Ear to the Pavement

In Episode 15, the second in a series about books related to #MeToo, Allison talks again with Chicago-based writer, academic, and activist Yasmin Nair about "Catch and Kill," Ronan Farrow's 2019 book reconstructing his efforts to report the Harvey Weinstein story. Nair brings her decades of experience at the intellectual intersection of gender and politics to "Catch and Kill," which is at once a chronicle of the Weinstein scandal, a story about journalism itself, and an attempt by Farrow to redraw his own complicated family story. But what kind of a #MeToo narrative does this book weave, and, at the dawn of a new decade, are we standing triumphant in the movement's victories, or in its crumbling ruins?

Yasmin Nair: http://yasminnair.com/

"Catch and Kill": https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ronan-farrow/catch-and-kill/9780316486668

In Episode 14 of Ear to the Pavement, Allison talks with professor and author Mindy Thompson Fullilove about how her past work on public health crises such as 9/11 and the AIDS epidemic is informing her current thinking about the coronavirus pandemic, and why we need to "remember, respect, learn, and connect" in these difficult and frightening times.

Mindy Fullilove: https://www.newschool.edu/milano/faculty/mindy-fullilove/

Mindy Fullilove's blog: http://mainstreetnj.blogspot.com/

In Episode 13 of Ear to the Pavement, Allison talks with author and labor activist Bill Fletcher, Jr. about the Bernie Sanders campaign's victories and mistakes, why Sanders failed to win over black voters in the South, the Sanders-Warren rift, and where the progressive movement needs to go from here.

Bill Fletcher, Jr.: http://billfletcherjr.com/

In this episode, the first in a series about books related to #MeToo, we talk with Chicago-based writer, academic, and activist Yasmin Nair about "She Said," the 2019 book by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. Nair situates "She Said" within the current journalism economy, as well as within the messy politics of #MeToo, and provides trenchant analysis of the book's strengths and shortcomings. Nair also recently talked with Trevor Beaulieu on the Champagne Sharks podcast about the Influencer Industrial Complex: https://soundcloud.com/champagnesharks/cs-245-influencer-industrial-complex-pt-1-feat-yasmin-nair-02042020

In his 1956 book The Power Elite, sociologist C. Wright Mills painted a disturbing picture of U.S. society in which a small group of people at the heads of corporations, government, and the military exercised increasing control over important decisions affecting the country and its citizenry. In this episode of Ear to the Pavement, we talk to sociologist Mark Mizruchi, author of The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite, about how Mills' classic has held up over time, and what light might it shed on the current crisis of inequality in the United States in which three men - Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett - own as much wealth as the bottom half of Americans.

The billions in tax breaks Amazon is slated to receive for its new headquarters in New York and Virginia has been big news lately, but for tax policy watchdog and Good Jobs First founder Greg LeRoy, Amazon's HQ2 is just the latest chapter in the company's long history of gaming the U.S. tax system. In this episode of Ear to the Pavement, we dive into the myriad ways Amazon has been dodging taxes from day one, the consequences for local economies and the public services we rely on, and what we can do to rein in the tax-break-industrial-complex that funnels taxpayer dollars to wealthy corporations that don't need it.

Social justice non-profit PolicyLink has documented how a focus on racial equity has led to more business success for companies like PayPal, Prudential, and Gap, and they're using these examples to convince more corporations to embrace racial equity. But where does this approach to racial justice come from, and how far can it take us? In this episode, PolicyLink Founder and CEO Angela Glover Blackwell and author and labor activist Bill Fletcher, Jr. unpack the argument that racial equity gives companies a competitive advantage, and what it means for our politics.

Of all of the things there are to worry about in the Trump era, climate change is at the top of the list. But the failure to act effectively on climate long predates Trump. Anne Peterman, executive director of Global Justice Ecology Project, argues that by promoting market-based solutions such as carbon trading, a series of American presidential administrations have not only failed to address climate change, but have also helped enrich corporations at the expense of poor and indigenous communities worldwide. What we really need in order to solve the climate crisis is a collective effort to transform society. But how might this happen, and what would a truly sustainable world look like?

In too much American political discourse, economic issues and identity issues are treated separately, even though they're deeply connected. This has been divisive and disastrous for the Left. But what does a politics that truly integrates race and class look like? The League of Black Revolutionary Workers has an answer. Formed in 1969 and lasting only a few years, the League was one of the most politically sophisticated movements in American history. Dan Georgakas, author of Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, explains what we can learn from them today.

In Episode Five of Ear to the Pavement, housing organizer Rob Robinson recounts his journey from homelessness to the housing movement, and explains how Take Back the Land, an organization he co-founded, used radical organizing to successfully fight the corporate forces that helped create the foreclosure crisis. Robinson is currently a volunteer organizer with the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), and is connected to housing and land movements in Europe, South Africa, and Brazil.