Jacobin Radio

Capitol Hill used to be a lonely place for a leftist. And, frankly, it still is. But now that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appears to be headed to Washington, Senator Bernie Sanders will likely have some powerful company. Today, Sanders is Dan's guest, and they're talking about the impact of Ocasio-Cortez's victory and where the Left goes from here. This is the latest interview in this week's Ocasio-Cortez super series, which has already included interviews with Ocasio-Cortez and Cynthia Nixon. Next up is DSA member Julia Salazar, who is running for state senate in Brooklyn.Support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory should make New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a larger-than-life bully and ideologically-chameleon Democrat, very afraid. He faces a challenge from Dan's guest today, Cynthia Nixon, who has spent the years after her time on Sex in the City organizing for public education. After what happened to Joe Crowley, the left is more energized than ever. And what once appeared to be a long-shot attack on the king of New York politics now appears like it might just hit its target. This is the second episode in this week's super series on left electoral politics in the wake of Ocasio-Cortez's stunning win.Thanks to Verso. Check out Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump by Asad Haider versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identitySupport this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a 28-year old Latina working-class champion committed to social transformation who beat one of the most powerful men in Congress: the King of Queens. Dan had an extended conversation with her about how organized people won her election, how she’ll stay accountable to those movements now that she’s a rock star, establishment myopia and denial, The Congressional Progressive Caucus' shortcomings, and where the insurgency goes from here. Then Intercept D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grim on left media and left electoral politics, why mainstream media missed Ocasio-Cortez, and why Emily's List fails to support left women challengers. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx with Sven-Eric Liedman versobooks.com/events/1785-a-world-to-win-the-life-and-works-of-karl-marx-with-sven-eric-liedman And the new paperback edition of China Miéville’s October: The Story of the Russian Revolution versobooks.com/books/2731-october <style type="text/css"></style> And support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

Leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, won an overwhelming victory in Mexico's presidential election, shattering a corrupt, old party system that brought ordinary Mexicans rampant violence and economic immiseration. But AMLO faces powerful political and economic constraints once in office—including some of his own making. Dan's guest is Christy Thornton, a professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins. During the last week, she was an election observer for the Scholar and Citizen Network for Democracy in Mexico. Thanks to Verso. Check out Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot, now out in paperback versobooks.com/books/2732-out-of-the-wreckage George did a Dig interview too blubrry.com/thedig/34202825/telling-a-new-story-with-george-monbiot/ And Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump by Asad Haider versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity <style type="text/css"></style> You can find lots of great left Latin America news in English at nacla.org Support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

Today, we're talking about Italy, where a so-called "populist" alliance of the Five Star Movement and right-wing League just took over the government with anti-migrant and Euro-skeptic agenda. Dan's guest is David Broder, a historian of French and Italian communism and frequent contributor to Jacobin. The Five Star Movement was for a time welcomed by some on the left. But it’s not of the left; rather, it is a product of the Italian left’s collapse.Thanks to Verso. Check out Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield versobooks.com/books/2742-radical-technologiesAnd register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.orgAnd support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

Suzi talks to Joel Jordan and then Alissa Quart, who in different ways are both looking at our squeezed post-recession lives and the fight to win or win back a decent standard of living. Longtime teacher and teacher-union strategist Joel Jordan joins us to talk about the spectacular mass strikes of the red-state teachers — and draw comparisons with the worsening conditions for teachers in California. Then, Suzi seapks with Alissa Quart about her new book, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America,which tells the stories of the financial instability — and downward mobility — of what she calls the "middle precariat": highly educated but insecure, so-called middle-class Americans who can barely afford to raise children and meet expenses.

Stephen Wertheim, a Lecturer in American and international history at Birkbeck, University of London, breaks cuts through the suffocating foreign policy debate that shapes American Empire under Trump.Peace has broken out across the Korean Peninsula—or, at least, the odds that Donald Trump will blow the world up have gone down a just a bit—at least temporarily. Yes, Trump is the one who pushed us way too close to the brink of nuclear war. And yes, he likely sought peace with Kim Jong-Un because he loves wins, whatever their political or ideological content. But wow, has the liberal reaction been revealing. According to the mindset that pervades the liberal media and political elite, a move toward peace with North Korea is bad because Trump is bad. Or perhaps worse yet, it's bad because the national security state conventional wisdom that has governed Washington under both parties for so long—purveyed by the very people who have brought us endless war almost everywhere—says that it's bad. It's clearer than ever that the task of the left to find a way out of this ideological closed circuit of the liberal vs. Trump foreign policy debate—and, if we win power, to shut down its warmongering for good.Thanks to Verso. Check out Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump by Asad Haider versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identityAnd register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.orgSupport this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

