KPFA - Against the Grain

Should Marxism be rooted in inter-species liberation? Or is it already, unbeknownst to most of us? Leigh Claire La Berge has delved into what she considers an unrecognized trove of evidence for Marxism’s deep engagement with the feline as a way of making sense of class society — and what would be necessary to leap beyond it. She argues that the history of inter-species solidarity between radicals and cats (among other animals) is only now starting to be recuperated. Resources: Leigh Claire La Berge, Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary Duke University Press, 2023 The post Cats and Marxism appeared first on KPFA.

What can sex workers add to discussions around transformative justice, prison abolition, and labor organizing? Heather Berg has spoken with sex worker radicals whose perspectives on left theory and practice are informed by encounters with ever-present threats to their lives and livelihoods. Heather Berg, “‘If You’re Going to Be Beautiful, You Better Be Dangerous’: Sex Worker Community Defense” Radical History Review Heather Berg, Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism University of North Carolina Press, 2021 The post Sex Worker Theorizing appeared first on KPFA.

In 1936, Nazi Germany hosted the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, amidst international calls to boycott. It was an enormously consequential event in the politics of the times, granting Hitler an international spotlight to promote the Third Reich. Much less known, as writer Michael Waters argues, is how Nazi eugenics and paranoia about transgender athletes gave rise to the gender surveillance that characterizes contemporary sports to this day. Resources: Michael Waters, The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024 The post The Nazi Origins of Gender Surveillance in Sports appeared first on KPFA.

In the years following the Russian Revolution, a popular resistance movement sprang up in Ukraine that drew its inspiration from a man named Nestor Makhno. Makhno went on to organize a seven-million-strong anarchist polity amidst the chaos and brutality of the Russian Civil War. Charlie Allison describes Makhno’s appeal, his political beliefs, and his rejection of Bolshevism. Charlie Allison, No Harmless Power: The Life and Times of the Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno PM Press, 2023 (Image on main page by Oleh Kushch.) The post Ukrainian Anarchist appeared first on KPFA.

Recent political discussions of marriage have revolved around who should be allowed to wed. But missing from most debates is the question of the unfair privileges conferred by the institution of marriage itself. Scholar Jaclyn Geller discusses the more than one thousand benefits accorded married people, at the expense of the non-married. Resources: Jaclyn Geller, Moving Past Marriage: Why We Should Ditch Marital Privilege, End Relationship-Status Discrimination, and Embrace Non-marital History Cleis Press, 2023 The post The Unfair Benefits of Marriage appeared first on KPFA.

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. Gabrielle Hecht, Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures Duke University Press, 2023 (open access) The post Extraction’s Heavy Toll appeared first on KPFA.

For over half a century, Big Oil and the plastics industry, through their trade associations and front groups, have sold the public the false idea that plastics are recyclable. Recycling became the mantra of good ecological stewardship, promoted by the likes of city governments, school children, and environmental groups. Davis Allen lays out the mass-marketing of a deception. Resources: Center for Climate Integrity, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the Plastics Industry Deceived the Public for Decades and Caused the Plastic Waste Crisis February, 2024 The post The Plastics Recycling Deception appeared first on KPFA.

Reclaiming the commons sounds good in the abstract, but what’s being done on a practical level? Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, the Hawai‘i-based co-founders of Eating in Public, describe projects like Free Gardens and Free Stores. Also: Wren Awry discusses the volume to which Chan and Sharma contributed an essay. Eating in Public Wren Awry, ed., Nourishing Resistance: Stories of Food, Protest, and Mutual Aid PM Press, 2023 The post Food & Freedom appeared first on KPFA.

In the United States, few things seem as wholesome as camping, letting us temporarily escape the daily grind and commune with nature and each other. But Phoebe Young argues that camping has a complicated history, which tell us a lot about Americans’ notions of nature and the nation. She discusses the various forms that camping has taken in this country, from recreational camping to the encampments of those without shelter to Occupy Wall Street. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Phoebe S.K. Young, Camping Grounds: Public Nature in American Life from the Civil War to the Occupy Movement Oxford University Press, 2021 The post The Politics of Camping appeared first on KPFA.

A hallmark of our age is feeling we’re perpetually struggling with time—not having enough of it to accomplish seemingly endless tasks and obligations, while swimming in a sea of distractions. Can we cope if we learn, following the gurus of time management, to become ever more disciplined and productive? Or does that just feed into a capitalist logic that doesn’t benefit us? Journalist Oliver Burkeman discusses the perils of time management orthodoxy. The post Fund Drive Special: Mastering Time? appeared first on KPFA.