KPFA - Against the Grain

What happens when meditation and yoga are taught behind bars? Are the imprisoned student-practitioners prodded to view their suffering as generated solely by their thoughts and actions, or do the classes foster an awareness of the structural and systemic factors that contributed to their incarceration? Farah Godrej taught yoga and meditation in prison and interviewed both fellow instructors and formerly incarcerated practitioners. (Encore presentation.) Farah Godrej, Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State Oxford University Press, 2022 The post Contemplating Incarceration appeared first on KPFA.

The Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, are celebrated on the left for their militant opposition to capitalism, their broad church unionism across race and gender lines, and their ability to organize migrant and other precarious workers. As Ahmed White documents, they were crushed by unprecedented violence and vigilantism, which cast a long shadow over the U.S. labor movement and the left. Resources: Ahmed White, Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers UC Press, 2022 The post The War on the Industrial Workers of the World appeared first on KPFA.

Highlights of some of the best commentary presented on Against the Grain in 2022, featuring Nandita Sharma on nation-states and nationalism; Sarah Clark Miller on moral precarity in neoliberal times; Max Haiven on palm oil and capitalist logics; and Michael Albert on the corporate division of labor. Full-length interviews with Nandita Sharma, Sarah Clark Miller, Max Haiven, and Michael Albert. The post A Look Back appeared first on KPFA.

A twentieth-anniversary edition of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, by the UCLA-based historian Robin D. G. Kelley, recently came out. Kelley spoke about his book shortly after it was published. Kelley later joined the program to talk about Aimé Césaire, one of the thinkers featured in Freedom Dreams. (Encore presentation.) Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination Beacon, 2022 (Image on main page by Ivan Radic.) The post Dreams of Liberation appeared first on KPFA.

We’re often told that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians rises out of a unique historical situation. But the dispossession of the Palestinians, rather than being exceptional, has strong echoes in other historical dispossessions. Gary Fields discusses the enclosure of the lands of the English peasantry, Native Americans, and the inhabitants of historic Palestine. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Gary Fields, Enclosure: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror UC Press, 2017 The post Dispossession and Enclosure appeared first on KPFA.

This year saw the publication of a fifteenth-anniversary edition of Vijay Prashad’s award-winning book “The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World,” which examines the origins, the development, and what the author calls the assassination of the Third World project. Today’s program features excerpts of a two-part in-studio interview with Prashad conducted shortly after the book first came out. The post Third World History appeared first on KPFA.

The fortunes of DDT, the synthetic pesticide which infamously devastated bird populations in the United States, rose and fell during the 20th century, and rose again in the 21st century, driven by a campaign by Big Tobacco to sew uncertainty about what can be known. Historian of medicine Elena Conis discusses the trajectory and afterlife of DDT, used to cast doubt on scientific evidence and undermine the regulation of private corporations and markets. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Elena Conis, How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT Bold Type Books, 2022 The post DDT’s Toxic Reach appeared first on KPFA.

Covid has exposed the precarious health of working class people and people of color in this country. And the climate disaster is laying bare the vulnerability of so many around the world on a changing planet. What’s the connection? Political economist Raj Patel and physician Rupa Marya argue that capitalism, with its roots in colonialism, has derailed our ecosystems, both the ones outside us and the ones inside our bodies. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021 The post A World on Fire, Inside and Out appeared first on KPFA.

Most of us assume that our medical data is protected under U.S. law — but, as sociologist Mary Ebeling illustrates, that’s wrong. Even when we don’t collect it ourselves with fitness trackers and health apps, our most sensitive health information is gathered from across the web, and package and sold as data commodities by brokers like the credit bureaus Equifax and Experian. Ebeling discusses the afterlives of our medical data, as well as the lack of medical data privacy in a post-Roe world. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Mary F.E. Ebeling, Afterlives of Data: Life and Debt under Capitalist Surveillance UC Press, 2022 The post Our Medical Data, Everywhere appeared first on KPFA.

According to James Martel, what anarchism opposes is “archism,” a form of politics based on rule and hierarchy. He points to three instances in which anarchism – by which he means horizontalist and collective politics– took hold: the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s; the Rojavan Revolution in contemporary Syria; and a region of Papua New Guinea where a man named Yali once held sway. (Encore presentation.) James Martel, Anarchist Prophets: Disappointing Vision and the Power of Collective Sight Duke University Press, 2022 The post Anarchist Visions and Realities appeared first on KPFA.