Dorothy's Place

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 brought new readers to Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism (published in 1951). Pete and I talk to Samantha Hill, assistant director of Bard College's Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities, about the insights Arendt's thought offers us today. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

Amidst a global culture war between the forces of neoliberal atomization and incorrigible fundamentalists, Adam Webb is proposing the creation of a deep cosmopolis, a global alliance of tradition-minded defenders of the poor. His own international background (UK, Spain, Peru, China)gives Webb fascinating insights into how the local and the global might combine forces. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

A senior editor with Current Affairs, Brianna Rennix's day job is as an asylum attorney stationed just north of Laredo/Nuevo Laredo. We talk about her recent columns ("This Week in Terrible Immigration News") on topics such as what it's like to interview women with children fleeing violence and hoping the Trump administration will not succeed in separating them from their children. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

Back on the air, Pete and Elias talk to the founder of Big Car (Indianapolis), Jim Walker, about his group's amazing track record using social practice art in Rust Belt placemaking and (even better) in "placekeeping." Also discussed: ideas of mercy in Fr. James Keenan and Isaac Bashevis Singer. (Sorry about the occasional noise!) Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

Pete talks about his newly-published critique of the state of the legal profession (Bicentennial Crisis), aimed partly at his own Harvard Law School's practices. We also take up public service anthropology, explain what a stroad is, and ponder the Right to the City. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

What if ordinary citizens stopped thinking of themselves as mere consumers and began acting as co-creators of their communities? Pete and I interview Karol Soltan, one of the founders of the Civic Studies movement, along with some talk about the Boston-based anti-eviction group called Urban Life/Vida Urbana and Jeremy Beer's book on how localized charity became placeless Big Philanthropy. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

Pete and I interview Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a think tank which hopes to avoid corporate capture by using crowd-funding for support. We gab about stuff like universal basic income, social wealth funds, and why libertarianism seems cool when you're in high school. Pete and I also talk about James Keenan's Moral Wisdom and the L.A. Kitchen project. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

An oral historian in the tradition of Studs Terkel, Rosalie Riegle has written books on the history of the Catholic Worker movement, the non-violence movement and women's history. Before our interview with Rosalie (starting 13:15 mark), Pete and I talk about the organizational lessons of the AA movement and Douglas Rushkoff's terrific book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

We talk about a wonderful essay collection by localist Bill Kaufmann called Look Homeward, America and the neighborhood microfunding project called Detroit Soup before talking to Nathan Schneider about his days caught up in the middle of the Occupy encampment in NYC, platform cooperativism, and what radical Catholicism has to do with all this. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

A quick chat about the most successful world-changing non-violent movement in modern history. Talk about your solidarity. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

We chat with Liz Bruenig about the religious left, the "dirtbag" left, St. Augustine, the "nones", the trouble with meritocracy, Gar Alperovitz's Next System, and a great new book called Ours to Hack and to Own. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe

Our debut effort, talking with Matthew Loftus (of the Doctors Without Boredom blog) about from everything from healthcare in East Africa to Japanese social coops to a book on how this country's old system of federated organizations used to work. Get full access to Solidarity Hall at solidarityhall.substack.com/subscribe