A we need to be constantly bringing in new voices and expanding the range of issues that we're covering because women and feminism is just such a huge subject that there's no way that a few people can do it justice so I'm really excited about the people that you've found to come in and help out and I think it's going to be amazing so I really want to ask people to step up and give whatever you can to help make sure that that can happen today we have a great show for you. Which hunting welfare rights labor struggles and abortion politics have in common everything is the answer from Sylvia Federici one of the leading voices of anti-capitalist feminist scholarship in English since the 1970 s. In this country which hunting has frequently been used as jargon for irrational campaigns against imaginary enemies and we've all heard it just in the last few weeks when the president keeps going on about the impeachment proceedings against him being a witch hunt so it's so commonly used in that context it's easy to forget that witch hunts appear in our history as a real campaign of terror against mainly women and especially poor and old women so we're really excited today to bring you Sylvia Federici talking about her groundbreaking work which is and witch hunting in which she demonstrates the intimate connection between this war against women's bodies and women's knowledge with and closures of land and the imposition of capitalist relations and she looks not only at the uses of witch hunts in this context in Europe and the us in the 17th and 18th centuries but also at its current manifestation in other parts of the world as capitalism seeks to expand globally. Federici spoke recently in Berkeley at an event sponsored by k p f a hosted by against the grains such a little e. Today we'll listen to part of that talk and later on we'll hear part of a talk by Jenny Brown who also links reproductive and labor justice in her recent book Birth strike the hidden fight over women's work will be offering both of these talks as well as Federici stew most recent books as thank you gifts for your pledge today to women's magazine and k. P.f.a. We have gives them packages at a number of levels starting at just $40.00 going up to $300.00 for both talks and both books and I know that after you start to hear Federici you're going to realize that you really want to hear the full talk to us the q. And a we're about an hour and a half long we're only going to have time to play about 20 minutes a little more than 20 minutes of it so I know that you're going to want to hear that and so Jenny Brown's Talk which was a full hour and we're only going to listen to a little bit of it so if you feel moved to do so at any time as you're listening and I hope that you will please call 180-439-5732 extension 1800 Hey Kaye p.f.a. Or go to k p f a dot or g. To make your pledge to keep this radio station on the air Sylvia Federici is one of the most important scholars and writers the contemporary time because she's a Marxist feminist and there aren't that very many marxist feminists who have writings that are looking at who are popularly known and who are looking at the control of women's bodies the way she does and I think the way she and Jenny Brown who have been appearing together have been linking issues of the control of women's bodies of you know looking at witches and seeing is that relationship to capitalism and Jenny. Brown does the same thing in looking at the control of women's reproduction and their relationship to capitalism and very often we think you know patriarchy or can anti-abortion movements are about racism or sexism that's a culture war but I think the talks that Janie Brown and Sylvia Federici show there are underlying economic reasons that are hidden and that are not known commonly especially in the u.s. Where Marxism is not really something most people are versed in even on the left so let's start with Sylvia Federici and she is talking about her new book which is witch hunting and women it is a rare treat to spend the evening with a brilliant and inspiring Sylvia Federici a person of enormous intellectual and political generosity and steadfast commitment to the struggle against capitalism and empire it's no exaggeration to say that she's one of the most important fingers on the left so we're incredibly lucky to have her here in Berkeley on this chilly December night our world is being shaken by protests over people's basic ability to feed clothe house and care for themselves and each other in other words to reproduce the conditions of life. Although the mainstream media has been fixated on the inward looking spectacle in Washington d.c. Demonstrations have been flaring up in the Middle East in Latin America from Lebanon to chill a to rock and Columbia today in France the trade unions joined with. Yellow vest hers for a general strike against Micron's plan to gut pensions alike the last round of N.T.'s Gerrity protests these don't come in the depths of a historic global economic crisis but under apparently and the way more rosy conditions. How should we make sense of the struggles over the reproduction of basic conditions of life and how should we understand them when the long history of dispossession and resistance since the dawn of capitalism no thinker has engaged as fruitfully with these questions as Sylvia Federici her many books include which is witch hunting and women revolution at point 0 beyond the periphery of Diskin and re and chanting the world as well as her groundbreaking work Caliban in the which Sylvia was a co-founder in the 1970 s. Of the international feminist collective which launched the wages for housework campaign globally. Please join me in giving a very warm welcome to still be afraid of reaching thank you so I'm here tonight to please and one of my last book. Press has published which is called which