Today we’re joined by writer and journalist Leslie Lee III, host of the left-wing arts and culture podcast Struggle Session, to take stock of the Bernie Sanders campaign thus far and the state of the Democratic primary race after another night of favorable results for Joe Biden. 

After filling listeners in on his own origin story and the birth of Struggle Session, Leslie breaks down the media narratives around overwhelming black support for Biden and the various premature postmortems on Bernie’s 2020 bid. The gang discusses the importance of taking heart from how far we’ve come since 2016, keeping up the momentum around Bernie’s agenda to the convention, and expanding the base for a socialist movement by organizing around specific issues, regardless of electoral outcomes. Finally, the crew rounds out the hour with an obligatory Star Wars segment. 

You can follow Leslie on Twitter @leslieleeiii and check out Struggle Session wherever pods are cast. 

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Kate Willett, comedian, writer, and co-host of the left-wing feminist podcast Reply Guys. Kate has also appeared in Netflix's “Comedy Lineup” and recently made her network debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Kate dives into how she broke out in comedy and what has helped define her left-wing bona fides, including the tragic passing of her boyfriend, comedian Raghav Mehta. 

We discuss her powerful essay for ELLE Magazine which explains just how Kate went from a Hillary Clinton fan to a quintessential Bernie Bro, and how canvassing for the Sanders campaign has helped her deal with the aftermath of losing Raghav.

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined from Jackson, Mississippi by veteran community organizers Pauline and Frederick Rogers. Pauline is President of the RECH Foundation or Reaching and Educating for Community Hope, and cofounder of that organization along with her husband Fred. Pauline and Frederick were both formerly incarcerated at Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm. Together they founded RECH as a prison and reentry ministry whose projects include the Wendy Hatcher Transitional Home and the Mississippi Freedom Letters Campaign in collaboration with historian and activist Garrett Felber, assistant professor of history the University of Mississippi and author of the book Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State, out now from University of North Carolina Press. 

After Pauline and Fred share a bit of how their lives have been impacted by the prison system, they outline the broad range of services and advocacy they are able to engage in through the RECH Foundation. Pauline, Fred and Garrett discuss the deepening prison crisis in Mississippi, where 19 inmates have died in state prisons since the end of last year, most of them in the notorious Parchman facility. They explain why the Mississippi prison system and especially Parchman have a particular reputation for brutality, detailing both the history of the institution and the current conditions inmates endure. The crew ends by giving their assessment of state and federal government responses to the crisis as well as the double-edged sword of celebrity-driven media attention that has recently brought Parchman into the national spotlight. 

You can follow Pauline on Twitter @rechpauline, Garrett at @garrett_felber and learn more about everyone’s work at the RECH Foundation on their website. 

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Briahna Joy Gray, National Press Secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign and co-host of the Hear The Bern podcast. After shedding light on her formative years before joining the Sanders campaign, Brie breaks down one of the most covered media narratives that has plagued the movement: the Bernie Bro myth. Brie unpacks the implications of this smear and explains just how diverse the Sanders coalition truly is. 

The gang then discusses the weaponization of identity politics by members of the liberal pundit class, and breaks down how Bernie Sanders' policy positions stack up with the other candidates still left on the field. We also get into the unique outreach tactics employed by Sanders canvassers who knocked on over 500,000 doors in the lead up to the Iowa caucus, and who appealed to the most disenfranchised communities in places like Ottumwa where Donald Trump had swept in 2016.

We also weigh up Mike Bloomberg's infiltration into the Democratic primary and what the Sanders campaign is focusing on to continue their winning streak through Super Tuesday.

You can follow Brie on Twitter @briebriejoy, listen to the campaign's official podcast on Hear The Bern, and keep up to date with the Sanders movement at berniesanders.com.

