KPFA - Against the Grain: Recent Episodes
Against the Grain
Award-winning program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social, and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong.
What role did Irish Catholics play within the U.S. left? Were Irish radicals more interested in freedom from British rule or in anticapitalism? And what effect did religious beliefs have on Irish Americans’ inclinations to break with the mainstream? David Emmons highlights Irish Americans’ contributions to dissidence, progressivism, and radicalism in the United States.
David Emmons, History’s Erratics: Irish Catholic Dissidents and the Transformation of American Capitalism, 1870-1930 University of Illinois Press, 2024
The post Irish American Dissidents appeared first on KPFA.
Few things are more necessary than a roof over one’s head, and yet few things feel as precarious as housing. Rents have skyrocketed across the country, far outstripping wages, and homelessness has risen to an historic high. Fellow tenant organizers Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis argue that this is the latest chapter in a century-long assault on tenants, but that we can draw powerful lessons from housing struggles to fight for a world without landlords.
Resources:
Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis Haymarket Books, 2024
The post The War on Tenants appeared first on KPFA.
The dramatic expansion of police power in the U.S. has been fueled by sexual policing—the targeting and legal control of people’s bodies and their presumed sexual activities. So argues Anne Gray Fischer, who describes the historical trajectory of sexual policing and traces the profoundly consequential shift in its targets from white women to Black women. (Encore presentation.)
Anne Gray Fischer, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification University of North Carolina Press, 2022
(Image on main page by Steven Depolo.)
The post Sex, Race, and Police Power appeared first on KPFA.
Critiques of conspiracy thinking abound—but what if our world needs a conspiracy, of people willing to confront their own participation in institutional injustices? Joseph Dumit explains why large corporations knowingly engage in antihuman activities; he also draws from Adrian Piper’s insights into bullying institutions, the impact of bystanding, and the importance of blowing the whistle when we notice harm being inflicted.
Joseph Masco and Lisa Wedeen, eds., Conspiracy/Theory Duke University Press, 2024
Joseph Dumit, Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health Duke University Press, 2012
(Image on main page by Elvert Barnes.)
The post Conspiracies and Complicity appeared first on KPFA.
For over half a century, Big Oil and the plastics industry, through their trade associations and front groups, have sold the public the false idea that plastics are recyclable. Recycling became the mantra of good ecological stewardship, promoted by the likes of city governments, school children, and environmental groups. Davis Allen lays out the mass-marketing of a deception. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Center for Climate Integrity, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the Plastics Industry Deceived the Public for Decades and Caused the Plastic Waste Crisis February, 2024
The post The Plastics Recycling Deception appeared first on KPFA.
What can sex workers add to discussions around transformative justice, prison abolition, and labor organizing? Heather Berg has spoken with sex worker radicals whose perspectives on left theory and practice are informed by encounters with ever-present threats to their lives and livelihoods. (Encore presentation.)
Heather Berg, “‘If You’re Going to Be Beautiful, You Better Be Dangerous’: Sex Worker Community Defense” Radical History Review
Heather Berg, Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism University of North Carolina Press, 2021
The post Sex Worker Theorizing appeared first on KPFA.
For decades after World War Two, the defense industry polluted the desert near Tucson’s Southside and poisoned the aquifer from which the largely Mexican American neighborhood got its drinking water. Sunaura Taylor, who was born there, reflects on lessons from the residents’ struggle — and asks what a genuine remedy might look like. She discusses an environmentalism that recognizes that we all are or will become disabled — and fights not just for the able-bodied, but to extend care to all, including the rest of the natural world.
Resources:
Sunaura Taylor, Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert UC Press, 2024
The post Environmentalism of the Injured appeared first on KPFA.
What are discarded materials from extractive activities like mining doing to life on the planet? According to Gabrielle Hecht, what’s happening in South Africa to and around mountainous piles of mining residues crystallizes a number of thorny environmental and sociopolitical issues faced by communities around the globe. (Encore presentation.)
Gabrielle Hecht, Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures Duke University Press, 2023 (open access)
(Image on main page by Gabrielle Hecht.)
The post Extraction’s Heavy Toll appeared first on KPFA.
It’s both a precious resource and a dangerous pollutant, exponentially increasing crop yields, while fouling our waterways with blue-green algae. The element phosphorus has played a crucial role in agriculture and war, while its reserves are unevenly distributed, with much of the world’s supply located in the occupied territories of Western Sahara. Writer Dan Egan discusses the double-edged nature of an element that is increasingly depleted and overused. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Dan Egan, The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance Norton, 2023
The post Phosphorus: Reaping the Harvest appeared first on KPFA.
More than two million farmworkers do the hard, sometimes backbreaking work of planting, growing, and harvesting crops in the U.S. Focusing on strawberry and grape pickers in California, David Bacon describes what the work involves, where the workers come from, and steps they’re taking to protect their rights and pursue justice.
The Reality Check: Stories and Photographs by David Bacon
David Bacon, More Than a Wall/Mas que un muro El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2022
(Image on main page by David Bacon.)
The post Laboring in the Fields appeared first on KPFA.
What lessons can we learn from the ways working class people in the U.S., many of them women and people of color, took collective action during the depression of the 1930s? Historian Dana Frank discusses experiments in mutual aid and cooperatives, battles over the expulsion of Mexican and Mexican American workers, small-scale sit down strikes, including by African American wet nurses, as well as working class support for the fascist right.
Resources:
Dana Frank, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? Stories of Ordinary People & Collective Action in Hard Times Beacon Press, 2024
The post Collective Action in the Great Depression appeared first on KPFA.
Black parents worry about racism’s impact on their children. Jennifer C. Nash is interested in both the nature of racialized anxiety and the way it’s rendered visible to the general public. Among other things, she looks at how Black mothers have used the epistolary form to convey their concerns, fears, and hopes.
Jennifer C. Nash, How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory Duke University Press, 2024
The post Conveying Black Loss appeared first on KPFA.
When we think of potentially dangerous and addictive drugs, most of us think about illegal substances like heroine or cocaine. And yet widely-prescribed drugs like Xanax, Ritalin, Adderall, and Vicodin are also addictive, but legal in the United States. Historian David Herzberg discusses the artificial distinction that has been created between addictive drugs and medicines — with the key difference being the class and race of the consumers who use them and the partial protections that one group receives and the other does not.
Resources:
David Herzberg, White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America University of Chicago Press, 2020
The post Good Patients, Bad Addicts appeared first on KPFA.
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the U.S. transported refugees from Vietnam to its colonial possession Guam. In that period, Israel did something similar, offering citizenship to Vietnamese refugees, in the wake of its expanded occupation of Palestine. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi looks at the condition of refugee settlers, as well as solidarity between the indigenous inhabitants of settler colonial states. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine UC Press, 2022
The post Refugee Settlers in Guam and Palestine appeared first on KPFA.
Not one movement but a multiplicity of movements engaging in protest and direct action brought down France’s absolutist regime in 1789. Micah Alpaugh describes popular uprisings and insurrections in Paris and the provinces that operated without central leadership and later inspired anarchists around the globe.
Micah Alpaugh, The People’s Revolution of 1789 Cornell University Press, 2024
(Image on main page from Rama.)
The post French Revolutionary Movements appeared first on KPFA.
Ayn Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have been called gateway drugs to rightwing ideas for so many Americans. And while the works of the writer and philosopher have seen a resurgence since the global economic crisis, her influence has been undeniably huge and sustained since those books were originally published in mid-century. Historian Lisa Duggan examines what is at the heart of Rand’s enduring appeal. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Lisa Duggan, Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed UC Press, 2019
The post Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed appeared first on KPFA.
What is Mexican philosophy, and what are its guiding principles? According to Carlos Alberto Sánchez, Mexican philosophy is a byproduct of Western philosophy’s role in the colonization of the Americas. He lays out some of its central concepts and considers how they apply to everyday life.
Carlos Alberto Sánchez, Blooming in the Ruins: How Mexican Philosophy Can Guide Us Toward the Good Life Oxford University Press, 2024
The post Mexican Philosophy appeared first on KPFA.
Public schools have long been a battleground for the right. But since the Covid pandemic, the right has had the wind at its back, enlarging its ranks with parents frustrated by school closings and masking mandates. Education journalist Laura Pappano discusses how the far right has sowed panic over library books, gender neutral bathrooms, and the supposed teaching of Critical Race Theory — not just to take over school boards, but to cast doubt on the value of public education itself.
Resources:
Laura Pappano, Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education Beacon Press, 2024
The post The Right’s War on Schools appeared first on KPFA.
What did the abrupt transition from socialism to capitalism in the former Soviet Bloc mean for residents, radicals, and the social order? Helena Sheehan, a Marxist thinker, educator, and activist, devotes a portion of her latest book to the impact and legacy of the momentous events of 1989 and 1990. (Encore presentation.)
Helena Sheehan, Until We Fall: Long Distance Life on the Left Monthly Review Press, 2023
The post Socialism to Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.
Throughout much of the 20th century and into the 21st, the U.S. state has worked to undermined and destroy leftwing and anti-imperialist labor unions around the world. And much of those efforts were assisted by an entity ostensibly committed to the interests of American workers: the trade union federation the AFL-CIO. Historian Jeff Schuhrke argues that by doing so the AFL-CIO fueled the demise of the U.S. labor movement, as U.S. corporations could more easily move factories to other countries where militant labor opposition had been repressed.
Resources:
Jeff Schuhrke, Blue-Collar Empire:The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade Verso, 2024
Photo credit: Mattpopovich
The post U.S. Empire and the AFL-CIO appeared first on KPFA.
Award-winning artist/illustrator Nate Powell discusses his graphic adaptation of James Loewen’s classic text “Lies My Teacher Told Me.”
The post Fund Drive Special: Adapting Loewen’s “Lies” appeared first on KPFA.
It’s indisputably one of the most important works in history. Karl Marx’s Capital has been perennially embraced by those trying to understand and move beyond the capitalist system — and reviled in equal measure by those defending the established order. Yet, until now, English readers of the first volume of Marx’s magnum opus have not had access to the authoritative final version edited and approved by Marx himself. Paul Reitter and Paul North discuss their new translation, based on the last German edition of Capital.
The post Fund Drive Special: Marx’s Capital appeared first on KPFA.
When and where did the practice of forcing incarcerated people to work without wages begin? Robin Bernstein reveals that prison-based slavery in the U.S. originated not in the South but in Auburn, New York. The Auburn System, under which incarcerated workers were prohibited from talking and were put in solitary confinement each night, spread across the country and beyond.
Robin Bernstein, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit University of Chicago Press, 2024
The post How Carceral Slavery Began appeared first on KPFA.
What does the expansion and intensification of nighttime labor say about the workings of capitalism, and what did Marx say about wage labor done in the wee hours? Paul Apostolidis draws from the working-day chapter in Marx’s Capital an emphasis on social reproduction, which he believes should be a key focus of contemporary worker struggles. (Encore presentation.)
Paul Apostolidis, The Fight for Time: Migrant Day Laborers and the Politics of Precarity Oxford University Press, 2019
(Image on main page by Rwendland.)
The post Nighttime Labor appeared first on KPFA.
Our world is replete with problems, calling out for repair and change. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have solutions at the ready – tech fixes and innovations that they claim will make a difference. Scholar Julie Guthman discusses the problem with such solutions, and the mindset that has permeated institutions of higher learning which reward the development of such fixes over critical thinking and systemic change.
Resources:
Julie Guthman, The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food UC Press, 2024
The post Silicon Valley’s Quick Fixes appeared first on KPFA.
No one escapes trauma or avoids stress. But what happens to our ability to imagine and pursue justice when individual and collective trauma goes unaddressed? Hala Khouri lays out a framework for understanding trauma; she also points to the important role that embodied practices can play in processes of healing and self-care.
Tessa Hicks Peterson and Hala Khouri, eds., Practicing Liberation: Transformative Strategies for Collective Healing and Systems Change North Atlantic Books, 2024
Hala Khouri, Tessa Hicks Peterson and Keely Nguyễn, Practicing Liberation Workbook: Radical Tools for Grassroots Activists, Community Leaders, Teachers, and Caretakers Working Toward Social Justice North Atlantic Books, 2024
The post Trauma, Healing, and Social Change appeared first on KPFA.
A large segment of Americans now find work via online labor market platforms — not just low-wage drivers for Uber, but highly educated lawyers and architects, software engineers and data scientists. Sociologist of work and technology Hatim Rahman discusses the ways that algorithms are used to control these workers, intentionally keeping them constantly off guard.
Resources:
Hatim Rahman, Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers UC Press, 2024
The post Digital Labor Platforms and the Control of Skilled Workers appeared first on KPFA.
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
The post Against the Grain – August 21, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.
What happened to California’s prisons and jails when the Covid pandemic struck? Why did so many people die behind bars, and why were so many on the outside affected (and afflicted)? Hadar Aviram sheds light on multiple aspects of California’s Covid-19 correctional disaster, including activist efforts to prevent it. (Encore presentation.)
Hadar Aviram and Chad Goerzen, Fester: Carceral Permeability and California’s COVID-19 Correctional Disaster University of California Press, 2024
(Image on main page by Annette Teng.)
The post Covid Carceral Calamity appeared first on KPFA.
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
The post Against the Grain – August 14, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.
Economic inequality in the United States is vast and unyielding. Despite much fanfare about tight labor markets and wage growth, the top 1% own more wealth than the entire middle 60% of households by income. How did we get here? Historian Steve Fraser discusses capitalism, class, and our new gilded age.
The post Our Gilded Age appeared first on KPFA.
How did residents of shack settlements in South African cities like Durban become a formidable political force? Yousuf Al-Bulushi lays out the operating principles, goals, and methods of Abahlali, one of the most well-known radical formations in all of Africa.
Yousuf Al-Bulushi, Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City Palgrave Macmillan, 2024
(Image on main page by Dexs1991.)
The post The Shack Dweller Movement appeared first on KPFA.
Are countries like India and South Africa still committed to coal extraction? What plans are afoot to make a just transition to renewable power? Ashley Dawson describes and evaluates struggles against extractivism and for publicly owned and democratically managed renewable energy. (Encore presentation.)
Ashley Dawson, Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements Are Leading the Fight for Our Planet Haymarket Books, 2024
The post Fossil Fuel Fights appeared first on KPFA.
Our food system, as well as our ecosystems, is clearly in crisis. Should we look to technological fixes and lab-grown meat to provide food for our future? Or, as writer Taras Grescoe suggests, should we look backwards instead to the lost foods of our past? Grescoe argues that a sustainable future necessitates cultivating food and plant diversity, while reclaiming collective practices, including those drawn from contemporary indigenous peoples. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Taras Grescoe, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past Greystone Books, 2023
Taras Grescoe’s Blog: lostsupper.blog
The post In Search of Lost Foods appeared first on KPFA.
In a California women’s prison, domestic violence survivors who killed their abusers in self-defense came together to practice a politics of mutual care, solidarity, and resistance. Rachel Leah Klein details the origins, efforts, and achievements of Convicted Women Against Abuse, situating their activities within the charged political context of the tough-on-crime 1990s.
Rachel Leah Klein, “Surviving domestic and state violence: Women’s prison organising and the gendered politics of solidarity” Gender & History (open-access through August 2024)
(Image on main page by Ryan McGrady.)
The post Criminalized Survivors Mobilize appeared first on KPFA.
Medicines – we’re told by the pharmaceuticals industry – are expensive by necessity owing to the high costs of research and development. Yet, as with the vaccines for Covid, much research is publicly-funded, and much comes out of universities. And, as Nick Dearden argues, only 3% of new drugs even represent actual breakthroughs. Instead most are “evergreened” drugs that Big Pharma tweaks in order to prolong its intellectual property rights. He discusses why the business of pharmaceuticals companies is not public health, but private profit. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Nick Dearden, Pharmanomics: How Big Pharma Destroys Global Health Verso, 2023
The post The Price of Big Pharma appeared first on KPFA.
Automation, its advocates contend, will usher in a new era of leisure and abundance. Is that true, and what kind of thing is automation, anyway? Salem Elzway emphasizes the political dimensions of automation, including how it’s been used against workers and how the discourse of automation has been deployed by elites.
Salem Elzway and Jason Resnikoff, “Whence Automation? The History (and Possible Futures) of a Concept” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History
The post The Uses of Automation appeared first on KPFA.
What was the modern Sanctuary Movement formed to do? What sorts of challenges has it faced, and how has the movement changed and evolved? Carl Lindskoog considers the history of the Sanctuary Movement, including its expansion into a far-reaching campaign for human rights, economic justice, and peace.
Maria Cristina Garcia & Maddalena Marinari, Whose America? U.S. Immigration Policy since 1980 University of Illinois Press, 2023
(Image on main page by Church World Service/New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia.)
The post A History of Sanctuary appeared first on KPFA.
Jewish opposition to Israel, so visible recently through the spectacular actions of groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, is not a recent phenomenon. Historian Marjorie Feld argues that what may seem like unprecedented criticism of Israel by U.S. Jews is part of a long tradition of dissent, which has been repressed by establishment Jewish organizations and frequently erased by historians.
Resources:
Marjorie N. Feld, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism NYU Press, 2024
Photo credit: Marcy Winograd
The post U.S. Jewish Anti-Zionism appeared first on KPFA.
John Bellamy Foster on Albert Einstein’s radical politics and his 1949 essay “Why Socialism?”
The post Against the Grain – July 15, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.
Jane McAlevey was an exceptional organizer and thinker, and her death on July 7th leaves a gaping hole for the left. She dedicated her life to building working class power, in the trenches of the environmental and labor movements and as a radical scholar. McAlevey believed that the left and labor movement abandoned deep organizing in the 1970s, in favor of shallow mobilization and even shallower advocacy. But she insisted that the tide could be turned.
