Against the Grain – April 23, 2008
Chris Carlsson discusses his new book Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today!

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.
Chris Carlsson discusses his new book Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today!
Ellen McLaughlin talks about her play "The Trojan Women," inspired by Euripides’s classic anti-war tragedy. And Sara Shelton Mann and Jo Kreiter discuss the works they’ve contributed to "FOR THE RECORD: Dancers Debate the Body Politic," an ODC Theater festival.
Michael Klare discusses his new book "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy."
Susan Greenbaum criticizes federal policies that disperse public housing residents in the name of reducing poverty. And radical historian Eric Hobsbawm discussed socialism, democracy, Poland, and the USSR in a 1981 Pacifica Radio interview.
Eyal Press examines the abortion debate and traces the rise of the evangelical anti-abortion movement in his book "Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict That Divided America."
The geographer Saed Engel-Di Mauro discusses soil degradation and its impact on agriculture and the environment. And Paul Paz y Mino of Amazon Watch talks about a historic lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador.
Co-editor William Minter and contributor Lisa Brock discuss the new book “No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000.”
Jen Angel, author of Becoming the Media: A Critical History of Clamor Magazine, talks about the lessons that can be gleaned for media and left institutions from the experience of the radical publication Clamor. With host Sasha Lilley.
There is no stable working class under capitalism, contends Yale scholar Michael Denning. He looks at how global labor has been represented, and emphasizes the importance of wageless people to the project of resisting neoliberal globalization.
In his new book "Chechnya: The Case for Independence," Tony Wood, an assistant editor at New Left Review, examines the historical relationship between Russia and Chechnya and makes an argument for Chechen self-determination.