KPFA - Against the Grain

Demands for police reform that emphasize accountability, transparency, respect for civil liberties, or the restructuring of police agencies miss the point. So argues Mark Neocleous, who lays out what he calls a critical theory of police power, linking it to the war power, vagrancy legislation, and the exigencies of capital. Social Justice Mark Neocleous, A Critical Theory of Police Power: The Fabrication of the Social Order Verso, 2021 (Image on main page by StockSnap from Pixabay.) The post A Theory of Police Power appeared first on KPFA.

Open any world history book and you’ll read that the Neolithic Revolution was a turning point for humanity, when hunter gatherers gave up roving in small egalitarian groups and settled down to farm. Out of that, civilization was born, with all the benefits and ills connected to it: the rise of cities, the emergence of the state, inequality, and class society. But, according to anthropologist David Graeber, that tale is not based on fact. The post Fund Drive Special: Where We Came From, Where We’re Going appeared first on KPFA.

Penn professor Paul Goldin discusses the Chinese philosophical text “Lao-Tzu,” also known as the “Tao Te Ching,” which has inspired and intrigued readers for more than two millennia. The post Fund Drive Special: The Taoist Classic “Tao Te Ching” appeared first on KPFA.

High school students are assigned massive textbooks overflowing with dates and events in U.S. history. But according to sociologist and educator James Loewen, these massive tomes often omit more than they include. Loewen’s classic work, Lies My Teacher Told Me, explores the whitewashing of Woodrow Wilson’s racism and imperialist ventures, and the exclusion of Helen Keller’s radical socialist views. The post Fund Drive Special: Whitewashing the Past appeared first on KPFA.

Zen master and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hanh on how to generate and cultivate happiness, mindfulness, and compassion. The post Fund Drive Special: Thich Nhat Hanh appeared first on KPFA.

Every October, the United States officially celebrates Columbus Day. Yet the story of Columbus is shrouded in myth and falsehoods, on display in the textbooks American kids are assigned. Sociologist and educator James Loewen, who died recently, set out to challenge that myth-making in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me, providing a salutary antidote to official history making and teaching. photo: Pixabay The post Fund Drive Special: The Myths of U.S. History appeared first on KPFA.

What happens when socialist struggle intersects with struggles for national liberation? What role did Marxist theory play in anticolonial movements? Are movements that target hierarchies other than class properly considered Marxist? Vijay Prashad discusses the entwined traditions of Marxism and national liberation. “Dawn: Marxism and National Liberation”, a dossier of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Vijay Prashad, Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations Monthly Review Press, 2020 The post Theory Amidst Struggle appeared first on KPFA.

Covid has laid bare the inequities of our society and the dysfunction of our medical system, which focuses at great cost on disease-treatment rather than fostering health. So contends epidemiologist Sandro Galea. He argues that the pandemic provides an opening to rethink medicine, along with housing, wages, and racial and social inequality, and to treat health as a public good. Resources: Sandro Galea, The Contagion Next Time Oxford University Press, 2021 The post The Roots of Covid Vulnerability appeared first on KPFA.

On Christmas Day, 1765, a new era in the history of protest began. So asserts Micah Alpaugh; he describes how the Sons of Liberty, formed in the thirteen colonies to oppose the British government’s Stamp Act, innovated a movement organizing model that was later taken up by rebels and revolutionaries in Britain, France, Haiti, the U.S., and elsewhere. Micah Alpaugh, Friends of Freedom: The Rise of Social Movements in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions Cambridge University Press, 2021 The post Pivotal Protest Movement appeared first on KPFA.

As the world stumbles towards renewable energy, who will own the power from the sun and wind? Is wind the common property of everyone — or the private property of the few? Anthropologist David McDermott Hughes spent several years studying resistance to wind turbines in a southern Spanish village, from which he draws important lessons for the left and the environmental movement about the potential backlash against renewable energy from people in rural areas. Resources: David McDermott Hughes, Who Owns the Wind? Climate Crisis and the Hope of Renewable Energy Verso, 2021 The post The Turbulent Route to Wind Power appeared first on KPFA.