Jacobin Radio

Dan’s guest today is Thea Riofrancos, a political scientist at Providence College. They discuss Ecuador’s 2017 elections, in which the left won a narrow victory despite the crisis hitting the Pink Tide of left governments throughout the region.Former President Rafael Correa accomplished much for the country’s poor majority. Unfortunately, he did so thanks to a commodity boom that has since gone bust, a strategy that has put the government in conflict with indigenous and environmental movements. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Doug interviews two guests. First, Tim Shorrock on the two Koreas: while South Korea has a recently-elected leader, the North continues testing missiles while the US continues threatening engagement. Then, Margaret Corvid updates us on British politics in the week following the recent surprise election. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Doug interviews two guests. First, investigative journalist Alex Kotch talks about the Koch academic network. Then, Alfredo Saad Filho, a professor of political economy at the SOAS, University of London, updates us the political and economic situation in Brazil. This episode was recorded the day before Lula was found guilty on corruption and money-laundering charges, and Filho sent an update for the show's listeners, which Doug reads on the show. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dan talks with Dara Lind, the immigration reporter at Vox. They discuss how Trump has made Obama's massive deportation machine into a terrifying spectacle in a bid to to scare undocumented immigrants from the country. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the latest episode Suzi will cover election results across the globe. First, Tom Ferguson, Professor Emeritus at U Mass Boston, will discuss the Democratic Party’s recent election defeats, the party's ties to finance, and their rejection of the Sanders political line within their own base. Then, Sebastian Budgen will join from Paris for an analysis of the recent Parliamentary elections that gave Emmanuel Macron's new Party "En Marche" a majority. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Workers have for years faced a neoliberal onslaught administered by a bipartisan establishment of technocratic elites who have ensured the redistribution of wealth into the hands of the rich. This is an elite that has abetted the decimation of labor unions and whose primary disagreement are over how severely those expelled from the labor market should be allowed to suffer. Dan's guest today is journalist Sarah Jaffe. Jaffe talks about the state of work, particularly the manufacturing and retail workers she writes about in recent pieces at The Nation and racked.com. Thanks to supporters at Verso and University of North Carolina Press. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Naomi Klein takes on President Donald Trump’s brand, and offers some thoughts as to how to tarnish it, in her new book “No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mass incarceration controls poor people and populations that have been excluded from the labor market. Politically, tough-on-crime rhetoric has for decades been a tool for politicians to appeal to white voters’ racism. But what’s less discussed is the complicated history of criminal justice politics within black communities and amongst black politicians. Yale Law professor James Forman talks about his new book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Joining Suzi are Maria Svart, National Director of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Becky Bond, co-founder of the Knock on Every Door campaign and former advisor on the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign. They will review the recent People's Summit conference as well as take a deep look at the Democratic Party. Specifically, they'll explore how the party can and should be engaged as well as the party leadership and its hostility to the pro-Sander's contingent. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Bernie would have won. And in the UK, he sort of did last week. The Labour Party, under left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn (full name: Jeremy Bernard Corbyn) came far from behind and stripped Prime Minister Theresa May of her majority in parliament — after the punditocracy had confidently predicted that radicals had doomed Labour to electoral oblivion. Dan speaks to Richard Seymour, the author most recently of Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical politics, and a founding editor of Salvage. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In These Times editor Miles Kampf-Lassin cracks open a cold one with the boys in the Stockton to Malone studio/supply closet. Micah, Miles, and RL discuss their experiences walking with striking workers at the AT&T picket lines on Chicago's south side last month. RL closes out the episode by making fun of Slavoj Žižek. He was then struck by a car in a mysterious hit and run ten minutes after they finished recording. He's okay now, but be warned, Slavoj's got shooters!Follow us on Twitter at @RLisDead, @MilesKLassin, and @MicahUetricht. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Doug interviews two guests. First, Yasha Levine, author of the forthcoming Surveillance Valley, discusses Russia, the NSA, and the Intercept election hacking leak. Then, Angela Nagle, author of Kill All Normies, chronicles the alt-right's rise. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dan interviews journalist David Dayen on President Trump's financial policy. Despite espousing white populist rhetoric on the campaign trail, Donald Trump has stacked his administration with Big Finance elites. Dodd-Frank is on the chopping block and Wall Street is set to deepen its predatory financial practices. Thanks to our advertisers at The Nation! Get a deal on magazine subscription at thenation.com/dig and find their podcast at https://www.thenation.com/authors/start-making-sense/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Suzi interviews two guests about the surging Jeremy Corbyn and the fate of leftwing class politics in the coming UK elections. Journalist and author Paul Mason joins the conversation from London. Blogger and analyst Kevin Ovenden is based in Athens. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Doug interviews two guests. First, James Whitman on the U.S. origins of Nazi race law. Second, Alex Gourevitch discusses strikes and their challenge to bourgeois law. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Donald Trump pledged to build a big, beautiful wall on the border with Mexico. For liberals, the wall now shares a toxic association with Trump. But until recently, militarizing the border with Mexico was accepted as a core piece of the commonsense, bipartisan establishment immigration and drug policy agenda. Dan talks about border policy with Peter Andreas, a professor at Brown University and the author of Border Games: Policing the US-Mexico Divide. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The drug war is winding down around the country and heating up under Trump at the same time. Rick Lines of Harm Reduction International lays out the humane and evidence-based alternative to the war on drugs. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hope is more than a mood or feeling — it's the basis for all political action, argues Ronald Aronson in an interview with Suzi Weissman. Bernie Sanders's campaign inspired collective action to make the world more equal; the Trump campaign and presidency are its mirror opposite. Aronson's book We: Reviving Social Hope is out now. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jacobin's latest issue, "By Taking Power," asks: What has the Pink Tide accomplished? What is its future? When the Pink Tide emerged in Latin America, the U.S. Left was done with governing. The Pink Tide was a confident call back to the old-time religion, a return to not ceding state power to the Right, but wielding it to improve lives in the here and now.Jacobin editor and publisher Bhaskar Sunkara spoke with Rene Rojas, a PhD student in sociology at NYU, to discuss the ebb and flow of the Pink Tide at the Verso Books offices on May 16. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Micah and RL finally release their take on Jordan Peele's film "Get Out." Micah sees the story as standard brocialist propaganda, an ode to unionized public sector workers and the social democratic investments that produce them. RL can't get past the protagonist picking cotton and turning into the "Terminegro" at the film's climax. But like Saul on the road to Damascus, RL sees the light and Micah converts him mid-take. This episode is in honor of Yale maintenance worker Corey Menafee, MTA employee Darryl Goodwin, and all the other unionized workers who have stood up to racism on the job. Follow us on Twitter at @RLisDead and @micahuetricht. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.