Jacobin Radio

Three interviews: historians Linford Fisher, Christy Clark-Pujara and Joanne Melish, and Emily Owens.Dan conducted six interviews on capitalism and slavery at The Dig's recent Slavery's Hinterlands symposium here in Rhode Island. This first of two episodes begins with historian Linford Fisher, who explains that the English settlement of North America was a settler-colonial project that required genocidally dispossessing indigenous people of their lands. What you might not know is that a central tactic for that dispossession, in New England and Virginia alike, was the threat and actual enslavement of native people, including the widespread practice of forcing native youth to labor in English homes. Then historians Christy Clark-Pujara and Joanne Melish, who pick up where Fisher leaves off: slavery wasn't the South's peculiar institution; it was the bedrock of the northern economy. And finally, historian Emily Owens on sexual labor under slavery: what, Owens' work explores, did slavery and freedom mean for women for whom, in brothels or the home, sex was work? On the next episode, Dan has two more interviews looking at the big picture questions of slavery, capitalism, revolution and colonialism, and an interview with a group of public historians who teach about slavery today.Thanks to n+1. To get 25% off a one-year subscription, go to nplusonemag.com/thedig and enter THEDIG at checkoutPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Chicago recently made international headlines for the victories of six — six!! — members of the Democratic Socialists of America running for city council. It’s an astonishing victory, the biggest socialist victory in any American city in probably a century. These victories matter both for Chicago, which has seen growing working-class pushback to neoliberalism in recent years, but also for socialist organizers in cities around the country, who can learn from how Chicago won so many elections on a left platform. One of the six victors in the April elections was Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, who represents Chicago's 35th Ward, a gentrifying area on the city’s northwest side. Carlos was the only incumbent socialist city council member (or “alderman”); despite being attacked repeatedly by the area’s wealthy real-estate developers, he won re-election comfortably. You can read my interview with Carlos from two years ago, when he was kicked off a gubernatorial ticket for his support of Palestine (which we mention in our discussion) here:https://www.jacobinmag.com/<wbr />2017/09/carlos-rosa-chicago-<wbr />bds-democratic-party And you can read my piece in the Guardian on the Chicago electoral victories here:https://www.theguardian.com/<wbr />commentisfree/2019/apr/03/<wbr />americas-socialist-surge-<wbr />chicago

Donna Haraway's work defies disciplines, combining insights from both biology and feminist thought, and drawing on her own involvement in political projects organized around feminism and radical science. Haraway’s most recent book, Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, takes up these questions as the fragility of earth’s webs of life is becoming frighteningly and increasingly apparent. What are the ethical and political demands in the face of the most pressing threat of our era—catastrophic climate change? To stay with the trouble, Haraway argues, is to reject technofixes that will save us from doom on the one hand, and on the other, to reject the pessimistic idea that “it’s too late” to make the world better. The book outlines a view of what Haraway calls “multispecies flourishing” and the obstacles to achieving it through theoretical insights and speculative fiction imaginings. Interviewed by Jacobin editorial board member Alyssa Battistoni.Thanks to n+1. To get 25% of a one-year subscription, go to nplusonemag.com/thedig and enter THEDIG at checkoutPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDigAlyssa's piece on Haraway for n+1: nplusonemag.com/issue-28/reviews/monstrous-duplicated-potentSophie Lewis's critique of Haraway and population politics: viewpointmag.com/2017/05/08/cthulhu-plays-no-role-for-meThe Leap Manifesto: leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifestoThe Xenofeminist Manifesto: laboriacuboniks.net

If we want to transform the United States in a socialist direction, we're going to need to do much more than elect Bernie Sanders as president. Nobody harps on this point more than Bernie himself. You can see it in his "not me, us" campaign slogan, or his emphasis in stump speeches on how massive industries like health insurance companies would mobilize against Medicare for All. President Bernie couldn't do much without a mass working-class movement at his back. But that doesn't mean that such a movement and the Sanders campaign are two separate things — Bernie's campaign can help and has already helped bring those movements into being. Micah talks with Jacobin staff writer Meagan Day about it. You can read Meagan's article "Bernie Sanders Wants You to Fight" here: https://www.jacobinmag.<wbr />com/2019/03/bernie-sanders-<wbr />movements-not-me-us And you can read her article "Wielding the Imperial Presidency" in the new print issue of Jacobin or here: https://jacobinmag.com/<wbr />2019/02/wielding-the-imperial-<wbr />presidency Subscribe to Jacobin: https://jacobinmag.<wbr />com/subscribe

