Ear to the Pavement

In episode 25, the third installment in our Deconstructing Feminism series, Allison and author and activist Yasmin Nair discuss "The Right to Sex" by Amia Srinivasan, situating it in relation to Kyla Schuller's "The Trouble With White Women" and Rafia Zakaria's "Against White Feminism," books discussed in the series' previous two episodes. Throughout the discussion, Nair continually touches on issues of hierarchy and deference in the publishing world, arguing that an awareness of such dynamics is important in any feminist analysis. Yasmin Nair: https://yasminnair.com/ "The Right to Sex": https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374721039/therighttosex Amia Srinivasan: https://www.asc.ox.ac.uk/person/professor-amia-srinivasan Kyla Schuller: https://www.kylaschuller.org/ Rafia Zakaria: https://www.rafiazakaria.com/ Related links to Nair's writing on White feminism, trauma feminism, and the politics of publishing: The Perils of Trauma Feminism (Current Affairs): https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/12/the-perils-of-t

Episode 24 is part two of Allison's conversation with writer and activist Yasmin Nair, about White Feminism, and about two books on the topic: "The Trouble With White Women" by Kyla Schuller, and "Against White Feminism" by Rafia Zakaria. This episode zeroes in on these authors' treatment of the phenomenon of the White female Trump voter as a touchstone for contemporary intersectional feminist analysis. For more background on the history of Whiteness studies, see "The Wages of Roediger" by Cedric Johnson. Yasmin Nair: https://yasminnair.com/ Kyla Schuller: https://www.kylaschuller.org/ Rafia Zakaria: https://www.rafiazakaria.com/ "The Wages of Roediger" by Cedric Johnson: https://nonsite.org/the-wages-of-roediger-why-three-decades-of-whiteness-studies-has-not-produced-the-left-we-need/

Episode 23 is the first in a new series with writer and activist Yasmin Nair, about contemporary feminist books. We begin the series with an examination of two recent titles: "The Trouble With White Women" by Kyla Schuller, and "Against White Feminism" by Rafia Zakaria. While Schuller's and Zakaria's common call for the dismantling of White feminism is, as Nair states, "interesting and necessary," each of these books also contains its own distinct set of pitfalls, a closer analysis of which sheds light on the complicated and troubling issues arising at the intersection of modern-day American feminism, antiracism, academia, and publishing. For more background on the history of Whiteness studies, see "The Wages of Whiteness" by Cedric Johnson. Yasmin Nair: https://yasminnair.com/ Kyla Schuller: https://www.kylaschuller.org/ Rafia Zakaria: https://www.rafiazakaria.com/ "The Wages of Whiteness" by Cedric Johnson: https://nonsite.org/the-wages-of-roediger-why-three-decades-of-whiteness-studies-has-not-produced-th

In episode 22 of "Ear to the Pavement" - the first in a new series about the American South - Allison talks with Professor Adolph Reed, Jr. about his new book, "The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives," published in 2022 by Verso. In the book, Reed speaks as a member of the last generation with a living memory of the Jim Crow order, offering a corrective to our increasingly caricatured notions of what the order actually was. By weaving together his own personal stories of growing up under Jim Crow with his signature political analysis, Reed shows us that it was the stuff of ordinary, everyday life that held the system together. Adolph Reed, Jr.: https://live-sas-www-polisci.pantheon.sas.upenn.edu/people/adolph-reed "The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives": https://www.versobooks.com/books/3945-the-south

The expectation of radical self-sufficiency is a hallmark of the neoliberal U.S. economy in the early 21st century, and the arts are no exception. The rise of the discourse and practice of "musical entrepreneurship" within the classical music field is a case in point. In episode 21 of "Ear to the Pavement", Allison speaks with musicologist Marianna Ritchey about about her book, "Composing Capital," which looks critically at the neoliberalization of musical labor, and the broader questions it raises about what art is for, who gets to produce it and under what conditions, and how the arts serve different political ideologies. Marianna Richey: https://www.umass.edu/music/member/marianna-ritchey "Composing Capital": https://www.powells.com/book/composing-capital-9780226640235

