Jacobin Radio

<h4>As urban rebellions arise in cities, welfare rights advocates in Boston public housing use militant tactics to get services they are owed.</h4><h4>This is episode two of the first season of a people's history podcast! "The Point: Rebellion and Resistance in Boston Public Housing" traces a social history of Boston from the urban rebellions of the 1960s, through busing in the 70s, into the Clinton era.</h4>We investigate these events from the lens of one community: Columbia Point, the largest public housing project in New England. Built on an isolated landfill site next to the Boston city dump, it was the site of major organizing, from welfare rights to a Free Breakfast for Children program. It was also the first public housing project to be sold off and redeveloped as private "mixed-income" development (and was a model for the federal policy "HOPE VI").Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/peopleshistorypod

Dan interviews Naomi Klein on her new essay collection On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal.Thanks to University of California Press. Check out their huge selection of titles at ucpress.eduPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Ryan Grim, author of We’ve Got People, on the long fight between insurgents and establishment in the Democratic Party. Then, Jenny Brown, author of Without Apology, on the history and politics of abortion in the United States (check out National Women’s Liberation and Redstockings).

The Green New Deal is on the political agenda in the United States, and thank God for that. Can you imagine how depressing it would be to hear all of these climate reports from scientists around the world without the sense of hope and optimism that the GND has brought discussions of climate change? But how we go about fighting for a GND is crucial. Matt Huber argues in a recent essay in Catalyst that we need a class-struggle approach to fighting climate change. Workers hold more power than any other social group in society; without putting the working class at the center of a GND strategy, we're bound to lose. Matt Huber is a professor of geography at Syracuse University, and the author of 'LifeBlood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital,' as well as a forthcoming book on class and climate politics from Verso. His essay "Ecological Politics for the Working Class" appears in the Spring 2019 edition of Catalyst. Read it here: https://catalyst-<wbr />journal.com/vol3/no1/<wbr />ecological-politics-for-the-<wbr />working-class

<h4>At Columbia Point, a Boston public housing project built in 1954, mothers organize to try and close the city dump.</h4><h4>This is episode one of the first season of the people's history podcast! "The Point: Rebellion and Resistance in Boston Public Housing" traces a social history of Boston from the urban rebellions of the 1960s, through busing in the 70s, into the Clinton era.</h4><h4>We investigate these events from the lens of one community: Columbia Point, the largest public housing project in New England. Built on an isolated landfill site next to the Boston city dump, it was the site of major organizing, from welfare rights to a Free Breakfast for Children program. It was also the first public housing project to be sold off and redeveloped as private "mixed-income" development (and was a model for the federal policy "HOPE VI").</h4>Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/peopleshistorypod

Maria hit Puerto Rico as austerity dismantled its social and material infrastructure. But as Yarimar Bonilla explains, these years also taught Puerto Ricans about their own collective power, fueling the summer’s mass movement that overthrew Governor Ricardo Rosselló.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

A new audio documentary about struggles in the United States. Each six-episode season covers one local story, told from the viewpoint of working-class people. Our first season, The Point, traces a social history of Boston from the urban rebellions of the 1960s, through busing in the 70s, into the Clinton era.Season one, episode one drops November 19th on Jacobin Radio.

Historian Quinn Slobodian makes a return appearance to talk about neoliberals: their opposition to the European Union (essay in Mutant Neoliberalism), their hatred of the 1960s, and their embrace of racial and culturalist politics.

Two of the most pressing questions facing humanity are as follows: 1. What exactly has changed and what has stayed the same about the global capitalist economy in the 21st century? 2. Are we gonna have a Prime Minister Jezza in the UK before Christmas? Micah posed these questions and others to Grace Blakeley, a socialist economist, economics commentator at the New Statesman, and research fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR). She's also the author of a new book, Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialization. She came through Chicago on the American leg of her book tour, and sat down for a discussion about the book and UK politics in front of an audience at Volumes Bookcafe. Thanks to Volumes for hosting the event. You can buy Grace's book Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialization here: https://repeaterbooks.<wbr />com/product/stolen-how-to-<wbr />save-the-world-from-<wbr />financialisation/

Suzi talks to Tariq Ali, author of The Extreme Center,about the UK election, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Labour Party campaign. Unlike the endless US presidential election campaign, the British general election is run on a mercifully concentrated, if intense political timetable of just twenty-five working days once the election is called by Parliament. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and if the Conservatives, the Brexit party. and the Lib Dems have their way, the campaign will focus on Brexit, which has sucked the air out of politics and worse, divided the working class and the Left without addressing what led people to vote to leave in the first place. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made his campaign about reversing the decades-long night of austerity and the need to commit £400 billion of investment to the twin crises of the climate emergency and social deprivation. We get Ali's insights.

