AlternativeRadio

Despair. We all experience it. It can lead to demoralization. What’s the antidote? Engagement. Finding kindred spirits and acting collectively. Building bonds of solidarity. Working toward the common good. John Lewis, long-time Georgia Congressperson and civil rights icon had this advice: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some...

As a political ideology, fascism developed in Mussolini’s Italy, a century ago. At its core, fascism conjures up a mythic past. There is nostalgia for a so-called purer time. Its advocates deploy a raw appeal to nationalism. Opponents are demonized. Politicians spew racist dog whistles. Minorities are scapegoated. Fascists use fear, one of the most powerful human emotions, to manipulate people. And there is always the implied threat and actual use of violence. The great radical historian...

We are in “unchartered territory,” as the media incessantly remind us. We are on the eve of an election amidst a pandemic. The president has declared in advance that the election is a “hoax,” it is “rigged.” He would not even commit to saying he would honor the outcome. “We’ll see what happens,” he says. He knew early on how deadly the coronavirus was, telling Bob Woodward it’s a “killer“ and a “plague.” And yet in public continued with happy talk: “It’ll just go away…It’s fading…And we have...

It’s axiomatic that political discourse in the U.S. is becoming more and more extreme. There’s even talk of a coup. In textbook coups, martial law is declared. The internet and phones go dead. The opposition is jailed or killed. This is how we think of authoritarian regimes beginning. Yet Steven Levitsky says, “Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders.” He lays out a four-part test for identifying authoritarian leaders: rejecting democratic institutions,...

India is often called the world’s largest democracy. Narendra Modi is the prime minister. He was elected in 2014 and again in 2019. Prior to becoming prime minister, he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, where in 2002, a massacre of Muslims took place. Modi denied any involvement. But the State Department was not convinced and banned him from traveling to the U.S. He is a longtime member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the RSS. “Its founding ideologues,” Arundhati Roy, says,...

Legal battles for gender equality didn’t begin with the Women’s Movement of the 1960s. But it laid the groundwork for the historic 1972 Supreme Court decision that made gender discrimination unconstitutional. That case was successfully argued by then-38-year old Brooklyn-born attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It set precedent for another ruling a few years later that men should also be eligible for their wives’ survivor benefits. She won five out of the six gender discrimination cases she argued...

What is fascism? Michael Parenti, author and historian says, “Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to secure the rational ends of class domination.” Fascism flourishes in times of economic insecurity and cultural backlash. Opportunistic politicians offer up a platter of racism, xenophobia and hyper-nationalism. They stoke fear and...

The world is at a crossroads. The COVID-19 pandemic, with hundreds of thousands dead across the globe and counting, has triggered a disastrous economic situation for millions. At some point, we will be in a post-pandemic world. What will it look like? More of the same old same old? Or can we imagine a different world? Where the planet and its people are nurtured and protected and there are no longer huge concentrations of wealth and grotesque inequalities. Can pressure from the streets break...

Remember the popular TV series - The X-Files? FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully doggedly investigate unexplained, mind-bending cases known as "X-Files." The show’s signature line was, “The Truth is Out There.” We probably need Mulder and Scully back on the job examining recent comments from the current president about “thugs wearing black uniforms” boarding planes. “They are people controlling the streets. People that you’ve never heard of. People who are,” the president said,...

Talk about an odd couple. The 45th president and the Christian right. For the president, renowned for his wayward ways, the support from some of the mega-churches and their high priests form a key part of his base. According to a Pew poll, over 80% of white evangelicals said they will vote for the current occupant of the Oval Office. The Christian right looks the other way when confronted with the facts. For them, it’s all about opposing same-sex marriage and abortion, funding...

Representative John Lewis of Georgia, an icon of the struggle for civil rights, social justice and equality died in mid-July. He was called the “conscience of the Congress.” His passing evoked memories of the March on Washington and the bridge in Selma. And attention on the struggles today: the new Jim Crow, the Black Lives Matter movement and the widespread demonstrations protesting the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In the tradition of his mentor Dr. King, John Lewis was...

A famous Russian revolutionary once said, “'There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” The pandemic certainly feels that way. We are in limbo. The uncertainty is bewildering. What can we expect? What must we do? There are no clear answers. Dr. Stephen Bezruchka presents a novel view of the novel virus. What if we are a cancer on this planet? The human species fits the definition of a cancer. We have practiced cancer denial and are paying the price...

The drugs and war nexus is an old story involving not just criminal gangs but states. Just go back to the U.S. wars in Vietnam and Laos in the 1960s and 70s or in Central America in the 1980s or more recently in Afghanistan to see the connections. Alliances with drug dealers and cartels were part of Washington’s playbook albeit mostly secret. Covert operations need covert funding and drugs are always a handy cash crop. Culturally, the topic always attracts attention. There have been...

The news about the pandemic goes from bad to worse. The term another grim milestone in the number of infections and deaths has become almost commonplace. But at some point, hopefully not too far away, the crisis will pass. Where will we be? The world will surely be different. There is so much uncertainty. Kim Stanley Robinson, the well-known science fiction writer, says, "The future isn’t cast into one inevitable course. On the contrary, we could cause the sixth great mass extinction event...

For more than a year the public was complaining about the drinking water in Flint, Michigan. The water was so pungent and foamy that one priest had stopped using it for baptisms. The state’s Department of Environmental Quality, confidently announced, “Anyone who is concerned about lead in the drinking water in Flint can relax.” Flint is a majority African-American city. In nearby Detroit, 85% black, schools are heavily infested with rats, roaches and mold. Might those conditions affect the...

The great African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois in his 1903 classic book, The Souls of Black Folk, wrote, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” Well, here we are in the 21st century and the color line and racial injustice remain front and center. Some white people have acknowledged racism as a major issue. Others when challenged are defensive and uncomfortable. The murder of George Floyd brought out multi-racial demonstrations against police...

White privilege. What’s that? White people have choices and advantages simply because of the color of their skin. Many whites are unaware of it. Peggy McIntosh, a noted women’s studies scholar in her classic essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack,” wrote: “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on...

Is it starry-eyed to think about not just regime change but something much larger: system change? The systemic failures of the current crisis and the calamitous fissures it has exposed has raised the question of the efficacy of reform, half-measures and tinkering around the edges. When under duress, the system is agile enough to make some concessions while crucially leaving the fundamental structures of power intact. From the outside systems can look invincible and impregnable. Just tell...

The five biggest corporations in the world by market value are Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook. Their head honchos the Zuckerbergs, Gates and Bezos make the Vanderbilts, Morgans and Carnegies of the Gilded Age look like pikers. These “masters of mankind” as Adam Smith called them, love to pay lip service to competition. But you know what? They want absolute domination and control. Monopoly is not a board game for them, it is the essence of their very being. And they rely on...

What will tomorrow bring in the age of COVID-19? There is so much uncertainty. Arundhati Roy sees an opportunity. She writes, “Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one...