In episode 20, Allison speaks with author and social psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove, about her book "Main Street: How a City's Heart Connects Us All." In it, Fullilove argues for a vision of Main Street - from large cities to rural farm towns - not as dead but as "machines for living" or "factories of invention" that not only build community but that can help us solve some of our biggest problems, like inequality, racism, and the climate crisis. "Main Street: How a City's Heart Connects Us All": https://nyupress.org/9781613321263/main-street/

In episode 19, the fifth in a series about books related to #MeToo, Allison speaks with authors Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan about "Sexual Citizens" (2020). It's a book that everyone seems to be talking about, and for good reason: "Sexual Citizens" offers us a profoundly liberating and at the same time pragmatic new roadmap for thinking about and addressing one of the most heated issues of our time, sexual assault on college campuses. Author Lacy Crawford, whose explosive 2020 memoir "Notes on a Silencing" chronicles her own campus sexual assault, also joins the conversation. Jennifer Hirsch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_S._Hirsch Shamus Khan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamus_Khan "Sexual Citizens": https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781324001706 Lacy Crawford: https://lacycrawford.com/ "Notes on a Silencing": https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316491556

In episode 18, the fourth in a series about books related to #MeToo, Allison talks again with author and activist Yasmin Nair, this time about Chanel Miller's 2019 memoir, "Know My Name." The book is a blistering and tender account, from Miller's perspective, of her sexual assault by Stanford University student Brock Turner, and its harrowing aftermath in The People v. Turner case. Miller's writing is brilliant and deft, and manages to convey both her personal story as well as the mechanisms of the broken system that was supposed to bring justice. Allison and Yasmin examine how Know My Name resists a lot of the problematic issues that often beset so-called "survivor" narratives, and what the emergence of Miller's voice has meant for the larger politics of #MeToo. Chanel Miller: https://www.chanel-miller.com/

The tension between race and class that continues to bedevil the American left flared up recently when a talk that prominent scholar Adolph Reed was slated to give to the New York City chapter of DSA was cancelled. The skirmish created such a ripple it was covered by the New York Times. But what really lies beneath this dustup? Author and labor activist Bill Fletcher, Jr. reflects on how the left handles differences within its own ranks, whether the antiracist movement really has a class problem, the need for both allies and comrades (and the difference between the two), and what needs to change if the left is serious about building real power. Bill Fletcher, Jr.: http://billfletcherjr.com/ Adolph Reed: https://nonsite.org/author/adolph-reed New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/adolph-reed-controversy.html

In Episode 16, the third in a series about books related to #MeToo, Allison talks with NYC-based journalist JoAnn Wypijewski about her recent book, "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About #MeToo: Essays on Sex, Authority, & the Mess of Life," published by Verso. In this collection, spanning thirty years of reporting on scandals from Abu Ghraib to the Harvey Weinstein saga, Wypijewski reveals our tendency to flatten complex stories in pursuit of villains and victims, in the process forging a "poisoned solidarity" that actually undermines the possibility of true social justice. JoAnn Wypijewski: https://www.thenation.com/authors/joann-wypijewski/ "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About #MeToo: Essays on Sex, Authority, & the Mess of Life": https://www.versobooks.com/books/3178-what-we-don-t-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-metoo

In Episode 15, the second in a series about books related to #MeToo, Allison talks again with Chicago-based writer, academic, and activist Yasmin Nair about "Catch and Kill," Ronan Farrow's 2019 book reconstructing his efforts to report the Harvey Weinstein story. Nair brings her decades of experience at the intellectual intersection of gender and politics to "Catch and Kill," which is at once a chronicle of the Weinstein scandal, a story about journalism itself, and an attempt by Farrow to redraw his own complicated family story. But what kind of a #MeToo narrative does this book weave, and, at the dawn of a new decade, are we standing triumphant in the movement's victories, or in its crumbling ruins? Yasmin Nair: http://yasminnair.com/ "Catch and Kill": https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ronan-farrow/catch-and-kill/9780316486668

In Episode 14 of Ear to the Pavement, Allison talks with professor (https://www.newschool.edu/milano/faculty/mindy-fullilove/) and author (http://mainstreetnj.blogspot.com/) Mindy Thompson Fullilove about how her past work on public health crises such as 9/11 and the AIDS epidemic is informing her current thinking about the coronavirus pandemic, and why we need to "remember, respect, learn, and connect" in these difficult and frightening times.

