Upstream

You can listen to the full episode with Roger Keeran and Joe Jamison by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscriber, not only will you get access to at least one bonus episode a month, usually two or three, as well as early access to certain episodes and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers, depending on which tier you subscribe to,...

Join the Upstream Patreon here:   https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast Below is a transcript of the update shared in this announcement episode — TL;DR: we've got tons of bonus episodes and other goodies as part of our new Patreon!  At least 1 bonus episode a month, usually 2-3 Early access to certain episodes Stickers If you've been following along with our episodes or on social media you've pr...

The past decade or so was marked by mass protests—in fact, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history, from Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring to the 2020 George Floyd uprisings and even more recently with millions upon millions pouring into the streets in support of Palestinian liberation. So why, then, have conditions not improved? Why have they, in many cas...

"The sign of a healthy economy should be a drinkable river," these are the words of Li An Phoa, an environmental activist and our guest for this episode. In 2005, Li An Phoa canoed the full length of the Rupert, a river in Canada. All along the way, she was able to drink water straight from the river. When she returned three years later, this was no longer the case. The river had been poisoned fro...

It may seem like a distant dream to imagine that the decades-long settler-colonial project which is Israel could finally end and transform into a state where all faiths, ethnicities, and cultures could thrive together in their diversity and equality. It seems like a distant dream because, as we all know, the reality that we're witnessing is the opposite of that — it's an escalation of an already r...

Happy Winter 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 Accidental Gods podcast, 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 generati...

The ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip has been front and center in the world's attention for the last couple of months, and it's important that we keep it there. But it's also important to remember that this latest escalation in violence is just that: an escalation, an increase in violence in a region where violence is the norm, not just militarily but also politically and economically — what...

Before the Zionist project and the state of Israel placed their boots on the neck of Palestine, this region was a multicultural, multi-religious land, where Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived side-by-side in relative peace and harmony.  And despite what Israeli forces propagandize, this so-called "conflict" in the Middle East is not some millennia-old, intractable holy war between two religions....

As the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians continues, it's important that we also continue to raise a magnifying glass to its perpetrators, not just looking at the state of Israel as a whole or the IDF—as blood-soaked as their hands are—but also looking at the some of the perhaps less publicly scrutinized institutions complicit in this genocide.  In this episode in our ongoing s...

For those of us living in the United States, today — what we call Thanksgiving — is a very significant holiday because, for some of us at least, it's a day to recognize and remember the violent, genocidal, settler-colonial history of the land we live on. Our lives here in North America are predicated on a history and a pattern that is repeating itself as we speak, most notably in occupied Palestin...

The Red Scare — perhaps most well known through the era of McCarthyism that dominated the social, political, and legal spheres of the U.S. in the 1950s — is actually much more than just a brief window of time where communists in the United States were vilified, criminalized, and blacklisted. The Red Scare is actually much more pervasive and longstanding, originating decades before McCarthyism and...

"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 him, but you've just got to hold your nose and vote for him — 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...

As we continue to work towards outer transformation, building the structures and models that will shape the transition to a post-capitalist society, it's also important to think about the inner transitions within ourselves — particularly, how we relate to one another personally and socially. How we show up together for a liberated future is the core theme of the book How We Show Up: Reclaiming Fam...

Before 1948, the land of Palestine was dotted with olive groves along rolling hills between mountains and the Mediterranean sea. Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Jews, and Christians all lived alongside one another in relative harmony, practicing agriculture and embroidery, or working in factories or along the coast in thriving port villages. Not to romanticize it too much, but in comparison to what...

What Is To Be Done? This is the question so profoundly posed by the Russian Revolutionary and Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, in his landmark text of the same name. Although it was written well over a century ago, this text, the questions it asked, and the paths forward that it provided, are just as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago. And just as urgent. What roles do spontaneity an...

What is the connection between capitalism, colonialism, consumerism, and Christianity? How do these systems and ideologies uphold and support one another? How do we work to dismantle them and cultivate in their place a decolonized culture and politics that supports Indigenous sovereignty, human health and wellbeing, and flourishing ecosystems? These are some of the questions that we'll explore tod...

Although the reference to war that you just heard could very much be real, actual military conflict — after all, our guest on today's episode has fought as a freedom fighter in a Kurdish militia in Syria — today's episode isn't about that. It's about a different kind of war: class war. Specifically, class conflict as it manifests in the workplace between employees and employers. You may already kn...

It was once very difficult for people experiencing poverty in the Global South to obtain credit and loans because they were seen as unable to provide adequate collateral. This situation changed with the emergence of microfinance, a model pioneered by Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh which has now been widely disseminated to countries around the world.  At the heart of the Grameen...

"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." Those words have been attributed to both the philosophers Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek decades ago, but they couldn't feel more true today. As we continue to stare down the double barrels of climate change and COVID without any meaningful response from those who rule over us, without organized and collective action that...

Do you ever feel like time is marching in a particular direction? Towards, say, rising global temperatures, mass extinctions, ever-increasing divisions — and ultimately, towards inevitable collapse? What if this particular perception of time contributes to our feelings of despair and hopelessness about our futures? What if it limits our ability to imagine and fight for a more just, equitable, and...

When you think about the philosophies and practices of Buddhism and Marxism, you might not immediately think that they have much in common. However, you might be surprised at how much overlap and complementary resonance there actually is between these two rich and beautiful traditions.  In this conversation, we've brought on Breht O'Shea , a Buddhist practitioner and Marxist political educator bas...

When we think of health under capitalism, it's easy to go straight to the fight for universal healthcare, and understandably — that battle is one of the most contentious and important in the ongoing class war between the mass of people and those who rule us, the capitalist class. But it would be a mistake to think that that's where our battle ends, that there isn't an expanded struggle over the wa...

Elements of capitalism have existed throughout history — in institutions like markets, class relations, ownership laws, credit systems, etc. But they were never dominant until they came together, escaping the isolated, laboratory conditions in which they once existed, to coalesce and form a world-dominating capitalist order.  How did the bubonic plague, the world-shattering pandemic occurring in W...

It's perhaps more important than ever in these especially tumultuous, lonely, and oppressive times that we continue to believe that another world is possible. Simply reimagining the way we raise our children, the homes that we dwell in, the property we horde or share, and the form of the families we choose — can have profound and long-term impacts on the quality of our lives and on the world we're...

The music we know today as jazz has deep and contested roots, but likely arose in New Orleans, Louisiana in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The music is based on the musical traditions of Africans, newly freed from slavery, and particularly by the tradition of the blues, an art form known for expressing the suffering and hardship of Jim Crow America.   In his book, Jazz and Just...