mulele to radical change for purposes of meeting the deepest aspirations of the Congolese people for democracy and social progress. On the other hand, the CNL leadership, which included Christophe Gbenye and Laurent-Désiré Kabila, was more interested in power and its attendant privileges than in the people's welfare. This is Lumumbism in words rather than in deeds. As president three decades later, Laurent Kabila did little to move from words to deeds.
More importantly, the greatest legacy that Lumumba left for Congo is the ideal of national unity. Recently, a Congolese radio station asked me whether the independence of South Sudan should be a matter of concern with respect to national unity in the Congo. I responded that since Patrice Lumumba has died for Congo's unity, our people will remain utterly steadfast in their defence of our national unity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja is professor of African and Afro-American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History
Patrice Lumumba, first prime minister of the Republic of Congo and a pioneer of African unity, was murdered on 17 January 1961.
Democratically elected to lead the Mouvement National Congolais, the party he founded in 1958, Lumumba was at the centre of the country’s growing popular defiance of the colonial rule of oppression imposed by Belgium. When, in June 1960, independence was finally won, his unscheduled speech at the official ceremonies in Kinshasa received a standing ovation and made him a hero to millions. Always a threat to those who sought to maintain a covert imperialist hand over the country, however, he became within months the victim of an insidious plot and was arrested and subsequently tortured and executed.
This book unravels the appalling mass of lies, hypocrisy and betrayals that have surrounded accounts of the assassination since it perpetration. Making use of a huge array of official sources as well as personal testimony from many of those in the Congo at the time, Ludo De Witte reveals a network of complicity ranging from the Belgian government to the CIA. Chilling official memos which detail ‘liquidation’ and ‘threats to national interests’ are analysed alongside macabre tales of the destruction of evidence, putting Patrice Lumumba’s personal strength and his dignified quest for African unity in stark contrast with one of the murkiest episodes in twentieth-century politics.
REVIEWS:
“De Witte has assembled a staggering amount of detail to support his allegations of direct government participation in Lumumba's murder.”—Washington Post Book World
“De Witte has performed an important service in establishing the facts of Lumumba’s last days and Belgium’s responsibility for what happened.”—New York Review of Books
“De Witte writes without stylish frills or narrative tricks, but this is a vivid and utterly compelling account of a nation strangled at birth by the West.”—Ronan Bennett, Los Angeles Times
“De Witte’s book, politically passionate as it is, is an unignorable effort to bring the West face to face with its culpability in this entire sad and sanguinary tale.”—Richard Bernstein, New York Times
“One Belgian author has triumphed over decades of official obfuscation: Belgium did collude in Patrice Lumumba’s assassination ... It raises questions about Western policy in Africa that will reverberate for decades to come.”—Michela Wrong, Financial Times
“One should never underestimate the ruthlessness of British gentlemen cradling endangered shares.”—Neal Ascherson, London Review of Books
“Whilst the battle for control over the resources of the Congo (now DR Congo) continues today this important book restores Congolese history and saves it from the official version peddled by those directly implicated in the affair.”—New Internationalist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ludo De Witte is a sociologist and a writer. He is author of the Dutch work Crisis in Kongo and has researched two broadcast television documentaries on Patrice Lumumba.
Patrice Lumumba (center), at the 1960 round table conference in Brussels to discuss Congo’s independence. Source: National Archives of the Netherlands.
On January 17, 1961, democratically elected prime minister of the Republic of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, was executed with the assistance of the governments of Belgium and the United States.
In his 1960 independence day speech Lumumba said,
We are going to show the world what the Black man [and woman] can do when he works in freedom, and we are going to make of the Congo the center of the sun’s radiance for all of Africa. We are going to keep watch over the lands of our country so that they truly profit her children.
Just six months later he was imprisoned and executed by firing squad.
The Zinn Education Project has a lesson for high school classes on the Congo, examining the brutal exploitation of the Congolese for rubber in the 19th and 20th centuries and for coltan (in smart phones) today. Here is the text for the role of Lumumba in the lesson:
Patrice Lumumba:
"I was the first elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I was a postal clerk and traveling salesman. In 1958, I helped found the Mouvement National Congolais, a political party that demanded independence from Belgium. In October 1959, I was arrested and imprisoned for inciting anti-colonial riots. I won the country’s first parliamentary election in June 1960.
On June 30, 1960, King Baudouin of Belgium came to grant us our independence. How arrogant. His speech was even worse. He told us that we should be thankful the Belgians brought us civilization. In my speech, I reminded him of all the crimes they committed against us. As you can imagine, he thought I was ungrateful. White kings get upset when Black men talk back to them. Predictably, the United States and Great Britain were also angry. They accused me of being a communist because I believed that the wealth of Congo should remain in Congo to create a strong society. The U.S. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and their counterparts in Britain and Belgium paid a group of Congolese military men (including Joseph Mobutu) to kill me. I was executed by a firing squad on January 17, 1961, after a long torture session. Before they killed me, they made me eat the paper on which my Independence Day speech was written. After my assassination, people all over the world protested the destruction of our democracy." Download and use full lesson.
To learn more, read “An Assassination’s Long Shadow,” in the New York Times by Adam Hochschild and watch “Patrice Lumumba: 50 Years Later, Remembering the U.S.-Backed Assassination of Congo’s First Democratically Elected Leader” on Democracy Now!
Question: "Some of your political opponents accuse you of being a Communist. Could you reply to that?" Answer: "This is a propagandist trick aimed at me. I am not a Communist. The colonialists have campaigned against me throughout the country because I am a revolutionary and demand the abolition of the colonial regime, which ignored our human dignity. They look upon me as a Communist because I refused to be bribed by the imperialists." (From an interview to a "France-Soir" correspondent on July 22, 1960)
“We are neither Communists, Catholics nor socialists. We are African nationalists. We reserve the right to choose our friends in accordance with the principle of positive neutrality.”
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)
"There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent. "
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
"Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society."
Aimé Césaire (1913-2008)
"A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization."
Nina Simone (1933-2003)
"There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be."
Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973)
"Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children ....Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories..." .
Angela Davis (b. 1944)
"The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
“Jazz is the freest musical expression we have yet seen. To me, then, jazz means simply freedom of musical speech! And it is precisely because of this freedom that so many varied forms of jazz exist. The important thing to remember, however, is that not one of these forms represents jazz by itself. Jazz simply means the freedom to have many forms.”
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)
"Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” --August 3, 1857
Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)
“Musical categories don’t mean anything unless we talk about the actual specific acts that people go through to make music, how one speaks, dances, dresses, moves, thinks, makes love...all these things. We begin with a sound and then say, what is the function of that sound, what is determining the procedures of that sound? Then we can talk about how it motivates or regenerates itself, and that’s where we have tradition.”
Ella Baker (1903-1986)
"Strong people don't need strong leaders"
Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
"The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
"I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good."
Miles Davis (1926-1991)
"Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around."
C.L.R. James (1901-1989)
"All development takes place by means of self-movement, not organization by external forces. It is within the organism itself (i.e. within the society) that there must be realized new motives, new possibilities."
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
"Now, political education means opening minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence as [Aime] Cesaire said, it is 'to invent souls.' To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them."
Edward Said (1935-2003)
“I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for."
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. There must be pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
"Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
