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Podcast

Tech Won't Save Us Silicon Valley and the Coronavirus Crisis (5-26-20)

Join us for a conversation between Nicole Aschoff and Rob Larson on how Big Tech and its philosopher kings are profiting off the coronavirus crisis, why that should make you angry, and what we can do about it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- With the necessity of social distancing forcing more and more of our lives to be lived through our screens, technology has begun seeping even deeper into the crevices of our social fabric. With everything from elementary school classes to routine doctor’s visits being mediated by various apps, smart phones, and computers, Silicon Valley is poised to be more profitable—and more powerful as a political force—than ever before. Tales of Amazon’s record profits, and Bill Gates’s boundless generosity are presented by the media as the silver-linings we can all believe in amidst the endless torrent of pandemic related bad news. And yet signs of the tech related scandals-to-come are already all around us—Elon Musk’s move to re-open his smart-car factories and stories of Zoom’s predatory data hoovering practices being just two among many. Join authors, activists, and radicals Rob Larson and Nicole Aschoff as they discuss why we should resist swallowing the tech industry’s puff, spin, and outright lies, and whether we use their own platforms against them to build digital socialism. Rob Larson is a professor of economics at Tacoma Community College and author of Bit Tyrants: The Political Economy of Silicon Valley, and Capitalism vs. Freedom. He writes for Jacobin, In These Times, Current Affairs and Dollars & Sense. Nicole Aschoff is a writer, editor, and sociologist. She is the author of The Smartphone Society: Technology, Power, and Resistance in the New Gilded Age and The New Prophets of Capital, an editor-at-large at Jacobin magazine, and managing editor of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Nation, Dissent, and Al Jazeera, among many other places, and she contributes regularly to podcasts and radio shows. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Nicole Aschoff's book The Smartphone Society: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9780807061688 Order a Copy of Nicole Aschoff's book, The New Prophets of Capital: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781781688106 Order a copy of Rob Larson's book, Bit Tyrants: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1447-bit-tyrants Order a copy of Rob Larson's book Capitalism Vs. Freedom: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/zer0-books/our-books/capitalism-freedom Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/LBSotsDgSts Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

More Episodes

May 18, 2026

Ukraine’s Anti-Imperialist Struggle

February 24th marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine. Right now, it is bombing the country’s energy system, cutting off heat and electricity for millions in the depths of a bitterly cold winter. At the same time, the Trump administration is trying to bully Ukraine into a land for peace settlement that rewards Putin’s aggression and, with the willing collaboration of Ukraine’s oligarchs, puts the country up for sale to Western multinationals. Join this webinar to hear about Ukraine’s struggle.

Speakers:

Artem Chapeye is the author of Ordinary People Don’t Carry Guns (Washington Post 2025 best non-fiction) and The Ukraine. He is a writer, translator, activist, and, after the 2022 invasion, an enlisted member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine .

Tanya Vyhovsky is a Ukrainian American, Vermont State Senator, member of Vermont’s Progressive Party, and also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Denys Bondar is a native of Ukraine and an associate professor of physics at Tulane University as well as a member of the Ukraine Solidarity Network and Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction.

May 18, 2026

We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities

Join editors and contributors of We Are Each Other's Liberation, a major anthology that illuminates historical and contemporary solidarities between Black and Asian feminists.

A collaborative project between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective, We Are Each Other's Liberation envisions a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists. Bringing together organizers, artists, journalists, poets, novelists, and more, this collection introduces readers to new ways of understanding and reflecting on race and feminism.

Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers—including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Third World Women’s Alliance as well as struggles today—We Are Each Other’s Liberation offers an urgent call for the just future we might build together.

Get a copy of We Are Each Other's Liberation from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2519-we-are-each-other-s-liberation

Speakers:

Rachel Kuo is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective, which engages intersectional feminist politics grounded within Asian diasporic communities.

Jaimee A. Swift is the creator and executive director of Black Women Radicals, dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender-expansive people’s radical activism in Africa and in the African diaspora.

TD Tso is a feminist writer, editor, cultural organizer, and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective.

Pratibha Parmar’s films have shaped the politics of feminist, queer, and diasporic visual cultures for over four decades. From experimental shorts to activist documentaries and feature-length works, Parmar’s cinematic language operates as an act of visual justice. Her practice engages the image as a site of struggle—challenging the power relations that determine who is seen, how they are represented, and what forms of visual expression are made possible. Her films are a site of narrative transformation, where memory, activism, and artistic expression converge to resist erasure and imagine new futures. Pratibha is a published author and editor of of several anthologies. The Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and Sming Sming Books published, Our Eyes as Commonly Tender: Visual Justice in the Filmmaking of Pratibha Parmar in 2025.

Margo Okazawa-Rey is an activist-educator working on issues of militarism for over 30 years. She has long-standing activist commitments in South Korea and Palestine, with Du Re Bang and Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, respectively. She is a founding member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism and Women for Genuine Security, its US group. She also hosts feminist radio program Women’s Magazine, broadcast on KPFA Berkeley California station of the Pacifica Radio network, and is known as DJ MOR Love and Joy, transnational feminist virtual dance party DJ.

Dr. Beverley Bryan is a lifelong educator and political activist, who is co-author of the classic book Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (1985) which detailed the experiences of Black women and their fight for equality from post-war up to 1980s Britain. Dr. Bryan was a founding member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD); a Saturday school organiser, a mainstream primary school teacher who pioneered Black history teaching in her classroom in the 1970s and a member of the British Black Panther Movement. A lifelong educator, Dr. Bryan is a retired Professor of Language Education from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica.

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