Delete Your Account Podcast

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This week, Roqayah and Kumars discuss gentrification and organizing for tenants’ rights with Shanti Singh and Jen Snyder, both housing rights activists in San Francisco and leaders in DSA SF’s Housing Committee. Shanti, a returning guest and past guest host, is also with the statewide tenants rights organization Tenants Together. First-time guest Jen was the campaign manager for Proposition F, a San Francisco ballot measure that passed on June 5th that guarantees tenants a lawyer if they’re being evicted or otherwise forced out by their landlords.

Shanti and Jen give a lay of the land when it comes to housing rights in SF, including defining the terms YIMBY, NIMBY and PHIMBY, before getting into the specifics of the “Yes on F” campaign. They discuss how DSA SF, in spearheading the effort, strategically linked up with coalition partners and picked their battles to reach sympathetic residents and bolster turnout on election day. They also respond to recent tenants’ rights victories in Oakland, like the activities of the Defend Auntie Frances campaign and the Tenant and Neighborhood Councils project of the East Bay DSA Communist Caucus. Shanti and Jen conclude by pointing to both ground-up tenants’ rights organizing and more radical policy measures as potential next steps for the struggle for housing justice in the Bay Area and beyond.

Follow Shanti on Twitter @uhshanti, and Jen @ohjennyboy.

A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.

 If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page 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 first-time guest Matt Lubchansky. Matt is the Associate Editor of The Nib and a cartoonist and illustrator living in Queens, NY. Their work has appeared in VICE, The Intercept, Mad Magazine, Gothamist, The Toast, and of course, The Nib. We learn more about what led Matt to illustration, and get some background on his popular comic Please Listen To Me, as well as Matt's role in the ongoing political animated series from The Nib. Matt also shares their thoughts on Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams and Alex Jones favorite Ben Garrison, who have now become members of the alt-right, pro-Trump media landscape, and how they got to where they are. We examine the liberal side of political cartooning, discussing Garry Trudeau and Matt Groening, before turning our attention to artists like those featured at The Nib whose politics are further left. We discuss what makes some political art subversive and iconic, and what makes some (most) political art fall flat on its face. There's lots of extra fun material for Patreon subscribers only, so you'll have to listen for yourself!

You can follow Matt on Twitter at @Lubchansky.

A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page 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, Kumars and Roqayah speak with Martha Mundy, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She specializes in the anthropology of Arab societies, focusing in particular on matters of law and state, agrarian systems, kinship and family. Martha, who conducted her first ethnographic fieldwork in North Yemen in the mid-1970's, discusses the historical background of Yemen, including the political composition of the North and South. We learn about what drew Martha towards the region, specifically working in Yemen in the area of agricultural study. We dive into the role of local tribal and agrarian culture, how they form the very base of Yemeni society, and how this has been impacted by war and famine. Martha draws attention to the Saudi-led coalition bombing of Yemen, and how this military onslaught, whose targets have included water facilities, and sanitation systems, has brought Yemen to the brink of collapse. Martha discusses the extent of the economic war on Yemen and the U.S. role in prolonging it—from the Bush administration’s designation of Yemen as a combat zone, and subsequent drone assassination campaigns, to Barack Obama’s covert “signature strikes”.

Check out Martha's writing over at Counterpunch and buy her book. Also, make sure to listen to our interview from 2016 with journalist Afrah Nasser about Yemen.

A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page 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, Kumars and guest-host Shanti Singh welcome Jessica Raven. Jessica is a mother, community organizer, and Executive Director of Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS), a DC-based grassroots organization working to build safer public spaces using community-based, non-criminal solutions. In this role, she has spearheaded the growth of the Safe Bar Collective, which works to end harassment and discrimination in nightlife. She is also a former youth survival sex worker working with the Sex Workers' Advocates Coalition (SWAC) to decriminalize sex work in DC.

