Public gatherings this week in Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana — featuring an especially distinctive guest — will honor the legacy of revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (1925-1961). The Black Alliance for Peace, an African internationalist organization committed to peace and opposition to war and imperialism, and Cooperation Jackson, which is building a solidarity economy anchored by worker-owned co-ops in West Jackson, are co-hosting several Black August events with Fanon’s eldest daughter. Mireille Fanon Mendès-France is a jurist, an educator, and an anti-racism expert who passionately shares her father’s commitment to rebellion against colonialism in its many forms. She founded the Frantz Fanon Foundation in 2007 to connect his theoretical work to ongoing anti-colonialist struggles like those Black communities throughout the Deep South are facing, especially the kind of ongoing mass displacement that occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago. Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson told Truthout that Fanon Mendès-France has a great deal to share about her father’s contributions in raising consciousness about what it takes to fight against fascism, “because that is what we are staring down.”
Fanon fought the Nazis in World War II with the Free French Forces. Later, he fought for independence against the reactionary colonial regime in Algeria, which, Akuno said, used Nazi tactics against the national liberation movement. “We are doing this consciousness raising in a period where they are deliberately erasing all oppositional history and knowledge, and they’re doing it very intentionally under the color of law. If we don’t recall the lessons of our earlier generations who fought against colonial erasure, who fought against white supremacy, then we’re gonna lose this battle before it even begins.” Akuno explained that a backdrop to all this is the ongoing genocide in Palestine; Fanon Mendès-France is directly tied into the struggle of Arab and North African/Southwest Asian people. “There’s many intersections that we’re trying to get at this year, and she’s one of the best people who encapsulates it all.”
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