Upstream

Join the Upstream Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

Below is a transcript of the update shared in this announcement episode — TL;DR: we've got tons of bonus episodes and other goodies as part of our new Patreon!

• At least 1 bonus episode a month, usually 2-3
• Early access to certain episodes
• Stickers

If you've been following along with our episodes or on social media you've probably heard that we've been working on launching a Patreon account, and, voila—we did it.

We'll be sharing at least one, more likely two or three, bonus episodes every month for our Patreon subscribers, and that's in addition to the bi-weekly, regularly scheduled episodes of course. We have 5 different tiers at which you can subscribe to our Patreon—all the details can be found here, but just to give you a sense, we the tiers start at $5/month. All tiers have access to the same number of bonus episodes per month, but as you go up in tiers there are additional benefits as well, including early access to certain episodes and stickers. And, of course, you'll also be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going.

Here's what's coming: this month we've already got two bonus episodes loaded and ready to go. The first is an episode with Doug Henwood on the problems with modern monetary theory (MMT), and the second episode is with Roger Keeran and Joe Jamison on their book Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union. So as soon as you sign up you'll get instant access to both of these. And then we're also planning Part 7 of our ongoing series on Palestine for later in the month.

Coming up in March in March we've got an episode planned with Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia who are running for President and Vice-President as the candidates of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, or PSL.

What inspired us to create a Patreon community? As you know, we've always provided all of our bi-weekly episodes and our documentaries for free to everyone—that's not gonna change. But then last year we faced a pretty big crisis as we lost both of our grant funders (which were by far our largest income stream), and we realized that we were gonna be entirely listener funded moving forward. The nonprofit industrial complex itself is a challenge to navigate, to say the least, but even more so as a podcast—funders just don't really fund podcasts. They especially don't fund political education podcasts, and especially, especially socialist ones.

But we have to say we were so, so grateful to all of you who started supporting us at that time, or, of course, who had already been contributing monthly or through one-time donations—you really showed us that we can definitely keep Upstream going without the grant funding. So thank you so much. And to show our thanks we wanted to give you all something extra, something special.

Wanna sign up? Here's how it works: just go to our Patreon page and sign up. If you're already donating to us and you want to switch over to become a Patreon subscriber, it's super easy—you can just cancel your current recurring donation through Flipcause (which is where you're donating through now), and just sign up for our Patreon instead. If you don't feel like making the switch, no problem at all, you don't have to do anything—your current donations through Flipcause won't be affected in any way. And, of course, you can still make one-time donations through Flipcause.

We're so grateful to all of you out there who've supported us with your donations over the months and years—we really could not do this without you. And if you've been on the fence about becoming a monthly supporter, this is a great time to do it because we've got a lot of really great bonus content coming your way.

And if you're just not at a place where you can afford to subscribe, it's all good, we completely understand—we've still got our regular episodes coming out every two weeks. And if you do want to support us in a nonfinancial way, the best way to do so is just to share our episodes, share our posts, help spread the word and get people tuned into the struggle for liberation and for a more equitable and beautiful world. And of course leaving us a 5-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify goes a long way in getting those apps to put our content in front of new eyes and into new ears. So, thank you, we love you all. Solidarity.

Join the Upstream Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

The past decade or so was marked by mass protests—in fact, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history, from Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring to the 2020 George Floyd uprisings and even more recently with millions upon millions pouring into the streets in support of Palestinian liberation. So why, then, have conditions not improved? Why have they, in many cases, only gotten worse?

This is the question that Vincent Bevins set out to answer in his latest book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. The search for an answer took Vincent all over the world, from Brazil to Ukraine, Turkey, Chile, Hong Kong, and Middle East. The answer imparts an extremely important lesson to the left: we're simply not organized. Or, rather, we're not organized in an effective way. The shift in the left's tactics and strategies since the 1960s has left us with movements that rely far too heavily on horizontalism, spontaneity, and an extreme form of prefiguration that subordinates ends to means. This New Left ideology abandons the principles of Marxism-Leninism, revolutionary theory, and the importance of leadership. This, Vincent believes, is why the mass protest decade failed to win its demands and bring about real change.