Everyone wants to know what's wrong with Appalachia. But beginning in the 1960s, it was "white ethics"—Italians, Irish, Polish, Jews and other non-WASPs—who broke from the New Deal coalition, embracing their Ellis Island immigrant roots in reaction to the Black Freedom struggle and, ultimately, Latin American migration. Dan’s guest today is Matthew Frye Jacobson, an historian at Yale and the author of Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America, from Harvard University Press.Thanks to Verso. Check out Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot, now out in paperback versobooks.com/books/2732-out-of-the-wreckage George did a Dig interview too blubrry.com/thedig/34202825/telling-a-new-story-with-george-monbiot/And register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.orgSupport this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

Vox immigration reporter Dara Lind, one very bright spot in an often disappointing landscape of mainstream immigration journalism, discusses the historical, political, and legal context of Trump’s family separation policy. Dan also just wrote a lengthy piece on this for Jacobin, which you can read at jacobinmag.com/2018/06/trump-immigration-child-family-separation-policyThanks to Verso Books. Check out the new paperback edition of China Miéville’s October: The Story of the Russian Revolution versobooks.com/books/2731-octoberAnd register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.org.And support this podcast with $ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig.

David Harvey has taught Capital to huge numbers of people. Dan interviews him about his latest book, Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason. Harvey explains why he thinks all three volumes are of Capital are key, why we’re still living under neoliberalism at least unless and until ethnonationalist autarchy pushes it aside, how capitalism might survive climate change via mass immiseration, and linking struggles over production and consumption in the fight to transform society toward socialism. And more.Thanks to Verso. Check out Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump by Asad Haider versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity.Register for the Socialism 2018 conference (July 5-8, Chicago!) at socialismconference.org!And support this podcast with $$ and access our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig.

Suzi speaks with David Graeber, whose earlier Debt: the First 5000 years was an international best-seller. From Adbusters to Occupy to the history of debt, Graeber has demonstrated his creative and provocative thinking. He takes on the biggest shibboleth — our very work — in his new book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. A recent UK poll found that 37 percent of full-time workers were sure that their jobs made no meaningful contribution to the world. Bullshit jobs are the pointless ones that could be erased — and their absence would hardly be noticed. Graeber points to the ubiquitous administrative layer that has ballooned even as joblessness has grown in the last decade, creating an entire sector in academia, health administration, human resources, public relations, financial services, telemarketing, and the like. Graeber suggests we can move from the "bullshitization" of jobs to caring jobs and a caring society, but is it possible under capitalism?

The US colony of Puerto Rico has been repeatedly shocked and Puerto Ricans are traumatized. That is precisely what successful shock doctrines like this one — which wants to remake the island into a utopia for rich Americans and crypto-bros and a dystopia for everyone else — depend upon.This is also the subject of Naomi Klein's new book from Haymarket, The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists. Today, Klein returns to The Dig, and is joined by Mercedes Martínez, president of the Puerto Rican Teachers Federation.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx with Sven-Eric Liedman versobooks.com/events/1785-a-world-to-win-the-life-and-works-of-karl-marx-with-sven-eric-liedman.Also, register for the upcoming Socialism 2018 conference at SocialismConference.org.Support this podcast with $ and get our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig!

Last week, we posted an interview Dan recorded in Barcelona on Spanish politics — specifically, on the question of Catalan independence, and the municipalist movement governing cities like Barcelona. What wasn't discussed much was the fact that the conservative Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy was about to fall — which it did, just a few days later. So, Dan brought sociologist Carlos Delclós back for a follow-up interview.Production note: Dan sounds like he’s speaking in an aquarium or calling into his own show because he messed up the recording. So, don’t blame Alex Lewis.Thanks to Verso. Check out Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties by Tariq Ali versobooks.com/books/2666-street-fighting-years.Also, register for the upcoming Socialism 2018 conference at SocialismConference.orgAnd support this podcast with $ and get access to our stellar weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig!

