KPFA - Against the Grain

Billions of dollars have been spent on Alzheimer’s research over many decades, yet no effective treatment exists. Investigative journalist Charles Piller has revealed one reason for the impasse: pivotal scientific research into Alzheimer’s disease — affirming the hypothesis that it’s caused by sticky amyloid plaques in the brain — was based on manipulated images. Resources: Charles Piller, Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s One Signal, 2025 The post Manipulating Alzheimer’s Research appeared first on KPFA.

Lawrence Grossberg explains what the cultural theorist Stuart Hall meant by a war of positions and a war of maneuvers. We also present portions of a talk Hall gave about the dynamics of media representation. And Yousuf Al-Bulushi examines certain political stances taken by South Africa’s shack dweller movement. Lawrence Grossberg, On the Way to Theory Duke University Press, 2024 Stuart Hall: Representation and the Media Yousuf Al-Bulushi, Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City Palgrave Macmillan, 2024 (Image on main page by SkepticalScience.) The post Terrains of Struggle appeared first on KPFA.

The union movement is suffering from a conundrum. While the U.S public overwhelmingly supports unions, labor lacks the capacity to help workers organize and unionize. Labor scholar and organizer Eric Blanc argues that there is a new and promising way of organizing from the bottom up, which emerged during Trump’s first term and flourished through Covid. He believes that with worker to worker organizing, unions could see explosive growth, even during Trump’s second term. Resources: Eric Blanc, We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big UC Press, 2025 Eric Blanc’s Labor Politics on Substack Photo credit: dblackadder The post Worker Organizing in the Time of Trump appeared first on KPFA.

How is the War on Terror playing out in a country like Kenya? What are its security forces doing at the U.S.’s behest, and how are ordinary Kenyans responding? Samar Al-Bulushi discusses the emergence of supranational forms of police power and their impact on human rights activism. Samar Al-Bulushi, War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror Stanford University Press, 2024 The post Counterterrorism in Context appeared first on KPFA.

Many assume the majority of people living on the streets struggle with mental illness or just need jobs — and that homelessness is unfortunate, but intractable. Longtime advocate for the unhoused, Mary Brosnahan, argues that these are myths, and that much of what we assume about homelessness is wrong. She posits that at its root is the capitalist commodification of housing, illustrated in the past by Bronx landlords getting rid of low income tenants by burning their buildings to the ground to the systemic shortage of affordable housing today. Resources: Mary Brosnahan, “They Just Need to Get a Job” 15 Myths on Homelessness Beacon Press, 2024 Invisible People Finland The post Getting Homelessness Wrong appeared first on KPFA.

What can – and can’t – you say and do as a Palestinian American teacher? Can you speak frankly about Palestine, about the occupation and oppression, about the Israel-U.S. relationship? Can you support student inquiry into matters that rankle Zionist colleagues? Social-studies educator Luma Hasan encountered intolerance and pushback while working at a reputedly liberal high school. Kevin L. Clay and Kevin Lawrence Henry Jr., eds., The Promise of Youth Anti-citizenship: Race and Revolt in Education University of Minnesota Press, 2024 Teach for Liberation The post Palestinian Teacher’s Travails appeared first on KPFA.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about race, segregation, poverty, militarism, and nonviolent resistance in two talks, one he gave in Hollywood, in March 1968, and the other in London, in December 1964. Pacifica Radio Archives (Image on main page by Wes Candela.) The post Two Talks by Dr. King appeared first on KPFA.

We assume that the collection of our data by Big Tech companies — to scrutinize, categorize, and use for commercial and other unsanctioned purposes — is unique to our era. But scholar Anita Say Chan illustrates how the eugenics movement in the 19th and 20th centuries amassed and analyzed data in order to justify social hierarchies. She draws a line from that past to our present, but also reminds us of alternative traditions of data in the cause of social justice. Resources: Anita Say Chan, Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future UC Press, 2025 The post The Misuse of Data from Eugenics to Big Tech appeared first on KPFA.

In his new book, Lawrence Grossberg describes ways of thinking that have laid the foundation for the development of contemporary Western theory. Two of the thinkers he writes about are Friedrich Nietzsche, who “rejected the enlightenments,” and Stuart Hall, a pioneer in the field of cultural studies. Lawrence Grossberg, On the Way to Theory Duke University Press, 2024 (Image on main page by Nick Youngson/Alpha Stock Images.) The post Nietzsche, Hall, and “Theory” appeared first on KPFA.

It was the first of its kind program of mass surveillance: the surreal, and initially-secret, deployment of an unmanned plane flying in circles over the city of Baltimore. Sociologist Benjamin Snyder discusses the Baltimore Police Department’s short-lived experiment in spying on the city’s residents. He considers how technologies like the spy plane are both embraced and feared –- without a deeper awareness of how flawed they often are. Resources: Benjamin H. Snyder, Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment UC Press, 2024 The post Baltimore’s Spy Plane appeared first on KPFA.