AlternativeRadio

How to be positive in these perilous times? Humankind and the planet are facing enormous dangers. We can indulge in magical thinking and hope for miracles or we can ground ourselves in reality, understand the depth of the crises we face and then act to change things. It won’t be easy. There are huge obstacles and difficulties. Our task going forward is to find kindred spirits, organize and work to create a decent future. We may be inspired by the adage, Pessimism of the intellect, Optimism of the will. It was made famous by the great 20th century Italian Marxist thinker and writer Antonio Gramsci. A dedicated anti-fascist Gramsci languished for 11 years in Mussolini’s jails where his health deteriorated. He died in 1937. Today, there is a revival of interest in Gramsci and his work.

Reproductive rights and abortion are under sustained political attack. Texas, Mississippi and other states have passed highly restrictive laws limiting and, in some cases, eliminating access to abortion. In all, nearly 600 anti-abortion laws have been introduced. The Supreme Court, with its three Trump-appointed justices, seems poised to decimate if not overturn the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion. In 2018, even before the pandemic, the birth rate in the United States reached its lowest level in decades. The pandemic has further reduced childbirths. Feminist activists assert that declining birth rates represent a work slowdown, or strike, in the face of the poor conditions for those who do the work of bearing and raising children. For millions of overworked and exhausted women, the financial burden is significant. They must be compensated. Recorded at the University of California.

The concept of Global North and Global South are not geographical terms but rather describe a grouping of countries along economic lines. The Global South, previously called the Third World, is a term used to identify lower-income countries on one side of the so-called divide, the other side being the countries of the Global North with its enormous wealth and its institutions of power and control: the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. The pandemic has created a kind of vaccine apartheid. Take Africa for example. Only a few of its 1.3 billion people have been vaccinated. The haves of the Global North keep most of the vaccines for themselves while the have nots of the Global South scramble to get doses. In this program, Vijay Prashad presents perspectives and analyses rarely discussed in the media.

Denise Comanne, a prominent French feminist/activist wrote, “The oppression of women is very ancient: it existed before capitalism, which is also a system of oppression, but one that is more global in nature. Patriarchy can be defined in simple terms as the oppression and objectification of women by men. In addition to its strictly economic form, this oppression is expressed in many ways, notably through language, kinship relations, stereotypes, religion, and culture. The form oppression takes varies depending on whether you live in the North or the South, or in an urban or rural area. To be a feminist is thus to become aware of this oppression and, having realized that it is a system, to work to destroy it to help bring about the emancipation of women.” Over the centuries women have collectively struggled for their rights. That struggle continues.

The historical lens through which national holidays are viewed is often blurred and distorted. Thanksgiving is a case in point. The much-revered Pilgrims fresh off the Mayflower sat down and shared native foods with the friendly Wampanoags.  A heart-warming story. But this idea of the gift-giving Indian, helping to establish and enrich what would become the United States, is a myth. Native Americans would soon be overwhelmed and killed en masse by white settlers. Those that survived the murderous campaigns against them were relegated to inhospitable reservations. Indian land was stolen fair and square. Today we honor the memory of the slaughtered with Apache and Black Hawk helicopters, Jeep Cherokees, the Washington Redskins and calling bin Laden, Geronimo.  Native Americans are offended by the appropriation of their culture. It is the final stage of genocide.

The concept of social murder was introduced in the mid-19th century. The German philosopher Friedrich Engels coined the phrase in describing the political and social power held by ruling elites over laborers in England. Engels wrote about poor workers dying prematurely. Today, during the current pandemic, the term has been revived.  The British Medical Journal says, “Social murder may describe the lack of political attention to social determinants and inequities that exacerbate the pandemic.” Enormous discrepancies in income and wealth have huge health consequences. Failure to address them has no doubt contributed to the global death toll from the pandemic which now exceeds 5 million. The actual number must be much higher. The economic and class realities exposed and magnified by Covid-19 cannot be ignored or spun away. The need for a system that is equitable has never been more apparent.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865 officially abolished slavery. However, there is a crucial legal exception. Section 1 of the Amendment provides: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." In plain English, this simply means those behind bars have no constitutional rights and they can be forced to work as further punishment for their crimes. They earn, if you can even say that, little or no money. It’s a new form of slavery. The plantation system is tragically alive and well. Blacks, Latinx and Indigenous make up a disproportionate percentage of those incarcerated. Many of them were coerced into plea deals. In this program, Chris Hedges describes the effort of some prisoners to educate themselves. Recorded at The Sanctuary for Independent Media.

Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, once described the internet as a "permissionless space for creativity, innovation and free expression." In the early days, you may recall, the internet was also called the “information superhighway.” It would be open, free and with no advertising. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Tech giants like Facebook and Google control a huge percentage of traffic on the internet with algorithms designed with just one priority in mind: make that cash register ring. In turning the internet into an ATM machine the tech giants have amassed huge amounts of personal information about you. They know your likes and dislikes. Right now, Facebook, with billions of users, is mired in controversy. Its platform has been a forum for polarizing content ranging from hate and bigotry to misinformation and human trafficking. Calls are getting louder and louder for meaningful regulation.

The 1960s have been largely romanticized and commodified. The Beatles, Woodstock, sit-ins, protests, and marches. Those years saw huge social change. Bottom-up grassroots movements rocked the establishment. A major symbol of those years was Angela Davis. She has this to say today: “The lesson is that even though we don't have the same structures that we had at that time, the challenge is to create a kind of vibrant internationalism. Today, of course, we have the technologies of communication that would enable connections in ways that did not exist at all back then. How to actually begin to create the kind of movements that will bring people in Palestine, and people in Brazil, and people who are struggling against police violence in France, and people who are struggling against police violence in South Africa together. I think that that is the major challenge of this moment.”

There’s a famous quote in George Orwell’s 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Orwell understood how important knowledge of history is and how it can be manipulated by the powerful to serve their interests. If the past disappears down the memory hole society is at risk. History is not some neutral ideologically-free zone. It is a highly contested battlefield. The contents of textbooks are subject to partisan bias, often tilting to the right. Inadequate history textbooks help produce adults who can’t distinguish evidence from opinion, fact from fiction. Progressive voices such as Frederick Douglass, Emma Goldman, and Dorothy Day are often omitted from textbooks or just appear without context. James Loewen said, “Telling the truth about the past helps cause justice in the present. Achieving justice in the present helps us tell the truth about the past.”