Delete Your Account Podcast

For Roqayah's triumphant return, she and Kumars are joined from the top of the hour by friends of the show Brett Payne and Bryan Quinby for the 4-year reunion of their classic election night 2016 episode. Brett and Bryan are the hosts of Street Fight Radio as well as the creators and stars of an upcoming live action comedy series on Means TV.

The gang begins by catching up at the tail end of the weirdest year in American history before diving into some ballot proposition election results across the country, including big wins for drugs. They then proceed to hash out the thorniest issues surrounding the ongoing election and possible futures for the left under a Biden administration, and a wonderful time is had by all.

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!!!

Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined from the top of the hour by returning guest cohost Shanti Singh along with René Christian Moya, California-based housing rights activists extraordinaire, for a deep dive into Proposition 21, the statewide rent control expansion up for popular referendum in next week's elections. Shanti, who is based in San Francisco, is a leader in DSA SF's Housing Committee, the former deputy data director for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign in California, and currently serves as the legislation and communications coordinator for the statewide renters' rights group Tenants Together. René is based out of Los Angeles, formerly of the LA Tenants Union and is the Campaign Director for the Yes on 21 campaign.

René, Shanti, and Kumars begin by outlining the looming eviction crisis which has already begun thanks in part to the Trump administration's so-called moratorium at the federal level. René, who was last on the show discussing Prop 10, the previous iteration of Prop 21, explains how the new ballot measure differs in terms of specifics, and why the political situation is more favorable than in the 2018 midterms. The gang talks about the real estate industry's $70 million, Republican-aligned campaign to defeat the proposal as well as Prop 21's biggest backer, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. They round out the conversation on a positive note, discussing Shanti's work with the elderly residents of SF's Midtown Park Apartments, who just concluded the longest rent strike in the city's history.

Follow René on Twitter @rcmoya84 and find out more or get involved in the final push, visit yeson21ca.org. You can follow Shanti on Twitter @uhshanti and Tenants Together @tenantstogether and learn more about how you can support their work at tenantstogether.org.

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!!!

Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined from the top of the hour by returning guest cohost Nora Barrows-Friedman, associate editor at the Electronic Intifada and cohost of the Electronic Intifada Podcast as well as The Brief, along with Jewish Voice for Peace organizer Estee Chandler, founder of that group's Los Angeles chapter, producer of Middle East in Focus and Middle East Minute+ on KPFK, and host of the upcoming podcast called The Breakout Room with Estee Chandler. After sharing her personal path to Palestine solidarity activism, including her career in Hollywood as an actor and visual effects artist, Estee introduces listeners to the saga surrounding The Lobby – USA, a four-part Al Jazeera documentary exposing Israel's covert influence operations in the United States that remains largely unseen almost three years after its completion due to a successful pressure campaign from the Israel lobby to get the government of Qatar to censor the film, later obtained and released by the Electronic Intifada.

The gang discusses the context of the surge in repression of the Palestine solidarity movement after 2014, when an initial wave of victories for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns were followed by a critical mass of activists explicitly linking white supremacy in the US and Israel-Palestine at the protests sparked by the police killing of Michael Brown. Estee explains what the documentary reveals about the strategy and methods of Israel lobby organizations as well as the close relationships between them and the Israeli government.

To RSVP for the special screening of the 1 hour supercut (plus a Q&A to follow) this Thursday October 15, go to jvp.org/LobbyCampusCut.

You can follow Estee on Twitter at @caliactivist and keep up with her organizing with JVP Los Angeles @JVP_LA. You can follow Nora @norabf, and check out the Electronic Intifada podcast at electronicintifada.net as well as The Brief at thebriefpodcast.com and 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!!!

As a special treat, we've unlocked our recent sporting edition of Delete Your Account AFTER HOURS. Kumars was joined once again by Sam Sacks and Sam Knight, journalists and founders of the District Sentinel News Co-op, who host the daily District Sentinel Radio podcast as well as Means Morning News, their weekly collaboration with Means TV.

The Sams give listeners a rundown of newsworthy events in the worlds of sports and politics, including the hijacked NBA players' strike over the killings of James Blake and other black victims of police and vigilante violence, a campaign to organize the first tennis players' union that leaves much to be desired, and the Big Ten buckling to pressure from conservatives to proceed with the college football season in the face of rising COVID-19 numbers at universities. The gang rounds out the hour nerding out about soccer, dissecting their memories of World Cups past, their favorite players, and their varying degrees of hatred for the USMNT.

