if( is_user_logged_in != null ){ Join Mike Davis and Jon Wiener for a conversation with Katrina vanden Heuvel about grassroots movements past and present. Beware of the Mike Davis Revenge Game. } freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ Heart medicines, addictive tranquilizers, and treatments for male impotence are profit leaders, not the defenses against hospital infections, emergent diseases, and traditional tropical killers. For Reprints and Permissions, click here. Consider the global experience of the Spanish flu in 1918–19, which is estimated to have killed 1 to 2 percent of humanity. In light of the 1918 experience, this is a foolish extrapolation. Along with human agents subjugated, disorganized, and subject to brutal weather in impoverished areas, Davis pointed to another terrifying development within the earth’s ecology: plagues, which he examined in his 2005 book on the avian flu, republished in 2020 as The Monster Enters: COVID-19 and the Plagues of Capitalism. In 1990, his dystopian L.A. touchstone, “City of Quartz,” anticipated the uprising that followed two years later. Mike Davis and The Laughing Buddha Episodes Become a Fan Remove Fan. It was there that he also developed a reputation as a bit of a loose cannon. A central thread running through all of the tales is the racism, brutality, and red-baiting encountered by every one of these movements. His father was a meatcutter who suffered a heart attack after the family moved to an area near San Diego. Men's Basketball. Most of the upsurges in 1960s LA were defeated, despite their inspiring actions, just as the American labor movement was, as chronicled in Davis’s first book three and a half decades ago. In early 2009, the historian and social critic Mike Davis sat down for an interview with Bill Moyers to discuss what was then the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. "LA story: backlash of the boosters," Nation (2/22/99).   Prisoners of the American Dream is Mike Davis’s brilliant exegesis of a persistent and major analytical problem for Marxist historians and political economists: Why has the world’s most industrially advanced nation never spawned a mass party of the working class? We like to think that, as a can-do nation, when the (ice) chips are down, when things really get tough, we can always, in cavalry fashion, ride to the rescue just in the nick of time. And as with the El Niño systems in Late Victorian Holocausts, Davis didn’t just gloss over the science in question. Here, Davis returns to many of the questions about working-class agency that he raised in Prisoners of the American Dream. The result is a chaos of numbers. jQuery("#inline_cta_2_module_376234").addClass("tn-inline-cta-module"); “The smug liberal teleology of US history, with its happy endings in a perpetually self-reforming ‘society of affluence,’ scarcely accords with the new politics of inequality and social revanchism that have become dominant since the late 1970s,” Davis told his readers. The … freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ } Its introduction is classic Davis, tantalizing its reader with stray, entertaining biographical bits. During the Watts uprising, Police Chief William Parker, a central villain of the book up until his death in 1966, described his approach to fighting the neighborhood’s Black residents as “very much like fighting the Viet Cong”; the racist brutality of his officers and the National Guard—who wantonly sprayed shotgun blasts and high-caliber machine gun fire during the uprising—wasn’t far from the US military’s conduct in Vietnam. The underlying sense is of possibility for working-class action rather than hopelessness. }); Working out of the New Left Review’s London offices, Davis began editing for the journal. cta_2_check_376234 = true; Mike Davis Mike Davis, a Nation contributing editor, is a writer, historian, and political activist. But gone is his sense of pessimism; of impending disaster from the sky, sea, air, and from fellow citizens; of a suffocating political environment in which little can be accomplished because the forces of evil are too overwhelming. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, he laid out the fundamental problems of the housing bubble then underway. "The truth squad of history," LA Times (1/10/99) Weiner, Jon. But universal coverage is only a first step. A year from now, we may look back in admiration at China’s success in containing the pandemic but in horror at the USA’s failure. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California. “I … He also got six looks in the passing game, catching five balls for another 42 yards. tn_subject: ['climate-ch', 'history', 'the-left'], Mike Davis: The Real Revolution of 2016 was not Donald Trump’s: The Nation podcast 11/17. While studying Irish history in Scotland, he developed a relationship with Perry Anderson and the New Left Review. (I’m making the heroic assumption that China’s declaration of rapidly declining transmission is more or less accurate.) Historical Amnesia About Slavery Is a Tool of White Supremacy. Some academic leftists have also criticized Davis's focus on modern urban structures. He takes those movements seriously enough to tell their participants the forecast isn’t always sunny. } He hasn’t turned away from unflinchingly cataloging the wreckage piling up around us, but his eternally clear-eyed analysis now also recognizes when a political moment pregnant with possibility, from the Sanders campaigns to the rebirth of the socialist movement in America, has emerged. The “corona flu” that Trump waves off is an unprecedented danger to geriatric populations, with a potential death toll in the millions. inline_cta_2_font_color_376234 = '#ffffff'; They became victims of a sinister synergy between malnutrition, which suppressed their immune response to infection, and rampant bacterial and viral pneumonia. A universal vaccine for influenza—that is to say, a vaccine that targets the immutable parts of the virus’s surface proteins—has been a possibility for decades, but never a profitable priority. He knew that being off the bench and off television makes it nearly impossible to get back and get a head coaching job. By signing up to receive emails, you agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation's journalism. tn_keyword: ['california'], You may unsubscribe or adjust your preferences at any time. It’s no false optimism, to be sure. Fantasy Football analysis: Panthers RB Mike Davis. Running back Mike Davis will play for his fifth NFL franchise as he signed with the Atlanta Falcons on a two-year deal. President Donald Trump is seen through a window in the Oval Office as he addresses the nation on the response to the Covid-19 coronavirus, on March 11, 2020, in Washington, DC. This forum is for the discussion of the men's