A History of the World According to David Rovics

This series of broadcasts featuring tales from global history will soon feature 16 episodes, available for free download by anyone.

Members of my Community-Supported Art program have access to all 16 episodes right now, as part of their Everything folder.  If you want to support my work and join my CSA, please feel free!

Notes and Recommendations for Further Exploration

Song titles are in parentheses.

Episode 1

This episode explores events that took place between 1492 and the 1840’s.

  • The Alhambra Decree of 1492 (“1492”)
  • The Golden Age of Piracy (“Black Flag Flying”)
  • Shays’ Rebellion (“Berkshire Hills”)
  • The War of 1812 (“The Man Who Burned the White House Down”)
  • The Merthyr Tydfil uprising (“Cheese and Bread”)
  • The Tolpuddle Martyrs (“Tolpuddle”)
  • Colonization of Australia by capitalists and refugees (“Ballad of Lachlan Macquarie”)
  • The Opium Wars in China (“Trade War”)
  • The Rent Strike Wars (“Landlord”)
  • Colonization of America by capitalists and refugees (“My Great Grandparents”)

Book recommendations that cover some of this history include A Peoples’ History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Villains of All Nations by Marcus Rediker.

Episode 2

This episode covers events that took place between 1846-1916.

  • The Mexican-American War and the St. Patrick Battalion (“St Patrick Battalion”)
  • The Fugitive Slave Act in Wisconsin (“In Wisconsin in 1854”)
  • The Eureka Stockade uprising in Australia (“Song for the Eureka Stockade”)
  • John Brown and the abolitionist movement against slavery (“John Brown”)
  • The settler-colonial project in Oregon (“When this Fertile Valley was Stolen”)
  • Use of Egyptian mummies in the paper mills of Maine (“Egyptian Rag”)
  • Little Crow’s uprising of 1862 in Minnesota (“Little Crow”)
  • The Highland Clearances in Scotland (“Song for the Highland Clearances”)
  • The life and death of Joe Hill and the rise of the IWW (“Joe Hill”)
  • The Easter Rising in Ireland (“The Irish Spring”)

Book recommendation for some of this history would be An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States as well as Loaded, both by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

Episode 3

1917-1921

  • The rise and fall of the Working Class Union in Oklahoma (“Oklahoma, 1917”)
  • Danish syndicalism and the Battle of the Borso (“Stock Exchange”)
  • World War 1 and the Pandemic of 1918 (“The Pandemic of 1918”)
  • The Russian Revolution and US invasion of Russia (“The Last Time the US Invaded Russia”)
  • The Winnipeg General Strike (“Winnipeg”)
  • The Industrial Workers of the World and the lynching of Wesley Everest (“Centralia”)
  • The Palmer Raids (“Ballad of a Wobbly”)
  • Kelly Butte and the use of prison labor in Oregon (“Kelly Butte”)
  • The Tulsa Race Massacre (“Greenwood”)
  • The Battle of Blair Mountain (“The Battle of Blair Mountain”)

On the Battle of Blair Mountain, Thunder in the Mountains by Lon Savage.  On the history of the IWW, listen to Utah Phillips, particularly Utah Phillips Sings the Songs and Tells the Stories of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Episode 4

1933-1941

  • The rise to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler (“1933”)
  • The International Brigades and the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (“The Last Lincoln Veteran”)
  • Anti-immigration laws and sentiment in the west and the turning back of Jewish refugees (“Send Them Back”)
  • The kindertransports — rescuing Jewish children while leaving their parents to die (“Lola Aglialoro”)
  • The SS Winnipeg and Pablo Neruda’s rescue of the Spanish refugees in France in 1939 (“Across the Ocean Wide”)
  • Henry Ford and the popularity of fascism in the US (“Henry Ford was a Fascist”)
  • Ram Mohamed Singh Azad and resistance to colonialism in India (“Ram Mohamed Singh Azad”)
  • The US-imposed oil blockade on the Japanese Empire (“Oil Blockade”)
  • The internment of Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans in the western US (“Liberty and Justice for All”)
  • Chiune Sugihara and the rescue of thousands of European Jews by “the Japanese Schindler” (“Sugihara”)

On the Lincoln Battalion and the Spanish Civil War I recommend Carl Geiser’s Prisoners of the Good Fight.  On the rise to power of Hitler I recommend Berlin Diary by William Shirer.

