According to Jesse Olsavsky, vigilance committees in Philadelphia, Boston, and other northern cities constituted the militant, highly organized urban wing of the Underground Railroad. Olsavsky stresses the importance of the interviews vigilance committee members conducted with runaways, interviews that acted as crucial conduits for information, ideas, and strategies for resistance.

Jesse Olsavsky, The Most Absolute Abolition: Runaways, Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Revolutionary Abolitionism, 1835–1861 LSU Press, 2022

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The wines of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand are widely consumed around the world, especially in the UK, the heart of the former British empire. And that’s no coincidence. The British imperial project was central to the cultivation and distribution of wine from its colonies, for reasons both ideological and economic. Historian Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre discusses three centuries of imperial wine production and consumption, once primarily reserved for the elite, then later consumed by the lower classes.

Resources:

Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre, Imperial Wine: How the British Empire Made Wine’s New World UC Press, 2022

The post The Wines of Empire appeared first on KPFA.

Palm oil can be found in a staggering variety of food items and other products we consume every day. Max Haiven traces the history of this ubiquitous commodity’s production and use to reveal capitalism’s logics and imperial states’ depredations. (Encore presentation.)

Max Haiven, Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire Pluto Press, 2022

Pluto Press’s Vagabonds series

The post Oily Business appeared first on KPFA.

Mike Davis was an exceptional thinker and writer: a deeply committed socialist who dazzlingly illuminated the unfolding ecological and social contradictions of late capitalism. Whether writing about his native Southern California, or contemplating the fate of billions in the world’s mega-slums, Davis gave us new ways of seeing — always with a post-capitalist world in his sights. Geographer Richard Walker discusses the many contributions of his fellow urbanist and radical.

The post Remembering Mike Davis appeared first on KPFA.

Many U.S. military establishment bigwigs are pushing the development of automated and autonomous weapons systems. Roberto González questions whether this robo-fanaticism, as he calls it, is justified. He also describes efforts to address human warfighters’ distrust of machines. (Encore presentation.)

Roberto J. González, War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future University of California Press, 2022

The post Automated Warfare appeared first on KPFA.

The complicity of white workers in maintaining the capitalist status quo has been much argued on the U.S. left. One of the key combatants and contributors to the debate was the influential radical thinker Noel Ignatiev, who died in 2019. Economist Geert Dhondt reflects on the key ideas of Ignatiev on race and the notion of dual power in moments of revolutionary upheaval.

Resources:

Noel Ignatiev, Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity (Edited by Geert Dhondt, Zhandarka Kurti, and Jarrod Shanahan) Verso, 2022

Noel Ignatiev, Acceptable Men: Life in the Largest Steel Mill in the World Charles H Kerr, 2021

Hard Crackers

The post The Politics of Noel Ignatiev appeared first on KPFA.

The movement of Chinese people – around 300 million of them – from rural areas to China’s cities has been called the largest mass migration in human history. Have the working-class migrants who’ve built China’s megacities been rewarded for their efforts? Eli Friedman describes the obstacles and injustices they’ve encountered, particularly when trying to get schooling for their children.

Eli Friedman, The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City Columbia University Press, 2022

The post Migrant Workers in China appeared first on KPFA.

It’s been described at the most turbulent period of global class struggle in history — the turn of the 20th century when revolutionaries around the world found common cause against capital and empire. Christina Heatherton discusses the revolutionary internationalism swirling around the Mexican Revolution and the remarkable intersection of radicals at that time.

Resources:

Christina Heatherton, Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution UC Press, 2022

The post The Radical International appeared first on KPFA.

In arguing for the urgency of moving from anthropocentrism toward ecocentrism, Aaron S. Allen distinguishes between environmental crises and ecological change; argues against the “balance of nature” paradigm; differentiates between strong and weak forms of sustainability; and describes the role that expressive culture and the environmental liberal arts can play in driving awareness and activism. (Encore presentation.)

McDowell, Borland, Dirksen, and Tuohy, eds., Performing Environmentalisms: Expressive Culture and Ecological Change University of Illinois Press, 2021

Allen and Dawe, eds., Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature Routledge, 2016

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They are among the biggest companies in the world: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon have an outsized impact on the global economy and on our daily lives. Rob Larson examines the companies that have become synonymous with the glories and ills of contemporary capitalism. He makes the case for online socialism. (Encore presentation.)

Resources:

Rob Larson, Bit Tyrants: The Political Economy of Silicon Valley Haymarket Books, 2020

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