Vincent Bevins is a journalist and writer and, in addition to If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, he's the author of The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World.

Further Resources:

• If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, by Vincent Bevins
• Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
• The Tyranny of Structurelessness, by Jo Freeman
• On Authority, by Frederick Engels
• All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (TV series), Adam Curtis
• Upstream: What Is To Be Done? with Breht O'Shea and Alyson Escalante

Thank you to Menstruação Anarquika for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

"The sign of a healthy economy should be a drinkable river," these are the words of Li An Phoa, an environmental activist and our guest for this episode. In 2005, Li An Phoa canoed the full length of the Rupert, a river in Canada. All along the way, she was able to drink water straight from the river. When she returned three years later, this was no longer the case. The river had been poisoned from dams, mining, and industry. Fish died, people got ill, and the delicate balance in the ecosystem was destroyed. Realizing that drinkable rivers are not just a key indicator of ecological health, but community vitality and resilience as well, and that rivers can only be drinkable when economic systems are post-growth, truly democratic, place-based, and respectful of the commons and Indigenous peoples, Li An decided to dedicate her life to re-cultivating drinkable rivers.

Since then, Li An founded the Drinkable Rivers organization and Spring College and has walked many rivers, using citizen science to test the water quality, training others to do the same, and intervening when a river has been contaminated or is off-balance. Her 1,000-kilometer walk along the river Meuse in Europe was the subject of the documentary Long Walk for Drinkable Rivers. Most recently, she and her partner Maarten van der Schaaf wrote the book Drinkable Rivers: How the river became my teacher.

In this conversation, Li An goes upstream to explain why rivers are no longer drinkable, she offers her vision of a world with drinkable rivers, shares her process for galvanizing communities to care for their watersheds, and suggests invitations for how all of us could contribute to healthier rivers and healthier eco- and economic systems around the world.

Further Resources:

• Drinkable Rivers

This episode of Upstream is brought to you by EcoGather, a holder of space between stories. EcoGather offers guided learning journeys and free weekly online EcoGatherings that foster conversation and build community around heterodox economics, collective action, and living as part of the natural world. Visit: ecogather.sterlingcollege.edu

Thank you to Mirah for the intermission music and to Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art.

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

It may seem like a distant dream to imagine that the decades-long settler-colonial project which is Israel could finally end and transform into a state where all faiths, ethnicities, and cultures could thrive together in their diversity and equality. It seems like a distant dream because, as we all know, the reality that we're witnessing is the opposite of that — it's an escalation of an already ruthless and bloody ethnic cleansing campaign that officially began in 1948.

Although a democratic, multi-ethnic, multicultural, multi-religious state may seem like an exercise in imagination, it's hardly a futile pursuit. We must constantly be exercising our imagination and dreaming of a better world, not only because it's important to exercise those muscles of hope, but because in doing so we're also spreading the seeds of knowledge and inspiration which could themselves affect change.

To talk about what could be, we've brought on Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian-born academic, physician and author of many books, including In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story, and, most recently, One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel, published by Pluto Press. This is part 6 of our ongoing series on Palestine.

Ghada was a young child in Palestine during the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, and has spent many decades involved in the movement for Palestinian liberation. In this conversation, we discuss why a single Palestinian state from the river to the sea is the only just way forward, what some of the barriers to this happening are, what the sentiment of many Palestinians is when thinking about living side-by-side with Israelis in a democratic state, how this dream might turn into a reality, and much more.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further Resources:

• One State The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel, by Ghada Karmi
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction with Sumaya Awad
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 2: Justice for Some with Noura Erakat
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 3: Settler-Colonialism and Medical Apartheid with Rupa Marya & Jess Ghannam
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 4: False Solutions and Paths of Resistance with Sumaya Awad
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 5: The Political Economy of Palestine with Adam Hanieh
• Donate to Middle Eastern Children's Alliance (MECA)
• Anera: Provide urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians
• Write your member of Congress to demand an immediate ceasefire

The cover art for this episode was originally designed by Thomas Greenwood and was slightly adapted by Carolyn Raider for this episode. Thank you to Ferkat Al Ard for the intermission music.