For libertarians, liberty means something different. It’s about liberty for property owners. And in their quest to preserve that absolute freedom for the ownership class — whether their assets be human slaves, factories, or extractive industries — democracy must be curtailed and the power of the people must be checked and repressed.This is the argument put forward by Dan’s guest, historian Nancy MacLean, in her book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America. The book makes a powerful argument for the anti-democratic origins and trajectory of free market fundamentalist, Koch Brothers-aligned economists who have come to profoundly shape and warp American politics to fit their dystopian vision. The book has also been controversial.Thank you to Verso Books. Check out Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite.Thank you to the Socialism 2018 conference. Register now at socialismconference.org!Want to get access to our stellar weekly newsletter? You can do so by making a contribution to the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig.

On this edition of Jacobin Radio, Suzi talks to legendary street-fighting man, author and playwright Tariq Ali about 1968 — as seen from today, fifty years later. The first cover of Black Dwarf, founded by Tariq and others in May 1968, is reproduced in the latest London Review of Books: “We Shall Fight, We Will Win, Paris, London, Rome, Berlin.” Now there is an emerging strike wave in France — and the slogan is “We are not commemorating 1968, we are continuing 1968.” Suzi talks to Tariq Ali about continuity and change since 1968.

Fifty years ago, a mainstream group of high-profile Americans declared the following: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal. Reaction to last summer’s disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American. This deepening racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed. Choice is still possible. Our principal task is to define that choice and to press for a national resolution." The Kerner Commission, established by President Johnson, embodied left liberalism at its most bold and idealistic. But that vision of radical reform was eviscerated by the American war on Vietnam, the rise of neoliberalism and the modern conservative movement, and liberal triangulation that reached its apotheosis under Bill Clinton.Dan talks to Vanessa A. Bee, a consumer protection lawyer in D.C. and a social media editor for Current Affairs magazine, about her New York magazine essay on the subject: nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/how-we-can-get-a-more-equal-union.html.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig and access our new weekly newsletter.

Spanish politics are complicated. Dan speaks to Carlos Delclós, Kate Shea Baird, and Bécquer Seguín to help clarify the Catalan independence movement, the radical municipalist governments that now govern major Spanish cities including Barcelona, and the promise and problems of the left-wing party Podemos.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art. And Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite. And please support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig and access our new weekly newsletter!

The steady pace of school massacres has revived calls to put more cops in school, with atrocities committed by white students exploited to make schools more like prisons, and ensure that the former remain a rapid-fire pipeline into the latter.Dan’s guests are Dakota Hall, the executive sirector of Leaders Igniting Transformation, a youth-of-color-led organization fighting the school-to-prison pipeline in Milwaukee; and Dmitri Holtzman, the director of education justice campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Hara Hotel: A Tale of Syrian Refugees in Greece by Teresa Thornhill versobooks.com/books/2713-hara-hotel. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show and access our weekly newsletter at Patreon.com/TheDig!

A laundry list of modest policy solutions is not enough, it turns out. It's not just that technocratic fixes around the edges spectacularly fail to meet people's needs; in failing to articulate a big picture vision of how the world ought to be transformed, they fail to move people — either emotionally or, more concretely, to the polls.Dan’s guest George Monbiot argues that the Left needs a powerful new story to win power and change lives in his new book, Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx with Sven-Eric Liedman versobooks.com/events/1785-a-world-to-win-the-life-and-works-of-karl-marx-with-sven-eric-liedman. And support this podcast with $ and get our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig!

Author and activist Mark LeVine on the recent horrific events in Gaza and Jerusalem, which he sees as a point of no return. LeVine interprets Zionism's fundamental nature and history as one of settler colonialism, and he explains why he thinks resistance to Zionism around the world, both by Jews and non-Jews, is in the process of transforming itself and taking off.

The Brookings Institute's Carol Graham (papers here, here, and here) on failing health and declining prospects among poor white people in the United States. Then, Kristen Ghodsee, co-author of this article, on the vile uses of anticommunism.

