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On this episode, Roqayah and Kumars talk to Andalusia Knoll, a freelance multimedia journalist based in Mexico City. She was recently on-the-ground in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, where government forces just massacred teachers who were protesting neoliberal education reforms.
Andalusia discussed the proposed reforms and why teachers are standing in opposition, even in the face of brutal state violence. We discuss the reasons for why the Mexican government has repeatedly and viciously attacked teachers in particular, without fear of accountability at home or abroad. In this context, we revisit the Ayotzinapa massacre of 2014, which Andalusia has also reported on extensively, to learn the status of efforts toward justice for those victims. We also discuss the role of the United States in violence perpetrated by drug cartels and government actors. Finally, we talk about next steps for those organizing within Mexico, as well as steps folks outside Mexico can take to support this struggle.
Check out Andalusia's work in VICE News, AJ+, Democracy Now!, and Truthout. In Mexico, she collaborates with various independent media and art collectives. Follow her on Twitter at @andalalucha.
This is just part of this week's episode. If you want to hear the full episode, subscribe on our Patreon page 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!!!
On this episode, Roqayah and Kumars interview Lara Kiswani, a community organizer in the San Francisco Bay Area and Executive Director of the nonprofit Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC). As a leader at AROC and in the Bay Area activist community, Lara has contributed to numerous high-profile wins for social justice, including preventing Israel's largest shipping company from docking in Oakland following the 2014 Israeli bombardment of Gaza (#BlockTheBoat), kicking the Urban Shield convention out of Oakland, and securing Arabic and Vietnamese language instruction in San Francisco schools, among other victories.
Roqayah and Kumars discuss these high-profile wins, as well as street-tested strategies for cross-movement coalition-building, including how AROC was able to help build the 70-member-organization Block The Boat Coalition. Lara discusses the necessity of having coalitions broad enough to be large, powerful, and inclusive, as well as the dangers of watering down your message and betraying your principles when engaging in broad-based coalition work. As someone who organizes, quite successfully, through the lens of her identity as a Palestinian American, we also discuss with Lara the strengths and limitations of identity politics as an organizing framework. Lara discusses several concrete strategies for mitigating the inevitable pitfalls of both coalition-building and identity politics, while also explaining the importance that experience plays in shaping our actions and views.
Links discussed in the episode:
This Non-Violence Stuff'll Get You Killed, by Charles E. Cobb Jr
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, by Robin D.G. Kelley
On this episode of Delete Your Account, Roqayah and Kumars have on Doug and Patrick, a couple of radical labor organizers who run a blog called The South Lawn. The South Lawn focuses on labor organizing in the Southern United States, with an aim of producing writing that resonates with the working class, not just labor lawyers or academics as is the case with most labor writing. The gang discusses Doug and Patrick's most recent piece on political violence and its role in combating fascism. Is Trump a fascist? How do we beat him? Is beating him even enough? Should you vote for Hillary Clinton? Listen to learn the answers to these questions and more! Also, stick around to hear the gang roast Hillary Clinton for demeaning the name of our show, as well as some other podcasters who shall remain nameless.
This is just part of the interview we recorded with Doug and Patrick. If you want to hear the full, unedited interview, subscribe on our Patreon page 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!!!
Important links mentioned in the show:
Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt, by Umberto Eco
On this episode, we put election madness aside. If we want to win, first we need to learn how to fight.
To teach us how to fight, we invite on our first guest ever, Mariame Kaba, though most of you know her as @prisonculture on Twitter. If you're not familiar with Mariame, she's a brilliant organizer whose work focuses primarily on dismantling the prison industrial complex. She's the founder of Project NIA, which is an advocacy group focused on ending youth incarceration. She's also co-founded a number of other organizations including the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, and We Charge Genocide.We talk about an impressive list of wins compiled by Chicago activists like herself, including reparations for survivors of torture by Chicago Police, funding for a new trauma center in Southside Chicago, and the successful ouster of Anita Alvarez, the prosecutor who participated in a cover-up of the police murder of Laquan McDonald. Roqayah, Kumars, and Mariame also discuss the perceived tension between reform and revolution, as well as what it means to be a prison abolitionist in your daily life.
Roqayah and Kumars also take on the pundit class, mocking their nonsensical and contradicting positions on political violence in the wake of the egging of some proto-fascist Trump fans in San Jose.
If you like the show and want access to special bonus content, please donate here: https://www.patreon.com/deleteyouraccount
Delete Your Account is a new podcast hosted by journalist Roqayah Chamseddine and her plucky sidekick Kumars Salehi. Every week they will talk about important stories from the worlds of politics and pop culture, both on and off-line, in a way that will never bore you. They’re radical leftists, but not that kind. The other kind. The fun kind.
On this inaugural episode, Roqayah and Kumars discuss long-suffering Hillary Clinton supporters on college campuses, liberal defenses of Clinton and Democrats, the weaponization of social justice rhetoric, having a beer with Hilldawg, Kumars’s Fox News obsession, brainstorming possible insulting terms for Jill Stein supporters, Bernie on Palestine, third party protest voting, what the election means for organizing, cheering the rise of the Cat Video Left, and a tribute to The Toast.
Follow Roqayah (@roqchams) and Kumars (@KumarsSalehi) on twitter.
If you like the show and want access to special bonus content, please donate here: https://www.patreon.com/deleteyouraccount