KPFA - Against the Grain KPFA

Americans as a population have an unusually large appetite for psychoactive drugs, whether legal or illegal. And American history has been marked by periodic moral panics over drug use and normalization or legalization, as we’re experiencing right now. Why is that? What is it about US society that makes drug use simultaneously so appealing and reviled? Writer and scholar Benjamin Fong weighs in. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Benjamin Yen-Yi Fong, Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge Verso, 2023
The post America’s Drug Binge appeared first on KPFA.

What accounts for worker injuries and fatalities in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota? Should they be viewed as localized phenomena, or are larger socioeconomic processes at work? In his effort to explain oil-boom representations and calamities, Bruce Braun considers and extends Lauren Berlant’s analysis of worker precarity, “crisis ordinariness,” and “slow death.” (Encore presentation.)
Braun and Thomas, eds., Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil University of Minnesota Press, 2023
The post Oil & Capital appeared first on KPFA.

Nico Slate shared a white mother with his brother Peter, but Nico’s father was white, whereas Peter’s was black. What did that matter? To whom did it matter? Slate has written a book remembering his older brother, recalling their relationship, and examining the charged sociopolitical context of their private and public lives. (Encore presentation.)
Nico Slate, Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race Temple University Press, 2023
The post White Brother, Black Brother appeared first on KPFA.

The backlash against trans people, which has swept both the United States and the world in recent years, is not as new as it seems, according to historian Jules Gill-Peterson. She traces the emergence of trans misogynistic violence over the last two centuries, which she links to the establishment of colonialism, capitalism, and more recently neoliberalism.
Resources:
Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny Verso, 2024
The post Why Trans Misogyny? appeared first on KPFA.

What did the Communist Party accomplish in California, or try to? SFSU emeritus professor Robert W. Cherny considers the party’s agendas and activities in relation to longshore workers, labor unions, political figures, and others. He also examines the stances the party took toward the Roosevelt administration, the New Deal, the Comintern, and U.S. involvement in World War II.
Robert W. Cherny, San Francisco Reds: Communists in the Bay Area, 1919-1958 University of Illinois Press, 2024
The post California’s Communists appeared first on KPFA.

Should Marxism be rooted in inter-species liberation? Or is it already, unbeknownst to most of us? Leigh Claire La Berge has delved into what she considers an unrecognized trove of evidence for Marxism’s deep engagement with the feline as a way of making sense of class society — and what would be necessary to leap beyond it. She argues that the history of inter-species solidarity between radicals and cats (among other animals) is only now starting to be recuperated.
Resources:
Leigh Claire La Berge, Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary Duke University Press, 2023
The post Cats and Marxism appeared first on KPFA.