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This week, Roqayah and Kumars welcome first-time guest Anoa Changa and returning guest Eugene Puryear to the show. Anoa is an attorney and host of the podcast The Way with Anoa. She’s the co-managing editor of Progressive Army, and she also edits and writes for Peach Perspective which brings a left focus to politics in Georgia. Eugene is an organizer and founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and is on the editorial board of Liberation News. He ran for Vice President alongside Presidential candidate Gloria La Riva under the PSL banner in 2008 and 2016. He is the author of Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America, and host of By Any Means Necessary on Radio Sputnik.
Anoa and Eugene were recently contacted by a reporter for Atlanta NPR affiliate WABE, ostensibly to profile Anoa about her experiences as a black activist in Atlanta. Eugene was contacted because he had hosted Anoa on his radio show, which is on Radio Sputnik, which has ties to the Russian state. The article, which ran on WABE and was boosted in other outlets, attempted to discredit Anoa and Eugene's work because of this extremely loose connection to Russia. Anoa and Eugene situate their treatment in historical context, pointing out that black organizing has been discredited for decades as a Soviet conspiracy to destabilize American politics. We get everyone's thoughts on Russian "election meddling", ignoring the hype to discuss more pressing threats to our electoral system and real ways to address them that don't result in a jingoist frenzy. Anoa and Eugene call out mainstream US news outlets for chastising leftists for appearing on platforms they deem out-of-bounds, while simultaneously denying leftists space and instead giving platforms to far-right scum. Finally, we have a very nuanced conversation about the complexities of choosing the right platform for your message, especially in our media universe where no platform with any real reach is pure.
You can follow Anoa on Twitter @TheWayWithAnoa, and follow Eugene @EugenePuryear.
A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.
If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, 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!!!
This week, Roqayah and Kumars welcome back two friends of the show, Douglas Williams and Bryan Conlon, also known as @Cato_of_Utica on Twitter. Douglas and Bryan, the proprietors of the Southern-focused labor organizing blog The South Lawn, catch up with Roqayah and Kumars, venting about the media mourning Barbara Bush before sharing their insight into the recent wave of teachers’ strikes across the country. The crew discusses how they negotiate the tension between “meeting people where they’re at” on the one hand, and on the other hand, building an intersectional left in solidarity with all oppressed and marginalized people.
Douglas and Bryan debate the importance of elections, particularly for leftist organizers interested in building a broad movement for social justice. We revisit their 2013 article for Facing South, “Creating a culture of unionism in the South”, and discuss its relevance to the labor actions we are seeing nationwide. Bryan and Douglas also share their thoughts on what people need to be doing to keep up the momentum from these strikes, transforming otherwise isolated labor actions into a mass movement for social and economic justice. Finally, the crew discusses Janus vs. AFSCME, the national “right to work” case that would undercut unions on a federal level, and what will be needed to revitalize the labor movement in the face of that impending consolidation of corporate anti-union reaction.
You can follow Bryan on Twitter @Cato_of_Utica, and follow both their work @TheSouthLawn. Don't forget to support The South Lawn on Patreon.
A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.
If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, 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!!!
This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble, assistant professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication and author of the new book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. Safiya calls attention to the built-in prejudices that distort search results and influence the information users can access on Google and other search engines in ways that reinforce structural inequality and bigoted attitudes. The crew talks about how the reliance of companies like Google on human-created algorithms to sort and prioritize search results means that the creators’ racist and sexist assumptions get translated into a new, ostensibly “neutral” or “objective” media form.
Safiya discusses the particular case of Dylann Roof, whose search history led him to the right-wing ideas he said motivated his massacre at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Roqayah and Kumars ask Safiya about laws in Europe that compel companies to restrict access to Nazi propaganda and other hate speech, and get her thoughts on regulating how companies prioritize bigoted content. Finally, Safiya puts forward one model for how a radical search engine might work to both protect marginalized users and ensure that tools of oppression are presented in their proper context.
Check out Algorithms of Oppression here and you can follow Safiya on Twitter @safiyanoble.
A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.
If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, 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 week’s episode, Roqayah and Kumars are joined for the entire show by returning guest Shaun Scott, author of Millennials and the Moments That Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982—Present. Shaun talks with Roqayah and Kumars about Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx, the recent biographical picture that tells the story of Marx’s early career, his friendship with Friedrich Engels, his marriage to his wife Jenny, and the development of Marx’s ideas in the lead-up to the publication of his Communist Manifesto. Opinions differ on the quality of the film. Shaun explains his article for City Arts Magazine, “Identity Politics in The Young Karl Marx,” providing background on Marx’s life and arguing that the film’s perspective demonstrates not only the potential but the necessity of integrating intersectional thinking about identity with Marxist class analysis through social reproduction theory.
The crew argues about how the film falls short, including its narrative focus on the development of ideas and its adherence to traditional biopic conventions. Roqayah and Kumars also discuss other recent depictions of communism, the Soviet Union, and Cold War politics in the recent movies Red Sparrow, The Death of Stalin, and The Shape of Water, and everyone concludes by taking stock of the complexities that arise when cinema takes on political issues.
Follow Shaun on Twitter @eyesonthestorm, and check out his analysis of The Young Karl Marx on City Arts.
A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.