Ed Mead on Millennials Are Killing Capitalism [Podcast interview]
Ed Mead (revolutionary, former urban guerilla, and ex-prisoner) recently appeared on the excellent Millennials Are Killing Capitalism podcast for an hour-long interview. We highly recommend checking it out. See below for the episode description and links.
Right now, you can get Ed Mead’s fantastic autobiography, Lumpen, at LeftWingBooks.net for 50% off!
When a thirteen-year-old Mead ends up in the Utah State Industrial School, a prison for boys, it is the first step in a story of oppression and revolt that will ultimately lead to the foundation of the George Jackson Brigade, a Seattle-based urban guerrilla group, and to Mead’s re-incarceration as a fully engaged revolutionary, well-placed and prepared to take on both his captors and the predators amongst his fellow prisoners.
In this episode we interview Ed Mead. Mead is a veteran of the revolutionary underground organization the George Jackson Brigade which operated in solidarity with prisoner, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist struggles. A prolific organizer and participant of prisoner struggles both inside and outside of prisons, Ed also co-founded the prisoner organization Men Against Sexism.
He also worked with a number of other organizations and struggles over the years including work with the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the Attica Brothers Legal Defense Committee, the National Lawyers Guild, Prison Legal News, and California Prison Focus.
In this conversation we talk about some lessons along the way of Ed’s political development, from social prisoner to jailhouse lawyer to organizer to revolutionary to political prisoner.
Ed offers unvarnished reflections from a life in struggle, characteristically with no holds barred for what he refers to as “the tamed left.”
Our conversation was informed by Ed Mead’s autobiography Lumpen and by Daniel Burton-Rose’s books on the George Jackson Brigade. We will include a full list of sources in the show notes.
Links:
Lumpen: The Autobiography of Ed Mead
Theory and Practice of Armed Struggle in the Northwest: A Historical Analysis
Creating A Movement With Teeth: A Documentary History of the George Jackson Brigade
Guerilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970’s
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