KPFA - Against the Grain

What are discarded materials from extractive activities like mining doing to life on the planet? According to Gabrielle Hecht, what’s happening in South Africa to and around mountainous piles of mining residues crystallizes a number of thorny environmental and sociopolitical issues faced by communities around the globe. (Encore presentation.) Gabrielle Hecht, Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures Duke University Press, 2023 (open access) (Image on main page by Gabrielle Hecht.) The post Extraction’s Heavy Toll appeared first on KPFA.

It’s both a precious resource and a dangerous pollutant, exponentially increasing crop yields, while fouling our waterways with blue-green algae. The element phosphorus has played a crucial role in agriculture and war, while its reserves are unevenly distributed, with much of the world’s supply located in the occupied territories of Western Sahara. Writer Dan Egan discusses the double-edged nature of an element that is increasingly depleted and overused. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Dan Egan, The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance Norton, 2023 The post Phosphorus: Reaping the Harvest 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. 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.

What lessons can we learn from the ways working class people in the U.S., many of them women and people of color, took collective action during the depression of the 1930s? Historian Dana Frank discusses experiments in mutual aid and cooperatives, battles over the expulsion of Mexican and Mexican American workers, small-scale sit down strikes, including by African American wet nurses, as well as working class support for the fascist right. Resources: Dana Frank, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? Stories of Ordinary People & Collective Action in Hard Times Beacon Press, 2024 The post Collective Action in the Great Depression appeared first on KPFA.

Black parents worry about racism’s impact on their children. Jennifer C. Nash is interested in both the nature of racialized anxiety and the way it’s rendered visible to the general public. Among other things, she looks at how Black mothers have used the epistolary form to convey their concerns, fears, and hopes. Jennifer C. Nash, How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory Duke University Press, 2024 The post Conveying Black Loss appeared first on KPFA.

When we think of potentially dangerous and addictive drugs, most of us think about illegal substances like heroine or cocaine. And yet widely-prescribed drugs like Xanax, Ritalin, Adderall, and Vicodin are also addictive, but legal in the United States. Historian David Herzberg discusses the artificial distinction that has been created between addictive drugs and medicines — with the key difference being the class and race of the consumers who use them and the partial protections that one group receives and the other does not. Resources: David Herzberg, White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America University of Chicago Press, 2020 The post Good Patients, Bad Addicts appeared first on KPFA.

In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the U.S. transported refugees from Vietnam to its colonial possession Guam. In that period, Israel did something similar, offering citizenship to Vietnamese refugees, in the wake of its expanded occupation of Palestine. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi looks at the condition of refugee settlers, as well as solidarity between the indigenous inhabitants of settler colonial states. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine UC Press, 2022 The post Refugee Settlers in Guam and Palestine appeared first on KPFA.

Not one movement but a multiplicity of movements engaging in protest and direct action brought down France’s absolutist regime in 1789. Micah Alpaugh describes popular uprisings and insurrections in Paris and the provinces that operated without central leadership and later inspired anarchists around the globe. Micah Alpaugh, The People’s Revolution of 1789 Cornell University Press, 2024 (Image on main page from Rama.) The post French Revolutionary Movements appeared first on KPFA.

Ayn Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have been called gateway drugs to rightwing ideas for so many Americans. And while the works of the writer and philosopher have seen a resurgence since the global economic crisis, her influence has been undeniably huge and sustained since those books were originally published in mid-century. Historian Lisa Duggan examines what is at the heart of Rand’s enduring appeal. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Lisa Duggan, Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed UC Press, 2019 The post Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed appeared first on KPFA.

What is Mexican philosophy, and what are its guiding principles? According to Carlos Alberto Sánchez, Mexican philosophy is a byproduct of Western philosophy’s role in the colonization of the Americas. He lays out some of its central concepts and considers how they apply to everyday life. Carlos Alberto Sánchez, Blooming in the Ruins: How Mexican Philosophy Can Guide Us Toward the Good Life Oxford University Press, 2024   The post Mexican Philosophy appeared first on KPFA.