Resources:
Jane F. McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age Oxford University Press, 2016
Who Rules America?
The post Jane McAlevey on How to Win appeared first on KPFA.
Is there such a thing as core gender identity? Are queer and trans people born that way? And what role does trauma play in shaping gender? Drawing on psychoanalytic theory and practice as well as queer and trans studies, Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, each a clinician and NYU-based scholar, contest the notion that gender is fixed and innate.
Avgi Saketopoulou & Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without Identity The Unconscious in Translation, 2023 (use discount code “KPFA” at checkout for 25% off until July 15)
(Image on main page by Charles Hutchins.)
The post Rethinking Gender appeared first on KPFA.
We are living through the sixth great extinction of species and governments are almost nothing to curb it. Scientist Douglas Tallamy, however, proposes a blueprint for a grassroots effort to restore habitat in a meaningful way, seeing nature not as something to be preserved in parks and reserves far from us, but all around us in our cities and suburbs, farmlands and ranches. (Full-length interview.)
Resources:
Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard Timber Press, 2020
The post Rebuilding Habitats in Our Yards appeared first on KPFA.
What accounts for worker injuries and fatalities in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota? Should they be viewed as localized phenomena, or are larger socioeconomic processes at work? In his effort to explain oil-boom representations and calamities, Bruce Braun considers and extends Lauren Berlant’s analysis of worker precarity, “crisis ordinariness,” and “slow death.” (Encore presentation.)
Braun and Thomas, eds., Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil University of Minnesota Press, 2023
The post Oil & Capital appeared first on KPFA.
Nico Slate shared a white mother with his brother Peter, but Nico’s father was white, whereas Peter’s was black. What did that matter? To whom did it matter? Slate has written a book remembering his older brother, recalling their relationship, and examining the charged sociopolitical context of their private and public lives. (Encore presentation.)
Nico Slate, Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race Temple University Press, 2023
The post White Brother, Black Brother appeared first on KPFA.
The backlash against trans people, which has swept both the United States and the world in recent years, is not as new as it seems, according to historian Jules Gill-Peterson. She traces the emergence of trans misogynistic violence over the last two centuries, which she links to the establishment of colonialism, capitalism, and more recently neoliberalism.
Resources:
Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny Verso, 2024
The post Why Trans Misogyny? appeared first on KPFA.
What did the Communist Party accomplish in California, or try to? SFSU emeritus professor Robert W. Cherny considers the party’s agendas and activities in relation to longshore workers, labor unions, political figures, and others. He also examines the stances the party took toward the Roosevelt administration, the New Deal, the Comintern, and U.S. involvement in World War II.
Robert W. Cherny, San Francisco Reds: Communists in the Bay Area, 1919-1958 University of Illinois Press, 2024
The post California’s Communists appeared first on KPFA.
Should Marxism be rooted in inter-species liberation? Or is it already, unbeknownst to most of us? Leigh Claire La Berge has delved into what she considers an unrecognized trove of evidence for Marxism’s deep engagement with the feline as a way of making sense of class society — and what would be necessary to leap beyond it. She argues that the history of inter-species solidarity between radicals and cats (among other animals) is only now starting to be recuperated.
Resources:
Leigh Claire La Berge, Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary Duke University Press, 2023
The post Cats and Marxism appeared first on KPFA.
What can sex workers add to discussions around transformative justice, prison abolition, and labor organizing? Heather Berg has spoken with sex worker radicals whose perspectives on left theory and practice are informed by encounters with ever-present threats to their lives and livelihoods.
Heather Berg, “‘If You’re Going to Be Beautiful, You Better Be Dangerous’: Sex Worker Community Defense” Radical History Review
Heather Berg, Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism University of North Carolina Press, 2021
The post Sex Worker Theorizing appeared first on KPFA.
In 1936, Nazi Germany hosted the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, amidst international calls to boycott. It was an enormously consequential event in the politics of the times, granting Hitler an international spotlight to promote the Third Reich. Much less known, as writer Michael Waters argues, is how Nazi eugenics and paranoia about transgender athletes gave rise to the gender surveillance that characterizes contemporary sports to this day.
Resources:
Michael Waters, The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024
The post The Nazi Origins of Gender Surveillance in Sports appeared first on KPFA.
In the years following the Russian Revolution, a popular resistance movement sprang up in Ukraine that drew its inspiration from a man named Nestor Makhno. Makhno went on to organize a seven-million-strong anarchist polity amidst the chaos and brutality of the Russian Civil War. Charlie Allison describes Makhno’s appeal, his political beliefs, and his rejection of Bolshevism.
Charlie Allison, No Harmless Power: The Life and Times of the Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno PM Press, 2023
(Image on main page by Oleh Kushch.)
The post Ukrainian Anarchist appeared first on KPFA.
Recent political discussions of marriage have revolved around who should be allowed to wed. But missing from most debates is the question of the unfair privileges conferred by the institution of marriage itself. Scholar Jaclyn Geller discusses the more than one thousand benefits accorded married people, at the expense of the non-married.
Resources:
Jaclyn Geller, Moving Past Marriage: Why We Should Ditch Marital Privilege, End Relationship-Status Discrimination, and Embrace Non-marital History Cleis Press, 2023
The post The Unfair Benefits of Marriage appeared first on KPFA.
What are discarded materials from extractive activities like mining doing to life on the planet? According to Gabrielle Hecht, what’s happening in South Africa to and around mountainous piles of mining residues crystallizes a number of thorny environmental and sociopolitical issues faced by communities around the globe.
Gabrielle Hecht, Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures Duke University Press, 2023 (open access)
The post Extraction’s Heavy Toll appeared first on KPFA.
For over half a century, Big Oil and the plastics industry, through their trade associations and front groups, have sold the public the false idea that plastics are recyclable. Recycling became the mantra of good ecological stewardship, promoted by the likes of city governments, school children, and environmental groups. Davis Allen lays out the mass-marketing of a deception.
Resources:
Center for Climate Integrity, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the Plastics Industry Deceived the Public for Decades and Caused the Plastic Waste Crisis February, 2024
The post The Plastics Recycling Deception appeared first on KPFA.
Reclaiming the commons sounds good in the abstract, but what’s being done on a practical level? Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, the Hawai‘i-based co-founders of Eating in Public, describe projects like Free Gardens and Free Stores. Also: Wren Awry discusses the volume to which Chan and Sharma contributed an essay.
Eating in Public
Wren Awry, ed., Nourishing Resistance: Stories of Food, Protest, and Mutual Aid PM Press, 2023
The post Food & Freedom appeared first on KPFA.
In the United States, few things seem as wholesome as camping, letting us temporarily escape the daily grind and commune with nature and each other. But Phoebe Young argues that camping has a complicated history, which tell us a lot about Americans’ notions of nature and the nation. She discusses the various forms that camping has taken in this country, from recreational camping to the encampments of those without shelter to Occupy Wall Street. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Phoebe S.K. Young, Camping Grounds: Public Nature in American Life from the Civil War to the Occupy Movement Oxford University Press, 2021
The post The Politics of Camping appeared first on KPFA.
A hallmark of our age is feeling we’re perpetually struggling with time—not having enough of it to accomplish seemingly endless tasks and obligations, while swimming in a sea of distractions. Can we cope if we learn, following the gurus of time management, to become ever more disciplined and productive? Or does that just feed into a capitalist logic that doesn’t benefit us? Journalist Oliver Burkeman discusses the perils of time management orthodoxy.
The post Fund Drive Special: Mastering Time? appeared first on KPFA.
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
The post Against the Grain – May 21, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.
Open any world history book and you’ll read that the Neolithic Revolution was a turning point for humanity, when hunter gatherers gave up roving in small egalitarian groups and settled down to farm. Out of that, civilization was born, with all the benefits and ills connected to it: the rise of cities, the emergence of the state, inequality, and class society. But, according to anthropologist David Graeber, that tale is not based on fact.
The post Fund Drive Special: Where We Came From, Where We’re Going appeared first on KPFA.
Zoologist, filmmaker, and bestselling author Lucy Cooke upends received wisdom about female passivity in the animal kingdom.
The post Fund Drive Special: Forceful Females appeared first on KPFA.
We are living through the 6th great extinction of species and governments are almost nothing to curb it. Scientist Douglas Tallamy, however, proposes a blueprint for a grassroots effort to restore habitat in a meaningful way, seeing nature not as something to be preserved in parks and reserves far from us, but all around us in our cities and suburbs, farmlands and ranches.
The post Fund Drive Special: Rebuilding Habitats in Our Yard appeared first on KPFA.
Renowned mycologist Paul Stamets talks about mushrooms, human health, bee populations, psychoactive fungi, and more.
The post Fund Drive Special: Paul Stamets on Mushrooms appeared first on KPFA.
Anti-genocide encampments in the U.S. have shined a spotlight on academic institutions and their complicity in militarism. Israeli universities have been heralded in the West for their liberalism and diversity, but critics assert that they are a crucial part of Israel’s war making machine. Israeli Jewish academic Maya Wind argues that even before the formation of the state of Israel, universities played a key role in the project of Zionism. And Noam Chomsky discusses why the U.S. supports Israel.
Photo: Al Araby/Wikimedia Commons
The post Fund Drive Special: Israeli Universities and the State appeared first on KPFA.
Award-winning artist/cartoonist Nate Powell discusses his graphic adaptation of James Loewen’s classic text “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.”
The post Fund Drive Special: A New “Lies My Teacher Told Me” appeared first on KPFA.
Award-winning artist/cartoonist Nate Powell discusses his graphic adaptation of James Loewen’s classic text “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.”
The post Fund Drive Special: A New “Lies My Teacher Told Me” appeared first on KPFA.
The banks and financiers are a common target of the left — and often the right — purportedly sucking the lifeblood out of the real industrial economy. Stephen Maher argues that while the financialization of the economy has intensified under neoliberalism, finance has played a central role in the growth of capitalism — and the disciplining of labor — from at least the Gilded Age. He discusses the recent rise of asset management companies Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock, which have concentrated ownership at a level unprecedented in the history of capitalism.
Resources:
Scott Aquanno and Stephen Maher, The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to BlackRock Verso, 2024
Photo credit: Lee De Cola
The post The Fall and Rise of U.S. Finance appeared first on KPFA.
What does May Day, as an anarchist and socialist political project, commemorate? Nicolas Lampert and Paul Buhle share historical background; Cindy Milstein reviews anarchist principles; Richard Lichtman considers what Marx called alienation; and Paul C. Gray discusses the importance of identifying workers’ issues of concern and creating democratic structures. (Encore presentation.)
(Image on main page by Washington Area Spark.)
The post May Day Meanings appeared first on KPFA.
What did the abrupt transition from socialism to capitalism in the former Soviet Bloc mean for residents, radicals, and the social order? Helena Sheehan, a Marxist thinker, educator, and activist, devotes a portion of her latest book to the impact and legacy of the momentous events of 1989 and 1990.
Helena Sheehan, Until We Fall: Long Distance Life on the Left Monthly Review Press, 2023
The post Socialism to Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.
Over the last forty years, bottled water consumption has exploded. Once a rarefied item, global sales of bottled water dwarf every other beverage — totaling $300 billion a year. Environmental sociologist Daniel Jaffee argues that packaged water doesn’t only imperil our oceans and bodies with plastic waste, but undermines safe public water even more than water privatization. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Daniel Jaffee, Unbottled: The Fight against Plastic Water and for Water Justice UC Press, 2023
The post Commodifying Water appeared first on KPFA.
What insights into Israel/Palestine, and what visions for the region, were articulated by Edward Said? Under what conditions did the Palestinian-American scholar, critic, and activist believe reconciliation and a just coexistence are possible? Jonathan Graubart considers a number of Said’s assertions; he also brings up Ella Shohat’s claims about Zionism’s impact on Mizrahi Jews. (Encore presentation.)
Jonathan Graubart, Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs Temple University Press, 2023
The post Edward Said’s Vision appeared first on KPFA.
As the plight of the Palestinians, many of them refugees in their native lands, dominates world headlines, a look at the ways that international policy, though entities like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, has not been driven by altruistic motives. Instead, as historian Laura Robson argues, much of what takes place under the guise of humanitarian assistance has served to keep a lid on displaced populations, while profiting from their captive labor.
Resources:
Laura Robson, Human Capital: A History of Putting Refugees to Work Verso, 2023
Photo credit: Mrbrfast
The post Exploiting Refugees appeared first on KPFA.
Degrowthers, Half Earthers, advocates of green growth – what distinguishes the ecological left’s various camps? Does it matter if an approach appears impracticable? Is only a post-capitalist future a sustainable one? And which thinkers are driving the debate, or trying to? Benjamin Kunkel considers a range of strategies advanced by contributors to New Left Review.
Benjamin Kunkel and Lola Seaton, eds., Who Will Build the Ark? Debates on Climate Strategy from New Left Review Verso, 2023
The post Left Climate Strategies appeared first on KPFA.
U.S. higher education is in the grips of a new McCarthyism over criticisms of Israel. Sociologist William Robinson, himself the target of an unsuccessful campaign by the Anti-Defamation League, considers reports that the Israeli state is directly intervening to stoke repression on U.S. campuses and in U.S. society. He also discusses the political economic conjuncture and why the Palestinians have come to be regarded by elites as a dispensable population.
Resources:
William I. Robinson, “Israel Has Formed a Task Force to Carry Out Covert Campaigns at US Universities,” Truthout, March 23, 2024
Photo: Jersey Noah via AROC Bay Area
The post Repressing Opposition to Israel appeared first on KPFA.
Of what use is utopian thinking? Is hope something we need to cultivate, or rediscover? Jon Greenaway looks at how the German philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) thought about history, human consciousness, revolution, Marxism, religion, and fascism.
Jon Greenaway, A Primer on Utopian Philosophy: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Ernst Bloch ZerO Books, 2024
Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore, Working-Class Heroes PM Press/Free Dirt, 2019
The post Ernst Bloch’s Utopianism appeared first on KPFA.
Radio is a medium with extraordinary propagandistic power — seductively transmitting ideas into the quotidian intimacy of one’s home and life. That power and potential was recognized early on by the state following the First World World. It was also appreciated by opponents of war, including the anarchist pacifists who founded KPFA Radio and the Pacifica network. As KPFA Radio celebrates its 75th anniversary, historians Matthew Lasar and Iain Boal reflect upon the origins of the legendary station, the mother of listener-sponsored radio.
The post Fund Drive Special: War, Peace, and KPFA Radio appeared first on KPFA.
What does bold and militant action in the face of climate calamity look like? What sorts of individual and collective actions should the movement encompass, embrace, or at least tolerate? Chuck Collins explores these questions in a provocative novel packed with information about real-life activists and iconic campaigns. (Encore presentation.)
Chuck Collins, Altar to an Erupting Sun Green Writers Press, 2023
Inequality.org
DivestInvest
The post Fueling Change appeared first on KPFA.
How did a Scottish moral philosopher of the Enlightenment become an apostle of the libertarian right in this country? Political theorist Glory Liu traces the uses of the complex ideas Adam Smith in the United States — from the establishment of the U.S. state, through debates about slavery and inequality, to justifying the ostensible retreat of the state in our era.
Resources:
Glory M. Liu, Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism Princeton University Press, 2022
Image: Nicole Marie Photography
The post Claiming Adam Smith appeared first on KPFA.
Urban renewal processes and projects have wreaked havoc on many communities of color. Lindsey Dillon reveals how Black San Franciscans have responded to exclusionary forms of development and, more specifically, how Hunters Point residents worked to establish community control over how their neighborhood was redesigned and rebuilt. (Encore presentation.)
Camilla Hawthorne and Jovan Scott Lewis, eds., The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity Duke University Press, 2023
Lindsey Dillon, Toxic City: Redevelopment and Environmental Justice in San Francisco University of California Press, 2024
The post Race & Redevelopment appeared first on KPFA.
Film brings to us — with unparalleled rawness — what feels like the intimate experience of war. But how true is that visceral feeling? And how do the tension and excitement of war on screen ultimately affect our sympathy toward each other and our humanity? David Thomson, one of the greatest film historians of our time, argues that movies — even those with antiwar intentions — perpetuate war.
Resources:
David Thomson, The Fatal Alliance: A Century of War on Film Harper, 2023
The post War and Film appeared first on KPFA.
What happened to California’s prisons and jails when the Covid pandemic struck? Why did so many people die behind bars, and why were so many on the outside affected (and afflicted)? Hadar Aviram sheds light on multiple aspects of California’s Covid-19 correctional disaster, including activist efforts to prevent it.
Hadar Aviram and Chad Goerzen, Fester: Carceral Permeability and California’s COVID-19 Correctional Disaster University of California Press, 2024
(Image on main page by Annette Teng.)
The post Covid Carceral Calamity appeared first on KPFA.
The pandemic highlighted the vital importance of care work—whether childcare, nursing home care, medical care or schooling – and the struggles many people face to get sufficient care. Would more public investment solve the crisis? Historian Premilla Nadasen argues that the problem lies with contemporary capitalism itself, as care has become an enormous arena for corporate profit, in which the state is often deeply complicit. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Premilla Nadasen, Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Haymarket Books, 2023)
The post Profiting from Care appeared first on KPFA.
While the Supreme Court considers restricting abortion pills, feminists in the Global South have shown the way forward for safe abortions outside of the law. Sociologist Naomi Braine has documented the efforts of networks and collectives of activists, some formed in the struggles against dictatorship in Latin America, who provide information, pills, and support in ending unwanted pregnancies without the need for medical personnel.
Resources:
Naomi Braine, Abortion Beyond the Law: Building a Global Feminist Movement for Self-Managed Abortion Verso, 2023
If/When/How
Digital Defense Fund
The post Lessons in Self-Managed Abortion appeared first on KPFA.
