At a time when the world was changing, the Black Panther Party in Oakland came along to transform the US civil rights movement. How has the world changed (or not) since? What lessons can we learn from the Panthers' radical perspective on US society? Judy Juanita, a member of the party in its early days, describes in her debut novel those times and the people she knew.

Should racial, sexual, and other forms of liberation be sought through legal change? Will enhanced criminalization, more hate crimes legislation, and demands for same-sex marriage get us to a just society? Dean Spade argues that these kinds of efforts distract and detract from efforts to achieve real racial and economic justice. He also suggests key elements of a critical trans politics.

Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley brings suburbia to mind, but its landscape and reality are much more complex. Sociologist Laura Barraclough explores how a white, rural settler identity was shaped in the San Fernando Valley -- and how the politics of land use in the region reveal much about how notions of whiteness have been formed in the American West.

For nearly six decades, writers from near and far have come to read their work and, in many cases, expound on social issues at events sponsored by the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. Steve Dickison, the center's director, selected for this program audio highlights of James Baldwin, Robert Duncan, Jessica Hagedorn, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Margaret Randall, and Tomas Transtromer. Dickison also provides commentary and analysis.

Farmers' markets appear to embody many of the qualities of the much touted green economy -- environmentally sustainable, local, and wholesome. Yet as a solution, according to sociologist Alison Hope Alkon, they tend to reinforce, not undermine, racial and class inequality. Alkon explores the limitations of farmers' markets and the market-driven green economy, by contrasting a farmers' market in affluent and white North Berkeley with a now-closed market in poor and predominantly African American West Oakland. 

To say that there are 50 million Latinos in the US is to suggest that the category of "Latino" is clear-cut and straightforward. But is that true? Tomas Almaguer highlights the ambiguities; he also examines how Latinos, a tremendously diverse population, have been racialized, and how they racialize each other. Almaguer brings up as key factors both the US Census and Spain's colonization of Mexico and Puerto Rico.