Manufacturing Dissent Since 1996
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Episode 890

Math Incarceration

Mar 5 2016

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890matthewdesmond
Matthew Desmond

Eviction erases the home: Losing shelter on the edge of American life.

Sociologist Matthew Desmond explores the increasingly precarious role of housing in Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods, where low wages and high rents make eviction commonplace, and examines the ways in which eviction, like mass incarceration, destabilizes the economic stability and mental health of families already living on the margins of American life.

Matthew is author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City from Penguin Random House.

Interview transcript via Antidote Zine

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890toddwilliams
Todd Williams

Europe is building new fences and old alliances around the refugee crisis.

Our Man in Budapest, Todd Williams sees the refugee crisis splitting Europe along old lines - from the 14th century inspired Visegrád alliance between Central European states, to the ghosts of the Austro-Hungarian empire haunting inter-EU politics - and explains how Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán's "me against the world (except maybe Russia)" brand of individualism has paid off so far, but risks losing support from the rest of the world (except maybe Russia.)

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890matthieuaikins
Matthieu Aikins

Money can be ammunition: The US invades with guns, then cash.

Journalist Matthieu Aikins reports on the financial front of America's occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, where a flood of cash buys temporary peace but creates long term problems - from destabilizing corruption to enemies on the payroll, and explains why American foreign policy needs a radical re-imagining if the government hopes to create stability abroad.

Matthieu wrote the New Yorker piece The Bidding War: How a young Afghan military contractor became spectacularly rich.

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890andrewhacker
Andrew Hacker

Against math: The case for rethinking American education.

Educator Andrew Hacker explains why America's current mathematic education policy is failing students - from Algebra's barrier to higher ed for many students, to the STEM advocates dehumanizing classrooms to push for more testing and lower wages - and makes the case for teaching "numeracy," a greater arithmetical understanding of the numbers in our lives and workplaces, so we can get back to work innovating and pursuing our strengths.

Andrew is author of The Math Myth And Other STEM Delusions from The New Press.

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890lizafeatherstone
Liza Featherstone

Small tweaks here and there: On the limits of Hillary's feminism.

Journalist Liza Featherstone explains her definition of socialist feminism, and explains why Hillary Clinton's past and politics - from her rightward New Democrat manouvering in partnership with Bill, to her current role as advocate of the corporate status quo - reveals a shallow feminism unwilling to challenge the structural inequalities women outside the elite face on a daily basis.

Liza wrote recent pieces Hillary Clinton's Faux Feminism for Truthout and Why This Socialist Feminist Is Not Voting for Hillary for The Nation.

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890jeffdorchen
Jeff Dorchen

A shithead's guide to lying about racism and history on television.

Jeff Dorchen, bless his heart, watched CNN last week and saw the unfolding spectacle of white-power brown-noser Jeffrey Lord somehow turning reason and history around on itself to blame targets of racism for racism itself, victims of lynching (journalistic and actual) for their own lynchings, while letting everyone in power off the hook for their own actions. Good lord.

Here is the clip of Jones and Lord on CNN if you feel like you can stomach it.

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