Upstream

• From the Frontlines: Organizing Against Amazon w/ Chris Smalls and Mars Verrone

  Chris Smalls had no idea the direction his life would take when he was discharged in 2020 for organizing a walk out in protest against Amazon’s safety protocols during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. He had no idea he was about to embark on one of the most challenging David and Goliath unionization efforts of our century.  In this episode, we speak with Chris Smalls, the founder and a former president of the Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, as well as Mars Verrone, a filmmaker, musician, and educator from Los Angeles who recently produced the documentary film, Union, following Chris and the other organizers in their fight for better working conditions at Amazon. We hear the origin story of the Amazon Labor Union, learn about the internal and external challenges faced by Amazon labor organizers, and explore a broader view of the union movement and its crucial role in advocating for systemic change. Chris and Mars also talk about the importance of unions in today’s political landscape—especially under the Trump Administration—and the significance of this year's May Day and its resonance for workers around the world fighting for justice, dignity, and a post-capitalist future.  This episode was sponsored by EcoGather, an experimental educational project focused on heterodox economics, collective action, and belonging in an enlivened world. As EcoGather's active phase comes to a close its self-paced online courses are being made freely available at www.ecogather.ing and its vibrant community is reconvening in a new organization called otherWise. Find out more at www.otherwise.one. Further Resources Union: A Documentary Film Request a Screening  Follow Union on social media @unionthefilm Amazon Labor Union Donate to Amazon Labor Union Congress of Essential Workers DegrowNYC Film Workers for Palestine Related Episodes: International Workers' Day w/ John from Working Class History Technofeudalism w/ Yanis Varoufakis Prefigurative Politics and Workplace Democracy w/ Saio Gradin and Nicole Wires Our ongoing From the Frontline series International Workers' Day w/ John from Working Class History Intermission music: "You Are Not a Number" Original score for Union by Robert Aiki and Aubrey Lowe Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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• [TEASER] China Pt. 5: Towards an Ecological Civilization w/ Tings Chak

  This is a free preview of the episode " China Pt. 5: A Socialist Approach to Ecological Development w/ Tings Chak". You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscriber you will have access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. One of the primary challenges facing Global South countries in the 21st century is the question of sustainable and just development—how do you raise living standards and eliminate poverty, what some refer to as the process of industrialization, without going down the same ecologically destructive and often deadly path that Western capitalist countries went down—the path of slavery, genocide, colonization, and now, a form of neocolonialism that is essentially colonialism in all but name. How can you compete in a global capitalist economy against countries that have no qualms about ethnically cleansing an entire people just so that they can build a “riviera of the Middle East”? Well, this is a massive question that cannot be answered in a single episode, but we can begin to chip away at it and uncover some lessons and explore some evidence-based analyses that can help us to at least understand the alternative approaches that at least some Global South countries are experimenting with—because, despite what the monsters in power want us to think—there are alternatives to capitalism.   In this conversation, we’ve brought on Tings Chak to talk about China’s attempts to balance ecological and human development through the lens of a specific environmental project. Tings Chak is the Art Director and Asia Coordinator at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Editor of Wenhua Zongheng. She is the co-author of the recent piece “Reviving Erhai Lake: A Socialist Approach to Balancing Human and Ecological Development” published in Tricontinental. In this conversation, we talk about Erhai Lake—which is the site of a restoration and cleanup project that China has been working on for quite some time now. A decade ago, Erhai Lake was a microcosm of how China’s rapid economic development led to ecological devastation. Today, it’s an example of quite the opposite—how China aims to move towards its own stated goal of creating an ecological civilization that represents a harmonious balance between ecological and human development.  How and why did the Communist Party of China initiate a massive poverty reduction and ecological restoration project across the country, and how does Erhai Lake fit into it? What can be learned from this project by other Global South countries looking for alternatives to the capitalist model of development? And why should we be exploring these questions in the first place? This is just some of what we cover in this conversation between Robert and Tings Chak. Artwork: Tricontinental Further resources: Reviving Erhai Lake: A Socialist Approach to Balancing Human and Ecological Development, by Xiong Jie and Tings Chak  Wenhua Zongheng China and CoronaShock Serve the People: The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in China  Chinese-Style Modernization: Revolution and the Worker-Peasant Alliance, by Lu Xinyu Without Culture, Freedom Is Impossible: The Thirty-Eighth Newsletter (2022) Culture as a Weapon of Struggle: The Medu Art Ensemble and Southern African Liberation Related episodes: (Chinese) Socialism vs (U.S.) Capitalism Listen to our ongoing series on China Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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• A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations w/ Vijay Prashad