Samih Al Qasem's "Wait For Me":

My neck is on the edge of the knife, O, my homeland, and yet I tell you: Wait for me! And my hands are tied behind my back, O, my homeland And yet I sing for you, o, my wound..I sing "I have not betrayed you… so don't betray me I have not sold you..so don't sell me!" The homeland of the miserable psalms and the lost faces the homeland of the vengeful roots the homeland of the storms, thunderbolts, and cold nights the homeland of the stolen orchards and the prayerful palms the homeland of the villages, ruins, blood, and crying Do I strengthen your resolve? Or do you, o betrayed one, strengthen my resolve? The homeland of the old lies, tales, and prophets Do I become your secret? Or do you, o betrayed one, become my secret? The homeland of fragmentation in exiles, Strange airports, and ports homeland of anger homeland of flames You, whose hands are kissed through the tears of one million refugee! Homeland of humiliation, distress, and pride I believed in the love which gives, and which dissolves in giving.. Thus, I say to you: Wait for me! My neck is on the edge of the knife, But I say to you: Wait for me!"

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Happy Winter Solstice! In this annual tradition, Della is joined by two fellow podcast hosts to reflect on the past year and set some intentions for the year ahead.

Manda Scott is a novelist, smallholder, and host of the Accidental Gods podcast, which showcases individuals and organizations at the emerging edge of our world to set the foundation for a future we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. Her latest novel, Any Human Power is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Nathalie Nahai is a behavior science advisor, author and host of the podcast The Hive, which focuses on psychology, technology, and human behavior. Nathalie is the author of Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and is also the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.

One of Della's offerings in the new year is a Gaia Education course called Cultivating Regenerative Livelihoods that weaves insights from this podcast and her work as a Right Livelihood coach with practical solidarity economy tools to help us better align our work with our values and contribute to economic systems change. This 12-week online course will start on January 13th and is 300 pounds with half and full scholarships available and a 15% discount for Upstream listeners available here.

Further Resources:

• Course: Cultivating Regenerative Livelihoods Course, Jan 13 - Apr 20, 2024, Virtual, Designed and co-facilitated by Della Duncan, 15% off discount for Upstream Listeners here: https://www.gaiaeducation.org/cart/155142-Cultivating-Regenerative-Livelihoods
• Poem: The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
• Theory: Two Loop Theory by Meg Wheatley and Deborah Frieze
• Upstream: Marxism & Buddhism with Breht O'Shea
• Upstream: A Marxist Perspective on Elections with August Nimtz
• Upstream: Beyond the Clock with Jenny Odell
• California Doughnut Economics Coalition and positions available
• Indy Johar: talking about Inter-Becoming and the model of the autonomous house on Accidental Gods
• Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy: on shifting from a Trauma Culture to an Initiation Culture on Accidental Gods
• Grief and Joy on a Planet in Crisis: Joanna Macy on the Best Time To Be Alive on The Way Out is In
• Event: Flourishing Futures Salon
• Event: Planet Local Summit
• Winter Solstice Meditation
• Summer Solstice Meditation

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

The ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip has been front and center in the world's attention for the last couple of months, and it's important that we keep it there. But it's also important to remember that this latest escalation in violence is just that: an escalation, an increase in violence in a region where violence is the norm, not just militarily but also politically and economically — what we might call structural violence.

The suffering in Palestine has been seen primarily as a humanitarian issue for decades now, but the reality is that reducing Palestine to a matter of humanitarian concern obscures issues of geopolitics and the political economy of the region in a way that decontextualizes much of what is taking place in Palestine, and, importantly, the material conditions and incentives driving the Israeli occupation.

