In this episode, we give a film review of Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Loosely based on the trial of the Chicago 7 and chairman of the Black Panther Party Bobby Seale, the film is a lightly fictionalized courtroom drama based on the six-month trial of eight men accused of conspiring to cross state lines and incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In our #ElectionDay2020 special episode, Bob and Scott share their thoughts on next Tuesday’s election, liberal freakouts, Trump’s politics, and organizing no matter what.
In this episode, we talk with Professor Jack Downey of the University of Rochester about Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. We get into Day’s life and influence, liberation theology, the politics of the modern Catholic Church, the tactic of self-immolation as a form of resistance and more.
Jack Downey is the John Henry Newman Chair in Roman Catholic Studies at the University of Rochester. He teaches courses on contemporary justice movements, liberation theologies, North American religious history, Christianity, Buddhism, and contemplative traditions. His current research projects examine self-immolation, forms of protest, violence, Roman Catholicism in Alaska and Québec, and asceticism. Continue reading “Saint or Subversive? Dorothy Day & the Politics of the Catholic Church with Prof. Jack Downey”
Does it matter what we call Trump? Does the Left need to to chill out?
Some years ago, Randy Newman sang “the end of an empire . . . is messy at best,” and American society is now in a mess that Winston Wolfe couldn’t clean up. No one has to ignore the long sordid corporate liberal record of Joe Biden or the Wall Street/Prosecutor career of Kamala Harris to understand that Donald Trump has to be deposed by whatever means necessary and if the tactic of voting does that, there’s no reason to knock it.
But it’s also a time for thinking rationally and coldly, not being hysterical and panicking, and there’s a lot of that on the Left these days.
Trump’s scary and dangerous, absolutely. Though he’s not as abnormal as a lot of Leftists and especially Liberals insist (think of Nixon and Reagan and Bush, not to mention Clinton and Obama), he’s openly, crudely, vulgarly, maniacally, and virulently presenting a challenge at home of a greater magnitude than we’ve seen probably since the 1960s. While logically building on the neo-liberal and inhumane programs of his predecessors, he’s topped them off with a dismissal of a public health crisis that’s killed over 200,000 and is openly inciting white supremacist violence from Portland to Michigan. Continue reading “Is Trump a Fascist? Will there be a Coup?”
In this special cross-podcast episode, Bob and Scott talk with Pearson, the host of the anarchist podcast Coffee with Comrades, about street organizing– the history of it, the current politics around it and the mechanics of how to do it.
The latest U.S. history lecture from Green and Red Podcast co-host, and University of Houston history professor, Bob Buzzanco.
In this lecture, he gets into The Cold War at Home. He talks about “Duck and Cover”; the Hollywood Ten; Levittown; End of McCarthyism; Margaret Chase Smith and Joseph Welch.
Hot Take! Buzzanco’s latest is on Cold War/Hot War in the “Third World”
He discusses the Cold War in Asia and covers Chinese Civil War: Mao Zedong [CCP] vs. Jiang Jieshi [Guomindang] Plus The “China Lobby” and the Korean War. And then the expansion of the American National Security State with NSC-68 and Military Keynesianism.
In this episode, we speak with sports writer Dave Zirin (@edgeofsports) about the wildcat strikes that shook the NBA in late August; the role of sports activists like Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James and Megan Rapinhoe; the increased resistance to the status quo in high school, college and professional sports; how sports are a medium to communicate with working class white and rural Americans; Lester “Red” Rodney (sports writer for the Daily Worker from the 30s-50s) and more.
Dave Zirin is The Nation’s sports editor and host of the Nation’s Edge of Sports podcast. He is the author of ten books on the politics of sports. He is also frequent guest on ESPN, MSNBC, and Democracy Now!