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Lana Polansky, a Montreal-based video game critic, designer and journalist whose writing has appeared on Vice, Paste, and Kill Screen, among other outlets. After charting her personal journey to the intersection of gaming and left-wing politics, Lana explains the experimental impulses behind the category of indie games, with the help of a series of essays for the digital arts and culture outlet Rhizome detailing how the concept of empathy has become a buzzword in the industry. 

Lana then gives listeners a lay of the land with respect to labor conditions for game workers and their efforts to organize, including her retrospective on Gamergate and the function of far-right cultural politics as worker suppression in a completely neoliberal industry, the new campaign by the Communications Workers of America in collaboration with Game Workers Unite to help unionize workers at game companies, and her own work with Game Curious Montreal, the “radical book club for games” bringing gaming enthusiasts together with local social justice organizers. 

You can follow Lana on Twitter @mechapoetic, tune in to her weekly Twitch streams at twitch.tv/mechapoetic, keep up with her independent work on her personal website sufficientlyhuman.com and her other other independent work at patreon.com/Lana Polansky. 

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by returning guest Freddy Martinez, and Nathan "Nash" Sheard. Freddy is currently a policy analyst with the nonpartisan government accountability coalition Open The Government. Nash is an associate director of community organizing at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Freddy and Nash bring us up to speed on the explosive investigative report from the New York Times on the elusive facial recognition vendor, Clearview AI, which has scraped some three billion images for its database from social media platforms and sold them to law enforcement agencies for just $2,000 a month. We also explore the ways in which our personal information is being commodified and then sold back to as a part of wider surveillance capitalism; everything from the hottest security technology, like Ring, to software like Photoshop and everyday phone applications.

With help from Nash and Freddy, we unpack the feasibility of privacy legislation and how law enforcement organizations, like ICE, still manage to find legal ways to mine databases and use facial recognition technology with help from the world's leading tech giants including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.

Finally, we learn about active campaigns like the ACLU's "Press Pause" initiative that intend to help control the surge of facial recognition software and why an outright ban on this technology may be the safest way to protect our privacy.

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Nima Shirazi is a NYC-based media critic and political analyst who edits the English-language Middle East news outlet Muftah and cohosts the podcast Citations Needed with friend of the show Adam Johnson. After sharing some choice tidbits about his formative years and political trajectory, Nima unpacks the ongoing saga surrounding the Iranian government’s accidental downing of a Ukrainian airliner during its military operation in retaliation for the Trump administration’s Jan. 3 killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani.

The gang then discusses the fallout from Soleimani’s assassination, including the latest push for regime change and a rundown of the reactions from leading Democratic presidential candidates. Nima runs the gamut from growing up growing up as an Iranian American and rooting for the Iron Sheik, to the media’s demonization of Soleimani and branding of the Islamic Republic as a terrorist state, to a fresh wave of repression here at home, like the detention of Iranians (including US citizens) at the border as well as Facebook removing pro-Soleimani posts from Instagram under the pretense that they violate US sanctions.

You can follow Nima on Twitter @WideAsleepNima, keep up with his latest work on his website and over at Citations Needed.

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson. Nathan is also a PhD student at Harvard University, a columnist for the Guardian, and author of the new book Why You Should Be a Socialist. After filling listeners in on what he’s been up to since his first appearance on the show, Nathan lays out his pitch in the book and a recent article for NBC News to readers who might be socialists, but don’t know it yet. 

Then the gang takes a deep dive into the political phenomenon of Pete Buttigieg, revisiting Nathan’s magnum opus on Buttigieg from early in his candidacy and expanding on it to cover his tenure as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, his consulting work for McKinsey & Company, his military service in Afghanistan, and his catastrophic record on racial issues. Finally, Nathan takes stock of the Buttigieg campaign’s momentum going forward and shares his take on the state of play in the Democratic primary. 

You can follow Nathan on Twitter @NathanJRobinson, read his work over on the Current Affairs website and pick up Why You Should Be a Socialist wherever books are still sold.

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Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined by Madeline Peltz, a research coordinator at Media Matters for America where she covers the rise of the far right in conservative media and has emerged as the world’s foremost expert on Tucker Carlson. 

Madeline famously combed through the Fox News host’s weekly guest appearances from 2006 to 2011 on the talk radio program of C-list shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge, exposing a history of openly bigoted statements that put Carlson’s lingering prestige in media circles and the confusion surrounding his descent into fascism in their proper context. After catching listeners up on the history and mission of Media Matters, Madeline and Kumars dive deep into the utility of boycotting Fox News, the weirdest Fox commercials, how the network’s ideological project has evolved in the Trump era, and what makes “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” of all its offerings, uniquely dangerous. 

You can follow Madeline Peltz on Twitter @peltzmadeline and keep up with her work on the Media Matters website. 

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Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined once again by activist extraordinaire Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the antiwar organization CODEPINK, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and the author of many books. Medea also just returned from Bolivia, where she witnessed the state’s brutal repression of dissent in the aftermath of the Nov. 10 ouster of President Evo Morales by the military and police. Medea begins by laying out the basics of the situation in Bolivia, refuting the far-right opposition’s charges of election fraud and clarifying the role of the US-dominated regional multilateral body Organization of American States (OAS) as a vehicle for legitimizing regime change in Latin America. 

Medea and Kumars then touch on the history of foreign intervention in Bolivia, Morales’s record and his now scuffled plan to nationalize the country’s lithium reserves. Medea breaks down the dynamics of the counterrevolution, including interim president Jeanine Añez, explaining how an unpopular Christian nationalist minority was able to stoke the traditional elite’s racist resentment of Bolivia’s indigenous majority and leverage a violent intimidation campaign against socialist leaders to shut Morales’s party out of government—tactics now codified in the coup government’s decree granting security forces legal immunity to crack down on dissent. Medea goes on to share her eyewitness account of the military junta’s Nov. 19 massacre of at least 9 protesters in the indigenous city of El Alto. 

You can follow Medea on Twitter at @medeabenjamin and CODEPINK @codepink.

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Roqayah is off this week, and Kumars is joined for a discussion of New York City’s recently approved jail expansion by three organizers with the prison abolitionist campaign No New Jails NYC, Pilar Maschi, Samantha Johnson and Nabil Hassein. Pilar, who was formerly incarcerated in the notorious Rikers Island facility, also organizes with Critical Resistance NYC. Samantha is a Community Board member on Community Board 2 in Brooklyn, which voted against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $10 million plan, and Nabil is an educator and technologist who has previously organized with the Shut Down Rikers campaign among others.

After sharing a bit of their personal paths towards organizing, Nabil, Pilar and Samantha give listeners a gloss of the horrific conditions at Rikers, separating fact from fiction with regard to the facility’s violent reputation. The crew then walks us through the details of the legislation, detailing why they opposed the plan to ostensibly close Rikers within the next 10 years and replace it with 4 new borough-based jails. They explain how, despite the media’s overwhelming sympathy with de Blasio’s framing, NNJ NYC organizers were nonetheless able to mount a serious challenge to City Hall’s narrative, putting pressure on the city government through escalating direct actions and bringing unprecedented visibility to abolitionist principles including the critique of liberal rhetoric around “safer” and more “humane” incarceration. 

According to a report from the New York Times and Associated Press, between 2011 to 2013 alone there were over 1,000 documented injuries against inmates, with many more likely unreported

Follow Nabil on Twitter @NabilHassein, Pilar @pilar_maschi and Samantha @1samanthajoh, as well as No New Jails NYC @nonewjails_nyc. You can also find all the resources referenced in the episode and more at nonewjails.nyc.

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by open source human rights investigator Liza Mamedov-Turchinsky who is the founder and lead organizer of the Bay Area chapter of the Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps (CCCC), a local network of migrant rights and activist groups, as well as founder and lead organizer of the UC Berkeley student group Cal Bears Against ICE. 

