Radicals, Realists and Repression: The State of U.S. Activism w/ G&R Panel Discussion (G&R 497)

🎉 Support Green and Red Podcast and other great events like this panel at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast. We hosted a panel discussion and live podcast event on May 21st in Berkeley, CA where we discussed "The State of Activism in the U.S." We’ve been in the midst of a serious rollback of first amendment protected activities. States are passing anti-protest legislation, police are increasingly militarized, surveillance is being drastically increased on activist groups and the Trump administration is turning activism into terrorism.BUT, we are also seeing new large-scale resistance from the massive No Kings and May Day mobilizations to fierce resistance to ICE in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, communities and movements are fighting back.The anti-AI Data Center movement has blurred political divides across the country. Activists are not only marching in the street and disrupting authoritarian forces, but actions at Tesla dealerships, Kimberly Clark warehouses, the offices of corporate war profiteers and other locations show a radical edge to today’s resistance.This panel discussion will focus on the state of activism in the United States from its radicals to its realists, how the state is responding with repression, and understanding why movements and activists make the choices they do.Panelist bios//Bio// Annie Leonard is the creator of The Story of Stuff film, book and organization; and spent 17 years with Greenpeace US, including serving as Executive Director from 2014-2023. She's the co-author (with Andre Carrothers) of the new book "Protest: Respect It, Defend It, Use It".Bio// Jason Myles is the host of THIS IS REVOLUTION podcast with bylines in Current Affairs Magazine,Damage Magazine and Black Agenda ReportBio// Omar Wasow is an Assistant Professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science. His research focuses on race, politics and statistical methods. Bio//Scott Parkin has been a campaigner and organizer in social justice and environmental movements for the past two decades. He is also the co-host of the Green and Red Podcast.Bio// Thomas Zeitzoff is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington DC. His research focuses on political violence, social media, and political psychology. His most recent book is No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Climate Movement and the Climate Crisis (Oxford 2026). ———-Outro// "Green and Red Blues" by MoodyLinks//🔖 No Option But Sabotage by Thomas Zeitzoff (https://bit.ly/4ulRUEv)🌐 Omar Wasow (https://www.omarwasow.com/_🔖 Protest:Respect It Defend It Use It by Annie Leonard and Andre Carothers (https://protestthebook.com/)🌐 THIS IS REVOLUTION podcast (https://www.thisisrevolutionpodcast.com/)🌐 Thomas Zeitzoff (https://www.zeitzoff.com/)💚 Support the Green and Red Podcast🎉 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast☕ One-time donation: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR🎙️ Follow Green and Red🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast🌐 Website: https://greenandredpodcast.org🌍 Our Networks🎧 Labor Podcast Network: https://www.laborradionetwork.org📢 Anti-Capitalist Podcast Network: https://linktr.ee/anticapitalistpodcastnetwork📻 Listen on WAMF (90.3 FM) New Orleans: https://wamf.org🎬 A Green and Red Podcast production👨‍🏫 Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969)✂️ Edited by Scott🔔 Subscribe for more analysis on U.S. politics, leftist strategy, and anti-establishment resistance.

🎉 Support Green and Red Podcast and get the latest at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast.Trump’s war on universities , DEI and student activism have been well documented over the past 18 months. But his ability to do this is a result of an architecture put in place by neoliberalism and university administrators. They turned the university into a for profit corporation and transformed students into consumers. Trump has taken this model and used it to wage war on higher education. In our latest, we talk with Nolan Higdon, scholar and author of MAGAcademy: How Corporatism Paved the Way for the Hostile Takeover of Higher Ed., about how corporatism created a blueprint for Trump's hostile takeover of the university. Guest bio//Nolan Higdon is a political analyst, author and host of The Disinfo Detox Podcast. He is a lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz, and Project Censored Judge. Higdon's popular Substack includes the bi-weekly Gaslight Gazette, which chronicles important and well-researched examples of disinformation, character assassination, and censorship in the United States. He is the author of MAGAcademy: How Corporatism Paved the Way for the Hostile Takeover of Higher Ed. ———-Outro// "Green and Red Blues" by MoodyLinks//🌐 Gaslight Gazette (https://substack.com/@nolanhigdon)🔖 MAGAcademy (https://bit.ly/42L3e0f) 💚 Support the Green and Red Podcast🎉 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast☕ One-time donation: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR🎙️ Follow Green and Red🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast🌐 Website: https://greenandredpodcast.org🌍 Our Networks🎧 Labor Podcast Network: https://www.laborradionetwork.org📢 Anti-Capitalist Podcast Network: https://linktr.ee/anticapitalistpodcastnetwork📻 Listen on WAMF (90.3 FM) New Orleans: https://wamf.org🎬 A Green and Red Podcast production👨‍🏫 Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969)✂️ Edited by Scott🔔 Subscribe for more analysis on U.S. politics, leftist strategy, and anti-establishment resistance.