You can follow Sam Sacks on Twitter @SamSacks and the official District Sentinel account tweets @TheDCSentinel. Subscribe to Means TV to keep up with their antics every week, but Means Morning News is also available to nonmembers, in audio-only form, wherever pods are cast.

Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined from the top of the hour by two veterans of arguably the first successful video game worker strike in history, writer Krissy Perez and returning guest Emma Kinema. Krissy is the most senior writer for Lovestruck, a mobile visual romance novel game distributed by the US subsidiary of Japanese developer Voltage Inc. and played by millions worldwide, and a member of Voltage Organized Workers (VOW). Emma Kinema is a former game developer, one of the founders of Game Workers Unite, and currently serves as Campaign Lead for the CODE-CWA, the Communications Workers of America's initiative to organize unions in the North American tech industry.

Krissy gives listeners a lay of the land at Voltage USA, explaining how the Lovestruck writers' famously prolific output has come at the cost of brutally tight deadlines and industry-low pay. The gang walks through a timeline of the VOW strike, which lasted 3 weeks and ended in a decisive win, securing the workers substantial pay raises among other concessions. Krissy and Emma reflect on the Voltage workers' messaging making it clear that they are all members of marginalized genders and/or sexualities, and what worker power means to Lovestruck's heavily female and queer fanbase.

You can follow Krissy on Twitter @kepmakingwords, Emma @EmmaKinema, CODE @CODE_CWA and the Lovestruck writers @VOW_Together.

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!!!

Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined from the top of the hour by two organizers with the Southwest Louisiana chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America: Phil Peterson, an activist, organizer, and educator based in Lake Charles Louisiana, and Megan Romer, also an organizer, writer, and educator based in the neighboring city of Lafayette, Louisiana. After introducing listeners to their communities and their personal paths to organizing, Phil and Megan describe the devastation on the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Laura as DSA SWLA and allied groups like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief continue their recovery efforts despite a lack of interest from national media.

Phil discusses his experience of being displaced by the storm and the significance of Louisiana activists as innovators at the vanguard of climate struggle, and Megan explains the key lessons we can learn from DSA SWLA about organizing during a pandemic, along with the convoluted local politics behind the city of Lafayette's refusal to accept refugees from Lake Charles in the aftermath of the police killing of 31-year-old Trayford Pellegrin on August 21. The gang highlights the willful abdication of responsibility by Louisiana's Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards and the dire implications of local authorities' decision to lift mandatory evacuation orders for the majority-black, heavily working class people of Lake Charles and the surrounding area, over 10,000 of whom are now forced by FEMA to pay out of pocket to subsidize New Orleans's otherwise failing hotels.

You can follow Phil on Twitter @Sadsackjacobin and Megan @meganromer. To keep abreast of Southwest Louisiana DSA's activities and to check for updates on how you can help, follow them on Twitter as well @DSASWLA, and donate to their GoFundMe here.

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!!!

Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined from the top of the hour by Kimberly Galindo, lead organizer for Southern California's High Desert region with the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, an alliance of over 40 civil society organizations providing support to immigrant communities. Kimberly starts off by describing about her own political development growing up undocumented and later becoming a DACA recipient. She gives listeners an introduction to ICIJ's various aid projects and advocacy campaigns since the start of the pandemic, recounting their spectacular direct action at the governor's mansion in Sacramento California, where 14 undocumented organizers and immigration attorneys were arrested after chaining themselves to Gavin Newsom's front gate demanding an end to ICE transfers and the release of those behind bars as coronavirus runs roughshod through the US prison system.

Kimberly talks about her work acting as a liaison with detainees at the privately-owned Adelanto Detention Facility, detailing what she's seen and heard of the conditions there. Kimberly and Kumars discuss a number of recent news items that throw the Trump administration's genocidal immigration agenda into sharp relief, including reports of mass, nonconsensual hysterectomies performed in a Georgia ICE facility, and Kimberly shares her perspective on the flaws of DACA, Barack Obama's legacy in immigrant communities, and the resonance of immigrant struggles in a moment of unprecedented visibility for the politics of prison-industrial complex abolition.