is which and women but I want to talk more generally about the question of which and what does he mean today. It's. Especially it's a word that is been much much misused of late and it's terrible because behind in this whole history that has been increasingly forgotten and that I think we need to they compare 8 because they say he's sorry they has a lot of implication also for the press and especially for the life of women now I've been dealing now with a show with chanting for many many years basically I started in the mid seventy's and I think I will begin by speaking a bit. How I became interested in it at that time you know some of you all of my age will remember pamphlet came out and this was one of the high moment so the feminist movement. By but when I and healed the English title nurses midwives and healers and their parents fully talked about which And he said well they will chance in Europe. Took place in the 16th century and for the 1st. Time you know I heard of a connection between their will chance and the rise of capitalism you know by that time which is was a concept that was very familiar to me because the word story you know which in Italian I would regionally from the telly was always used to design a bad woman if you're a bad woman or if you were poorly dressed or the issue was my mother for example see me going out in the morning to school and I didn't call myself and she would say you look like a which man so I believed these were more legendary figures and believed it is was a kind of full Clore use you know tool to discipline women and they're not there pamphlet made me realize that this was a true story and also by the close Knology that this was a story that obviously was connected with their eyes of capitalism because the chronology of that we chant as specify in their pamphlet connected with a grade process of enclosure their message spouse Shaun of the peasant the from the land in Europe with the conquest the conquest of what is true they call a maid a color Tina and with the beginning of the slave trade and the plantation economy in the south of the United States and they can leave here sold this was a day early let's call it an illumination because I realized that this was a whole path of history that had been obviously completely ignore you know by in. Socialist thinker. Etc you know or there the in the feminist movement through the experience of looking for an understanding of the specific form of of discrimination and exploitation that women is suffering capitalist society turning to Maddox's work for that and discover in that there was very little late into the experience of women in their work and then we turned convenes Ok I now to have to learn you know these he story has to be understood and I am Barrick into the project of you know of I seen at that time what they saw as the forgotten part of primitive accumulation which is the work that eventually led to Cally burn in there which And for those of you have read the book you know that much of what I've read to me in the boat is nor in conjunction is to explain that there was a fundamental xpect of the process they laid the material social political conditions for their eyes of a capitalist economy and in particular for they development of a sexual division of labor of new gender relation based on a higher key on a high between wage than a wage workers on women's dependents all men etc etc And you know tonight maybe I'll go back to some of those themes and of course the day we turn was really instrumental in or in the weakening we can e there is systems in all of the hall was. Called proletariat of a whole population to day advance of capitalism lay Sion in Europe and of course they will chance will also exported by missionary and conquistador this to America Latina and particularly Kowloon here for seal the area of the and this and was used as a tool as is that it's against the struggle of people in the slave plantation to free themselves so it was our. Use to accuse particularly They use of the chaws in the form particular forms of Protestant by slave and they were accused of being in the morning sawed this is been a very important expert for me for the for the missional more than capitalist society but I decided to return to it in more the same here as I never actually I never actually start the the end because they something so extraordinary about their persecution I don't know who else in the study has been accused of being a servant insulted. Of being the enemy of humanity not of everything killed and not of every kind but literally of being saw the really evil soul completely evil as to actually been a servant of detail. And of course that type of accusation it's really rooted in some Christian theology because their division between good and evil is very much at the root of a theist interpretation of Christian theology. Now. I've come back to that we tons because more and more as I was finishing to work on the Caliban in there which I began to realize to my horror in surprise that there we chance we're never finished and that in fact in more and more parts of the world new charges are witchcraft being waged against women and in fact in the years to follow their publication of Taliban in there which was always in 2004 those accusation and the persecution of women have only continued to grow and now statistics say that there are thousands and thousands of women who are being killed on the child so witchcraft in different parts of Africa even. When you gave me is Steve Moore Any it's really it's being spreading. It's been spreading also beginning to spread in Latin America though it has not taken you know that most of us for that it a stake in other parts of the world and saw nature really I was drawn tools try to understand if. There was a connection between these return of these persecution that I