KPFA - Against the Grain

At every step of the process in which communities are policed and punished, states, localities and other public entities benefit financially, along with their partners in the private sectors. Scholars Joe Soss and Joshua Page describe the multitude of ways in which the poorest people — not just individuals, but the communities around them — became a cash cow for extracting revenue for the state.
Joshua Page and Joe Soss, Legal Plunder: The Predatory Dimensions of Criminal Justice University of Chicago Press, 2025
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It’s largely invisible to most of us, but without the industries and workers that drill or mine the world’s raw materials, and the arteries of transport that bring petroleum and other resources across the seas, global capitalism would sputter to a halt. Scholar and writer Laleh Khalili has traveled on the system’s massive container ships and describes in unflinching terms the inner workings of resource extraction.
Laleh Khalili, Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy Verso, 2025
Photo credit: NOAA’s National Ocean Service
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Conventional wisdom holds that the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and early 60s neglected the question of police violence, only to be remedied by the Black Panther Party and decades later by the Movement for Black Lives. But historian Joshua Clark Davis argues that that assumption is inaccurate. He also discusses the extensive involvement of local police departments, above and beyond the FBI’s COINTELPRO, in disrupting and repressing the Civil Rights movement.
Joshua Clark Davis, Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back Princeton University Press, 2025
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Ancient Greece and Rome are venerated throughout our society — including on the far right. Is this a misappropriation and misuse of the ideals of Greco-Roman antiquity? Classical scholar Curtis Dozier argues that when white nationalists appeal to ancient thinkers to justify their reactionary ideas, there is surprisingly much to draw from.
Curtis Dozier, The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate Yale University Press, 2026
Pharos – Doing Justice to the Classics
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The struggle for labor across the color line has often been credited to white activists. However, as sociologist Cedric de Leon argues, the black labor movement, independently organized outside of the official union movement, propelled such efforts. He discusses the black labor movement’s divisions, including in the face of the state’s attempt to destroy it.
Cedric de Leon, Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity UC Press, 2025
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