For today's show the Moles bring you an episode from our archive, which originally aired on July 14, 2014. Hosted by Frann Michel, the Moles explore debates over left strategies. The show includes musical selections from Bitch Magazine's mixtape of American Protest Music, and the individual segments linked below:
Worker Cooperatives: Bill Resnick and Norm Diamond discuss worker-cooperative businesses and their significance for the left. Do they prefigure the democratic production of socialism and empower participants? Or are they fragile small businesses that either become as cutthroat as other capitalist enterprises to survive, or else fail after having distracted their members from more promising mass organizing? Norm Diamond is an organizer and sometime Old Mole, as well as co-author of The Power in Our Hands.
After the interview, we hear some of the song that provides that book's title, "Solidarity Forever," performed by Emcee Lynx.
Storming the Bastille: In recognition of 14 July, Frann Michel comments on Bastille Day, the holiday commemorating the French Revolution of 1789. You can read her comments, with links, here.
Capitalism and Inequality: Our Well-read Red, Tom Becker reads from a recent Counterpunch article, "Does Capitalism Inevitably Produce Inequalities?" by Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer.
Buffer Zones and Bodily Control: Jan Haaken talks with Kate Raphael about the Supreme Court's decisions on reproductive rights, including McCullen v Coakley striking down no-protest buffer zones around reproductive health care clinics that provide abortions, on which Raphael recently commented for the Women's Magazine on KPFA, where Raphael is a producer. Kate and Jan also discuss the importance of public protest, the routine policing of fat women's bodies, and the need to return to a broad feminist agenda that goes beyond abortion rights to reproductive justice and beyond. After their talk, we hear some of "My Body Politic" by NC Music Love Army's album "We Are Not For Sale, Songs of Protest." Proceeds from album sales and live performances benefit Progress NC and Planned Parenthood of Central NC. For more information and to donate, please visit: ncmusiclovearmy.org.
- KBOO