KPFA - Against the Grain

“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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about rich people. Does his work also offer a critique of wealth and inequality? According to John Marsh, we can learn a lot about class, power, privilege, and impunity from a novel published 100 years ago. John Marsh, A Rotten Crowd: America, Wealth, and One Hundred Years of The Great Gatsby Monthly Review Press, 2024 The post Wealth, Inequality, and “The Great Gatsby” appeared first on KPFA.

The federal minimum wage languishes at $7.25 an hour and has not been raised since 2009. Given the disproportionate number of workers of color who receive the minimum wage or less, legal scholar Ruben Garcia argues that the fight for racial justice has to include raising the minimum wage. Resources: Ruben J. Garcia, Critical Wage Theory: Why Wage Justice Is Racial Justice UC Press, 2024 Photo credit: Fibonacci Blue The post Racial Justice Through Raising the Minimum Wage appeared first on KPFA.

What did the Communist Party accomplish in California, or try to? SFSU emeritus professor Robert W. Cherny considers the party’s agendas and activities in relation to longshore workers, labor unions, political figures, and others. He also examines the stances the party took toward the Roosevelt administration, the New Deal, the Comintern, and U.S. involvement in World War II. (Encore presentation.) Robert W. Cherny, San Francisco Reds: Communists in the Bay Area, 1919-1958 University of Illinois Press, 2024 The post California’s Communists appeared first on KPFA.

While the wealthy disproportionately own real estate in the U.S., in many locales the properties of low income homeowners and especially homeowners of color are assessed and taxed at levels higher than their actual market value. On average, African Americans and Latinos pay more than ten percent higher taxes than whites for similar properties. Property law scholar Bernadette Atuahene discusses what she calls predatory governance, in which states and municipalities increase their coffers by unfairly taxing or fining people of color. Resources: Bernadette Atuahene, Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America Little, Brown and Company, 2025 University of Chicago’s Property Tax Fairness Portal Detroit’s Coalition for Property Tax Justice The post Racism and Property Taxes appeared first on KPFA.

When and where did the practice of forcing incarcerated people to work without wages begin? Robin Bernstein reveals that prison-based slavery in the U.S. originated not in the South but in Auburn, New York. The Auburn System, under which incarcerated workers were prohibited from talking and were put in solitary confinement each night, spread across the U.S. and overseas. (Encore presentation.) Robin Bernstein, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit University of Chicago Press, 2024 The post How Carceral Slavery Began appeared first on KPFA.