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.

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 iTunes. We can't do this show without your support!!!

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/. 

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 iTunes. We can't do this show without your support!!!

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.

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 iTunes. We can't do this show without your support!!!