Jessica joins us to talk about the recently passed FOSTA-SESTA legislation, which holds internet companies liable if users post ads for illegal sex work. Jessica describes the negative consequences of this legislation for sex workers, particularly those who are most marginalized. We discuss the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and homelessness as relates to sex work, and explore the incongruity between narratives about sex work and sex trafficking and reality. Jessica explains how the goal of the well-funded, white-male-dominated anti sex-trafficking movement is to end the sex trade, not to protect trafficking victims and definitely not to protect the vast majority of sex workers who aren’t trafficked. We talk about the risks of criminalizing any aspect of consensual sex work, particularly given that sex workers are often victimized by police themselves. Jessica also discusses the importance of language choices in either breaking or reinforcing the social stigma around sex work, leading to real consequences for sex workers, particularly those most marginalized. Finally, we hear about the work Jessica is doing in Washington DC to educate the community about the reality of sex work, and to organize to meet the needs of sex workers.

Check out the sex worker lobby day in DC planned for June 1st (part of a broader National Day of Action), and keep an eye out for direct actions happening in a city near you for International Whores Day on June 2nd. Follow Jessica on twitter @thejessicaraven.

A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page 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 welcome Mariame Kaba back on the show. Mariame is a brilliant organizer 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. You'll know her from Twitter as @prisonculture.

Mariame joins us to discuss her efforts on behalf of survivors of domestic and gender-based violence who have been criminalized and incarcerated for defending themselves against their abuser. Mariame shares her experiences and lessons learned from the successful campaigns to free Bresha Meadows and Marissa Alexander, two high-profile criminalized survivors of domestic violence. Mariame contrasts the treatment of Bresha and Marissa with other prominent examples to demonstrate that self-defense is only available to certain people, and certainly not black women. We talk about the impossible situation that domestic violence survivors are put in when the system fails them and then punishes them for doing what was necessary to survive. Mariame also discusses the work of Survived and Punished, an organizing collective she co-founded that emerged from several campaigns to free individual criminalized survivors. We learn about the efforts of the Survived and Punished NYC branch to push New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to commute the sentences of all criminalized domestic violence survivors in the state, a unilateral power he has and chooses not to exercise. We discuss the value, even in isolation, of clemency campaigns for individual survivors, while also highlighting the important role of these individual campaigns in building a mass movement to win systemic changes.

Check out the Survived and Punished toolkit to learn more about how to organize a defense campaign for criminalized survivors of violence where you live. 

A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page 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 welcome first-time guest Anoa Changa and returning guest Eugene Puryear to the show. Anoa is an attorney and host of the podcast The Way with Anoa. She’s the co-managing editor of Progressive Army, and she also edits and writes for Peach Perspective which brings a left focus to politics in Georgia. Eugene is an organizer and founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and is on the editorial board of Liberation News. He ran for Vice President alongside Presidential candidate Gloria La Riva under the PSL banner in 2008 and 2016. He is the author of Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America, and host of By Any Means Necessary on Radio Sputnik.

Anoa and Eugene were recently contacted by a reporter for Atlanta NPR affiliate WABE, ostensibly to profile Anoa about her experiences as a black activist in Atlanta. Eugene was contacted because he had hosted Anoa on his radio show, which is on Radio Sputnik, which has ties to the Russian state. The article, which ran on WABE and was boosted in other outlets, attempted to discredit Anoa and Eugene's work because of this extremely loose connection to Russia. Anoa and Eugene situate their treatment in historical context, pointing out that black organizing has been discredited for decades as a Soviet conspiracy to destabilize American politics. We get everyone's thoughts on Russian "election meddling", ignoring the hype to discuss more pressing threats to our electoral system and real ways to address them that don't result in a jingoist frenzy. Anoa and Eugene call out mainstream US news outlets for chastising leftists for appearing on platforms they deem out-of-bounds, while simultaneously denying leftists space and instead giving platforms to far-right scum. Finally, we have a very nuanced conversation about the complexities of choosing the right platform for your message, especially in our media universe where no platform with any real reach is pure.

You can follow Anoa on Twitter @TheWayWithAnoa, and follow Eugene @EugenePuryear.

A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page 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 welcome back two friends of the show, Douglas Williams and Bryan Conlon, also known as @Cato_of_Utica on Twitter. Douglas and Bryan, the proprietors of the Southern-focused labor organizing blog The South Lawn, catch up with Roqayah and Kumars, venting about the media mourning Barbara Bush before sharing their insight into the recent wave of teachers’ strikes across the country. The crew discusses how they negotiate the tension between “meeting people where they’re at” on the one hand, and on the other hand, building an intersectional left in solidarity with all oppressed and marginalized people.

