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By KPFA
4.7
187187 ratings
The podcast currently has 1,490 episodes available.
What role did Irish Catholics play within the U.S. left? Were Irish radicals more interested in freedom from British rule or in anticapitalism? And what effect did religious beliefs have on Irish Americans’ inclinations to break with the mainstream? David Emmons highlights Irish Americans’ contributions to dissidence, progressivism, and radicalism in the United States.
David Emmons, History’s Erratics: Irish Catholic Dissidents and the Transformation of American Capitalism, 1870-1930 University of Illinois Press, 2024
The post Irish American Dissidents appeared first on KPFA.
Few things are more necessary than a roof over one’s head, and yet few things feel as precarious as housing. Rents have skyrocketed across the country, far outstripping wages, and homelessness has risen to an historic high. Fellow tenant organizers Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis argue that this is the latest chapter in a century-long assault on tenants, but that we can draw powerful lessons from housing struggles to fight for a world without landlords.
Resources:
Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis Haymarket Books, 2024
The post The War on Tenants appeared first on KPFA.
The dramatic expansion of police power in the U.S. has been fueled by sexual policing—the targeting and legal control of people’s bodies and their presumed sexual activities. So argues Anne Gray Fischer, who describes the historical trajectory of sexual policing and traces the profoundly consequential shift in its targets from white women to Black women. (Encore presentation.)
Anne Gray Fischer, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification University of North Carolina Press, 2022
The post Sex, Race, and Police Power appeared first on KPFA.
Critiques of conspiracy thinking abound—but what if our world needs a conspiracy, of people willing to confront their own participation in institutional injustices? Joseph Dumit explains why large corporations knowingly engage in antihuman activities; he also draws from Adrian Piper’s insights into bullying institutions, the impact of bystanding, and the importance of blowing the whistle when we notice harm being inflicted.
Joseph Masco and Lisa Wedeen, eds., Conspiracy/Theory Duke University Press, 2024
Joseph Dumit, Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health Duke University Press, 2012
The post Conspiracies and Complicity appeared first on KPFA.
For over half a century, Big Oil and the plastics industry, through their trade associations and front groups, have sold the public the false idea that plastics are recyclable. Recycling became the mantra of good ecological stewardship, promoted by the likes of city governments, school children, and environmental groups. Davis Allen lays out the mass-marketing of a deception. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Center for Climate Integrity, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the Plastics Industry Deceived the Public for Decades and Caused the Plastic Waste Crisis February, 2024
The post The Plastics Recycling Deception appeared first on KPFA.
What can sex workers add to discussions around transformative justice, prison abolition, and labor organizing? Heather Berg has spoken with sex worker radicals whose perspectives on left theory and practice are informed by encounters with ever-present threats to their lives and livelihoods. (Encore presentation.)
Heather Berg, “‘If You’re Going to Be Beautiful, You Better Be Dangerous’: Sex Worker Community Defense” Radical History Review
Heather Berg, Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism University of North Carolina Press, 2021
The post Sex Worker Theorizing appeared first on KPFA.
For decades after World War Two, the defense industry polluted the desert near Tucson’s Southside and poisoned the aquifer from which the largely Mexican American neighborhood got its drinking water. Sunaura Taylor, who was born there, reflects on lessons from the residents’ struggle — and asks what a genuine remedy might look like. She discusses an environmentalism that recognizes that we all are or will become disabled — and fights not just for the able-bodied, but to extend care to all, including the rest of the natural world.
Resources:
Sunaura Taylor, Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert UC Press, 2024
The post Environmentalism of the Injured appeared first on KPFA.
What are discarded materials from extractive activities like mining doing to life on the planet? According to Gabrielle Hecht, what’s happening in South Africa to and around mountainous piles of mining residues crystallizes a number of thorny environmental and sociopolitical issues faced by communities around the globe. (Encore presentation.)
Gabrielle Hecht, Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures Duke University Press, 2023 (open access)
The post Extraction’s Heavy Toll appeared first on KPFA.
It’s both a precious resource and a dangerous pollutant, exponentially increasing crop yields, while fouling our waterways with blue-green algae. The element phosphorus has played a crucial role in agriculture and war, while its reserves are unevenly distributed, with much of the world’s supply located in the occupied territories of Western Sahara. Writer Dan Egan discusses the double-edged nature of an element that is increasingly depleted and overused. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Dan Egan, The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance Norton, 2023
The post Phosphorus: Reaping the Harvest appeared first on KPFA.
More than two million farmworkers do the hard, sometimes backbreaking work of planting, growing, and harvesting crops in the U.S. Focusing on strawberry and grape pickers in California, David Bacon describes what the work involves, where the workers come from, and steps they’re taking to protect their rights and pursue justice.
The Reality Check: Stories and Photographs by David Bacon
David Bacon, More Than a Wall/Mas que un muro El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2022
The post Laboring in the Fields appeared first on KPFA.
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