Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy Radicals

Green & Red celebrates (American) Labor Day . . . we talk a little about the history of the day, the co-optation strategy behind it, and current conditions for labor and unions in the U.S. Labor in the U.S. has momentum, and the organizing efforts and strikes are ramping up. ------------------------------------------------------ Outro- "The Preacher and the Slave" by Utah Phillips Links// +G&R: Ma...

In much of the developed world, waste is out of sight and out of mind. The world generates around 2 billion tons of municipal solid waste annually, with at least 33% of it not managed in an environmentally safe manner, according to a 2018 World Bank report. Though high-income countries only account for 16% of the world’s population, they generate about 34% of the world’s waste each year. A third o...

Like many corporations in Silicon Valley, Apple claims to be supportive of the LGBQT community. Even more than most as Apple's CEO Tim Cook is openly gay and the senior vice president of retail and former head of People (i.e human resources), Deirdre O’Brien, is also a member of the community. Every Pride month the company proudly claims “support” of the LGBQT community, it sells rainbow bands for...

We’re in an unprecedented rollback of civil liberties. States are passing laws to outlaw protests and direct action, charging non-violent protesters with “domestic terrorism” and legalizing the running over of people blocking traffic. State surveillance of activists has increased dramatically. Police budgets are getting astronomical increases to further militarize the state. In Atlanta, in the Sto...

The Mountain Valley Pipeline is a 300 mile long fracked gas pipeline cutting across the mountains and waterways of Appalachia. For the past five years, Appalachians Against Pipelines (@stopthemvp) has waged a fierce direct action campaign against it with tree-sits, blockades and civil disobedience. Along with battles being waged in the courts and the public eye, the campaign had successfully imped...

It's the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. With decisions to drop atomic bombs being discussed with the release of Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer," we thought we'd repost this episode from 2020. Enjoy! From the 2020 episode: "For years, large majorities of Americans have believed that the U.S. had to use the A-Bomb against Japan on August 6th, 1945 to end t...

On September 13th, 2001, G&R co-host Bob Buzzanco was fortunate to have one, if not the, first interviews w/ Noam Chomsky about the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Here the Green & Red Archives reprises that interview as an important document of the era and of Chomsky's history of dissent. ---------------------------------------------Follow Green and Red//+G&R Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpod...

We welcome back our friend, comrade and maker of trouble Jake Conroy (@_jakeconroy) to discuss the state of direct action. We talk about the state repression of activists in Atlanta and elsewhere, the lessons of 2020, strategies to win and whether there is anything to be optimistic about. Jake Conroy is the host of "The Cranky Vegan" on YouTube, and co-host of the podcast "Radicals...

Woody Guthrie is the most influential political singer and songwriter of the 20th Century. July 14th is Woody's 110th birthday, so we had a fantastic discussion with Mark Allan Jackson, a scholar on popular culture and music. He's author of "Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie" and editor of "The Honky Tonk on the Left: Progressive Thought in Country Music....

We've introduced a new feature . . . Green & Red Archives. We're putting out encore episodes of some older talks and events that Scott and I have organized or participated in over the years. Recently, to pay our respects to the great Daniel Ellsberg, we put up a speech he gave in Houston in February 2003 in which he spoke about many things, but in particular warned of the coming war ag...

James Risen is a two-time Pulitzer winner and investigative journalist who's just written a great book about Senator Frank Churck, *The Last Honest Man.* In this interview we go into detail about the impact of Vietnam on Church's political evolution, the creation of the Church Committee, the CIA's subversion and assassinations, the role of presidents--both Democratic and GOP--in subver...

Union organizing is on the rise. Headlines regularly highlight worker organizing drives at Starbucks, Amazon and other workplaces. Bosses and politicians like Joe Biden ( despite claiming to be the "most pro-union president ever" ) do everything they can to slow or stop organizing and strikes. To ensure strong unions, workers need to educated, organize and build power. This includes effe...

