For this special May Day episode of Conjuncture, we air one of Mike Davis' final public talks, a reading from his unfinished manuscript, Star Spangled Leviathan: An Economic History of American Nationalism. The talk was originally recorded for the Trinity Social Justice Initiative on May Day in 2022. Conjuncture is a web series and podcast curated and co-produced by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton for the Trinity Social Justice Initiative. It features interviews with activists, artists, scholars, and public intellectuals. Taking its title from Antonio Gramsci and Stuart Hall’s conceptualization, it highlights the struggles over the meaning and memory of particular historical moments. Mike Davis (1946-2022) was a preeminent writer, editor, activist, and radical public intellectual. He was the author more than 20 influential books, including City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (Verso) and Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties (Verso) with Jon Wiener.