Against Idiocy with Kafui Attoh

The Dig

Daniel Denvir

News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2019

⏱️ 98 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Car dominance, public transit austerity, and the neoliberal political-economy within which both are embedded have fomented what Marx called idiocy, in its classical sense of privatized social isolation. Dan talks to geographer Kafui Attoh, the author of Rights in Transit: Public Transportation and the Right to the City in California's East Bay, about the political-economy of public transit and why the fight for transportation justice must be part of a broader struggle for the right to the city.
André Gorz's "The social ideology of the motorcar" unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/
Two upcoming live Dig tapings in Providence!
April 23: Dan interviews Sam Stein on his book Capital City facebook.com/events/2164662790291372/
May 2-4: Slavery’s Hinterlands: Capitalism and bondage in Rhode Island and across the Atlantic world facebook.com/events/661508874305008/
And check out the Philadelphia Socialist Feminist Convergence, April 26-28 socfemphilly.wordpress.com
Thanks to Verso Books. Peruse their massive selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our listeners who support us at patreon.com
0:05.6	and by Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles, perfect for dig listeners like you.
0:14.5	One that you might like is Capital City, Gentrification in the Real Estate state by Samuel Stein. Our cities are changing.
0:24.3	Around the world, more and more money is being invested in buildings and land. Real estate is now a
0:31.9	$217 trillion industry, worth 36 times the value of all the gold ever mined.
0:41.5	It forms 60% of global assets, and one of the most powerful people in the world, the
0:48.0	president of the United States, made his name as a landlord and developer.
0:57.3	Samuel Stein shows that this explosive transformation of urban life and politics has been driven not only by the tastes of wealthy
1:04.0	newcomers, but by the state-driven process of urban planning. Planning agencies provide a unique window into the way the state uses
1:13.5	and is used by capital and the means by which urban renovations are translated into rising real
1:20.8	estate values and rising rents. Capital City explains the role of planners in the real estate state, as well as the remarkable
1:30.2	power of planning to reclaim urban life. Also, if you're in New England, come see me interview
1:38.8	Stein live in Providence, April 23, 7 p.m. at Riffraff Books.
1:46.2	Capital City, gentrification, and the real estate state by Samuel Stein.
1:52.5	Out now from Verso Books.
2:07.3	Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin Magazine.
2:13.3	My name is Daniel Denver, and I'm temporarily broadcasting from Santiago de Chile.
2:19.1	The Freedom of the Open Road is a bedrock one in American culture.
2:28.1	Our relationships with cars are supposed to be deeply connected to the best of our relationships with everything else in life.
2:34.8	This is why car companies have no shortage of pop songs to draw on for their television advertising.
2:43.2	So much do we associate cars with the freedom of individual and national Ford movement that Dodge Ram infamously went so far as to sample a Martin Luther King speech,
2:50.0	figuring its pickup truck as a literal and figurative
	...

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