Mathew Lawrence, founder and director of the left-wing UK think tank Common Wealth, explains why ownership must be socialized, what that might look like, and how to make it happen.Thanks to UNC Press. Check out Stirrings: How Activist New Yorkers Ignited a Movement for Food Justice By Lana Dee Povitz uncpress.org/book/9781469653013/stirringsPlease support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

What a time to be alive, when there are so many socialists running for Congress that it's difficult to schedule them all. We've interviewed two socialists running for House recently: Heidi Sloan, who's running in Texas, and Cathy Kunkel, who's running in West Virginia. Today, we're interviewing a third socialist House candidate: Rebecca Parson in Washington's sixth district. Rebecca is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, an activist with the Tacoma Tenants Organizing Committee, and a Court Appointed Special Advocate for Pierce County, advocating for children in the foster care system. You can visit her website here: https://rebeccaforwa.<wbr />com/

Grace Blakeley, author of Stolen, on where financialized capitalism came from and how we could get out of it. Then, economist Emmanuel Saez, co-author of The Triumph of Injustice, on how the rich got richer while paying less of their income in taxes than the working class (Tax Justice website here).

The divide between Latin American and the United States was not always so evident. Across the hemisphere, creoles—the descendants of European settlers, born in the Americas—launched revolutions to cast off European rule and preserve their own elite position over black and indigenous people. Joshua Simon explains how rival settler-colonial projects became today's status quo of US dominance.Thanks to n+1. Dig listeners can take 25% off a year’s subscription. Go to nplusonemag.com/thedig to subscribe, and enter THEDIG at checkout.Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

René Rojas, author of this article, on the social explosion in Chile. Then, Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, author of this article, on the little problems, little answers approach of this year’s economics Nobelists.

It's safe to say that Julia Salazar's campaign for state senate in New York was the most watched and most brutal state legislature race in recent history, maybe in all of US history. But what she's done in office since then hasn't received as much attention. Micah sat down with Salazar to talk about what she's been up to since heading to Albany.jacobinmag.com/subscribe

Gabriel Winant, author of this article, on the professional–managerial class and its decomposition (the 1977 Ehrenreich papers are here and here; their 2013 follow-up is here). Then, Alan Beattie, author of this paper, on the US-led global order and its decomposition.

Suzi talks to Pablo Abufom and Gilbert Achcar about the ongoing massive protest movements in Chile and Lebanon, where for more than two weeks the mobilization and demonstrations have spread spectacularly in breadth and depth. In Chile 1.2 million took to the streets on Oct 25 and in Lebanon protestors formed a human chain from one end of the country to another, in both places protesting the inequity of the status quo, a generalized protest against neoliberalism, and an unjust order. Protestors have demanded the resignation of their governments in both Chile and Lebanon, and Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri has now resigned. Lebanon’s October uprising of dignity has shaken its long-resilient sectarian political system to its foundations.

Adom Getachew explains how anticolonial leaders from across the black Atlantic tried to not only cast off European rule but also end empire by constructing an egalitarian global political and economic order in its place.Thanks to University of North Carolina Press. Check out Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor uncpress.org/book/9781469653662/race-for-profit/Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

<style></style> What could a Bernie Sanders presidency do for racial justice in America? Last month at Riverside Church in New York City, we hosted a discussion on this question with Briahna Joy Gray and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, moderated by Ariella Thornhill. <o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> Briahna Joy Gray is Bernie Sanders’s national press secretary. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an assistant professor of African American Studies at Princeton and a Jacobin columnist. Ariella Thornhill is a Jacobin board member.<o:p></o:p>

Jodi Dean, author of Comrade, on the sense of political belonging formed by and essential to common struggle.

Corey Robin, author of The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, on the life and thought of a conservative black nationalist.

