The Dig

Fifty years ago, a mainstream group of high-profile Americans declared the following: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal. Reaction to last summer’s disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American. This deepening racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed. Choice is still possible. Our principal task is to define that choice and to press for a national resolution." The Kerner Commission, established by President Johnson, embodied left liberalism at its most bold and idealistic. But that vision of radical reform was eviscerated by the American war on Vietnam, the rise of neoliberalism and the modern conservative movement, and liberal triangulation that reached its apotheosis under Bill Clinton. Dan talks to Vanessa A. Bee, a consumer protection lawyer in D.C. and a social media editor for Current Affairs magazine, about her New York magazine essay on the subject nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/how-we-can-get-a-more-equal-union.html Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig and access our new weekly newsletter.

Spanish politics are complicated. Dan speaks to Carlos Delclós, Kate Shea Baird and Bécquer Seguín to help clarify the Catalan independence movement, the radical municipalist governments that now govern major Spanish cities including Barcelona, and the promise and problems of the left-wing party Podemos. 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 Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig and access our new weekly newsletter.

The steady pace of school massacres has revived calls to put more cops in school. And so atrocities committed by white students are 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 Director 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

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 Support this podcast with $ and get our weekly newsletter at patreon.com/TheDig

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 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  

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 return guest 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  

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 12.8px Arial; color: #222222; -webkit-text-stroke: #222222; background-color: #ffffff} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 12.8px Arial; color: #222222; -webkit-text-stroke: #222222; background-color: #ffffff; min-height: 15.0px} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 12.8px Arial; color: #222222; -webkit-text-stroke: #222222} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffffff} span.s3 {font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000} 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

Dan just moderated a discussion in Philadelphia with Senator Sanders, along with Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, scholar and frequent Dig guest Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and veteran defense lawyer and advocate Premal Dharia. Bernie came to Philly because what's happening here is extraordinarily important: it's a city where for years cops have committed abuses and engaged in corruption with near impunity, and where prosecutors long looked the other way while feeding poor young black and brown men into the present-day peculiar institution of mass incarceration. Last year, Philadelphia elected Krasner, a long-time civil rights champion who pledged to fight the to end mass incarceration, as its district attorney. And that happened for the same reason that Bernie came out of nowhere and nearly ran away with the Democratic nomination in 2016: their message tapped into and was lifted up by massive grassroots movements, representing and speaking to an emerging majority that wants transformative change. And so this is why Bernie Sanders came to Philly: to learn about what has gone so horribly wrong with the criminal justice system and how we can all organize and do the hard work to make it right. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Crashing the Party: From the Bernie Sanders Campaign to a Progressive Movement by Heather Gautney versobooks.com/books/2549-crashing-the-party. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig

This is part two of Dan's interview on Hannah Arendt's notion of "the right to have rights." This episode covers a lot, including why we must fight not only to expand the democratic political community but also to deepen its power—all at a time when the nativist right is exploiting the many crises unleashed by neoliberalism and empire to erect walls and punish scapegoats. One upshot is that zombie liberalism can't be the answer, because it is precisely the liberal order that is a key source of the problem. Dan’s guests today, Stephanie DeGooyer and Astra Taylor, just wrote a book about this for Verso, called the The Right to Have Rights. This is part 2. It’s strongly suggested that you listen to part 1 first. Also: check out and support the soon-to-be-made documentary Socialism: An American Story https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/socialismmovie/socialism-an-american-story Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police. And Work: The Last 1,000 Years by Andrea Komlosy versobooks.com/books/2608-work. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig

What are rights worth when government denies people the very right to have rights? Political theorist Hannah Arendt recognized this loss of "the right to have rights" as millions of refugees found themselves without a national home in the wake of world wars. Human rights, it became clear, proved to be an empty promise for those excluded from citizenship—the foundational right to be a member of a political community. Today, this insight remains a critical one as a record number of humans transit the globe in search of economic and physical security, and far-right nativists and establishment liberals alike scapegoat them for the chaos and precarity unleashed by neoliberalism and war. As a result, migrants are condemned to second-class citizenship or even death in the Mediterranean and desert Mexican-American borderlands. My guests today, Stephanie DeGooyer and Astra Taylor, just wrote a book about this for Verso, called the The Right to Have Rights. This is part 1. Part 2 will be posted on Thursday or Friday. 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 Work: The Last 1,000 Years by Andrea Komlosy versobooks.com/books/2608-work. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px} James Comey is liberal America’s favorite cop and now, as a result, a bestselling author as well. Patrick Blanchfield returns to talk about his Baffler review of Comey’s new book. It’s awful, of course. But it’s bad in productively revealing ways. Comey has become an icon of the liberal fetishization of the national security state as a bulwark against Trumpism—when it fact it is that very national security state and its rampant abuses that are deeply implicated in Trump’s rise. The elevation of police as a model of duty and leadership contrasted against Trump’s vulgar monstrosities renders invisible not only why Trump won but why he is so dangerous.   Here’s Patrick’s review: thebaffler.com/latest/prig-and-pig-blanchfield   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 And Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

It's yet the latest installment in our ongoing series on the left and electoral politics. Dan’s guest is Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. Last year, Mayor Lumumba pledged to make Jackson "the most radical city on the planet." Lumumba, who comes out of a decades-old revolutionary black nationalist movement, is serious about that. But he also faces serious challenges: Jackson is a majority black city which, like many such cities, has much of its wealth appropriated by its largely-white suburbs. The human and infrastructural needs are enormous, and the tax base is thin. This is precisely why so many on the left have found what's going on in Jackson to be so interesting, and why Dan was eager to invite the mayor onto the show. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st Century State Extremism by Nisha Kapoor versobooks.com/books/2551-deport-deprive-extradite. And 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 at Patreon.com/TheDig

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px} It's the latest installment in our ongoing series on the left and electoral politics. Dennis Kucinich is running a viable race for governor of Ohio. Cynthia Nixon, running with Working Families Party backing, has Cuomo truly freaked out in New York. There are major primary fights underway in California—most everywhere, it seems, some variant of the left is on the move. But does the fact that a onetime business-aligned Democrat like Gavin Newsom is getting away with posing as the progressive in the California race for governor indicate that the left hasn't yet built the institutional capacity to control the leftward surge amongst voters? Dan thinks so. These are amongst the topics that he discusses with Dave Weigel, a political reporter at the Washington Post and one of the few mainstream political reporters who really gets the left.   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 Work: The Last 1,000 Years by Andrea Komlosy versobooks.com/books/2608-work. And please make a contribution to support the long-run viability of this show at Patreon.com/TheDig

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} The latest installment in our ongoing series on the left and electoral politics and we're talking about Democratic Socialists of America's new electoral strategy. DSA has almost overnight become a serious force on an American socialist left that has for decades lacked much in the way of serious forces. One of the major reasons the organization's membership rolls blew up, of course, was because of Bernie Sanders' historic 2016 run for president, which not only electrified huge swaths of the country but reminded the radical left that the point is to win power and to govern—and that, after years on the margins, we could do so. This was in part because many Americans were no longer afraid of the s-word: socialism. Yet there is still, for many good reasons, a lot of skepticism about electoral politics in general and the Democratic Party very much in particular, inside DSA and across the socialist left. That's the needle that the new DSA electoral strategy document tries to thread.   Dan’s guests are Renée Paradis, a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer (@ReneeParadis). She has frequently worked for electoral campaigns, including most recently as the National Voter Protection Director for Bernie 2016. Michael Kinnucan is a writer, researcher and activist in New York City. You should also follow him on Facebook, where he has a lively and incisive presence. Both are members of DSA’s National Electoral Committee and the organizing committee for NYC-DSA’s Brooklyn Electoral Working Group.   Thanks to Verso Books. Check out Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall versobooks.com/books/2530-police and Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo versobooks.com/blogs/3635-where-freedom-starts-sex-power-violence-metoo And support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig