Election and Empire: with U.S. voting day just around the corner, what will November 3rd bring? Will it be a worsening of the Republican shit-show that is the Trump presidency or will it be a slide over to that other party? You know the one, the party that can’t even commit to a fracking ban during a climate crisis, much less health care for all its citizens in the midst of a pandemic? And yet, though the outcome may not be immediately clear come election night, what arguably won’t change is where non-Settler interests fit into the big picture of American politics. Be they Black, Indigenous, or people of colour, most such voters are not kidding themselves about whether settler colonialism or white supremacy are on the ballot. So what does that mean then for any marginalized population’s participation in the electoral process? How far does it go, and could or should these energies be more productively invested elsewhere?

Joining host/producer Rick Harp for the first half of this special, extended look at American politics are Kim TallBear, associate professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta, as well as lawyer and podcaster Trevor Beaulieu, the driving force behind “Champagne Sharks,” a US-based current events program on race, politics, and pop culture, as seen through the lenses of humour and psychology.

// CREDITS: This episode was co-edited by Stephanie Wood and Rick Harp. Our theme is 'nesting' by birocratic.