What if Earth were furious with humanity? What if revolutionaries took their cues from an unruly planet? Anne Stewart examines depictions of terrestrial upheaval and grassroots rebellion in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, and other works.
Anne Stewart, Angry Planet: Decolonial Fiction and the American Third World University of Minnesota Press, 2022
The post Angry Planet appeared first on KPFA.
Hostility to unions, lax environmental regulations, and –- perhaps less obviously –- far flung rural communities: all of these helped give birth to our express-delivery, buy-on-credit economy. Environmental historian Bart Elmore considers the importance of the American South to the genesis, reach, and ecological damage of five outsized corporations: Walmart, Coca-Cola, FedEx, Bank of America, and Delta Airlines.
Resources:
Bart Elmore, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet University of North Carolina Press, 2023
The post Contemporary Capitalism’s Road Through the U.S. South appeared first on KPFA.
Are countries like India and South Africa still committed to coal extraction? What plans are afoot to make a just transition to renewable power? Ashley Dawson describes and evaluates struggles against extractivism and for publicly owned and democratically managed renewable energy.
Ashley Dawson, Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements Are Leading the Fight for Our Planet Haymarket Books, 2024
The post Fossil Fuel Fights appeared first on KPFA.
The program DARE — in which police officers stepped into the role of teacher to warn 5th and 6th graders away from drugs — is an object of humor today. But historian Max Felker-Kantor argues that we should take DARE seriously. He posits that the program, which at its height brought police into 75% of U.S. school districts, was ultimately about burnishing the reputation of law enforcement in the midst of the abuses of the war on drugs, and it served to normalize having cops in schools.
Resources:
Max Felker-Kantor, DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools University of North Carolina Press, 2024
The post DARE: Promoting the Police appeared first on KPFA.
What was the modern Sanctuary Movement formed to do? What sorts of challenges has it faced, and how has the movement changed and evolved? Carl Lindskoog considers the history of the Sanctuary Movement, including its expansion into a far-reaching campaign for human rights, economic justice, and peace.
Maria Cristina Garcia & Maddalena Marinari, Whose America? U.S. Immigration Policy since 1980 University of Illinois Press, 2023
(Image on main page by Church World Service/New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia.)
The post A History of Sanctuary appeared first on KPFA.
Our food system, as well as our ecosystems, is clearly in crisis. Should we look to technological fixes and lab-grown meat to provide food for our future? Or, as writer Taras Grescoe suggests, should we look backwards instead to the lost foods of our past? Grescoe argues that a sustainable future necessitates cultivating food and plant diversity, while reclaiming collective practices, including those drawn from contemporary indigenous peoples. (Full-length interview.)
Resources:
Taras Grescoe, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past Greystone Books, 2023
Taras Grescoe’s Blog: lostsupper.blog
The post In Search of Lost Foods appeared first on KPFA.
How can people be moved from sympathy to solidarity with an oppressed group? Juliet Hooker considers how the legendary writer and activist Ida B. Wells and Harriet Jacobs, whose slave narrative was the first authored by a woman in the U.S., balanced grief and grievance in an effort to mobilize white people to act to end Black suffering. (Encore presentation.)
Juliet Hooker, Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss Princeton University Press, 2023
(Image on main page by kkfea.)
The post Portraying Black Loss appeared first on KPFA.
Medicines – we’re told by the pharmaceuticals industry – are expensive by necessity owing to the high costs of research and development. Yet, as with the vaccines for Covid, much research is publicly-funded, and much comes out of universities. And, as Nick Dearden argues, only 3% of new drugs even represent actual breakthroughs. Instead most are “evergreened” drugs that Big Pharma tweaks in order to prolong its intellectual property rights. He discusses why the business of pharmaceuticals companies is not public health, but private profit.
Resources:
Nick Dearden, Pharmanomics: How Big Pharma Destroys Global Health Verso, 2023
The post The Price of Big Pharma appeared first on KPFA.
In “The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg,” Jerry Aronson paints a compelling portrait of the legendary writer, visionary, activist, and spiritual seeker.
The post Fund Drive Special: Allen Ginsberg appeared first on KPFA.
We are living through the 6th great extinction of species — and governments are doing almost nothing to curb it. Scientist Douglas Tallamy, however, proposes a blueprint for a grassroots effort to restore habitat in a meaningful way, seeing nature not as something to be preserved in parks and reserves far from us, but all around us in our cities and suburbs, farmlands and ranches.
The post Fund Drive Special: Rebuilding Habitats in Our Yards appeared first on KPFA.
In “The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg,” Jerry Aronson paints a compelling portrait of the legendary writer, visionary, activist, and spiritual seeker.
The post Fund Drive Special: Allen Ginsberg appeared first on KPFA.
It is hard to measure the impact of social stress and political turmoil on our bodies and minds, but we know they does damage. The physician Gabor Maté has made it his life’s work to examine how stress and trauma make us sick, alienated, and often prone to harmful behaviors. He draws on the ideas of Stephen Porges, originator of Poly-Vagal Theory, and we feature the work of both men today.
The post Fund Drive Special: Gabor Mate and Steven Porges appeared first on KPFA.
World-renowned teacher Sharon Salzberg talks about her book “Real Happiness: A 28-Day Program to Realize the Power of Meditation.”
The post Fund Drive Special: Meditation Pioneer Sharon Salzberg appeared first on KPFA.
The death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza continues to climb. Nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since October, two-thirds of them women and children, and almost 70,000 people have been injured. Yet this unspeakable crime has been rationalized by much of the U.S. media. Israeli scholar Ilan Pappé says that such justifications rest partly on a distorted view of the history of Palestine/Israel, including of the multiethnic society that existed in Palestine before the establishment of the state of Israel.
The post Fund Drive Special: Ilan Pappé appeared first on KPFA.
Philip Shepherd on the importance of recovering “radical wholeness” and experiencing a new way of being.
The post Fund Drive Special: Embodied Intelligence appeared first on KPFA.
Our food system, as well as our ecosystems, are clearly in crisis. Should we look to technological fixes and lab-grown meat to provide food for our future? Or, as writer Taras Grescoe argues, should we look backwards instead to the lost foods of our past? Grescoe argues that a sustainable future necessitates cultivating food and plant diversity, while reclaiming collective practices, including those drawn from contemporary indigenous peoples.
The post Fund Drive Special: Recovering Ancient Foods appeared first on KPFA.
What accounts for worker injuries and fatalities in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota? Should they be viewed as localized phenomena, or are larger socioeconomic processes at work? In his effort to explain oil-boom representations and calamities, Bruce Braun considers and extends Lauren Berlant’s analysis of worker precarity, “crisis ordinariness,” and “slow death.”
Braun and Thomas, eds., Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil University of Minnesota Press, 2023
The post Oil & Capital appeared first on KPFA.
Israeli universities are heralded in the West for their liberalism and diversity, but critics assert that they are a crucial part of Israel’s war making machine. Israeli Jewish academic Maya Wind argues that even before the formation of the state of Israel, universities played a key role in the project of Zionist state-building. She makes the case for an academic boycott and discusses the demonization of Boycott Divestment Sanctions against Israel as it gathers strength.
Resources:
Maya Wind, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom Verso, 2024
The post Israeli Universities and the State appeared first on KPFA.
Israeli universities are heralded in the West for their liberalism and diversity, but critics assert that they are a crucial part of Israel’s war making machine. Israeli Jewish academic Maya Wind argues that even before the formation of the state of Israel, universities played a key role in the project of Zionist state-building. She makes the case for an academic boycott and discusses the demonization of Boycott Divestment Sanctions against Israel as it gathers strength.
Resources:
Maya Wind, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom Verso, 2024
The post Israeli Universities and the State appeared first on KPFA.
What would it mean to have authentic dialogues around race and racism? How would one engage in a way that promotes transformation, not polarization? Roxy Manning reveals how nonviolent communication principles and practices can be used to interrupt racist conduct in ways that foster the creation of what Dr. King called Beloved Community. (Encore presentation.)
Roxy Manning, How to Have Antiracist Conversations: Embracing Our Full Humanity to Challenge White Supremacy Berrett-Koehler, 2023
(Image on main page by RMHare.)
The post Responding to Racism appeared first on KPFA.
Americans as a population have an unusually large appetite for psychoactive drugs, whether legal or illegal. And American history has been marked by periodic moral panics over drug use and normalization or legalization, as we’re experiencing right now. Why is that? What is it about US society that makes drug use simultaneously so appealing and reviled? Writer and scholar Benjamin Fong weighs in.
Resources:
Benjamin Yen-Yi Fong, Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge Verso, 2023
The post America’s Drug Binge appeared first on KPFA.
Reclaiming the commons sounds good in the abstract, but what’s being done on a practical level? Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, the Hawai‘i-based co-founders of Eating in Public, describe projects like Free Gardens and Free Stores. Also: Wren Awry discusses the volume to which Chan and Sharma contributed an essay.
Eating in Public
Wren Awry, ed., Nourishing Resistance: Stories of Food, Protest, and Mutual Aid PM Press, 2023
The post Food & Freedom appeared first on KPFA.
Following the mass George Floyd demonstrations, it appeared as if a racial reckoning was taking place in the United States, although of a puzzling nature. Amazon, Walmart, and other prominent corporations declared that Black Lives Mattered and dedicated funds to ostensibly address systemic racism. In cities across America, individuals denounced white silence and took on the task of scrutinizing interpersonal relationships for implicit racism. Arun Kundnani argues that such efforts are part of a tradition of liberal anti-racism, which he contrasts with the lineage of radical anti-racism forged against colonialism and capitalism.
Resources:
Arun Kundnani, What Is Antiracism? And Why It Means Anticapitalism Verso, 2023
The post Radical vs Liberal Antiracism appeared first on KPFA.
Microwork involves the performing of short, discrete tasks on digital platforms, usually at the worker’s home and often after dark. Paul Apostolidis applies his analysis of nocturnal labor under capitalism, and its impact on worker’s lives, to microwork, for which people in many countries are paid miniscule wages. (Encore presentation.)
James Muldoon and Paul Apostolidis, “‘Neither work nor leisure’: Motivations of microworkers in the United Kingdom on three digital platforms” New Media & Society
(Image on main page by Kulik Stepan.)
The post Microwork’s Impact appeared first on KPFA.
As the world rushes headlong into the climate emergency, what might a liberatory approach look like, that would avert ecological disaster while making another world possible? Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese have laid out one vision for eco-socialism that takes on the difficult question of how to plan society in a radically different way. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics Verso, 2022
Half-Earth Socialism: A Planetary Planning Game
The post Half-Earth Socialism appeared first on KPFA.
What accounts for the militarization of the police in the U.S., and how long has it been going on? Julian Go links police militarization with colonial conquest, imperial control, and the racialization of crime and disorder. The domestic effects and implications of the so-called imperial boomerang, Go reveals, have been momentous and longstanding. (Encore presentation.)
Julian Go, Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the U.S. Oxford University Press, 2023
(Image on main page by Tony Webster.)
The post Police Militarization & Empire appeared first on KPFA.
Gene-guided healthcare has taken U.S. medicine by storm, promising precision, targeted treatments to myriad illnesses. It has also proved very profitable. James Tabery traces how genetic medicine vied within the federal government with another approach to healthcare — one emphasizing the social and environmental determinants of health, such as whether you live in a polluted neighborhood — and triumphed over it. He argues that private industry has benefited, while public health has suffered. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
James Tabery, Tyranny of the Gene: Personalized Medicine and Its Threat to Public Health Knopf, 2023
Photo credit: Dave Titensor
The post The Price of Gene-Based Medicine appeared first on KPFA.
What insights into Israel/Palestine, and what visions for the region, were articulated by Edward Said? Under what conditions did the Palestinian-American scholar, critic, and activist believe reconciliation and a just coexistence are possible? Jonathan Graubart considers a number of Said’s assertions; he also brings up Ella Shohat’s claims about Zionism’s impact on Mizrahi Jews.
Jonathan Graubart, Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs Temple University Press, 2023
The post Edward Said’s Vision appeared first on KPFA.
Why has the term complicity become so ubiquitous in recent years? Are we all complicit in the system that we live under? What use, or uses, does the notion serve? These are questions that legal scholar Francine Banner poses. She makes the argument that the term bears different meanings, sometimes holding the powerful to account and other times looking for someone to blame, rather than focusing on systemic change. She considers the shifting modern use of complicity — shaped in part by problematic scholarship on the uncaring bystander — and sees parallels in how the legal system severely penalizes those for even peripheral involvement in crimes.
Resources:
Francine Banner, Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems UC Press, 2024
The post Interrogating Complicity appeared first on KPFA.
Nico Slate shared a white mother with his brother Peter, but Nico’s father was white, whereas Peter’s was black. What did that matter? To whom did it matter? Slate has written a book remembering his older brother, recalling their relationship, and examining the charged sociopolitical context of their private and public lives.
Nico Slate, Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race Temple University Press, 2023
The post White Brother, Black Brother appeared first on KPFA.
While it would seem like the crisis of the political establishment would provide fertile ground for the left, instead we have seen the ascendancy of right-wing figures around the world, who denounce the establishment while shoring up the capitalist order. Often these figures are businessmen like Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi, who position themselves outside of the discredited status quo. Sociologist Leslie Gates asks why such capitalist outsiders win, looking at the very different trajectories of Venezuela and Mexico. She contrasts the victories of Hugo Chavez and Vicente Fox — the latter whose election heralded the rise of more leaders in his mold.
Resources:
Leslie C. Gates, Capitalist Outsiders: Oil’s Legacies in Mexico and Venezuela University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023
The post Electing Capitalist Outsiders appeared first on KPFA.
The call to abolish the family and liberate its members has been one of the central pillars of the radical left historically. Yet today that venerable tradition is almost forgotten, abandoned with the ebbing of the Sixties. Sophie Lewis renews the argument for abolishing the family and replacing it with collective forms of care. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Sophie Lewis, Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation Verso, 2022
The post Family Abolition appeared first on KPFA.
Much been said and written about the Sixties; what should we make of the ’70s? Revolutionary hopes were dampened and movements repressed, but did something constructive and instructive also take place? Michael Hardt considers radical struggles and conceptual developments that he finds provocative, inspiring, and relevant to our times. (Encore presentation.)
Michael Hardt, The Subversive Seventies Oxford University Press, 2023
(Image on main page by Fábio Goveia.)
The post Rethinking the ’70s appeared first on KPFA.
They shut down the Las Vegas strip, when the casinos were operated by the mafia, and waged a grassroots fight against racism and poverty. The struggle of African American poor mothers for welfare rights in Nevada is a story with lessons for our times of punitive austerity. Historian Annelise Orlick has documented one of the forgotten but key social struggles of the 1960s and 70s. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Annelise Orleck, Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty Beacon Press, 2023
The post Organizing Against Poverty appeared first on KPFA.
What does bold and militant action in the face of climate calamity look like? What sorts of individual and collective actions should the movement encompass, embrace, or at least tolerate? Chuck Collins explores these questions in a provocative novel packed with information about real-life activists and iconic campaigns.
Chuck Collins, Altar to an Erupting Sun Green Writers Press, 2023
Inequality.org
DivestInvest
The post Fueling Change appeared first on KPFA.
The modern nation-state has been premised on the violent creation of permanent minorities ruled over by ethnic or religious majorities, argues Mahmood Mamdani. The acclaimed scholar of colonialism and anti-colonialism reflects on the United States, Nazi Germany, South Africa, and Israel — settler-colonial societies built on internment and ethnic cleansing. He calls for a decolonialism that transcends nationalism altogether, moving beyond the divisions fostered by colonial rule (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities Harvard University Press, 2020
The post Beyond Settler-Colonialism appeared first on KPFA.
What has capitalism done to and with time? How does it regulate and discipline workers from the standpoint of time? And what would a principled struggle to take back time — to reappropriate it — look like? Engaging with the ideas of Marx, E. P. Thompson, and others, Bryan D. Palmer reflects on work, life, and capitalist temporality; he also stresses the importance of abolishing the wage system. (Encore presentation.)
Leo Panitch and Greg Albo, eds., Socialist Register 2021: Beyond Digital Capitalism Monthly Review Press, 2020
Bryan Palmer, James P. Cannon and the Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States, 1928-38 Brill, 2021
(Image on main page by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.)
The post Time Under Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.
Modern art has always been a battleground — and the highly influential Museum of Modern Art has been partisan since its inception. Architectural historian Patricio Del Real discusses two differing political visions of modernism and modern architecture: one rooted in the left, and associated with figures such as Communist muralist Diego Rivera, and the other on the right, represented by the architect and fascist sympathizer Philip Johnson. He weighs in on MoMa’s promotion of a view of modernism in Latin America, stripped of its radical politics and racial fusions, and radiating American power and hegemony. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Patricio del Real, Constructing Latin America: Architecture, Politics, and Race at the Museum of Modern Art Yale University Press, 2022
The post MoMa and Cultural Imperialism in Latin America appeared first on KPFA.
Is a world of nation-states desirable? If ultranationalism is pernicious, are some forms of nationalism beneficial? Should struggles framed in terms of national liberation be lauded and supported? Nandita Sharma emphasizes the exclusions inherent in all nationalist politics, exclusions dictated by considerations of who does and does not belong to the nation. (Encore presentation.)
Nandita Sharma, Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants Duke University Press, 2020
(Image on main page by Joel Kramer.)
The post The Nation, Reconsidered appeared first on KPFA.
Island nations have produced the least carbon dioxide emissions, but are paying the greatest price for global warming as they face inundation and obliteration. Yet many in wealthy continental countries know little about them or their plight. Scholar and environmental journalist Christina Gerhardt discusses the circumstances of islands surrounded by a rising sea, many made more vulnerable by economies dependent on tourism and histories of military exploitation and occupation. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Christina Gerhardt, Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean UC Press, 2023
The post Islands in a Rising Sea appeared first on KPFA.
