This Week with David Rovics

New song: "Twitter Troll Jig"

This song is not hyperbolic. It is word-for-word, literally what happens to many people who organize a gig for me and who promotes it on Twitter. Welcome to my world -- you might want to avoid it if you care about your mental health. Let this song be a warning to any potential associates out there, seriously. If you think the song is funny, that's great -- but it is deadly serious. And for those who need ask, all the allegations are completely false.

New song: "This Machine"

I got a new tattoo on my guitar today, and wrote a song about it. Happy birthday, Woody Guthrie.

New song: "116 Degrees"

A new song that requires little explanation, unless you’re living on a different planet than this one that’s burning.

Rough mix: "Free Them All"

It started with a campaign to make privatized utilities public again in the state of Washington.  Folks involved with that project thought the theme of taking the power back needed some music.  When they heard me interviewing Mic Crenshaw on the internet, in the process of which we talked about the idea of artistically collaborating, a recording project was born.

Somehow or other we've only been meeting in the studio once every three or four months, so it's been a slow process, but I have to share one of the tracks with you, so you get the flavor.  Tell us what you think.

New song: "PDX Houseless Radicals Collective"

Members of a wonderful local network called the PDX Houseless Radicals Collective suggested I might write a song about the group. It turned out better than I expected. You can read lots more about the collective, from the horse's mouth, as it were, at pdxhrc.org.

New song: "When Chevron Came to Ecuador"

Chevron laid waste to the lands of five tribes in Ecuador, turning an area the size of Rhode Island into a toxic cesspool, which is what it is today. Instead of paying for their crimes, they abandoned the country, refused to compensate the victims, and managed to have the lawyer who successfully sued them, Steven Donziger, arrested -- in New York City.

Discussion with Jeremy Brecher, author of Strike!

We spend the hour with historian and self-described "participant-observer" in the making of history, Jeremy Brecher. He has a brand new book out on PM Press, more relevant than ever -- Common Preservation in a Time of Mutual Destruction.

The Coming Crash

The US housing market is fairly obviously a Ponzi scheme. Just don't tell the homeowners, they may get upset. Some thoughts on the coming crash, and what forms it may take.

Discussion with Ryan Harvey

We spend the hour with Ryan Harvey. As a songwriter, writer, podcaster, and organizer, Ryan has been in the thick of a lot of momentous occasions over the past couple decades.

New song: "Greenwood"

Between May 31st and June 1st, 1921, a white mob lay waste to a thirty-block section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, with the active support of the authorities, killing hundreds of Black residents of the Greenwood neighborhood.    

It is a chilling fact of history that exactly these sorts of neighborhood-destroying massacres -- leaving dozens, hundreds, or sometimes thousands dead -- were taking place in cities all over the Russian Empire only a little more than a decade earlier, targeting Jews.  There, this particular form of mob-directed massacre became known as a pogrom.  

The Greenwood Race Massacre was only the biggest of thousands of other attacks on Black communities by white mobs that took place in different parts of the US.  In the immediate wake of US military campaigns, it has often been noted by historians that there is generally a corresponding increase in such racist attacks.