In Episode 13 of Ear to the Pavement, Allison talks with author and labor activist Bill Fletcher, Jr. (http://billfletcherjr.com/) about the Bernie Sanders campaign's victories and mistakes, why Sanders failed to win over black voters in the South, the Sanders-Warren rift, and where the progressive movement needs to go from here.

In this episode, the first in a series about books related to #MeToo, we talk with Chicago-based writer, academic, and activist Yasmin Nair about "She Said," the 2019 book by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. Nair situates "She Said" within the current journalism economy, as well as within the messy politics of #MeToo, and provides trenchant analysis of the book's strengths and shortcomings. Nair also recently talked with Trevor Beaulieu on the Champagne Sharks podcast about the Influencer Industrial Complex: https://soundcloud.com/champagnesharks/cs-245-influencer-industrial-complex-pt-1-feat-yasmin-nair-02042020

In his 1956 book The Power Elite, sociologist C. Wright Mills painted a disturbing picture of U.S. society in which a small group of people at the heads of corporations, government, and the military exercised increasing control over important decisions affecting the country and its citizenry. In this episode of Ear to the Pavement, we talk to sociologist Mark Mizruchi, author of The Fracturing of the American Corporate Elite, about how Mills' classic has held up over time, and what light might it shed on the current crisis of inequality in the United States in which three men - Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett - own as much wealth as the bottom half of Americans.

The billions in tax breaks Amazon is slated to receive for its new headquarters in New York and Virginia has been big news lately, but for tax policy watchdog and Good Jobs First founder Greg LeRoy, Amazon's HQ2 is just the latest chapter in the company's long history of gaming the U.S. tax system. In this episode of Ear to the Pavement, we dive into the myriad ways Amazon has been dodging taxes from day one, the consequences for local economies and the public services we rely on, and what we can do to rein in the tax-break-industrial-complex that funnels taxpayer dollars to wealthy corporations that don't need it.

Social justice non-profit PolicyLink has documented how a focus on racial equity has led to more business success for companies like PayPal, Prudential, and Gap, and they're using these examples to convince more corporations to embrace racial equity. But where does this approach to racial justice come from, and how far can it take us? In this episode, PolicyLink Founder and CEO Angela Glover Blackwell and author and labor activist Bill Fletcher, Jr. unpack the argument that racial equity gives companies a competitive advantage, and what it means for our politics.

Of all of the things there are to worry about in the Trump era, climate change is at the top of the list. But the failure to act effectively on climate long predates Trump. Anne Peterman, executive director of Global Justice Ecology Project, argues that by promoting market-based solutions such as carbon trading, a series of American presidential administrations have not only failed to address climate change, but have also helped enrich corporations at the expense of poor and indigenous communities worldwide. What we really need in order to solve the climate crisis is a collective effort to transform society. But how might this happen, and what would a truly sustainable world look like?

In too much American political discourse, economic issues and identity issues are treated separately, even though they're deeply connected. This has been divisive and disastrous for the Left. But what does a politics that truly integrates race and class look like? The League of Black Revolutionary Workers has an answer. Formed in 1969 and lasting only a few years, the League was one of the most politically sophisticated movements in American history. Dan Georgakas, author of Detroit, I Do Mind Dying, explains what we can learn from them today.

In Episode Five of Ear to the Pavement, housing organizer Rob Robinson recounts his journey from homelessness to the housing movement, and explains how Take Back the Land, an organization he co-founded, used radical organizing to successfully fight the corporate forces that helped create the foreclosure crisis. Robinson is currently a volunteer organizer with the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), and is connected to housing and land movements in Europe, South Africa, and Brazil.