Beacon Podcast

Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap and ACLU of Maine legal director Zach Heiden join the podcast this week to answer a listener question: is voter suppression a threat in Maine and what should those who are concerned about this issue be doing right now to prevent it.

You can ask a question or leave a comment for a future show at (207) 619-3182.

Subscribe to the podcast feed right here using your favorite podcasting app or subscribe using iTunes.

(Top: A voter casts her ballot at a polling place at Highland Colony Baptist Church, November 27, 2018 in Ridgeland, Mississippi. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

New York Time bestselling author and historian Ibram X. Kendi joins the podcast this week to discuss his new book How To Be An Antiracist, a guide to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves.

Before that, however, Beacon’s D.C. correspondent Robin Bravender calls in from a closet in the Capitol to give us an update on impeachment and where Maine’s delegation stands.

You can ask a question or leave a comment for a future show at (207) 619-3182.

Subscribe to the podcast feed right here using your favorite podcasting app or subscribe using iTunes.

Nelini Stamp, National Organizing Director for the Working Families Party, joins the podcast to talk political movements and institutions, the importance of being willing to take risks and her organization’s recent endorsement of Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president.

Also: Ben and Mike discuss some strange signs at Eric Brakey’s campaign launch, what’s next for all the people’s vetoes, and a perplexing defense of a racist comedian.

You can ask a question or leave a comment for a future show at (207) 619-3182.

Subscribe to the podcast feed right here using your favorite podcasting app or subscribe using iTunes.

This week on the Beacon podcast, Ben Chin and Mike Tipping dive into the systems of a city in which neither of them live, discussing the counter-intuitive politics of Maine’s largest municipality.

Also: Results from the state’s first long-term care commission, an update on the people’s vetoes and a new expansion of ranked-choice voting.

Plus: Does Susan Collins really hate dark money?

You can ask a question or leave a comment for a future show at (207) 619-3182.

Subscribe to the podcast feed right here using your favorite podcasting app or subscribe using iTunes.

This week on the Beacon podcast, MPA co-director Jesse Graham joins to discuss the decades-long fight to force Maklinckrodt to clean up deadly mercury in the Penobscot River, dumped and leaked from their HoltraChem site in Orington.

Also: Ben and Mike discuss an upcoming presidential forum, a new study from MECEP, a disconnect in coverage of Maine’s top border guard and more.

You can ask a question or leave a comment for a future show at (207) 619-3182.

Subscribe to the podcast feed right here using your favorite podcasting app or subscribe using iTunes.

 

This week on the Beacon podcast, Lee Leviter joins to discuss rising and insidious anti-Semitism in Maine and across the country. Ben Chin and Mike Tipping also discuss the vote by the state Senate to extend ranked-choice voting to the presidential primary and why it’s important.

Plus: Ben answers a set of trivia questions on Maine history and politics. Can you beat his score?

You can ask a question or leave a comment for a future show at (207) 619-3182.

Subscribe to the podcast feed right here using your favorite podcasting app or subscribe using iTunes.

(Photo: Jewish activists march in Portland earlier this month | Kevin Simowitz)

This week on the Beacon podcast, Taryn, Ben and Mike discuss Sen. Susan Collins’ exasperation and worsening electoral prospects. Beacon reporter Dan Neumann joins to talk about his investigations into BMV wait times and alt-right online trolls.

They also say goodbye to Taryn, as she records her last podcast as an official co-host.

Plus: an update on the South Portland oil tanks, a book on tribal sovereignty and Mike’s favorite computer game from 20 years ago.

You can ask a question or leave a comment for a future show at (207) 619-3182.

Subscribe to the podcast feed right here using your favorite podcasting app or subscribe using iTunes.

This week on the Beacon podcast, Mike Tipping is joined by Sydney Avitia-Jacques and Esther Pew, two community organizers for the Maine People’s Alliance, who discuss the work they do, the philosophy behind it and upcoming opportunities to get involved.

They also came prepared with some solid rays of hope.

You can ask a question or leave a comment for a future show at (207) 619-3182.

Subscribe to the podcast feed right here using your favorite podcasting app or subscribe using iTunes.

This week on the Beacon Podcast, we spend the entire episode with Lewis Raven Wallace, discussing his forthcoming book, The View from Somewhere, on the history and future of journalism.

Wallace is a former reporter for Marketplace, among other outlets, who was fired for questioning traditional ideas of objectivity, based in part on his own experience as a transgender man. In his book he traces the history of the false idea of a truly neutral point of view in reporting and argues that the pursuit of a mythical form of objectivity too often entrenches the ideology of the status quo.

In this interview we discuss everything from the recent New York Times headline controversy to Ida B. Wells’ anti-lynching crusade to new local outlets practicing groundbreaking movement journalism.

His work has already helped to inform how we do our work here at Beacon.

You can ask a question or leave a comment for a future show at (207) 619-3182.

Subscribe to the podcast feed right here using your favorite podcasting app or subscribe using iTunes.

This week on the Beacon podcast everything old is new again as Ben Chin and Mike Tipping discuss school segregation, Nazis on the radio and why you shouldn’t sign the current people’s vetoes, including one to repeal Maine’s immunization law.

Beacon reporter Cara DeRose joins to discuss a new report showing divisions by race and funding across some adjacent school districts in Maine.

Ask a question or leave a comment for a future show at (207) 619-3182.

Subscribe to the podcast feed right here using your favorite podcasting app or subscribe using iTunes.

Photo: Members of the National Socialist Movement, one of the largest neo-Nazi groups in the US, hold a swastika burning after a rally on April 21, 2018 in Draketown, Georgia. (by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)