Episode 10: Charlene Carruthers - "We Come In The Lineage of Folks Like Claudia Jones"

Millennials Are Killing Capitalism

This episode's guest Charlene A. Carruthers is a Black, queer feminist community organizer and writer with over 10 years of experience in racial justice, feminist and youth leadership development movement work. As the founding national director of the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), she has worked alongside hundreds of young Black activists to build a national base of activist member-led organization of Black 18-35 year olds dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. Her passion for developing young leaders to build capacity within marginalized communities has led her to work on immigrant rights, economic justice and civil rights campaigns nationwide. Charlene’s forthcoming book Unapologetic. We talked about the Black Queer Feminist Lens which is an organizing praxis used by the BYP100. Charlene discusses the Agenda to Build Black Futures and why their platform is taken up by organization’s like the DSA, and touches on the history of Black women communists and socialists like Claudia Jones who have worked to ensure that the US left understand the overlapping systems of oppression that impact Black women, queer, and trans folks. We also talk about the importance of political education, the non-permanency of allyship, prison organizing, why Charlene is clear BYP 100 cannot dismiss engagement in electoral politics, and her upcoming book Unapologetic. (photo credit to Sara Ji) field audio samples of BYP100: (intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmF3mVCtANE) (outro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMTCU0G9y94)