This week on Hitting Left, Mike sits down with Michael Rabbitt and Joselyn Walsh, members of the Broadview 6, whose arrests during an anti‑ICE protest have become a flashpoint in Chicago's struggle for immigrant rights and the right to protest. They share their story and the broader stakes of resisting state violence.

Mike and Susan Klonsky are joined by Zayd Ayers Dohrn, playwright, screenwriter, and author of the new memoir Dangerous, Dirty, Violent & Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground. Dohrn's story cuts straight into the contradictions we talk about every week on Hitting Left — the collision of family, politics, violence, and repression, and the long shadow of American radicalism. His book traces what it meant to grow up inside the Weather Underground, navigating idealism, fear, privilege, and the costs of resistance in a country that still can't tell the truth about its own past.

Joining Mike  this week is the co-founder and trumpeter of the Grammy-winning klezmer group, the Klezmatics. The Klezmatics are a fiercely inventive New York klezmer band that fuses Jewish musical tradition with jazz, punk, folk, and political fire.

Joining Mike on May Day is Ivan Weiss, retired journalist, union organizer and the son of a Philadelpia family of McCarthy era political survivors. Now a small family farmer near Seattle, Wahington, Ivan shares with Mike family stories of life growing up during the notorious Red Scare and the lessons for today.

Jay Schaffner and Geoffrey Jacques join Mike to talk about their new volume, Red Lives: Our Years in the U.S. Communist Party (1950–2000).

Joining Mike in the Lumpen Radiio studio on this editon of Hitting Left are Shirin Vossoughi and Elham Hoominfar — two Northwestern scholars who bring depth, clarity, and a refusal to let Iran be reduced to headlines or talking points.

Back in February of 2017 the Klonsky brothers decided to do a radio show. Hitting Left is still on the air with Mike as the host. This edition of the show has the two joiining up qgain to talk about today and the last ten years of politics and strugglle. Fred zooms in from Brooklyn.

Mike's guests on this edition of Hitting Left are filmmaker and cultural historian Floyd Webb, who is promoting a new film, 'Rediscovering Fanon'. Floyd joins us with his ongoing excavation of Frantz Fanon's legacy, how Fanon's ideas move through film, memory, and current anti-colonial movements. Floyd will be joined by Peter Hudis, author of Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades.

Joining Mike in the Lumpen Radio studio today is former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot. They discuss Trump, his SOTU address and the threat of war. 

Joining Mike and Susan Klonsky in the Lumpen Radio studio is Michael Ansara. Michael is an organizer, writer, and longtime movement builder.