What do neoliberal policies and institutions do to people’s ability to care well for others? According to Sarah Clark Miller, caregivers experience moral precarity and moral injury, brought on by the fact that they can’t care for loved ones in ways that are consistent with their ethical principles. (Encore presentation.)
Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower, eds., Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity University of Minnesota Press, 2021
Sarah Clark Miller, The Ethics of Need: Agency, Dignity, and Obligation Routledge, 2014
The post Caregiving in Neoliberal Times appeared first on KPFA.
Insights from two scholars who had books published in 2023: Thomas Wheatland, discussing his rereleased book about the Frankfurt School, the influential grouping of radical thinkers that included Herbert Marcuse and Walter Benjamin, and Juliet Hooker, expounding on aspects of her new book about race relations and political loss that weren’t addressed in last month’s interview.
Thomas Wheatland, The Frankfurt School in Exile University of Minnesota Press, 2023
Juliet Hooker, Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss Princeton University Press, 2023
The post Thought-full Books appeared first on KPFA.
Advancements in science are seen as symbols of human progress, but science has frequently served deadly ends. Historian Clifford Conner discusses how scientific research in the United States is deeply enmeshed with the military, and considers the purpose of trillions of dollars of spending on the military. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Clifford D. Conner, The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman to Trump Haymarket Books, 2022
Science for the People
The post U.S. Science and the Military appeared first on KPFA.
Urban renewal processes and projects have wreaked havoc on many communities of color. Lindsey Dillon reveals how Black San Franciscans have responded to exclusionary forms of development and, more specifically, how Hunters Point residents worked to establish community control over how their neighborhood was redesigned and rebuilt.
Camilla Hawthorne and Jovan Scott Lewis, eds., The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity Duke University Press, 2023
Lindsey Dillon, Toxic City: Redevelopment and Environmental Justice in San Francisco UC Press (forthcoming)
The post Race & Redevelopment appeared first on KPFA.
That these are intensely difficult times is stating the obvious. It’s hard to quantify the impact of social stress and political turmoil on our collective psyche, but we all know it’s real. The acclaimed Canadian physician and Marxist Gabor Maté illuminates how stress and trauma damage our lives and our bodies– making us alienated, sick, and often prone to destructive behaviors. His deeply humanistic work is featured in an award-winning documentary film.
The post Fund Drive Special – Gabor Mate on Trauma appeared first on KPFA.
A new interview with Sharon Salzberg about her new book “Finding Your Way: Meditations, Thoughts, and Wisdom for Living an Authentic Life.”
The post Against the Grain – December 12, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.
The rise of the far right has been one of the most alarming developments of the last few years, exercising a gravitational pull on much of American politics. Liberal critics often chalk up the appeal of the right to the irrationalism of the downtrodden. But writer Naomi Klein argues that the populist right is, in its perverse, hateful way, addressing often legitimate discontent about an unequal society. She argues that the only antidote is a renewed anticapitalist left.
The post Fund Drive Special: How the Right Shadows the Left appeared first on KPFA.
World-renowned teacher Sharon Salzberg talks about her book “Real Happiness: A 28-Day Program to Realize the Power of Meditation.”
The post Fund Drive Special: Meditation Pioneer Sharon Salzberg appeared first on KPFA.
Frank Luntz thinks that Israel has a public relations problem in the United States, which may seem surprising given that until recently a majority of Americans have favored Israel’s actions against the Palestinians. The rightwing spin doctor, a longtime advisor to Israel on how to shape American public opinion, believes that such longstanding support is fraying. “The Occupation of the American Mind” examines the history of the public relations campaign waged by the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel lobby to shape American popular opinion about the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and examines the growing criticism of Israel within the U.S.
The post Fund Drive Special: Israel’s PR Machine appeared first on KPFA.
How did the influential scholar Cedric Robinson understand black radicalism and global capitalism? Yousuf Al-Bulushi has written about what he sees as several constituent elements of the Robinsonian black radical tradition, including an appreciation of culture (which pushes back against Marxism’s materialism) and a critique of state-based models of self-determination. Al-Bulushi also considers Robinson’s engagement with world-systems analysis. (Encore presentation.)
Yousuf Al-Bulushi, “Thinking Racial Capitalism and Black Radicalism from Africa: An Intellectual Geography of Cedric Robinson’s World-System” Geoforum (pdf)
(Image on main page by Doc Searls.)
The post Cedric Robinson’s World appeared first on KPFA.
How does capitalism tap into our desires with the promise of objects to satisfy us? Yet when we possess them, the urge for something new reemerges. Geographer Jared Marguiles attempts to explain that paradox by looking at some of most endangered, and coveted, species in world: cacti. He examines the market for succulents and the collectors who drive it, including the strange illicit trade in legally available cacti.
Resources:
Jared D. Margulies, The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade, University of Minnesota Press, 2023
The post Looting Cacti appeared first on KPFA.
How can people be moved from sympathy to solidarity with an oppressed group? Juliet Hooker considers how the legendary writer and activist Ida B. Wells and Harriet Jacobs, whose slave narrative was the first authored by a woman in the U.S., balanced grief and grievance in an effort to mobilize white people to act to end Black suffering.
Juliet Hooker, Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss Princeton University Press, 2023
(Image on main page by kkfea.)
The post Portraying Black Loss appeared first on KPFA.
It’s the most important program combating food insecurity in the United States – and it originates from aid to the agricultural and food processing industries, not poverty alleviation. Christopher Bosso argues that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP — formerly known as food stamps — has survived for almost sixty years, against those would would eliminate it, precisely because of this connection to agricultural interests.
Resources:
Christopher John Bosso, Why SNAP Works: A Political History — and Defense — of the Food Stamp Program UC Press, 2023
The post Food Aid to the Poor, Aid to Agriculture appeared first on KPFA.
What was the most powerful technology introduced into schools in the past century? You might answer the computer, or something like Zoom, or even the slide projector. But scholar Antero Garcia argues that it was the humble yellow school bus. Buses have been central to the struggle to desegregate education. And school buses are a zone — and mainly an unnoticed one — in which many working class children and children of color spend a significant part of their day. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Antero Garcia, All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology University of Minnesota Press, 2023
The post The Yellow School Bus appeared first on KPFA.
What role have historians, and the discipline of history itself, played in how historical events unfold? Priya Satia contends that historians were key architects of British imperialism, that history enabled empire in fundamental ways. She also contests the notion that history unfolds in a linear and progressive fashion, and discusses the work and impact of the working-class historian E. P. Thompson. (Encore presentation.)
Priya Satia, Time’s Monster: How History Makes History Belknap Press, 2023 (paper)
The post History’s Complicity in Empire appeared first on KPFA.
Revolutionaries in one country can inform and inspire rebels in another. Kevin A. Young examines the impact of Vietnamese and Chinese revolutionary strategies on El Salvador’s guerrillas in the tumultuous 1970s and ’80s. Among other things, he describes how conceptions of “prolonged popular war” were adopted and adapted by the FPL, the FMLN’s largest faction.
Becker, Power, Wood, and Zumoff, eds., Transnational Communism across the Americas University of Illinois Press, 2023
The post (Re)making Revolution appeared first on KPFA.
The pandemic highlighted the vital importance of care work—whether childcare, nursing home care, medical care or schooling – and the struggles many people face to get sufficient care. Would more public investment solve the crisis? Historian Premilla Nadasen argues that the problem lies with contemporary capitalism itself, as care has become an enormous arena for corporate profit, in which the state is often deeply complicit.
Resources:
Premilla Nadasen, Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Haymarket Books, 2023
The post Profiting from Care appeared first on KPFA.
Our regularly scheduled programming is preempted from 6am to 9pm (PST) today for a special fundraiser.
During this one-day event, we air old and new broadcasts that demonstrate the richness of the Pacifica Radio Archives and how important it is that we ensure their preservation and accessibility.
We appreciate your understanding and support in contributing to the success of this important initiative.
The post Preempted for Pacifica Radio Archives Fundraiser appeared first on KPFA.
Why is the aging of populations framed as a crisis? What settler-colonial and capitalist logics are at work, and how are older people viewed and treated as a result? Sandy Grande delineates and critiques mainstream frameworks; she also advances a decolonial perspective that draws on indigenous attitudes toward elders and toward old age-associated conditions like dementia. (Encore presentation.)
René Dietrich and Kerstin Knopf, eds., Biopolitics, Geopolitics, Life: Settler States and Indigenous Presence Duke University Press, 2023
Sandy Grande, ed., Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought Rowman & Littlefield
(Image on main page by Dwayne Reilander.)
The post Aged Out? appeared first on KPFA.
The idea that we and the world around us vibrate with flows of energy has deep roots in North America. Historian Jackson Lears argues that vitalism or animism has played a crucial but contradictory role in U.S. politics and society. On the one hand, it has been fueled by capitalism and the almost magical function of money and credit, along with the vitalist imperial notion of regeneration through violence. And on the other, it has motivated those who see humans as part of a larger animated web of life, in need of protection and defense.
Resources:
Jackson Lears, Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023
The post The Politics of American Vitalism appeared first on KPFA.
Why was the political philosopher Hannah Arendt so critical of mainstream Zionism? What did her criticisms have to do with how she understood nationalism and historical antisemitism? According to Jonathan Graubart, Arendt sought to delink Jewish nationalism from Israel’s state project; she also condemned Herzlian Zionism for subscribing to a view of eternal antisemitism. (Encore presentation.)
Jonathan Graubart, Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs Temple University Press, 2023
The post Arendt on Zionism appeared first on KPFA.
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the U.S. transported refugees from Vietnam to its colonial possession Guam. In that period, Israel did something similar, offering citizenship to Vietnamese refugees, in the wake of its expanded occupation of Palestine. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi looks at the condition of refugee settlers, as well as solidarity between the indigenous inhabitants of settler colonial states.
Resources:
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine UC Press, 2022
The post Refugee Settlers in Guam and Palestine appeared first on KPFA.
Perhaps best known for his advocacy of “propaganda by the deed,” Johann Most (1846-1906) was a committed socialist before turning toward anarchism. What spurred that shift? Why did Most advocate violence – and later abandon that position? Tom Goyens is writing a biography of the fiery orator and influential editor who immigrated to the U.S. in 1882. (Encore presentation.)
Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer, eds., With Freedom in Our Ears: Histories of Jewish Anarchism University of Illinois Press, 2023
Anarchistories: Uncovering the World Anarchists Made
Tom Goyens, Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914 University of Illinois Press, 2014 (paper)
The post Anarchist Firebrand appeared first on KPFA.
The modern nation-state has been premised on the violent creation of permanent minorities ruled over by ethnic or religious majorities, argues Mahmood Mamdani. The acclaimed scholar of colonialism and anti-colonialism reflects on the United States, Nazi Germany, South Africa, and Israel — settler-colonial societies built on internment and ethnic cleansing. He calls for a decolonialism that transcends nationalism altogether, moving beyond the divisions fostered by colonial rule.
Resources:
Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities Harvard University Press, 2020
The post Beyond Settler-Colonialism appeared first on KPFA.
Microwork involves the performing of short, discrete tasks on digital platforms, usually at the worker’s home and often after dark. Paul Apostolidis applies his analysis of nocturnal labor under capitalism, and its impact on worker’s lives, to microwork, for which people in many countries are paid miniscule wages.
James Muldoon and Paul Apostolidis, “‘Neither work nor leisure’: Motivations of microworkers in the United Kingdom on three digital platforms” New Media & Society
(Image on main page by Kulik Stepan.)
The post Microwork’s Impact appeared first on KPFA.
Over the last forty years, bottled water consumption has exploded. Once a rarefied item, global sales of bottled water dwarf every other beverage — totaling $300 billion a year. Environmental sociologist Daniel Jaffee argues that packaged water doesn’t only imperil our oceans and bodies with plastic waste, but undermines safe public water even more than water privatization.
Resources:
Daniel Jaffee, Unbottled: The Fight against Plastic Water and for Water Justice UC Press, 2023
The post Commodifying Water appeared first on KPFA.
What would it mean to have authentic dialogues around race and racism? How would one engage in a way that promotes transformation, not polarization? Roxy Manning reveals how nonviolent communication principles and practices can be used to interrupt racist conduct in ways that foster the creation of what Dr. King called Beloved Community.
Roxy Manning, How to Have Antiracist Conversations: Embracing Our Full Humanity to Challenge White Supremacy Berrett-Koehler, 2023
(Image on main page by RMHare.)
The post Responding to Racism appeared first on KPFA.
Public schools in cities across the U.S., cities like Newark, New Jersey, have been the targets of privatization campaigns over the last two decades. Sociologist John Arena asks why rising star and Mayor Cory Booker was unsuccessful at forcing through corporate school reform in Newark, while his rival and successor Mayor Ras Baraka — the one time leader of a grassroots movement for local control of schools — brought charters in.
Resources:
John Arena, Expelling Public Schools: How Antiracist Politics Enable School Privatization in Newark University of Minnesota Press, 2023
The post The Contradictory Politics of Newark School Privatization appeared first on KPFA.
What accounts for the militarization of the police in the U.S., and how long has it been going on? Julian Go links police militarization with colonial conquest, imperial control, and the racialization of crime and disorder. The domestic effects and implications of the so-called imperial boomerang, Go reveals, have been momentous and longstanding.
Julian Go, Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the U.S. Oxford University Press, 2023
(Image on main page by Tony Webster.)
The post Police Militarization & Empire appeared first on KPFA.
Israel’s military power has been on display following Hamas’s attack and Israel’s continuing assault on Gaza. Israel is one of the world’s most important producers of military hardware and surveillance technology, honed in its occupation of Palestine, and exported around the globe to various brutal regimes. Antony Loewenstein traces the history of Israel’s military tech sector, while Saree Makdisi reflects on the Israeli state’s cultivation of Western liberal support.
Resources:
Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World Verso, 2023
Saree Makdisi, Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial UC Press, 2022
The post The Technological and Ideological Tools of Occupation appeared first on KPFA.
Much been said and written about the Sixties; what should we make of the ’70s? Revolutionary hopes were dampened and movements repressed, but did something constructive and instructive also take place? Michael Hardt considers radical struggles and conceptual developments that he finds provocative, inspiring, and relevant to our times.
Michael Hardt, The Subversive Seventies Oxford University Press, 2023
(Image on main page by Fábio Goveia.)
The post Rethinking the ’70s appeared first on KPFA.
What’s the value of a liberal arts education? It’s become commonplace to hear Humanities degrees condemned as a waste of money, purportedly not readying students for the world of work. Author and literary critic Gayle Greene counters that they have never been more necessary — yet are disappearing from higher education.
Resources:
Gayle Greene, Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of the Algorithm Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023
The post The Value of a (Disappearing) Humanities Education appeared first on KPFA.
Many U.S. military establishment bigwigs are pushing the development of automated and autonomous weapons systems. Roberto González questions whether this robo-fanaticism, as he calls it, is justified. He also describes efforts to address human warfighters’ distrust of machines. (Encore presentation.)
Roberto J. González, War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future University of California Press, 2022
The post Automated Warfare appeared first on KPFA.
Universities are one of the most hallowed institutions in our society — but critics argue they’re closer to hedge funds that conduct classes. Higher education is largely tax-exempt, based on the idea that universities benefit the public at large, including the communities where they are located. Yet urbanist and historian Davarian Baldwin argues that cities pay a very high price for universities which, whether public or private, are engines of profit, encroaching on adjacent communities and exploiting low wage labor, while grossly subsidized by their host cities. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Davarian L. Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities Bold Type Books, 2021
The post Cities and the Big Business of Higher Education appeared first on KPFA.
The acclaimed physician Gabor Maté believes that capitalist society damages us at an early age and that we carry that trauma through our lives — making us alienated, sick, and often prone to destructive behaviors. Maté draws from his remarkable background and radical commitments to provide us with tremendous insights into the maladies that are the norm in our society. His deeply humanistic work is featured in an award-winning documentary film.
The post Fund Drive Special: Gabor Mate on Trauma appeared first on KPFA.
An interview with the meditation pioneer and “Real Happiness” author Sharon Salzberg, including never-before-aired remarks.
The post Fund Drive Special: More Sharon Salzberg appeared first on KPFA.
Americans as a population have an usually large appetite for psychoactive drugs, whether legal or illegal. And American history has been marked by periodic moral panics over drug use and normalization or legalization, as we’re experiencing right now. What is it about US society that makes drug use simultaneously so appealing and reviled? Writer and scholar Benjamin Fong weighs in.
The post Fund Drive Special: Drugs and American Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.
Renowned mycologist Paul Stamets talks about mushrooms, human health, bee populations, psychoactive fungi, and more.
The post Fund Drive Special: Paul Stamets on Mushrooms appeared first on KPFA.
The rise of the far right has been one of the most alarming developments of the last few years, exercising a gravitational pull on much of American politics. Liberal critics often chalk up the appeal of right to the irrationalism of the downtrodden. But writer Naomi Klein argues that the populist right is, in its perverse, hateful way, addressing often legitimate discontent about an unequal society. She argues that the only antidote is a renewed anticapitalist left.
The post Fund Drive Special: How the Right Shadows the Left appeared first on KPFA.
Meditation pioneer and world-renowned teacher Sharon Salzberg talks about her book “Real Happiness: A 28-Day Program to Realize the Power of Meditation.”
The post Fund Drive Special: Sharon Salzberg on Meditation appeared first on KPFA.
When we think about nature preservation, many of us picture not just wetlands and forests, but farms and pasturelands. Yet journalist George Monbiot argues that the most destructive effects that humans have had on the planet has been through farming – through deforestation, the destruction of the soil, and the massive loss of habitat.