believed you know was teenage have been terminated at least in the 18th century. If there was a connection with the process of. Capitalistic like me this expansion of capital is the class the world that is Sylvia Federici talking about her new book which is witch hunting and women that was a talk that she gave on Thursday December 5th at St John's Presbyterian church maybe some of you were there if you were you certainly know how really thrilling and scintillating it is to hear her putting together so many concepts and so many of the things that we talk about in really disparate ways listening to this time it really helped me to understand that witch hunts which I've always thought of as an irrational anomaly to an increasingly rationalized world in the 17th and 18th century was actually part of the process of consolidating that rationalized approach and consolidating capital in a new labor force so I mean there's so much in this talk that just really makes me think deeply and that's so much of what I love about p.f.a. This is Kate. And you're listening to women's magazine I'm here with Lisa Detmer and we are in a fundraising period so we are offering you the opportunity to get this full talk which was about an hour and a half including a really vibrant q. And a and we're going to listen to a little bit of that q. And a in a few minutes but you can get that talk as a thank you gift for your donation to k p f a of just $5.00 a month I mean that's one latte Basically I'm sure we all spend $5.00 a month on something that does not give us as much inspiration as the stock by. Sylvia Federici so 180-439-5732 extension 1800 p.f.a. Or you can go online and see all of the different gives and packages that we're offering during this funder of those you know really something for everyone but I hope that you will be moved by hearing this talk and by thinking about these issues to donate to k p f a because it's one of the very few places where you can hear anything like this on the air and it's one of the few places that Sylvia can have an outlet to get her work out so this book is also part of the package Caliban in the which you can get that for $15.00 a month or $150.00 if you want to go into more detail which she talks about it the whole title is Callinan the way to women and the body and primitive accumulation which she talked about there if you really want to understand how that works you talked about it briefly but it's complex for years we've been talking about patriarchy as separate preceding capitalism and how do they work together if capital is indeed something preceding capitalism so we see breaks down in this book how they are so tightly connected and work together in this and they say you can get the event at Cape mentioned which is which is which hunting and women which is on December 5th either as an m p 3 or a cd or a d.v.d. For $5.00 a month or $75.00 or you get the book Caliban in a which for $150.00 or $15.00 a month and you can also get her new book which is witch hunting and women by still be a Federici which also shows how witch hunting is as she mentioned in the talk it's still going on today especially in other countries like Brazil and other places but you know one could say that witch hunting is still going on even in the u.s. . And that's for $8.00 a month or $80.00 and this Kate said they can get the combo m p 3 cd both books and Johnny Brown's Talk on cd for $300.00 which is not much that's less than a dollar a day yeah I mean a dollar a day and when I think about what I do with a dollar. Every day that I could so live with I honestly couldn't live without k. P.f.a. I mean I've really come to depend on analysis. Provocative theory and thinking and discussions that I hear here you know I love to be entertained but k.p. If a is a lot more than entertainment and you know I just think we need it I mean this idea that. We have to choose somehow between fighting culture wars and economic justice I feel like I see that every day on Facebook in terms of people talking about you know whether we're supporting a list with Warren or Bernie Sanders and you know that Warren is seen as a culture warrior and Sanders is seen as prioritizing the economic justice fight but actually you know it is not a contest and the culture wars are part of the fight for economic justice and vice versa and you know I think that really we see in a lot of the reactions to women candidates a lot of these witch hunting tropes really come in and the ways that women are belittled and I mean just the fact that the word which you know rhymes so neatly with the overused word bitch and the way that those 2 get substituted one for the other so much even in left circles I mean I feel like hearing talks like this really really make me think about you know what that is in our culture and what our culture has to do with our economic system and how we can turn it all around so yeah and you hear on the left a lot attacks on identity politics as if it did any politics are superfluous and the economic reasons are the real reasons but in reality they are implicated they are definitely intertwined so we need to understand them and understand the histories and that's what she does in this book and in this talk going back and understanding our history so we can understand the present and I have to say I hadn't heard her speak before a couple weeks ago when I went to the some azing event that she did at the lab in San Francisco and I was really so blown away by the way in which she puts it. Together and also she said that she really tries to focus and positives that she really tries to not like tear other scholars down or tear down other idiology but really sort of promote liberty Tory way of thinking and I feel like when she speaks she really does and I also Jenny Brown who we're going to hear in a little while you know I think does that as