Bill Resnick interviews David Cortright, warrior for peace, writer and Vietnam War veteran. David wrote the classic book Soldiers in Revolt on the organizing and achievements of the GI anti-war movement.

They discuss Trump’s ordering the U.S. military into U.S. cities including Portland to “dominate the streets” and clear out the George Floyd insurgency demonstrators that he described as looters vandals and terrorists.

Photo by Nathan Howard, courtesy of Willamette Week

First aired on KBOO Radio’s The Old Mole Variety Hour.

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

This episode of The Old Mole Variety Hour is hosted by Frann Michel, and includes these segments:

BLM Protests: 

Bill Resnick talks with Greg McKelvey and reflects on the protests locally and nationally, which continue and as of this weekend show no sign of diminishing.

Black Panthers and Public Health:

As part of their ongoing discussing about public health, Jan Haaken and Patricia Kullberg take up the Black Panther’s vision and practice of community-based health care, which the Panthers formulated in the wake of the urban uprisings of the mid-1960’s. By organizing in African American communities to challenge dominant ideas about Black bodies and the historic exclusion of African-Americans from access to mainstream medicine, they developed a radical public health practice that offers lessons for activists today.

Hyung Nam on Police Budgets:

Desiree Hellegers speaks with Hyung Nam with the Portland Metro People’s Coalition about Thursday’s hearing on the Portland Police Bureau budget, the upcoming vote this week, and the movement to defund the Portland Police.

First aired on KBOO Radio.

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

Patricia Kullberg hosts this episode of the Old Mole Variety Hour, which includes these segments:

Pandemic Recovery, or Not:

Bill Resnick speaks with Yeva Nersisyan, a progressive economist, in part 2 of a two part interview on the COVID crisis. In the first part they discussed the way the Trump regime has dealt with the economics of the crisis, by giving major corporations and finance great gobs of money but sending crumbs to the people. In Part 2 today they discuss the coming economy, very likely featuring considerable unemployment, evictions, homelessness, and families losing health insurance. They discuss the public programs necessary to support working people and the popular movements that will be necessary to force government action. Yeva Nersisyan is a Research Scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and an Associate Professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College.

Housing Precarity:

Jan Haaken speaks with local housing activist Marih Alyn-Claire, a long term organizer with SE Portland Tenants in Action and the Portland Metro Poor People’s Campaign. They discuss the worsening situation for local renters and the homeless as the public health and economic crises deepen.

World War Z:

Movie Moles Denise Morris and Victoria Saucedo review the 2013 apocalyptic zombie movie World War Z, and the book by Max Brooks, of the same name, that it was based on. The one is a work of well researched and well written fiction which presents a serious sociopolitical indictment of the failures of both regular citizens and official government responses to a worldwide pandemic that throws in the zombie trope as a means to propel the story. The other is a fairly typical Hollywood blockbuster that bears almost no resemblance in pacing or storytelling to the weighty themes laced throughout the source material of the book, yet still manages to tell its own story in a jarring and semi-effective way.

First broadcast on KBOO Radios‘s The Old Mole Variety Hour.

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

On this episode of The Old Mole Variety Hour titled “Pandemic Recovery..Or Not”:

Bill Resnick speaks with Yeva Nersisyan, a progressive economist, in part 2 of a two part interview on the COVID crisis.

In the first part they discussed the way the Trump regime has dealt with the economics of the crisis, by giving major corporations and finance great gobs of money but sending crumbs to the people.

In Part 2 today they discuss the coming economy, very likely featuring considerable unemployment, evictions, homelessness, and families losing health insurance. They discuss the public programs necessary to support working people and the popular movements that will be necessary to force government action.

Yeva Nersisyan is a Research Scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and an Associate Professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College.

Image courtesy of Medium.

First broadcast on KBOO Radio’s The Old Mole Variety Hour

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

Patricia Kullberg hosts today’s show – Environmental Degradation and Covid-19 – which includes these segments:

Environmental Degradation and Covid 19:

In the first of a two part interview, Bill Resnick speaks with microbiologist Dr. Michael Friedman, who teaches at the American International College of Arts and Sciences in Antigua and studies the relationship between environmental degradation and the emergence of human pathogens, like Covid 19. Dr. Friedman will discuss how deforestation and declining biodiversity coupled with live animal markets set the stage for the transfer of the virus from animal to human.

Contagion:

Movie Moles Jan Haaken and Denise Morris talk about “Contagion,” the 2011 film directed by Steven Soderbergh about a deadly worldwide virus outbreak that has generated a huge upsurge in public interest in recent weeks.  The film has been praised for its medical authenticity and its eerie prescience in forecasting some of the pathways of the corona pandemic. Jan and Denise provide their own reading of the film, including how the film portrays group dynamics of the pandemic and the limits of this Hollywood cautionary tale.

The Butterfly Girl:

Book Mole Larry Bowlden reviews Rene Denfeld’s latest novel, The Butterfly Girl. Denfeld displays once again her skills as an author, and her deep understanding of and compassion for street people, especially homeless children. Celia, the butterfly girl, living on the streets with her equally vulnerable child friends, imagines butterflies as her guardians, in all hues and shapes. It’s an enchanting novel that tells the truth about the horrors homeless children face and yet manages to give the reader hope.

Covid 19 and Human Rights:

“Well Read Red” Tom Becker reads from a piece published in Counterpunch by Catherine Rottenberg and Neve Gordon, entitled: The Corono Virus Conundrum and Human Rights. Rottenberg and Gordon write about the coronavirus pandemic’s potential to accelerate the already existent totalitarian drift of governments, both here and abroad, while also arguing for the possibility of a progressive uprising demanding an end to neoliberal and austerity politics. Rottenberg is Associate Professor of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham and Gordon is Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the School of Law in Queen Mary University of London.

First aired on The Old Mole Variety Hour.

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