Resources:
George Monbiot’s TED Talk
Audio excerpted courtesy Penguin Random House Audio from Regenesis by George Monbiot, read by the author.
The post Fund Drive Special: Regenerating a Damaged Planet appeared first on KPFA.
Audio portions of the award-winning documentary film “Move When the Spirit Says Move: The Legacy of Dorothy Foreman Cotton.”
The post Fund Drive Special: A Civil Rights Powerhouse appeared first on KPFA.
It’s both a precious resource and a dangerous pollutant, exponentially increasing crop yields, while fouling our waterways with blue-green algae. The element phosphorus has played a crucial role in agriculture and war, while its reserves are unevenly distributed, with much of the world’s supply located in the occupied territories of Western Sahara. Writer Dan Egan discusses the double-edged nature of an element that is increasingly depleted and overused.
Resources:
Dan Egan, The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance Norton, 2023
The post Phosphorus: Reaping the Harvest appeared first on KPFA.
How does a social movement attract younger participants, who may be turned off by older activists’ approaches, styles, and understandings? Elisabeth Jay Friedman describes how Ni Una Menos, an influential feminist formation in Argentina, managed to build an intergenerational mass movement. (Encore presentation.) Elisabeth Jay Friedman and Ana Laura Rodríguez Gustá, ‘“Welcome to the Revolution’: Promoting Generational Renewal in Argentina’s Ni Una Menos,” Qualitative Sociology (Image on main page by TitiNicola.) The post Mobilizing Across Generations appeared first on KPFA.
What happens to survivors of violence — often perpetrated by intimates — who defend themselves against their attackers? According to legal scholar Leigh Goodmark, it often depends on whether those survivors look suitably victim-like. She discusses the circumstances that frequently lead to the criminalization of survivors of violence –- and makes the case for the abolition of a punitive legal system. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Leigh Goodmark, Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism UC Press, 2023 The post Criminalizing the Victims of Intimate Partner Violence appeared first on KPFA.
To be queer and communist at a time when the Communist Party in the U.S. banned LGBT people was tricky and often perilous. In her new book Bettina Aptheker profiles Lorraine Hansberry (who famously penned the play “A Raisin in the Sun”), Harry Hay (best known for founding the Mattachine Society), and other figures with radical sensibilities and closeted sexualities. (Encore presentation.) Bettina Aptheker, Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s-1990s Routledge, 2023 The post Hansberry and Hay appeared first on KPFA.
What is the relationship between things held in Common — from rivers and forests, to traditions of sharing and mutual aid — and communism? How should we understand the connection between the Commons within class society and life after capitalism? Historian Peter Linebaugh weighs in on the history of the idea of Communism, the very different history of enclosure, and the influence of the Commons and egalitarian indigenous ideas on the work of Karl Marx.
The post The Commons and Communism appeared first on KPFA.
The pandemic, the Muslim bans, the US-backed Saudi bombing of Yemen, counterterrorism initiatives – Yemeni Americans have faced, and continue to confront, major challenges to their well-being and their ability to connect with loved ones in Yemen. Sunaina Maira’s recent ethnographic work focuses on Oakland-based Yemeni corner store owners and their families. (Encore presentation.)
Nadia Kim and Pawan Dhingra, eds., Disciplinary Futures: Sociology in Conversation with American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies NYU Press, 2023
(Photo on main page by Sunaina Maira.)
The post Yemeni American Realities & Resilience appeared first on KPFA.
Can classic organizing methods be effective in gig economy workplaces? Paul C. Gray examines how methods like organizing conversations, social mapping, social charting, leader identification, and the identification of strategic chokepoints were applied by food couriers in Toronto to the peculiar circumstances of their platform-based work environment. (Encore presentation.) Labour/Le Travail Gig Workers United (Photo on main page by Kai Pilger.) The post Organizing in the Gig Economy appeared first on KPFA.
At a time when media ownership was held in a few hands, rightwing press barons combined celebrity coverage with xenophobic and nationalist politics, lauding authoritarian leaders and playing down the threat of fascism. In the lead up to World War Two, the likes of William Randolph Hearst and Robert McCormack in the U.S., and Lords Rothermere and Beverbrook in the UK, flirted with fascism and promoted imperialism. Historian Kathryn Olmsted argues that they paved the way for far-right mass media today.(Encore presentation.) Resources: Kathryn S. Olmsted, The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler Yale University Press, 2022 The post The Roots of the Far Right Press appeared first on KPFA.
In many immigration holding facilities, detainees can choose to work for wages. But is the language of choice in this context misleading? Katie Bales deploys the concept of unfree labor to explain what’s going on within what she calls the immigration industrial complex. She emphasizes the historical and geopolitical factors that compel many detainees to agree to work for often miniscule wages. (Encore presentation.) Boris et al., eds., Global Labor Migration: New Directions University of Illinois Press, 2022 (Photo on main page by DIAC Images.) The post “Unfree” Labor in Immigration Detention appeared first on KPFA.
Mike Davis was an exceptional thinker and writer: a deeply committed socialist who dazzlingly illuminated the unfolding ecological and social contradictions of late capitalism. Whether writing about his native Southern California, or contemplating the fate of billions in the world’s mega-slums, Davis gave us new ways of seeing — always with a post-capitalist world in his sights. Geographer Richard Walker discusses the many contributions of his fellow urbanist and radical. (Encore presentation.) The post Remembering Mike Davis appeared first on KPFA.
How did the influential scholar Cedric Robinson understand black radicalism and global capitalism? Yousuf Al-Bulushi has written about what he sees as several constituent elements of the Robinsonian black radical tradition, including an appreciation of culture (which pushes back against Marxism’s materialism) and a critique of state-based models of self-determination. Al-Bulushi also considers Robinson’s engagement with world-systems analysis. Yousuf Al-Bulushi, “Thinking Racial Capitalism and Black Radicalism from Africa: An Intellectual Geography of Cedric Robinson’s World-System” Geoforum (pdf) The post Cedric Robinson’s World appeared first on KPFA.
Gene-guided healthcare has taken U.S. medicine by storm, promising precision, targeted treatments to myriad illnesses. It has also proved very profitable. James Tabery traces how genetic medicine vied within the federal government with another approach to healthcare — one emphasizing the social and environmental determinants of health, such as whether you live in a polluted neighborhood — and triumphed over it. He argues that private industry has benefited, while public health has suffered. Resources: James Tabery, Tyranny of the Gene: Personalized Medicine and Its Threat to Public Health Knopf, 2023 Photo credit: Dave Titensor The post The Price of Gene-Based Medicine appeared first on KPFA.
First airing of the full-length interview with Peter Cave about his new book “How to Think Like a Philosopher: Scholars, Dreamers and Sages Who Can Teach Us How to Live.” The post Against the Grain – August 21, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.
Ours is an era of breathless talk about innovation, technical change, and disruption –- all for the presumed greater good. But what if the focus on relentless innovation has obscured the more important work of maintenance and care? Historian Lee Vinsel discusses the trajectory of technical innovation and its valorization, as well as the devaluing of maintaining what already exists. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell, The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most Currency, 2020 The Maintainers The post Hyping Innovation, Neglecting Maintenance appeared first on KPFA.
What role do historians, and the discipline of history itself, play in how historical events unfold? Priya Satia contends that historians were key architects of British imperialism, that history enabled empire in fundamental ways. She also contests the notion that history unfolds in a linear and progressive fashion, and discusses the work and impact of the working-class historian E. P. Thompson. Priya Satia, Time’s Monster: How History Makes History Belknap Press, 2023 (paper) The post History’s Complicity in Empire appeared first on KPFA.
They shut down the Las Vegas strip, when the casinos were operated by the mafia, and waged a grassroots fight against racism and poverty. The struggle of African American poor mothers for welfare rights in Nevada is a story with lessons for our times of punitive austerity. Historian Annelise Orlick has documented one of the forgotten but key social struggles of the 1960s and 70s. Resources: Annelise Orleck, Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty Beacon Press, 2023 The post Organizing Against Poverty appeared first on KPFA.
What makes one group of people show up and stand up for another group’s interests? Manijeh Moradian describes how what she calls affects of solidarity spurred Iranian student leftists in the U.S. to become active in Black liberation, Palestine liberation, and other radical movements and struggles of the 1960s and ‘70s. Manijeh Moradian, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States Duke University Press, 2022 The post Solidarity Across Difference appeared first on KPFA.
State-ownership of the means of production and a planned economy appear to be the hallmarks of Marxist thought, along with the notion that revolution necessitates passing through socialist and communist stages. But, as Peter Hudis points out, these ideas don’t originate with Marx. He discusses his Critique of the Gotha Program, in which Marx most fully expounds his conception of life after capitalism, and the gap between Marx’s vision and that of his later followers. Resources: Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program (Introduction by Peter Hudis) PM Press, 2022 The post Marx’s Communism Before Marxism appeared first on KPFA.
Revolutionaries in one country can inform and inspire rebels in another. Kevin A. Young examines the impact of Vietnamese and Chinese revolutionary strategies on El Salvador’s guerrillas in the tumultuous 1970s and ’80s. Among other things, he describes how conceptions of “prolonged popular war” were adopted and adapted by the FPL, the FMLN’s largest faction. Becker, Power, Wood, and Zumoff, eds., Transnational Communism across the Americas University of Illinois Press, 2023 The post (Re)making Revolution appeared first on KPFA.
The call to abolish the family and liberate its members has been one of the central pillars of the radical left historically. Yet today that venerable tradition is almost forgotten, abandoned with the ebbing of the Sixties. Sophie Lewis renews the argument for abolishing the family and replacing it with collective forms of care. Resources: Sophie Lewis, Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation Verso, 2022 The post Family Abolition appeared first on KPFA.
Why was the political philosopher Hannah Arendt so critical of mainstream Zionism? What did her criticisms have to do with how she understood nationalism and historical antisemitism? According to Jonathan Graubart, Arendt sought to delink Jewish nationalism from Israel’s state project; she also condemned Herzlian Zionism for subscribing to a view of eternal antisemitism. Jonathan Graubart, Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs Temple University Press, 2023 The post Arendt on Zionism appeared first on KPFA.
A hallmark of our age is feeling we’re perpetually struggling with time — not having enough of it to accomplish seemingly endless tasks and obligations, while swimming in a sea of distractions. Can we cope if we learn, following the gurus of time management, to become ever more disciplined and productive? Or does that just feed into a capitalist logic that doesn’t benefit us? Journalist Oliver Burkeman discusses the perils of time management orthodoxy. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021 The post Mastering Time? appeared first on KPFA.
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. The post Against the Grain – July 26, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.
The climate crisis no longer looms in the future, but has arrived in the form of deadly heat waves, enormous wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and droughts. While the fight to slow the effects of global warming continues, it’s clear that we also need to protect ourselves and the most vulnerable around us from the devastating effects of global warming. Award-winning science writer and broadcaster David Pogue discusses concrete steps to safeguard ourselves and our loved ones in an increasingly precarious world. The post Fund Drive Special: Preparing for the Climate Crisis appeared first on KPFA.
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. The post Against the Grain – July 24, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.
The acclaimed physician Gabor Maté believes that capitalist society damages us at an early age and that we carry that trauma through our lives—making us alienated, sick, and often prone to destructive behaviors. Maté draws from his remarkable background and radical commitments to provide us with tremendous insights into the maladies that are the norm in our society. His deeply humanistic work is featured in an award-winning documentary film. The post Fund Drive Special: Gabor Mate on Trauma appeared first on KPFA.
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. The post Against the Grain – July 18, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.
Modern art has always been a battleground — and the highly influential Museum of Modern Art has been partisan since its inception. Architectural historian Patricio Del Real discusses two differing political visions of modernism and modern architecture: one rooted in the left, and associated with figures such as Communist muralist Diego Rivera, and the other on the right, represented by the architect and fascist sympathizer Philip Johnson. He weighs in on MoMa’s promotion of a view of modernism in Latin America, stripped of its radical politics and racial fusions, and radiating American power and hegemony. Resources: Patricio del Real, Constructing Latin America: Architecture, Politics, and Race at the Museum of Modern Art Yale University Press, 2022 The post MoMa and Cultural Imperialism in Latin America appeared first on KPFA.
Why is the aging of populations framed as a crisis? What settler-colonial and capitalist logics are at work, and how are older people viewed and treated as a result? Sandy Grande delineates and critiques mainstream frameworks; she also advances a decolonial perspective that draws on indigenous attitudes toward elders and toward old age-associated conditions like dementia. René Dietrich and Kerstin Knopf, eds., Biopolitics, Geopolitics, Life: Settler States and Indigenous Presence Duke University Press, 2023 Sandy Grande, ed., Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought Rowman & Littlefield (Image on main page by Dwayne Reilander.) The post Aged Out? appeared first on KPFA.
Island nations have produced the least carbon dioxide emissions, but are paying the greatest price for global warming as they face inundation and obliteration. Yet many in wealthy continental countries know little about them or their plight. Scholar and environmental journalist Tina Gerhardt discusses the circumstances of islands surrounded by a rising sea, many made more vulnerable by economies dependent on tourism and histories of military exploitation and occupation. Resources: Christina Gerhardt, Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean UC Press, 2023 The post Islands in a Rising Sea appeared first on KPFA.
What stances did the renowned sociologist and historian W. E. B. Du Bois take toward race and class? And how and why did his convictions change over time? According to Michael Burawoy, Du Bois moved from a phenomenology of racism to a Black Marxism, a shift that culminated in Du Bois’s book on the Civil War and Reconstruction. (Encore presentation.) Michael Burawoy, “The Making of Black Marxism: The Complementary Perspectives of W. E .B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon” (pdf) Michael Burawoy, Public Sociology Polity, 2021 Part Two of the interview The post Du Bois on Race and Class appeared first on KPFA.
One of conservation’s greatest achievements happened mostly by accident and is still hiding in plain sight for most of us. When settlers established cities in the United States, they decimated the existing ecosystems. But in recent decades, as environmental historian Peter Alagona illustrates, there has been a remarkable return of wildlife to urban areas across the country. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Peter S. Alagona, The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities UC Press, 2023 The post The Fall and Rise of Urban Wildlife appeared first on KPFA.
Following the attacks of September 11th, the administration of George W. Bush instituted the widespread use of coercive interrogations of detainees, as well as kidnapping, forced disappearance, and sham commission proceedings. Yet for the first several years of the “war on terror” little was known about what the U.S. state was doing to prisoners, until hundreds of lawyers—some from the left, but others even from the military itself—challenged the U.S. government in court. Sociologist Lisa Hajjar describes the legal fight against torture and its legacy now. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Lisa Hajjar, The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture UC Press, 2022 The post Litigating Torture appeared first on KPFA.
Perhaps best known for his advocacy of “propaganda by the deed,” Johann Most (1846-1906) was a committed socialist before turning toward anarchism. What spurred that shift? Why did Most advocate violence – and later abandon that position? Tom Goyens is writing a biography of the fiery orator and influential editor who immigrated to the U.S. in 1882. Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer, eds., With Freedom in Our Ears: Histories of Jewish Anarchism University of Illinois Press, 2023 Anarchistories: Uncovering the World Anarchists Made Tom Goyens, Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914 University of Illinois Press, 2014 (paper) The post Anarchist Firebrand appeared first on KPFA.
The Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, are celebrated on the left for their militant opposition to capitalism, their broad church unionism across race and gender lines, and their ability to organize migrant and other precarious workers. As Ahmed White documents, they were crushed by unprecedented violence and vigilantism, which cast a long shadow over the U.S. labor movement and the left. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Ahmed White, Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers UC Press, 2022 The post The War on the Industrial Workers of the World appeared first on KPFA.
Throwing away the key is what the criminal punishment system – and, by extension, the U.S. public – does to tens of thousands of people behind bars. Why does the acclaimed public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson attend to and represent those serving extreme sentences? What does Joseph G. Ramsey mean when he refers to Stevenson’s “compassionate radicalism”? Ramsey talks about Stevenson’s transformative ideas, and his own. Joseph Ramsey, “Never Throw Away the Key” Portside Joseph Ramsey, “Don’t Judge an Issue Just by Its Cover – 12 Important Points from Jacobin’s Latest Issue ‘Reduce the Crime Rate,’” The Multiracial Unity Blog (Image on main page by Ron Lach.) The post Beyond Condemnation appeared first on KPFA.
Fossil fuels lie at the center of contemporary life — powering, despoiling, and altering everything around us. And that includes environmentalism itself, according to anthropologist David Bond. He discusses how concepts like toxic thresholds and environmental impact assessments are an accommodation to the continued existence of the oil and petro-chemical industries, rather than ways to address their inherent harms. (Encore presentation.) Resources: David Bond, Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment UC Press, 2022 The post The Environmentalism of the Fossil Fuel Industry appeared first on KPFA.
Paul Apostolidis interprets Marx’s writings about nighttime labor and considers the current state of worker struggles. The post Against the Grain – June 21, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.
Israel is one of the world’s most important producers of military hardware and surveillance technology, honed in its occupation of Palestine, and exported around the globe to various brutal regimes. Journalist and filmmaker Antony Loewenstein traces the history of Israel’s military tech sector, refined after the invasion of Lebanon and again following September 11th, and discusses its tools of mass surveillance today. Resources: Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World Verso, 2023 The post Exporting Israel’s Technology of Occupation appeared first on KPFA.
Can white people truly grasp how deeply racism is embedded in U.S. society, and in people’s psyches? According to David Mura, the stories that white people tell themselves about race make the recognition of Blacks as equals impossible. Also: more from Elisabeth Jay Friedman about intergenerational mobilizing. David Mura, The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives University of Minnesota Press, 2023 Elisabeth Jay Friedman and Ana Laura Rodríguez Gustá, “‘Welcome to the Revolution’: Promoting Generational Renewal in Argentina’s Ni Una Menos,” Qualitative Sociology (Image on main page by Kelly.) The post White Lies, Black Lives appeared first on KPFA.