💫 LIVE Green and Red Podcast Event on May 21st in Berkley: "Radicals, Realists, and Repression: The State of Activism in the U.S." RSVP here- https://bit.ly/3QFR1XOSupport Green and Red Podcast and get the latest at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast. In this very special episode from 2020, we celebrate the shared birthday of iconic revolutionaries Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X, both born on May 19th (1890 and 1925, respectively).Join Scott and Bob as we go deep on two of the most important figures of the 20th century---their ideas, their organizations, their international leadership in the class and anti-imperial struggles, and the inspiration they gave to so many millions.Plus a little Last Poets love for Ho Chi Minh:I'm gettin' on out of hereYou see, I just could not winAgainst Ho Chi MinhNo, I just could not winAgainst Ho Chi Minh--------------------------------Further reading// 🌐 William Duiker's Ho Chi Minh: A Life and Sacred War, 🌐 The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 🌐 Peniel Joseph's The Sword and the Shield, 🌐 James Cones' Martin and Malcolm and America💚 Support the Green and Red Podcast🎉 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast☕ One-time donation: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR🎙️ Follow Green and Red🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast🌐 Website: https://greenandredpodcast.org🌍 Our Networks🎧 Labor Podcast Network: https://www.laborradionetwork.org📢 Anti-Capitalist Podcast Network: https://linktr.ee/anticapitalistpodcastnetwork📻 Listen on WAMF (90.3 FM) New Orleans: https://wamf.org🎬 A Green and Red Podcast production👨‍🏫 Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969)✂️ Edited by Scott🔔 Subscribe for more analysis on U.S. politics, leftist strategy, and anti-establishment resistance.

💫 LIVE Green and Red Podcast Event on May 21st in Berkley: "Radicals, Realists, and Repression: The State of Activism in the U.S." RSVP here- https://bit.ly/3QFR1XOSupport Green and Red Podcast and get the latest at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast. The Yellow Vest, or gilets jaunes, are grassroots worker movement that have defied politics as usual in France and the rest of the world. In our latest, Scott talks with Prof. Ida Susser about her new book- an ethnographic study of the Yellow Vest movement- "The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy." They discuss who they are, where they come from and the alliances and relationships they built in through their movement organizing. They also discuss the state backlash to them as they refused to comply with liberal and far right political institutions.Guest bio//Ida Susser is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has published on popular mobilizations, social movements, and the urban commons in the United States, Europe, and Southern Africa. She is the author of "The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy" and many other books. -----------------Outro// "Green and Red Blues" by MoodyLinks//🌐 Prof. Ida Susser (https://bit.ly/4uaBJJs)🔖 The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy. (Get free access to the book here: https://bit.ly/495sIZI)💚 Support the Green and Red Podcast🎉 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast☕ One-time donation: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR🎙️ Follow Green and Red🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast🌐 Website: https://greenandredpodcast.org🌍 Our Networks🎧 Labor Podcast Network: https://www.laborradionetwork.org📢 Anti-Capitalist Podcast Network: https://linktr.ee/anticapitalistpodcastnetwork📻 Listen on WAMF (90.3 FM) New Orleans: https://wamf.org🎬 A Green and Red Podcast production👨‍🏫 Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969)✂️ Edited by Scott🔔 Subscribe for more analysis on U.S. politics, leftist strategy, and anti-establishment resistance.

