Jacobin Radio

Education reporter and host of Have You Heard? Jennifer Berkshire on teachers’ strikes, in West Virginia and beyond. Then, Forbes contributor Stan Collender on fiscal follies in Washington, D.C.

Suzi talks to Wagner Moura, a Brazilian actor known for his work in the Elite Squad films and the Netflix series Narcos, about the volatile political situation in Brazil, where Marielle Franco, the socialist Rio City Councillor and her driver were assassinated on March 14, sparking huge protests across Brazil. Moura also talks about the film he is directing — Marighella — about the Bahian revolutionary Marxist writer and guerrilla fighter Carlos Marighella. We also hear from Brazilian political economist Pedro Paulo Zaluth Bastos and get his analysis of the political calculus in the move by the highly unpopular President Temer to put the military in charge of security, as well as the prospects for the Left in the coming election.Plus: Chris Phelps from the University of Nottingham joins us to talk about the wider implications of the month-long strike of British University lecturers, who have just reached a settlement. The strike was about much more than pensions and austerity: it struck at the heart of the qu

Perhaps nothing has more defined the monstrosity of Donald Trump than his racist demonization and targeting of immigrants from Mexico, Muslim-majority countries, and those nations he deems "shitholes." But what's seldom reported is that one of the key mechanisms the administration has used to target immigrants was rolled out under Barack Obama. It's called Secure Communities, and it's the culmination of decades of policy-making and politicking that have intertwined the US systems of mass incarceration and immigrant enforcement — facilitating the growth of both. To fight both mass deportation and mass incarceration, localities and states must move beyond what's currently defined as sanctuary, as a new report by Kade Crockford from the Century Foundation and ACLU of Massachusetts argues: tcf.org/content/report/beyond-sanctuary. Also: Check out Dan’s essay on Trump’s proposal to execute drug dealers: slate.com/technology/2018/03/trumps-call-to-execute-drug-dealers-is-a-natural-progression-of-american-policy.html

Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry talk about their new book, To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. King is often remembered for his soaring oratory. But the commonplace emphasis on his rhetoric in place of his ideas too often allows enemies of King's agenda to domesticate him or, worse, to weaponize his out-of-context words to bolster the very forces of racism and oppression that King struggled to defeat. Shelby and Terry talk about King’s theory of nonviolence (more complicated than you might think), his debate with the Black Power movement, and his thinking on gender, hope, political economy, Beloved Community, and more. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art and Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

John Clarke of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty on what’s wrong with a universal basic income (UBI), a proposal that's become increasingly popular among part of the Left and the Right. Then, Isabel Hilton of ChinaDialogue.net on Xi Jinping’s becoming China’s president for life.

Democrat Conor Lamb's victory is a rebuke of Republicans. But Lamb is far from an ideal candidate, and so the race also raises a perennial debate between the left and liberal center over what kind of alternative to the Republican right we need. Dan’s guests are Elizabeth Fiedler, Sara Inammorato, and Summer Lee, three leftist women running for state rep in Pennsylvania — all three DSA members endorsed by their local chapters. Other stuff: Patrick Blanchfield’s article on guns and neoliberalism discussed last week is here splinternews.com/the-market-cant-solve-a-massacre-1823745509 Thanks to Verso Books. Check out the free e-book Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo and Police: A Field Guide versobooks.com/books/2530-police. Support us with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Are we on the cusp of a new wave of worker militancy? We talk to Rebecca Cohen and Shaun Richman about the victory of West Virginia teachers (and public sector workers) and the coming Oklahoma strike as they set a date to go the West Virginia way — at the same time that the Supreme Court is likely to further weaken public sector unions with the Janus v. AFSCME decision. Shaun and Rebecca talk about the possible unintended consequences that ruling could bring about. Then Dean of Boalt Law School (UC Berkeley) and constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky joins us to untangle the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state of California over three state laws the California legislature has passed to ensure that the state isn’t complicit with the Trump administration’s use of ICE raids, detention, and deportation — which the state sees as unconstitutional and “un-American.”

In West Virginia, a focal point of Trump-era liberal armchair ethnography, teachers have won a historic state-wide strike just as the Supreme Court is poised to rule in Janus, a case that will mark the culmination of a long right-wing effort to gut public sector unions. It's a scary time — but maybe, just maybe, also an exciting one. Dan’s guests today are Sarah Jaffe, Nation Institute fellow and author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, and labor historian Gabriel Winant. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out The Right to Have Rights by Stephanie DeGooyer, Alastair Hunt, Lida Maxwell, Samuel Moyn and Astra Taylor versobooks.com/books/2424-the-right-to-have-rights and Greece and the Reinvention of Politics by Alain Badiou versobooks.com/books/2560-greece-and-the-reinvention-of-politics. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Neoliberal culture expects little from government and everything from plucky individuals — including, apparently, the self-sacrificing courage to charge an AR-15 wielding gunman while your classmates cower behind bulletproof backpacks. Writer Patrick Blanchfield returns to the show to discuss his recent essays on guns for New York magazine (forthcoming) and The Intercept (theintercept.com/2018/02/28/parkland-florida-school-shootings-arming-teachers). Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Greece and the Reinvention of Politics by Alain Badiou versobooks.com/books/2560-greece-and-the-reinvention-of-politics. And support this podcast with $ at Patreon.com/TheDig!

