Upstream

Upstream

1 hour 30 minutes

A Solstice Celebration for 2024 w/ Manda Scott and Nathalie Nahai
Happy Solstice! In this annual tradition, Della is joined by two fellow podcast hosts to reflect on the past year and set some intentions for the year ahead.

Manda Scott is a novelist, smallholder, and host of the podcast Accidental Gods, which showcases individuals and organizations at the emerging edge of our world to set the foundation for a future we’d be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. Manda’s latest novel, Any Human Power, is out now and available here.

Nathalie Nahai is a behavior science advisor, author and host of the podcast The Hive, which focuses on psychology, technology, and human behavior. Nathalie is the author of Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and is also the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.

One of Della’s offerings in the new year is a course she designed about how to cultivate regenerative livelihoods. She created this course with insights that she has found most helpful in bringing Upstream theories and ideas into people’s lives as a Right Livelihood coach. Whether you are in a livelihood transition, want to be in community with others trying to find meaningful work, or you just want to know more about work as a vehicle for post capitalist systems change, this course is a great fit. It includes live sessions, engaging module materials and activities including Upstream episodes, and a lively discussion forum to bring the material to life. Here is the link to learn more and register and use "UPSTREAM25" for a special 25% off coupon.

Further Resources:
Related Episodes:
- Down the Rabbit Hole
- Transformative Adaptation
- How to Be an An Anticapitalist in the Twenty-first Century (book)
- How to be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century (Jacobin article)
- God, Human, Animal, Machine
- The Psychological Drivers of the MetaCrisis
- Feeding Your Demons, Tsultrim Allione
- Feeding your Demons (Lion's Roar article)
- Winter Solstice Meditation
- Summer Solstice Meditation
Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
21 December 2024, 4:00 am
1 hour 58 minutes

Historical Materialism w/ Torkil Lauesen
Historical materialism is the science of Marxism. It’s the theory developed by Marx and Engels that explains how human societies develop and change over time based on economic organization. Like Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection, historical materialism serves as a powerful tool in understanding the world around us. It explains why societies are arranged the way that they are, why there are classes, why revolutions happen—and when taken together with the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism, historical materialism becomes a rigorous scientific tool for analyzing the entire world and, most importantly, acting within it.

Everybody on this planet would benefit greatly from having a clear understanding of historical materialism, and every Marxist should at least understand the basics of it. And in this episode, we’re going to provide an introductory exploration of historical materialism, along with dialectical materialism, which is deeply intertwined with the former. And we’ve brought on the perfect guest to help us to do this.

Torkil Lauesen is an activist and a writer from Denmark who has spent the last fifty years immersed in the study and praxis of historical materialism. Torkil spent many years in his youth engaged in both legal and illegal activities with the purpose of materially supporting anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World, including in Palestine. He spent a decade in prison for this work.

This episode is part of our ongoing series on Marxist philosophy and theory. The first episode in this series takes a close look at dialectical materialism with Josh Sykes as our guest and was published in June of 2024. This episode serves as a follow-up to that episode, but can also be listened to on its own. Historical materialism and dialectical materialism are deeply intertwined, so having a solid understanding of dialectics will help you understand historical materialism—but we do explore both dialectics and historical materialism in this episode.

We also explore concepts from Torkil’s latest book, The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism, published this last November by Iskra Books, along with many fascinating topics related to historical materialism that span from Marx’s concepts of use value and exchange value, the history of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, anti-imperialism, neoliberalism, the rise of China, and much more.

Further Resources
- The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism
- Iskra Books
- International Forum (Copenhagen)
- Arghiri Emmanuel Organization
- Anti-Dühring Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, Frederick Engels
- Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature, by John Bellamy Foster
- Monthly Review
- On Contradiction, Mao Zedong
- The Commodity (Capital Vol. 1), Karl Marx
- Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
- The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism, Joshua Sykes
- Fossil Capital:The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, Andreas Malm
- Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), Karl Marx
- Forget Eco-Modernism, Kai Heron
- The Accumulation of Waste: A political economy of systemic destruction, Ali Kadri
- How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all? Insights from needs-based analysis, Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan
Related Episodes:
Cover art: Carolyn Raider Intermission music: "gl0om" by heavy lifter

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
17 December 2024, 4:00 am
51 minutes 52 seconds

[UNLOCKED] Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness w/ Da'Shaun Harrison
Anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Being Black and fat in our capitalist, white-supremacist, ableist, heteronormative society is to live in a body that is subjected to a form of unique violence marked by policing, misdiagnosis, discrimination, abuse, trauma—the list goes on.

And anti-fatness and anti-Blackness are not simply two separate things—disparate nodes on a circuit of oppression—anti-fatness and anti-Blackness form a crucial intersection, and are ultimately one and the same, according to our guest, in terms of their history, structural, weaponization, and deployment by the ideological apparatuses of the capitalist state and the violence which it upholds.

In this episode, we’ll be discussing anti-fatness as anti-Blackness with Da'Shaun Harrison—a writer, editor, speaker, community organizer, co-executive director of Scalawag Magazine, and author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, published by North Atlantic Books.

In this conversation, we explore the field of fat studies, the history of anti-fatness and anti-Blackness, why we should view anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, the eugenicist history of BMI—or the Body Mass Index—the need to stretch and grow abolition politics, the importance of unlearning supremacist ideology, and much more.

Further resources:
Related episodes:
- Abolish the Police
Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
12 December 2024, 4:00 am
18 minutes 38 seconds

[TEASER] Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism: An Introduction
This is a free preview of the episode "Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism: An Introduction." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

"Sure, I agree that capitalism sucks—but what's the alternative? We tried socialism in the 20th century and it failed." We've all heard this line from well-meaning friends, family members, or any variety of interlocutors we happen to find ourselves in dialogue with in any variety of contexts. There are a lot of compelling and nuanced responses to this common position, and regardless of what you think of the idea itself, it's an important one for us on the left to be able to answer.

In this Patreon reading series, Robert reads a passage from a book that attempts to answer this question. The passage is the introductory chapter of the excellent new book, The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism, by Torkil Lauesen. Published by Iskra Books.

What is the response to the idea that socialism is a failed ideology? Why should we see the transition from capitalism to socialism as a long struggle of experiments and struggles that, far from being fruitless, are essential parts of a world-historical struggle that is still playing out? Why is it important to center historical materialism in our analysis of the world? And why should we be more excited than ever at the prospects of human and more-than-human emancipation and thriving in a world organized under socialism? These are just some of the questions we tackle in this reading and analysis of the introductory chapter of The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism, by Torkil Lauesen.

Further resources:
Related episodes:
Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
10 December 2024, 4:00 am
1 hour 22 minutes

How to Be a Good Ancestor w/ Roman Krznaric
It's been said that “the shortest path to the future is always one through the deepening of the past.” But how do we balance the past, present, and future, when all three weigh so heavily on our consciousness and our social existence?

Perhaps one way to find a balance—or at least to distill these various webbed threads of temporality—might be to pose them as questions: what can we learn from the past to help us in the present? And how can I be a good ancestor for the people of tomorrow? These are the questions that inform and guide the recent work of our guest on today's episode.

Roman Krznaric is a social philosopher, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, and the author of several books including most recently, History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity and The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World.

In this episode, we explore lessons from the past and what it means to be a good ancestor today. We look at how our conceptions of time can expand or limit the way that we answer these questions. We explore what it means to be on the radical fringes of a society, how to build and strengthen solidarity, and how to find meaning and community in a world that has grown increasingly isolating and alienating.

This episode was produced in collaboration with EcoGather, a collapse-responsive co-learning network that hosts free online Weekly EcoGatherings that foster conversation and build community around heterodox economics, collective action, and belonging in an enlivened world. In this collaboration, EcoGather will be hosting gatherings to bring some Upstream episodes to life—this is one of those episodes. We hope you can join the gathering on TK to discuss the topics covered in this episode. Find out more at www.ecogather.ing.

