What was the modern Sanctuary Movement formed to do? What sorts of challenges has it faced, and how has the movement changed and evolved? Carl Lindskoog considers the history of the Sanctuary Movement, including its expansion into a far-reaching campaign for human rights, economic justice, and peace. Maria Cristina Garcia & Maddalena Marinari, Whose America? U.S. Immigration Policy since 1980 University of Illinois Press, 2023 (Image on main page by Church World Service/New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia.) The post A History of Sanctuary 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. 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.

A brilliant theoretical physicist best known for his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein was also a socialist. John Bellamy Foster describes Einstein’s radical political commitments, including his efforts in relation to the founding of Brandeis University, his role in the Henry Wallace campaign, and his seminal essay “Why Socialism?” John also talks about his new book. John Bellamy Foster, “Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’ and ‘Monthly Review’: A Historical Introduction” Monthly Review John Bellamy Foster, The Dialectics of Ecology Monthly Review Press, 2024 The post Einstein’s Socialism appeared first on KPFA.

Jane McAlevey was an exceptional organizer and thinker, and her death on July 7th leaves a gaping hole for the left. She dedicated her life to building working class power, in the trenches of the environmental and labor movements and as a radical scholar. McAlevey believed that the left and labor movement abandoned deep organizing in the 1970s, in favor of shallow mobilization and even shallower advocacy. But she insisted that the tide could be turned. Resources: Jane F. McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age Oxford University Press, 2016 Who Rules America? The post Jane McAlevey on How to Win appeared first on KPFA.

Is there such a thing as core gender identity? Are queer and trans people born that way? And what role does trauma play in shaping gender? Drawing on psychoanalytic theory and practice as well as queer and trans studies, Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, each a clinician and NYU-based scholar, contest the notion that gender is fixed and innate. Avgi Saketopoulou & Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without Identity The Unconscious in Translation, 2023 (use discount code “KPFA” at checkout for 25% off until July 15) (Image on main page by Charles Hutchins.) The post Rethinking Gender appeared first on KPFA.

We are living through the sixth great extinction of species and governments are almost nothing to curb it. Scientist Douglas Tallamy, however, proposes a blueprint for a grassroots effort to restore habitat in a meaningful way, seeing nature not as something to be preserved in parks and reserves far from us, but all around us in our cities and suburbs, farmlands and ranches. (Full-length interview.) Resources: Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard Timber Press, 2020 The post Rebuilding Habitats in Our Yards appeared first on KPFA.

Why has the term complicity become so ubiquitous in recent years? Are we all complicit in the system that we live under? What use, or uses, does the notion serve? These are questions that legal scholar Francine Banner poses. She makes the argument that the term bears different meanings, sometimes holding the powerful to account and other times looking for someone to blame, rather than focusing on systemic change. She considers the shifting modern use of complicity — shaped in part by problematic scholarship on the uncaring bystander — and sees parallels in how the legal system severely penalizes those for even peripheral involvement in crimes. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Francine Banner, Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems UC Press, 2024 The post Interrogating Complicity 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.

Times of emergency require difficult decisions and we’re told by the likes of Bill Gates that nuclear power is necessary to get the world off fossil fuels. Nuclear power boosters argue that new technologies have made nuclear reactors cheaper and safer. Scholar and scientist M.V. Ramana calls this a fiction. He asserts that nuclear power remains dangerous, expensive, polluting, and too slow to come online in time. He argues that nuclear power is a boondoggle that would derail us from the urgent need to switch to renewable energy, while increasing the danger of nuclear conflict. Resources: M.V. Ramana, Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change Verso, 2024 The post Nuclear Power and the Climate Emergency appeared first on KPFA.

What role have historians, and the discipline of history itself, played in how historical events unfold? Priya Satia contends that historians were key architects of British imperialism, that history enabled empire in fundamental ways. She also contests the notion that history unfolds in a linear and progressive fashion, and discusses the work and impact of the working-class historian E. P. Thompson. (Encore presentation.) Priya Satia, Time’s Monster: How History Makes History Belknap Press, 2023 (paper) The post History’s Complicity in Empire appeared first on KPFA.