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Beneath The Surface
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Sunday, December 14, 2025 10:00 am
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1:00:12
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| Guests:
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| Oleksandr Kyselov, Alyssa Oursler
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| Topics
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| Trump’s Moscow-scripted “Peace Plan” for Ukraine
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We look at what’s being sold to the world as “peace” in Ukraine – and what it looks like from the standpoint of Ukrainians who are actually living through the war. Trump’s 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine — drafted behind closed doors by his real estate ally Steve Witkoff and a Russian sovereign wealth fund chief — reads less like diplomacy and more like a property deal: Russia gets the land, the US takes its cut, Europe foots the bill, and Ukraine is told to choose between surrendering now or surrendering later – with little input in the process.
Ukrainian political analyst Oleksandr Kyselov argues that what’s on the table is not a just peace but an imperial carve-up — and that the Ukrainian left is fighting for what he calls “the least unjust peace” under conditions of military exhaustion, political turmoil, dependency, and mounting pressure from competing imperialisms in Washington and Moscow.
Journalist Alyssa Oursler’s new report from Kyiv captures what this “peace plan” looks like through the eyes of people living and fighting there. She spoke with soldiers, left intellectuals, and ordinary Ukrainians in bookstores, on streets, and during funeral processions. She shows how Trump’s policies have already worsened the war, delaying air defenses, increasing civilian deaths, and deepening Ukrainians’ sense that their fate is being negotiated without them.
We ask what a real peace would look like, why Ukrainians fear being forced into a deal that rewards Russian aggression, and what international solidarity from the left ought to mean now.
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Beneath The Surface
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Sunday, November 30, 2025 10:00 am
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0:59:52
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| Guest:
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| Ilya Matveev
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| Topics
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| 21st C Imperialism, China, Russia, US
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Political theorist Ilya Matveev recently presented his ideas about imperialism in the 21st Century to the Critique journal editorial board, in a discussion moderated by Suzi Weissman. We now bring the discussion to Beneath the Surface.
Matveev examines the emerging era of inter-imperialist rivalry and asks what’s really driving the strategies of Russia, China, and the United States. China has risen as a manufacturing superpower, with national capital tightly fused to the party-state. Russia, in a neo-fascist turn, has shattered the global free-trade order with its invasion of Ukraine. The United States, still unmatched in military and financial power, confronts both as rivals even as Trump’s second administration dismantles the alliances and institutions that once underpinned American primacy.
What theories of imperialism can help us make sense of this fractured world order? Matveev argues that to grasp today’s disjointed global system, we must reckon not only with the structural contradictions of capitalism but also with the sovereign decisions and ideological projects of political elites.
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Beneath The Surface
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Sunday, November 23, 2025 10:00 am
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1:00:11
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| Guest:
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| Eric Blanc
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| Topics
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| Lessons from Milwaukee's Sewer Socialism for NYC today
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Historian Eric Blanc joins us to look at a surprisingly timely chapter in American socialist history: the rise—and the limits—of the Milwaukee “sewer socialists. ” Eric’s new article, “Socialists in City Hall? A New Look at Sewer Socialism in Wisconsin,” revisits the often disparaged experiment in socialist municipal power that suddenly feels very current as NYC prepares for Zohran Mamdani’s administration.
A century ago, Milwaukee elected socialist mayors who governed cleanly, efficiently, and for the working class — public power, parks, housing, and real material gains. But they also ran into the hard limits of what was possible under capitalism.
Eric Blanc argues that this history offers essential lessons for today’s Left: how to build durable political organization, how to use office to win material gains, how to govern competently while expanding working-class power—and how not to mistake municipal office for municipal socialism -- or to make the sewers more important than the socialism.
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Beneath The Surface
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Sunday, November 16, 2025 10:00 am
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1:00:12
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| Guests:
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| Alina Shen, Jagpreet Singh, Alicé Nascimento
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| Topics
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| How Movements Beat Money: Organizers Behind Mamdani’s win
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Sunday 10am: How Movements Beat Money: The Organizers Behind Mamdani’s NYC Victory
In the finance capital of the world, working-class and immigrant New Yorkers beat Wall Street’s money machine. Zohran Mamdani’s decisive mayoral victory was powered by a coalition of movements — tenants, immigrants, and labor that took Mamdani across the finish line.
We’re joined by three of the organizations that helped make this victory real along with NYC-DSA (Zohran is a longtime member), and who are now shaping what accountability in governance will look like.
Our guests are Alina Shen Organizing Director of CAAV Voice (Organizing Asian Communities) Jagpreet Singh Political Director of DRUM Beats (Desis Rising Up and Moving), and Alicé Nascimento, Political Director of New York Communities for Change (NYCC)
They discuss how grassroots groups expanded the electorate, and built the People’s Majority Alliance, a movement for housing, justice, and democrac
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Beneath The Surface
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Sunday, November 9, 2025 10:00 am
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1:00:12
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| Guests:
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| Alex Press, Luke Savage
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| Topics
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| Zohran Mamdani’s NYC: Night workers, & the elite meltdown
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Jacobin writer Alex Press takes us out after dark in Queens with New York City’s democratic socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who took his campaign to the night-shift workers -- taxi drivers at LaGuardia, nurses and residents at Elmhurst Hospital, late-night delivery workers -- the people who keep the city running while the rest of us sleep.
Luke Savage analyzes the bipartisan meltdown that Mamdani’s campaign provoked: billionaires, media moguls, the Democratic Party establishment — all united to stop a democratic socialist.
We talk about Mamdani’s agenda — free public transit and childcare; a $20 minimum wage, regulation of gig companies and labor rights for delivery drivers, freezing rents and more — and why the working-class movement behind him has elites so terrified.
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Beneath The Surface
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Sunday, October 26, 2025 10:00 am
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1:00:12
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| Guest:
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| Ilya Matveev
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| Topic
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| 21st Century Imperialism
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| Ilya Matveev on the new era of inter-imperialist rivalry, in a discussion I moderated for the Critique journal of socialist theory. China’s rise as a manufacturing superpower, Russia’s neo-fascist imperialism, and Trump’s wrecking ball policies are reshaping global capitalism. What theories of imperialism can help us make sense of this fractured order? Matveev argues that to understand today’s disjointed global system, we must reckon not only with capitalism’s structural contradictions, but also with the sovereign decisions and ideological projects of political elites.
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