On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg talks to Jeanne Theoharis about her new book, “King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South,” in which Theoharis argues that King’s time in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—outside Dixie—was at the heart of his campaign for racial justice.

Jeanne Theoharis is the author or co-author of thirteen books on the civil rights and Black Power movements and the contemporary politics of race in the US. Her biography, “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” won a 2014 NAACP Image Award & the Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians.

Order a signed copy directly from Pilsen Community Books: https://www.pilsencommunitybooks.com/item/yHYLazfoaGjjMRbzFV1DYw

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank welcome back Ramzy Baroud to the show to talk about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, geopolitics of the region, and why Palestinians will never surrender. Ramzy is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank welcome Roger Peet to discuss art and resistance, the 60th anniversary of the US-backed genocide in Indonesia, and the conflicts in the Congo. Roger Peet is an artist, printmaker, muralist, and writer living in Portland, Oregon. He is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and helps run the cooperative Flight 64 print studio in Portland.

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Joshua Frank and Erik Wallenberg welcome back Ralph Nader to discuss Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s fascist creep, and how we can fight back.

Ralph Nader is a long-time consumer advocate, presidential candidate and the author of many books, most recently Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People.

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank talk to Vijay Kolinjivadi and Aaron Vansintjan about their new book, The Sustainability Class: How to Take Back Our Future from Lifestyle Environmentalists.

Vijay Kolinjivadi is an assistant professor at the School for Community and Public Affairs, Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He is also a co-editor of the website Uneven Earth. The co-author, with Aaron Vansintjan, of The Sustainability Class (The New Press), he has been published in Al Jazeera, New Internationalist, Truthout, and The Conversation. He lives in Montreal.

Aaron Vansintjan is the founder and co-editor of Uneven Earth and co-author of The Future Is Degrowth. He has been published in The Guardian, Truthout, openDemocracy, and The Ecologist. The co-author, with Vijay Kolinjivadi, of The Sustainability Class (The New Press), he lives in Montreal.

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt discusses storytelling, writing, and reading during the Palestinian genocide with Eman Aljhaj Ali in Gaza. Eman Alhaj Ali is a Palestinian writer, translator, and storyteller from Gaza. Reading and writing are her passions with her byline appearing on a number of international news outlets – The Nation, Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, The New Arab, and others. “Writing is the act in which I share part of my soul with the world,” she says. She has contributed to anthologies such as, “We Were Seeds” and is a member of Palestinian writing collective, We Are Not Numbers, where she has published several pieces and contributed to their upcoming anthology.

Eman has written features and opinion articles to personal testimonies, poems, and fictional stories. She loves documenting the world around her, expressing her feelings through both speech and writing. “I firmly believe that writing is crucial for conveying our messages,” she says, “especially to those who prefer to read. Words hold incredible power, and I see it as essential to harness that power through writing,”

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank talk with Jesse Hagopian about his new book Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. Jesse has taught in the public schools for over 20 years, serves on the Black Lives Matter at School steering committee, organizes for the Zinn Education Project, and founded the Ethnic Studies course at Seattle’s Garfield High School. He is an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, the co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School and Teaching for Black Lives.

This week on CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank talk to David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz about their new book, “Building the Worlds that Kill Us: Disease, Death and Inequality in American History” (Columbia University Press).

David Rosner is the Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and professor of history in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University and the director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at the Mailman School.

Gerald Markowitz is distinguished professor of history at John Jay College.

Together, they have written many books, including Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth-Century America (1991) and Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children (2014). They are both elected members of the National Academy of Science’s National Academy of Medicine.

Check out their resource site, ToxicDocs.org.

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Joshua Frank and Erik Wallenberg talk with Kim Kelly and Hamilton Nolan about what to expect in the next four years of Trump and how to build labor power in a world dominated by billionaires.

Kim Kelly is a writer and labor activist based in Philadelphia. She is the author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor.

Hamilton Nolan is a labor journalist who writes regularly for In These Times magazine and The Guardian. His new book is The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor.

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Joshua Frank and Erik Wallenberg talk to Ashley Dawson about his new book, Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements Are Leading the Fight for Our Planet (Haymarket Books).