well and so their work is both provocative and challenging but also a political and you know I think that you would just find them so useful and thinking about what's going on now so you know give us a call 180-439-5732 extension 1800 hake a p.f.a. Your donation helps to let cake if they know that you value women's programming feminist programming that you value the kinds of thinking and talking that we do about gender issues because you can't understand capitalism without standing gender issues and patriarchy and that is what Sylvia Federici is showing that capitalism and patriarchy go hand in hand and you cannot understand one without the other Lisa was just talking about whether patriarchy precedes capitalism or the obvious fact that patriarchy does precede capitalism but what that has to do with the analysis that Federici is presenting and during the q. And a at the event on December 5th she was asked about that so let's listen to her response to that do you see patriarchy is proceeding capitalism and influencing how it occurred in capitalism Yeah Patrick certainly has taken place before capitalism you look at the woman and your book and they get. These Well here's the. The world's But I but the basis of past chickie was a defining one. Because in or it was the ass certainly in there in it's good East that is always being called the cradle of democracy that I you know women were basically play pick of the sake of the gated for the public spaces in the spaces of man and kept the early for the purpose of producing children but it's the defining way in which the exploitation of women thinks placing capitalism through their wage relation to defend then paid in unpaid leave or I say I come to say I like the idea of defining it not a paycheck e and the capitalism as the paycheck e of their wage the fact this so mant of the defense of between women a man and to some extent also in terms of of the least of the lesion is built on the fact that in capitalism or in a particular group of workers is recognized as legitimate work go as contributing to society so the early exploited but nevertheless they said they could commission these asserting social pact and social deal there is in place where there's these a vast world of people colonized the women there in so far as politically and women housewife and of course the whole world the sleeve that is snark and the question of money and their wage as becoming seen with workers becoming a passport to being xcept this is a social and. So they use the concept of the pacha killed their wage and also because through their weight. In a way the capitalist class as in made many men working class men their accomplices. Through their wages given them the power to where they could pay it at the expense of women the kind of exploitation. For the kind of the dignity that they may lose in their relationship you know of work sold there I say capitalism mistake in a way to come ons and then a given the male a worker a servant. So the men can have. His servant and these as I believe is very powerful that e.g. Of Pacific asian of their white male working class. I'd like to ask your question of my own you spoke about the control of women women's bodies around abortion and particularly the targeting of particular populations as unfit to reproduce and certainly there you know that's undoubtedly the case that. There there's so much of this history and yet at the same time I wonder if you could comment on the pronate alist parts of the elite who are interested in controlling women's bodies. Not just to stop them from reproducing but. Of d. . The concern around making sure that the working classes it's perpetuated you know I think is very important when we talk about this when we talk about maternity procreation and so on because I think we have I mean quite simply yes the capitalist class I believe is vitally interested in or in women we producing children and I would say that all in all though in over the gain. They have not yet found a way of reproducing Cheel then with a machine outside of their women's body their will laugh to there's a lot of experimentation that they believe is they erected to their I think there's a lot of effort that has been made to like I say that the women's body is their last flung tear the capitalism has to break they still can knock the life they still have to pass through the body of women if they want workers that is their problem I saw. Yeah and. At the same time there's all kinds of children they do not want that I and the poor is there loud to the produce and who is not allowed is really a political Licia you know or if you begin to make a struggle then they want us to the life that they want to stay their lives here to stay the lifestyle and it's saw as you know you had their peak in of the n.t. Quite a long a struggle and you had the whole process of country you know basically put 18th through at least to some extent because I don't believe there's ever been a process of decorum only Zeeshan and they have a lot of problem with their cancer because they don't think there's been a real the colonization but there is saw in there as there's been a certain modicum of independence that there's been one with Amanda's antiquity on your struggle immediately you have you know all these capital is scientists begin to speak of a population explosion that they discovered they were too many and who they begin to control loud here they're 530 to force women to produce at least wait women to produce cheer there but they have weighed tremendous there is Asian campaigns in our Flicka in all the places you know where they have been an anti Colonials that saw it's important to see. That as important as it is to force people you know women to have children. It's also very important then to deny their eye to have children you know or to population a women are seen as