Further Resources
Related Episodes:
- Be More Pirate w/ Sam Conniff
- Doughnut Economics with Kate Raworth
Cover art: Nina Montenegro Intermission music: “Seed of a Seed” by Haley Heynderickx

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
3 December 2024, 4:00 am
22 minutes 4 seconds

[TEASER] Palestine Pt. 14: Decolonial Marxism w/ Patrick Higgins
This is a free preview of the episode "Palestine Pt. 14: Decolonial Marxism w/ Patrick Higgins." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

The Palestinian resistance movement—when seen as a continuous struggle taking shape in the early 20th century and continuing to this very day—has been one of the most profound and long-lasting resistance movements the world has ever seen. The movement was forged in the struggle against British colonialism, Zionist settler-colonialism, and later, US imperial hegemony, and through its long struggle, was not just inspired and informed by Marxist theory—but it itself developed and expanded Marxist revolutionary theory and tested it in the battlefields of West Asia. The contributions—both materially and theoretically—by the Palestinian left, cannot be overlooked, and we’ve devoted this episode to an exploration of this history and of this development of the global, international, anti-imperialist left. And we’ve brought on a terrific guest for this conversation.

Patrick Higgins is a researcher and writer with a PhD in Arab History. He is a co-editor of the publication Liberated Texts. He is currently adapting his dissertation into a book on the history of Palestinian resistance against US imperialism.

In this conversation, Patrick walks us through a history of revolutionary Marxist parties and organizations in Palestine, from the Palestine Communist Party in 1919 all the way up to the present resistance coalition of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—among others. We explore the role that pan Arabism and Arab Nationalism played in the development of the Palestinian left’s struggle, the rise of Israel as a US proxy in West Asia, the aims and goals of US imperialism and the United States’ involvement in the region, the contributions of the Palestinian left to anti-imperialist theory, and how the current genocide can be analyzed and contextualized from the perspective of the Palestinian revolutionary left.

Further resources:
Related episodes:
- Our ongoing series on Palestine
- Walter Rodney, Marxism, and Underdevelopment with D. Musa Springer & Charisse Burden-Stelly
Cover art: “The Path of Armed Struggle” issued by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1970.

Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
26 November 2024, 4:00 am
1 hour 34 minutes

The Exhausted of the Earth w/ Ajay Singh Chaudhary
Exhaustion. What a perfect and powerful word to describe our times. Exhausted bodies—over-worked, over-productive, over-stretched. Bodies pushed to their limits, treated like machines whose sole existence is to produce profit. Exhausted ecosystems—extracted, ruined, plundered. Viewed as nothing but raw material for the ceaseless flow of capital accumulation. Exhausted minds—hurried and harried, no time for joy, for introspection, for pondering the cosmos. Our minds are tethered to an orbit delineated by distraction, denial, and despair. Exhaustion.

2024 is on track to be the hottest year on record—and unless you’ve been consciously avoiding it you’ve probably seen the videos of the devastating floods, wildfires, and “once in a thousand years” storms that are increasingly becoming a part of our daily lives. The reality of climate change is no longer one of the future, one that can be framed in a discussion about coming generations—it’s here already. And it’s not even a question anymore of capitalism being the driving factor—that’s an old conversation. The question now is: what are we going to do about it? How do we respond, right now?

Ajay Singh Chaudhary is the executive director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and core faculty member specializing in social and political theory and author of The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World, published by Repeater Books.

In this episode, we analyze and unpack the many forms of exhaustion that shape us and our world today. We explore the politics of climate change, from right-wing climate responses to those coming from the left, we explore the extractive circuit of capitalism as it stretches its tentacles from lithium mines in The DRC to Doordash drivers in the suburbs of the West. We explore imperialism, Marxist theory, revolutionary classes, revolutionary strategies, and why the “exhausted of the earth” are the mass political subject of our times.

Further Resources
- The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World, by Ajay Singh Chaudhary
- Brooklyn Institute for Social Research
Related Episodes:
Intermission music: "Non-Metaphorical Decolonization" by Mount Eerie

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
19 November 2024, 4:00 am
18 minutes 57 seconds

[TEASER] Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness w/ Da'Shaun Harrison
This is a free preview of the episode "The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness w/ Da'Shuan Harrison," which will be unlocked in a few weeks. To can get early access to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you will get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

Anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Being Black and fat in our capitalist, white-supremacist, ableist, heteronormative society is to live in a body that is subjected to a form of unique violence marked by policing, misdiagnosis, discrimination, abuse, trauma—the list goes on.

