Jacobin Radio

Latest Episodes:

The Dig: Resisting the School-to-Prison Pipeline May 27, 2018

Show notes

The steady pace of school massacres has revived calls to put more cops in school, with atrocities committed by white students exploited to make schools more like prisons, and ensure that the former remain a rapid-fire pipeline into the latter.

Dan’s guests are Dakota Hall, the executive sirector of Leaders Igniting Transformation, a youth-of-color-led organization fighting the school-to-prison pipeline in Milwaukee; and Dmitri Holtzman, the director of education justice campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Hara Hotel: A Tale of Syrian Refugees in Greece by Teresa Thornhill versobooks.com/books/2713-hara-hotel. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show and access our weekly newsletter at Patreon.com/TheDig!

The Dig: Telling a New Story with George Monbiot May 23, 2018

Show notes

A laundry list of modest policy solutions is not enough, it turns out. It's not just that technocratic fixes around the edges spectacularly fail to meet people's needs; in failing to articulate a big picture vision of how the world ought to be transformed, they fail to move people — either emotionally or, more concretely, to the polls.

Dan’s guest George Monbiot argues that the Left needs a powerful new story to win power and change lives in his new book, Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx with Sven-Eric Liedman versobooks.com/events/1785-a-world-to-win-the-life-and-works-of-karl-marx-with-sven-eric-liedman. And support this podcast with $ and get our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig!

Jacobin Radio: No Way Back For Gaza May 21, 2018

Show notes

Author and activist Mark LeVine on the recent horrific events in Gaza and Jerusalem, which he sees as a point of no return. LeVine interprets Zionism's fundamental nature and history as one of settler colonialism, and he explains why he thinks resistance to Zionism around the world, both by Jews and non-Jews, is in the process of transforming itself and taking off.

Behind the News: Declining Health; Anticommunism May 21, 2018

Show notes

The Brookings Institute's Carol Graham (papers here, here, and here) on failing health and declining prospects among poor white people in the United States. Then, Kristen Ghodsee, co-author of this article, on the vile uses of anticommunism.

The Dig: Free Palestine with Noura Erakat May 18, 2018

Show notes

Israel is massacring Palestinians daring to approach a fence that occupation forces have built to shore up an ethno-state founded on the principle of apartheid. Nothing could be more clear. But you wouldn't no that from the, at best, muddied coverage that prevails in mainstream media accounts. Dan’s guest is Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney, professor at George Mason University, and a powerful and eloquent voice challenging the anti-Palestine narrative — including, straight into the lion's den of TV news.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties by Tariq Ali versobooks.com/books/2666-street-fighting-years.

Check out the Socialism 2018 conference at socialismconference.org

And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

The Dig: The Law in Its Majestic Equality May 16, 2018

Show notes

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.” The rule of law: the #resistance has construed it to be a cornerstone of opposition to Trump. It is certainly alarming to live under a president who flirts with operating in a permanent and near-total state of exception. But it's the rule of law as we've known it that has blessed the wide-open floodgates of corporate money into American politics, looked the other way in the face of unchecked national-security-state abuses, christened separate and unequal schools and, of course, rubber-stamped the rise of mass incarceration. The law has no transcendent moral basis. Rather, it is shaped by political economy.

Dan’s guest is Amy Kapczynski, professor of law at Yale Law School, and a co-convenor of LPEblog.org.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police

And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Behind the News: Venezuela; the Making of American Political Science May 14, 2018

Show notes

Historian Alejandro Velasco sorts fact from fiction when it comes to contemporary Venezuela. Then, Jessica Blatt, author of Race and the Making of American Political Science, on the racist origins of the discipline.

The Dig: Policing Poor Black Families with Dorothy Roberts May 12, 2018

Show notes

Recent cases of horrific child abuse have elicited widespread media attention. What the media coverage often misses is what these incidents reveal about a two-tiered child protection system that systemically surveils, punishes, and destroys poor black families while ignoring abuses perpetrated in affluent white homes. Dan's guest is Dorothy Roberts, who has closely studied the racism and poverty policing that pervades the child-protection system.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che by Max Elbaum versobooks.com/books/2707-revolution-in-the-air.

The Dig: Struggle and the State May 09, 2018

Show notes

Today's Dig is a very good and somewhat unusual Dig: Dan’s got two interviews with two different people. First, journalist Eric Blanc on the teacher strike wave that he's been covering for Jacobin. Then comes the Center for Popular Democracy's Xiomara Caro Diaz on last week's May Day demonstrations against austerity in Puerto Rico.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War by Hito Steyerl versobooks.com/books/2553-duty-free-art. Also, check out the Socialism 2018 Conference at SocialismConference.org. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig!

Jacobin Radio w/ Suzi Weissman: Educators' Strikes and Left Foreign Policy May 07, 2018

Show notes

Suzi talks to veteran union negotiator and labor writer Joe Burns about the teachers strike wave from West Virginia to Arizona — and about how public-sector workers and teachers are reviving the most powerful weapon in the working class arsenal: the strike. Then, Daniel Bessner joins Suzi in conversation about his new book Democracy in Exile —and the rise of intellectuals in foreign-policy institutions and think tanks with all their anti-democratic implications, how Trump represents a continuation rather than a break in the history of US foreign policy, the rise of intellectuals in foreign-policy institutions — as well as what a left foreign policy might look like.

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