How does gun culture get built from the ground up? What are the everyday politics of guns? Sociologist Jennifer Carlson does ethnographic fieldwork that provides answers to these questions, showing how men see guns as a way to be a protector in a time of economic precocity and how the NRA’s massive training operation helps shape the racialized identity of “citizen protectors” defending “sheeple” against the “wolves.” Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out The Right to Have Rights by Stephanie DeGooyer, Alastair Hunt, Lida Maxwell, Samuel Moyn and Astra Taylor versobooks.com/books/2424-the-right-to-have-rights and Greece and the Reinvention of Politics by Alain Badiou versobooks.com/books/2560-greece-and-the-reinvention-of-politics. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Liza Featherstone, author of Divining Desire, on the history and meaning of focus groups [disclosure alert: Featherstone is the host’s wife].

Nomiki Konst, a correspondent for The Young Turks and Sanders appointee to the DNC’s Unity Reform Commission, talks about the Berniecrat struggle against a corrupt neoliberal establishment to democratize the Democratic Party. This is the first in a series on electoral politics over the next couple of months that will include conversations about DSA’s electoral strategy, an interview with Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, and more. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Greece and the Reinvention of Politics by Alain Badiou versobooks.com/books/2560-greece-and-the-reinvention-of-politics and The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World by Andreas Malm versobooks.com/books/2575-the-progress-of-this-storm. And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig.

Did the "Woke Blacks" Instagram account really cost Clinton the election? Glenn Greenwald returns to the show to ask basic but rarely asked questions about the troll army’s presumed efficacy, explain his often mischaracterized position on Russiagate, and call out Republicans and Democrats for hypocritically supporting unfettered power for national security state surveillance. Thanks to Verso and University of California Press. Check out The Right to Have Rights by Stephanie DeGooyer, Alastair Hunt, Lida Maxwell, Samuel Moyn, and Astra Taylor and The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World by Andreas Malm at versobooks.com Check out Miller's Children: Why Giving Teenage Killers a Second Chance Matters for All of Us by James Garbarino at ucpress.edu Support this podcast with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

On this “podcast-versary” of the premiere of Jacobin Radio – one year since her first podcast, Suzi Weissman invites Robert Brenner back for another extended conversation on the state of the economy, especially given the dramatic plunges of the stock market, the wage and inflation reports, Trump tax cuts, and the proposed infrastructure plan. Robert Brenner is Professor of History at UCLA, co-editor of Catalyst, Director of the Center for Social Theory and Contemporary History (CSTCH) and author of many books including The Economics of Global Turbulence.

Dan talks to Randy Bryce, the Berniecrat ironworker taking on Paul Ryan, about how he plans to knockout the House Speaker, Scott Walker’s decimation of unions, and Foxconn’s con against the people of Wisconsin. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books and University of California Press. Check out Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future by Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright versobooks.com/books/2545-climate-leviathan and Healing from Hate: How Young Men Get Into—and Out of—Violent Extremism ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520292635 Support us with your cash at patreon.com/TheDig!

What if the Cold War only just ended in November 2016, as Donald Trump grotesquely encircled and then captured the presidency, finding it, to his surprise, unguarded? The Cold War proper, of course, ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Aziz Rana, making his second Dig appearance, argues that it was a lot more than the conflict with the Evil Empire. It was a domestic order that, he writes in the latest issue of n+1, “concerned everything from the genius of America’s domestic institutions to the indispensability of its global role. These judgments gave coherence to the country’s national identity—allowing both Barack Obama and Bill Kristol to wax poetic about America’s special destiny as a global hegemon—and legitimacy to its economic policy. But with the 2016 election, the cold-war paradigm finally shattered.” Check out Aziz’s article here https://nplusonemag.com/issue-30/politics/goodbye-cold-war/. Thanks to our supporters at Verso and University of California Press Check out The New Spirit of Cap

Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University David Palumbo-Liu on the right-wing attacks on him and the question of academic freedom. The Stanford Politics article on the Thiel network Palumbo-Liu references is here. Then, Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges Jodi Dean on how to think about Trump.<o:p></o:p>

Doug Henwood on stock market madness (longer version is here). Then Yasha Levine, author of Surveillance Valley, joins Doug to talk about the military and intelligence roots of the internet, which live on today (hi NSA!).

Four decades ago, Frances Fox Piven and her husband Richard Cloward published Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, a classic, clear-eyed analysis of just what the title suggests. Piven, a legendary scholar and activist, talks to Dan about her life, Occupy, Bernie, the Democratic Party, anti-war movements, black bloc, mass incarceration, and more. (Also: Dan’s voice sounds a little different because he had to record in a different room.) Thanks to Verso Books and University of California Press. Check out The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots and Class Conflicts in the American West by Mark A. Lause versobooks.com/books/2592-the-great-cowboy-strike and Chicago on the Make: Power and Inequality in a Modern City by Andrew J. Diamond ucpress.edu/ebook.php?isbn=9780520961715.

The uprising following the police killing of Freddie Gray drew national media attention to Baltimore and the abusive law enforcement agents that discipline and control those most exploited and excluded by contemporary American capitalism. As is often the case, however, the focus shifted elsewhere soon after disturbances in the street came to end. Political scientist Lester Spence recently wrote an article about why children were freezing in Baltimore public schools: the heating didn’t work, something that can only be made sense of when viewed in the longer history of capital flight, racial and class segregation, and the rise of a service-economy carceral state: jacobinmag.com/2018/01/baltimore-freezing-schools-children-racism-austerity. Thanks to Verso for their support. Check out The New Spirit of Capitalism by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello versobooks.com/books/2513-the-new-spirit-of-capitalism Support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!