Diet Soap Podcast #122: Occupy Wallstreet
The guest this week is the Journalist Margaret Kimberley. Ms. Kimberley writes a weekly column for the Black Agenda Report called Freedom Rider and she is a regular guest on this podcast as well. Whenever something major happens in the world of late capitalist politics, whether it’s something depressing like putting Social Security on the chopping block as President Barack Obama did during the debt ceiling crisis over the summer or something hopeful like the Occupy Wall Street movement I will usually ask Ms. Kimberley to comment, and I was pleased she was willing to speak with me on Friday, and not too surprised that we both agreed that Occupy Wall Street, even with its limitations, is a movement that points the way for the rest of us.
I want to thank Bruce P and Peter L who donated last week to the podcast. I’m announcing their names twice because I’ve gotten behind on shipping out my book Pick Your Battle and I want to let you know that those books will be on their way to you this week. I also want to thank everyone who is following me on twitter and on Facebook, or through the Diet Soap community page on Facebook, and let you know that I really would like to hear from you if you have any questions about what goes on here on the podcast. Also, I should point out that if you’d like to get a signed copy of Pick Your Battle I believe this is the last week. My plan is to take most of the remaining copies to OccupyPortland and leave the box of books in the library tent there.
However, have no fear, my newest book entitled “Wave of Mutilation” is both available in audio form at the end of the podcast and in dead tree version through Amazon, and I will make signed copies available to people who contribute to the podcast sometime next month.
As you can tell I’m pretty enamored with the political moment and with Occupy Wall Street, and I’ve planned to get in touch with some people who are involved with the movement directly, but I should also point out that interviews with Daniel Coffeen, Jon Armstrong, Jason Horsley, Ted Friedman, and Jon Meade are in the can as they say, so I’m going to try to sprinkle those literary and philosophical conversations in alongside future podcasts about this movement, and we’ll just have to see how long it takes me before I’ve cleaned out the archived material I have now.
The sound clips in this episode include a short excerpt from my visit to the Occupy Portland campground, a group called the Wrong Trousers performing a song entitled “I’ve Dreamt the Future,” the Twin Cities Labor Chorus singing Solidarity Forever, and an excerpt from the dirty part of my newly released novella “Wave of Mutilation.”
Diet Soap Podcast #121: Three Marxists (pt. 2)
This is a podcast that sees and wants to seize the Late Capitalist moment. On Diet Soap we consider what it would mean to #occupyingeverything and we attempt to realize philosophy. The guest this week is Brendan Cooney and we’ll be finishing off the second part of our conversation about Crisis theory and three Marxists thinkers. We discuss David Harvey, Rick Wolff, and Andrew Kliman. There is also an interesting conversation about the role of theory and the need for political movements, a conversation that seems dated to me now that #occupywallstreet has found its legs.
The show has moved to Mondays because I’ve found part time work for the Oregon Symphony and will have to put the shows together on the weekends. Also, that move back to the Symphony might mean that the podcast features even more Classical music. We’ll see.
Diet Soap has been on hiatus for the past few weeks, but I want to thank Andrew M, Pieter L, Michael T, David B, and Bruce P for donating in the last few weeks. It’s great to get so much support even though the podcast was shut down due to technical difficulties. My old iMac died just before Steve Jobs shed his mortal coil, but now I’ve got a little Mac Mini. What I’d really like is a Linux machine made out of recycled wood and spit that will upgrade itself using nanotechnology. Anybody know where I can find one of those for the price of an iPad? Anyhow, copies of Pick Your Battle are still available through the end of this month, and Bruce P and Pieter L will be receiving copies of the book soon (the other donors had already received copies).
In other news, a few things have happened since the last podcast. I mentioned #occupywallstreet at the start, and I have to say that while I was skeptical about the movement as it was described by Adbusters over the summer, I have to say that the movement has already transformed itself and is getting stronger. At the end of this episode Cooney comments that there is no movement of radicals who could use and transform radical theory. That might have been true when he said that a month or so ago, but it may not be true anymore. We’ll see.
I’d promised to include excerpts from my upcoming novella Wave of Mutilation on the podcast until I’d finished reading the whole story, and I’ll return to that. But in an effort to get this podcast out I’m skipping that segment this week. The music you’re listening to now is El Cholu by Tosca Tango which is the theme from the Linklater film, waking life, but in just a moment you’ll be listening to Brendan Cooney and I discuss how to #occupywallstreet
The music and sounds this week include music from Tosca Tango and Waking Life, the human microphone at #occupywallstreet chanting the words of my hero Slavoj Zizek, Brendan Cooney’s youtube video What is Capitalism, Arturo Toscanini conducting the Internationale in 1944, and an advertisement for #occupywallstreet.
