KPFA - Against the Grain

Elites, especially in tech, in recent years have overtly espoused the repugnant idea 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. And historian Steve Fraser reflects on the class war of the Gilded Age. (Full-length presentation.)
Kim Phillips-Fein, Country of Lords: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight against Equality in America W. W. Norton, 2026
The post The Long Struggle Against Equality appeared first on KPFA.

How should we organize while the planet is burning and authoritarianism is intensifying? Chris Dixon reflects on lessons for the present, drawn from decades of activism on the left – for a moment where interest in left politics has grown significantly, yet while the organizational infrastructures of the left are greatly diminished.
Chris Dixon, For the Long Haul: How to Stay in the Fight for a Better World AK Press, 2026
Photo credit: Lori Shaull
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What was the most powerful technology introduced into schools in the past century? You might answer the computer, or something like Zoom, or even the slide projector. But scholar Antero Garcia argues that it was the humble yellow school bus. Buses have been central to the struggle to desegregate education. And school buses are a zone — and mainly an unnoticed one — in which many working class children and children of color spend a significant part of their day. (Encore presentation.)
Resources:
Antero Garcia, All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology University of Minnesota Press, 2023
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Longtime activist Annie Leonard discusses the rich tradition of protest in this country and why we need to defend it, in the face of anti-protest laws, SLAPP suits, and diktats from the Trump administration.
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Historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez argues that our immigration laws were put in place first to protect enslavers, and later elites more broadly, from the insurgent radicalism of migrants, starting with the Haitian Revolution. She looks at the modern construction of immigration control both as a type of counterinsurgency and labor control.
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