Perhaps nowhere is the far right stronger than in India. There, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, continues in power under Prime Minister Narendra Modi after winning a huge victory in this year’s elections. The BJP, however, isn’t just a party. It’s the electoral wing of a Hindu nationalist movement that constitutes the largest and most organized far-right force on earth. A deep dive with Indian scholar Achin Vanaik.Read some of his recent work:newleftreview.org/issues/II112/articles/achin-vanaik-india-s-two-hegemoniesjacobinmag.com/author/achin-vanaikThanks to Princeton University Press. Check out The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America by Nicholas Buccola press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691181547/the-fire-is-upon-usPlease support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi talks to Tel Aviv University professor YoavPeled, whose latest book is The Religionization of Israeli Society, about the still unclear outcome of the September 17 Israeli election — the second election this year. Likud prime minister Bibi Netanyahu got thirty-two seats and Benny Gantz of Blue and White got thirty-three, but so far Netanyahu has not been able to form a coalition that would get the 61 seats out of 120 needed to rule, and the clock is ticking toward the October 24 deadline. Secular far-right nationalist Avigdor Lieberman refuses to form a coalition with Netanyahu (unless he can be acting PM) and Netanyahu needs the immunity granted to the PM from the indictments he faces. If neither Netanyahu nor Gantz succeed in forming a governing coalition, there could yet be a third election, in a single year. Yoav Peled explains the election results, what could happen next — and how we should understand the continuing ascendancy of the Israeli far right.<img src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif" />

'Joker' is not an ode to the alt right. It is a film about the devastating consequences of austerity. This is an objective fact, which I spoke with Jacobin story editor Connor Kilpatrick about. You can read my review of 'Joker,' which touches on many of the themes we talk about in this discussion, for the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/10/joker-far-right-warning-austerity Eileen Jones's piece about 'Joker' and America's long history of movie moral panics is here: https://www.jacobinmag.<wbr />com/2019/09/joker-and-the-<wbr />long-history-of-movie-moral-<wbr />panics

Dan interviews Alex Gourevitch about how 19th century US labor radicals remade the idea of freedom into a principle of working-class social transformation.If you want more on the debate over Lexit, which they only touched on briefly, check out this June interview with Chris Bickerton and Jerome Roos www.thedigradio.com/podcast/the-european-situation-with-chris-bickerton-and-jerome-roosThanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi talks to UCSB Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein about the ongoing UAW strike against General Motors, the first strike since 2007, with 50,000 workers on the picket lines. Lichtenstein shares his views of the strike, the union leadership, and the impact he thinks this strike can have on politics and work life, in reviving and reshaping industries and workplaces — and the political order. Suzi then talks to Daniel Aldana Cohen about the Green New Deal (GND) in the wake of worldwide climate strike actions, and how the GND intersects with the housing crisis, racism, inequality, and energy and food systems, not to mention the political and socioeconomic order while seeking to decarbonize the economy. Plus — it is reviving the Left. It’s not pie in the sky and we get Cohen’s take on why.

Samuel Moyn (author of this article and this) on the political snares of impeachment. Then, Tom Athanasiou on the Sanders climate plan and the need for a global Green New Deal (article here)

Dan interviews Noura Erakat, the author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, a new book that analyzes the history of settler-colonialism in Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation from just before the British mandate to the present through the lens of the law.Thanks to Haymarket Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at haymarketbooks.orgPlease support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig. We need those of you who can support us to do so because we provide every episode free to all.

Our newest print issue is “War Is a Racket,” focused on war and imperialism. At the Chicago issue release party, I spoke with two organizers and writers who appear in the issue: Rory Fanning and Sarah Lazare. Rory is a former Army Ranger who fought in Afghanistan and became a war resister there. He’s the author of the book ‘Worth Fighting For’ and now works at Haymarket Books. He was profiled by our assistant editor Alex Press in the new issue. Sarah is a web editor at In These Times. She has an overview of where the top five Democratic candidates stand on the issue of foreign policy and war in the issue. If you’re not a subscriber, please buy a copy of the issue. You can purchase it here: https://jacobinmag.com/issue/<wbr />war-is-a-racket And subscribe to Jacobin here:https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />subscribe/?code=WARISARACKET

Joel Schalit, co-founder and editor of The Battleground, on the Israeli election. Then, Martin Lukacs, author of The Trudeau Formula, on that slippery Canadian prime minister.