  “What is the price of an assassin’s bullet? Some dollars here and there. The cost of the bullet.  The cost of a taxi ride, a hotel, an airplane, the money paid to hire the assassin, his silence purchased through a payment into a Swiss bank, the cost to him psychologically for having taken the life of one, two, three, or four. But the biggest price is not paid by the intelligence services. The biggest price is paid by the people. For in these assassinations, these murders, this violence of intimidation, it is the people who lose their leaders in their localities.  Each bullet fired struck down a Revolution and gave birth to our present barbarity. This is a book about bullets.” These are the words of Vijay Prashad in the opening paragraphs of his book, Washington Bullets: The History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations—a fascinating and meticulously researched and gut-wrenchingly evocative book which takes readers on a tour of the US empire’s wide-ranging project of global dominance.  Vijay Prashad is a journalist, political commentator, and Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He’s the author of many books including Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations, and the book that we’ll be discussing today, Washington Bullets. This conversation explores many of the concepts outlined in the Washington Bullets, from the CIA’s manual for regime change to how economic shock and military coups were utilized to achieve said regime changes in countries like Chile. But more than just a chapter by chapter overview, today’s conversation with Vijay takes many side-alleys and side-paths that range from the importance of art and emotion in politics, why we need to rethink the idea of conspiracy theories, why cancel culture is a dead end, and why the left needs to reexamine its use of language and propaganda in the face of a US cultural apparatus that won the PR campaign against socialism decades ago.  Further Resources Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Washington Bullets, by Vijay Prashad Related Episodes: China Pt. 3: Bourgeois Democracy vs Socialist Democracy w/ Vijay Prashad The Fight for The Congo w/ Vijay Prashad Intermission music: "Stolen Empires" by Andrew Glencross Artwork: Tings Chak Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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• [TEASER] How Fascism Works

  This is a free preview of the episode "How Fascism Works." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast As a Patreon subscriber you will have access to bi-weekly episodes ranging from conversations to readings and more. Signing up for Patreon is a great way to make Upstream a weekly show, and it will also give you access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes along with stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. You’ll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. In this episode of our reading series, Robbie reads and provides real-time analysis of the opening chapter of the classic book Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism & the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti. The text covers the topics of plutocracy and autocracy, whom the fascists last century supported, a bit of history on Hitler and Mussolini, the rational and irrational aspects of fascism, patriarchy and pseudo-revolution, collaboration, and much more.  The analysis provided in the reading brings this text into our current conditions and looks at where Parenti's analysis holds up and where it might need to be stretched and adapted to help us understand the rise of neofascism in the United States under Trump and his modern day fascist footsoldiers. We explain why it's more important than ever to resist collaboration and to stand in full solidarity with all of the racialized and criminalized "others" in order to combat the fearmongering and scapegoating that fascism relies on in order to grow in strength.  Further resources: Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, by Michael Parenti Related episodes: From the Frontlines: State Repression and Anti-Imperialist Organizing w/ Calla Walsh Capitalism, The State, and How We Got Here with Christian Parenti Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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  21:36
• From the Frontlines: State Repression and Anti-Imperialist Organizing w/ Calla Walsh

  The moniker The Merrimack Four might be something you’re already familiar with—perhaps you saw the headlines in the late fall of 2023 about a handful of direct actionists being arrested on the rooftop of a facility owned by a major weapons manufacturer in New Hampshire. Maybe you heard about the multiple felony charges that were being pressed against these actionists, the concern about RICO charges…or maybe you haven’t heard about any of this at all. Regardless of how familiar you are with the Merrimack Four, you’d be hard-pressed not to be gripped by the story you’re about to hear recounting the events of November, 2023 from someone who was actually on that rooftop facing down US empire.  Calla Walsh is an anti-imperialist organizer and activist who was part of the Merrimack Four—a group of activists who faced severe state repression in response to an action organized by Palestine Action US against an Elbit Systems facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire—Elbit is one of the major arms suppliers to the IDF—or more accurately IOF—in Israel.  In this conversation, Calla tells us about the momentous event which changed her life forever. She talks about Palestine Action—an organization who you might be familiar with if you’ve been listening to our series on Palestine—and walks us through the action in New Hampshire, her arrest along with her fellow actionists, and the long and winding journey through the legal system which landed her in jail. We talk about state repression more broadly, looking at what is taking place right now under the Trump administration with abductions and deportations, talk about some cases that haven’t made it into the mainstream coverage, and end with a discussion about why Palestine is the tip of the spear when it comes to the fight against US imperialism.  Further Resources Calla Walsh The case against the Merrimack Three is an attack on the Palestine movement as a whole, Mondoweiss Palestine Action Support Women in Valley Street Jail (GoFundMe) Struggling single mama looking for help (GoFundMe) Capitailsm Plus Dope Equals Genocide Perfect Victims And the Politics of Appeal, Mohammed El-Kurd  Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network #FreeCaseyNow: On Casey Goonan and the Abandonment of Political Prisoners in the Pro-Palestine Movement  Related Episodes: Palestine Pt. 7: Direct Action w/ Max Geller  of Palestine Action Palestine Pt. 11: Israel and the U.S. Empire w/ Max Ajl Palestine Pt. 12: Resistance in the West w/ Max Geller and Sanyika Stop Cop City with Keyanna Jones and Matthew Johnson Listen to our 14-part series on Palestine Listen to our ongoing From the Frontline series Intermission music: "Erase" by Scary Hours Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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