It is important for many who were recently radicalized by the #RejectFinanceBill protests to understand that we are not the first to take on the powers that have shaped Kenya into a country subservient to foreign interests. Under Moi, neoliberalism and authoritarianism stripped Kenyans of self-determination, but many movements—including the December Twelfth Movement/Mwakenya and the Release Political Prisoners Movement—fought back. In this teach-in, we are joined by organizers of these...

We need to think beyond just graft and theft. For all of the wastage and graft of MPs, for example, Parliament still only makes up less than 1% of Kenya's national budget. We need to think beyond individual vice—concepts like greed and corruption and dishonesty—and think towards larger structures, particularly production. Agricultural production, industrial production, infrastructure... We were lucky to have Gussai Hamror Sheikheldin join us for the last teach-in. Towards the end of that...

Unmaking as Emancipation Who really is a Luddite? Contrary to popular usage of the term, Luddites are not anti-technology; they are anti-exploitation. In E4, we discussed the constant tug-of-war between labor and capital that pushes history forward. Capital, on its side, innovates to strive for more accumulation and profits, primarily by developing new technology to reduce labor costs. This is the situation skilled artisans in 18th century Europe found themselves in; after being forced...

What is imperialism, and how is the Kenyan state complicit in enabling it? Why, since Independence, has the Kenyan state been a willing imperialist stooge — in terms of military action, global finance, economic partners, trade deals, and more? Why do our rulers value the acceptance of the West more than that of their own people? What lessons can we learn from Palestinians, Sudanese, and others who have resisted imperialism at home? On 11 July, our team and Qwani/Bunge la Mayut hosted a...

Having established what happened to unions in Kenya and the role of capitalism in their weakening and eventual co-optation, we move on to imagining what unions can look like in today's conditions. To begin, we highlight a concept rooted in historical recurrence, initially highlighted by Marx and Engels: dialectical materialism. At its core, dialectical materialism is about the constant tug-of-war between labor and capital. We situate the history of labor union activism in Kenya within this...

In this episode, we discuss capitalism as a monster—specifically a vampire—that feeds off the surplus value of the working class’s labour. This is not a particularly new idea; Karl Marx, who remains to be one of the most influential thinkers of capitalism wrote in Capital Volume 1 that “Capital is dead labour, which vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” Just as the vampire’s thirst for blood is insatiable, so is capital’s craving for...

We begin in Mombasa where, in 1947, workers staged a general strike. Over 10,000 people gathered in a field they called Kiwanja cha Maskini and demanded dignified living and working conditions from the colonial administration. Today, the Mombasa port is being contested for privatisation. Dockworkers seem to have no power over their fate, no voice or choice beyond entreating politicians to act on their behalf. What happened? What happened to the militant, powerful unions of the...

The wait is over! Season 2 is just around the corner. Our first episode drops this Friday. Subscribe on YouTube or find us anywhere you get podcasts.

At "Until Everyone Is Free," we're here to talk about power and freedom. Our last season focused on the life and work of Pio Gama Pinto, who organized various movements that paved the way for independence in Kenya. We remember Pinto so that we can understand how Kenya got free without its people getting free… in other words, why independence is not the same as decolonization. On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched an offensive attack on Israel, killing over 1,300 Israelis, over 1,000 of whom were...

When we began UEIF, we could not have imagined that there could be space for a sheng history of Pio Gama Pinto's life and work in a Kenyan museum.   We are beyond proud to share our work at The Pio Gama Pinto Exhibition at the Nairobi Gallery in CBD (next to Nyayo House). Join us for the opening ceremony Sun 5 Mar! Admission is free on opening day; Nairobi Gallery fees (150 KES for citizens) apply for the following three months—March through May.

You can tell what kind of person someone was by seeing who attends their funeral. Pio Gama Pinto was buried at City Park Cemetery. On that day, the park was filled with people. Of course there were his friends from politics. Achieng Oneko, his friend from their days in detention on Manda Island. Bildad Kaggia, from their days routing weapons to Mau Mau forest fighters. Oginga Odinga, his staunchest supporter in government, with whom he fought to make Kenya a more equitable, socialist...

We don’t have many photographs of Pinto. He didn't attend events to be seen. He wasn't the kind of politician who would stand before a crowd of people and deliver a speech. The photos we have of him tell us how he spent his time instead. There's a photo of Pinto and Kenyatta, while Mzee was detained at Lodwar, and Pinto and others like Odinga were fighting for his release. There's also a photo of Pinto, Fitz de Souza, and others protesting with signs against Portuguese colonization of...

We spoke before about how some chapters of history are erased. Today we tell one of those stories. Did you know about the fire that burned in the Happy Valley of Kaloleni for days and days? Did you know about the time that workers from all sectors, from all tribes, came together and brought the city to a grinding halt? Did you know about the General Strike of Nairobi? While the General Strike was organized by trade union leaders, most of the people who took part in it—who gathered by the...

When we think of the fight for independence, we often think of the part of that struggle that involves weapons. But, at the same time there was a war fought over territory, a parallel war was being fought for minds. In fact, many of the Mau Mau fighters would not have decided to join the freedom fight if it weren't for the work of many small, independent African publications that opened up new, important spaces for public discourse. This was the golden age of the vernacular paper. Kenya would...

In 2015, a monument honouring the Mau Mau was erected at Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park, Nairobi. Many surviving Mau Mau freedom fighters attended, many traveling by matatu from upcountry, some arriving as early as 6am to await the opening ceremony. This honour is well-deserved, but as these elders—many still impoverished—sat beneath the hot sun as NGOs and Kenyan dignitaries enjoyed the shade of a large white tent, the question that looms is this: did the Mau Mau get what they fought for? And...

The Mau Mau War has gone down in history—not only in Kenya as a key part of the anti-colonial independence struggle—but in the world. Mau Mau freedom fighters and the mass movement that backed them decided that constitutional, non-violent methods were useless in defeating a violent colonial regime. The only answer was organized violence. Against impossible odds, they did that. Although the Mau Mau are heralded today as Kenya's freedom fighters, their history has been sanitized. In this...

Less than two years after gaining independence, Kenya began killing its own freedom fighters. One of the first political assassinations in the history of independent Kenya was in 1965.  They killed a man who knew too much.  He knew that oppressors will not stop oppressing you if you ask politely, that the only way to defeat British colonizers was through organized violence—so he routed weapons to Mau Mau forest fighters. He knew that stolen land was the root of colonization—so he fought,...

In 1965, only two years after Kenya gained its independence, Pio Gama Pinto was shot and killed on his driveway in Nairobi. This was Kenya’s first political assassination. In this series, me and our producer April Zhu will tell the story of Pio Gama Pinto, a Kenyan freedom fighter. But we tell the story of Pinto to answer a very important question: How did the country of Kenya become free…. Without the people of Kenya becoming free?