The spiritual pioneer, writer, and teacher Ram Dass on how to embrace aging, changing, and dying.

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Alan Watts, the author, lecturer, and prominent interpreter of Eastern thought, gave a talk called “Way Beyond the West.”

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What do the resistance of soldiers in Vietnam, the death of Ho Chi Minh, the film Easy Rider, and future Trump-fixer Roy Cohn’s defense of Joseph McCarthy have in common with each other? Among other things, they all took place in 1969 — and the voices of the participants were all captured by KPFA Radio and its sister stations.

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“Working-Class Heroes” is a presentation on CD of 20 folk songs rooted in the militant labor struggles of the early twentieth century and revived by Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore.

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Democracy is one of the most contradictory terms in political discourse today. On the one hand, it evokes rule by the people. On of the other, it’s used relentlessly by elites to mask where power truly resides in our society. Is it still a word worth fighting for?  That’s one of the questions posed by radical filmmaker Astra Taylor in her latest documentary “What is Democracy?”

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Immigration discourse in the U.S. often revolves around the advisability of “securing” the physical border, of addressing the flow of people across the U.S.-Mexico border. But, as Elliott Young asserts, overseas mechanisms of screening and exclusion have been far more effective at keeping would-be immigrants out. Young discusses the history and racial dimensions of so-called remote control. (Encore presentation.)

Marinari, Hsu, and Garcia, eds., A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: U.S. Society in an Age of Restriction, 1924-1965 University of Illinois Press, 2019

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Coca-Cola is the most ubiquitous of American brands, the symbol of American capitalism and culture internationally, for better and for worse. It’s been a stand-in for American modernity and a lightening rod for global opposition to US corporate and cultural hegemony. Amanda Ciafone discusses the material and immaterial products of Coca-Cola — and the resistance that has shaped the trajectory of The Coca-Cola Company.

Resources:

Amanda Ciafone, Counter-Cola: A Multinational History of the Global Corporation University of California Press, 2019

The post Resisting Coca-Cola appeared first on KPFA.

“Broken windows” policing emphasizes the importance of addressing minor disruptions and low-level offenses, such as those committed by homeless people with mental health issues. But do such policing tactics reduce the amount of perceived disorder on the streets, or actually foster it? Tony Sparks discusses a revealing case study of policing and punishment in San Francisco.

Social Justice

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If I asked you to picture a digital activist, I’d wager that you’d envision a progressive. But sociologist Jen Schradie says that’s misguided. In fact, the typical profile of an internet activist is a conservative. Schradie discusses the internet and the left and right.

Resources:

Jen Schradie, The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives Harvard University Press, 2019

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