KPFA - Against the Grain

Elites, especially in tech, over at least the last decade have espoused repugnant ideas arguing that extreme social inequality is not only inevitable, but desirable. Acclaimed historian Kim Phillips-Fein argues that there is a long US tradition promoting wealth inequality that has once again moved from the shadows into the mainstream.
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The post Fund Drive Special: The Long Struggle Against Equality appeared first on KPFA.

Calling 911 can save lives. But all too often phoning the emergency hotline leads to maiming or death at the hands of the police. Rebecca Neusteter describes the origins of the emergency response system as a means of quashing social unrest, out of the urban uprisings of the 1960s.
Rebecca Neusteter, 911, What’s Your Emergency? The Promise and Peril of Crisis Response The New Press, 2026
Photo by Yassine Khalfalli on Unsplash
The post When 911 Calls Go Wrong appeared first on KPFA.

Some of the most important struggles for health justice have taken place in New York City — from the Young Lords to ACT UP, from battles to make school lunches free to the Fight for $15 for low wage workers. Public health scholar Nicholas Freudenberg discusses the lessons he’s gleaned from fifty years of activism, including the need to start with people’s daily living conditions.
Nicholas Freudenberg, Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since the 1960s Columbia University Press, 2026
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
The post New York City and Health Justice appeared first on KPFA.

We live our lives often through the things we buy — presuming the more we have, the happier we’ll be. Have we always thought this way? Economist Mark Joseph Stelzner examines the need for ever more consumption under capitalism — and reflects on what our lives might be like if we exchanged the quest for goods for more leisure.
Mark Joseph Stelzner, Growth Machines: On the Hollow Joys of Consumption in the Desert of Economic Life University of Chicago Press, 2026
Photo by Obi on Unsplash
The post All Consuming appeared first on KPFA.

Almost 98% of all state executions in the U.S. are conducted by lethal injection, purportedly a quick and painless death. Corinna Barrett Lain states nothing could be further from the truth — but that it’s in the interests of the killing state that we imagine it that way.
Corinna Barrett Lain, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection NYU Press, 2025
Photo by Raghavendra V. Konkathi on Unsplash
The post When the State Kills by Lethal Injection appeared first on KPFA.