Delete Your Account Podcast

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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This week, Roqayah and Kumars are once again joined live in Delete Your Account HQ by friends of the show Brett Payne and Bryan Quinby, hosts of the anarcho-comedy podcast Street Fight Radio. Brett and Bryan share the latest on some upcoming projects, including Teen Fight Radio which will feature Bryan's teen daughter Gwen and a different woman every week having a conversation about growing up, relationships, and what it means to be cool.   The crew also discusses the holidays and the intense tableside confrontation that they bring. Bryan shares his own sordid holiday tales and how he's learned to deal with political in-law drama. We also play a round of everyone's favorite game they've never heard of: Ohio or Nohio! Can you guess if these eerie tales are a dead giveaway for the Buckeye state?   The crew also gives listeners an introduction to the latest Silicon Valley trend known as "dopamine fasting", and we take a quick peek into Bill Gates' brain.   Follow Brett on Twitter @BrettPain and Bryan @MurderBryan. You can also follow Street Fight Radio @StreetFightWCRS.   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!!!

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.

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 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!!!

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.

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!!!

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

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 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. 

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!!!

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.

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!!!