Jacobin Radio

Jobs have in recent years gotten much worse for millions of service workers at Amazon, McDonalds and call centers. Dan interviews Emily Guendelsberger on her book On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane.

Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com

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Suzi looks at the rising in Puerto Rico with professor, activist, and author Rafael Bernabe in San Juan, Puerto Rico where two weeks of massive protests brought down the corrupt government of Ricardo Rosselló, and continue amid uncertainty about what comes next. The protest movement took off after the Center for Investigative Journalism released nearly 900 pages of chat messages between Rosselló and his inner circle, revealing their misogyny, homophobia, and the contempt they held for the population. But it wasn’t just the most recent events that brought the people’s anger to the boiling point: the economic meltdown of 2008–2009 hit a Puerto Rico already ensnared in a never-ending debt crisis engineered by vulture funds, and when natural disaster hit following economic disaster, conditions went from bad to worse. Bernabe helps us understand this trajectory, and we get his view on what direction he sees for Puerto Rico after the success of the mass movement.

Asli Bâli, UCLA law professor and Middle East expert on public international law, international security, and nuclear non-proliferation, gives us a big picture look at the US-Iran conflict and its defunct nuclear agreement. Trump continues to threaten Iran, aided by the mainstream media who are freaking out over Iran’s supposed breach of the 2015 Nuclear Accord, seemingly forgetting that it was Trump who unilaterally tore up that agreement, arbitrarily imposing a new, brutal sanctions regime. Bâli looks at the deeper context of the chronic but escalating US-Iran conflict, and explores its trajectory now that Trump has essentially abandoned the deal.

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Dan interviews Lily Geismer, the author of Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. While Boston whites fought school busing in the streets, suburban liberals along Route 128 maintained and benefited from the larger system of metropolitan residential and school segregation that made the crisis possible. Suburban liberals also played a key role in creating a new Democratic Party that embraced a superficial politics of recognition while advancing a technocratic elite-driven neoliberal agenda that included the demonization and persecution of poor black mothers on welfare and mass incarceration.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com

Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dan is taking his first week off ever in Dig history to finish his book. Here's a classic from deep in the archives: our first interview with Aziz Rana, on his book The Two Faces of American Freedom, aka episode 62. If you've already heard this one and are hungry for more content we've got everything organized by date, guest and topic at www.thedigradio.com.

Support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.