Mass shootings and other forms of person-on-person violence dominate the headlines, but what less visible, and perhaps more insidious, kinds of violence exist? Barbara Chasin identifies and describes two types of violence that affect large numbers of people: organizational violence and structural violence. She also connects the dots between violence and economic inequality. Barbara Chasin, Inequality & Violence in the United States: Casualties of Capitalism, 3rd ed., Lexington Books, 2022 (Image on main page from Pix4free.) The post Structural & Organizational Violence appeared first on KPFA.
Universities are one of the most hallowed institutions in our society — but critics argue they’re closer to hedge funds that conduct classes. Higher education is largely tax-exempt, based on the idea that universities benefit the public at large, including the communities where they are located. Yet urbanist and historian Davarian Baldwin argues that cities pay a very high price for universities which, whether public or private, are engines of profit, encroaching on adjacent communities and exploiting low wage labor, while grossly subsidized by their host cities. Resources: Davarian L. Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities Bold Type Books, 2021 The post Cities and the Big Business of Higher Education appeared first on KPFA.
How does a social movement attract younger participants, who may be turned off by older activists’ approaches, styles, and understandings? Elisabeth Jay Friedman describes how Ni Una Menos, an influential feminist formation in Argentina, managed to build an intergenerational mass movement. Elisabeth Jay Friedman and Ana Laura Rodríguez Gustá, ‘“Welcome to the Revolution’: Promoting Generational Renewal in Argentina’s Ni Una Menos,” Qualitative Sociology (Image on main page by TitiNicola.) The post Mobilizing Across Generations appeared first on KPFA.
As the world rushes headlong into the climate emergency, what might a liberatory approach look like, that would avert ecological disaster while making another world possible? Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese have laid out one vision for eco-socialism that takes on the difficult question of how to plan society in a radically different way. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics Verso, 2022 Half-Earth Socialism: A Planetary Planning Game The post Half-Earth Socialism appeared first on KPFA.
To be queer and communist at a time when the Communist Party in the U.S. banned LGBT people was tricky and often perilous. In her new book Bettina Aptheker profiles Lorraine Hansberry (who famously penned the play “A Raisin in the Sun”), Harry Hay (best known for founding the Mattachine Society), and other figures with radical sensibilities and closeted sexualities.
Bettina Aptheker, Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s-1990s Routledge, 2023
The post Queer Communists appeared first on KPFA.
What are the contradictions and uses of environmental conservation and land preservation in a settler colonial state? Like South Africa and the United States, the Israeli government has carved out large swaths of land for ecological protection — and the dispossession of native populations is often hidden from sight. Legal anthropologist Irus Braverman discusses the settler ecologies of Palestine-Israel. Resources: Irus Braverman, Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel University of Minnesota Press, 2023 The post Israel and Settler Conservation appeared first on KPFA.
An Asian Pacific Islander history-themed program featuring Jean Pfaelzer on anti-Chinese pogroms; Karen Ishizuka on API organizing; Craig Santos Perez on Guam’s indigenous Chamorro population; and Julie Otsuka about her novel about Japanese American incarceration. Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans UC Press Karen Ishizuka, Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties Verso Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [guma’] Omnidawn Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine Anchor Books (Image on main page by Andrew Ratto.) The post API Setbacks & Struggles appeared first on KPFA.
North Americans are sick, stressed, and alienated, a state of affairs accentuated in recent years by Covid. The Hungarian-Canadian physician Gabor Maté argues that capitalism engenders illness, while the medical system blindly ignores the lives of its patients. Maté discusses individual and collective change, while reflecting on human nature, alienation and rightwing politics, and the work of Karl Marx. Resources: Gabor Maté, MD with Daniel Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture Avery, 2022 The post Gabor Maté on Illness, Human Nature, Capitalism, and Socialism appeared first on KPFA.
In the United States, few things seem as wholesome as camping, letting us temporarily escape the daily grind and commune with nature and each other. But Phoebe Young argues that camping has a complicated history, which tell us a lot about Americans’ notions of nature and the nation. She discusses the various forms that camping has taken in this country, from recreational camping to the encampments of those without shelter to Occupy Wall Street. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Phoebe S.K. Young, Camping Grounds: Public Nature in American Life from the Civil War to the Occupy Movement Oxford University Press, 2021
The post The Politics of Camping appeared first on KPFA.
Groundbreaking theorist David Harvey considers Marx’s analytical framework and applies it to contemporary conditions.
The post Fund Drive Special: David Harvey appeared first on KPFA.
Audio highlights of the award-winning film “Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness.”
The post Fund Drive Special: “Aware” Revisited appeared first on KPFA.
What can the work of Karl Marx tell us about the world we live in, beset by pandemics, economic distress, and vast inequality? The renowned geographer and radical theorist David Harvey has made answering that question his life’s work — and we on the left are so much richer for it.
The post Fund Drive Special: David Harvey on Marxism and Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.
Penn professor Paul Goldin discusses the Chinese philosophical text “Tao Te Ching,” which has inspired and intrigued readers for more than two millennia. And we offer as a thank-you gift Ursula Le Guin’s acclaimed rendition of the text.
The post Fund Drive Special: Tao Te Ching appeared first on KPFA.
The acclaimed physician Gabor Maté believes that capitalist society damages us at an early age and that we carry that trauma through our lives—making us alienated, sick, and often prone to destructive behaviors. Maté draws from his remarkable background and radical commitments to provide us with tremendous insights into the maladies that are the norm in our society. His deeply humanistic work is featured in an award-winning documentary film.
The post Fund Drive Special: Gabor Mate on Trauma appeared first on KPFA.
The acclaimed physician Gabor Maté believes that capitalist society damages us at an early age and that we carry that trauma through our lives—making us alienated, sick, and often prone to destructive behaviors. Maté draws from his remarkable background and radical commitments to provide us with tremendous insights into the maladies that are the norm in our society. His deeply humanistic work is featured in an award-winning documentary film.
The post Fund Drive Special: Moving Beyond Trauma appeared first on KPFA.
In the award-winning film “Aware,” six thinkers weigh in on the nature of consciousness.
The post Fund Drive Special: On Consciousness appeared first on KPFA.
Oakland’s Police Department has been a poster child for abusive and violent law enforcement. But award-winning journalist Darwin Bondgraham argues that the OPD is exceptional only because of the scrutiny it’s received. He discusses the department’s history from the Red Scare of the 1920s to the Black Panthers in the 1960s to Occupy Oakland in 2011 and beyond, highlighting the ways activists and others have fought to hold the police department accountable against the odds.
Resources:
Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham, The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-up in Oakland Atria Books, 2023
Photograph by Pete Rosos
The post Resisting Police Reform in Oakland appeared first on KPFA.
A number of things are bad for your health. Is economic inequality one of them? According to Stephen Bezruchka, U.S. population health lags behind that of dozens of other countries for two main reasons: extreme economic inequality and a lack of government support directed at early life. (Encore presentation.)
Stephen Bezruchka, Inequality Kills Us All: COVID-19’s Health Lessons for the World Routledge, 2022
(Image on main page by AllaSerebrina.)
The post Inequality’s Impact on Health appeared first on KPFA.
Atlanta is a pivotal city for reasons cultural, economic, and political. And so the changes that the city and metropolitan area have undergone since the 1990s have been consequential, deepening class and racial inequality. As Dan Immergluck points out, these shifts were not the inevitable product of market forces, but the result of political decisions. He lays out the lessons that can been drawn from the gentrification of Atlanta. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Dan Immergluck, Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Atlanta UC Press, 2022
The post The Gentrification of Atlanta appeared first on KPFA.
What does May Day, as an anarchist and socialist political project, commemorate? Nicolas Lampert and Paul Buhle share historical background; Cindy Milstein reviews anarchist principles; Richard Lichtman considers what Marx called alienation; and Paul C. Gray discusses the importance of identifying workers’ issues of concern and creating democratic structures.
(Image on main page by Washington Area Spark.)
The post May Day Meanings appeared first on KPFA.
The experience of awe — of a sense of vast, mysterious wonderment — may feel beyond classification or definition. But recently, awe as an emotion has been deeply probed, and the results are fascinating. Scientist Dacher Keltner, who has pioneered the study of awe, argues that awe allows us to make connections that break down our sense of isolation and can lead to more cooperative ways of seeing and being in the world. (Full-length interview.)
Resources:
Dacher Keltner, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life Penguin Press, 2023
Photo credit: Natalie Keltner-McNeil
The post Dacher Keltner on Awe appeared first on KPFA.
Can classic organizing methods be effective in gig economy workplaces? Paul C. Gray examines how methods like organizing conversations, social mapping, social charting, leader identification, and the identification of strategic chokepoints were applied by food couriers in Toronto to the peculiar circumstances of their platform-based work environment.
Labour/Le Travail
Gig Workers United
(Photo on main page by Kai Pilger.)
The post Organizing in the Gig Economy appeared first on KPFA.
Many have concluded that the climate emergency will only be addressed by mass collective action. But given the small size of the U.S. left, who would populate such a movement? Scholar and participant-activist Kai Bosworth draws lessons from the struggles against the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines in the Upper Midwest, which brought together a broad coalition of opponents, ranging from anti-capitalist to landowners. He discusses the populist side of that movement — its openings and limitations, including xenophobia and nationalism.
Resources:
Kai Bosworth, Pipeline Populism: Grassroots Environmentalism in the Twenty-First Century University of Minnesota Press, 2022
The post Popular Protest Against Oil Pipelines appeared first on KPFA.
Where can one find an outstanding example of decentralized democracy? Richard Franke describes a remarkable initiative launched in the Indian state of Kerala that devolved power to the community level, made local development a bottom-up process, and drew on mass mobilizations to bring to light people’s needs and how best to address them.
T.M. Thomas Isaac and Richard W. Franke, People’s Planning: Kerala, Local Democracy and Development LeftWord Books, 2021
The post Democratic Development appeared first on KPFA.
Ours is an era of breathless talk about innovation, technical change, and disruption –- all for the presumed greater good. But what if the focus on relentless innovation has obscured the more important work of maintenance and care? Historian Lee Vinsel discusses the trajectory of technical innovation and its valorization, as well as the devaluing of maintaining what already exists.
Resources:
Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell, The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most Currency, 2020
The Maintainers
The post Hyping Innovation, Neglecting Maintenance appeared first on KPFA.
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
The post Against the Grain – April 17, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.
What happens to survivors of violence — often perpetrated by intimates — who defend themselves against their attackers? According to legal scholar Leigh Goodmark, it often depends on whether those survivors look suitably victim-like. She discusses the circumstances that frequently lead to the criminalization of survivors of violence –- and makes the case for the abolition of a punitive legal system.
Resources:
Leigh Goodmark, Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism UC Press, 2023
The post Criminalizing the Victims of Intimate Partner Violence appeared first on KPFA.
In many immigration holding facilities, detainees can choose to work for wages. But is the language of choice in this context misleading? Katie Bales deploys the concept of unfree labor to explain what’s going on within what she calls the immigration industrial complex. She emphasizes the historical and geopolitical factors that compel many detainees to agree to work for often miniscule wages.
Boris et al., eds., Global Labor Migration: New Directions University of Illinois Press, 2022
(Photo on main page by DIAC Images.)
The post “Unfree” Labor in Immigration Detention appeared first on KPFA.
What was the most powerful technology introduced into schools in the past century? You might answer the computer, or something like Zoom, or even, the slide projector. But scholar Antero Garcia argues that it was the humble yellow school bus. Buses have been central to the struggle to desegregate education. And school buses are a zone — and mainly an unnoticed one — in which many working class children and children of color spend a significant part of their day.
Resources:
Antero Garcia, All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology University of Minnesota Press, 2023
Creative Commons image
The post The Invisible Yellow School Bus appeared first on KPFA.
The pandemic, the Muslim bans, the US-backed Saudi bombing of Yemen, counterterrorism initiatives – Yemeni Americans have faced, and continue to confront, major challenges to their well-being and their ability to connect with loved ones in Yemen. Sunaina Maira’s recent ethnographic work focuses on Oakland-based Yemeni corner store owners and their families.
Nadia Kim and Pawan Dhingra, eds., Disciplinary Futures: Sociology in Conversation with American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies NYU Press, forthcoming
The post Against the Grain – April 5, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.
It took more than three generations of struggle to win the vote for half the population of the United States. The fight for women’s suffrage rose out of the battle for slavery’s abolition and later foundered in the backlash against Reconstruction, gaining new life with the social upheavals of the early 20th century. Historian Ellen Carol Dubois discusses the advances and setbacks, fractures and divisions of the seventy-five year long struggle for women’s enfranchisement.
Resources:
Ellen Carol DuBois, Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote Simon and Schuster, 2021
The post The 75 Year Struggle for Women’s Enfranchisement appeared first on KPFA.
The movement of Chinese people – around 300 million of them – from rural areas to China’s cities has been called the largest mass migration in human history. Have the working-class migrants who’ve built China’s megacities been rewarded for their efforts? Eli Friedman describes the obstacles and injustices they’ve encountered, particularly when trying to get schooling for their children.
Eli Friedman, The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City Columbia University Press, 2022
(Image on main page by Matt Ming.)
The post Migrant Workers in China appeared first on KPFA.
Pirates are some of the most immediately recognizable figures in popular culture –- and some of the most inaccurately represented. Historian Marcus Rediker argues that the actual pirates who lived during the 17th and 18th centuries created a remarkably egalitarian world for themselves at sea, democratically electing their leaders and sharing their takings equally.
Resources:
David Lester and Marcus Rediker, Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic, a Graphic Novel Beacon Press, 2023
Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age Verso, 2012
The post The Egalitarian World of Pirates appeared first on KPFA.
A women’s history-themed program featuring Bettina Aptheker on her efforts to assist Angela Davis and her turn toward feminism; Jennifer Guglielmo on Italian American women anarchists in New York City; and Manijeh Moradian on an Iranian women’s uprising amidst the revolutionary ferment of 1979.
Bettina Aptheker, Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel Seal Press, 2006
Jennifer Guglielmo, Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945 University of North Carolina Press, 2010
Manijeh Moradian, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States Duke University Press, 2022
The post Inspired Women appeared first on KPFA.
What can our fantasies about space tell us about life on earth? Fred Scharman discusses competing visions for long-term space occupancy over the last century and a half, many of them emanating from Russia and the United States even before the Cold War, and now monopolized by billionaires like Elon Musk. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Fred Scharmen, Space Forces: A Critical History of Life in Outer Space Verso, 2021
The post Conquering Outer Space appeared first on KPFA.
What makes one group of people show up and stand up for another group’s interests? Manijeh Moradian describes how what she calls affects of solidarity spurred Iranian student leftists in the U.S. to become active in Black liberation, Palestine liberation, and other radical movements and struggles of the 1960s and ‘70s.
Manijeh Moradian, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States Duke University Press, 2022
The post Solidarity Across Difference appeared first on KPFA.
Following the attacks of September 11th, the administration of George W. Bush instituted the widespread use of coercive interrogations of detainees, as well as kidnapping, forced disappearance, and sham commission proceedings. Yet for the first several years of the “war on terror” little was known about what the U.S. state was doing to prisoners, until hundreds of lawyers — some from the left, but others even from the military itself — challenged the U.S. government in court. Sociologist Lisa Hajjar describes the legal fight against torture and its legacy now. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Lisa Hajjar, The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture UC Press, 2022
The post Litigating Torture appeared first on KPFA.
According to Jesse Olsavsky, vigilance committees in Philadelphia, Boston, and other northern cities constituted the militant, highly organized urban wing of the Underground Railroad. According to Olsavsky, the interviews conducted by vigilance committee members with runaways acted as crucial conduits for information, ideas, and strategies for resistance.
Jesse Olsavsky, The Most Absolute Abolition: Runaways, Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Revolutionary Abolitionism, 1835–1861 LSU Press, 2022
(Image on main page by Melissa Grimes Guy.)
The post The Vigilance Committees appeared first on KPFA.
Twenty years ago, Against the Grain came on the air for the first time, in the midst of turmoil, protest, and impending war. In the second half of a two part retrospective, historian Iain Boal discusses the context out of which Against the Grain emerged, from the media reform, global justice, and antiwar movements at the turn of the new century, to the program’s deeper roots in West Coast radicalism and radio.
Photo credit of Sasha Lilley and C.S. Soong: Ilona Bray
The post Against the Grain’s Beginnings appeared first on KPFA.
In the first of a two-show retrospective marking Against the Grain’s twentieth anniversary, C. S. presents excerpts of some of his favorite interviews. Featured are David Hawkes talking about money, magic, and ideology; Laura Kipnis on monogamous coupledom; Theodore Brown on the history of socialism; Juliet Hooker on “democratic loss” and Black activism; and Louise Erdrich on the search for answers to life’s big questions.
(Image on main page by Upsilon Andromedae.)
The post Celebrating Twenty Years appeared first on KPFA.
The poorest and most vulnerable regularly find themselves at the mercy of the juvenile and criminal justice systems – through policing and detention, of course, but also child removals and child support, property seizure, and probation. Scholar and lawyer Daniel Hatcher argues that U.S. courts, prosecutors, sheriffs, and probation departments are generating vast amounts of revenue on the backs of poor people, often causing them irreversible harm.
Resources:
Daniel L. Hatcher, Injustice, Inc.: How America’s Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor UC Press, 2023
The post Profiting from Injustice appeared first on KPFA.