producing troublemakers from their point of view of the system and this is what is there been there to go head to head together. In in the end if in fact if you look at their the 19 seventy's and eighty's it was the Mendus campaign or through this so-called 3rd World. Sterilization Sufiah these nor. Offering women and Ickes them through the or the transistor of those some gadgets in exchange for their you know want to have their chips than I and in many cases of pushing. These contraceptive they proper of a are nor the plant there you know they are the implants and you cannot control them yeah you cannot take them away or or stop if you're their lies they're hurting your you know in this with mess they really massively pushed I saw the tool call and took care but we should carry away from the idea that because now there's all this technology there for you know the capitalist class the same want to work as in the longer see machine I still belong to North school the Says only human labor produces capital is wealth. You know machine dump produce value as you know that sheen a big investment and it's only that is fair then shield between what people produce and what they're paid for it. The produce is wealth the plea to seize a community that accumulation comes from someplace comes from a defense of mobs was right in that and that the fair then show is between what people are producing and what they're getting back for their production that's what exploitation is about and it doesn't with machines that was Federici at De there e recent talk where the name of the talk was which is witch hunting and women and I think that if you don't understand Sylvia Federici is arguments you really can't understand what is happening around the control of women's bodies in capitalism both here and internationally and she talks about the movement to sterilize women internationally in the 3rd world in the talk about population explosions when it comes to 3rd world women and that is something Jenny Brown talks about in her latest book Birth strike the hidden fight over women's work and I recorded her at u.c. Berkeley on December 10th so that cd of that talk is available for $5.00 a month or $40.00 which is nothing and this talk I don't think you can get it anywhere else it was a hour and maybe 15 minute talk she and Sylvia Federici have been talking together around town because they are talking about something very similar which is the control of women's bodies because of popular the need for population control under capitalism in particular the control of women's reproduction but not just reproduction and her book also like Sylvia Federici goes underneath the myths that we hear that the irrational attack on women why are they attacking women's abortion it's always been a big mystery to me you know I never really understood this into abortion was not something that was always illegal and the right didn't always have an objection to abortion Well let's listen to Jenny Brown for a little bit. So for decades we've been told that abortion is just a wedge issue used by Republicans to split working class Catholics away from the Democratic Party and to excite a Protestant evangelical base the main goal of anti-abortion politics we've been instructed by such writers as Thomas Frank is not actually to curtail abortion instead it's to provide a conservative base of voters will elect politicians whose interest really lie with the one percent feminist Law Professor Jones c. Williams explained recently quote starting in the 1970 s. Republicans up have offered support for working class anti-abortion views in exchange for working class support for pro-business positions unquote So according to this few politicians on the one percent really don't care one way or the other about abortion they're just using the issue to get votes but we came to suspect that the anti-abortion politics that we see today are not fundamentally about politicians pandering to a right wing base instead we concluded that these sharp conflicts originate in the age old dispute over the labor of bearing and rearing children who will do it and who will pay for it. Looking in the feminist archives you can see that in the 2nd wave that started in the 1960 s. Women's childbearing role was primarily seen as a vulnerability an unfair burden and an excuse to discriminate against women and all this was certainly true but as birth rates have fallen throughout the developed world becoming lower than what is required for replacement of the existing population this baby bust has revealed the other side of women's procreative work its necessity and power pundits are for telling economic doom if women don't step up reproduction and just as workers have found that bargaining power comes from uniting and refusing to work striking women's bargaining power has increased when we have not produced children at desired rates Well fast forward 100 years while the birth rate was high during the long post-war baby boom and it was longer our baby boom was longer than most other countries. It dropped in the 1970 s. As abortion and birth control became easier to get but the birth rate in the us was a demographic puzzle throughout the eighty's and ninety's despite being a developed country our rate stuff stayed high while it was dropping below the $2.00 replacement rate throughout the developed world $2.00 children per woman on average are required to replace her and her male counterpart of the population however starting this century the Us birth rate has dropped below replacement and is now considerably below the level needed for a stable population when I wrote the book it was 1.76 s. Now drop to 1.72. Some people except I expected it to go up as unemployment dropped but it has not budged. This is cause for concern and even panic at some establishment think tanks Stephen Philip Kramer of the