Lisa Duggan wrote a book that explains everything you need to know about Ayn Rand and why she became so enormously consequential so that you don't have to read Rand's work yourself. Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed is out now from University of California Press.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Sam Gindin on the UAW’s strike against GM, and the possibilities for the green repurposing of a plant GM is abandoning. Then, Robin Einhorn on the role of slavery in shaping tax politics in the early United States (article here).

The history of suburbanite reactions to school integration in Atlanta and Charlotte reveal the class power underpinning both racism and the demolition of the New Deal order. Dan interviews Matt Lassiter, discussing suburbanite resistance to school busing, why Nixon's Silent Majority was the the product of a suburban strategy rather than a Southern one, and why the class base of all politics matters.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

As we trudge closer to 2020, candidates are emerging for elected office beyond the presidency. And, thank God, they don't all suck. Like Cathy Kunkel, who is running for Congress in West Virginia's second district. Cathy is an energy analyst, cochair of the Working Families Party in West Virginia, an activist during the 2018 West Virginia teachers strike, and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She's also a contributor to Jacobin, where she's written half a dozen articles about West Virginia and Puerto Rico. You can read her Jacobin articles here: https://www.jacobinmag.<wbr />com/author/cathy-kunkel You can learn more about her campaign at her website: https://<wbr />kunkelforcongress.com

Suzi talks to Paul Mason on Brexit and George Kerevan on Brexit in Scotland — to unravel the complexities and many political-economic ramifications of the issue. The Brexit crisis is as consuming for the United Kingdom as Trump is for the United States. Paul Mason calls it "Brexhaustion," and says chaos is being normalized … albeit manufactured. The daily ins and outs are confusing, especially to outside spectators, but we shed light on this now constitutional crisis with British journalist and writer Paul Mason, and with political economist, journalist, and former SNP MP George Kerevan, who fills us in on the Scottish case by framing for us just how the United Kingdom came to this pass, how Britain has been massively convulsed by the internal divisions rocking the dominant Conservative (Tory) Party — such that Boris Johnson, now in power, could be seemingly denouncing the very capitalist interests the Conservative Party was supposed to represent. Brexit didn’t create these developments, but it is the outward form in which these divisions are being played out — and we get both George Kerevan and Paul Mason’s analyses.

Margaret Corvid, city councilor in Plymouth, England, on Boris Johnson and Brexit madness. Then, John Clegg on slavery’s profound effects on the US political structure.

Dan interviewed legendary feminist scholar Silvia Federici on Caliban and the Witch at her Brooklyn apartment. Next year, he'll make a return trip to discuss Wages for Housework.Here's the article on the Pawtucket factory strike by Joey La Neve DeFrancesco that Dan mentions jacobinmag.com/2018/06/factory-workers-strike-textile-mill-womenThanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Dan discusses the history of black politics in the US—left, nationalist, liberal, and neoliberal—with Michael Dawson.Check out New Dawn, Michael's podcast on race and capitalism: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-dawn/id1213696020Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

We need a Green New Deal to stop climate catastrophe. Everybody knows this. But housing has to be a key piece of the GND, as Daniel Aldana Cohen argues in the Spring 2019 issue of Jacobin on housing. Daniel Aldana Cohen is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative and coauthor, with Alyssa Battistoni, Kate Aronoff, and Thea Riofrancos, of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal from Verso Books. The four of them also coedit the Green New Deal series at Jacobin.Buy a copy of our housing issue, "Home Improvement," here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />issue/home-improvementRead Daniel's articles for Jacobin here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />author/daniel-aldana-cohenRead our Green New Deal series here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />series/green-new-deal

Journalist Yasha Levine on the “democracy” demos in Moscow: for a flossier neoliberalism. Then, Maria Luisa Mendonça, director of Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (Network for Social Justice and Human Rights) in Brazil on the Amazon fires: who’s setting them, why, and what can be done.

