Time To Say Goodbye

Hello from a reunited podsquad, each back in their natural habitat!This week, taking off from an essay by Jamelle Bouie, we discuss the right wing’s composite attack on queer educators and racial-justice curriculum as an attack on public goods. How should the Democrats—and the left—respond? Plus: notes on and from the lockdown in Shanghai and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Thanks for listening, and ping us via Substack, timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com, https://twitter.com/ttsgpod, and/or https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from the Staten Island Ferry!This week, the podsquad reunites for all kinds of $$ talk. We begin with a chat —occasioned by a book prize Andy received — about how to balance leftist politics and theory in journalism and academia. Then, our main topic: the historic victory by Amazon Labor Union (ALU) at the JFK8 warehouse!We discuss Tammy’s reporting in The New Yorker, traditional/large versus small/independent unions, and the links between Amazon, the Democrats, and labor. How did the ALU do it? Is it okay for the left to make celebrities out of Chris Smalls and Derrick Palmer? How do multiracial, immigrant politics intersect with class politics? What’s the next step, both for Amazon and US labor in general?Also, we unpack Ohio politician Tim Ryan’s pathetic new “workers first” ad, which scapegoats China. (If you want to take action, check out the responses of Asian American Midwest Progressives and OPAWL.)Thanks to TTSG Discord member, Lance, and the NBA Dark Web channel for the new theme music :)Thanks for listening! Please get in touch via timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com or https://twitter.com/ttsgpod.And subscribe via Substack or https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hi everyone:Today it’s just me, Andy, talking with guest Adolph Reed, Prof. Emeritus at University of Pennsylvania, about his new book The South: Jim Crow and its Afterlives. Drawing from personal experience, he argues that racial segregation cannot be fully explained through abstract ideas about white supremacy and anti-Blackness. It was a coherent social order animated by ruling class power. We talk about what he calls “neoliberal race politics,” the charge against him of “class reductionism” (NYT), and the broader usefulness of this analysis to contexts across the US and the world. Also, a bit of NBA banter. * See: our conversation with Merlin Chowkwanyun (2020) on his work with Reed on racial disparity discourse (their piece on Covid reporting here)* Also: Adolph’s new podcast Class Matters* and Adolph’s essays on nonsite.org0:00: The premise of the book and its reception (The New Yorker, Common Dreams, Harper’s podcast). Adolph periodizes Jim Crow from the 1890s-1960s, and he speaks about his formative years in Louisiana, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Atlanta. He first drafted the book in the 2000s after realizing his would be the last generation with clear memories of the Jim Crow order. Jim Crow, he argues, has been conspicuously overlooked in contemporary discussions about race and slavery, which flatten history (“the bad old timey-times”).20:20: An aside on Adolph’s polemic (2013) on Hollywood “race movies” such as Django Unchained and The Help.28:30: Adolph describes the Jim Crow racial order as a practical and pragmatic strategy of class power over all workers, rather than an abstract hatred of one group. And why it is counterproductive to frame it as a binary story of all white versus all Black people.  It’s not like white people had a meeting around the campfire and said, “let’s go put some Jim Crow on some Black people”36:30: Framing Jim Crow as unrelenting oppression in fact mirrors, ironically, the very vision laid out by segregationists themselves. This view, found today in liberal anti-racism discourses, attributes everything to an abstract “white supremacy” and “anti-Blackness.” Class is disavowed. The effect is to help sustain an elite stratum of racial spokespeople. But also, why does this race-first worldview have such broad appeal? 53:15: Adolph responds to charges that his argument is class reductionist. We reference an older exchange with the late political theorist Ellen Meiskins Wood (2002) to clarify the distinctions in Adolph’s arguments (see the original text here, esp. the “Rejoinder”). Race, he argues, is one of many ideologies to sustain accumulation and class power that rest on “ascriptive differences,” or, putative ideas about the natural differences between people: if not race, then sex, gender, religion, caste, tribe, mental and physical abilities, etc. * Also see Adolph’s concise summary in New Labor Forum (2013).1:03:50: Wrestling with common objections, such as, “ethnocentrism predates capitalism, so race is autonomous from class”; or, “upper-class Black people are subject to police violence too, so class doesn’t explain racism.”1:14:20: Adolph on the broader generalizability of his analysis for other groups, in the US and globally (see Clare Kim on comparative analyses of Asian American/Black racial ideology). And where Adolph got his Marxism.I wouldn’t say I’m the most cosmopolitan world traveler. But the thing I will say is that, in every place that I’ve been, what I’ve noticed is that most people are scuffling trying to work for a living. It doesn’t matter what kind of food they eat or the music they listen to. I mean that’s all interesting, more or less. But the basic human condition is that, right?1:30:30: NBA banter.Thanks for listening! Please get in touch via timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com or https://twitter.com/ttsgpodYou can subscribe via substack or https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hi from multi-culti Toronto! (We wish.)This week, Jay and Tammy discuss the urban housing crisis, the weird and embarrassing SCOTUS confirmation hearings of (Future Justice) Ketanji Brown Jackson, and the lovely new animated film, “Turning Red” (which Tammy womansplains to Jay). (Andy will be back soon.)Thanks for listening, and K.I.T. via Substack, timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com, https://twitter.com/ttsgpod, and/or https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello!This week just Jay and Andy and with guest Max Read. We talk about all things “disinformation.” First up is Andy’s n+1 essay last week on the lab-leak Covid conspiracy, what it says about the world’s ideas about China, and the plausibility of conspiracies today. Then a wider discussion about whether the Ukraine invasion and competing claims of “disinformation” have presented a new crisis for media and the framework of fake news installed the last few years. Jay’s got a few recent pieces on disinformation and media coverage of Ukraine.And here is some of Max’s recent commentary on media:* “Mapping the celebrity NFT complex”* “Is web3 b******t?”