Ashley is a Professor of English at the Graduate Center / City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. He is the author of several books on key topics in the environmental humanities, including People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons, Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change, and Extinction: A Radical History. A member of the Public Power NY campaign and the founder of the CUNY Climate Action Lab, he is a long-time climate justice activist.

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Silky Shah and Eman Abdelhadi join Joshua Frank and Erik Wallenberg to discuss how we should gear up to take on the Trump administration, and the best way to empower our movements going forward, from immigration to Palestine.

In this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Jeffrey St. Clair, editor-in-chief of CounterPunch, and author of many books, including Been Brown so Long it Looked like Me and Grand Theft Pentagon, is interviewed by Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank about the 25th anniversary of the WTO protests in Seattle. They discuss Jeffrey’s dispatches from the streets of Seattle and the book that was born from those reports, Five Days That Shook the World. They also address the significance of the protests, and what transpired in the decades to follow.

On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Janene Yazzie, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the NDN Collective, joins Joshua Frank and Erik Wallenberg to talk global climate policy, the plight of Leonard Peltier, and the push for clemency from President Biden. Janene, who just returned from COP29, also addresses how we move forward under a second Trump term. As a bonus, we’ve included Janene’s scorching plenary speech from Socialism 2024.

To learn about NDN Collective- www.ndncollective.org
For our actions and campaigns: https://ndncollective.org/take-action/
Palestine Solidarity: https://ndncollective.org/the-right-of-return-is-landback/
For Leonard Peltier work- https://freeleonard-peltier.com/
Or text ‘FREELEONARDNOW’ to 50302

In this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt speaks with members of Acción Palestina Chiapas, grassroots organizers in southern México raising awareness around Palestinian resistance within their communities. They discuss the vínculos, the connections, between local Indigenous struggles against displacement, forced migration, and narco-violence and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. The episode is dedicated to Padre Marcelo, who dedicated his life and work to the Indigenous peoples and farmworkers of Chiapas and who also advocated for Palestinian liberation in the months before his assassination in October 2024.

This week on CounterPunch Radio, the tenacious Ralph Nader talks to Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank about why Kamala Harris lost, Israel’s influence in American politics, and demise of working class America.

CounterPunch co-editor Joshua Frank explains why abandoning the working class sunk the Harris campaign – blowback for 30 years of neoliberal capitalism.

This week Joshua Frank and Erik Wallenberg talk to Ramzy Baroud about the genocide in Gaza, Zionism’s shaky future and the role of the international left in helping shape its future.

Ramzy is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

On this re-aired episode of CounterPunch Radio, Eric Draitser interviews Arun Gupta about Israel’s propaganda campaign, the failed reporting of The New York Times, and how it’s all been used to dehumanize and justify genocide in Gaza.

Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt speaks with Jumana Kaplanian, psychologist and founder of Psychology Spa, a mental health clinic in the West Bank. Jumana shares her experience supporting the mental health of youth and women in her community in Bethlehem throughout the genocide, the day-to-day impacts of the occupation, and the most recent invasion of the West Bank.

Jumana Kaplanian is the founder of Psychology Spa, the first specialized non-profit company in Psychoeducation in Palestine since 2016. She is a social activist, a psychologist & mental health trainer. Since 2019, she is a member of the Board of Directors of Psychologists and Social Workers in Bethlehem. Jumana is a skilled, motivated, and ambitious psychologist experienced in providing a specialized psychological assessment of clients’ problems based upon collected data through counseling sessions in Bethlehem, Palestine.

Queer Mikveh Project is currently raising funds for trauma-informed somatic and mental health programming for women and girls at Psychology Spa in Bethlehem. Donate to Venmo at @queermikvehproject or paypal.me/queermikvehproject

This week, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank interview Eman Abdelhadi and Khury Petersen-Smith on all things Palestine, from organizing to liberation.

Eman Abdelhadi is an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion and politics. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the University of Chicago, where she researches American Muslim communities. She is co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 – 2072. She is also a columnist for In These Times where you can follow her latest. She also organzizes with Faculty and staff for Justice in Palestine and Salon Kawakib.

Khury Petersen-Smith is the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow and Co-Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). He researches the U.S. empire, borders, and migration. His work has appeared widely, including in Truthout, In These Times, and Foreign Policy in Focus. He is one of the co-authors and organizers of the 2023 Black Voices for Ceasefire statement, which was signed by over 6,000 Black activists, artists, and scholars.