National Defense University who I think you could describe as a liberal or a centrist wrote a book in 2014 called the other population crisis what governments can do about falling birth rates he writes quote declining birth rates constitute a problem for the survival and security of nations in the broadest existential sense of national security for several 100 years economic growth has been tied to growth and population increasing the size of the domestic market and labor force unquote conservative Jonathan last promoting his 2013 book What To Expect When no one no one's expecting cautioned the nation's falling fertility rate is at the root cause of many of our problems and it's only getting worse unquote and the worries across the political aisle fillip long one of the centrist New America Foundation writes in his book The Empty Cradle that quote capitalism has never flourished except when it company by population growth and it is now languishing in those parts of the world such as Japan Europe and the Great Plains of the United States where population has become stagnant unquote these writers and many others fret about flagging consumer demand immigration and what they see as its attendant political problems an aging workforce causing rises in entitlement spending social Social Security and Medicare and how to keep the us military strong when both the working age tax base and the supply of young people to enlist are shrinking and they worry that the nation's women are not providing a large enough workforce for employers. This change in the establishment thoughts around this has been largely unnoticed by feminists and this is probably because 2nd wave feminism arose starting in the 1960 s. During a brief 20 year period when government planner planners were panicking not about low birth rates but about high ones they were panicking about overpopulation so for feminists this period is burned in our minds because it was characterized by horrific reproductive coercion in the form of forced sterilization aimed at women receiving welfare or women of color in particular African-Americans Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans the sterilisation operation was so common it was called the Mississippi appendectomy and in Puerto Rico simply put also your own. This population panic and the forced sterilization that accompanied it lasted 2 decades from the mid fifty's to the mid seventies coinciding with the period that the feminist movement built into a 2nd wave. But 50 years on it's a different world half the world's population now lives in countries where the birth rate is below replacement levels and in 10 years the United Nations projects 67 percent will. Still many feminists continue to suspect that the power structure is preoccupied with too much population especially among the low wage and women of color and this has caused us to tune out even as establishment think tanks agonize about low birth rates warn of worker shortages and decry aging population as during slavery white land owners and employers needed black workers whose work made the land productive and the big landowners wealthy. So it was not only white landowners racial animus but their desire to keep black people working and the immense value of their labor that was foremost in the minds of the homicidal racists that ran the slave south and its Jim Crow successors. After World War 2 an increase in resistance was met by an increase in repression as the civil rights movement grew that repression started to include for sterilization. This was new there had not actually been much special attention paid to African-American birth rates as distinct from whites until the Great Depression black people have largely been spared the eugenicists helpful because public welfare programs had mainly been whites only as were the institutions where the doctors did most of the involuntary sterilizations and eugenics was mostly about quote unquote improving the white race and black people weren't even on the radar yet. And in fact birth control campaigners within the black community had to make great efforts to win rights to the same level of access to birth control clinics that white women already had but after World War 2 as black organize it increased and as African-American one access to programs went from which they had been previously excluded the white power structure suddenly became very concerned that the black birth rate was too high. And in the south another factor was at work the labor intensive cotton farming system was ending due to medical mechanization the change was driven 1st by the labor shortage during World War 2 and then by white fears of returning black G.I.'s Nicholas Lehman quotes a planter's impassioned letter to the local cotton industry association in 1944 quote I strongly advocate the farmers of the Mississippi Delta changing as rapidly as possible from the old 10 or sharecropping system mechanized farming will require only a fraction of the amount of labor which is required by the sharecropped system thereby tending to equalize the weight and Negro population which would automatically make our racial problem easier to handle unquote. So 1st mechanical pickers were brought in replacing the picking job but then leaving the task of chopping and plantation started to kick their resident workers out hiring day labor for the chopping jobs Limon writes that as black war veterans returned to Mississippi and tried to register to vote the white plantation owners got even more nervous because African-Americans outnumbered whites and pretty easily outvote them in some places $3.00 to $1.00 woman writes quote The idea of getting the numbers of blacks and whites in the Delta a little closer to equilibrium began to seem attractive to whites on political as well as economic grounds unquote then in the late 1950 s. Planters started