Liza describes the challenges facing student organizers, and how this has informed her work supporting migrant and undocumented communities. We learn about the collective action by the coalition and their allies to support immigrant rights and put an end to migrant incarceration and abuse, which has included targeted protests and nationwide vigils.

We also talk about the complicity of leading tech companies in supporting the Trump administration's barbaric immigration policy, including Microsoft's GitHub and elusive data company Palantir, and the significance of motivating employees at these companies to demand accountability and make a stand by withholding their labor.

Liza also updates us on momentous victories in the fight against these tech giants, and what this means for the future of immigration justice.

You can follow Liza on Twitter @lizardnizami to keep up with her work, and follow The CCCC Bay Area @CloseTheCampsBA.

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Musa Gwebani, a South African activist who serves as head of advocacy and organizing for the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), a radical civil society organization based in Cape Town. After sharing her personal path to organizing, Musa introduces listeners to the SJC and its mission to fighting for the rights of marginalized people, especially those living in what in so-called informal settlements. 

She then helps Roqayah and Kumars put the current flareup in xenophobic violence across South Africa in its proper context, peeling back the layers to consider the roots of the crisis in the legacy of apartheid, internalized antiblack racism, the usefulness of scapegoating migrants for economic injustice, and the complicity of government officials like Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, whom Musa recently took to task in a televised debate forum for his rhetoric of incitement against foreign nationals. The gang rounds out the discussion by touching on the causes of migration in sub-Saharan Africa, South African exceptionalism, the dream of de-balkanizing the continent for the benefit of all, and how it might yet be salvaged. 

You can follow Musa on Twitter @musa_gwebani and learn more about the Social Justice Coalition’s work at http://sjc.org.za/. 

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by media analyst Adam Johnson, host of The Appeal podcast and co-host of Citations Needed. After bringing us up to speed on felicitous goings-on in his personal life, Adam helps Roqayah and Kumars ring in episode 150 with a fan mail special. Moving into more serious waters, Adam goes in-depth explains the ideological basis and policy consequences of the dehumanizing and exterminationist rhetoric targeting homeless people pushed by local reporters all the way up to Fox News. 

Adam then unpacks the toxic positivity of “feel good” news stories about the charity of corporations or pulling yourself by your bootstraps, before giving us his read on the media’s premature coronation of Elizabeth Warren and the real difference between Bernie and Liz. The gang rounds out the conversation by debating the relevance of the concept of electability for the left, and whether the supposed media suppression of Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang is going far enough.

You can follow Adam on Twitter @AdamJohnsonNYC, and to hear more check out both Citations Needed and The Appeal wherever you get your podcasts.

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by the show's resident organizer, Mariame Kaba, and first-time-guest Dean Spade, Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law. Mariame, known best as @prisonculture on Twitter, is an abolitionist 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. Dean not only teaches law but founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective.

Mariame and Dean guide listeners through the world of mutual aid: from what this organizing theory means to how mutual aid projects are being applied in everyday life in order to disrupt violent, carceral institutions and inspire community building. Mariame explains what differentiates mutual aid from charity work, and why helping to lift one another up through struggle is a powerful act of solidarity and self-determination.

Dean, who helped develop the mutual aid toolbox, gives us examples of how this project gives organizers a guide on forming community support projects that touch on issues like legal aid, childcare collectives, mental health support, cop watches, and so much more.

The crew also discusses the organizing framework on abolitionist principles released this week, designed to lessen the scope and power of the prosecuting office and change the ways in which our communities respond to criminality and crisis.

You can follow Mariame on Twitter @prisonculture and Dean @deanspade. For more details on the mutual aid toolkit make sure to visit The Big Door Brigade.

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Today Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Dean Preston, a democratic socialist candidate for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors and founder of the housing rights organization Tenant's Together, the only statewide renters’ organization in California.

Dean recounts his vibrant activist record, and how he went from working as a housing justice attorney representing low-income tenants fighting Ellis Act evictions to organizing one of the nation's leading tenant advocacy groups. Dean, who also wrote Prop F, which gives city-funded legal representation to renters facing eviction, talks us through the legislative hurdles facing tenants and why displacement and homelessness will continue to rise without housing access.

We also get into housing discrimination and its impact on the formerly incarcerated, who are nearly 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public. Also, in light of the Trump administration's proposed crackdown on homeless encampments in California, Dean offers up what he would be willing to do so as to protect San Francisco’s homeless from such attacks.

You can follow Dean on Twitter @DeanPreston, and for more details about his campaign and how to get involved visit votedean.com

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by two members of the Socialist Rifle Association’s Central Committee for an in-depth discussion of gun rights, gun control, and community self-defense. Faye Ecklar is Vice President of the SRA, a main organizer of the Los Angeles chapter, and cohost of the official Socialist Rifle Association podcast. Brad is the founder of the North Georgia chapter and serves as the SRA’s Director of Local Organizing. 

After giving listeners an introduction to their personal paths to left politics and gun rights advocacy, Faye and Brad lay out the basic mission of the SRA to serve as an educational institution for the working class and explain the young organization’s rapid growth by highlighting their commitment to mutual aid projects like hurricane relief. Faye and Brad also outline the SRA’s efforts to function as an alternative to right-wing gun culture in the US, including the influence of the National Rifle Association. 

The gang then gets into the nitty-gritty of the socialist case for gun ownership. Faye, Brad, and our hosts address common arguments for and against gun rights in liberal discourse as well as in left-wing organizing spaces. They consider the implications of red flag laws, an assault weapons ban and other gun control legislation currently under debate, finally ending on the question of how to responsibly approach the need for armed community defense as political tensions and the violent far-right continue to rise. 

You can follow Faye on Twitter @FayeEcklar, Brad @GeorgiaMarxist and the official SRA account @SocialistRA. You can find even more info and sign up for membership on their website https://socialistra.org. 

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Today Roqayah and Kumars are joined by indigenous author Nick Estes, a member of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate nation. Nick is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and a member of the Oak Lake Writers Society, a group of Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota writers. Nick is also the author of Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance, and writer at The Red Nation.

Nick spoke to us about the long tradition of indigenous resistance against colonialism and capitalism, and emphasized the anti-indigenous origins of the US settler colonial project. We discuss "A Red Deal", his provocative essay for Jacobin Magazine which criticises aspects of the Green New Deal as not going far enough, and highlights indigenous demands for the restoration of land, air, and water as well as an end to capitalism.

We also get into the meaning of decolonization, the liberation from colonial rule, and what role this process plays in advancing the class struggle. Finally we discuss the issues surrounding presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, from her false Native ancestry claims to her platform promises concerning indigenous issues.

You can follow Nick on Twitter at @nick_w_estes and read more of his work at The Red Nation.

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by the show's resident artist Matt Lubchansky. Matt is a cartoonist and illustrator with a long running webcomic Please Listen To Me. You can find their work in VICE, Eater, The Intercept, Mad Magazine, Gothamist, and Brooklyn Magazine, among others.

We learn about what Matt has been up to since their previous appearance, especially in light of The Nib losing its primary source of funding from its parent company First Look Media after three and a half years. Matt shares how they've been coping, and why The Nib decided to go independent so they can keep pumping out high quality left-wing comic content. 

We also get into the weeds and examine the role of satire in political cartooning, and how Matt provides social commentary in their comics without punching down. We talk about Matt's artistic portrayal of a dystopian future, and "hell world" that features sci-fi and horror tropes. And this, of course, means we get to talk about aliens and how we would react to a potential alien invasion.

You can follow Matt on Twitter at @Lubchansky and support The Nib by becoming a member of the Inkwell.