Episode 5

1943-1949

  • The arrests and executions of German communists such as Hamburg city councilor, Franz Jacob (“Frieden und Freiheit”)
  • The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (“I Remember Warsaw”)
  • The boatlift of the Danish Jews to Sweden (“Denmark, 1943”)
  • The Dutch resistance and the killing of Henk Streefkerk (“Henk”)
  • The Normandy landings (“Normandy”)
  • The liberation of Katharina Jacob and other Ravensbruck prisoners by the Red Army (“They All Sang the Internationale”)
  • The US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (“Hiroshima”)
  • The expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from Palestine, the Naqba (“The Key”)
  • The Berlin Airlift of 1948-49 (“Airdrop”)

Book recommendation for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising would be The Bravest Battle by Dan Kurzman.  On Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Empire and the Bomb by Joseph Gerson.  On the Naqba, the Absence of Peace by Nicholas Guyatt.

Episode 6

1950-1970

  • US/UN invasion of Korea and war with China (“Korea”)
  • The Red Scare and the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (“The Death of Ethel Rosenberg”)
  • The Cuban Revolution (“Commandante Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz”)
  • The Cuban Missile Crisis (“Vasili”)
  • Texaco/Chevron’s destruction of the Ecuadorian Amazon (“When Chevron Came to Ecuador”)
  • The Six Day War and the Israeli attack on the NSA spy ship, the USS Liberty (“Ballad of the USS Liberty”)
  • The My Lai Massacre in Vietnam (“Song for Hugh Thompson”)
  • The antiwar movement in the US and around the world (“They Couldn’t Stand By”)
  • Martin Luther King, Jr assassination and the Poor People’s March on Washington (“The Poor People’s March on Washington”)
  • Anti-Catholic pogroms and refugee crisis in Ireland (“Pogroms of 1969”)
  • Columbia Eagle Mutiny (“Ballad of the Columbia Eagle”)
  • Kent State Massacre (“Dead”)

Episode 7

1970’s and 1980’s

  • The blowing up of a dam and the birth of the Icelandic environmental movement (“The Dam”)
  • The discovery of the FBI’s Cointelpro by the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI (“The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI”)
  • The imprisonment and escape from prison of Assata Shakur (“Assata”)
  • The CIA-backed coup in Chile, and solidarity from East Kilbride, Scotland (“East Kilbride”)
  • The struggle for land and freedom at Big Mountain and the Navajo/Hopi dispute (“Song for Big Mountain”)
  • The collective construction of the world’s biggest windmill in Denmark (“The Biggest Windmill”)
  • The CIA-backed coup in Australia that overthrew Gough Whitlam’s government (“Gough Whitlam”)
  • The Iranian Revolution and the seizure of the US Embassy by students (“When the Students Took the Embassy”)
  • Armed Republican resistance in Ireland, and the 1981 prison hunger strikes (“Up the Provos”)
  • Civil war in El Salvador (“Unknown Soldier”)

On Latin American history, in relation to colonialism and imperialism in particular, Eduardo Galleano’s book, the Open Veins of Latin America, remains a classic.  On the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, Betty Medsger’s book, the Burglary, reads like a great novel.  On the overthrow of Gough Whitlam, John Pilger’s history of Australia, A Secret Country.  On the Iranian Revolution and so much more, Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilization.

Episode 8

1980’s and 1990’s

  • The exposure of Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal and the abduction of Mordechai Vanunu (“Vanunu”)
  • The Anti-Highway Movement and victory in Massachusetts (“A Brief History of the Orange Line”)
  • Sanctions on Iraq and the deaths of 500,000 children there, according to UNICEF (“Song for Basra”)
  • Industrial disaster in Hamlet, North Carolina and the failure of OSHA (“Sometimes I Walk the Aisles”)
  • Gun violence in America and the death of my dear friend Eric Mark in San Francisco (“Song for Eric Mark”)
  • Riots and police shootings in Copenhagen after passage of the Maastricht Treaty (“On the Streets of Copenhagen”)
  • The blockade of Prince William Sound in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez oil spill (“Cordova”)
  • The arrest and imprisonment of Alvaro Luna Hernandez for the crime of self-defense (“Alvaro Luna Hernandez”)
  • The rise of School of the Americas Watch and annual protests in Columbus, Georgia (“Song for the SOA”)
  • The Minnehaha Free State in Minneapolis, and resistance to highway expansion there (“Song for Minnehaha”)
  • The Timber Wars on the west coast of North America and the death of David “Gypsy” Chain (“The Death of David Chain”)
  • The environmental crisis is found to be profoundly affecting the male anatomy (“The Alligator Song”)

On the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the blockade of Prince William Sound, Riki Ott’s book, Not One Drop.