In this conversation, Episode 5 of our ongoing series on Palestine, we're going to explore the political economies of Palestine and Israel with a guest who is deeply immersed in these questions. Adam Hanieh is a Palestinian professor at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the University and Exeter and author of Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East, published by Haymarket Books.

In this conversation Adam helps us understand the relationships between the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Israel, how class manifests in these different regions, what the political economies of these regions are and how they shape Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign, and in general, the importance of understanding the geopolitical dynamics of the broader region and neighboring Arab states when trying to understand what is happening in Palestine and Israel.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further Resources:

• Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East, by Adam Hanieh
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction with Sumaya Awad
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 2: Justice for Some with Noura Erakat
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 3: Settler-Colonialism and Medical Apartheid with Rupa Marya & Jess Ghannam
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 4: False Solutions and Paths of Resistance with Sumaya Awad
• Donate to Middle Eastern Children's Alliance (MECA)
• Anera: Provide urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians
• Write your member of Congress to demand an immediate ceasefire

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Before the Zionist project and the state of Israel placed their boots on the neck of Palestine, this region was a multicultural, multi-religious land, where Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived side-by-side in relative peace and harmony.

And despite what Israeli forces propagandize, this so-called "conflict" in the Middle East is not some millennia-old, intractable holy war between two religions. It's quite simply and very classically a case of settler-colonialism. When we see what's happening in Palestine from this perspective, the solution becomes quite clear: end the occupation.

But despite this clarity, ending the occupation is no simple feat. Not only is there little appetite for this in Israel, of course, but with the entire cavalry of US military, financial, and PR support behind it, an end to the zionist colonization and occupation of Palestine feels, well, to put it gently, perhaps not feasible in the short term.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the fight for Palestinian liberation is a lost cause — far from it. Not only are there many battles to be fought which will bring liberation just that much closer, and which can improve conditions drastically, but the ultimate aim of ending the occupation of Palestine is a goal that the left can never abandon. As Noura Erakat reminded us in the second episode in our series on Palestine: we are, in many ways, all Palestinians.

In this episode we're going to explore how to end the occupation and the colonization of Palestine. We'll explore some of the steps to get there, some of the barriers, some of the false solutions, and what a liberated Palestine might look like.

To guide us on this journey we've brought back onto the show Sumaya Awad. Sumaya is a Palestinian writer, analyst, and socialist organizer based in New York City. She's the Director of Strategy and Communications at the Adalah Justice Project and a contributor to and co-editor, along with brian bean, of Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, published by Haymarket Books.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further Resources:

• Palestine: A Socialist Introduction
• Adalah Justice Project
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction with Sumaya Awad
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 2: Justice for Some with Noura Erakat
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 3: Settler-Colonialism and Medical Apartheid with Rupa Marya & Jess Ghannam
• Donate to Middle Eastern Children's Alliance (MECA)
• Anera: Provide urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians
• Write your member of Congress to demand an immediate ceasefire

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

As the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians continues, it's important that we also continue to raise a magnifying glass to its perpetrators, not just looking at the state of Israel as a whole or the IDF—as blood-soaked as their hands are—but also looking at the some of the perhaps less publicly scrutinized institutions complicit in this genocide.

In this episode in our ongoing series on Palestine, we're going to focus on healthcare institutions and their complicity in the devastation and destruction taking place in Palestine. What are the underlying power structures that support and uplift settler colonialism, white supremacy, and health apartheid? Why is it that so few health institutions in the west have spoken out against Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people? What does that tell us about the failures of our healthcare systems and much of the medical community?

To discuss these questions and more we've brought on two guests today. Dr. Jess Ghannam is a Palestinian professor in psychiatry at UCSF in San Francisco working in Gaza. Dr. Rupa Marya is a professor of medicine at UCSF in San Francisco and co-author, along with Raj Patel, of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.

Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art and to Sabreen Group & Majazz Project / Palestinian Sound Archive for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further Resources

• Upstream: Decolonizing Medicine with Rupa Marya and Raj Patel
• Rupa Marya on Instagram
• Inflamed Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice
• There's No Justification for Destroying Gaza's Health Infrastructure, Yes Magazine
• Health Professionals and War in the Middle East, JAMA
• Upstream: Health Communism with Beatrice Adler-Bolton
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction with Sumaya Awad
• Upstream: Palestine Pt. 2: Justice for Some with Noura Erakat

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

For those of us living in the United States, today—what we call Thanksgiving—is a very significant holiday because, for some of us at least, it's a day to recognize and remember the violent, genocidal, settler-colonial history of the land we live on. Our lives here in North America are predicated on a history and a pattern that is repeating itself as we speak, most notably in occupied Palestine, where we are witnessing what feels like the culmination of a decades-long ethnic cleansing campaign against the Indigenous population of Palestine by the forces of Zionism, the state of Israel, and, by the reigning global hegemon, the United States.

We've already covered some of the history that led us to this point in Episode 1 of our ongoing series on Palestine with Sumaya Awad, and on today's show, we're going to be exploring a different angle, outlining the history and context of the formation of the state of Israel, how Palestinians resisted Israeli occupation from before the state was even created, and how they continued to resist throughout the disingenuously named "peace" process that culminated with the Oslo Accords. As we'll see, this process was never intended to bring a lasting peace to the region, but was intended to cement in the status quo of Israeli supremacy and the ongoing subjugation of Palestinians.

To talk about this we've brought on Noura Erakat, Associate Professor at Rutgers University in the department of Africana Studies and the program of Criminal Justice and author of Justice For Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. From the Great Arab Revolt in 1936 to the second Intifada at the start of this century, and up to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th, in this conversation we explore the history of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, the so-called peace process, the betrayal of the so-called two-state solution, where Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign is headed, and what it's up against.

Although the episodes in our series build on each other in certain ways, all of our series are designed so that each episode can be listened to as a standalone.

Further Resources:

• Upstream – Palestine Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction with Sumaya Awad
• Justice For Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat
• Palestine: A Socialist Introduction edited by Sumay Awad and brian bean
• The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
• Palestine, Israel, and the U.S. Empire by Richard Becker
• Donate to Middle Eastern Children's Alliance (MECA)
• Anera: Provide urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians
• Write your member of Congress to demand an immediate ceasefire

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

The Red Scare — perhaps most well known through the era of McCarthyism that dominated the social, political, and legal spheres of the U.S. in the 1950s — is actually much more than just a brief window of time where communists in the United States were vilified, criminalized, and blacklisted. The Red Scare is actually much more pervasive and longstanding, originating decades before McCarthyism and stretching well into the present. And, when combined with the Black Scare — the fear and hatred of Black people in the United States — it really forms an entire mode of governance that has shaped the character, policies, and collective consciousness of much of U.S.'s 20th and 21st centuries.

To talk about the Black Scare, the Red Scare, and how they work together to create a specific hegemonic atmosphere and policy landscape in the U.S., we've brought on Charisse Burden-Stelly, an Associate Professor of African American studies at Wayne State University, a fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, and author of Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, published by the University of Chicago Press.

In this conversation, we discuss the history of the Red and Black Scares by looking at a few different examples of how these modes of governance overlapped and shaped both policies and people in the 20th century. We also explore how these scares have followed us into the present and how they shape and color more contemporary moments like the George Floyd uprisings, the Stop Cop City movement, or the various solidarity movements for Palestinian liberation here in the United States.

Further Resources:

• Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States
• Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women's Political Writing
• Upstream: The Limitations of Black Capitalism with Francisco Perez
• Upstream: Abolition with Niki Franco AKA Venus Roots

This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.