KPFA - Against the Grain

Few things are more necessary than a roof over one’s head, and yet few things feel as precarious as housing. Rents have skyrocketed across the country, far outstripping wages, and homelessness has risen to an historic high. Fellow tenant organizers Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis argue that this is the latest chapter in a century-long assault on tenants, but that we can draw powerful lessons from housing struggles to fight for a world without landlords. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis Haymarket Books, 2024 The post The War on Tenants appeared first on KPFA.

KPFA first took to the airwaves on April 15, 1949. To mark the station’s 76th birthday, we present excerpts of interviews we’ve conducted with Jane Fonda; Louise Erdrich; Agustín Fuentes (about human evolution and aggression); Elizabeth S. Anderson (about the dictatorship of the workplace); and David Hawkes (about money, finance, and symbolism). The post Fund Drive Special: Commemorating KPFA’s 76 Years appeared first on KPFA.

Why is it that so many schools fail at teaching their students critical thinking skills that could help them understand the world? Political scientist Agustina Paglayan argues that mass primary education from its origins was set up not to raise children’s prospects — but rather to teach them to obey. She locates the Right’s recent attacks on schooling in the context of the social upheavals of our times. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Agustina Paglayan, Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education Princeton University Press, 2024 The post Obedience and Mass Education appeared first on KPFA.

Capitalist processes wreak havoc on ecosystems. What stories or accounts can spur people to address environmental degradation, and help them grasp its root causes? Drawing on works by John Steinbeck and Anna Tsing, Tim Christiaens considers the impact of capitalist dynamics on ecological relations. Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François, eds., Re-Imagining Class: Intersectional Perspectives on Class Identity and Precarity in Contemporary Culture Leuven University Press, 2024 (open access) The post Ecological Relations Under Capitalism appeared first on KPFA.

Our lives are filled with innumerable choices, such as for the countless array of products for us to buy, assuming we can afford them. Our politics are often framed as a question of individual, not collective, choice such as the freedom to choose to have an abortion or the act of casting one’s vote in secret, away from the eyes other others. Historian Sophia Rosenfeld argues that the notion that freedom means “the freedom to choose” has been central to modern Western society, but may be coming apart. Resources: Sophia Rosenfeld, The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life Princeton University Press, 2025 The post Is Freedom a Choice? appeared first on KPFA.

“The bosses have two parties,” they said. “We need one of our own.” In 1996, representatives and activists from hundreds of local and international unions came together to launch a workers’ party — long missing from U.S. politics. Labor Party participant and economist Howard Botwinick discusses the organization’s challenges and promise, and the lessons from its rise and fall — including how the failure to build leftwing politics rooted in the working class created a vacuum that was ultimately filled by the right. Resources: Labor Party Archive The post Lessons from the U.S. Labor Party appeared first on KPFA.

Jewish opposition to Israel, so visible recently through the spectacular actions of groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, is not a recent phenomenon. Historian Marjorie Feld argues that what may seem like unprecedented criticism of Israel by U.S. Jews is part of a long tradition of dissent, which has been repressed by establishment Jewish organizations and frequently erased by historians. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Marjorie N. Feld, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism NYU Press, 2024 Photo credit: Marcy Winograd The post U.S. Jewish Anti-Zionism appeared first on KPFA.

After four decades of neoliberalism, capitalism is becoming neofeudal. So argues Jodi Dean, who lays out neofeudalism’s main features, explains why she believes capitalism is on the way out, and identifies which sectors of society could spearhead the struggle against neofeudalism. Jodi Dean, Capital’s Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle Verso, 2025 Excerpt of Capital’s Grave in Protean Magazine The post Neofeudalism appeared first on KPFA.

More than two million farmworkers do the hard, sometimes backbreaking work of planting, growing, and harvesting crops in the U.S. Focusing on strawberry and grape pickers in California, David Bacon describes what the work involves, where the workers come from, and steps they’re taking to protect their rights and pursue justice. (Encore presentation.) The Reality Check: Stories and Photographs by David Bacon David Bacon, More Than a Wall/Mas que un muro El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2022 (Image on main page by David Bacon.) The post Laboring in the Fields appeared first on KPFA.

The American diet is awash in junk food. More than half the calories Americans eat come from processed food and drink. Three decades ago, with obesity on the rise, the food industry funded scientists to conclude that exercise was the answer, rather than taxing soda and reining in the marketing of processed food. Anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh weighs in on Big Soda’s influence on science — at universities, through front groups — and the ways that companies like Coca-Cola influenced public health in the U.S. and in China, one of the largest markets for processed food in the world. Resources: Susan Greenhalgh, Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola University of Chicago Press, 2024 Photo credit: Mike Mozart The post How Big Soda Shaped the Science of Exercise appeared first on KPFA.