Fund Drive Special: Hannah Arendt’s Life and Ideas
The film “Vita Activa” examines the life and ideas of Hannah Arendt, who wrote about totalitarianism, the plight of refugees, and the nature of evil.
Against the Grain
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 produced and hosted by Sasha Lilley.
Against the Grain – May 10, 2017
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.
“Polishing the Mirror,” by the influential spiritual seeker and teacher Ram Dass, has been turned into an audiobook.
Marx on Life After Capitalism
Capitalism appears to many to be a failed system, leading to extreme inequality and ecological devastation. We’re also told that the alternative posed by Karl Marx is similarly bankrupt, as proved by the failures of state socialism. But what if Marx’s vision for a postcapitalist future has little in common with the experience of the … Continued
Marketization and Inequality
What stage of capitalism are we in, and what processes of commodification are associated with it? Michael Burawoy isn’t fond of the term “neoliberalism”; he thinks we’re experiencing the third wave of marketization. Burawoy draws upon the ideas of Karl Polanyi and others to examine the past and evaluate the present.
When Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998, it was on a wave of optimism about challenging the fundamental inequities of Venezuela, a country that had been battered by neoliberalism. But the trajectory of the country from the heyday of the Bolivarian Revolution has been rocky. Leftwing Venezuelan scholar Margarita Lopez Maya discusses populism, Chavez, and … Continued
Race, Labor, and the Liberal Project
When and how did racial liberalism find its way onto the liberal – and Democratic Party – agenda? Rather than seeing the 1960s as the critical moment in the partisan realignment on race, Eric Schickler claims that the process of connecting civil rights support to the liberal project began in the late 1930s, thanks to … Continued
Despite the precariousness that it creates, why does capitalism survive? Radical theorist Silvia Federici discusses how capitalism perpetuates itself by dispossessing and dividing us, while putting the job of reproducing the workforce squarely on the shoulders of the working class, especially women. She considers the missteps that the feminist movement made in confronting the rise … Continued
How do we get from neoliberalism to a just society? What political projects and initiatives have put us on a trajectory of radical social transformation? In his latest book, political theorist Robert Latham puts forward a notion of re-collective passage, which involves turning away from dominant sociopolitical relations and enacting new ways to organize and … Continued
In the age of Trump — and before him, of Obama — change from the top seems far out of reach for progressives. Some have drawn from the past and have struggled from the bottom up for a just city, perhaps the premier case being Richmond, California. Journalist Steve Early talks about Richmond, Chevron, labor … Continued