* “How to have a career as a journalist in 2022”Consider subscribing to the newsletter!Back next week with the full gang! Please get in touch via timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com or https://twitter.com/ttsgpodYou can subscribe via substack or https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from New York! This week, Tammy interviews the playwright and TV writer Hansol Jung. They talk about Hansol’s childhood in South Africa and South Korea, the feeling of being 70% fluent in both Korean and English, religion and structural sexism in the recent Korean presidential election, race in theater and TV, building queer characters, and how Rent changed everything. Hansol’s latest production is Wolf Play — at the Soho Rep, with Ma-Yi Theater Company. She was also a writer on the forthcoming Apple TV+ series, Pachinko, based on the novel by Min Jin Lee. (Sound note: Snippets of live theater from Wolf Play and Cardboard Piano woven into the episode; also, Tammy has a sore throat!)Thanks for listening. Please donate to the Red Cross to help people in Ukraine, and stay in touch with us via Substack or:timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.comhttps://twitter.com/ttsgpodhttps://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from a South Korean ballot box! (Tammy wishes.)This week, Andy and Tammy talk to the political scientist Neta C. Crawford* of Boston University (soon, Oxford University) about the human and ecological costs of the war in Ukraine, the China dimension, and what a global movement for peace should strive for.Plus: Andy discusses his review essay on Chinese economic history and neoliberalism in The Nation; Tammy freaks out over the imminent South Korean presidential election and reflects on outgoing leader Moon Jae-in; and Andy reveals his secret recipe for Whole Foods salmon poke (YouTube).Some links:* Brown’s invaluable Costs of War project, co-directed by Neta* Neta commenting on war crimes against civilians * Neta’s forthcoming book, The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War* Rohini Hensman on the long history of Russia–Ukraine* Isaac Chotiner’s interview with John Mearsheimer * Tammy’s profile of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists* Apols for mispronouncing “Neta” at the top of the show. It’s NEE-TA. Also: stripe twins!Thank you for listening. Please donate to the Red Cross to help people in Ukraine, and send us feedback via Substack or:timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.comhttps://twitter.com/ttsgpodhttps://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hello from our doomscroll…Today we talk about—what else?—the events in Ukraine this past week :-(We chat with Sophie Pinkham, an essayist, reporter, and expert on the region. In 2016, she published Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine (read an excerpt in Dissent). She has written about politics after the Maidan protests (The New Yorker), the election of President Volodymyr Zelensky (The New York Review of Books), and, just yesterday, Zelensky and the war (New York).We discuss our initial reactions to the news of invasion, why so many people didn’t expect it to happen, U.S. jingoism, the impact of social media and propaganda, criticisms of “the left,” speculations about the future, and the comparability of China–Taiwan. Some stuff we’ve been reading:* “Ukraine: What Russia wants, what the West can do,” Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft* “A letter to the Western Left from Kyiv,” Taras Bilous, Open Democracy* “News from Natoland,” Tariq Ali, New Left Review* Background on history and political economy in Adam Tooze’s newsletter* Friends of the show Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu on reactions to Ukraine from Taiwan.Thank you for listening. Please donate to the Red Cross to help people in Ukraine, and send any questions or comments via Substack or: timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.comhttps://twitter.com/ttsgpodhttps://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Hi from the United States of empire! The podsquad reunites in Amurica. This week, we talk about the murders of two women in New York City and the recall of school board members in San Francisco. Christina Yuna Lee and Michelle Go died in nightmarish attacks. We process our feelings and explore how Asian Americans, policymakers, and members of the general public are interpreting/using the women’s deaths. Why do we always fall back on law-enforcement responses? How do stigmas against people who aren’t housed, or those who have mental illness, affect our analysis of “hate crimes”? How are Asian communities in New York and New Jersey responding? What does women’s safety mean? What’s the abolitionist horizon? San Franciscans recently voted to remove three people from the school board—and Asian Americans were a big part of the action. Jay wrote about how this all boils down to anxiety over admissions to a selective high school. But the recall might also be seen as a tech-funded campaign against all things “woke.” What’s going on? How do immigrant politics graft onto the US’s left-right spectrum? Are Asian voters basically social Darwinians? What does this mean for criminal-legal policy, specifically the upcoming Chesa Boudin recall? For Asian-American organizing? Thanks to the PNW listeners who came to our IRL lunch over the weekend. And thanks to all of you for supporting the pod. Stay in touch via Substack or:timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.comhttps://twitter.com/ttsgpodhttps://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode is a conversation with Eugene Lim, the author of the novel Search History. Eugene’s one of our favorite writers. We talk about experimental fiction, Asian writers, Eugene’s life as a school librarian, what constitutes good and bad writing, identity questions in fiction, and we even take questions from the audience who watched this talk on Discord. If you’d like to be part of our next BOOK TIME, please sign up for our newsletter subscription at goodbye.substack.com for $5 a month and you can join our discord community. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe