Kumars and Roqayah are joined this week by India Walton, a registered nurse, community organizer and candidate for mayor of Buffalo, New York. She is a founder and former executive director of Fruit Belt community land trust, an historic grassroots housing justice organization, and also former lead community organizer for Open Buffalo’s Opportunity and Justice coalition. She’s already picked up endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America and New York’s Working Families Party. They call her the unofficial Mayor of Buffalo, she’s just looking to make it super official.
We talk to India about her ideas for transforming the city of Buffalo, including her ideas around policing and public safety, housing, food access, COVID response and more.
If you want to support India's campaign, you can volunteer or donate.
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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by returning guest Sydney Ghazarian and first timer Ashik Siddique, both climate organizers with the Democratic Socialists of America’s Ecosocialist Working Group and coordinators for DSA’s Green New Deal and PRO Act campaigns. Syd is the Los Angeles-based founder of the Ecosocialist Working Group and previously came on the show to tackle everything from racism in the environmentalist movement to what we can learn from indigenous-led pipeline blockades, as well as her article in In These Times outlining an agenda for escalating climate organizing through labor tactics. Ashik serves on the steering committee of the Ecosocialist Working Group and is a research analyst with the National Priorities Project, an initiative of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.
After Ashik shares a bit about his personal path to organizing and the left, the gang jumps into the history of US labor law and breaks down how the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which passed the House of Representatives in 2020 and again on March 9, 2021, would fundamentally alter it, from legalizing secondary strikes to extending labor protections to undocumented immigrants. Syd and Ashik discuss the emerging coalition between unions and the socialist left, as well as the concrete ways the PRO Act would have impacted the unionization efforts of Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama.
Visit proact.dsausa.org to sign up for phone banking in states whose senators do not yet support the bill.
Follow Ashik on Twitter @ahSHEEK and Syd @SydneyAzari. You can also follow the DSA Ecosocialist Working Group @DSAecosocialism and find out more about how to get involved in this campaign as well as their future efforts here.
To keep up with what is happening in Palestine and to learn more about ways you can help, visit the Electronic Intifada and Decolonize Palestine.
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 Apple Podcasts. We can't do this show without your support!!!
This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again from the top of the hour by Brett Payne and Bryan Quinby, hosts of Street Fight Radio and the creators and stars of an upcoming live action comedy series on Means TV, in their first appearance on the show since November. The gang catches up, discussing Biden banning blunts and recent innovations in the field of getting high. Brett and Bryan talk about the community response in Columbus to the police murder of Ma’Khia Bryant before tackling electoral politics, identity politics, and the banality of J.D. Vance.
Follow Brett on Twitter @BrettPain, Bryan at @murderxbryan, and the Street Fight show account @StreetFightWCRS, and as always you can hear Street Fight Radio wherever pods are cast.
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 Apple Podcasts. We can't do this show without your support!!!