Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy Radicals

One of the eminent intellectuals/activists of our time, Staughton Lynd, died yesterday, and Scott and Bob paid tribute to him as the introduction to a reprise of his 2020 interview.  Staughton was the first interview on Green & Red, during its second episode, and he discussed various issues regarding civil rights and especially labor organizing.  (Errata: It was Herbert Apthecker, no...

We’re currently seeing a drive towards the growth of the renewable energy (RE) sector. We’re seeing a new iteration of corporate liberalism which allows the state to expand markets, in this case for renewable energy, but at a cost related to justice and health of communities in or near areas extracting materials for the RE sector.  The most recent example of this is the Inflation Reduction Ac...

Over 36,000 academic workers across the University of California's (UC) 10-campus system held a strike authorization vote. The vote passed with nearly 98% approval. The strike will begin on November 14th. Workers are demanding include increased compensation, access to sustainable transportation, more childcare assistance, and increased job security. Scott talks with Galen Liang, a grad student and...

The 27th meeting of the United Nations Climate talks, or COP27m is  happening in Sharm El Sheikh, a coastal resort town in Egypt. The  gathering is happening amidst a crackdown on Egyptian civil society by  the government around climate issues and food shortages.    Scott gets an update with a climate activist on the ground in Sharm  El-Sheikh.   ———————  Li...

The Democratic Party is about to get pummeled in the mid-term elections next week.  Scott and Bob followed up on their recent discussion with Noam Chomsky on the devolution of the Democrats and their abandonment of working class issues since the 1970s (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Ngm...) by discussing the their failure to offer up a real resistance to the Republicans. We take...

60 years ago this month, in October 1962, Americans anxiously heard news for almost two weeks straight about the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba, less than 100 miles away from the U.S.  Nuclear War was possible, to some imminent. In this episode we offer a brief history of the Cuban Missile Crisis and, more importantly, a remembrance and reconsideration of the events of October and JFK ac...

Mike Hellman is country and americana musician writing songs, putting out albums and playing gigs in Texas, California and beyond. But he also has organized with the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) for over a decade. He's been part of campaigns against Starbucks and Whole Foods a long time before the current campaigns against those corporate giants.  Flying solo, Scott talks with o...

The "hijab protests" in Iran have continued and intensified for weeks now, and we talked to a journalist and scholar with a longtime familiarity with the country.  Giuseppe Acconcia, @stradedellest,  professor at Padua University, has been a journalist working out of Iran and is the author of "The Great Iran," and most recently co-authored, with Lorenza Perini, of "The Arab Uprisings: Pr...

The "Mendocino War" was a bloody conflict between the Yuki tribe and white settlers in Northern California. White settlers raided and stole Yuki lands and massacring hundreds of Yuki in the process. The Yuki fled to "The Mountain" in what is now known as the Jackson Demonstration State Forest to escape the violence. Those villages in the forest are now sacred sites to the Coastal Yuki and Northern...

In this episode, we get into the legacies  of Columbus and America's  genocide of Indigenous people with Prof.  Michael Oberg (@nativeamtext),  the larger problems of the way Native  American History is taught, and  why a 1619 Project is needed for  American Indians too. We start off with a clip from the  Sopranos highlighting the conflict in the Italian-Ame...

Just after Giorgia Meloni's far-right Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) party won enough votes to likely make her Prime Minister, we had a great conversation with Francesco Mazzucotelli, a political scientist at the Universita di Pavia in Italy, a longtime journalist, and a 2018 candidate for senate for the Liberi e Uguali party.   Francesco, Scott and Bob discussed the recent Italian ele...

Republicans go to war . . . Democrats go to brunch! The past 50 years have seen a dramatic shift to the far-right in American politics.  On the heels of the 1972 McGovern debacle, the Democrats all but abandoned their New Deal heritage and moved swiftly to a stronger pro-business position and embraced Neo-Liberalism.  They abandoned class politics and giving priority to workers and the p...

The BBC has released a new podcast series called "Burn Wild."  It tells the story of radical environmental movements 20 years ago, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the subsequent "Green Scare."  There is much flawed analysis in the series to say the least. Other critiques include the juxtaposition of right-wing extremists and left-wing "extremism," the imbalance of law enforcement an...

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 see them, how they're de-classified,  and Trump's theft of vital top secret documents that prompted the FBI to search Mar-a-Lar...

The last of our "Best of's" for a minute.  We'll be back with new episodes next week.  In the meantime, here's our 2020 "Remembering 911" episode for the anniversary of September 11th.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9/11 changed our world.  Scott  (@sparki1969) and Bob (@bobbuzzanco) had a spirited discussion on the  impact of the events of September 11,...

Not unlike our (not so) esteemed leadership in Congress, Green and Red is out on a little summer recess.  We will be back with new episodes soon. In the meantime here's a "Best of Green and Red" episode from March 2020 on populism and the New Deal. ------------------------------------------------------------------- From March 2020: "The world is in full blown panic around the COVID19 pandemic...

Not unlike our (not so) esteemed leadership in Congress, Green and Red will be out on a little August recess.  We will be back with new episodes soon. In the meantime here's a "Best of Green and Red" episode from June 2020 on Trump vs. his generals. It's a repost referenced in last week's episode on divides in the Ruling Class.  -----------------------------------------------------------...

No more Panic Porn! Many/most liberals and much of the left has been panicking and in fear over "fascism" and "coups" for the past couple years--we call it "panic porn"--but Green & Red has been analyzing the objective conditions set by the ruling class and have been pointing out that key elements of the elite who run America, especially in the military and Wall Street, opposed Trump and would...

Bob had a great talk (Scott's on assignment) with Professor Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt (@hunnicuttwolfe) of Cal State-Stanislaus, author of  *The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy: Oil and Arab Nationalism in  Iraq* about Iraqi history from the Ottoman Empire to the present, with  an emphasis on the period from 1958 to the 1970s.   Before Iraq became the target of a massive U.S...

From the 1980s through the 2000s,  there was a period of growth in militant environmental and animal rights movements. This movement had a radical anti-capitalist politic that went after corporations waging war on the earth, people and animals. It's escalating tactics included property destruction and arson. In response, industry, government and the FBI worked to crack down on these radical m...

"The Godfather" movies are on the short list of the most consequential  American films ever, not just for their cinematic quality but because  they've become a textbook for politics as well.  In this episode Scott  and Bob celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the release of the movie with  a discussion of the way the movie is a deep analysis of American  capitalism and...

In May 2020, we saw millions hit the streets over the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. It’s been argued to be the largest protests in history.  The government moved in immediately to repress those taking the streets against the police and racial violence.  We saw intense protest, resistance, violent repression by police and other forces and media attention in Minneapolis, Lo...

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 an English professor at Middle Tennessee State and author of "Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie" and editor of "The Honky Tonk on the Left: Progress...

We’ve gotten a lot more donors this year and we really appreciate it and  we’d like to have a few more. We run on a shoestring budget but we do  have to pay for some tech help and promotions. G&R co-host Bob Buzzanco has a number of history books that he's edited or written that he's donating to the G&R cause. So, we're running a special Green and Red fundraising event! The books...

In our latest, we're joined by our friend and comrade Jake Conroy  (@_jakeconroy) and his co-host Tylor Starr (@TylorStarr).  We talk about  their new podcast, Radicals and Revolutionaries, which documents the history of direct action in the animal rights movements. We get into history, strategy and direct action.  All of our favorite things to talk about!   Radicals and R...