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Debt Relief

Under the weight of COVID-19, every lie we’ve been told about how the economy works is busting open, and our institutions are revealing themselves to be incapable of offering a path to recovery. Worse yet, many governments are using the crisis as a pretext for a punishing return to austerity.

Why? The answer can be summed up in one word: debt, an issue that Astra Taylor has spent the last several years organizing around as co-founder of the Debt Collective. Also a prolific writer and documentarian, Astra is the author most recently of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone and director of the companion film What Is Democracy? She has recently written about both the food system and debt crises as they intersect with the pandemic (and climate change, too).

On this week’s show, Kate and Daniel talk to Astra about what the coronavirus pandemic has to do with eating meat, whether we really need a technocratic savior, why debt relief is inherently tied to democracy, and more. Kate and Daniel also take a look at the toxic record of Larry Summers, and why Democrats shouldn’t let him anywhere near the party platform.

First aired on Dissent’s podcast Hot & Bothered.

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Designing The Green New Deal

To win a Green New Deal, we need to deepen and expand mass movements and coalitions. Last fall at the University of Pennsylvania, we organized a massive conference on Designing a Green New Deal, with contributions by academics, journalists, organizers, and designers. In this four-part mini-series, we bring you audio of the discussions.

To achieve rapid and equitable decarbonization will require immense practical wisdom, and a clear-eyed recognition of the obstacles in our path. We must also learn from the environmental justice movement, whose struggles invented the concepts behind the Green New Deal decades ago. This episode features UC Santa Barbara political scientist Leah Stokes, Vox writer David Roberts, WE-ACT Director of Legislative Affairs Kerene Tayloe, Esq, and Roosevelt Institute’s Director of Climate Policy Rhiana Gunn-Wright.

First aired on Dissent‘s podcast Hot & Bothered.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

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