Groundings with Walter Rodney
On the 50th anniversary of Walter Rodney's The Groundings With My Brothers, a small group of scholars on the impacts of Rodney on their intellectual development and political commitments.
Pick up a paper, or turn on the news today and you will likely come across discussions about reparations, the re-ordering of the global financial system, disconnect of the people from a political process that claims to represent them, etc. It is always a good time to read Walter Rodney. So voracious was his appetite for thinking, writing, questioning, educating that it can feel like there is a Walter Rodney book, essay, argument for every question, dilemma, paradox. Almost forty years after his assassination, the world has changed tremendously. And as the experts in this roundtable maintain, more useful than looking at Rodney as a man ahead of his time, is looking at how the questions and concerns have morphed and taken different manifestations—and how we have failed or succeeded in tackling them. His lesson of the importance of looking at the many worlds we live in and meeting them with courage and clarity remains. From then to now, Guyana to the world.