Writer Brian Hioe updates us on the Hong Kong protests. Then, Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA), on India’s ongoing crackdown in Kashmir

Heidi Sloan is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America running for Congress in Texas's 25th district. She's challenging a Republican incumbent, used car salesman, and incredibly rich person Roger Williams. Sloan recently sat down to talk about her story, her work with homeless people in Texas, how she came to join the DSA, her socialist political vision, and which corporate supervillain she would most like to grill as a member of the House of Representatives. Read more about Heidi at her website: https://heidifor25.<wbr />com/

Guest host Astra Taylor interviews Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz about Indigenous people's history to reexamine all of history, the present, and our possible futures.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Ordinary language is the sound of hegemony; it is also an archive of the struggles to overturn it. Language is an institution and a constantly emergent field of struggle; it is the product of power relations and it is also itself power relations. Dan interviews John Patrick Leary, the author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

The question of how socialists should engage with the labor movement has always been a critical one. One proposal: the rank-and-file strategy, which the Democratic Socialists of America adopted in its recent convention. But what is it? Labor sociologist Barry Eidlin explains. Barry Eidlin is an assistant professor of sociology at McGill University in Montreal and the author of Labor and the Class Idea in the United States in Canada. Read Barry's short explainer on the rank-and-file strategy here: https://www.jacobinmag.<wbr />com/2019/03/rank-and-file-<wbr />strategy-union-organizing Read Barry and Micah's article on the "militant minority" here: https://journals.<wbr />sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/<wbr />0160449X19828470 (Behind an academic paywall, but message Barry or Micah on social media to get a PDF of it) Read Kim Moody's 2000 pamphlet on the strategy here: https://www.jacobinmag.<wbr />com/2018/08/unions-socialists-<wbr />rank-and-file-strategy-kim-<wbr />moody Buy Barry's excellent book here: https://www.indiebound.<wbr />org/book/9781107514416?aff=<wbr />TomLutz

<font color="#000000">Suzi talks to UCLA law professor </font>Gary Blasi, a longtime housing activist and advocate for the homeless about the staggering increase in homelessness in LA city and county (indeed across the country). But there are misconceptions about what is driving this surge in people living on the streets. Put simply, says Blasi, homeless people are homeless because they cannot afford housing, mostly in neighborhoods where they have grown up. We get Blasi's analysis of the scope of homelessness, the effectiveness — or lack thereof —of city, county, and state measures to deal with it, as well as what more can be done. Suzi then talks to author and activist Paul Buhle about his graphic biography of the American socialist and labor leader Eugene V. Debs— one of the most important Americans of the twentieth century according to Bernie Sanders, who also called Debs “the most effective and popular leader that the American working class has ever had.” We hear about Debs’s life, ideas, and struggles as a fighting union leader of the Pullman railroad strike and Socialist Party leader who was jailed for opposing World War I and ran for president from prison, winning over a million votes.

Dan talks to Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara about his book The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality. We must study socialism's history and plan for its future.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Jobs have in recent years gotten much worse for millions of service workers at Amazon, McDonalds and call centers. Dan interviews Emily Guendelsberger on her book On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane.Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi looks at the rising in Puerto Rico with professor, activist, and author Rafael Bernabe in San Juan, Puerto Rico where two weeks of massive protests brought down the corrupt government of Ricardo Rosselló, and continue amid uncertainty about what comes next. The protest movement took off after the Center for Investigative Journalism released nearly 900 pages of chat messages between Rosselló and his inner circle, revealing their misogyny, homophobia, and the contempt they held for the population. But it wasn’t just the most recent events that brought the people’s anger to the boiling point: the economic meltdown of 2008–2009 hit a Puerto Rico already ensnared in a never-ending debt crisis engineered by vulture funds, and when natural disaster hit following economic disaster, conditions went from bad to worse. Bernabe helps us understand this trajectory, and we get his view on what direction he sees for Puerto Rico after the success of the mass movement.Asli Bâli, UCLA law professor and Middle East expert on public international law, international security, and nuclear non-proliferation, gives us a big picture look at the US-Iran conflict and its defunct nuclear agreement. Trump continues to threaten Iran, aided by the mainstream media who are freaking out over Iran’s supposed breach of the 2015 Nuclear Accord, seemingly forgetting that it was Trump who unilaterally tore up that agreement, arbitrarily imposing a new, brutal sanctions regime. Bâli looks at the deeper context of the chronic but escalating US-Iran conflict, and explores its trajectory now that Trump has essentially abandoned the deal.