KPFA - Against the Grain

Universities are one of the most hallowed institutions in our society — but critics argue they’re closer to hedge funds that conduct classes. Higher education is largely tax-exempt, based on the idea that universities benefit the public at large, including the communities where they are located. Yet urbanist and historian Davarian Baldwin argues that cities pay a very high price for universities which, whether public or private, are engines of profit, encroaching on adjacent communities and exploiting low wage labor, while grossly subsidized by their host cities. Resources: Davarian L. Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities Bold Type Books, 2021 The post Cities and the Big Business of Higher Education appeared first on KPFA.

How does a social movement attract younger participants, who may be turned off by older activists’ approaches, styles, and understandings? Elisabeth Jay Friedman describes how Ni Una Menos, an influential feminist formation in Argentina, managed to build an intergenerational mass movement. Elisabeth Jay Friedman and Ana Laura Rodríguez Gustá, ‘“Welcome to the Revolution’: Promoting Generational Renewal in Argentina’s Ni Una Menos,” Qualitative Sociology (Image on main page by TitiNicola.) The post Mobilizing Across Generations appeared first on KPFA.

As the world rushes headlong into the climate emergency, what might a liberatory approach look like, that would avert ecological disaster while making another world possible? Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese have laid out one vision for eco-socialism that takes on the difficult question of how to plan society in a radically different way. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics Verso, 2022 Half-Earth Socialism: A Planetary Planning Game The post Half-Earth Socialism appeared first on KPFA.

To be queer and communist at a time when the Communist Party in the U.S. banned LGBT people was tricky and often perilous. In her new book Bettina Aptheker profiles Lorraine Hansberry (who famously penned the play “A Raisin in the Sun”), Harry Hay (best known for founding the Mattachine Society), and other figures with radical sensibilities and closeted sexualities. Bettina Aptheker, Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s-1990s Routledge, 2023 The post Queer Communists appeared first on KPFA.

What are the contradictions and uses of environmental conservation and land preservation in a settler colonial state? Like South Africa and the United States, the Israeli government has carved out large swaths of land for ecological protection — and the dispossession of native populations is often hidden from sight. Legal anthropologist Irus Braverman discusses the settler ecologies of Palestine-Israel. Resources: Irus Braverman, Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel University of Minnesota Press, 2023 The post Israel and Settler Conservation appeared first on KPFA.

An Asian Pacific Islander history-themed program featuring Jean Pfaelzer on anti-Chinese pogroms; Karen Ishizuka on API organizing; Craig Santos Perez on Guam’s indigenous Chamorro population; and Julie Otsuka about her novel about Japanese American incarceration. Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans UC Press Karen Ishizuka, Serve the People: Making Asian America in the Long Sixties Verso Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [guma’] Omnidawn Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine Anchor Books (Image on main page by Andrew Ratto.) The post API Setbacks & Struggles appeared first on KPFA.

North Americans are sick, stressed, and alienated, a state of affairs accentuated in recent years by Covid. The Hungarian-Canadian physician Gabor Maté argues that capitalism engenders illness, while the medical system blindly ignores the lives of its patients. Maté discusses individual and collective change, while reflecting on human nature, alienation and rightwing politics, and the work of Karl Marx. Resources: Gabor Maté, MD with Daniel Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture Avery, 2022 The post Gabor Maté on Illness, Human Nature, Capitalism, and Socialism 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.

Groundbreaking theorist David Harvey considers Marx’s analytical framework and applies it to contemporary conditions. The post Fund Drive Special: David Harvey appeared first on KPFA.

Audio highlights of the award-winning film “Aware: Glimpses of Consciousness.” The post Fund Drive Special: “Aware” Revisited appeared first on KPFA.