Episode 9

2000-2002

  • The rise of the global justice movement in its many forms, such as the guerrilla gardening movement represented by groups like More Gardens in New York City (“The More Gardens Song”)
  • The Biotic Baking Brigade (“Song for the Biotic Baking Brigade”)
  • The beginning of the Second Intifada in Palestine (“Children of Jerusalem”)
  • The attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the new antiwar movement (“The Dying Firefighter”)
  • Al-Qaeda and “War on Terror” (“Promised Land”)
  • Barbara Lee, the sole dissenter in the US Congress after 9/11 (“Barbara Lee”)
  • The arrest of Ana Belen Montes and the ongoing US campaign to subjugate Cuba (“Song for Ana Belen Montes”)
  • 9/11 and suspicious events in Hollywood, Florida (“Hollywood Bread”)
  • The invasion of Afghanistan and the bombing of Kama Ado by the US Air Force (“The Village Where Nothing Happened”)
  • The opening of an internment camp at the US’s naval base on the island of Cuba, Guantanamo Bay (“Guantanamo Bay”)

On the rise and reasons for the existence of the global justice movement, Jeremy Brecher’s Global Village or Global Pillage and Globalization from Below.

Episode 10

2002-2004

  • Israeli invasion of Jenin (“Jenin”)
  • Heightened border security resulting from global justice movement continues (“Outside Agitator”)
  • Woomera Breakout in Australian refugee detention center (“Woomera”)
  • Coca-Cola union-busting efforts in Colombia turn deadly (“Drink of the Death Squads”)
  • Attempted coup in Venezuela against Hugo Chavez is defeated by the Venezuelan people (“Song for Hugo Chavez”)
  • International Solidarity Movement volunteer, Rachel Corrie, killed by Israeli occupation forces (“The Death of Rachel Corrie”)
  • The US invades Iraq again (“Operation Iraqi Liberation”)
  • The global justice movement is drowned in tear gas in Miami outside of the Free Trade Area of the Americas talks (“Miami”)
  • Spanish journalists go on strike (“Spanish Journalist Strike”)
  • A year after the US invasion of Iraq, the insurgency against the occupation begins (“Fallujah”)

Episode 11

2004-2008

  • The Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal breaks in the New York Times (“After We Torture Our Prisoners”)
  • Neocon architect of the Iraq occupation, Paul Wolfowitz, is appointed head of the World Bank (“Paul Wolfowitz”)
  • Cindy Sheehan starts camping out in front of President Bush’s ranch (“Song for Cindy Sheehan”)
  • Hurricane Katrina and government ineptitude kill thousands of people in New Orleans (“New Orleans”)
  • Construction of Israel’s Apartheid Wall in Palestine begins (“They’re Building a Wall”)
  • Israel invades Lebanon in 2006, killing thousands (“Lebanon, 2006”)
  • My dear friend and longtime activist and musician Brad Will is killed by paramilitaries in Oaxaca, Mexico (“Brad”)
  • Rod Coronado spends eight months in prison for giving a speech (“Burn It Down”)
  • The premier squatted social center in Denmark, Ungdomshuset, is destroyed by the Danish government, setting in motion a new social movement (“Ungdomshuset’s Microphone”)
  • The Global Financial Crisis leads to massive protests in Iceland (“Iceland, 2008”)
  • The GFC leads to massive protests in Greece, too, in which a dog named Loukanikos plays a prominent role (“Riot Dog”)
  • Founders of the Holy Land Foundation are charged with supporting terrorism, and five men are sentenced to between 15 and 65 years in prison (“Holy Land 5”)

Episode 12

2009-2011

  • The killing of Oscar Grant by BART police sets off a movement against police brutality in the San Francisco bay area (“Song for Oscar Grant”)
  • Barack Obama is elected president on a platform of Hope and Change (“If Only It Were True”)
  • Private Chelsea Manning is arrested and imprisoned for revealing US war crimes in Iraq (“Song for Chelsea Manning”)
  • The Global Financial Crisis results in a skyrocketing in the cost of housing in the US (“Just a Renter”)
  • The biggest ship to try to break the siege of Gaza, the Mavi Marmara, is attacked by Israeli soldiers, with 9 dead (“Song for the Mavi Marmara”)
  • The Citizens United Supreme Court decision gives corporations an unlimited ability to influence elections (“Corporations Are People, Too”)
  • The people of Tunisia rise up (“Tunisia, 2011”)
  • Tens of thousands of people occupy the Wisconsin state capitol (“Wisconsin”)
  • A tsunami kills tens of thousands of people in Japan (“Minami Sanriku”)

