Everyday Anarchism

In this episode, Meredith King of the University of New Orleans joins me to discuss Mardi Gras. We begin with the liberatory possibility of historical carnivals, as drawn from the works of David Graeber and Mikhail Bakhtin, then examine all of the many ways that Mardi Gras does and doesn't provide a space for freedom and grassroots organization.As always, you can find me at www.everydayanarchism.com.

In this February 2022 discussion episode of Anarchism 101, I discuss Kropotkin's "Anarchism" with Ruth Kinna. Join me and Ruth as we discuss Kropotkin's life, his place in the history of anarchism, and his analysis of anarchism as both a modern movement and an ancient practice.For more from Ruth, check out her discussion of the anarchism of Santa Claus with me and the overview of the history of anarchism on In Our Time.This project is year-long; on the first of each month of 2022, I'll be posting my reading of an important anarchist text. Later that month, I'll post an episode in which I discuss each text and its author. Look forward to Proudhon in March 2022!If you have any questions you would like answered about the text or Kropotkin, email me at everydayanarchismpodcast@gmail.com As always, you can find me at www.everydayanarchism.com.

This episode features my conversation with James Fallows, a legendary journalist whose work Our Towns is one of the inspirations for Everyday Anarchism. James and his wife Deb flew all over the country in their small airplane, documenting the ways that American democracy works at the grassroots level. In this conversation, James and I discuss the dysfunction of the federal government, the historically reactionary nature of the federal government, and the way that our towns offer a grassroots alternative to that reactionary system. Plus I try to convince James that his efforts against leaf blowers will save the world.For more context on the federal dysfunction of right now, see James's interview on Plain English. For more from James and Deb, check out their foundation: https://www.ourtownsfoundation.org/ or watch the HBO Documentary about their work https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/our-towns

This week we go to Barcelona - today's Barcelona, where the memory of the heroic anarchist revolution of the 1930s mostly goes unmemorialized. My guests, Dave Zirin and Mike Stark, traveled to Barcelona and visited sites of revolutionary struggle. Join me, Dave, and Mike as we discuss their trip, the radical history of Barcelona, the local leftists they met in the city, and how we can work together to memorialize the sacred spaces of anarchist struggles. If you'd like to read Dave's original article about the trip, check it out here: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/barcelona-olympics/As always, you can find me at www.everydayanarchism.com.

This week's episode is another in my ongoing series about the takeover of higher education by bureaucracy and managerialism. I'm joined by Andreas Wittel of Nottingham Trent University to discuss his idea of education as a gift, not a commodity. We also discuss the ways that we can work together to hold things in common, alternatives to the current educational model, the coming environmental collapse of capitalism, and the need to provide basic necessities for all people. You can learn more about Andreas's work here: https://nottinghamtrent.academia.edu/AndreasWittel As always, you can find me at www.everydayanarchism.com.

In this episode of Anarchism 101: An Anarchist Syllabus, I read Kropotkin's historical overview of anarchism, published in the 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. If you would prefer to read the essay, you can find it here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/AnarchismThis project is year-long; on the first of each month of 2022, I'll be posting my reading of an important anarchist text. Later that month, I'll post an episode in which I discuss each text and its author with a scholar of anarchism.If you have any questions you would like answered about the text or Kropotkin, email me at everydayanarchismpodcast@gmail.com If you email soon enough, we can include your question in the discussion episode. Look forward to Proudhon in March 2022!As always, you can find me at www.everydayanarchism.com

In this first discussion episode of Anarchism 101, I'm joined by eminent Goldman scholars to discuss Emma Goldman's "Anarchism: What it Really Stands For." Join me, Kathy Ferguson, and Penny Weiss as we discuss the text and where it fits in Goldman's thinking and the history of anarchismThis project is year-long; on the first of each month of 2022, I'll be posting my reading of an important anarchist text. Later that month, I'll post an episode in which I discuss each text and its author. Look forward to Kropotkin in February 2022!If you have any questions you would like answered about the text or Goldman, email me at everydayanarchismpodcast@gmail.com If you email soon enough, we can include your question in the discussion episode. As always, you can find me at www.everydayanarchism.com.

This week's episode comes out a little early in honor of MLK!This episode places Martin Luther King Jr. right where I think he belongs: in the midst of the anarchist tradition. The focus is on Universal Basic Income, the idea which King adopted in the year before his assassination as a solution to poverty. King argues in Where Do We Go From Here? that the direct abolition of poverty is not only desperately needed for everyone, but also the key to continuing the fight against systemic racism. This episode also covers UBI as discussed by David Graeber, Cory Booker, and Andrew Yang, as well as questions on basic income vs. reparations raised by Ta-Nehisi Coates and K.A. Dilday.As always, you can find me at www.everydayanarchism.com.

On Tuesday, January 18, German soccer giants Borussia Dortmund take the field against FC St. Pauli, a second division soccer team from Hamburg (in the US you can watch it on ESPN+). So who is FC St. Pauli? Why do they use the jolly roger as a logo, blast heavy metal and punk rock, and fly communist and anarchist flags?In anticipation of this big game, join me and Fabian Fritz, the director of education at the FC St. Pauli museum, to learn the history of the club, its takeover by the Nazis during Hitler's regime, its left-wing turn in the 1980s, and its connection to punk, anarchist, communist, anti-fascist, and squatter communities. To learn more about the history of the club, check out the the online exhibits of the museum: https://www.fcstpauli-museum.de/As always, you can find me at www.everydayanarchism.com.

In this week's episode I'm joined by Dr. Liz Morrish, a leading critic of the current state of universities. Liz and I discuss the craze for evaluating people based on numbers and the damage it does to the very real people trying to teach, research, and learn in academia. We also discuss academic free speech, the University of Austin Texas's half-baked solutions, the overselling of "STEM" majors as a career path, and Liz's personal journey from critic inside academia to critic outside of it.You can find more from Liz at her blog, Academic Irregularities, and as an editor at The Post-Pandemic University.As always, you can find me at www.everydayanarchism.com.