Unavoidable evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change confronts us at every turn. Record high ocean temperatures. Once-a-century storms that appear every other year. And on and on. In the face of ongoing ecological disaster, international best-selling author Kōhei Saitō asks why our society continues to prioritize corporate profits (and the rapacious expansion on which they depend), and proposes a revolutionary alternative to unfettered capitalism: degrowth communism.

In Slow Down, Saitō provocatively argues that any solutions that don’t directly confront capitalism itself—from the COP agreements to the “Green New Deal”—represent dangerous compromises that may ultimately worsen the climate emergency. Because it creates artificial scarcity and endlessly produces commodities based on their value, rather than their usefulness, our economic system itself makes it impossible to reverse climate change so long as capitalism remains in place. The biggest contributor to the problem cannot be an integral part of its solution.

Instead, Saitō advocates for degrowth and deceleration, which he conceives as the slowing of economic activity through the democratic reform of labor and our system of production. By returning to a system of social ownership, degrowth communism, we can restore the abundance of things that we truly need, and can focus on those activities that are essential for human life.

What would this alternative look like? How do we end mass production and mass consumption without reducing living standards? What do we need to do to redress global inequality without accelerating the rate at which the planet burns?

For this launch event Saitō will be in conversation on all of this, and more, with Science for the People editor, and Pilsen Community Books collective member and CounterPunch Radio co-host Erik Wallenberg. This event occurred on May 24, 2024 at Haymarket House in Chicago.

Last week the 2024 Democratic National Convention took over Chicago. Over the course of the week, the Democratic Party elite rubbed elbows and egos at the United Center and the McCormick Place Convention Center while outside, thousands gathered for meetings and marches, demonstrations and disruptions. CounterPunch Radio co-host and worker-owner at Chicago’s Pilsen Community Books, Erik Wallenberg, captured voices in the streets. Nathaniel St. Clair edited and produced the episode.

We hear from leaders of the opposition including Cornel West and Medea Benjamin as well as protesters who organized against the 1968 DNC and came out in the streets this year too. A speech from Chicago for Abortion Rights leader Mandy Medley, music from Songs for Liberation, and words from Mennonites for Ceasefire ring out alongside members of Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Veterans Against the War. The episode closes out with a song, Fields of Palestine, which was performed by Ryan Cason, a member of Songs for Liberation and Irish Americans for Palestine. This Irish folk song, Fields of Athenry was first adpated by Seth Stanton Watkins in solidarity with the struggle in Palestine.

This week on CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank interview M.V. Ramana on nuclear power and why it’s not an answer to the climate crisis. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India (Penguin Books, 2012) and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream (Orient Longman, 2003). Ramana is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, the Canadian Pugwash Group, the International Nuclear Risk Assessment Group, and the team that produces the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Leo Szilard Award from the American Physical Society.

He is the author of the new book, “Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change” published by Verso.

In this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt talks with fellow members of California Jewish Artists for Palestine Sophia Sobko and Steph Kudisch, about their collective decision to submit and withdraw explicitly anti-Zionist artworks to an open call for Jewish artists at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. They discuss the process of pulling their works out of the exhibition; the importance of the academic and cultural boycott of Israel (PACBI); and what it means to be Jewish artists publicly confronting Jewish arts institutions that receive Zionist funding and are struggling to address the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Steph Kudisch is a trans genderfluid artist whose work uses mutated intertidal aesthetics and personal storytelling to dwell in in-betweens. They work as a teaching artist on Lisjan Ohlone land, also known as the San Francisco Bay Area. Kudisch and their collaborator Kate Laster form Clear as Schmutz Press as well as the collective Hevra Kadisha in which they create site-specific works across the mediums of printmaking, sculpture, performance, and sound.

Sophia Sobko (she/they) is an artist, educator & researcher born in Moscow, USSR & based on Lisjan Ohlone Land in Oakland, CA. They are excited about collaborative learning, participatory art, and co-creating a more liberatory world. Sophia is founder/co-steward of two queer post-Soviet Jewish collectives: Kolektiv Goluboy Vagon and Krivoy Kolektiv.

Get in touch with CJAFP at cajewishartists4palestine[@]proton.me