Episode 13

2011-2013

  • Navy Seals kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan (“Osama Bin Laden is Dead”)
  • A white supremacist kills 78 people in Norway (“Breivik”)
  • Food Not Bombs founder, Keith McHenry, and others are arrested for serving food in Orlando, Florida (“Ballad of Eola Park”)
  • Riots in every major city in England (“London is Burning”)
  • Occupy Wall Street begins with a protest in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan (“Occupy Wall Street/Stay Right Here”)
  • Teenager Trayvon Martin is killed while walking down the sidewalk and his killer is found to be innocent, on the basis of having been “standing his ground” (“Trayvon”)
  • CeCe McDonald is attacked at a bar in Minneapolis and is jailed for “standing her ground” and killing her attacker (“Ballad of CeCe McDonald”)
  • NATO has a summit in Chicago where the FBI infiltrates protest groups and entraps people (“Meanwhile in Afghanistan”)
  • Spotify launches their Free Tier and destroys the lives of millions of musicians (“A Penny A Play”)
  • A train with 72 cars full of Bakken crude exploded in Quebec, killing 47 (“Oil Train”)

Episode 14

2013-2016

  • Edward Snowden reveals the NSA’s Prism Program to the world (“Prism”)
  • I am prevented from entering New Zealand on a mysterious basis (“Spies are Reading my Blog”)
  • Folks who smashed helicopter gunships with sledgehammers in Australia go on trial (“If I had a Hammer”)
  • There is a coup in Ukraine, and the Biden family gives the appearance of involvement (“A Biden Ballad”)
  • The police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, Jr. elicit marches across the US (“I Can’t Breathe”)
  • A white supremacist commits a massacre at the oldest Black church in South Carolina (“The State House Lawn”)
  • A massacre on the Kenya-Somalia border is prevented (“One Day in Kenya”)
  • Hundreds of thousands of refugees flood into Europe from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere (“Upon Our Shores”)
  • The autonomous region of Rojava is established in northern Syria (“Rojava”)
  • Omid Masoumali immolates himself on the island of Nauru in an Australian internment camp (“Leila and Majnun”)
  • Jeremy Corbyn is elected leader of the British Labor Party (“I Agree with Jeremy”)
  • Donald Trump launches a campaign for the US presidency, and wins (“Make the Planet Earth Great Again”)

Episode 15

2016-2020

  • Thousands of people travel from all over to protest against the pipeline being put through the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota (“Standing Rock”)
  • Grenfell Tower burns in London, killing 72 (“Names and Addresses”)
  • White supremacists rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens (“Today in Charlottesville”)
  • The state of Arizona cracks down further on those trying to keep refugees from dying on the border (“I Was a Stranger”)
  • The Trump administration institutes the child separation policy on the US-Mexico border (“ICE”)
  • Willem van Spronsen dies in an effort to prevent refugees from being deported in Tacoma, Washington (“The Time to Act”)
  • The Great March of Return begins in Palestine on Land Day in 2018 (“Land Day”)
  • Two-year-old refugee, Mawda Shawri, is killed by police in Belgium (“Mawda Was Her Name”)
  • Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, is forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy and imprisoned at Belmarsh (“Behind These Prison Walls”)
  • Stella Moris announces to the world that she and Julian have two children (“When Julian Met Stella”)
  • Annual numbers of people dying on the streets of Los Angeles County exceeds 1,000 for the first time (“Living on the Streets of LA”)
  • Bernie Sanders runs for president again and has his campaign sabotaged by the Democratic National Committee (“Bernie 2020”)
  • Jason Hargrove becomes one of the first “essential workers” to die from Covid-19 in the US (“Essentially Expandable”)
  • The Oregon Employment Department demonstrates itself to be completely unprepared for the Covid-19 emergency (“Ballad of the Oregon Employment Department”)

Episode 16

2020-2022

  • The Centers for Disease Control suspend evictions nationwide (“Don’t Pay the Rent”)
  • New Zealand/Aotearoa becomes one of the very few places on Earth free of Covid-19 (“Aotearoa”)
  • George Floyd is executed on camera, and protests and riots explode across the US (“As I Watch Minneapolis Burn”)
  • Sustained protests take place across the US for months and millions of people say that Black lives matter (“Say Their Names”)
  • The Trump administration declares Portland and Seattle to be “anarchist jurisdictions” (“Anarchist Jurisdiction”)
  • Israel bombs Gaza again, with even bigger bombs than the last time (“Watch the Buildings Crumble”)
  • Palestine Action forms in the UK and starts destroying Elbit Systems factories (“Smashing Elbit Systems”)
  • There is a Heat Dome over Portland, Oregon and the temperature hits 116F/47C (“116 Degrees”)
  • Russian invades Ukraine, and the US imposes sanctions on Russia (“This is Not a Trade War”)
  • Georgia state police kill an activist named Tortuguita in a hail of bullets for trespassing (“Tortuguita’s Playlist”)