Gray Brechin and Walter Riley will be on hand at Bird & Beckett this Sunday, hosted by Riva Enteen, editor of Follow the Money: Radio Voices for Peace and Justice, a new book compiling 66 interviews conducted by KPFA radio commentator Dennis J. Bernstein on his long-running and hugely influential program, “Flashpoints.” 

Bernstein’s Flashpoints interviews with Brechin and Riley are among the 66 incisive, insightful interviews, all conducted during the Obama era, that are collected in this volume.  Together, they provide the writing on the wall for how we got to Trump today. and paint a vivid picture of the state of things in present-day America.

Gray Brechin is an historical geographer, a visiting scholar in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, and project scholar of the Living New Deal Project. His book Imperial San Francisco (UC Press, 2006) has set the standard as the key economic, political and cultural investigation of San Francisco history. His interview, “Stealing the Commonwealth,” aired in October 2013.

Walter Riley grew up in segregated Durham, North Carolina, the ninth of 11 children. In high school, he joined the NAACP campaigns for jobs, voting rights, and desegregation. He is an attorney in Oakland and works with the Haiti Action Committee. His interview, “The Urgent Lessons of Ferguson,” aired in December 2014.

Riva Enteen, raised as a socialist and an activist since the 1960s, attended UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and was Program Director of the National Lawyers Guild for 12 years. She was the first chair of KPFA’s Local Station Board and led the successful efforts that brought Sovietologist Bill Mandel back to the airwaves.