Norm Diamond hosts this episode of the Old Mole, beginning with a story from Portland's May Day past, followed by these segments:
Campus Protest: For two decades, Palestinian rights activists have called for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. The aim of the BDS movement is to pressure Western companies and governments to stop funding and supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and Israel’s system of apartheid. In their Left & the Law segment, Jan Haaken and Mike Snedeker talk about a student campaign at Portland State University calling for the University to cut ties with Boeing—a major defense contractor with production facilities in Oregon. Jan and Mike discuss the student campaign and recent disciplinary actions against students and faculty involved in Divest in Boeing actions on campus.
Solidarity: In 1980, in a stunning act of solidarity with progressive forces both in the U.S. and Central America, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the ILWU, refused to load military supplies being shipped from the US government to El Salvador’s dictatorship. Their refusal ultimately resulted in the shipment being withdrawn. One of the key organizers in that ILWU campaign has written a remarkable novel about the union’s action. For Another World Is Possible, Norm Diamond discusses Presente: A Dockworker Story, by Herb Mills.
The Contradictions of Immigration: For the last eight years, including the Trump’s years, the U.S Congress has been increasing appropriations for “Border Protection,” and still every year, on average, over one million undocumented people crossed into this country, getting work and settling down. How and why did this happen? (Hint: Business needed workers) How can the Left work for lifting the threat of deportation and developing a route to citizenship? In part one of a two part interview, Bill Resnick speaks with Larry Kleinman, a cofounder of PCUN, Oregon’s farmworker union, its Secretary Treasurer for over 20 years, who now also works on national immigration policy.
In the Pines: When historian Grace Elizabeth Hale was a college student, her mother told her a story about how Hale’s grandfather, the white sheriff in a poor county in Mississippi, heroically stood up to a white mob and tried to prevent the lynching of a Black man. In Hale’s book, In The Pines, reviewed by writer and photographer Matt Witt, Hale recounts her investigation into whether this story about her grandfather was actually true.
- KBOO