Patricia Kullberg hosts this episode of the Old Mole, in celebration of Juneteenth and Pride Month. Our show includes the following segments:
Dam Removal on the Klamath: Over the past decade, Tribal Nations have led a global movement for dam removal as a vital part of responding to the climate crisis. Jan Haaken talks with Cynthia Coleman, professor of communication at Portland State University, about her case study of the campaign to remove four dams from the Klamath River in 2023 and 2024. Coleman is author of Environmental Clashes on Native Lands, published in 2020. She provides background on tribal relationships to the Klamath River Basin and explains how tribal leaders, farmers, ranchers and other community members were able to come together in calling for the removal of the dams.
What is Democracy? Is the U.S. form of Democracy – representative, with a Two Party system – the highest democratic form? Few countries are now emulating it, and many are developing more participatory systems. Bill Resnick interviews Eleanor Finley, an anthropologist, who is researching cities that have moved in the direction of Libertarian Municipalism to formulate public policy. Libertarian Municipalism consists of many interlinked and confederated societies that operate by means of direct, face-to-face assemblies of the people, based on an ethics of ecological sustainability and human solidarity. Not all news is bad.
Black Art and Social Practice: Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr, Visiting Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Social practice, sculpture, and installation, at Reed College, talks about their visual art and social practice contesting institutional racism, police violence, and the school to prison pipeline. In excerpts from their April talk—and performance art—at WSU’s 2024 social justice conference (SJCon), Stevenson speaks of recreating and revising a classic photo of Black Panther Huey P. Newton, and about their recent PICA exhibit, which integrates tear gas cannisters collected from the playground of Cottonwood Elementary School, during the police riots in the wake of the George Floyd racial uprising. And they speak about their arts-based work with the Fred Hampton Summer Camp at King Elementary School and their recreation of the Portland Panthers’ Breakfast Program.
Too Queer and Too Communist: In 2023 Netflix produced a sanitized biopic of Bayard Rustin, one of the great political organizers and strategists of the civil rights movement. Because he was both gay and a former member of the Communist Party, he was forced to operate in the shadows of Martin Luther King and other civil rights luminaries. Skip the Netflix biopic and go directly to the 2003 documentary, “Brother Outsider,” which gives the lowdown on Rustin’s life and accomplishments. Patricia Kullberg reads a review of the documentary by Robert Kuttner, titled The Real Bayard Rustin, published on November 22, 2023 in The American Prospect. You can rent the DVD at the Multnomah County Library or stream it for free on Kanopy.