The experience of awe — of a sense of vast, mysterious wonderment — may feel beyond classification or definition. But recently, awe as an emotion has been deeply probed, and the results are fascinating. Scientist Dacher Keltner, who has pioneered the study of awe, argues that awe allows us to make connections that break down our sense of isolation and can lead to more cooperative ways of seeing and being in the world.
Photo credit: Natalie Keltner-McNeil
The post Fund Drive Special: Dacher Keltner on Awe appeared first on KPFA.
Audio highlights, including some never-before-aired excerpts, of the award-winning film “Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness.”
The post Fund Drive Special: “Aware” Revisited appeared first on KPFA.
A look at the doctrine of discovery, a set of concepts and principles used to justify the domination and dehumanization of indigenous people.
The post Fund Drive Special: The Doctrine of Discovery appeared first on KPFA.
Football is the most popular sport in the United States and the NFL its the most influential sports league. A documentary, featuring sports writer Dave Zirin, examines the ways that the NFL has used the cache of football and black culture to effectively sell support for U.S. militarism, reactionary notions of manhood, and to shore up establishment politics, all the while benefiting the vastly wealthy white team owners.
The post Fund Drive Special: Football, Militarism, and Dissent appeared first on KPFA.
A look at the doctrine of discovery, a set of concepts and principles used to justify the domination and dehumanization of indigenous people.
The post Against the Grain – Wednesday, February 22 appeared first on KPFA.
How many thinkers come to mind who combine medical training, first-hand experience of dealing with some of society’s most abused members, such as drug addicts, and a deep familiarity with the ideas of Karl Marx? Gabor Mate draws from his remarkable background and radical commitments to provide us with tremendous insights into the maladies that are the norm in our society — how stress and trauma, accentuated by the divisions of class, gender, and race, damage our lives and bodies.
Photo credit: Matej Stransky
The post Fund Drive Special: Gabor Mate on Sickness and Health appeared first on KPFA.
The fortunes of DDT, the synthetic pesticide which infamously devastated bird populations in the United States, rose and fell during the 20th century, and rose again in the 21st century, driven by a campaign by Big Tobacco to sew uncertainty about what can be known. Historian of medicine Elena Conis discusses the trajectory and afterlife of DDT, used to cast doubt on scientific evidence and undermine the regulation of private corporations and markets. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Elena Conis, How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT Bold Type Books, 2022
The post DDT’s Toxic Reach appeared first on KPFA.
Part Two of our interview with Michael Burawoy about W. E. B. Du Bois’s political trajectory, and about Burawoy’s latest book. Also: a conversation with David Harris (1946-2023) from our archives about his legendary antiwar activism.
Michael Burawoy, Public Sociology Polity, 2021
Aldon Morris et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of W. E. B. Du Bois
The post Du Bois, Burawoy, and David Harris appeared first on KPFA.
What stances did the renowned sociologist and historian W. E. B. Du Bois take toward race and class? And how and why did his convictions change over time? According to Michael Burawoy, Du Bois moved from a phenomenology of racism to a Black Marxism, a shift that culminated in Du Bois’s book on the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Michael Burawoy, “The Making of Black Marxism: The Complementary Perspectives of W. E .B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon” (pdf)
Michael Burawoy, Public Sociology Polity, 2021
The post Du Bois on Race and Class appeared first on KPFA.
The world seems in dismal shape and only set to get worse. And capitalism appears to be the only option, spinning us further and further out of control. But Danny Dorling argues that if you take the longer view, stepping back and looking at measures like the rate of economic growth, innovation, debt, population growth, and more—the world is actually slowing down. He argues that it augurs a transition out of capitalism to a more stable society. (Full-length interview.)
Resources:
Danny Dorling, Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration — and Why It’s a Good Thing Yale University Press, 2021
Photo credit: Mc Gale
The post Is Capitalism Waning? appeared first on KPFA.
It’s been described at the most turbulent period of global class struggle in history — the turn of the 20th century when revolutionaries around the world found common cause against capital and empire. Christina Heatherton discusses the revolutionary internationalism swirling around the Mexican Revolution and the remarkable intersection of radicals at that time. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Christina Heatherton, Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution UC Press, 2022
The post The Radical International appeared first on KPFA.
Various explanations have been offered for what’s been called an anxiety epidemic among university students, but Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou believes a crucial causal factor is financialization, the way the financial sector and its logic has permeated our social, economic, and individual lives. He sees signs of optimism in the proliferation of student mobilizations around the issue of anxiety. (Encore presentation.)
Max Haiven and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, “An ‘Anxiety Epidemic’ in the Financialized University: Critical Questions and Unexpected Resistance” Cultural Politics
Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World University of Chicago Press, 2022
The post Financialization & Student Anxiety appeared first on KPFA.
Some causes make for strange bedfellows, but few like the campaign against sex trafficking, which brings together radical feminists, Christian evangelicals, the US state, and even QAnon. Cultural anthropologist Gregory Mitchell separates myth from fact and examines how allegedly rescuing women and girls from trafficking, included at mega sporting events, leads to increased police violence, including sexual violence, against sex workers.
Resources:
Gregory Mitchell, Panics without Borders: How Global Sporting Events Drive Myths about Sex Trafficking UC Press, 2022
The post Sex Trafficking and Sports Events appeared first on KPFA.
Throwing away the key is what the criminal punishment system – and, by extension, the U.S. public – does to tens of thousands of people behind bars. Why does the acclaimed public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson attend to and represent those serving extreme sentences? What does Joseph G. Ramsey mean by Stevenson’s “compassionate radicalism”? Ramsey talks about Stevenson’s transformative ideas, and his own.
Joseph Ramsey, “Never Throw Away the Key: On the Compassionate Radicalism of Bryan Stevenson’s ‘Just Mercy,’” Socialism and Democracy
Joseph Ramsey, “Don’t Judge an Issue Just by Its Cover – 12 Important Points from Jacobin’s Latest Issue ‘Reduce the Crime Rate,’” The Multiracial Unity Blog
(Image on main page by Ron Lach.)
The post Beyond Condemnation appeared first on KPFA.
Fossil fuels lie at the center of contemporary life — powering, despoiling, and altering everything around us. And that includes environmentalism itself, according to anthropologist David Bond. He discusses how concepts like toxic thresholds and environmental impact assessments are an accommodation to the continued existence of the oil and petro-chemical industries, rather than ways to address their inherent harms.
Resources:
David Bond, Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment UC Press, 2022
The post The Environmentalism of the Fossil Fuel Industry appeared first on KPFA.
Mass shootings and other forms of person-on-person violence dominate the headlines, but what less visible, and perhaps more insidious, kinds of violence exist? Barbara Chasin identifies and describes two types of violence that affect large numbers of people: organizational violence and structural violence. She also connects the dots between violence and economic inequality.
Barbara Chasin, Inequality & Violence in the United States: Casualties of Capitalism, 3rd ed., Lexington Books, 2022
(Image on main page from Pix4free.)
The post Structural & Organizational Violence appeared first on KPFA.
Why do so many people who see themselves as progressive nonetheless support the state of Israel, considered an apartheid state for its treatment of the native Palestinian population? Scholar Saree Makdisi argues that the answer partially lies in the Israeli state’s cultivation of Western liberal support. He discusses campaigns designed to appeal to progressives — such as large-scale tree planting, creating museums to tolerance, and encouraging gay tourism — blocking from sight the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinians. He argues that support amongst progressives in the United States and Europe is slipping nevertheless.
Resources:
Saree Makdisi, Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial UC Press, 2022
The post Israel and the Progressives appeared first on KPFA.
A number of things are bad for your health. Is economic inequality one of them? According to Stephen Bezruchka, U.S. population health lags behind that of dozens of other countries for two main reasons: extreme economic inequality and a lack of government support directed at early life.
Stephen Bezruchka, Inequality Kills Us All: COVID-19’s Health Lessons for the World Routledge, 2022
(Image on main page by AllaSerebrina.)
The post Inequality’s Impact on Health appeared first on KPFA.
Work changed dramatically during the Covid pandemic. Enormous numbers of people lost their jobs, while others were able to work remotely. And then there were so-called essential workers, whose in-person jobs put them at the highest risk. In response, many of them organized, often informally. Sociologist Jamie McCallum argues that the struggles of essential workers during the pandemic fed into a wave of labor organizing since.
Resources:
Jamie K McCallum, Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice Basic Books, 2022
The post The Labor Struggles of Essential Workers appeared first on KPFA.
Can individual psychological problems be addressed without an understanding of social conditions and political factors? Silvia Dutchevici talks about critical therapy, an alternative to traditional psychotherapy that fosters discussion of structural forces and oppressive systems in relation to mental health.
Silvia Dutchevici, Critical Therapy: Power and Liberation in Psychotherapy
The Critical Therapy Institute
(Image on main page by Alex Green.)
The post Critical Therapy appeared first on KPFA.
Who is ultimately responsible for global warming? Most often it’s cast as a problem we’ve all created equally, whether we’re rich or poor. In recent years, some attention has been paid to the top 10% of the population, whose high consumption lifestyles — large houses, large vehicles, and frequent plane flights — generate disproportionately large amounts of carbon emissions. Geographer Matthew Huber counters that while class is central, focusing primarily on consumption lets the key culprits off the hook: the corporations making a profit off of carbon-intensive production.
Resources:
Matthew T. Huber, Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet Verso, 2022
The post Climate Responsibility appeared first on KPFA.
What does it mean to be committed to nonviolence, in one’s activism and everyday life? Kazu Haga reveals that Kingian Nonviolence is a principled way of life, one that actively confronts violence and injustice, restores relationships, and helps create what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called Beloved Community. (Encore presentation.)
Kazu Haga, Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm Parallax, 2020
East Point Peace Academy
California Institute of Integral Studies and CIIS Public Programs
The post Kingian Nonviolence appeared first on KPFA.
What is ecomusicology, and what sorts of things do ecomusicologists investigate? Aaron S. Allen defines and traces the contours of this interdisciplinary field of study. Also, we revisit a conversation with Martin Daughtry about the auditory dimension of armed conflict and the violence perpetrated by mechanized sounds of wartime.
Aaron Allen’s keynote lecture on global ecomusicologies
Allen & Dawe, eds., Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature Routledge, 2016
J. Martin Daughtry, Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq Oxford University Press, 2015
The post Sonic Worlds appeared first on KPFA.
One of conservation’s greatest achievements happened mostly by accident and is still hiding in plain sight for most of us. When settlers established cities in the United States, they decimated the existing ecosystems. But in recent decades, as environmental historian Peter Alagona illustrates, there has been a remarkable return of wildlife to urban areas across the country.
Resources:
Peter S. Alagona, The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities UC Press, 2023
The post The Fall and Rise of Urban Wildlife appeared first on KPFA.
What happens when meditation and yoga are taught behind bars? Are the imprisoned student-practitioners prodded to view their suffering as generated solely by their thoughts and actions, or do the classes foster an awareness of the structural and systemic factors that contributed to their incarceration? Farah Godrej taught yoga and meditation in prison and interviewed both fellow instructors and formerly incarcerated practitioners. (Encore presentation.)
Farah Godrej, Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State Oxford University Press, 2022
The post Contemplating Incarceration appeared first on KPFA.
The Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, are celebrated on the left for their militant opposition to capitalism, their broad church unionism across race and gender lines, and their ability to organize migrant and other precarious workers. As Ahmed White documents, they were crushed by unprecedented violence and vigilantism, which cast a long shadow over the U.S. labor movement and the left.
Resources:
Ahmed White, Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers UC Press, 2022
The post The War on the Industrial Workers of the World appeared first on KPFA.
Highlights of some of the best commentary presented on Against the Grain in 2022, featuring Nandita Sharma on nation-states and nationalism; Sarah Clark Miller on moral precarity in neoliberal times; Max Haiven on palm oil and capitalist logics; and Michael Albert on the corporate division of labor.
Full-length interviews with Nandita Sharma, Sarah Clark Miller, Max Haiven, and Michael Albert.
The post A Look Back appeared first on KPFA.
A twentieth-anniversary edition of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, by the UCLA-based historian Robin D. G. Kelley, recently came out. Kelley spoke about his book shortly after it was published. Kelley later joined the program to talk about Aimé Césaire, one of the thinkers featured in Freedom Dreams. (Encore presentation.)
Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination Beacon, 2022
(Image on main page by Ivan Radic.)
The post Dreams of Liberation appeared first on KPFA.
We’re often told that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians rises out of a unique historical situation. But the dispossession of the Palestinians, rather than being exceptional, has strong echoes in other historical dispossessions. Gary Fields discusses the enclosure of the lands of the English peasantry, Native Americans, and the inhabitants of historic Palestine. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Gary Fields, Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror UC Press, 2017
The post Dispossession and Enclosure appeared first on KPFA.
This year saw the publication of a fifteenth-anniversary edition of Vijay Prashad’s award-winning book “The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World,” which examines the origins, the development, and what the author calls the assassination of the Third World project. Today’s program features excerpts of a two-part in-studio interview with Prashad conducted shortly after the book first came out.
The post Third World History appeared first on KPFA.
The fortunes of DDT, the synthetic pesticide which infamously devastated bird populations in the United States, rose and fell during the 20th century, and rose again in the 21st century, driven by a campaign by Big Tobacco to sew uncertainty about what can be known. Historian of medicine Elena Conis discusses the trajectory and afterlife of DDT, used to cast doubt on scientific evidence and undermine the regulation of private corporations and markets. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Elena Conis, How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT Bold Type Books, 2022
The post DDT’s Toxic Reach appeared first on KPFA.
Covid has exposed the precarious health of working class people and people of color in this country. And the climate disaster is laying bare the vulnerability of so many around the world on a changing planet. What’s the connection? Political economist Raj Patel and physician Rupa Marya argue that capitalism, with its roots in colonialism, has derailed our ecosystems, both the ones outside us and the ones inside our bodies. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021
The post A World on Fire, Inside and Out appeared first on KPFA.
Most of us assume that our medical data is protected under U.S. law — but, as sociologist Mary Ebeling illustrates, that’s wrong. Even when we don’t collect it ourselves with fitness trackers and health apps, our most sensitive health information is gathered from across the web, and package and sold as data commodities by brokers like the credit bureaus Equifax and Experian. Ebeling discusses the afterlives of our medical data, as well as the lack of medical data privacy in a post-Roe world. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Mary F.E. Ebeling, Afterlives of Data: Life and Debt under Capitalist Surveillance UC Press, 2022
The post Our Medical Data, Everywhere appeared first on KPFA.
According to James Martel, what anarchism opposes is “archism,” a form of politics based on rule and hierarchy. He points to three instances in which anarchism – by which he means horizontalist and collective politics– took hold: the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s; the Rojavan Revolution in contemporary Syria; and a region of Papua New Guinea where a man named Yali once held sway. (Encore presentation.)
James Martel, Anarchist Prophets: Disappointing Vision and the Power of Collective Sight Duke University Press, 2022
The post Anarchist Visions and Realities appeared first on KPFA.
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
The post Against the Grain – December 14, 2022 appeared first on KPFA.
According to the spiritual explorer and teacher Ram Dass, we are far too busy being somebody.
The post Fund Drive Special: Ram Dass on “Becoming Nobody” appeared first on KPFA.
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
The post Against the Grain – December 12, 2022 appeared first on KPFA.
Lynne Twist discusses her new book “Living a Committed Life: Finding Freedom and Fulfillment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself.”
The post Fund Drive Special: A Committed Life appeared first on KPFA.
The world seems in dismal shape and only set to get worse. And capitalism appears to be the only option, spinning us further and further out of control. But Danny Dorling argues that if you take the longer view, stepping back and looking at measures like the rates of economic growth, innovation, debt, population growth, and more — the world is actually slowing down. He argues that it augurs a transition out of capitalism to a more stable society.
Photo credit: Mc Gale
The post Fund Drive Special: The Ebbing of Capitalism? appeared first on KPFA.
Sidewalks take us places, but they’re also places of their own, where all sorts of people come together and interact. Shannon Mattern, who has written about the history of the sidewalk, claims that we’re entering a new era of sidewalk planning, use, and politics, driven in large part by advances in communications, surveillance, and smart technologies. (Encore presentation.)
Sarah Sharma and Rianka Singh, eds., Re-Understanding Media: Feminist Extensions of Marshall McLuhan Duke University Press, 2022
Shannon Mattern, A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences Princeton University Press, 2021
The post Sidewalk Planning and Politics appeared first on KPFA.
Why does the United States intervene militarily around the world? Supporters might claim that the U.S. acts in the interests of national security. For critics, a likely answer would be that the country wants to exercise influence and domination over others. Journalist Andrew Cockburn, however, argues that a great number of military decisions are based on financial benefit and profiteering, including for rival bureaucracies within the military. (Encore presentation.) Andrew Cockburn, The Spoils of War Power, Profit and the American War Machine Verso, 2021 The post The Spoils of War appeared first on KPFA.
Where can one find an outstanding example of decentralized democracy? Richard Franke describes a remarkable initiative launched in the Indian state of Kerala that devolved power to the community level, made local development a bottom-up process, and drew on mass mobilizations to bring to light people’s needs and how best to address them. T.M. Thomas Isaac and Richard W. Franke, People’s Planning: Kerala, Local Democracy and Development LeftWord Books, 2021 The post Democratic Development appeared first on KPFA.
Atlanta is a pivotal city for reasons cultural, economic, and political. And so the changes that the city and metropolitan area have undergone since the 1990s have been consequential, deepening class and racial inequality. As Dan Immergluck points out, these shifts were not the inevitable product of market forces, but the result of political decisions. He lays out the lessons that can been drawn from the gentrification of Atlanta. Resources: Dan Immergluck, Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Atlanta UC Press, 2022 The post The Gentrification of Atlanta appeared first on KPFA.