Israel is massacring Palestinians daring to approach a fence that occupation forces have built to shore up an ethno-state founded on the principle of apartheid. Nothing could be more clear. But you wouldn't no that from the, at best, muddied coverage that prevails in mainstream media accounts. Dan’s guest is Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney, professor at George Mason University, and a powerful and eloquent voice challenging the anti-Palestine narrative — including, straight into the lion's den of TV news.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties by Tariq Ali versobooks.com/books/2666-street-fighting-years.Check out the Socialism 2018 conference at socialismconference.orgAnd support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.” The rule of law: the #resistance has construed it to be a cornerstone of opposition to Trump. It is certainly alarming to live under a president who flirts with operating in a permanent and near-total state of exception. But it's the rule of law as we've known it that has blessed the wide-open floodgates of corporate money into American politics, looked the other way in the face of unchecked national-security-state abuses, christened separate and unequal schools and, of course, rubber-stamped the rise of mass incarceration. The law has no transcendent moral basis. Rather, it is shaped by political economy.Dan’s guest is Amy Kapczynski, professor of law at Yale Law School, and a co-convenor of LPEblog.org.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-policeAnd support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Historian Alejandro Velasco sorts fact from fiction when it comes to contemporary Venezuela. Then, Jessica Blatt, author of Race and the Making of American Political Science, on the racist origins of the discipline.

Recent cases of horrific child abuse have elicited widespread media attention. What the media coverage often misses is what these incidents reveal about a two-tiered child protection system that systemically surveils, punishes, and destroys poor black families while ignoring abuses perpetrated in affluent white homes. Dan's guest is Dorothy Roberts, who has closely studied the racism and poverty policing that pervades the child-protection system.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che by Max Elbaum versobooks.com/books/2707-revolution-in-the-air.

Today's Dig is a very good and somewhat unusual Dig: Dan’s got two interviews with two different people. First, journalist Eric Blanc on the teacher strike wave that he's been covering for Jacobin. Then comes the Center for Popular Democracy's Xiomara Caro Diaz on last week's May Day demonstrations against austerity in Puerto Rico. Thanks to Verso Books. Check Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art. Also, check out the Socialism 2018 Conference at SocialismConference.org. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig!

Suzi talks to veteran union negotiator and labor writer Joe Burns about the teachers strike wave from West Virginia to Arizona — and about how public-sector workers and teachers are reviving the most powerful weapon in the working class arsenal: the strike. Then, Daniel Bessner joins Suzi in conversation about his new book Democracy in Exile —and the rise of intellectuals in foreign-policy institutions and think tanks with all their anti-democratic implications, how Trump represents a continuation rather than a break in the history of US foreign policy, the rise of intellectuals in foreign-policy institutions — as well as what a left foreign policy might look like.

Dan just moderated a discussion in Philadelphia with Senator Sanders, along with Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, scholar and frequent Dig guest Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and veteran defense lawyer and advocate Premal Dharia. Bernie came to Philly because what's happening here is extraordinarily important: it's a city where for years cops have committed abuses and engaged in corruption with near impunity, and where prosecutors long looked the other way while feeding poor young black and brown men into the present-day peculiar institution of mass incarceration. Last year, Philadelphia elected Krasner, a long-time civil rights champion who pledged to fight the to end mass incarceration, as its district attorney. And that happened for the same reason that Bernie came out of nowhere and nearly ran away with the Democratic nomination in 2016: their message tapped into and was lifted up by massive grassroots movements, representing and speaking to an emerging majority that wants transformative change.And so this is why Bernie Sanders came to Philly: to learn about what has gone so horribly wrong with the criminal justice system and how we can all organize and do the hard work to make it right.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Crashing the Party: From the Bernie Sanders Campaign to a Progressive Movement by Heather Gautney versobooks.com/books/2549-crashing-the-party. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig!

This is part two of Dan's interview on Hannah Arendt's notion of "the right to have rights." This episode covers a lot, including why we must fight not only to expand the democratic political community but also to deepen its power—all at a time when the nativist right is exploiting the many crises unleashed by neoliberalism and empire to erect walls and punish scapegoats. One upshot is that zombie liberalism can't be the answer, because it is precisely the liberal order that is a key source of the problem.Dan’s guests today, Stephanie DeGooyer and Astra Taylor, just wrote a book about this for Verso, called the The Right to Have Rights. This is part 2. It’s strongly suggested that you listen to part 1 first.Also: check out and support the soon-to-be-made documentary Socialism: An American Story https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/socialismmovie/socialism-an-american-storyThanks to Verso Books. Check out Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police. And Work: The Last 1,000 Years by Andrea Komlosy versobooks.com/books/2608-work. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig

What are rights worth when government denies people the very right to have rights? Political theorist Hannah Arendt recognized this loss of "the right to have rights" as millions of refugees found themselves without a national home in the wake of world wars. Human rights, it became clear, proved to be an empty promise for those excluded from citizenship—the foundational right to be a member of a political community. Today, this insight remains a critical one as a record number of humans transit the globe in search of economic and physical security, and far-right nativists and establishment liberals alike scapegoat them for the chaos and precarity unleashed by neoliberalism and war. As a result, migrants are condemned to second-class citizenship or even death in the Mediterranean and desert Mexican-American borderlands.My guests today, Stephanie DeGooyer and Astra Taylor, just wrote a book about this for Verso, called the The Right to Have Rights. This is part 1. Part 2 will be posted on Thursday or Friday.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Hara Hotel: A Tale of Syrian Refugees in Greece by Teresa Thornhill versobooks.com/books/2713-hara-hotel. And Work: The Last 1,000 Years by Andrea Komlosy versobooks.com/books/2608-work. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig

James Comey is liberal America’s favorite cop and now, as a result, a bestselling author as well. Patrick Blanchfield returns to talk about his Baffler review of Comey’s new book. It’s awful, of course. But it’s bad in productively revealing ways. Comey has become an icon of the liberal fetishization of the national security state as a bulwark against Trumpism—when it fact it is that very national security state and its rampant abuses that are deeply implicated in Trump’s rise. The elevation of police as a model of duty and leadership contrasted against Trump’s vulgar monstrosities renders invisible not only why Trump won but why he is so dangerous.Here’s Patrick’s review: thebaffler.com/latest/prig-and-pig-blanchfieldThanks to Verso Books. Check out Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che by Max Elbaum versobooks.com/books/2707-revolution-in-the-air And Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

It's yet the latest installment in our ongoing series on the Left and electoral politics. Dan’s guest is Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. Last year, Mayor Lumumba pledged to make Jackson "the most radical city on the planet." Lumumba, who comes out of a decades-old revolutionary black nationalist movement, is serious about that. But he also faces challenges: Jackson is a majority black city which, like many such cities, has much of its wealth appropriated by its largely white suburbs. The human and infrastructural needs are enormous, and the tax base is thin. This is precisely why so many on the Left have found what's going on in Jackson to be so interesting, and why Dan was eager to invite the mayor onto the show.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite and Hara Hotel: A Tale of Syrian Refugees in Greece by Teresa Thornhill versobooks.com/books/2713-hara-hotel. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig!

The CUNY Grad Center's Kate Doyle Griffiths on teachers’ strikes and the crisis in social reproduction. Then, Thea Riofrancos and Daniel Denvir join to discuss Yascha Mounck and zombie liberalism (their review is here).

This week on Jacobin Radio, Suzi discusses the relevance of Marx for our present moment with anthropologist and Marxist geographer David Harvey. Harvey's newest book, Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason,explicates the core of Marx's thinking in the three volumes of Capital, and in less than 200 pages, Harvey develops those ideas so we all can use them to grasp what's going on in the capitalist economy today.

It's the latest installment in our series on the left and electoral politics. Dennis Kucinich is running a viable race for governor of Ohio; Cynthia Nixon, running with Working Families Party backing, has Cuomo truly freaked out in New York; and there are major primary fights underway in California. Most everywhere, it seems, some variant of the Left is on the move. But does the fact that a onetime business-aligned Democrat like Gavin Newsom is getting away with posing as the progressive in the California race for governor indicate that the Left hasn't yet built the institutional capacity to control the leftward surge among voters? Dan thinks so. These are among the topics he discusses with Dave Weigel, a political reporter at the Washington Post.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Hara Hotel: A Tale of Syrian Refugees in Greece by Teresa Thornhill versobooks.com/books/2713-hara-hotel. And Work: The Last 1,000 Years by Andrea Komlosy versobooks.com/books/2608-work. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig!

In the latest installment in our series on the Left and electoral politics, we're talking about the Democratic Socialists of America's new electoral strategy. DSA has almost overnight become a serious force on an American socialist left that has for decades lacked much in the way of serious forces. One of the major reasons the organization's membership rolls blew up, of course, was because of Bernie Sanders's historic 2016 run for president, which not only electrified huge swaths of the country but reminded the radical left that the point is to win power and to govern — and that, after years on the margins, we could do so. This was in part because many Americans were no longer afraid of the s-word: socialism. Yet there is still, for many good reasons, a lot of skepticism about electoral politics in general and the Democratic Party very much in particular, inside DSA and across the socialist left. That's the needle that the new DSA electoral-strategy document tries to thread.Dan’s guests are Renée Paradis, a civil rights and criminal-defense lawyer. She has frequently worked for electoral campaigns, including most recently as the National Voter Protection Director for Bernie 2016. Michael Kinnucan is a writer, researcher, and activist in New York City. Both are members of DSA’s National Electoral Committee and the organizing committee for NYC-DSA’s Brooklyn Electoral Working Group.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police and Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Sean Jacobs, founder of Africa Is A Country, joins Doug to discuss Winnie Mandela’s legacy. Then, Forrest Hylton talks about Colombian politics in the run-up to May’s presidential election.

