Category: 3-SometimeCommentary

Somewhere between white supremacists marching, an unbearable number of wrongful deaths of black youth, and police officers being gunned down in broad daylight sits the American citizen – overwhelmed by the escalating anger, confused by what’s true and what isn’t, not knowing where to turn to figure it out. Forced to choose between media sources that are increasingly partisan and without the time to launch our own research projects, we’re left paralyzed, polarized and more than a little bit angry ourselves.

In partnership with Florida Humanities Council and the Poynter Institute, we’re bringing you three powerful voices – two seasoned journalists and one student of human nature – to confront this central challenge of our time. Just how should those who write “the first draft of history” tell these stories in a diverse democracy like ours? Can a media that fans the flames of racial division also provide the inspiration we need to transcend it?

Joining us are:

Alexios Mantzarlis, Director of Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network, The Poynter Institute

Eric Deggans, TV Critic, NPR

Cory Clark, Director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project and a Visiting Scholar in the Psychology Department at University of Pennsylvania

Paris Marx is joined by Eden Medina to discuss Project Cybersyn, a technological system created by Chile’s socialist government in the 1970s to manage production, and what it can teach us about political technology and innovation outside the Global North.

Eden Medina is the author of “Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile.” She’s also an associate professor at MIT and the Rita E. Hauser Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Follow Eden on Twitter as @edenmedina.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• In 2020, Marian Schlotterbeck spoke to Jacobin about the fifty year anniversary of Salvador Allende’s election.
• Independent and left-wing delegates won major victories in the election for Chile’s constitutional assembly, making it hard for right-wing delegates to stall the process.
• In October 2020, Chileans voted overwhelmingly to draft a new constitution, following protests that began in 2019.
• Dictator Augusto Pinochet oversaw a brutal regime from 1973 to 1990, and the crimes of that period are still being prosecuted.

Support the show

Hello!

This week we talked with Joshua Leifer, an editor at Jewish Currents, about the ongoing military violence against Palestinian communities in Gaza this past month (for those keeping track, Josh helped organize that Jewish Current-TTSG webinar from two weeks ago!)

(Tammy unfortunately had to sit out today’s episode with a last-second conflict 😔 )

We talk to Josh about his recently co-authored explainer on the clashes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, resistance from Palestinian groups and the Israeli Left, and the role of Biden and US (and international) solidarity.

We also discuss his colleague Peter Beinart’s essay “Teshuvah: A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return.”

Also: does 2021 represent a turning point in debates over Israel/Palestine in the US? Comparisons and connections to BLM and other protests against settler colonialism worldwide? And Josh’s personal experiences navigating Jewish-American debates, Zionism and anti-Zionism, and diasporic internationalist organizing.

Other links from the conversation + recommendations for further reading:

* +972 Magazine: https://www.972mag.com/

* Nathan Thrall NYT on the Boycott-Divest-Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Democrats 

* The late Palestinian writer Edward Said’s prescient (1999) essay on “The One-State Solution” 

* Human Rights Watch’s Apartheid Report on Palestine (2021)

* Peter Beinart on Biden's Israel record

* Tareq Baconi's writing at the New York Review of Books

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