What does the expansion and intensification of nighttime labor say about the workings of capitalism, and what did Marx say about wage labor done in the wee hours? Paul Apostolidis draws from the working-day chapter in Marx’s Capital an emphasis on social reproduction, which he believes should be a key focus of contemporary worker struggles.

Paul Apostolidis, The Fight for Time: Migrant Day Laborers and the Politics of Precarity Oxford University Press, 2019

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Israel is one of the world’s most important producers of military hardware and surveillance technology, honed in its occupation of Palestine, and exported around the globe to various brutal regimes. Journalist and filmmaker Antony Loewenstein traces the history of Israel’s military tech sector, refined after the invasion of Lebanon and again following September 11th, and discusses its tools of mass surveillance today.

Resources:

Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World Verso, 2023

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Can white people truly grasp how deeply racism is embedded in U.S. society, and in people’s psyches? According to David Mura, the stories that white people tell themselves about race make the recognition of Blacks as equals impossible. Also: more from Elisabeth Jay Friedman about intergenerational mobilizing.

David Mura, The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives University of Minnesota Press, 2023

Elisabeth Jay Friedman and Ana Laura Rodríguez Gustá, “‘Welcome to the Revolution’: Promoting Generational Renewal in Argentina’s Ni Una Menos,” Qualitative Sociology

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Mass shootings and other forms of person-on-person violence dominate the headlines, but what less visible, and perhaps more insidious, kinds of violence exist? Barbara Chasin identifies and describes two types of violence that affect large numbers of people: organizational violence and structural violence. She also connects the dots between violence and economic inequality. (Encore presentation.)

Barbara Chasin, Inequality & Violence in the United States: Casualties of Capitalism, 3rd ed., Lexington Books, 2022

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Universities are one of the most hallowed institutions in our society — but critics argue they’re closer to hedge funds that conduct classes. Higher education is largely tax-exempt, based on the idea that universities benefit the public at large, including the communities where they are located. Yet urbanist and historian Davarian Baldwin argues that cities pay a very high price for universities which, whether public or private, are engines of profit, encroaching on adjacent communities and exploiting low wage labor, while grossly subsidized by their host cities.

Resources:

Davarian L. Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities Bold Type Books, 2021

The post Cities and the Big Business of Higher Education appeared first on KPFA.

How does a social movement attract younger participants, who may be turned off by older activists’ approaches, styles, and understandings? Elisabeth Jay Friedman describes how Ni Una Menos, an influential feminist formation in Argentina, managed to build an intergenerational mass movement.

Elisabeth Jay Friedman and Ana Laura Rodríguez Gustá, ‘“Welcome to the Revolution’: Promoting Generational Renewal in Argentina’s Ni Una Menos,” Qualitative Sociology

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As the world rushes headlong into the climate emergency, what might a liberatory approach look like, that would avert ecological disaster while making another world possible? Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese have laid out one vision for eco-socialism that takes on the difficult question of how to plan society in a radically different way. (Encore presentation.)

Resources:

Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics Verso, 2022

Half-Earth Socialism: A Planetary Planning Game

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To be queer and communist at a time when the Communist Party in the U.S. banned LGBT people was tricky and often perilous. In her new book Bettina Aptheker profiles Lorraine Hansberry (who famously penned the play “A Raisin in the Sun”), Harry Hay (best known for founding the Mattachine Society), and other figures with radical sensibilities and closeted sexualities.

Bettina Aptheker, Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s-1990s Routledge, 2023

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What are the contradictions and uses of environmental conservation and land preservation in a settler colonial state? Like South Africa and the United States, the Israeli government has carved out large swaths of land for ecological protection — and the dispossession of native populations is often hidden from sight. Legal anthropologist Irus Braverman discusses the settler ecologies of Palestine-Israel.

Resources:

Irus Braverman, Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel University of Minnesota Press, 2023

The post Israel and Settler Conservation appeared first on KPFA.

An Asian Pacific Islander history-themed program featuring Jean Pfaelzer on anti-Chinese pogroms; Karen Ishizuka on API organizing; Craig Santos Perez on Guam’s indigenous Chamorro population; and Julie Otsuka about her novel about Japanese American incarceration.

Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans UC Press

Karen Ishizuka, Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties Verso

Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [guma’] Omnidawn

Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine Anchor Books

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