Historian and political theorist Timothy Mitchell joins Dan for the second of a two-part interview on his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, published in 2011 by Verso. In part 1, we talked about a lot of things, including how the rise of coal made both industrial capitalism and newly powerful worker resistance possible, and how the shift to oil then facilitated the persistence of imperialism in a decolonizing world while thwarting worker organizing. In this installment, we discuss imperialist assaults on worker struggles in Iraq and Iran, the co-optation of those struggles by nationalist elites, and how those imperialist attacks facilitated the rise of the Baathist security state.We'll also look at how the true history of the '70s oil shock undermines the conventional account, how the protection of minorities was used to legitimate imperialism, how petro-dollars fueled the global arms trade, in what sense the Iraq War has been a war for oil, and the US strategy to seek advantage through the continuation of conflict and instability across the Middle East. Finally, we'll address petro-imperialism’s bedrock alliance with right-wing Islamists against democratic movements of the Left in Saudi Arabia and beyond, and why we must fight to ensure that the coming energy transition is a just one. That review of Yascha Mounk's book that Dan wrote with Thea Riofrancos is here: https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/zombie-liberalism/Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art and and Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig, where you can also check out the first edition of our new weekly newsletter.

Historian and political theorist Timothy Mitchell joins Dan for the first of a two-part interview on his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, published in 2011 by Verso. In this first episode, we talk about how the rise of coal made both industrial capitalism and newly powerful worker resistance possible; and how the shift to oil then facilitated the persistence of imperialism in a decolonizing world while thwarting worker organizing. On the next show, we'll discuss a lot more, including how oil companies and Western governments made autocratic governments and conservative Islamists key partners in creating the very global order that we now find in such profound crisis. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing and Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig, where you can also check out the first edition of our new weekly newsletter.

Imagine you walk into a warehouse where the workers are on break, and you stumble into a vigorous, nuanced discussion of Marx’s notion of surplus value, how it relates to organizing on the shop floor, and how it applies to flexible and often female labor. Then the conversation turns to Gramsci and workers' councils in Turin. This is exactly what Carolina Bank Muñozfound when she visited a warehouse in Chile to study how unions responded to Walmart’s entry into Chile. The majority of Walmart's workers in Chile are unionized, and we talk to Carolina about her book, Building Power From Below, Chilean Workers Take on Walmart,<font color="#000000">and how </font>Chilean retail and warehouse workers organized rank-and-file-led unions and win real economic gains along with respect and dignity on the job. Then Nelson Lichtenstein joins the discussion on Walmart and organizing retail workers in the US. Nelson has several books on Walmart — as the face of capitalism in the twenty-first century, transforming American politics and business. Nelson anticipated a day of reckoning for Walmart as challenges to its "business model" grow at home and abroad — as the Chilean case shows. We'll also get Nelson's take on the "Amazon threat" and the state of US labor today in the Trump era.

It’s our 100th episode and the launch of our spring fundraising drive! Aziz Rana returns to The Dig fifteen years after the invasion of Iraq to reflect on the paucity of substantive anti-imperialist politics across much of the American left. Socialism isn’t just an internationalist politics on principle: domestic and foreign struggles are inherently linked, just as the forces we struggle against are globally intertwined — and the latter benefit from perpetuating an ideology that artificially divides the two. But for decades, a bipartisan consensus has governed foreign policy, to disastrous ends. Why, Rana asks, is there no foreign policy equivalent to the new left-wing domestic policy litmus test on single-payer health care? Check out Aziz’s n+1 article here: nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-lefts-missing-foreign-policy. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art and Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

It’s obvious that student debt can be an excruciating financial burden. But anthropologist Caitlin Zaloom explains that it has also done a lot to make American families into plunderable financial mines, part of a larger capitalist system that individualizes blame for economic failure and forces families that can to support their children into their twenties while depleting retirement savings. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out the free e-book Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo and The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

Many Americans take the existence of so-called "illegal immigrants" for granted, whatever their opinion of the matter. But illegality isn't a property of immigrants; rather, it's a creation of positive law. And we can only understand how immigrants are declared "illegal" by the government by examining this country's too-often ignored history of racist and exclusionary immigration politics. Dan’s guest today is Mae Ngai, an historian at Columbia and the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing and Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Education reporter and host of Have You Heard? Jennifer Berkshire on teachers’ strikes, in West Virginia and beyond. Then, Forbes contributor Stan Collender on fiscal follies in Washington, D.C.

