A World to Win with Grace Blakeley

This week, Grace talks to Shami Chakrabarti, barrister, human rights campaigner and former Shadow Attorney General under Jeremy Corbyn. They discuss the Conservative’s sharp turn towards authoritarianism, with the introduction of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Overseas Operations Bill, and the Spy Cops Bill, as well as police and criminal justice reform. For access to the full hour-long episode, support us on Patreon at https://patreon.com/aworldtowinpod

This week, as the anniversary of the declaration of a pandemic by the WHO approaches, Grace talks to Dr. Eugene Richardson, Assistant Professor of Global Health at Harvard and author of Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health. Eugene previously worked in Sierra Leone and the DRC supporting the response to the Ebola outbreak. We discuss the ways in which an unequal, unsustainable capitalist world system reproduces massive economic, political and health inequalities, and what we can do about it. Find full episodes on our Patreon: https://patreon.com/aworldtowinpod

This week, we have a special International Women's Day episode of A World to Win, in which Grace talks to Kristen Ghodsee, Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of many books, including Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism and other arguments for economic independence. Kristen skillfully deconstructs liberal, corporate, and NGO feminism, and helps us to think about how the feminist movement is about supporting us all to build stronger, happier, healthier relationships and rediscover our unalienated humanity in the process. The conversation was recorded on March 8th, International Women's Day. Read Ghodsee's article mentioned in the interview: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/04/opinion/women-unpaid-labor.html Support us on Patreon at https://patreon.com/aworldtowinpod

This week, Grace talks to Sarah Jaffe, journalist and author of Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. They discussed Joe Biden’s first weeks as President, the impact of COVID-19 and climate breakdown in the US, and how the world of work is changing as a result of the pandemic, and how we might resist it. Support us: patreon.com/aworldtowinpod

This week, Grace talks to Moses Khisa, Assistant Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University and a research associate with the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala. They discuss the recent elections in Uganda, in which President Yoweri Museveni won his sixth term against populist challenger and former popstar Bobi Wine, and place them in the context of Uganda’s long slide towards authoritarianism and the failed neoliberal reforms of the 1990s. Support us on Patreon at https://patreon.com/aworldtowinpod

This week, Grace talks to Ellen Clifford, author of The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe, who is on the steering committee of DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts). They discuss successive UK government's breaches of the human rights of disabled people, how the left can be made a more inclusive space for disabled activists, and how the pandemic has affected the lives of disabled people after a decade of austerity. For access to the full hour-long episode, support us on Patreon at https://patreon.com/aworldtowinpod

This week, Grace talks to Ben Smoke, one of the members of the Stansted 15: a group of activists who stopped a mass deportation flight from taking off from Stansted airport in 2017, before being tried under law designed to prosecute terrorists. They discuss the details of the protest and the trial, the government's barbaric approach to migration policy, and why successive Tory governments seem so adept at breaking international human rights law. For the full episode, support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/aworldtowinpod Follow Ben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bencsmoke

This week, Grace talks to Ian Lavery MP, former Chair of the Labour Party, and Laura Smith, former MP for Crewe and Nantwitch, about their new project No Holding Back, which you can find online at https://noholdingback.org.uk and on Twitter @NBack20. We discuss whether the Labour Party is still the party of the working classes, the likely impact of Brexit on the UK, and how the left can rebuild trust with communities across the country in the wake of the pandemic. For the full hour-long episode, support us on Patreon at https://patreon.com/aworldtowinpod

This week, in a special episode of A World to Win, we remember the brilliant Marxist thinker, activist and public intellectual Leo Panitch. Grace talks to Max Shanly, socialist strategist and organiser and long time friend of Leo's, and Sam Gindin, former director of research for the Canadian Auto Workers Union and Leo's long time collaborator, including on his magnum opus The Making of Global Capitalism. Several of Leo's books - including the Making of Global Capitalism and Searching for Socialism - are available on the Verso website, and many of his essays are available for free through the Socialist Register website: https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv

This week, Grace talks to Vijay Prashad, head of the Tricontinenatal Institute for Social Research and author of Washington Bullets: A history of the CIA, Coups and Assassinations. They discuss the recent wave of strikes taking place across India, the rise of the far right in India and across the world, and the mechanisms through which imperial power is exercised in the global economy today - including the use of investor state dispute settlements by international investors to sue governments over their responses to the pandemic.