You can follow ICIJ on Twitter @IC4IJ and learn more about their work at ic4ij.org, and you can donate to their Adelanto bond fund here.

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!!!

Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined from the top of the hour by returning guest Madeline Peltz, senior researcher at Media Matters for America and the world's foremost expert on Tucker Carlson. Madeline is best known for combing through the Fox News host's weekly guest spots 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 seeming descent into white nationalism in its proper context. Madeline breaks down several of her recent articles for Media Matters on the revolving door between the Trump administration and conservative media personalities as well as how One America News Network and Fox News are covering the QAnon movement and the rise of white nationalism generally. Madeline begins by discussing her explosive report on former OANN correspondent Emily Miller, who was appointed FDA spokesperson by Trump and fired 11 days later, shortly after Madeline's reporting. Madeline and Kumars review the responses of Carlson and other Fox hosts to the Kenosha shooting, including Sean Hannity, whose lawyer is involved in Kyle Rittenhouse's legal defense. Madeline and Kumars investigate whether Trump really has ditched Fox for OANN, round out the conversation by updating listeners on the campaign urging corporate advertisers to boycott "Tucker Carlson Tonight," taking stock of the efficacy and limits of boycotts targeting far-right media.

You can follow Madeline on Twitter @peltzmadeline and keep up with her work at mediamatters.org.

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 is only part of our interview with Eoin Higgins. If you want to get the whole interview, support the show, and receive access to tons of other bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page for as little as $5 a month. Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. We can't do this show without your support!!!

Roqayah is still off this week, so Kumars is joined from the top of the hour by onetime guest host and freelance journalist Eoin Higgins, who has written for The Intercept, Common Dreams, FAIR.org, Vice, and the Washington Post. After sharing a bit of his personal background and political trajectory, Eoin breaks down his most recent reporting for The Intercept on the ongoing scandal surrounding Massachusetts Democratic Party efforts to torpedo the primary challenge of progressive House candidate Alex Morse, mayor of the Western Massachusetts town of Holyoke, who is running to unseat entrenched incumbent Rep. Richard Neal in MA's 1st congressional district on Sept. 1.

Eoin walks listeners through the initial coverage by his colleagues Ryan Grim and Daniel Boguslaw, which revealed that members of College Democrats at the University of Massachusetts Amherst had been plotting to entrap Morse for over a year by engineering a situation in which they could frame him as a predator, before detailing the most recent developments, which suggest that the state Democratic Party actively coordinated with College Democrats to amplify the smear that has now blown up in their faces.

Subscribe on Patreon to hear the full version of this interview, including Eoin's predictions for another Massachusetts Democratic primary battle he's been covering — the Senate race between Green New Deal sponsor Ed Markey and his conservative challenger, Rep. Joe Kennedy III — and his assessment of the eclectic coalitions assembled on either side

You can follow Eoin on Twitter @EoinHiggins_ to stay abreast of his future work for other outlets as well as his personal blog at eoinhiggins.com.

Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined from the top of the hour by the hosts of the Left POCket Project Podcast, returning guest Wendi Muse and Richard, who makes his Delete Your Account debut. Wendi is the creator of the Left POCket Project and a PhD Candidate in History at New York University, where her dissertation analyzes the impact of anticolonial struggles in Portuguese Africa on the Brazilian left during the Cold War. Richard is a gig worker and cohost the now defunct Progressive Army's The Discourse podcast.

After sharing a bit about his political origin story, Richard talks about what he learned from participating in the uprisings in Washington state this summer, and Wendi updates listeners on what's been new in her life since her previous appearance. Wendi and Richard react to this week's Democratic National Convention and the selection of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's running mate. They discuss Democrats' appropriation of identity politics and pro-worker rhetoric, corporate attempts to co-opt Black Lives Matter, the discourse around "cancel culture," and how socialists should think about the relationship between capitalism and white supremacy.

Follow Wendi on Twitter @MuseWendi and Richard at @Road2Revolution. The Left Pocket Project podcast is on Twitter @LeftPOC, and available to listen and download whenever pods are cast, but you can find every episode for free as well as support their work at https://www.patreon.com/leftpoc.

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!!!