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.
Democracy today is in a sorry state. Can Walt Whitman help us resuscitate it? John Marsh thinks so; he reveals how the thousands of visits Whitman paid to sick and wounded soldiers in Civil War army hospitals restored the poet’s faith in ordinary people’s ability to fashion a robust democracy. Marsh also shows how Whitman modeled … Continued
Often disparaged, the internet has become both a key tool for social movements and a way for activists to tell their own stories. Inspired by the Zapatistas, media activists blazed a trail, and transformed journalism, with a network-based model of grassroots independent media centers around the world. Todd Wolfson discusses Indymedia’s rise and fall, and … Continued
Welfare supports were a fundamental feature of the Soviet Union. But then the USSR collapsed, leaving millions of Russians without either good-paying jobs or state assistance. Marianna Pavlovskaya reveals how Russian families resorted to household and other informal economic practices to cope, adapt, and survive in an era of relentless privatization and neoliberalization. For more details … Continued
Archie Green may be best known for almost singlehandedly pressuring the government to create the American Folklife Center, but Sean Burns argues he was one of this country’s foremost intellectuals on the left. Burns, who has written the definitive study of the labor historian and folklorist, discusses Green’s political formation on San Francisco’s docks and … Continued
In Part Two of our interview with Keith Feldman, he tells the story of David Graham Du Bois, a journalist and erstwhile editor of the Black Panther Party newspaper. Also, W. E. B. Du Bois, David’s stepfather, spoke in an audio autobiography about student movements and pan-Africanism, and Barbara Seeber interprets Jane Austen from both … Continued
How have developments in Palestine and the Arab world influenced racial attitudes and struggles in the US? Keith Feldman’s book examines, among other things, how perceptions and understandings of Arabs and Palestinians helped writers like June Jordan think about both the plight of African Americans and their efforts to transform society. Also: Peter Linebaugh on … Continued
Insurrection and resistance are as much a part of the history of these lands as dispossession and occupation. Native American historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has made it her life’s work to shine a light on such history, which is so often hidden. She discusses the little known Green Corn Rebellion in 1917, as well as the … Continued
Cal Winslow reflects on the life, politics, and writings of socialist historian E.P. Thompson.
Are humans separate from “nature”? We tend to think they are, say ecofeminists and others, with devastating consequences for animals, for women, and for other groups associated with the nature side of the human/nature divide. Barbara Seeber examines what the British philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about how animals and women are viewed and treated. For … Continued
It’s only been a decade and a half since the height of the AIDS epidemic. Yet there’s profound amnesia about what happened during those years, in which hundreds of thousands of people died in this country, ignored by a government that only helped those with the disease after being forced through direct action. Writer Sarah … Continued
