Jacobin Radio

The drug war is a cause of, not solution to, the overdose crisis. Law and public health scholar @LeoBeletsky explains the origins of the opioid overdose crisis and how drug prohibition, policing, interdiction and incarceration are at its root — and continue to help make opioid use so deadly. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot versobooks.com/books/2571-out-of-the-wreckage Support us with your $ at Patreon.com/TheDig. We can’t do this without our listeners!

We’ve got a bonus episode for you today, which is audio from a debate between Alex Vitale — a recent guest on this show, sociologist and author of The End of Policing — and Heather Mac Donald, one of the leading intellectual champions of urban neoconservativism, over-policing, and mass incarceration at the Manhattan Institute. In a short intro, Dan explains why he’s rooting for one of these two individuals and why that person decisively wins. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. We work really hard and don’t paywall a thing: support this podcast with $ at Patreon.com/TheDig

Ethnographer Kristen Ghodsee returns to the show to discuss Red Hangover, her new book on the traumas of post-Communist life in Eastern Europe. Unique for an academic text, the book is a series of essays with fictional sketches that evoke the complexities of life under Communism and the poverty and displacement that came with its demise.

The GOP tax plan is a monstrous giveaway to corporate America but it might not pass thanks to the same contradictions within the Republican coalition that repeatedly sunk efforts to repeal Obamacare, as journalist @ArthurDelaneyHP explains. Thanks to our supporters at Verso Books. Check out Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change by Ashley Dawson versobooks.com/books/2558-extreme-cities Support us with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig

Trump's demagogic rhetoric on MS-13 is designed to obscure the truth about the reality and origins of mass Central American migration: the roots of migration from Central America lie in significant part in the violence unleashed by US-backed dirty wars and deportations of alleged gang members. The demonization of Central American gangs functions to distract the public from US complicity and legitimate a cruel deportation machine. Dan's guest, political scientist Noelle Brigden, has spent years researching on the migrant trail. For more background, check out Dan's Washington Post op-ed washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/07/20/deporting-people-made-central-americas-gangs-more-deportation-wont-help Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move by Reece Jones. And please hook us up with some $ at patreon.com/TheDig

Norman Solomon on the findings of a recently released report he co-authored, "Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis." It examines the continuing crises within the Democratic Party with the aim of stimulating a nationwide discussion and a stimulus for action of the kind that challenges the nature of the party. Then, Guardian columnist Alissa Quart on her recent article, "What's the common denominator among sexual harassers? Too often, it's money," which looks at sexual harassment's roots in inequality and power imbalances.

Last week was a bad week for Republicans and a good week for Democrats — and for democratic socialists. It’s now pretty clear that Republicans will pay a price for the fact that large numbers of Americans detest our dotard-in-chief. But last week’s election once again fails to offer any sort of definitive answer to the long-running debate between the Left and the corporate Democratic establishment over who is best poised to beat Republicans. The coming anti-Republican wave is an opportunity that the Left must seize. Dan's guests are DSA member Lee Carter, who took out the Republican whip to win Virginia’s 50th House District, and David Duhalde, DSA’s Deputy Director. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy by Lewis H. Lapham versobooks.com/books/2517-age-of-folly Also, support us with $ at patreon.com/TheDig

Brooke Harrington, author of Capital Without Borders, on the offshore wealth racket and the Paradise Papers. Then Kali Akuno, co-editor of Jackson Rising and a co-founder of Cooperation Jackson, on building a green municipal socialism in Jackson, Mississippi.

Historian Kelly Lytle Hernández tells the story of human caging in Los Angeles, from the Spanish Conquest to the mid-twentieth century, in her new book City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965. It's a story of indigenous exploitation and elimination, immigrant detention and deportation, and the suppression of cross-border revolutionary movements. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot versobooks.com/books/2<wbr />571-out-of-the-wreckage Support us with your $ at patreon.com/TheDig.

Journalist @melissagira eviscerates a newspaper investigation that conflates sex work with trafficking. She examines how reporters unwittingly fall into a savior complex, which ends up criminalizing workers in the name of defending women's dignity. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso Books. Check out Futures of Black Radicalism https://www.versobooks.com/books/2438-futures-of-black-radicalism. And support us on Patreon.com/TheDig with some cash.