Nuclear Colonialism and The Story “Oppenheimer” Didn’t Tell (Encore)
Oppenheimer swept the Golden Globes, reigniting public interest in the Manhattan Project, the WWII-era secret program to develop the atomic bomb and the impacts of nuclear power. But what the film leaves out alters our understanding about the real impacts of this advancement. On today’s encore episode, we hear about nuclear colonialism and how it has changed the course of the people and places of New Mexico with Myrriah Gómez,...
The Shadow of Nuclear Colonialism
The film Oppenheimer has reignited public interest in the Manhattan Project, the WWII-era secret program to develop the atomic bomb. But the movie leaves out important parts of the story. On today’s show, we hear about the impact of nuclear colonialism and the Manhattan Project on the people and places of New Mexico with Myrriah Gómez, author of Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex...
The Nakba: 75 Years On
This week marks the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, or the “catastrophe” in Arabic. It refers both to the events starting in late 1947, when Zionist militias expelled over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, and the ongoing destruction and occupation of their lands. Today, Palestinians continue to commemorate the Nakba by reclaiming their history, resisting the occupation, and calling for their right to return. We start...
One Long Night: Andrea Pitzer on the Global History of Concentration Camps
The Global History of Concentration Camps “The use of concentration camps changes the world, but going forward, the most predictable outcome of their use is a world with more camps” Today we use a lot of euphemisms: re-education camps, internment, work camps, prison camps, camps for internally displaced people. But before world war one, these prisons were known simply as concentration camps and they started in Cuba in the...
The Port Chicago Sailors: Separate and Unequal
California’s Port Chicago 75 years ago during World War II a deadly disaster hit when sailors, most of them African-Americans, were loading ammunition onto ships at California’s Port Chicago. 320 men were killed and while the White officers were given leave time and commended for heroic efforts, 328 of the surviving Black enlistees were sent to load ammunition on another ship. When they refused, fifty men were charged and...
Building Resistance: Japanese Imprisonment and the Fight Against a Muslim Registry
This year is the 75th anniversary of we now call Japanese Internment. And every year since 1942, Japanese Americans have tried to get the rest of us to remember what happened. To notice the scar that mass incarceration left, not just on the Japanese community, but on all of us. We found ourselves at similar crossroads in 2001 when the Bush Administration used the chaos of 9/11 to push through drastic changes, including the creation...