to use for herbicides to keep down the weeds which a lemonade at the chopping job so this explains the quick about face of the Southern white power structure from trying for mobilizing to prevent black workers from leaving to forcibly sterilizing black women and trying to force them to leave . The 975 wire produced by The New York wages for housework committee I think sums up there are now also this kind of nicely of the reasons for involuntary serialisation at the same time that birth control abortion or beings still being denied to people. Quote In the USA it is welfare women and black women in particular who are the main target of the government sterilization policy when they need more workers we women are forbidden any form of contraception and we are condemned to uninterrupted maternity or we are forced to resort to backstreet abortionists when the workers we produce are not disappointing off or when we claim some money for the cost of raising them that is when we are not disciplined enough based their allies on quote so that was Jenny Brown's talk about her latest book 1st strike the hidden fate of a woman's work and I don't know that you but I found it fascinating because I too have been stumped about why would the power structure want women of color to not have access to abortion given their history of controlling women's bodies and one of colors bodies to sterilization So I just thought that was really fascinating to see the underlying reasons and desires and needs of capitalism Yeah I definitely did not know that history that she was just going through about the efforts to control population the black population in the south like at the end of an after World War 2 That makes so much sense I do think I have to say that her argument about sterilizations a little bit overstated because I mean there was just a few years ago this whole scandal that came out about sterilization of women prisoners in California and that took place like over I think the last 30 years up until just a few years ago so it's not like it only have been between the fifty's and the seventy's nonetheless I mean I think her argument even if the limited mentions is that. And the right are in conflict and there are people on the right who have different arguments and they're constantly fighting for supremacy and who control policy what's great about speeches like hers and like Federici said it's not that you necessarily have to take everything they say as gospel it's not that you have to agree with all of that but that it's so challenging and it challenges our assumptions it challenges sometimes our worldview you know sometimes what we think we know about movements that we're deeply involved in and I think it really for me helps my political work a lot to just really put a different lens on it and you know that's why it's so much that you recorded this talk and Lisa taped this event on her own initiative nobody suggested from k.p. If they suggested she do that Lisa is really enterprising in looking to see who's speaking in the area and contacting whoever sponsoring the talks and asking if she can record them and I mean really she's preserving a lot of. That would be lost without her because I was listening to something on actually another radio station. Just yesterday and it was a show about anger on n.p.r. They were interviewing Cleve Jones and they used some sound from 1979 that came from the Pacific archives and I started thinking about it and I thought you know where night as Pacifica an escape if they were not doing as much of that as we used to in terms of really being out in the community and making sure that the history that spinning and acted on our streets is being captured but a lot of the independent journalists that come. Through our printed ship program and that are working on our unpaid shows here on k.p. F.a.a. Like Lisa do you do that and like the apprentices unlike the news volunteers you know are really the people who are making sure that that's still happening and so you know I want to ask you to show your appreciation for that unheralded and uncompensated work we do this as a labor of love and because you know it's important to us to be preserving this history but you can really help to make sure that it gets preserved and gets distributed and gets out there and is there for the next generations with your gift to k p a faded day 180-439-5732 extension 1800 Hey k.p.s. Pay or go to k.p. Or g. And donate securely on line and you can see all of the packages and gifts that we're offering today in this hour and all of the things that you know k.p. If a has to offer sweat shirts and mugs and bumper stickers and every other thing and become a member if you are not a member of k. P.f.a. I want to go back at you Kate because Kate been doing this for over 10 years and she has been documenting local history so I think we need to really treasure the history we're making here and that isn't getting preserved in Pacifica archives but you can help preserve it by buying it and keeping it and sharing it and knowing it and treasuring it and you can also show appreciation for the 10 years of work that Kate has put in at this station and this may be the last chance you get to show her the appreciation for her work so I really hope you don't let that opportunity go by and call 180-439-5732 I don't care if it's just 5 dollars or the 40 dollars for Jenny Brown's Talk but whatever it is leave a message tell Kate hell let you appreciate her having been here and she will. Continue to appear with her podcast which you're hoping she'll start sin is that correct yeah be starting a couple of podcasts and Kate Raphael dot org is where you can keep up with me and find out where you can get my podcasts when they become available but if you want to show appreciation from both of us for doing this labor of love you can get the k p f a a