KPFA - Against the Grain

How should we understand the relationship between capitalists, big and small, and the Republican and Democratic parties — especially in the wake of Trump’s return to power? Stephen Maher discusses the sectors of capital that support and oppose him. He traces the rise of the MAGA Right to forces set in motion by the global economic crisis. And he discusses under what circumstances big business, much of which currently is wary of Trump, might throw its support behind authoritarian rule. Resources: Scott Aquanno and Stephen Maher, The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to Blackrock Verso, 2024 Photo credit: Gage Skidmore The post Capital, the State, and Trump appeared first on KPFA.

When the system is stacked against you, when mainstream society sidelines you (or worse), where do you look for liberatory possibilities? Eve Dunbar describes how Ann Petry, author of the 1946 novel “The Street” as well as YA novels about Harriet Tubman and Tituba, insisted on satisfaction and not merely survival. Dunbar also talks about the value of what she calls monstrous work. Eve Dunbar, Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing under Segregation University of Minnesota Press, 2024 The post Radical Satisfaction appeared first on KPFA.

Why is it that so many schools fail at teaching their students critical thinking skills that could help them understand the world? Political scientist Agustina Paglayan argues that mass primary education from its origins was set up not to raise children’s prospects — but rather to teach them to obey. She locates the Right’s recent attacks on schooling in the context of the social upheavals of our times. Resources: Agustina Paglayan, Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education Princeton University Press, 2024 The post Obedience and Mass Education appeared first on KPFA.

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 institutional corruption? 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 The post Corruption 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 deportation 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 both in 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.