KPFA - Against the Grain KPFA

It’s the most important program combating food insecurity in the United States – and it originates from aid to the agricultural and food processing industries, not poverty alleviation. Christopher Bosso argues that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP — formerly known as food stamps — has survived for almost sixty years, against those would would eliminate it, precisely because of this connection to agricultural interests. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Christopher John Bosso, Why SNAP Works: A Political History — and Defense — of the Food Stamp Program UC Press, 2023
The post Food Aid to the Poor, Aid to Agriculture appeared first on KPFA.

The dramatic expansion of police power in the U.S. has been fueled by sexual policing—the targeting and legal control of people’s bodies and their presumed sexual activities. So argues Anne Gray Fischer, who describes the historical trajectory of sexual policing and traces the profoundly consequential shift in its targets from white women to Black women.
Anne Gray Fischer, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification University of North Carolina Press, 2022
(Image on main page by Steven Depolo.)
The post Sex, Race, and Police Power appeared first on KPFA.

How does capitalism tap into our desires with the promise of objects to satisfy us? Yet when we possess them, the urge for something new reemerges. Geographer Jared Marguiles attempts to explain that paradox by looking at some of most endangered, and coveted, species in world: cacti. He examines the market for succulents and the collectors who drive it, including the strange illicit trade in legally available cacti. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Jared D. Margulies, The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade University of Minnesota Press, 2023
The post Looting Cacti appeared first on KPFA.

What was the modern Sanctuary Movement formed to do? What sorts of challenges has it faced, and how has the movement changed and evolved? Carl Lindskoog considers the history of the Sanctuary Movement, including its expansion into a far-reaching campaign for human rights, economic justice, and peace.
Maria Cristina Garcia & Maddalena Marinari, Whose America? U.S. Immigration Policy since 1980 University of Illinois Press, 2023
(Image on main page by Church World Service/New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia.)
The post A History of Sanctuary appeared first on KPFA.

Jewish opposition to Israel, so visible recently through the spectacular actions of groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, is not a recent phenomenon. Historian Marjorie Feld argues that what may seem like unprecedented criticism of Israel by U.S. Jews is part of a long tradition of dissent, which has been repressed by establishment Jewish organizations and frequently erased by historians.
Resources:
Marjorie N. Feld, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism NYU Press, 2024
Photo credit: Marcy Winograd
The post U.S. Jewish Anti-Zionism appeared first on KPFA.

A brilliant theoretical physicist best known for his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein was also a socialist. John Bellamy Foster describes Einstein’s radical political commitments, including his efforts in relation to the founding of Brandeis University, his role in the Henry Wallace campaign, and his seminal essay “Why Socialism?” John also talks about his new book.
John Bellamy Foster, “Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’ and ‘Monthly Review’: A Historical Introduction” Monthly Review
John Bellamy Foster, The Dialectics of Ecology Monthly Review Press, 2024
The post Einstein’s Socialism appeared first on KPFA.