Undercurrents

Organizers Susan Labandibar and Jeff Lobo tell the story of their organization's, Swing Left Greater Boston, humble Amherst beginnings and its efforts to make democracy and progressive legislation more accessible: voter protection efforts, knocking on doors, running phone-banks and regularly registering voters. Swing Left Greater Boston is in the process of becoming Swing Blue Alliance. 

Brian Garvey and Amar Ahmad of Mass Peace Action talk about their organization's seventy-year effort to demilitarize from the grassroots up, and expound on the need to constrict the government's inflated military budget and limit our intervention abroad. 

UMass Economics professor Gerry Freidman comes onto the show to discuss the economics of flawed polling and this election cycle's unmet expectations. 

Emeritus professor Art Keene and professor Jennifer Sandler, both associated with the UMass Department of Anthropology, discuss the state of the nation, structural inequalities in the American voting system, and how disenfranchisement got us here. 

UMass professors John Bracey and Bob Pollin, who teach in the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies and the Department of Economics respectively, join us with fewer than 24 hours on the clock until polls close on the 2020 election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. 

Miranda Groux and Hallie Martin from the Resistance Center for Peace and Justice in Northampton join our show to talk about the grassroots movement propelling demilitarization, and how their organization takes preventative action in the Pioneer Valley against militarization. 

Traci Parker joins us this week in a discussion around historical barriers to obtaining suffrage and the need for Black activism in the struggle for racial justice. Parker's book, Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s, was released last year. 

Arlene Avakian of the Movement Voter Project fills us in on the mechanics of grassroots organizing, what happens on the ground once elections are over and  how organizations like hers fundraise for the future. Avakian is an emeritus professor from UMass Amherst, and she is one of the founders and former chair of the university's Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality. 

Art Keene, UMass professor emeritus of anthropology, joins us in conversation around voter suppression and the precarious state of our democracy. Keene is an editor at the Amherst Independent and a local activist. 

UMass professor of economics Gerry Friedman joins us to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic's strain on our healthcare system and the economics of inoculation. His newest release titled The Case for Medicare for All is out in bookstores now.