12:00 PM Pacific Time: Mondays - Wednesdays
Acclaimed program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters—political, economic, social, and cultural—important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong.
Who wants to be Muslim in post-9/11 America? Many of the characters in Ali Eteraz‘s new novel Native Believer have no choice in the matter; they deal in a variety of ways with issues of belonging and identity in a society bent on categorizing, stereotyping, and targeting Muslims. (Encore presentation.)
Was the emergence of capitalism a preordained affair? Was it natural and inevitable that capitalism developed in England and spread to the rest of the world, as conventional accounts would have it? Or was capitalism’s emergence contingent, arising out of social conflict in the countryside? Marxist scholars Christopher Isett and Stephen Miller explore what the … Continued
How many stories feature the Black Panthers, the Daley machine, the Young Lords, the original (pre-Jesse Jackson) Rainbow Coalition, and Chicago’s first black mayor (Harold Washington)? Jakobi Williams’s story does; he discusses how cross-racial coalition-building revolutionized Chicago’s politics and how it can and should inspire social justice organizing today. (Encore presentation.) Jakobi Williams, From the … Continued
Children are being diagnosed with increasing rates of autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and bipolar disorder. Theories abound about the spike in these conditions. But what if the root problem is, in fact, a society that medicalizes normal childhood behavior? Clinical psychologist Enrico Gnaulati makes such a claim. He discusses kids, psychiatric diagnoses, and the … Continued
Sheldon Wolin, who famously invoked the specter of inverted totalitarianism, also put forward a concept of “fugitive democracy.” While many theorists of democracy found the concept too bleak and despairing, David McIvor argues that Wolin was in fact pushing for the development of enduring, and radically democratic, ways of thinking and acting. David McIvor, “The … Continued
Evidence shows that the more curious we are, the better we learn and the happier we feel. And yet much of our schooling discourages curiosity and our curiosity shrinks with time, for complex reasons. Developmental psychologist Susan Engel reflects upon what drives — and inhibits — curiosity. Resources: Susan Engel, The Hungry Mind: The Origins … Continued
According to David Theo Goldberg, society is becoming militarized in myriad, and sometimes subtle, ways. Race, as it’s perceived and deployed, is a key part of this process. Goldberg also asserts that race is the secularization of the religious; that today’s anti-Muslim fervor is not primarily religion-focused; and that many groups working to demilitarize society … Continued
For the last forty years, unions and the left more broadly have been in decline. Clearly the business class went on the offensive during this time, but is that the whole story? Veteran organizer Jane McAlevey argues that the left abandoned deep organizing just at the moment when the right was organizing its grassroots, and … Continued
At the recent “People Get Ready: Building Resistance in the Trump Era” conference, Linda Burnham spoke about left strategy and the radical imagination; Linda Evans weighed in on the elements of effective grassroots organizing; and Maari Maitreyi commented on caste, Hindu politics, and a textbook controversy. The Center for Political Education All of Us or … Continued
It’s well-known that Donald Trump’s electoral support was disproportionately comprised of white voters. But if you remove white evangelicals from the picture, white voters supported Clinton by a margin of six points. How did evangelicals become such a force in American politics? And how did Christians—and not just evangelicals—end up supporting the interests of the … Continued
