Essential Dissent

A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age Imagine a capitalist paradise. An island utopia governed solely by the rules of the market and inspired by the fictions of Ayn Rand and Robinson Crusoe. Sound far-fetched? It may not be. The past half century is littered with the remains of such experiments in what Raymond Craib calls “libertarian exit.” Often dismissed as little more than the dreams of crazy, rich Caucasians, exit strategies have been tried out from the southwest Pacific to the Caribbean, from the North Sea to the high seas, often with dire consequences for local inhabitants. Based on research in archives in the US, the UK, and Vanuatu, as well as in FBI files acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, Craib explores in careful detail the ideology and practice of libertarian exit and its place in the histories of contemporary cap­italism, decolonization, empire, and oceans and islands. Adventure Capitalism is a global history that intersects with an array of figures: Fidel Castro and the Koch brothers, American segregationists and Melanesian socialists, Honolulu-based real estate speculators and British Special Branch spies, soldiers of fortune and English lords, Orange County engineers and Tongan navigators, CIA operatives and CBS news executives, and a new breed of techno-utopians and an old guard of Honduran coup leaders. This is not only a history of our time but, given the new iterations of privatized exit—seasteads, free private cities, and space colonization—it is also a history of our future.

https://pmpress.org/ A decade of American society coming apart. Every Fire Needs a Little Bit of Help collects a decade of reflections on recent US struggles—Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the George Floyd Rebellion—alongside accounts of the rise of Trumpism, the alt-right, an apocalyptic shift in popular culture, to paint a dense and complex portrait of a decade of protracted social crisis. Jarrod Shanahan reports from the ground. On the streets in 2014, from the depths of the Rikers Island penal complex, inside the alt-right underground and the carnival of Trump rallies, and in the line of fire in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020, among other scenes that Shanahan accessed not as a credentialed observer but an active participant: prisoner, infiltrator, activist. The resulting essays outline the pitfalls and opportunities facing those seeking to reverse the suicidal course of capitalist society and build a liberated world.https://pmpress.org/ Jarrod Shanahan spoke at the 2026 Upstate Anarchist Book Fair, which was held at the PM Press warehouse in Binghamton, NY on May 2nd and 3rd. He was interviewed by Sarah Kizuk.

In this episode, titled “People Power in Pursuit of Peace”, Michael Wong, a leader of Veterans For Peace and co-founder of VFP's China Working Group, interviews award-winning author Dee Knight. Dee Knight is the author of Befriending China, which was "Gold Winner" of the 2025 Nonfiction Book Award, and two other books: “A Realistic Path to Peace” and “My Whirlwind Lives: Navigating Decades of Storms”. The interview took place on May 15, 2026.

This episode is Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back, a talk by author Joshua Clark Davis to mark the publication of his book of the same name. Joshua Clark Davis is an associate professor of U.S. history at the University of Baltimore, and his research has earned awards from the Fulbright Program, the Silvers Foundation, and the NEH Public Scholars Program. He's joined by moderator Chenjerai Kumanyika (CHEN-jer-ai COO-man-YEE-ka), host of the podcast Empire City, and son of Herb Callendar, a '60s era civil rights activist who later changed his name to Makaza Kumanyika. Joshua Clark Davis' book, Police Against the Movement, shatters one of the most pernicious myths about the 1960s: that the civil rights movement endured police violence without fighting it. Instead, activists confronted police abuses head-on, staging sit-ins at precinct stations, picketing department headquarters, and blocking traffic to protest officer misdeeds. In return, organizers found themselves the targets of overwhelming political repression in the form of police surveillance, infiltration by undercover officers, and retaliatory prosecutions aimed at derailing their movement. The talk took place on November 6, 2025 at The Word Is Change, a radical bookstore in Brooklyn, NY. https://www.thewordischange.com

This episode is “Refuse Fascism - Trump Must Go Now”, an event held at Advent Lutheran Church in Manhattan on October 16, 2025. It was an organizing meeting leading up to a rally to be held in Washington DC on November 5th, 2025, and for subsequent actions. Refuse Fascism is a group calling for the nonviolent unrelenting struggle of thousands, growing into millions in the capital, united around the single demand "Trump must go now.”

This episode, titled “Standing In the Way of Genocide - Nonviolent Direct Action at Port Elizabeth, NJ”, is a discussion between 5 participants in a civil resistance action carried out on Oct. 3rd, 2025. Port Elizabeth, the third largest port in the US, is a major transshipment point for companies such as Maersk and Zim, whose trucks carry weapons bound for Israel. In doing so these companies support and enable Israel’s ongoing genocide, which according to Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, has claimed at least 680,000 lives, most of them innocent women and children. An autonomous group of about 100 activists stopped truck traffic for about an hour as they stood on a major road in Port Elizabeth with banners such as “Stop Sending Weapons to a Genocide.” It was a peaceful act in solidarity with the people of Gaza, the Global Sumud Flotilla, and port shutdowns across the world, most notably in Italy. The following discussion, which took place in Ithaca, NY on Oct. 11th, 2025, was led by Mary Anne Grady Flores, who avoided arrest at the Port Elizabeth action because she was the designated police liaison. The other participants, all of whom were arrested in Port Elizabeth, were Daniel Creamer, Mark Scibilia-Carver, and two of Mary Anne’s sisters, Ellen Grady and Teresa Berrigan Grady.

https://www.unacpeace.org 9/25/25; Riverside Church, New York City Join us alongside the Simon Bolivar Institute for an event to discuss building a solidarity movement between the US and Venezuela, and the fight for oppressed people everywhere! Speakers include Yvan Gil, Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister, and guests from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Palestine. United Solidarity with Venezuela includes the following groups and many others: Antiwar Action Network, Bolivarian Circle, Venezuela Solidarity, U.S. Palestinian Community Network, United National Antiwar Coalition, Bronx Antiwar, SanctionsKill Campaign, December 12 Movement, Cuba Si,International Action Center, Venceramos Brigade, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Americas Without Sanctions, U.S. Peace Council, Workers World Party The speech by Blanca Eekhout, President of the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity Among Peoples, was omitted from this podcast due to lack of an English translation.