And anti-fatness and anti-Blackness are not simply two separate things—disparate nodes on a circuit of oppression—anti-fatness and anti-Blackness form a crucial intersection, and are ultimately one and the same, according to our guest, in terms of their history, structural, weaponization, and deployment by the ideological apparatuses of the capitalist state and the violence which it upholds.

In this episode, we’ll be discussing anti-fatness as anti-Blackness with Da'Shaun Harrison—a writer, editor, speaker, community organizer, co-executive director of Scalawag Magazine, and author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, published by North Atlantic Books.

In this conversation, we explore the field of fat studies, the history of anti-fatness and anti-Blackness, why we should view anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, the eugenicist history of BMI—or the Body Mass Index—the need to stretch and grow abolition politics, the importance of unlearning supremacist ideology, and much more.

Further resources:
Related episodes:
- Abolish the Police
Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
12 November 2024, 3:00 am
2 hours 8 minutes

Prefigurative Politics and Workplace Democracy w/ Saio Gradin and Nicole Wires
Prefigurative politics, building the new within the old, exercising our muscles of collectivity and collaboration—muscles that have grown weak and atrophied under capitalist hegemony—these are all ideas and practices that play a crucial role in our revolutionary movements. And examples of prefiguration can and do take many interesting and inspiring forms—one of these forms is worker self-direction, or worker cooperatives.

In today’s episode we’re talking prefiguration and worker self-direction—and we’ve split the episode up into two parts so that we can dive deeply into both. Part one of our conversation takes a deep dive into the concept and practice of prefigurative politics, which is, simply put, the attempt to implement the world that you want to live in, now. And we’ve brought on the perfect guest to talk about it.

Saio Gradin teaches Politics at Kings College, London and is a community organizer and educator who has spent twenty years running workshops, campaigns and organizations for global justice. They are the author of the book, Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today, published by Polity Books.

Part two of our conversation is going to take a deep dive into one form of prefiguration—worker self-direction—specifically, we’ll exploring the ins and outs of working at a self-directed not-for-profit, which is structurally similar to a worker cooperative, but we’ll get into more those details in the conversation. The point is, we’ll be talking about what it’s like to work in a democratically-run organization. And to have that conversation, we’ve brought on Nicole Wires. Nicole is an organizer and the Network Director for the Nonprofit Democracy Network and a worker-member of the Sustainable Economies Law Center.

In this episode, we explore the concept of prefiguration and how it compares and contrasts to other revolutionary strategies. We explore examples of prefiguration in history and today and why prefigurative politics are an important component of our revolutionary movements. In part two we take a deep dive into the process and practice of prefiguration specifically in the context of worker self-direction, exploring the benefits and challenges of being part of a self-directed organization, the different types of decision-making processes utilized by certain worker-run firms, and how worker cooperatives—and the many forms they take—fit into a broader ecosystem of individuals and organizations striving to live their values in a world dominated by the logic of capital.

Further Resources
- Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today, published by Polity Books
- Could pre-figurative politics provide a way forward for the left? by Siao Gradin in OpenDemocracy
- Indian Home Rule Movement
- Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (Marcus Garvey)
- The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman
Related Episodes:
Intermission music: "Garbage Factory" by Bobby Frith

This episode was produced in collaboration with EcoGather, a collapse-responsive co-learning network that hosts free online Weekly EcoGatherings that foster conversation and build community around heterodox economics, collective action, and belonging in an enlivened world. In this collaboration, EcoGather will be hosting gatherings to bring some Upstream episodes to life—this is one of those episodes. Join the EcoGather team on Tuesday, Nov. 26 at 5pm ET for a warm and welcoming conversation! Find out more here.

Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
7 November 2024, 3:00 am
1 hour 41 minutes

[RE-RELEASE] A Marxist Perspective on Elections w/ August Nimtz
“This is the most important election of our lifetimes.” “Voting for a third-party candidate? Might as well throw away your vote!” “You may not like her, but you’ve just got to hold your nose and vote for her — otherwise, Trump might win.”

We're sure you’ve heard each of these lines many times — we know that we have. But, at some point you have to ask: how can every election be the most important one? Am I really throwing away my vote by voting for a candidate whose policies I agree with? Can we ever actually affect change if we’re always voting for the "lesser evil" candidate or party? Isn’t that just a race to the bottom — or, as we're seeing currently, a race towards genocide?

Well, in this conversation, we’re going to tackle all of those questions — and much more — with our guest, August Nimtz, Professor of political science and African American and African studies in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. Professor Nimtz is the author of The Ballot, The Streets, Or Both? published by Haymarket Books.

In this conversation, Professor Nimtz explores the question of electoralism as it relates to revolutionary left politics through a deep dive into the history of the Russian Revolution — examining how Marx, Engels, and Lenin approached electoralism and then applying their analyses and viewpoints to today’s situation.

What is the role of elections for the revolutionary left? How can we engage with electoralism without falling into what Professor Nimtz refers to as “electoral fetishism”? What about the "lesser evil" or "spoiler" phenomenon? How can we build a party for the working and oppressed classes without falling prey to opportunism or bourgeois distraction? What can we learn from the European Revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, and other historic attempts at revolution — both successful and unsuccessful? These are just some of the questions and themes we explore in this episode with Professor Nimtz.

Thank you to Bethan Mure for this episode’s cover art and to Noname for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

Further resources:
- The Ballot, The Streets, or Both? by August Nimtz
Related episodes:
Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support

If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship

For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.
5 November 2024, 4:00 am
23 minutes 25 seconds

[TEASER] Disabled Ecologies w/ Sunaura Taylor
This is a free preview of the episode "Disabled Ecologies w/ Sunaura Taylor." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

As a Patreon subscriber you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month (usually two or three), our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access to certain episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers—depending on which tier you subscribe to. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at Patreon.com/upstreampodcast or at upstreampodcast.org/support. Thank you.

Disability is a state, or an idea, or a process even that is often associated with human beings—somebody becomes “disabled” or is experiencing “disability.” We don’t typically attach this state of being or this process to things other than human beings, much less to, say, geological formations. When is the last time you heard somebody refer to a contaminated body of water as “being disabled?” But utilizing the language and framing of disability when thinking about the impacts of capitalism and imperialism on our bodies and our biosphere is not just a useful exercise—it’s a profound and crucial analysis.

The story that we tell in this episode is one of disabled ecologies and has its origins deep beneath the ground in Tucson, Arizona—but it stretches all across the globe, from Gaza to Yemen to Korea—from the cells in our bodies to the water that lives in aquifers many feet below the ground. And really, the story doesn’t actually originate in Arizona—it begins somewhere in Europe sometime between the 12th to 16th centuries, during the dawn of capitalism. But that’s a different story for a different time.

To tell the story and concept of disabled ecologies—a story of the web of interconnection between humans and the more-than-human world—we’ve brought on Sunaura Taylor. Sunaura is an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, a critical disability scholar and activist, an artist, and the author of two books: Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation, published by The New Press, and, most recently, Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert, published by University of California Press.

In this episode we tell the story of Tucson, Arizona’s aquifer and how it came to be contaminated by the US military. We trace the contours of death and destruction from the water beneath Tucson’s Southside neighborhood to the bodies living above it, from the chemicals that disabled ecosystems in Arizona and to the bombs drenched in those chemicals that were dropped on people across the Global South. We explore disability politics, environmental racism, classism, and the importance of organizing. And we celebrate the wins and the successes—not yet complete—of those in Tucson, Arizona who are taking on the capitalist state machinery to fight for justice and personal, community, and ecological healing.

Further resources:
- Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert
- Nature is Disappearing: The Average Size of Wildlife Populations has Fallen by a Staggering 73%
Related episodes:
Cover art: Sunaura Taylor

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29 October 2024, 3:00 am
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