12:00 PM Pacific Time: Mondays to Wednesdays
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.
In his book Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America, Jay Parini describes and analyzes three iconic works of fiction. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Parini writes, almost single-handedly created a mass audience for the antislavery movement. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn interrogated race in fundamental ways and introduced a distinctive vision of freedom. And On the Road … Continued
Clarence Thomas is Donald Trump’s favorite Supreme Court justice, which might confirm the liberal view that Thomas is simply a toady of the right. But scholar Corey Robin argues that Thomas is a complex thinker and skilled rhetorician, whose ideas originate in black nationalism. Robin reflects on how Thomas’ pessimism about the intractability of racism … Continued
Highlights of some of the best commentary presented on Against the Grain in 2019, featuring Max Haiven on revenge in a capitalist context; Helena Sheehan on European and Soviet communism; Manu Samnotra on civilization and political resistance according to Gandhi; Michael Burawoy on Pierre Bourdieu and Karl Marx; and Margaret Hunter on what she calls … Continued
When we on the left talk about the plight of the Palestinians, we usually talk about land – and rightly so. The dispossession of the Palestinians of their land has been a central element of the project of Israeli settler colonialism. But often what is forgotten is the question of Palestinian labor, its fundamental role … Continued
In November 2013, an African American teenager set the skirt of an agender youth on fire. Sasha was badly burned; Richard was arrested. Dashka Slater’s account of the incident, the two students and their parents, and the criminal prosecution of Richard raises important questions about class, race, gender identity, and, not least, justice – what … Continued
The proponents of cultured meat — meat grown in a laboratory — argue that it not only will put an end of the suffering of animals, but could lead us into a world free of the global warming-effects of industrialized animal agriculture. Benjamin Wurgaft discusses how the hopes for cultured meat refract many competing visions … Continued
Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019) was a radical sociologist and economic historian who pioneered world-systems analysis. Although he analyzed what he called the capitalist world-economy over its centuries-long development, he remained a staunch, and globally influential, critic of capitalism. Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction Duke University Press, 2004 Immanuel Wallerstein, The Essential Wallerstein The New Press, … Continued
Ayn Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have been called gateway drugs to rightwing ideas for so many Americans. And while the works of the writer and philosopher have seen a resurgence since the global economic crisis, her influence has been undeniably huge and sustained since those books were originally published in mid-century. Historian … Continued
Class divides and racial dynamics are explored in Nina Revoyr’s latest novel. In A Student of History, a biracial graduate student with a blue-collar background gains access to a very different world, that of the superrich descendants of the founders of Los Angeles. Many of them, he discovers, exert tremendous power and influence behind the … Continued
There’s no question: global warming is here and causing serious harm. And we’re on course for much worse, especially as the signatories to the Paris Accord — the US aside — are not on track to meet even the insufficient targets it sets. How might that shape the politics of the future? And what … Continued
