Essential Dissent

The following intervew is “Professor Eric Cheyfitz on Zionism, Genocide, and His Conflict with Cornell”.

It features longtime Catholic Worker peace activist Mary Anne Grady Flores in conversation with Cornell Professor Eric Cheyfitz, a scholar specializing in the study of settler colonialism and genocide.

They spoke in Ithaca, NY on November 8, 2025.

This episode is “Professor Eric Cheyfitz on Zionism, Genocide, and His Conflict with Cornell”.

It features longtime Catholic Worker peace activist Mary Anne Grady Flores in conversation with Cornell Professor Eric Cheyfitz, a scholar specializing in the study of settler colonialism and genocide.

Among other topics, they spoke about the origins of Zionism, its trajectory towards genocide, and Professor Cheyfitz’s conflict with the Cornell administration regarding academic freedom, which led him to choose early retirement.

The interview took place in Ithaca, NY on November 8, 2025.

A talk by author Joshua Clark Davis to mark the publication of his book of the same name. Joshua Clark Davis is an associate professor of U.S. history at the University of Baltimore, and his research has earned awards from the Fulbright Program, the Silvers Foundation, and the NEH Public Scholars Program.

He's joined by moderator Chenjerai Kumanyika, host of the podcast Empire City, and son of Herb Callendar, a '60s era civil rights activist who later changed his name to Makaza Kumanyika.

Joshua Clark Davis' book, Police Against the Movement, shatters one of the most pernicious myths about the 1960s: that the civil rights movement endured police violence without fighting it. Instead, activists confronted police abuses head-on, staging sit-ins at precinct stations, picketing department headquarters, and blocking traffic to protest officer misdeeds. In return, organizers found themselves the targets of overwhelming political repression in the form of police surveillance, infiltration by undercover officers, and retaliatory prosecutions aimed at derailing their movement.

The talk took place on November 6, 2025 at The Word Is Change, a radical bookstore in Brooklyn, NY.

https://www.thewordischange.com

This episode is “Refuse Fascism - Trump Must Go Now”, an event held at Advent Lutheran Church in Manhattan on October 16, 2025.

It was an organizing meeting leading up to a rally to be held in Washington DC on November 5th, 2025, and for subsequent actions.

Refuse Fascism is a group calling for the nonviolent unrelenting struggle of thousands, growing into millions in the capital, united around the single demand "Trump must go now.”

This episode is “On A Move,” a talk by Mike Africa, Jr, given at Burning Books in Buffalo, NY on Oct. 22, 2025.

Mike Africa Jr.’s 2024 book, “On a Move: Philadelphia's Notorious Bombing and a Native Son's Lifelong Battle for Justice”, is the story of MOVE, the revolutionary Black civil liberties group that Philadelphia police bombed in 1985, killing 11 civilians, including five children.

Mike Africa Jr. was born into the organization, raised during the bombing's tumultuous aftermath, and later entrusted with repairing what was left of his family.

Founded in 1972 by a charismatic ideologue named John Africa, MOVE's mission was to protect all forms of life from systemic oppression.

MOVE members lived together in a collection of West Philadelphia row houses, and took the surname Africa out of admiration for the group's founder.

But in MOVE's lifestyle, city officials saw threats to their status quo. Their bombing of MOVE homes shocked the nation and made international news.

Mike Africa Jr., born in jail, was six years old and living with his grandmother when MOVE was bombed. In the ensuing years he sought purpose in the ashes left behind.

In 2018, with the help of other MOVE members, he finally succeeded in getting his parents released from prison after they had spent 40 years behind bars.

Burning Books is a radical bookstore in Buffalo, NY, specializing in activism, social justice, and liberation struggles.

https://burningbooks.com/?srsltid=AfmBOool6D7S61fo6zZy6sO6-27eJIgOfuwcqoBARsO_SUzWP-G9RZwq

This episode, titled “Standing In the Way of Genocide - Nonviolent Direct Action at Port Elizabeth, NJ”, is a discussion between 5 participants in a civil resistance action carried out on Oct. 3rd, 2025. Port Elizabeth, the third largest port in the US, is a major transshipment point for companies such as Maersk and Zim, whose trucks carry weapons bound for Israel. In doing so these companies support and enable Israel’s ongoing genocide, which according to Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, has claimed at least 680,000 lives, most of them innocent women and children.

An autonomous group of about 100 activists stopped truck traffic for about an hour as they stood on a major road in Port Elizabeth with banners such as “Stop Sending Weapons to a Genocide.” It was a peaceful act in solidarity with the people of Gaza, the Global Sumud Flotilla, and port shutdowns across the world, most notably in Italy.

