KPFA - Making Contact

On today’s Making Contact, we head to Soseongri, a small village nestled in the mountains of Seongju County. There, grandmas and grandpas in the 70s, 80s, and 90s have gone from quietly farming to organizing daily protests and blockades to stop THAAD. THAAD is part of a missile defense system that gives the U.S. the ability to carry out a nuclear first strike.

The region has historically been Korea’s conservative stronghold, but with the deployment of THAAD, people are re-evaluating the history they’ve been taught their entire lives.

Featuring:  

Shin Dong Ok, Head of Soseongri Elders Group

Credits:

Host: Marie Choi

Staff Producers: Anita Johnson, Marie Choi, Monica Lopez, R.J. Lozada

Executive Director: Lisa Rudman

Audience Engagement Director: Sabine Blaizin

Development Associate: Vera Tykulsker

Voiceover for Shin Dong Ok – David Jang Jae Rhee

Archival audio is from the U.S. National Archives, AP Archives, U.S. State Department, and U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center.

Special Thanks to Io Sunwoo, Juyeon Rhee, and Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans.

Music Credits:

Photo Credit

Stop THAAD Alliance

Resources:

ZoomIn Korea’s Stop THAAD Coverage

http://www.zoominkorea.org/category/peace-and-militarism/stop-thaad/

Science at MIT: From Cold War to Climate Crisis

https://radius.mit.edu/programs/science-mit-cold-war-climate-crisis 

Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea

http://stopthaad.org/

MULTIMEDIA: Still Present Pasts

http://stillpresentpasts.org/ 

Memory of Forgotten War

http://www.mufilms.org/films/memory-of-forgotten-war/

BOOK: Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War by Grace Cho

https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/haunting-the-korean-diaspora

The post Ghosts of the Korean War: Stop THAAD (Encore) appeared first on KPFA.

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.

Some Americans cling desperately to the myth that we are living in a post-racial society, that the election of the first Black president spelled the doom of racism. In fact, racist thought is alive and well in America – more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues in Stamped from the Beginning, if we have any hope of grappling with this stark reality, we must first understand how racist ideas were developed, disseminated, and enshrined in American society.

In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. Stamped from the Beginning uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to offer a window into the contentious debates between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists and antiracists. From Puritan minister Cotton Mather to Thomas Jefferson, from fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to brilliant scholar W.E.B. Du Bois to legendary anti-prison activist Angela Davis, Kendi shows how and why some of our leading proslavery and pro-civil rights thinkers have challenged or helped cement racist ideas in America.

Featuring: Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

Photo Credits: Dr. Kendi’s website – https://www.ibramxkendi.com/

For More information:

Dr. Ibram

About the book:

nationalbook.org

The Heartbeat of Racism is Denial, Op-ed in New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/opinion/sunday/heartbeat-of-racism-denial.html

The post Dr. Ibram X. Kendi – Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Encore Edition) appeared first on KPFA.

Which came first– coin or the ledger? In either case, physical currency and a tally of debts and payments have been the two primary forms of money used throughout history. Today, physical cash is increasingly being replaced with cashless systems including cryptocurrencies. This week, we hear from blockchain researcher Jaya Klara Brekke on the political economy of blockchain and consensus protocols. And we go to Athens where contributors Niki Seth-Smith and Alyssa Moxley look at how some Greeks have been using cryptocurrencies since banking restrictions were imposed in 2015.

Featuring:  

Jaya Klara Brekke, author and researcher specializing in the political economy of blockchain and consensus protocols; Matthew Slater, FairCoin developer and Fair Coop member; Dionysus Zindros, blockchain PhD student, University of Athens; Nikos, owner of Taverna Aggelos accepts BitCoin; Achilleas, bee keeper and volunteer at Fair Spot.

For more information:

FairCoin web site

https://fair-coin.org/

Many unhappy with current political system – Richard Wike, Katie Simmons, Bruce Stokes, and Janell Fetterolf, Pew Research Center

http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/10/16/many-unhappy-with-current-political-system/

8 in 10 Greeks Not Happy With Government – Kerry Kolasa-Sikiaridi

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2017/01/20/8-in-10-greeks-not-happy-with-government-nd-leads-syriza-by-14-poll-says/

Jaya Klara Brekke – author

http://distributingchains.info/

The post Breaking Protocol: Blockchain and Capital Controls in Greece appeared first on KPFA.

When Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United states, the wealth gap between rich and poor was already very wide. The top 10% of families — those who had at least $942,000 — held 76% of total wealth. The average amount of wealth in this group was $4 million. And the entire bottom half of the population had just 1% of the total wealth pie, this gap continues to rise and when the statistical scope accounts for race, the disparity worsens.

Chuck Collins, Director of the Program On Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies, traces the history of the wealth gap in his work.

Is Universal Basic Income, or UBI, an answer to the wealth gap, and to poverty? Or is it the tech community’s neoliberal dream? For this answer we hear from the producers from Upstream.

Featuring: 

Chuck Collins, Director of the Program On Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies

Credits:

Host: RJ Lozada

Producers: Monica Lopez, Marie Choi, RJ Lozada, Anita Johnson

Upstream Podcast Producers: Della Z Duncan, Robert R Raymond

Executive Director: Lisa Rudman

Web Editor and Audience Engagement Director: Sabine Blaizin

Development Associate: Vera Tykulsker

Special thanks to Upstream Podcast.  

More information

Born on Third Base, by Chuck Collins: https://www.chelseagreen.com/born-on-third-base/

inequality.org : inequality.org 

United for a Fair Economy: faireconomy.org

Upstream Podcast: upstreampodcast.org

The Color of Money – Mehrsa Baradaran: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674970953

Economic Policy Institute, The racial wealth gap: How African-Americans have been shortchanged out of the materials to build wealth: https://www.epi.org/blog/the-racial-wealth-gap-how-african-americans-have-been-shortchanged-out-of-the-materials-to-build-wealth/

The post Wealth Inequity and Universal Basic Income appeared first on KPFA.

On today’s Making Contact, journalist Juan González discusses his new book, Reclaiming Gotham.  He chronicles the evolution of the growth machine in America’s cities – from redlining and racial covenants in the early 20th century, to land grabs and privatization in the 21st – and the rise of progressive alliances to reclaim them.

Featuring: 

Juan González, journalist and author of Reclaiming Gotham

Credits:

Host: Marie Choi

No, Juan Gonzalez, Bill de Blasio Isn’t Ending ‘The Tale of Two Cities’

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/no-juan-gonzalez-bill-de-blasio-isnt-ending-the_us_59b73610e4b08f6632c07699 

Neoliberalism is a Political Project

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/

Neoliberalism: The Idea that Swallowed the World

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world 

Local Progress

http://localprogress.org/

Richmond Progressive Alliance

http://www.richmondprogressivealliance.net/

The post Reclaiming Gotham: The Battle for U.S. Cities appeared first on KPFA.