What is gentrification? It isn't just about what was once known as the hipster and is still known as the artist, the telltale warning signs of impending demographic change. It's part of an entire political-economic order that has made real estate global capitalism's most prized asset for storing wealth—one that has helped bend place-based urban governments to the will of mobile, and thus more powerful, capital. Dan interviews Samuel Stein on his book, Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State.Come to The Dig's Slavery's Hinterlands symposium Thursday through Saturday in Rhode Island: facebook.com/events/661508874305008/Check out the English transcript of last week's Spanish-language interview with Communist Chilean Mayor Daniel Jadue jacobinmag.com/2019/04/communist-party-chile-left-governance-recoletaThanks to Verso. Check out their massive left-wing book selection at www.versobooks.comPlease support us with your cash at Patreon.com/TheDig

Alan Minsky, producer of Jacobin Radio, is the guest on this episode. He wears multiple hats and one of them is Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). We talk about the Democratic primary field, and Alan reports on conversations he had on his recent trip to the European Parliament as part of a contingent of the American left. Then, a conversation with Mitch Abidor, translator of Victor Serge's just-published Notebooks, about the Belgian-Russian anarcho-Bolshevik and lifelong Left Oppositionist, who was one of the great writer-thinker-activists of the twentieth century. Serge's contribution is especially attractive today because he never compromised his commitment to the creation of a society that defends human freedom, enhances human dignity, and improves the human condition — and insisted that democracy was at the heart of the socialist project. This makes him both a contemporary as well as a man for our future. Serge’s life as a maverick and renegade relegated him to the margins. He was always poor. His last exile was in Mexico, and a rich trove of his daily writings, his notebooks, were discovered in Mexico in 2003. They were published in France in 2012, and NYRB has just published the English translation. We are fortunate today to speak to the translator, Mitch Abidor.

It's the first episode of The Vast Majority, which will be bringing you conversations on American and international politics from a socialist perspective. So who better to have on than Bhaskar Sunkara, Jacobin's editor, publisher, and founder. Bhaskar is the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality, which is out today, April 30. Micah talked to Bhaskar about the state of the socialist movement, socialism’s relationship to liberalism and markets, and Bhaskar’s utopian vision of a Buffalo Wild Wings on every corner.You can order The Socialist Manifesto from your bookseller of choice or your local bookstore. And you can read Bhaskar's editorial "The Exercise of Power," where he talks about "class-struggle social democracy," in the latest issue of Jacobin: https://jacobinmag.<wbr />com/2019/02/the-exercise-of-<wbr />power

It's a new podcast from Jacobin: The Vast Majority, hosted by Micah Uetricht. We'll be talking to authors from Jacobin and its sister publications like Catalyst and Tribune in the UK, plus whoever else is thinking and doing important work on the Left. The first episode will be out April 30.

*This episode of The Dig is a special Dig in Spanish. Visit Jacobin for a transcript in English. Este episodio de The Dig es un Dig especial en español. Entra a Jacobin para una transcripción en inglés.* Cuando se piensa en Chile desde el extranjero, generalmente surge la imagen de su pasado reciente marcado por la dictadura cívico–militar. Y esto con toda razón. El legado del régimen genocida de Pinochet todavía está presente en todas partes—en la memoria personal y colectiva, en las leyes y en una constitución profundamente neoliberal que sigue condenando al sistema político a un bipartidismo e impide las transformaciones deseadas por la soberanía popular. Daniel Jadue, el alcalde de la comuna de Recoleta, ubicada en la Región Metropolitana del Gran Santiago, se ha entregado a la empresa de construir en su territorio un laboratorio del comunismo del presente y del futuro. Junto a su equipo ha abierto una farmacia popular, una óptica popular y una linda librería popular. Todos estos servicios de primera necesidad venden sus productos a precios bajos y justos desafiando con ello a un mercado supuestamente autoregulado que en Chile sólo ha demostrado funcionar más bien estimulando prácticas de monopolio—un capitalismo salvaje. Si nos estas escuchando hoy por primera vez con este episodio especial en español y también hablas inglés, por favor revisa nuestro archivo que contiene muchísimas entrevistas con intelectuales y activistas de la izquierda: blubrry.com/thedig/

Rossana Rodriguez on her successful campaign as a socialist for the Chicago city council, where she will join five other socialists. Then, Benjamin Fogel, author of this and this, on the lunacy of Bolsonaro's early months as president of Brazil.