KPFA - Against the Grain

Elites, especially in tech, in recent years have overtly espoused the repugnant idea that extreme social inequality is not only inevitable but desirable. Acclaimed historian Kim Phillips-Fein argues that there is a long US tradition promoting wealth inequality that has once again moved from the shadows into the mainstream. And historian Steve Fraser reflects on the class war of the Gilded Age. (Full-length presentation.)

Kim Phillips-Fein, Country of Lords: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight against Equality in America W. W. Norton, 2026

The post The Long Struggle Against Equality appeared first on KPFA.

How should we organize while the planet is burning and authoritarianism is intensifying? Chris Dixon reflects on lessons for the present, drawn from decades of activism on the left – for a moment where interest in left politics has grown significantly, yet while the organizational infrastructures of the left are greatly diminished.

Chris Dixon, For the Long Haul: How to Stay in the Fight for a Better World AK Press, 2026

Photo credit: Lori Shaull

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What was the most powerful technology introduced into schools in the past century? You might answer the computer, or something like Zoom, or even the slide projector. But scholar Antero Garcia argues that it was the humble yellow school bus. Buses have been central to the struggle to desegregate education. And school buses are a zone — and mainly an unnoticed one — in which many working class children and children of color spend a significant part of their day. (Encore presentation.)

Resources:

Antero Garcia, All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology University of Minnesota Press, 2023

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Longtime activist Annie Leonard discusses the rich tradition of protest in this country and why we need to defend it, in the face of anti-protest laws, SLAPP suits, and diktats from the Trump administration.

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Historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez argues that our immigration laws were put in place first to protect enslavers, and later elites more broadly, from the insurgent radicalism of migrants, starting with the Haitian Revolution. She looks at the modern construction of immigration control both as a type of counterinsurgency and labor control.

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The post Fund Drive Special: Building the Repressive Machinery of Immigration Control appeared first on KPFA.

The history of African American antifascism is often overlooked, from Ida B Wells-Barnett’s struggle against lynchings to activism against police violence and the carceral state today. In our increasingly authoritarian times, scholar Jeanelle Hope discusses what we can learn from the black antifascist tradition.

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American education has long been a battleground, but struggles over what students learn has become particularly intense right now, when teaching about racism has been prohibited in multiple states. Sociologist Nikki Khanna reflects on what’s missing, including key episodes from US history – from the United States attempts to starve native people, to the massacre of African Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the mass deportations of Mexican Americans in the Depression, to the Tuskegee syphilis study, and more.

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The post Fund Drive Special: Erasing the History of Racism appeared first on KPFA.

Canadian physician Gabor Mate discusses the maladies that are the norm in our society — how stress and trauma, accentuated by the divisions of class, gender, and race, damage our lives and bodies.

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Historian and activist, teacher and playwright — Howard Zinn told a different history of the United States, one of struggle between those on the bottom against those on top.

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The post Fund Drive Special: Howard Zinn on His Life and Times appeared first on KPFA.

Are women as strong as men? According to science writer Starre Vartan, in some cases, they are stronger. She argues that scientific research over the last several decades shows that culture shapes strength as much as hormones — and that much of what we presume about sex differences, strength, and athleticism harms all of us.

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Photo by Peter Zhan on Unsplash

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