Green & Red: Podcasts for Scrappy Radicals

“The remedy” to labor troubles, said J. West Goodwin, a Missouri businessman and newspaperman “is a counter organization.” In a fascinating conversation around the history of capital and labor, we dive deep into the business sector's remedies to workers organizing unions, blacks seeking greater liberation and other forms of progress. We talk about laws criminalizing syndicalism and the Industrial...

It's a bleak outlook for America these days-- mass shootings, the end of Roe vs. Wade, inflation, culture wars and the rise of the far right.  Bob and Scott take some time to talk about it. We get into the culture wars, the National Rifle Association, guns in Texas, organizing, mutual aid, direct action and the need for a real opposition.  ------------------------ Outro// "Hard Times" by...

We started as a couple of kids with a big silky smooth dream-- the Green and Red Podcast. Over the past two years, we've built a small grassroots radical media outlet that has brought you interviews with Noam Chomsky, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, sociologist Alex Vitale, economist Richard Wolff and more. We've talked about issues of the environment, labor, popular culture, war and peace, public...

The ruling class follies continue both at home and abroad. Another $40 billion going to aid the Ukrainian war effort while there are baby formula and COVID vaccine shortages in the U.S. Plus George W. Bush gives a speech at the Bush Institute about stolen Russian elections (what about Florida 2000?) and illegal invasions of Iraq... er... Ukraine..  In all seriousness, the brutality of militar...

Repost of our 2020 episode celebrating M19! In this very special episode, 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-...

Texas' right wing establishment has waged war on abortion and abortion  providers for many years. In 2013, Texas HB 2 closed 23 abortion clinics  and led to an 11 hour filibuster by State Senator Wendy Davis and mass  occupation of the state capital by pro-choice protestors. Earlier this  year, the passage of SB 8 put bounties on anyone associated with  providing an aborti...

Last week, a draft of a brief overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to Politico causing an uproar in many sectors. This decision will put the health and safety of millions of women in jeopardy. Predictably, the establishment focused on catching the leaker. Outrage hit Twitter.  And the left hit the streets. In a series of episodes, Green and Red will focus on how grassroots direct action and mut...

The Green and Red Seminar on the war in Ukraine continues! As the head of NATO says that the allies are prepared to support the Ukraine war effort for years to come, and Biden asks Congress for another $33 billion in war aid, we take a look at the anti-war movement over the past decades.  From Bush's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to Obama's drone wars to military build-ups in Asia and ea...

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 texts to use to discover Marx's writings, the importance of Marx's concept of "alienated labor," his formulation of class struggle, and wh...

Happy May Day tender comrades!   Here is a repost of our May Day episode from 2021. In it, Bob and Scott talk about the history of May Day from pagan rituals to the Haymarket Affair to International Workers' Day to Labor Day and Loyalty Day.  And we discuss how the ruling class's "war on the left" fits into the politics of May Day vs. Labor Day. Spend an hour of your International Workers' Day wee...

We're in the midst of a new era of momentum and militancy around labor organizing. We're seeing headline grabbing organizing campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon shifting the political landscape. But beyond Starbucks and Amazon, union organizing has been spreading to sectors across the country.      In our latest episode, we talk with labor organizer and writer Daisy Pitkin (@dais...

The first Earth Day was in 1970 after decades of conservation and environmental advocacy from Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" to real life monkey wrenchers in the deserts of the American West. Since then, like so many other things, it has become by co-opted by corporations, politicians and non-profits looking to do well with environmentally minded consumers, voters and donors. In reality, change a...

Recently G&R co-host and award-winning historian Bob Buzzanco debated Oliver Stone's writer on his documentary "JFK Revisited," James DiEugenio, about Stone's theory that the "deep state" had JFK killed because he was going to withdraw from Vietnam, thaw relations with Castro, and end the Cold War.   They discussed Kennedy's actual policies as president, his aggressive actions in Vietnam...

Part two of our deep background on the NATO liberals.    In this episode, we get into the post-Cold War presidencies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The post-Cold War Clinton era is particularly instructive for U.S. foreign policy and empire today. Keeping Europe divided, Russia weak and flexing the military industrial complex muscle (i.e. massive defense budgets) on "teacup...

In the past ten years, we’ve also seen state repression of movements coming out of Occupy Wall Street, the Ferguson uprising, Standing Rock, Line 3 and various anti-Trump movements. Green and Red has had numerous episodes on radical movements and state repression of political movements from antifascists in Portland and Austin to water protectors at Line 3 to DAPL saboteur Jessica Reznicek.  B...

In December, the Pentagon got a $768 billion budget approved, despite the withdrawal from Afghanistan, with the aim to counter China and build Ukraine's military strength. This has been a bonanza for arms makers like Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Northrup Gruman.   Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes popped the champagne open when saying "“…[W]e  are seeing, I would say, opportunit...

Part two of our wide-ranging conversation with our good friend Prof. Clinton Fernandes on the U.S. empire and Russia's invasion of the Ukraine. In this second part, we also discuss the tensions in the South China Sea and the impact of the Ukraine conflict on Australia's coming election. Finally, we get an update on Clinton's law suit trying to get the Australian government to release documents sho...

Our latest episode on the Ukraine is a wide-ranging conversation with our good friend Prof. Clinton Fernandes on the U.S. empire and Russia's invasion of the Ukraine. In part one, we discuss everything from Russia and Putin's adventures in Georgia and Ukraine to the lack of strategic empathy from the West (particularly the U.S.). We break down the motives of the U.S. drive to expand NATO and...

We've got another briefing on the larger contexts of the current  conflict between Ukraine and Russia.  Sure, Putin is a horrible and brutal force in the world and the attack on Ukraine is indefensible, but we ignore the larger contexts at our own peril.     We talk about the impact of the breakup of the USSR, the privatization of the Russian economy, the sense of western/...

Welcome back to G&R co-host Bob Buzzanco!  We wish we had a happier story to share today for his return.    This week, Russia invaded the Ukraine sparking the largest land assault on the European continent since World War Two. The markets went into turmoil. The price of oil and gas went up. Political and media establishments scrambled to act on what's next.  Biden moved 700...

For a month, a group of truckers, anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and  various elements of Canada's far right occupied the streets around Canada's capital in Ottawa. They've also occupied border crossings between Canada and the U.S. The so-called "Freedom Convoy" has demanded  everything from an end to vaccine mandates and mask mandates to the jailing of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau...

California prides itself on being more progressive than most on solving the issue of the climate crisis. Whether it's phasing out the internal combustion engine or promises to take on the state's many oil extraction sites. There is a notion of "climate exceptionalism" in California's liberal ruling elite.    But the California state government is captured by oil interests like many others. The pro...

Last year, Indigenous women led movements waged a fierce campaign to stop  Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline. Police escalated in a multitude of ways (felony charges, high bails, rubber bullets, tear gas, etc) against water protecting pipeline opponents.    Thanks to the bold reporting of outlets such as The Intercept and Unicorn Riot, we're still finding out the strategies that the Canadian oil giant an...

Another professor from Collin College has been fired in retaliation for  speaking out against President Neil Matkin's continued rejection of  their First Amendment rights and their concern for safety on campus.   Michael Philips has now been fired along with Suzanne Stateler Jones,  Audra Heaslip, and Lora Burnett, all in violation of their First  Amendment righs.  Ph...

Rising tensions in eastern Europe between the U.S. and Russia over the Ukraine have dominated the news.  We discuss the situation with scholar and retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich.   We discussed why the U.S. is so concerned, and hawkish, about Russia and Ukraine--Russophobia?   We talked about the role of NATO in this current crisis.  We talked about the man...