Alice Childress, Paul Robeson and Lorraine Hansberry; Illustration by Jonathan Aprea via Wikimedia Commons, NYPL
Patricia Kullberg hosts this episode of the Old Mole, which includes the following segments:
Who will own the sun and wind? Today across the planet two familiar forces — corporate capital and the broad left — are furiously contesting for the resources and authority to direct the mobilization necessary to restore a habitable planet in the little time that remains. The left’s energy networks are far faster to construct, far less expensive, and far more reliable than the corporate systems. Public and democratically run, they are very popular in areas where they exist. The corporate set, led by the Investor Owned Utilities, are trying to destroy these programs using their political connections and power. Bill Resnick talks to M.V. Ramana, a physicist and energy researcher, on the struggle and how the left might prevail to continue the human experiment.
Paul Robeson: Luisa Martinez interviews Sharon Rudahl, artist and writer of A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson: Ballad of an American. Rudahl was commissioned by Rutgers University Press to create the novel both as a way to honor Robeson, a Rutgers alum, and to make a biography of him accessible to people of all ages. Robeson was world-renowned African-American athlete, singer, actor, scholar, and activist who fought for anti-colonialism, civil rights, and international peace. The book was published in honor of his graduation from the university in 1919. This interview originally aired on April 26, 2021.
Black Cultural Workers and Radical Politics: Black artists of music, song, theater, fiction and poetry have a long association with radical left politics. During the 1940’s and 50s, the socialist sympathies of Black artists like Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansbury, and Alice Childress turned them into targets of the FBI, leading to gross violations of their civil rights. Sharon Grant reads excerpts from an article by Mohammed Elnaiem entitled: In the McCarthy Era to be Black was to be Red. It was published November 13, 2019 in the JSTOR Daily. Sharon follows up with a reading from another article entitled The Poem that Inspired Radical Black Women to Organize also published in the JSTOR Daily on November 20, 2020, by Ashawnta Jackson. The poem was written by Black actor Beah Richards and she first performed it at the 1950 American People’s Peace Congress.
- KBOO