The following discussion, which took place in Ithaca, NY on Oct. 11th, 2025, was led by Mary Anne Grady Flores, who avoided arrest at the Port Elizabeth action because she was the designated police liaison. The other participants, all of whom were arrested in Port Elizabeth, were Daniel Creamer, Mark Scibilia-Carver, and two of Mary Anne’s sisters, Ellen Grady and Teresa Berrigan Grady.

This episode is "World War Against Fascism: Remembering China’s Role in the Victory," a webinar held by the International Manifesto Group and Friends of Socialist China on September 21st, 2025.

The webinar celebrated the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender - marked in China with spectacular celebrations attended by an array of heads of state and government - focusing in particular on the contributions of the Chinese and other Asian forces which are forgotten in the largely Eurocentric narrative of the Second World War.

The old adage that history is written by the victors does not seem to apply to the real victors of the Second World War, the Soviets and the Chinese on the Eastern and Pacific fronts respectively.

The webinar uncovered some crucial but little-known aspects of the war: for example, that China was the first country to wage war against fascist occupation; that in the course of 14 years of war (1931-45) China suffered over 35 million casualties; and that without the contribution of Chinese, Korean, Mongolian and largely Communist-led resistance forces across the region, the Japanese imperial armies would have had free rein to deploy their forces against the Soviet Union and the Western Allies.

The webinar participants assessed the renewed threats to China and other Asian countries emanating from the US, Japan and the rest of the capitalist world.

https://internationalmanifesto.org

https://socialistchina.org

https://www.unacpeace.org

9/25/25; Riverside Church, New York City

Join us alongside the Simon Bolivar Institute for an event to discuss building a solidarity movement between the US and Venezuela, and the fight for oppressed people everywhere!

Speakers include Yvan Gil, Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister, and guests from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Palestine.

United Solidarity with Venezuela includes the following groups and many others:

Antiwar Action Network, Bolivarian Circle, Venezuela Solidarity, U.S. Palestinian Community Network, United National Antiwar Coalition, Bronx Antiwar, SanctionsKill Campaign, December 12 Movement, Cuba Si,International Action Center, Venceramos Brigade, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Americas Without Sanctions, U.S. Peace Council, Workers World Party

The speech by Blanca Eekhout, President of the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity Among Peoples, was omitted from this podcast due to lack of an English translation.

Kevin Young is a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is active in labor and climate organizing. He spoke at the 2025 Upstate Anarchist Book Fair, held May 3rd and 4th in Binghamton, NY.

The event was sponsored and hosted by PM Press: https://pmpress.org

How we can muster the political strength to neutralize polluters is one of the most important questions humanity has ever faced. Although the US climate movement is not currently winning, it has achieved important partial victories that illuminate the vulnerabilities of the fossil fuel industry.

Kevin Young’s focus is on how the movement has targeted the industry’s enablers, including financial institutions, regulatory agencies, and purchasers of fossil fuels. He argues that the growing resistance to dirty energy projects has jeopardized investor confidence, leading the industry to lash out in increasingly desperate ways. The most powerful movements in US history succeeded in similar ways.

In addition to analyzing the recent climate and Indigenous movements, his presentation draws lessons from four classic victories: the abolition of slavery, battles for workers’ rights in the 1930s, Black freedom struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, and the fight for clean air. Those movements inflicted costs on economic elites through strikes, boycotts, and other mass disruption. Gains in the electoral and legislative realms were usually the byproducts of great upsurges in the fields, factories, and streets.

The presentation draws from Kevin Young's recent book, Abolishing Fossil Fuels: Lessons from Movements That Won (PM Press, 2024).

Raymond Tyler spoke at the 2025 Upstate Anarchist Book Fair, held May 3rd and 4th in Binghamton, NY. The event was sponsored and hosted by PM Press: https://pmpress.org

Raymond Tyler is a comics writer from Appalachian Georgia currently residing in Nyack, NY. He’s a longtime social justice and labor activist, bridging “history from below” with comics.

Raymond’s most recent work includes the horror comic series Amputation Capital and Black Coal and Red Bandanas (PM Press, 2024).

In the early twentieth century, strikes and union battles were common in industrial centers throughout the US. But nothing compared to the class warfare of the West Virginia mine wars.

The origins of this protracted rebellion were in the dictatorial rule of the coal companies over the proud, multiracial, immigrant and native-born miners of Appalachia.