March | 2024 | Forthright Radio

We steer clear of works of fiction – not only do we want our conversations to be based in facts, but it’s a hassle to dance around spoilers. Maybe like me you vaguely know that Frances Perkins is an important person in Women’s History, mostly because she was the first female to serve in the United States Cabinet, and like me, you have a blurry visual in your mind of an unsmiling, rather severe older woman who had something to do with the New Deal and the Depression. Maybe you never wondered why Franklin Roosevelt appointed her as his Secretary of Labor, or what made her so effective in identifying social injustices and doing things to rectify them.

Stephanie Dray, explained what compelled her to tell Frances Perkins story – that so many of the things we take for granted today: weekends, food and fire safety regulations, unemployment insurance, social security and so much more. Her deep research has resulted in her latest book, BECOMING MADAM SECRETARY, just out from Berkley Books. Her earlier books, many of which were NYT bestsellers, include THE WOMEN OF CHATEAU LAFAYETTE, MY DEAR HAMILTON, AMERICA’S FIRST DAUGHTER, and THE NILE TRILOGY. In BECOMING MADAM SECRETARY she uncovers the forgotten history of the intellectually brilliant, politically pragmatic and physically courageous woman, who remains the longest serving cabinet member in US History, Frances Perkins.

We spoke with Stephanie Dray via Skype on the Vernal Equinox of 2024.

Long before she became part of New York or the federal governments, Frances Perkins was a “radical” activist to investigate and reform the most lethal aspects of corporate capitalism., as when she worked aas the Director of the NY Consumers’ League in 1909.

Just before the signing of the Social Security Act, Frances Perkins had been informed that her husband had escaped from the mental hospital in which he had been confined. Immediately after the signing, she had to rush to New York to try to find him for his own safety.

Not only has she been honored as a national hero with this stamp, but the Episcopal Church celebrates her as a saint in their liturgy on May 13th.

When Women Lost the Vote https://www.amrevmuseum.org/virtualexhibits/when-women-lost-the-vote-a-revolutionary-story

How Trump Ends Social Security https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-trump-ends-social-security-4bb

Trump Wants to Destroy Social Security, But Biden Plan Would Improve and Expand It https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/biden-vs-trump-on-social-security?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=fc4122f9bf-Top+News%3A+Mon.+3%2F18%2F2024&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-37878a46b5-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Adam Shatz‘s latest book, The Rebel’s Clinic: the Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, examines the intersections of the African diaspora in the Caribbean Islands, WWII France and it’s aftermath, and the inevitable violence that colonialism creates and requires to maintain itself. He is the US editor of The London Review of Books and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other publications. He is also a visiting professor at Bard College and the host of the podcast “Myself with Others.” He is the author of two earlier books: Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing about Zionism and Israel and Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination.

Perhaps like me, you were aware of Frantz Fanon. You saw his books, particularly THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, in the bookshelves of people your respected, but you didn’t really know too much about him.

Frantz Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1925. He was educated to identify as a French man, and as he wrote in his book, BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK, it was a shock to serve in WWII, be wounded, receive a medal and still be seen as an African, an object of fear. He studied in Lyon, France, and became a psychiatrist in the post-war intellectual ferment of existentialism and the rise of decolonization movements.

He was a playwright, a practicing psychiatrist, the author of numerous articles in scientific journals, a teacher, a diplomat, a journalist, the editor of an anti-colonial newspaper, the author of three books, and a major Pan-Africanist and internationalist, who became a political militant as France efforts to suppress the Algerian independence movement became more violent and vicious. But unlike most militants, he had the training and intellectual capacity to analyze and articulate the processes internal to the individual and external to the culture that lead to the point of violence, and whether violence can be justified or even dis-intoxicating.

Like Ernesto “Che” Guevara–another revolutionary who valued the poetic and was a committed internationalist, doctor, soldier, teacher, and theorist–Fanon’s life has much to inform our understanding of where we find ourselves in struggle today.

Thanks to David Rovics for permission to post his song, “As the Bombs Rain Down” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQbx5zPxGAk&list=OLAK5uy_lNIlbd6R0lC4TICKXq2ylk9-CrjXHDcc4

The World May Be Entering a Much Bloodier Era https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/opinion/international-world/coups-climate-change-africa-sahel.html

Dossier no. 26: Frantz Fanon: The brightness of metal https://mronline.org/2020/03/04/dossier-no-26-frantz-fanon-the-brightness-of-metal/