Episode 903
Cross Purposes
Jun 4 2016
[Cop City] was built on this forest land, critical green space in the middle of a majority black working class neighborhood. It's referred to as the lungs of Atlanta. It's part of this broader stretch of forest land in Atlanta that the city itself committed to preserving…Over the course of the movement as the environmentalists who came to it initially from the angle of, “I don't really care where if you build this thing somewhere else, just don't build it on the forest.” A lot of them came to see that if you try to protect a forest, the police, the storm troopers show up to bulldoze you and to bulldoze the forest. I think a lot of people who actually originally really only saw the environmental side of things have come to also have a broader critique of policing because they've seen how the police have been deployed to crush this movement.
Micah Herskind returns to This Is Hell! to discuss his contribution to the new edited volume, No Cop City, No Cop World: Lessons from the Movement from Haymarket Books. After the interview, Jeff Dorchen delivers a live, in-studio "Moment of Truth."
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Jun 4 2016
Posted by Alexander Jerri
On This Day in Rotten History...
On this day in 1913 – (103 years ago) — at the prestigious Epsom Derby horse race in Great Britain, a women’s suffrage activist named Emily Davison ran out onto the track just as the lead horses were coming around a bend. Spectators noticed that she was holding a long piece of cloth, believed to be a banner bearing the slogan “VOTES FOR WOMEN.” Davison stood quietly as several horses passed — and then stepped directly into the path of a horse owned by King George V. She raised her arms in an apparent attempt to disrupt the race and capture media attention for the cause of women’s suffrage. But the fast-moving horse hit Davison, knocking both her and the jockey to the ground. The horse and the jockey recovered, but Davison died four days later of a broken skull and internal injuries. Another fifteen years would pass before British women were allowed to vote.
On this day in 1974 – (42 years ago) — in Cleveland, a special event called “Ten Cent Beer Night” drew some twenty-five thousand fans to a baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the Texas Rangers. An estimated sixty thousand cups of beer were sold, and by the sixth inning, with the Rangers leading 5–3, the drunken crowd was a security nightmare. Hot dogs, bottles, chairs, and firecrackers came raining out of the stands. Dozens of spectators, some of them naked, ran onto the field before being subdued. One woman tackled an umpire and tried to kiss him. A father and son entered the outfield and pulled down their pants to moon the crowd. But in the seventh inning, after Cleveland scored two runs to tie the game, the jovial, drunken mood turned ugly when two Cleveland fans threw a punch at a Rangers outfielder, and the outfielder punched back. It triggered an all-out riot as thousands of people poured onto the field — including players from both teams, armed with baseball bats. The bloody chaos went on for twenty minutes before umpires pulled the plug, and Cleveland was forced to forfeit the game.
On this day in 1989 – (27 years ago) — the Chinese political leadership decided it had finally had enough of the massive pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where for several weeks, thousands of students and other nonviolent protesters had been occupying the public space, demanding major government reforms and... read more
Jun 3 2016
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 1PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:10 - Writer Chris Lehmann explores the long business partnership between Christianity and capitalism.
Chris is author of the new book The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream from Melville House.
10:05 - David Skalinder says goodbye to the cultural quirks and social geography of London after 12 years.
David will be moving somewhere with just as distinctive an accent, he'll reveal that on his segment.
10:35 - Journalist Elizabeth Grossman reports on the underreported health costs of meat processing work.
Elizabeth wrote the In These Times story New Study Reveals Just How Brutal Meat and Poultry Work Is for Workers.
11:05 - Public interest advocate Wenonah Hauter traces the causes and consequences of America's fracking boom.
Wenonah is author of Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment from The New Press.
12:05 - Public policy researcher Kathleen Geier deflates Hillary Clinton's newfound economic populism.
Kathleen is one of the contributors to the collection False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton from Verso Books.
12:45 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen mulls over humanity's long-range goals.
Jeff got his subject to me a day early this week, so he's already up on planning for the future.
Jun 2 2016
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Here is what Chuck is reading to prepare for Saturday's show:
The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream - Chris Lehmann [Melville House]
New Study Reveals Just How Brutal Meat and Poultry Work Is for Workers - Elizabeth Grossman [In These Times]
Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment - Wenonah Hauter [The New Press]
False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton - Kathleen Geier [Verso Books]
May 28 2016
Posted by Alexander Jerri
On this day in 1830 – (186 years ago) — US President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the forced relocation of Native Americans from the southeastern United States. Spurred in part by white settlers’ desire for farmland, it reversed a US government policy, advocated by Presidents Washington and Jefferson, of respecting Native Americans’ land rights and encouraging their assimilation into white European-based culture. Jackson, for his part, opposed the idea of treating Indian tribes as sovereign nations with whom treaties could be negotiated. The forced expulsion, which came to be known as the Trail of Tears, involved moving tens of thousands of Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, and Muscogee people hundreds of miles from their ancestral homelands to areas west of the Mississippi River. Some tribes, such as the Seminoles, responded with armed resistance in battles with federal troops that claimed thousands of lives. Later, the series of forced journeys to the West under rugged and difficult conditions would prove deadly to many more thousands of Native American people.
