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Delete Your Account Podcast

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.
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Now displaying: May, 2018
May 30, 2018

 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 first-time guest Matt Lubchansky. Matt is the Associate Editor of The Nib and a cartoonist and illustrator living in Queens, NY. Their work has appeared in VICE, The Intercept, Mad Magazine, Gothamist, The Toast, and of course, The Nib. We learn more about what led Matt to illustration, and get some background on his popular comic Please Listen To Me, as well as Matt's role in the ongoing political animated series from The Nib. Matt also shares their thoughts on Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams and Alex Jones favorite Ben Garrison, who have now become members of the alt-right, pro-Trump media landscape, and how they got to where they are. We examine the liberal side of political cartooning, discussing Garry Trudeau and Matt Groening, before turning our attention to artists like those featured at The Nib whose politics are further left. We discuss what makes some political art subversive and iconic, and what makes some (most) political art fall flat on its face. There's lots of extra fun material for Patreon subscribers only, so you'll have to listen for yourself!

You can follow Matt on Twitter at @Lubchansky.

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.

May 23, 2018

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, Kumars and Roqayah speak with Martha Mundy, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She specializes in the anthropology of Arab societies, focusing in particular on matters of law and state, agrarian systems, kinship and family. Martha, who conducted her first ethnographic fieldwork in North Yemen in the mid-1970's, discusses the historical background of Yemen, including the political composition of the North and South. We learn about what drew Martha towards the region, specifically working in Yemen in the area of agricultural study. We dive into the role of local tribal and agrarian culture, how they form the very base of Yemeni society, and how this has been impacted by war and famine. Martha draws attention to the Saudi-led coalition bombing of Yemen, and how this military onslaught, whose targets have included water facilities, and sanitation systems, has brought Yemen to the brink of collapse. Martha discusses the extent of the economic war on Yemen and the U.S. role in prolonging it—from the Bush administration’s designation of Yemen as a combat zone, and subsequent drone assassination campaigns, to Barack Obama’s covert “signature strikes”.

Check out Martha's writing over at Counterpunch and buy her book. Also, make sure to listen to our interview from 2016 with journalist Afrah Nasser about Yemen.

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.

May 15, 2018

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, Kumars and guest-host Shanti Singh welcome Jessica Raven. Jessica is a mother, community organizer, and Executive Director of Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS), a DC-based grassroots organization working to build safer public spaces using community-based, non-criminal solutions. In this role, she has spearheaded the growth of the Safe Bar Collective, which works to end harassment and discrimination in nightlife. She is also a former youth survival sex worker working with the Sex Workers' Advocates Coalition (SWAC) to decriminalize sex work in DC.

Jessica joins us to talk about the recently passed FOSTA-SESTA legislation, which holds internet companies liable if users post ads for illegal sex work. Jessica describes the negative consequences of this legislation for sex workers, particularly those who are most marginalized. We discuss the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and homelessness as relates to sex work, and explore the incongruity between narratives about sex work and sex trafficking and reality. Jessica explains how the goal of the well-funded, white-male-dominated anti sex-trafficking movement is to end the sex trade, not to protect trafficking victims and definitely not to protect the vast majority of sex workers who aren’t trafficked. We talk about the risks of criminalizing any aspect of consensual sex work, particularly given that sex workers are often victimized by police themselves. Jessica also discusses the importance of language choices in either breaking or reinforcing the social stigma around sex work, leading to real consequences for sex workers, particularly those most marginalized. Finally, we hear about the work Jessica is doing in Washington DC to educate the community about the reality of sex work, and to organize to meet the needs of sex workers.

Check out the sex worker lobby day in DC planned for June 1st (part of a broader National Day of Action), and keep an eye out for direct actions happening in a city near you for International Whores Day on June 2nd. Follow Jessica on twitter @thejessicaraven.

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.

May 3, 2018

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 Mariame Kaba back on the show. Mariame is a brilliant organizer whose work focuses primarily on dismantling the prison industrial complex. She's the founder of Project NIA, 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. You'll know her from Twitter as @prisonculture.

Mariame joins us to discuss her efforts on behalf of survivors of domestic and gender-based violence who have been criminalized and incarcerated for defending themselves against their abuser. Mariame shares her experiences and lessons learned from the successful campaigns to free Bresha Meadows and Marissa Alexander, two high-profile criminalized survivors of domestic violence. Mariame contrasts the treatment of Bresha and Marissa with other prominent examples to demonstrate that self-defense is only available to certain people, and certainly not black women. We talk about the impossible situation that domestic violence survivors are put in when the system fails them and then punishes them for doing what was necessary to survive. Mariame also discusses the work of Survived and Punished, an organizing collective she co-founded that emerged from several campaigns to free individual criminalized survivors. We learn about the efforts of the Survived and Punished NYC branch to push New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to commute the sentences of all criminalized domestic violence survivors in the state, a unilateral power he has and chooses not to exercise. We discuss the value, even in isolation, of clemency campaigns for individual survivors, while also highlighting the important role of these individual campaigns in building a mass movement to win systemic changes.

Check out the Survived and Punished toolkit to learn more about how to organize a defense campaign for criminalized survivors of violence where you live. 

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.

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