Support Green and Red Podcast and get the latest at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast.It's the 78th anniversary the Nakba. The Nakba, meaning "catastrophe" in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing of roughly 750,000 Palestinian Arabs during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It marks the destruction of Palestinian society, the destruction of over 400 villages, and the prevention of return for refugees.We're reposting short audio from last year about Israeli terrorists blowing up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem to commemorate the Nakba. This incident was one of many terrorist actions by the Irgun that drove the British out of Palestine and led to the Nakba two years later.--------------On July 22, 1946, Terrorists from the Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary group in Palestine led by Menachem Begin, blew up part of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which was the headquarters of the British Mandate in Palestine. The explicit goal was to use terror to drive the British out of the region, and the blast killed 91--mostly civilians, about 30 Britons, and about 20 Jews. The attack met its goal as the British were driven out of Palestine and Israel was created 2 years later. The King David bombing showed that terrorism worked and set into motion 8 decades of continued terror from Israel, and it shows, again, that there is no historical basis for using October 7, 2023 as a point of origin to discuss this issue.———————🎙️ Follow Green and Red🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast🌐 Website: https://greenandredpodcast.org📰 Follow on Substack: https://greenandredpodcast.substack.com💚 Support the Green and Red Podcast🎉 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast☕ One-time Donation: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR🌍 Our Networks🎧 Labor Podcast Network: https://www.laborradionetwork.org📢 Anti-Capitalist Podcast Network: https://linktr.ee/anticapitalistpodcastnetwork📻 WAMF (90.3 FM) New Orleans: https://wamf.org🏆 Top 100 Activist Podcasts: https://bit.ly/4eHNt1f🎬 A Green and Red Podcast production👨‍🏫 Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969)✂️ Edited by Bob🔔 Subscribe for more history, political resistance, and anti-imperialist analysis.

Support Green and Red Podcast and get the latest at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast.In our latest, Scott talks with writer and Flotilla participant Zukiswa Wanner about the Global Salmud Flotilla. They talk about the detention, torture and deportation of two flotilla activists Saif Abukeshek and Thiago Avila. They also discussed her trip to the West Bank in early in 2023 , her experiences last October when she joined the flotilla bound for Gaza, her time on a boat and in an Israeli jail. And finally, they talked about South Africans joining the Israeli Occupation Forces and South African organizing against genocide and apartheid in Palestine.Guest Bio//Zukiswa Wanner (@zakiswa.wanner) is an award winning South African writer and journalist. Her latest book is Flotilla: A Journey of Conscience about her participation in the Gaza flotilla last year. In 2025, Wanner was among four South Africans – the others being Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela (grandson of Nelson Mandela), Reaaz Moolla and Dr Fatima Hendricks – sailing with the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSP) international maritime initiative with a mission to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip, who were detained by the Israeli special forces when the humanitarian fleet was intercepted on 1 October.She is now on the South African steering committee of the flotilla effort.  -----------------Outro// "Green and Red Blues" by MoodyLinks//🌐 Why we are sailing to Gaza on the Global Sumud Flotilla (https://bit.ly/4uiYN8M)🌐 Zukiswa Wanner Unveils Dual Covers for Flotilla: A Journey of Conscience (https://bit.ly/433jn0W)🌐 Nakba Day: https://www.instagram.com/p/DYOgl33Mf9x/💚 Support the Green and Red Podcast🎉 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast☕ One-time donation: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR🎙️ Follow Green and Red🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast🌐 Website: https://greenandredpodcast.org🌍 Our Networks🎧 Labor Podcast Network: https://www.laborradionetwork.org📢 Anti-Capitalist Podcast Network: https://linktr.ee/anticapitalistpodcastnetwork📻 Listen on WAMF (90.3 FM) New Orleans: https://wamf.org💫 LIVE Green and Red Podcast Event on May 21st in Berkley: "Radicals, Realists, and Repression: The State of Activism in the U.S." RSVP here- https://bit.ly/3QFR1XO🎬 A Green and Red Podcast production👨‍🏫 Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969)✂️ Edited by Scott🔔 Subscribe for more analysis on U.S. politics, leftist strategy, and anti-establishment resistance.

Join us on May 21st at 6:30pm for a panel on Radicals, Realists, and Repression: The State of Activism in the US. The panel will feature Prof. Thomas Zeitzoff, professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University and author of “No Option, But Sabotage,” Prof. Omar Wasow, Assistant Professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science, longtime environmental campaigner and organizer, and co-host of the Green and Red Podcast, Scott Parkin and Jason Myles, host of THIS IS REVOLUTION>podcast.RSVP: https://actionnetwork.org/events/radicals-realists-and-repression-the-state-of-activism-in-the-us/https://actionnetwork.org/events/radicals-realists-and-repression-the-state-of-activism-in-the-us/We’ve been in the midst of a serious rollback of first amendment protected activities. States are passing anti-protest legislation, police are increasingly militarized, surveillance is being drastically increased on activist groups and the Trump administration is turning activism into terrorism. BUT, we are also seeing new large-scale resistance from the massive No Kings and May Day mobilizations to fierce resistance to ICE in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, communities and movements are fighting back.The anti-AI Data Center movement has blurred political divides across the country. Activists are not only marching in the street and disrupting authoritarian forces, but actions at Tesla dealerships, Kimberly Clark warehouses, the offices of corporate war profiteers and other locations show a radical edge to today’s resistance.This panel discussion will focus on the state of activism in the United States from its radicals to its realists, how the state is responding with repression, and understanding why movements and activists make the choices they do. WHERE: The Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists; 1924 Cedar St. Berkeley CAWHEN: May 21st, 2026. Doors open at 6:30pm. Event begins at 7pmVirtual viewing: We'll also be live streaming the event on our YouTube Page. Just RSVP to receive details on how to watch.RSVP: https://actionnetwork.org/events/radicals-realists-and-repression-the-state-of-activism-in-the-us/Bio// Thomas Zeitzoff is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington DC. His research focuses on political violence, social media, and political psychology. His most recent book is No Option But Sabotage: The Radical Climate Movement and the Climate Crisis (Oxford 2026). His work has appeared in many of the leading political science journals, and he is also the author of Nasty Politics: The Logic of Insults, Threats, and Incitement (Oxford, 2023). Bio// Omar Wasow is an Assistant Professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science. His research focuses on race, politics and statistical methods. His paper on the political consequences of the 1960s civil rights movement was published in the American Political Science Review. His co-authored work on estimating causal effects of race was published in the Annual Review of Political Science. Previously, Omar co-founded BlackPlanet.com, an early leading social network, and was a regular technology analyst on radio and television.Bio//Scott Parkin has been a campaigner and organizer in social justice and environmental movements for over two decades. He is the Organizing Director at Rainforest Action Network and has led campaigns against Wall Street banks, mountaintop removal coal mining and the Keystone XL pipeline.Bio// Jason Myles is the host of THIS IS REVOLUTION>podcast with bylines in Current Affairs Magazine,Damage Magazine and Black Agenda ReportEvent hosted by the Green and Red Podcast, Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists' Social Justice Committee, Mt. Diablo Rising Tide and Oil and Gas ActionNetwork

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The 6-3 ruling, along partisan lines, ends 61 years of voter protections for African-Americans and other minorities. In our latest, we talk with Prof. Clayton Lust about how the Civil War has never ended and the forces supporting the Lost Cause continue to fight and win for a Southern vision of America. Guest Bio//Prof. Clayton Lust (@profclaytonlust.bsky.social)- Historian, activist, teacher, conqueror, warper of minds. Clayton Lust has taught at Houston Community College since 2003 after graduating from the University of Houston. -----------------Outro// "Green and Red Blues" by MoodyLinks//🌐 Slotkin: Trumpism’s New “Lost Cause”: National Myth and the Struggle for America (https://bit.ly/4eIQiiL)🌐 G&R- America’s Disorder: The Frontier, Violence, Cowboys, and Trump, w/ Richard Slotkin (https://bit.ly/3MR11sf)💚 Support the Green and Red Podcast🎉 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast☕ One-time donation: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR🎙️ Follow Green and Red🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast🌐 Website: https://greenandredpodcast.org🌍 Our Networks🎧 Labor Podcast Network: https://www.laborradionetwork.org📢 Anti-Capitalist Podcast Network: https://linktr.ee/anticapitalistpodcastnetwork📻 Listen on WAMF (90.3 FM) New Orleans: https://wamf.org💫 LIVE Green and Red Podcast Event on May 21st in Berkley: "Radicals, Realists, and Repression: The State of Activism in the U.S." RSVP here- https://bit.ly/3QFR1XO 🎬 A Green and Red Podcast production👨‍🏫 Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969✂️ Edited by Scott🔔 Subscribe for more analysis on U.S. politics, leftist strategy, and anti-establishment resistance.