Trump’s public life has long been a target of comedians and satirists. His notorious thin skin often led to him lashing out on Twitter and Truth Social at the likes of Alec Baldwin and Seth Meyers. Like other authoritarian, or wannabe authoritarians, humor become a strategy to confront the Trump regime. As some experts say, comedy is an incredibly important method of non-violent protest and satire...

Today we're all saddened to hear that Daniel Ellsberg had died. Ellsberg's life is well-known, and he's one of the more important figures in the history of American dissent and radicalism. In February 2003, Green and Red co-host Bob Buzzanco was really lucky, and honored, to host Dan Ellsberg in Houston, where he talked about the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, the breakup of the Soviet...

We got together to discuss the war in Ukraine. Currently the US is continuing to send money and military equipment to Ukraine, but conditions on the battlefield are at a stalemate, with neither side able to win the war not on the verge of surrendering either. We discussed the levels of US aid to Ukraine, in terms of money and arms. We also discussed the profits made by American military suppliers...

In our latest episode, we talk with journalist Joshua Frank (@joshua_frank) about his book, " Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, " which details the story of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State and a $677 billion environmental cleanup site. We also talk about the resurgence of nuclear power, its toxic legacy and the deadly impacts of its ent...

With Trump's federal indictment around his hoarding of classified documents, we thought it'd be good to repost this episode from September. Enjoy! Donald Trump might finally be in real trouble, because of . . .  archivists? Green and Red shows the love to archivists and librarians! We had a good discussion in this episode about the way national security  documents are classified, who can s...

Since the murder of forest defender Tortuguita last January, we've seen an escalation on the Stop Cop City by both activists and police. 34 people have been charged with "domestic terrorism." Atlanta police have cracked down on the smallest of demos resisting the project. Meanwhile, it's been revealed that Cop City would cost twice the amount originally asked for by the Atlanta P...

"How to Blow Up a Pipeline" is an environmental-climate crisis action-thriller film. It's based on Andreas Malm's book of the same name. The New York Times called it a "cultural landmark" for its sympathetic portrayal of eco-terrorists. It deals with complex issues related to the climate crisis such as violence vs. non-violence, sabotage as self-defense and the necessit...

The U.S. is synonymous with forever wars and empire. U.S. troops sit in 70% of the world's nations on about 800 bases. Culturally, we're taught that this necessary and we shouldn't question it and the state sponsors tributes like Memorial Day to "thank the troops for their service" but which really give people a reason to have picnics and blow off fireworks. In our Memorial Day episode, we dive de...

The rise of militarism and the climate crisis are intertwined in a myriad of ways. The Pentagon is largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. The U.S. has hundreds of bases around world polluting nearby communities. Money that could be preparing for climate resilience and disaster relief is used to prepare for U.S. adventures abroad. Private military contractors and the Pentagon pla...

In this very special episode from 2020, we celebrate the shared birthday of iconic revolutionaries Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X, both born on May 19th (1890 and 1925, respectively). Join Scott and Bob as we go deep on two of the most important revolutionaries of the 20th century---their ideas, their organizations, their international leadership in the class and anti-imperial struggles, and the inspir...

HBO just premiered a new mini-series called "The White House Plumbers" starring Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux. It's based on a book by former Nixon domestic advisor Egil "Bud" Krogh, a key player in the administration's secret espionage unit, aka "The Plumbers," and his son Matt Krogh. G&R talked to Matt last year on the 50th anniversary of the Waterg...

Karl Marx would have been 205 today.  So we're re-sharing our birthday episode interview with Prof. David McNally about Marx from 2022. David McNally is one of the more important Marxist scholars in the world, and we talked to him today on the anniversary of Karl Marx's birth--May 5th, 1818.  McNally discussed a wide array of topics, including his introduction to Marxist thought, important...

It's the 52nd anniversary of the killings at Kent State University. In a special encore episode, we're reposting our episode from 2020. In this episode, we commemorate the anniversary of the tragic events of May 4th, 1970 at Kent State University, where agents of the state murdered 4 students and shot 9 others. Students, who'd been told the war was winding down in Vietnam, erupted in protest at ca...