bent with civic Sylvia Federici which is witch hunting and women that was on Thursday December 5th just recently get an m p 3 or cd or d.v.d. For just $5.00 a day. Or you can get the count been in the which women the body in primitive accumulation $15.00 a month and then the Jenny Brown talk that we just heard about her latest book burst strike the hidden fight of a woman's work that was just recorded on $1210.00 for $5.00 a month or this combo which we've got a great combo m p 3 cd of the and the book which is witch hunting and women for $125.00 but I really want to challenge our listeners to get both of these talks and both of Sylvia Federici. For the $300.00 because really that's such a great value I mean it's like 3 hours of sound plus 2 books plus cake b.f.a. Give it to a friend for a holiday present or make it your holiday present to yourself and know that. You're giving not only to yourself or your friends but you're also giving to the whole Bay Area the gift of k p f a which you know in this time when things have gotten so so dire I know that we're really trying to parse out what to make of the u.k. Election and what that means for our prospects next year you know that we really need k.p. F.a. In these times this is just not a time to be sanguine about community radio station so what ever you can give 184-957-3218 extension 00 Hey k p f a or go online and you can look at all the combos that we're offering all of the pledge the premiums that are available from other shows and other events that can be if they has done you know people have accumulated a really wide array of content that's inspirational that's useful it's amusing but whatever you can do I mean even if it's just $5.00 or you know $25.00 will make you a member of k p f a and in that time of Sylvia Federici the parts that we didn't play look at the issue of me too and violence against women and how that is connected to witch hunting and capitalist accumulation so I mean there's many more of the issues that are really up for us today are woven together amazingly and these 2 tog Jenny Brown also is an organizer for national women's liberation which is an organization I didn't even know about until I interviewed her a few months ago so she is bringing an activist perspective to historical research and to looking at contemporary political issues and I feel like that's so valuable and Danny Brown also looks at how. We have a burst strike going on how women she concludes are engaged in a sort of labor strike refusing to perform their labor in a world where they lack affordable health care affordable child care paid work leave job protections and reliable male partners so that you know women are deliberately declining the birth rate she shows in a sense the power women have in the leverage they have in controlling their reproduction so you know if you want to show you're saying if you want to have this knowledge if you want to participate in k.p. If they if you want to prevent us from going the road of n.p.r. In having ads if you want to show your love for women's magazine calls 180-439-5732 that's 1800 Hey Kate b.f.a. And pledge any amount become part of women's magazine become part of Kate b.f.a. Show years Banks Show the management that women's issues matter because that is not a done deal there's always been a lot of resistance in the left to seeing women's issues and identity politics as central So if you think these issues are central call us now $1800.00 take a p.f.a. I hope we have to meet at least a $1500.00 I don't know if we've met that but if you call 180-439-5732 maybe you can be the person to take us over the edge to meet that $1500.00 that we need to meet to show the management that we are indeed wanted by this audience thank you for joining us on women's magazine please keep calling 818-043-9573 extension 2. Look. Like. You're listening to 94 point one Keep your faith in 9.3 k.b. Of b. In Berkeley point one k. Or c. From Fresno nice 1.5 k. 2 for a b. On Santa Cruz an on line to keep if you don't work. Good afternoon and welcome to our about health I'm David b. Feldman psychologist professor author blogger podcast or and your host today our topic is the epidemic of stress in the United States over the past 5 years I've been noticing a relatively new trend like everyone as I go about my day I end up greeting many friends family members acquaintances and even strangers as we all do I ask them how are you the traditional answer of course is fine or good how are you but recently I've more and more than hearing a very different reply People often say stressed busy or occasionally even overwhelmed it seems like the American public is more stressed out than at any time in recent memory at least as we've talked about on the show many times there's been a significant uptick in depression in the United States there's also been an uptick in stress usage of counseling services and even suicidal thoughts particularly among young people but the question is why is this seemingly sudden increase in stress due to current events in our world is technology to blame politics maybe financial strain or increased pressures at work or is it all simply a coincidence Well on today's show we'll put this question to our guests as we explore reasons for the epidemic of stress in our nation and our world and of course we'll also discuss ways to address some of the stress in our own lives joining me in studio is refute me joining me by phone is Dr Meg Meg Van Dusen Dr Van Dusen is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Seattle Washington who has worked with children adolescent. And adults in both inpatient and outpatient settings Dr Henderson has a particular interest in attachment theory interpersonal neurobiology mindfulness sleep and dreams and has recently delved into the subject of what influences stress in our lives through her review.