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are rejoined by Megan the Meme Witch and one of the hosts of the Naughty By Nurture podcast. Longtime listeners will remember her previous interviews discussing shame, trauma and burnout on the left, as well as her appearance modeling a therapy session on a special After Hours episode. This time around Megan outlines what organizers can learn from the lessons of clinical psychological practices about how people change their minds and break their toxic patterns of behavior. 

With the help of the crew, Megan introduces and models one framework she finds useful for organizers constantly confronted with apathy and conservatism: motivational interviewing (MI), which is particularly effective in treating people with deeply entrenched beliefs. Motivational interviewing emphasizes sitting with feelings of ambivalence and letting people come to their own conclusions. Megan, Roqayah, and Kumars end by debating the wisdom of meeting people where they are in the context of genuine bigotry and ideological opposition. 

You follow Megan on Twitter @MemeVVitch and you can check out the abundance of resources referenced in the episode on her old blog. 

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Ashley Reyes and Cam Crowell, former workers of the Portland-based fast food chain Little Big Burger. Both Ashley and Cam were fired for their involvement in the recent campaign to unionize Little Big Burger, and they join the crew less than 24 hours before their union election to talk about these organizing efforts.

Ashley and Cam talk about the issues facing workers at Little Big Burger, and explain how this led to collective action culminating in their union campaign. We talk about the impact of the success of Burgerville workers in forming a union, as well as their decision to join Burgerville workers in the IWW. They also discuss how their efforts resulted in a targeted harassment campaign by management designed to coerce other Little Big Burger workers from joining. This included the firing of nine employees including Cam and Ashley, and the creation of a wildly conspiratorial website that specifically targeted organizers.

We learn why these management tactics have been in vain, and how the push for the Little Big Union has gained traction. 

You can find out more about Little Big Union at littlebigunion.org, follow the union on Twitter @LBU_IWW, and support the Little Big Union strike fund by giving to their fundraising campaign.

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by immigration attorney Sophia Gurulé who works for the non-profit legal advocacy group, The Bronx Defenders. Sophia has also participated in the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project in Dilley, Texas for which she helped provide legal services to asylum-seeking women and children. 

Sophia describes how the Bronx Defenders, which represents over 30,000 people each year, is creatively redefining public defense through a holistic approach and how this has helped communities impacted by the criminal and immigration system find authentic and effective representation. We learn about the challenges facing public defenders and their clients, from a lack of resources to a system that is designed to instill fear into asylum seekers who are seeking reprieve.

Sophia helps us understand what's at stake for her clients and other undocumented people who are facing an increasingly inhumane detention process. We also talk about the importance of highlighting the ways each recent US President, Republican or Democrat, has ratcheted-up the brutality relative to their predecessors. While Trump is certainly the worst yet, the immigration policies of Clinton and Obama paved the way for the nearly unimaginable cruelty we are enacting today.

You can follow Sophia on Twitter @s_phia_ to keep up to date with her work. You also can find more information on The Bronx Defenders at bronxdefenders.org and on Twitter @BronxDefenders. And support your local bond fund! 

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Sina Toossi, a research associate at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) where he specializes in Iranian politics and US foreign policy in the Middle East, for another deep dive into the Trump administration’s push for regime change in Iran. Sina was previously at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Institute for Policy Studies in DC, and his work has been published in Newsweek and Foreign Policy among many other outlets. 

After sharing a bit of his personal background as well as his path to both his politics and the world of foreign policy thinktanks, Sina breaks down escalating US-Iran tensions, including the fallout from the tanker attacks in the Gulf of Oman and Trump’s recent decision to order and then call off military strikes in response to the downing of a US drone in Iranian airspace. The gang also discusses the various responses of the Democrats to the threat of war, public sentiment and activist perspectives in Iran, and why it’s no longer in the Islamic Republic’s interest to abide by the nuclear deal, which Sina outlines in his recent piece for the National Interest on the Iranian government’s strategy for geopolitical survival.

You can follow Sina on Twitter @SinaToossi and keep up with his work at sinatoossi.com.

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