Support Green and Red Podcast and get analysis on U.S. politics, leftist strategy, and anti-establishment resistance at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast.It's the 56th anniversary of the killings at Kent State University. In a special encore episode, we're reposting our episode from 2020.In this episode, we commemorate the anniversary of the tragic events of May 4th, 1970 at Kent State University, where agents of the state murdered 4 students and shot 9 others. Students, who'd been told the war was winding down in Vietnam, erupted in protest at campuses all over America when Richard Nixon announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia on April 30th. At Kent State, a working-class public school in Northeast Ohio, protesting students and other burned down an ROTC building, a common target in the Vietnam protest era, and Ohio Governor James Rhodes, vowing a violent response, mobilized the National Guard and sent them to Kent. For two days the students and Guard skirmished, with the paramilitaries hurling tear gas and intimidating students. On May 4th, the Guard, unprovoked, started shooting into the crowd of students and shot 13, killing 4, from distances beyond 300 feet. These were extrajudicial killings and a sure sign the state would murder anyone who challenged its interests. The war had come home! Scott and Bob, who's also a historian of the Vietnam War and the 1960s and has published extensively on those subjects, talk about the background to the protests, the official, violent response, the aftermath at places like Jackson State, where 2 more students were killed, and the larger context of anti-state protests and their meaning, and lessons.----------Outro// "Green and Red Blues" by Moody🔗 Links//​🌐 Kent State Tribunal Organization, established by Laurel Krause, sister of one of the students assassinated that day (https://bit.ly/3w2spdR);​interview with Alan Canfora, one of the survivors of the shootings (https://bit.ly/3OUyjGq);🌐 ​The Kent State May 4th Poetry Collection; Denise Levertov, "The Day the Audience Walked Out on Me, and Why" (https://bit.ly/3kIVyFv);​🌐 Governor Rhodes press conference, May 3 (https://bit.ly/37cIk0R);​🌐 Robert Buzzanco, Vietnam and the Transformation of American Life (https://bit.ly/3kB21ST).💚 Support the Green and Red Podcast🎉 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast☕ One-time donation: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR🎙️ Follow Green and Red🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast🌐 Website: https://greenandredpodcast.org🌍 Our Networks🎧 Labor Podcast Network: https://www.laborradionetwork.org📢 Anti-Capitalist Podcast Network: https://linktr.ee/anticapitalistpodcastnetwork📻 Listen on WAMF (90.3 FM) New Orleans: https://wamf.org💫 LIVE Green and Red Podcast Event on May 21st in Berkley: "Radicals, Realists, and Repression: The State of Activism in the U.S." (RSVP here- https://bit.ly/3QFR1XO)🎬 A Green and Red Podcast production👨‍🏫 Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969✂️ Edited by Scott🔔 Subscribe for more analysis on U.S. politics, leftist strategy, and anti-establishment resistance.

Support Green and Red Podcast and get analysis on U.S. politics, leftist strategy, and anti-establishment resistance at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast.Here is a repost of our May Day episode from 2021. In it, we talk about the history of May Day from pagan rituals to the Haymarket Affair to International Workers’ Day to Labor Day and Loyalty Day. And we discuss how the ruling class’s “war on the left” fits into the politics of May Day vs. Labor Day.Spend an hour of your International Workers’ Day hearing about the history of May Day. You won’t regret it. ---------------------------------------------Outro// "Green and Red Blues" by MoodyLinks//🛠️ IWW: The Brief Origins of May Day (⁠https://bit.ly/2QLtO7Q⁠)✊ G&R:How Labor and Climate Movements Are Building An Enduring Alliance w/ Jeff Ordower and Norman Rogers (⁠https://bit.ly/4cDK9AU⁠)💚 Support the Green and Red Podcast🎉 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast☕ One-time donation: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR🎙️ Follow Green and Red🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast🌐 Website: https://greenandredpodcast.org🌍 Our Networks🎧 Labor Podcast Network: https://www.laborradionetwork.org📢 Anti-Capitalist Podcast Network: https://linktr.ee/anticapitalistpodcastnetwork📻 Listen on WAMF (90.3 FM) New Orleans: https://wamf.org💫 LIVE Green and Red Podcast Event on May 21st in Berkley: "Radicals, Realists, and Repression: The State of Activism in the U.S." (RSVP here- https://bit.ly/3QFR1XO)🎬 A Green and Red Podcast production👨‍🏫 Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969)✂️ Edited by Scott🔔 Subscribe for more analysis on U.S. politics, leftist strategy, and anti-establishment resistance.