This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by housing justice and tenant advocates Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal and returning guest Shanti Singh. Tracy, making their Delete Your Account debut, is a writer and cofounder of the Los Angeles Tenants Union whose book Abolish Rent is forthcoming from Verso Books. Shanti, formerly deputy data director of for the Bernie Sanders campaign in California, serves as Legislative and Communications Coordinator for Tenants Together as well as on the board of the San Francisco Community Land Trust. The gang discusses the flood of evictions underway in California, how today’s capitalism needs mass homelessness to function, what a YIMBY is, the success of tenant organizing in LA, the facts behind the recall of San Francisco’s reform-minded District Attorney Chesa Boudin, how the LA mayoral race will impact the city’s unhoused population, and more. Follow Tracy on Twitter @two_evils and Shanti @uhshanti. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, find out how to get involved with the LA Tenants Union at latenantsunion.org, and if you’re elsewhere in California, check out Tenants Together at tenantstogether.org. And make sure to read Tracy’s article published for The New Republic titled “Inside LA’s Homeless Industrial Complex”. As mentioned in the introduction, a list of abortion funds most urgently in need of financial support can be found here. If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show on iTunes. We can't do this show without your support!!!
Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined from the top of the hour by Paris Marx, author of Road Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation out July 5th from Verso Books and host of the hit podcast Tech Won’t Save Us, where they cover the intersections of labor, tech and finance. Paris and Kumars discuss the significance of the union drive currently gaining momentum at Apple stores across the US, the recent victory of the nation’s first major US video game union at Activision Blizzard’s Raven Software, the limits of the current push by governments and corporations to produce electric vehicles for mass consumption, what could cause the crypto bubble to pop for good, and why Elon Musk can’t stop committing fraud. Keep up with Paris’s work by following them on Twitter @ParisMarx and listening to Tech Won’t Save Us, and pre-order your copy of Road to Nowhere here. If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subsc...
This is just a teaser for today's episode, which is available for Patreon subscribers only! We can't do the show without your support, so help us keep the lights on over here and access tons of bonus content by subscribing on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. While you’re at it, we also love it when you subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined once again by Sam Knight and Sam Sacks, founders of the District Sentinel news co-op and hosts of the podcast District Sentinel Radio. Sam Knight is a reporter and editor for Truthout.org and a writer on Means TV’s Means Morning News, anchored by Sam Sacks. The guys spend the hour breaking down recent labor, finance and economic headlines, from the unionization campaigns at Amazon, Starbucks and beyond to the baby formula shortage, the recent collapse of the cryptocurrency market and the possibility of a recession. Follow the Sams on Twitter @SamSacks and @TheDCSentinel. Subscribe...
Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined for the hour by Tamika Turner, a reproductive rights advocate and former Associate Director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and returning guest Christine O’Donovan-Zavada, a reproductive rights organizer in northeastern Pennsylvania. Tamika, Christine and Kumars discuss the limits of the status quo under Roe v. Wade, the practical implications of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning it, how it will affect the most vulnerable people in both Republican and Democratic-controlled states, and what the Democrats’ fucking problem is. Tamika and Christine round out the hour by sharing where they find inspiration for the future of the fight for abortion rights and how you can help on every front. Follow Tamika on Twitter @prettycritical and Christine @queenozymandias. You can donate to Christine’s fundraiser for the Western PA Fund for Choice here and find a local abortion fund in your state here. If you...
This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Tamara K. Nopper, who is a writer, editor, and professor of sociology whose research focuses on the intersection of economic, racial, and gender inequality, with emphasis on globalization, and urban development, among other areas. Tamara helps us understand the power of data literacy, especially when examining racialized violence, and why excessive dependence on crime data has reinforced racial inequality. Tamara also discusses the risk of deploying crime data in feeding into carceral frameworks, even when they appear to confirm abolitionist arguments. We also learn more about the history of data analysis, and the importance of examining the work of W.E.B Du Bois and Ida B. Wells, both of whom pioneered their own respective methods of sociological data analysis that we still benefit from today. Keep up with Tamara’s work by following her on Twitter @TamaraNopper. If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content,...
This is just a teaser for today's episode, which is available for Patreon subscribers only! We can't do the show without your support, so help us keep the lights on over here and access tons of bonus content by subscribing on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. While you’re at it, we also love it when you subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. This week, Roqayah and Kumars welcome back independent writer and media critic Adam Johnson for a rundown of the most pernicious tropes in US media coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Follow Adam on Twitter @AdamJohnsonNYC, listen to Citations Needed and subscribe to The Column at thecolumn.substack.com.
This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by first-time guest Shireen Al-Adeimi and returning guest Ken Klippenstein for an in-depth discussion of the ongoing war in Yemen. Shireen is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University who has advocated for an end to the humanitarian catastrophe facing the country of her birth on Al Jazeera and in the pages of Current Affairs Magazine, Al Bawaba, and In These Times, and she has a new piece out on Business Insider called “Biden has merely rebranded the brutal war against Yemen”. Ken is a DC-based investigative reporter who has covered government misdeeds and corporate malfeasance for a wide array of publications and is now with The Intercept, where his latest scoop details the Biden administration’s internal debate on reinstating Trump’s terror designation for Ansarallah, more commonly known as the Houthis. Shireen and Ken recap the history of how US and Saudi intervention in the Yemeni civil war created the world’s worst humanit...
This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Nick Estes, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, and Melanie Yazzie, members of the Red Nation’s Bordertown Violence working group and coauthors of Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation. Nick is an indigenous author, and member of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate nation. Nick is also an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and a cofounder of The Red Nation, a revolutionary Native-led community organization and cohosts the podcast of the same name. Nick is also the author ofOur History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance, and writer atThe Red Nation. Jennifer Nez Denetdale is a professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico, and she was the first Diné, or Navajo, scholar ever to get a PhD in History. Jennifer chairs the Navajo Human Rights Commission. She is the author of Reclaiming Dine History: The Legacies ...
This is just a teaser for today's episode, which is available for Patreon subscribers only! We can't do the show without your support, so help us keep the lights on over here and access tons of bonus content by subscribing on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. While you’re at it, we also love it when you subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by labor and tech reporter extraordinaire Edward Ongweso Jr., a staff writer at Vice’s Motherboard and cohost of This Machine Kills, a podcast about the political economy of tech. Ed starts off talking about his union’s landmark victory in contract negotiations with Vice Media and picks up where his previous appearance left off, sharing his thoughts on Uber’s alleged profitability as well as the future of laws like Prop 22. The gang talks about recent revelations of congressional insider trading before going all the way down the tech rabbithole to discuss NFTs, the metaver...
This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi. Lara us Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the George Washington University, and the secretary and president-elect of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology.She is also co-editor ofStudies in Gender & Sexualityand of Counterspace inPsychoanalysis, Culture and Society. Lara also serves on the advisory board to the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network and Psychoanalysis for Pride. Stephen Sheehi is the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Middle East Studies and Director of the Decolonizing Humanities Project at William & Mary, where he is also Professor of Arabic Studies in the Asian and Middle East Studies Program, Arabic Program, and Asian and Pacific Islander American Studies Program. Stephen is also the author ofCamera Palaestina: Photography and Displaced Histories of Palestine(with Salim Tamari and Issam Nassar), Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, 1860-1910, andI...