On this day in 1934 – (82 years ago) — Oliva and Elzire Dionne, poor farmers living in rural Ontario, became parents of the first quintuplets ever to survive past infancy. News of the birth spread fast, and the Dionne quintuplets became a pop-culture sensation. The provincial government of Ontario declared the parents unfit, and took custody of the five infant girls, who soon became the stars of a tourist trap called “Quintland,” where thousands of paying spectators every day watched them eat, sleep, and play in a specially built observation center. The quintuplets also generated millions of dollars through commercial endorsements and appearances in Hollywood films. When they were nine years old, their parents regained custody, and in their teenage years they were treated with extreme discipline and allegedly were sexually abused by their father. When they turned eighteen, the Dionne quintuplets severed connections with their parents. One entered a Catholic convent and died there of a seizure in 1954; another died of a blood clot in 1970. After their marriages ended in divorce, the three remaining sisters chose to live together quietly in a house near Montreal, breaking their public silence in a open letter to the parents of septuplets in 1997. “Our lives have been... read more
May 27 2016
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 1PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:10 - Democracy advocate Kate Shea Baird explores the radical disobedience of Barcelona's BComú movement.
Kate wrote the essay The Disobedient City and the Stateless Nation for ROAR Magazine.
10:05 - Investigative journalist Steve Horn reports on the Clinton State Department's global fracking push.
Steve wrote the Intercept article Hillary Clinton’s Energy Initiative Pressed Countries to Embrace Fracking, New Emails Reveal with Lee Fang.
10:35 - Lawpagandist Brian Foley explains how the American middle class got priced out of legal representation.
Brian will talk about what happens when legal advice becomes more necessary to everyday life, and more expensive than ever.
11:05 - Sociologist Robert Vargas connects gang violence in Chicago to a turf war between local politicians.
Robert is author of the new book Wounded City: Violent Turf Wars in a Chicago Barrio from University of Oxford Press.
12:05 - Journalist Matthieu Aikins explains how a hospital bombing reveals America's contradictory role in Afghanistan.
Matthieu's latest writing is Doctors With Enemies: Did Afghan Forces Target the M.S.F. Hospital? for New York Times Magazine.
12:45 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen agrees: the best laid plans, et cetera!
We're still planning on calling him at 12:45PM Central though.
May 26 2016
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Here is what Chuck is reading to prepare for Saturday's show:
The Disobedient City and the Stateless Nation - Kate Shea Baird [ROAR Magazine]
Hillary Clinton’s Energy Initiative Pressed Countries to Embrace Fracking, New Emails Reveal - Steve Horn [The Intercept]
Wounded City: Violent Turf Wars in a Chicago Barrio - Robert Vargas [Oxford University Press]
Doctors With Enemies: Did Afghan Forces Target the M.S.F. Hospital? - Matthieu Aikins [New York Times Magazine]
May 21 2016
Posted by Alexander Jerri
On This Day in Rotten History...
On this day in 1924 – (92 years ago) — Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy students at the University of Chicago who had read too much Nietzsche at too young an age, set out to demonstrate their own superiority to the herd of humanity by committing what they thought would be the perfect crime. They kidnapped a teenage boy named Bobby Franks, beat and strangled him to death in the back of a rented car, and drove his body to Hammond, Indiana, where they dumped it in a culvert. Though Leopold and Loeb had spent months carefully planning the murder, they were soon found out and arrested — partly thanks to a lost pair of eyeglasses that police found near the body and traced back to Leopold. The famous Chicago defense lawyer Clarence Darrow persuaded the judge to spare Leopold and Loeb the death penalty. They instead received life sentences, and Loeb was later stabbed to death by a fellow inmate at Stateville Prison. Leopold’s glasses are now at the Chicago History Museum.
On this day in 1936 – (80 years ago) — Tokyo police arrested Sada Abe, a former maid, geisha, and prostitute, for the murder of a married restaurant owner named Kichizo Ichida, with whom she had disappeared for two weeks of sex in various inns and teahouses. Abe told the police that she and Ichida had consensually engaged in kinky practices including partial asphyxiation. In the heat of lovemaking mixed with jealousy, she had strangled him to death, and then cut off his genitals — which she was still carrying in her purse at the time of her arrest. The case made lurid headlines across Japan, and Abe served five years in prison. After her release she became something of a celebrity, and even published a bestselling memoir, but the public fascination finally drove her to take refuge in a cloistered nunnery, where she probably died sometime after 1971.
On this day in 1946 – (70 years ago) — during atomic weapons research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and in the presence of seven colleagues, a thirty-five-year-old Canadian physicist named Louis Slotin was performing a delicate experiment that involved holding a hemisphere of beryllium very close above a plutonium core in order to tease and measure the beginning of a nuclear reaction without actually allowing it to take place. Slotin was using a screwdriver to prop up the beryllium and... read more