Patricia Kullberg hosts this episode of the Old Mole, which includes the following segments:
Border Patrol: Nearly every year since the 1990s the U.S. Congress has increased the appropriation for the Border Patrol and the whole apparatus of border protection. Yet every year increasing numbers, mostly from the Americas but also from all over, gain entrance by evading the enforcers or forcing an official hearing, which can be delayed more than several years later. As they wait they are free to go anywhere in the country where relatives, friends, or social justice organizations help them gain work, allowing them to get rooted, though always worried about their status. In the Trump and Biden periods the numbers have exceeded 1,000,000 per year. How and why has this unintended development occurred? And what can be done to humanize U.S. immigration policy and welcome the people whose work will be necessary to fuel the economy and transform it towards sustainability? Bill Resnick interviews Larrry Kleinman, one of the co-founders of PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste) who also works with the national Hispanic affairs organization, the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM).
The Corner That Held Them: Book Mole Frann Michel reviews The Corner That Held Them, published in 1948, the sixth novel by British queer communist musicologist and writer Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893–1978). Set mostly in a 14th-century Benedictine convent between the Black Death of 1349 and the Peasant's Rebellion of 1381, the book focuses on the mundane material realities of a community of women and illuminates how a pandemic illness may contribute to the transformation from one mode of production to another.
Tár: a Morality Tale: Movie Moles Jan Haaken and Denise Morris talk about the film Tár, a 2022 psychological drama directed by Todd Field and starring Cate Blanchet. The film charts the downfall of fictional composer and conductor Lydia Tár. Jan and Denise take up the mixed reviews and reactions to the film, particularly in its portrayal of sexual and class politics. They offer their own readings of Tár as a morality tale plotting the rise and fall of a highly ambitious and exploitive woman.