The Dig Folgen

Workers have for years faced a neoliberal onslaught administered by a bipartisan establishment of technocratic elites who have ensured the redistribution of wealth into the hands of the rich. This is an elite that has abetted the decimation of labor unions and whose primary disagreement are over how severely those expelled from the labor market should be allowed to suffer. My guest today is journalist Sarah Jaffe. We’re going to talk about the state of work, particularly the manufacturing and retail workers she writes about in recent pieces at The Nation and racked.com. Thanks to our sponsors at Verso and University of North Carolina Press.

Donald Trump appears to many in the guise of a terrifying aberration. But in reality, he is the outcome of trends that are far too normal. We need movements to come together to not only defeat Trump but to take on the system that made him possible. Naomi Klein takes on Trump’s brand, and offers some thoughts as to how to tarnish it, in her new book “No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need.” Thanks to our sponsors at versobooks.com and at FSG, promoting the excellent new book “Locking Up Our Own” by James Forman Jr.

Mass incarceration controls poor people and populations that have been excluded from the labor market. Politically, tough-on-crime rhetoric has for decades been a tool for politicians to appeal to white voters’ racism. But what’s less discussed is the complicated history of criminal justice politics within black communities and amongst black politicians. Yale Law professor James Forman talks about his new book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Thanks to sponsors at thenation.com and https://www.versobooks.com