Patricia Kullberg hosts this episode of the Old Mole, which includes the following segments:
The Time to get it Right: Johanna Brenner interviews Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) President, Elizabeth Thiel, about how their union proposes to solve a staffing crisis in the schools, maintain in-person instruction, and address students’ unprecedented social and emotional needs that have arisen from the covid pandemic. The teachers’ campaign for “time to get it right” proposes innovative solutions, based in their experience as educators. Yet PPS administration is resisting their ideas. Read more about their campaign here: The Time to Get it Right.
Dispatch from Venezuela: Luisa Martinez was part of a small DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) electoral delegation for the Venezuelan national elections on November 21st. Hear her second Dispatch from Venezuela, assessment on the political situation in the country currently, and possible lessons and considerations for socialist organizers in the US.
The Hidden Child: The horrors of the eugenics movement were not restricted to the Nazis. Larry Bowlden reviews Louise Fein’s excellent historical novel, The Hidden Child, about the rise of eugenics pseudoscience in Europe and America. In the story Fein lays out the attempt to mistakenly apply Darwinism to social science. She exposes atrocities like sterilizing so many women considered inferior due to economic conditions or various illnesses. Epileptic children were taken from their parents and literally imprisoned for life. This novel displays in lived-life the effects on one family and one little girl who is considered an imbecile simply because she has epileptic seizures.
SCOTUS and Reproductive Rights: The Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments this month on the constitutionality of Mississippi’s ban on abortions past 15 weeks in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case. In their Left and the Law segment, Jan Haaken and Mike Snedeker take up this case and the legal reasoning and precedents invoked in this upcoming Supreme Court decision, as well as the likely impacts of overturning Roe v Wade. Jan and Mike also discuss how this historical period differs from earlier eras of struggle around abortion rights.
- KBOO