Douglas and Bryan debate the importance of elections, particularly for leftist organizers interested in building a broad movement for social justice. We revisit their 2013 article for Facing South, “Creating a culture of unionism in the South”, and discuss its relevance to the labor actions we are seeing nationwide. Bryan and Douglas also share their thoughts on what people need to be doing to keep up the momentum from these strikes, transforming otherwise isolated labor actions into a mass movement for social and economic justice. Finally, the crew discusses Janus vs. AFSCME, the national “right to work” case that would undercut unions on a federal level, and what will be needed to revitalize the labor movement in the face of that impending consolidation of corporate anti-union reaction. 

You can follow Bryan on Twitter @Cato_of_Utica, and follow both their work @TheSouthLawn. Don't forget to support The South Lawn on Patreon.

A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page 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 Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble, assistant professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication and author of the new book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. Safiya calls attention to the built-in prejudices that distort search results and influence the information users can access on Google and other search engines in ways that reinforce structural inequality and bigoted attitudes. The crew talks about how the reliance of companies like Google on human-created algorithms to sort and prioritize search results means that the creators’ racist and sexist assumptions get translated into a new, ostensibly “neutral” or “objective” media form.

Safiya discusses the particular case of Dylann Roof, whose search history led him to the right-wing ideas he said motivated his massacre at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Roqayah and Kumars ask Safiya about laws in Europe that compel companies to restrict access to Nazi propaganda and other hate speech, and get her thoughts on regulating how companies prioritize bigoted content. Finally, Safiya puts forward one model for how a radical search engine might work to both protect marginalized users and ensure that tools of oppression are presented in their proper context.

Check out Algorithms of Oppression here and you can follow Safiya on Twitter @safiyanoble.

A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page 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!!!

On this week’s episode, Roqayah and Kumars are joined for the entire show by returning guest Shaun Scott, author of Millennials and the Moments That Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982—Present. Shaun talks with Roqayah and Kumars about Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx, the recent biographical picture that tells the story of Marx’s early career, his friendship with Friedrich Engels, his marriage to his wife Jenny, and the development of Marx’s ideas in the lead-up to the publication of his Communist Manifesto. Opinions differ on the quality of the film. Shaun explains his article for City Arts Magazine, “Identity Politics in The Young Karl Marx,” providing background on Marx’s life and arguing that the film’s perspective demonstrates not only the potential but the necessity of integrating intersectional thinking about identity with Marxist class analysis through social reproduction theory.

The crew argues about how the film falls short, including its narrative focus on the development of ideas and its adherence to traditional biopic conventions. Roqayah and Kumars also discuss other recent depictions of communism, the Soviet Union, and Cold War politics in the recent movies Red Sparrow, The Death of Stalin, and The Shape of Water, and everyone concludes by taking stock of the complexities that arise when cinema takes on political issues.

Follow Shaun on Twitter @eyesonthestorm, and check out his analysis of The Young Karl Marx on City Arts.

A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.

If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon page 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 Emily Ozment. Emily was born and raised in Lawton, Oklahoma. She is a special education teacher and lead teacher in her department for Biology and Physical Science at Eisenhower High School. Emily is participating in a grassroots effort by teachers across the state to bring funding back to the Oklahoma classroom and win a fair salary for Oklahoma teachers and education support staff. We talk to Emily about the statewide teacher walkout planned for April 2nd, placing it in the context of more than three years of political mobilization aimed at addressing the public education crisis in Oklahoma. Emily describes the dire conditions for both teachers and students, even as massive oil profits in the state are taxed at an absurdly low rate. With low wages forcing many teachers to work additional jobs, experienced teachers are fleeing the state and inadequately trained substitutes are being relied on more and more. Teachers are struggling to do their best in crumbling facilities with outdated and disintegrating textbooks, as the GOP-controlled state government has significantly decreased classroom funding. We talk about planning and preparation for April 2nd, as well as the support teachers are receiving from students, parents, and the broader community. We discuss the recent success of striking West Virginia teachers and the influence that this has had on teachers in Oklahoma, as well as teachers in other "red" states that are considering striking. Emily also talks about growing up in a deeply conservative state, and how her politics have shifted dramatically to the left as a result of what she has experienced teaching in Oklahoma.

A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.