basketball team. Over the course of a remarkable career, he has been resolutely clear-eyed about the nightmares we face as a society and a planet, mostly bearish on the prospects for reversing those nightmares, and always prescient. cta_2_check_376234 = true; (This used to be the case: During World War II, the Army enlisted Jonas Salk and other researchers to develop the first flu vaccine.) Mike Davis. inline_cta_2_button_text_376234 = ''; tn_ptype: 'article', tn_keyword: ['corona-202', 'coronaviru'], Mike Davis (ur. Overall family medical bills will soar at the same time that millions of workers are losing their jobs and their employer-provided insurance. ‎Show Start Making Sense, Ep Mike Davis: The Problem with Dr. Fauci; plus Amy Wilentz on Ivanka, and Debbie Nathan on Sandra Bland - Jul 8, 2020 In Davis’s introduction to The Bending Cross, the 2007 rerelease of Ray Ginger’s biography of Eugene Debs, he mentions that he first read the book in these years: “Thanks to the powder-blue ‘55 Chevy that I plowed into a wall while street racing with drunken teenage friends,” he was stuck in the hospital when his father gave him a copy of it. Sign up for our free daily newsletter, along with occasional offers for programs that support our journalism. But one of his strengths has been his ability to anticipate the future: Many of his books are monograph-length warnings of nightmares yet to come. Log out? Meanwhile, millions of low-wage service workers, farm employees, uncovered contingent workers, the unemployed, and the homeless will be thrown to the wolves. They have “been demoted in agency, not fired from history. slotId: "thenation_right_rail_342901", Instead, that organizer was “more like a patient gardener,” daily clearing the workplace soil of the weeds of petty jealousies and rivalries so that eventually, someday, when the time was right, the sprout would pop up. He was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. The outbreak has instantly exposed the stark class divide in health care: Those with good health plans who can also work or teach from home are comfortably isolated, provided they follow prudent safeguards. “Millions died, not outside the ‘modern world system,’ but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures. FAQ; The Racer Nation. tn_keyword: ['california'], On W.H.O. Following his second straight SWAC Championship Mark Gray talked with Texas Southern coach Mike Davis from Toyota Center In Houston. Michael is based in the Central Virginia/Shenandoah Valley area, but has been entertaining crowds across the nation for nearly a decade. The Panthers designated Christian McCaffrey for return, which means he is eligible to return anytime in the next 21 days. You can read our Privacy Policy here. But its stories offer something that was missing in Davis’s previous work: a sense of possibility that, despite the vicious repression and inevitable defeats it will suffer, resistance is worthwhile and even occasionally victorious. Mike Davis, a Nation contributing editor, is a writer, historian, and political activist.His books include Prisoners of the American Dream, City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, and Planet of Slums. In The Nation, prominent political theorist Mike Davis, a California native, discusses the political and environmental backdrop to the wildfires that have swept across the state in recent weeks. But even as he retains all of his signature uncertainty, he has also found a new sense of hope. This history—especially the unknown consequences of interactions with malnutrition and existing infections—should warn us that Covid-19 might take a different and more deadly path in the slums of Africa and South Asia. He marched against the Vietnam War with thousands of other anti-war protesters, and by 1968 he’d joined the Communist Party, impressed by the LA chapter’s public opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. As the antibiotic revolution is rolled back, old diseases will reappear alongside novel infections and hospitals will become charnel houses. In early 2009, the historian and social critic Mike Davis sat down for an interview with Bill Moyers to discuss … The upsurges chronicled in the book are wide-ranging, featuring a mix of historically well-known characters and many others unwritten about in previous histories of the ’60s, from radicals to working people: Congress of Racial Equality activists departing for Freedom Rides in the Jim Crow South, alternative media outlets like the Los Angeles Free Press and the radio station KPFK (still on the air today), the Black Panthers, feminist and gay activists, the Los Angeles branch of the Communist Party, Black and Chicano middle and high school and community college students, leftist nuns, Students for a Democratic Society members protesting the Vietnam War, “teenyboppers” fighting cops on the Sunset Strip for the right to hang out, Watts rioters, Stokely Carmichael, Dorothy Healey, Angela Davis, Malcolm X—they’re all here, alongside many others. Game day update: Christian McCaffrey is looking very unlikely to play, making Mike Davis a volume-based, floor play in Week 16.He’s not likely to win you a championship, but if James Robinson carried you there, you could do much worse for an emergency fill-in. As a socialist, he was interested in the rare leverage points through which social change could be achieved. Kropotkin’s life and career are interesting enough, but a reader might be forgiven for wondering where the story is going, until Davis explains that Kropotkin’s writings on the environment represent, in his view, “the first scientific attempt to make a comprehensive case for natural climate change as a prime mover of the history of civilization.”. Davis finished the Panthers season with over 600 rushing yards and 6 touchdowns. Michael Davis (born September 15, 1960) is an American basketball coach. “Permanent bio-protection against new plagues,” Davis added, “would require more than vaccines. tn_loc:'atf' But part of the reason is also that he has been among a small handful of prominent writers to keep the flame of socialism and class politics alive in this age of free-market triumphalism. But such an infrastructure will never exist until peoples’ movements break the power of Big Pharma and for-profit health care. To submit a correction for our consideration, click here. By that point, the upheavals of the 1960s were in full swing. DraftKings Nation homepage. } The 2018 flu season, for instance, overwhelmed hospitals across the country, exposing the shocking shortage of hospital beds after 20 years of profit-driven cutbacks of in-patient capacity (the industry’s version of just-in-time inventory management).   1 comment . Hosted by Katrina vanden Heuvel Monday, July 20, 3:00pm EDT. 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