U.S. higher education is in the grips of a new McCarthyism over criticisms of Israel. Sociologist William Robinson, himself the target of an unsuccessful campaign by the Anti-Defamation League, considers reports that the Israeli state is directly intervening to stoke repression on U.S. campuses and in U.S. society. He also discusses the political economic conjuncture … Continued
Radio is a medium with extraordinary propagandistic power — seductively transmitting ideas into the quotidian intimacy of one’s home and life. That power and potential was recognized early on by the state following the First World World. It was also appreciated by opponents of war, including the anarchist pacifists who founded KPFA Radio and the … Continued
Xinachtli, an anarcho-communist Chicano political prisoner held in the Texas prison system speaks settler-colonial white supremacy, jailhouse lawyering and his upcoming parole board visit.
Oakland’s Police Department has been a poster child for abusive and violent law enforcement. But award-winning journalist Darwin BondGraham argues that the OPD is exceptional only because of the scrutiny it’s received. He discusses the department’s history from the Red Scare of the 1920s to the Black Panthers in the 1960s to Occupy Oakland in … Continued
With the passage of time, some things are remembered and others forgotten. In the case of Central America, argues historian Aviva Chomsky, amnesia has been consciously fostered. The long history of United States support for repressive regimes and policies often vanishes in discussions about contemporary violence in Central America and migration from the region. Chomsky … Continued
We speak with two students, Jessica from Skyline and Dwayne who just graduated from McClymonds about tonight’s scheduled protest at 6:30pm, PST in Oakland, California. The protest will start in front of Walgreens in the Fruitvale District and will lead to the Mayor Libby Schaaf’s house.
The widespread protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd are continuing without any end in sight, despite curfew orders. Radical scholar Jordan Camp places the upheaval that’s taking place within the larger history of urban rebellions in the United States, from Watts in 1965, Detroit in 1967, Los Angeles in 1992, Ferguson in 2014, … Continued
While the United States is in the throes of upheaval over police murders, we take a historical look back at another time of great social ferment: a century ago, when the workers of Seattle shut that city down. The first major general strike in the United States coincided with the last widespread pandemic — the … Continued
This year is the 50th anniversary of 1968, a stand in for the explosive movements of the 60s and 70s. Christina Gerhardt discusses those movements through a German lens, many of which exploded on the scene a mere decade and a half after the defeat of the Nazis and into a society deeply marked by … Continued
Santiago, the capital of Chile, was a hotbed of radical, non-sectarian organizing in the early 1920s, when a repressive backlash led to the death of poet José Domingo Gómez Rojas. Historian Raymond Craib tells the story of anarchists and communists, students and workers, radicals and reactionaries, the pursuing and the pursued, whose politics echo down … Continued