Suzi talks to Wagner Moura, a Brazilian actor known for his work in the Elite Squad films and the Netflix series Narcos, about the volatile political situation in Brazil, where Marielle Franco, the socialist Rio City Councillor and her driver were assassinated on March 14, sparking huge protests across Brazil. Moura also talks about the film he is directing — Marighella — about the Bahian revolutionary Marxist writer and guerrilla fighter Carlos Marighella. We also hear from Brazilian political economist Pedro Paulo Zaluth Bastos and get his analysis of the political calculus in the move by the highly unpopular President Temer to put the military in charge of security, as well as the prospects for the Left in the coming election.Plus: Chris Phelps from the University of Nottingham joins us to talk about the wider implications of the month-long strike of British University lecturers, who have just reached a settlement. The strike was about much more than pensions and austerity: it struck at the heart of the quality of higher education, and has ramifications for university life and workers everywhere.

Perhaps nothing has more defined the monstrosity of Donald Trump than his racist demonization and targeting of immigrants from Mexico, Muslim-majority countries, and those nations he deems "shitholes." But what's seldom reported is that one of the key mechanisms the administration has used to target immigrants was rolled out under Barack Obama. It's called Secure Communities, and it's the culmination of decades of policy-making and politicking that have intertwined the US systems of mass incarceration and immigrant enforcement — facilitating the growth of both. To fight both mass deportation and mass incarceration, localities and states must move beyond what's currently defined as sanctuary, as a new report by Kade Crockford from the Century Foundation and ACLU of Massachusetts argues: tcf.org/content/report/beyond-sanctuary. Also: Check out Dan’s essay on Trump’s proposal to execute drug dealers: slate.com/technology/2018/03/trumps-call-to-execute-drug-dealers-is-a-natural-progression-of-american-policy.html. And thanks to Verso Books. Check out the FREE e-book Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo and also Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art.

Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry talk about their new book, To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. King is often remembered for his soaring oratory. But the commonplace emphasis on his rhetoric in place of his ideas too often allows enemies of King's agenda to domesticate him or, worse, to weaponize his out-of-context words to bolster the very forces of racism and oppression that King struggled to defeat. Shelby and Terry talk about King’s theory of nonviolence (more complicated than you might think), his debate with the Black Power movement, and his thinking on gender, hope, political economy, Beloved Community, and more. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art and Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

John Clarke of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty on what’s wrong with a universal basic income (UBI), a proposal that's become increasingly popular among part of the Left and the Right. Then, Isabel Hilton of ChinaDialogue.net on Xi Jinping’s becoming China’s president for life.

Democrat Conor Lamb's victory is a rebuke of Republicans. But Lamb is far from an ideal candidate, and so the race also raises a perennial debate between the left and liberal center over what kind of alternative to the Republican right we need. Dan’s guests are Elizabeth Fiedler, Sara Inammorato, and Summer Lee, three leftist women running for state rep in Pennsylvania — all three DSA members endorsed by their local chapters. Other stuff: Patrick Blanchfield’s article on guns and neoliberalism discussed last week is here splinternews.com/the-market-cant-solve-a-massacre-1823745509 Thanks to Verso Books. Check out the free e-book Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo and Police: A Field Guide versobooks.com/books/2530-police. Support us with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Are we on the cusp of a new wave of worker militancy? We talk to Rebecca Cohen and Shaun Richman about the victory of West Virginia teachers (and public sector workers) and the coming Oklahoma strike as they set a date to go the West Virginia way — at the same time that the Supreme Court is likely to further weaken public sector unions with the Janus v. AFSCME decision. Shaun and Rebecca talk about the possible unintended consequences that ruling could bring about. Then Dean of Boalt Law School (UC Berkeley) and constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky joins us to untangle the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state of California over three state laws the California legislature has passed to ensure that the state isn’t complicit with the Trump administration’s use of ICE raids, detention, and deportation — which the state sees as unconstitutional and “un-American.”