Washington Babylon

Paul Buhle is a prolific historian and comic art editor. He is co-founder of the Oral History of the American Left. Kollibri terre Sonnenblume is an activist, former farmer, writer, and host of the Voices for Nature and Peace [https://radiofreesunroot.com/category/voices-for-nature-and-peace/] podcast. [https://washingtonbabylon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/become_a_patron_button@2x.png] [https://www.patreon.com/join/DCBABYLON/checkout?rid=0]Please consider supporting us with as little as $1 per month via our Washington Babylon Patreon account. Every little bit helps and will keep us delivering great coverage [https://washingtonbabylon.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PayPal.me-2019-fundraiser-banner-1024x361.jpg] [https://paypal.me/DCBabylon]

SUPPORT US VIA Patreon.com/DCBABYLON [https://www.patreon.com/DCBABYLON]! Ken and Andrew speak with Prof. Marcie Smith of John Jay College, author of a pair of articles published by Nonsite about nonviolence guru Gene Sharp [https://nonsite.org/author/msmith]. Over the past 45 years, Sharp’s philosophy of “revolutionary nonviolence” has become a hegemonic ideology within the various protest movements. But as Dr. Smith shows in her scholarship, Sharp was also a significant Cold War ideologue whose philosophy is more synoptic with neoliberalism than traditional radical Left praxis, be it Marxism, Leninism, or anarchism. Sharpian nonviolence has dominated the methods and strategies of protest, discouraging radicals to engage in taking state power, precisely at the moment when reactionary forces have waged a successful campaign to take control of government so to demolish the welfare state created during the New Deal to Great Society governing coalitions.

This week, Ken and Andrew speak with Dr. Micheal Meeropol, an economics and history professor with a long history of engagement in racial justice activism. His birth parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were political prisoners executed by the state, and his adoptive parents, Abel and Anne Meeropol, were progressive songwriters, with Abel authoring Billie Holiday’s classic anti-lynching ballad “Strange Fruit.” Andrew also has a brief conversation with Dr. Johnny Eric Williams about the spike of anti-racism book sales charted by the New York Times Bestseller List [https://washingtonbabylon.com/?p=22779]. And is that Unrepentant Marxist Louis Proyect making a cameo?

This week we bring you the one and only Noam Chomsky! We discuss the Sanders campaign, the current political landscape, hopes for the future, internationalism, and more!

This week Andrew and Sam Husseini discuss Vote Pact, a voter organizing strategy that offers a small-d democratic third option which both negates the spoiler accusation and is not a form of vote swapping.