Belief conjures up political fanaticism and blind religiosity. But evolutionary anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that belief is also connected to our capacities to imagine, create, and change the world for the better. He reflects on why the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea is a central part of what makes us human. (Encore presentation.) Agustín Fuentes, Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being Yale University Press, 2019 The post The Evolution of Belief appeared first on KPFA.
The Republican Party is gripped by a hatred of immigrants. But geographer Reece Jones argues it has not always been so. Instead, one man, the late John Tanton, was responsible for making nativism appear a central concern of conservatives, by propagating scores of anti-immigrant organizations, some which eventually helped staff the Trump Administration. And, as Jones points out, Tanton’s nativism originated from an unexpected place: the environmental movements of the Sixties. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Reece Jones, White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall Beacon Press, 2021 The post Nativism, Immigration, and Environmentalism appeared first on KPFA.
Bunkering and doomsday prepping, far from being eccentric or fringe activities, are baked into U.S. politics. So argues Emily Ray, who describes how Americans have been encouraged, by both Cold War administrations and today’s political elites, to think of doomsday preparation as an individual rather than collective endeavor, one that involves looking to the market for solutions. (Encore presentation.) The post Preparing for Disaster appeared first on KPFA.
Following the attacks of September 11th, the administration of George W. Bush instituted the widespread use of coercive interrogations of detainees, as well as kidnapping, forced disappearance, and sham commission proceedings. Yet for the first several years of the “war on terror” little was known about what the U.S. state was doing to prisoners, until hundreds of lawyers—some from the left, but others even from the military itself—challenged the U.S. government in court. Sociologist Lisa Hajjar describes the legal fight against torture and its legacy now. Resources: Lisa Hajjar, The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture UC Press, 2022 The post Litigating Torture appeared first on KPFA.
Species extinction and loss of biodiversity may seem like twenty-first century concerns, but according to Wai Chee Dimock, nineteenth-century thinkers like Thoreau anticipated irreversible changes to the natural world. Thoreau, she asserts, was deeply concerned about the fate of both wildlife and Native American populations. (Encore presentation.) Wiggins, Fornoff, and Kim, eds. Timescales: Thinking across Ecological Temporalities University of Minnesota Press, 2020 Wai Chee Dimock, Weak Planet: Literature and Assisted Survival University of Chicago Press, 2020 (Image on main page by John Phelan.) The post Thinking With Thoreau appeared first on KPFA.
Modern art has always been a battleground — and the highly influential Museum of Modern Art has been partisan since its inception. Architectural historian Patricio Del Real discusses two differing political visions of modernism and modern architecture: one rooted in the left, and associated with figures such as Communist muralist Diego Rivera, and the other on the right, represented by the architect and fascist sympathizer Philip Johnson. He weighs in on MoMa’s promotion of a view of modernism in Latin America, stripped of its radical politics and racial fusions, and radiating American power and hegemony. Resources: Patricio del Real, Constructing Latin America: Architecture, Politics, and Race at the Museum of Modern Art Yale University Press, 2022 The post MoMa and Cultural Imperialism in Latin America appeared first on KPFA.
According to Jesse Olsavsky, vigilance committees in Philadelphia, Boston, and other northern cities constituted the militant, highly organized urban wing of the Underground Railroad. Olsavsky stresses the importance of the interviews vigilance committee members conducted with runaways, interviews that acted as crucial conduits for information, ideas, and strategies for resistance. Jesse Olsavsky, The Most Absolute Abolition: Runaways, Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Revolutionary Abolitionism, 1835–1861 LSU Press, 2022 (Image on main page by Melissa Grimes Guy.) The post The Vigilance Committees appeared first on KPFA.
The wines of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand are widely consumed around the world, especially in the UK, the heart of the former British empire. And that’s no coincidence. The British imperial project was central to the cultivation and distribution of wine from its colonies, for reasons both ideological and economic. Historian Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre discusses three centuries of imperial wine production and consumption, once primarily reserved for the elite, then later consumed by the lower classes. Resources: Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre, Imperial Wine: How the British Empire Made Wine’s New World UC Press, 2022 The post The Wines of Empire appeared first on KPFA.
Palm oil can be found in a staggering variety of food items and other products we consume every day. Max Haiven traces the history of this ubiquitous commodity’s production and use to reveal capitalism’s logics and imperial states’ depredations. (Encore presentation.) Max Haiven, Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire Pluto Press, 2022 Pluto Press’s Vagabonds series (Image on main page by Lian Pin Koh.) The post Oily Business appeared first on KPFA.
Mike Davis was an exceptional thinker and writer: a deeply committed socialist who dazzlingly illuminated the unfolding ecological and social contradictions of late capitalism. Whether writing about his native Southern California, or contemplating the fate of billions in the world’s mega-slums, Davis gave us new ways of seeing — always with a post-capitalist world in his sights. Geographer Richard Walker discusses the many contributions of his fellow urbanist and radical. The post Remembering Mike Davis appeared first on KPFA.
Many U.S. military establishment bigwigs are pushing the development of automated and autonomous weapons systems. Roberto González questions whether this robo-fanaticism, as he calls it, is justified. He also describes efforts to address human warfighters’ distrust of machines. (Encore presentation.) Roberto J. González, War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future University of California Press, 2022 The post Automated Warfare appeared first on KPFA.
The complicity of white workers in maintaining the capitalist status quo has been much argued on the U.S. left. One of the key combatants and contributors to the debate was the influential radical thinker Noel Ignatiev, who died in 2019. Economist Geert Dhondt reflects on the key ideas of Ignatiev on race and the notion of dual power in moments of revolutionary upheaval. Resources: Noel Ignatiev, Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity (Edited by Geert Dhondt, Zhandarka Kurti, and Jarrod Shanahan) Verso, 2022 Noel Ignatiev, Acceptable Men: Life in the Largest Steel Mill in the World Charles H Kerr, 2021 Hard Crackers The post The Politics of Noel Ignatiev appeared first on KPFA.
The movement of Chinese people – around 300 million of them – from rural areas to China’s cities has been called the largest mass migration in human history. Have the working-class migrants who’ve built China’s megacities been rewarded for their efforts? Eli Friedman describes the obstacles and injustices they’ve encountered, particularly when trying to get schooling for their children. Eli Friedman, The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City Columbia University Press, 2022 (Image on main page by Matt Ming.) The post Migrant Workers in China appeared first on KPFA.
It’s been described at the most turbulent period of global class struggle in history — the turn of the 20th century when revolutionaries around the world found common cause against capital and empire. Christina Heatherton discusses the revolutionary internationalism swirling around the Mexican Revolution and the remarkable intersection of radicals at that time. Resources: Christina Heatherton, Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution UC Press, 2022 The post The Radical International appeared first on KPFA.
In arguing for the urgency of moving from anthropocentrism toward ecocentrism, Aaron S. Allen distinguishes between environmental crises and ecological change; argues against the “balance of nature” paradigm; differentiates between strong and weak forms of sustainability; and describes the role that expressive culture and the environmental liberal arts can play in driving awareness and activism. (Encore presentation.) McDowell, Borland, Dirksen, and Tuohy, eds., Performing Environmentalisms: Expressive Culture and Ecological Change University of Illinois Press, 2021 Allen and Dawe, eds., Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature Routledge, 2016 (Image on main page by Nelson Pavlosky.)
The post Toward Ecocentrism appeared first on KPFA.
They are among the biggest companies in the world: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon have an outsized impact on the global economy and on our daily lives. Rob Larson examines the companies that have become synonymous with the glories and ills of contemporary capitalism. He makes the case for online socialism. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Rob Larson, Bit Tyrants: The Political Economy of Silicon Valley Haymarket Books, 2020 The post The Unmitigated Power of Big Tech appeared first on KPFA.
Trotskyism played a key role in the development of the U.S. revolutionary left. Among American Trotskyists, James Cannon stood out. Bryan D. Palmer talks about Cannon’s beliefs, his engagement with radical left formations in the U.S., and his involvement in militant labor struggles in the early twentieth century. (Encore presentation.) Bryan Palmer, James P. Cannon and the Emergence of Trotskyism in the United States, 1928-38 Brill, 2021 Bryan Palmer, James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928 University of Illinois Press, 2007 (Image on main page by Adam Jones.) The post Pioneering Trotskyist appeared first on KPFA.
How did term gender take on the meaning that it has today? How was it developed as a social pairing to the purportedly fixed notion of sex? Surprisingly, historian Sandra Eder traces its origins to a Pediatric Endocrinology Clinic at Johns Hopkins University in the 1940s. She discusses the significance of the introduction of the idea of a culturally-constructed gender, in the Cold War context of mid-20th century America, and the inherited baggage of the term today. Resources: Sandra Eder, How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea University of Chicago Press, 2022 The post Constructing Gender appeared first on KPFA.
Does it spark joy? That’s the criterion Marie Kondo has set for deciding which personal belongings to keep, and which to relinquish. Maureen Ryan considers Kondo’s decluttering method and her television show in the context of pervasive burnout and insecurity. (Encore presentation.) Richard Grusin, ed., Insecurity University of Minnesota Press, 2022 Maureen Ryan, Lifestyle Media in American Culture: Gender, Class, and the Politics of Ordinariness Routledge, 2018 (Image on main page by mycurrency.com.) The post Kondo Critiqued appeared first on KPFA.
How should we understand the ecological crisis accelerating around us? In a book that has sparked debate on the European left, Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen trace the origins of the Western mode of production and living, which is now spreading around the world. They connect such resource and emissions-intensive consumption to the political instability of our times, and point to alternatives beyond capitalism. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen, The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism Verso, 2021 The post Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.
Is capitalism bad for your health? Gabor Maté thinks so. The acclaimed Canadian physician and Marxist discusses capitalism, stress, and chronic illness, inimitably combining profound humanism, dark wit, and extensive knowledge of science and social justice. He makes the compelling case that the psycho-social needs to be taken into account by both the medical establishment — and the left. The post Fund Drive Special: Health and Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.
Renowned mycologist Paul Stamets talks about mushrooms, human health, bee populations, psychoactive fungi, and more. (Image by Alan Rockefeller.) The post Fund Drive Special: Mushroom Expert Paul Stamets appeared first on KPFA.
Over the last four decades, Americans have been gaining increasing amounts of weight. And they are told that it’s a result of their own personal failings, of not having the will power to control what they consume. But, as a documentary film shows, any serious look at the issue points not to individual self-discipline, but the enormous power of the processed food industry. The post Fund Drive Special: Profiting Off Food appeared first on KPFA.
Michael Albert discusses his vision of an equitable, sustainable, and participatory economy. The post Fund Drive Special: Participatory Economics appeared first on KPFA.
Over the past half century, the US economy has undergone a profound change: wealth has been concentrated in the hands of a few, inequality has skyrocketed, and insecurity has reigned. And yet it’s a story mainly downplayed by mainstream pundits and the media. Noam Chomsky, arguably the most important public intellectual in the world, says that any discussion of democracy is pointless if we don’t recognize the corrosive effects of this class war from above. The post Fund Drive Special: Noam Chomsky on Wealth and Power appeared first on KPFA.
In “Polishing the Mirror,” the influential spiritual seeker and teacher Ram Dass shares his insights into human consciousness and awakening. The post Fund Drive Special: Ram Dass on “Polishing the Mirror” appeared first on KPFA.
In “Polishing the Mirror,” the influential spiritual seeker and teacher Ram Dass shares his insights into human consciousness and awakening. The post Fund Drive Special: Ram Dass on “Polishing the Mirror” appeared first on KPFA.
The history of slavery in the United States casts a pall over our present. Berkeley-based documentary filmmaker Frances Causey illustrates how and why that is in a compelling and personal work, that traces four centuries of racial oppression in the United States. The post Fund Drive Special: The Living Legacy of Slavery appeared first on KPFA.
The history of slavery in the United States casts a pall over our present. Berkeley-based documentary filmmaker Frances Causey illustrates how and why that is in a compelling and personal work, that traces four centuries of racial oppression in the United States. The post Fund Drive Special: The Living Legacy of Slavery appeared first on KPFA.
Renowned mycologist Paul Stamets talks about mushrooms, human health, bee populations, psychoactive fungi, and more. (Image by Alan Rockefeller.) The post Fund Drive Special: Mushroom Expert Paul Stamets appeared first on KPFA.
As the world rushes headlong into the climate emergency, what might a liberatory approach look like, that would avert ecological disaster while making another world possible? Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese have laid out one vision for eco-socialism that takes on the difficult question of how to plan society in a radically different way. Resources: Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics Verso, 2022 Half-Earth Socialism: A Planetary Planning Game The post Half-Earth Socialism appeared first on KPFA.
As the world rushes headlong into the climate emergency, what might a liberatory approach look like, that would avert ecological disaster while making another world possible? Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese have laid out one vision for eco-socialism that takes on the difficult question of how to plan society in a radically different way. Resources: Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics Verso, 2022 Half-Earth Socialism: A Planetary Planning Game The post Half-Earth Socialism appeared first on KPFA.
What do neoliberal policies and institutions do to people’s ability to care well for others? According to Sarah Clark Miller, caregivers experience moral precarity and moral injury, brought on by the fact that they can’t care for loved ones in ways that are consistent with their ethical principles. Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower, eds., Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity University of Minnesota Press, 2021 Sarah Clark Miller, The Ethics of Need: Agency, Dignity, and Obligation Routledge, 2014 The post Caregiving in Neoliberal Times appeared first on KPFA.
With the passage of time, some things are remembered and others forgotten. In the case of Central America, argues historian Aviva Chomsky, amnesia has been consciously fostered. The long history of United States support for repressive regimes and policies often vanishes in discussions about contemporary violence in Central America and migration from the region. Chomsky contends that the history of resistance to U.S. intervention, both in Central America and the United States, also needs to be recovered and remembered. Resources: Aviva Chomsky, Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration Beacon Press, 2021 The post Amnesia and U.S. Intervention in Central America appeared first on KPFA.
With the passage of time, some things are remembered and others forgotten. In the case of Central America, argues historian Aviva Chomsky, amnesia has been consciously fostered. The long history of United States support for repressive regimes and policies often vanishes in discussions about contemporary violence in Central America and migration from the region. Chomsky contends that the history of resistance to U.S. intervention, both in Central America and the United States, also needs to be recovered and remembered. Resources: Aviva Chomsky, Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration Beacon Press, 2021 The post Amnesia and U.S. Intervention in Central America appeared first on KPFA.
Various explanations have been offered for what’s been called an anxiety epidemic among university students, but Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou believes a crucial causal factor is financialization, the way the financial sector and its logic has permeated our social, economic, and individual lives. He sees signs of optimism in the proliferation of student mobilizations around the issue of anxiety. Max Haiven and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, “An ‘Anxiety Epidemic’ in the Financialized University: Critical Questions and Unexpected Resistance” Cultural Politics Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World University of Chicago Press, 2022 The post Financialization & Student Anxiety appeared first on KPFA.
Various explanations have been offered for what’s been called an anxiety epidemic among university students, but Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou believes a crucial causal factor is financialization, the way the financial sector and its logic has permeated our social, economic, and individual lives. He sees signs of optimism in the proliferation of student mobilizations around the issue of anxiety. Max Haiven and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, “An ‘Anxiety Epidemic’ in the Financialized University: Critical Questions and Unexpected Resistance” Cultural Politics Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World University of Chicago Press, 2022 The post Financialization & Student Anxiety appeared first on KPFA.
Veterans are a prominent symbol in U.S. politics, evoking patriotism and military might. The right recruits them and they populate the police, private security, and often militia groups. But the struggles of veterans, and those currently working for the military, should be of concern for the left, argues Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early. They discuss the always non-union labor of military work, attempts to privatize veterans’ healthcare, and the political orientation of veterans and the organizations claiming to represent them. (Encore presentation.) Resources: KPFA Event with Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon Wednesday, September 7 at 6:00 pm, Veterans Building 401 Van Ness Avenue, Room 210 in San Francisco Suzanne Gordon, Steve Early, Jasper Craven, Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends, and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs Duke University Press, 2022 The post The Labor of Veterans appeared first on KPFA.
What happens when meditation and yoga are taught behind bars? Are the imprisoned student-practitioners prodded to view their suffering as generated solely by their thoughts and actions, or do the classes foster an awareness of the structural and systemic factors that contributed to their incarceration? Farah Godrej taught yoga and meditation in prison and interviewed both fellow instructors and formerly incarcerated practitioners. Farah Godrej, Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State Oxford University Press, 2022 The post Contemplating Incarceration appeared first on KPFA.
What happens when meditation and yoga are taught behind bars? Are the imprisoned student-practitioners prodded to view their suffering as generated solely by their thoughts and actions, or do the classes foster an awareness of the structural and systemic factors that contributed to their incarceration? Farah Godrej taught yoga and meditation in prison and interviewed both fellow instructors and formerly incarcerated practitioners. Farah Godrej, Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State Oxford University Press, 2022 The post Contemplating Incarceration appeared first on KPFA.
The failure to unionize the South, to organize Southern workers in the 1930s and ’40s on the basis of interracial worker solidarity, had momentous and enduring consequences for race relations and worker well-being in the U.S. as a whole. So argues Michael Goldfield, who in his new book points to the marginalization of leftists within unions and federations like the CIO. (Encore presentation.) Michael Goldfield, The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s Oxford University Press, 2020 The post Labor, Race, and the South appeared first on KPFA.
The failure to unionize the South, to organize Southern workers in the 1930s and ’40s on the basis of interracial worker solidarity, had momentous and enduring consequences for race relations and worker well-being in the U.S. as a whole. So argues Michael Goldfield, who in his new book points to the marginalization of leftists within unions and federations like the CIO. (Encore presentation.) Michael Goldfield, The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s Oxford University Press, 2020 The post Labor, Race, and the South appeared first on KPFA.