KPFA - Against the Grain

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. (Encore presentation.) 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.

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. 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.

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. (Encore presentation.) 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.

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.

A brilliant theoretical physicist best known for his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein was also a socialist. John Bellamy Foster describes Einstein’s radical political commitments, including his efforts in relation to the founding of Brandeis University, his role in the Henry Wallace campaign, and his seminal essay “Why Socialism?” John also talks about his new book. John Bellamy Foster, “Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’ and ‘Monthly Review’: A Historical Introduction” Monthly Review John Bellamy Foster, The Dialectics of Ecology Monthly Review Press, 2024 The post Einstein’s Socialism 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.

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. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Francine Banner, Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems UC Press, 2024 The post Interrogating Complicity appeared first on KPFA.

What can – and can’t – you say and do as a Palestinian American teacher? Can you speak frankly about Palestine, about the occupation and oppression, about the Israel-U.S. relationship? Can you support student inquiry into matters that rankle Zionist colleagues? Social-studies educator Luma Hasan encountered intolerance and pushback while working at a reputedly liberal high school. Kevin L. Clay and Kevin Lawrence Henry Jr. , eds., The Promise of Youth Anti-citizenship: Race and Revolt in Education University of Minnesota Press, 2024 Teach for Liberation The post Palestinian Teacher’s Travails appeared first on KPFA.

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Times of emergency require difficult decisions and we’re told by the likes of Bill Gates that nuclear power is necessary to get the world off fossil fuels. Nuclear power boosters argue that new technologies have made nuclear reactors cheaper and safer. Scholar and scientist M.V. Ramana calls this a fiction. He asserts that nuclear power remains dangerous, expensive, polluting, and too slow to come online in time. He argues that nuclear power is a boondoggle that would derail us from the urgent need to switch to renewable energy, while increasing the danger of nuclear conflict. Resources: M.V. Ramana, Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change Verso, 2024 The post Nuclear Power and the Climate Emergency 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.

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. (Encore presentation.) 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.

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.