Mechanical Freak

Listen to the episode in its entirety on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/109875108

Greg and Brian get together to discuss the innovative new solution to the homelessness crisis before discussing the Council’s bold new plan on where to put all the poor people they are going to be arresting.

Read about the last time Seattle had banishment zones in Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert, Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/banished-9780199830008

Read about Seattle’s previous efforts to police their way out of the capitalist-created housing crisis on the Mechanical Freak website:
https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/island-nightmares https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/seattle-and-its-discontents

The boys lost big by going long on Biden staying in the race and have been busy scouting buildings to jump off of in the local area. But in the meantime, some news also happened!

The boys stare into the abyss and discuss terminal imperial decline, the Trump vs. Biden debate, and ask the burning question: what exactly do they disagree on?

Read the debate transcript

Greg and Brian get together to discuss an eventful week in both Seattle and international politics. We talk exciting new developments in children’s rights, dive into the new Danny Westnut piece at the Times, and look into the future of vigilantism in the city. Then we duck beneath the iron curtain of Patreon to talk the latest developments in Ukraine and then stare into the abyss that is the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Become a Patron and get all the sweet paywalled content here: https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak

Read Brian’s 2018 article on the bipartisan effort to turn the US-Mexico border into a sight of horrifying human cruelty: https://jacobin.com/2018/05/united-states-mexico-border-immigration-deportation-military

The boys talk about the Trump conviction and Eve Fartlow’s latest retirement announcement before getting into some exciting local news. Would you believe that the President Ana Mari Cauce blatantly lied about claims of antisemitism on the UW campus? Or that a new Seattle City Council member completely flubbed gutting a popular program in the name of austerity? Or that after 12 years of being under the consent decree, that the culture at SPD is so rotten that our cop-loving mayor is having to hold a national pageant for chief of police? All this and more!

Read Hannah Krieg’s story about the Ana Mari Cauce’s latest flub here: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/05/31/79538609/uw-president-provides-proof-of-antisemitic-graffiti-from-out-of-state

And her reporting about the Council’s failed attempt to defund the EDI program: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/05/28/79535106/city-council-delays-last-minute-attempt-to-pull-money-from-black-and-brown-community-development-projects

Munya & Brian get together to discuss the beauty of cultural exchange with the Irish before looking back at the 100 Divorced Dad March on the University of Washington. Finally, they discuss some of the biggest winners of the new SPOG contract.

Check here for a wonderful look back at the cultural exchange between NYC & Dublin: https://twitter.com/AlertaMundoNews/status/1789819410527535558

Learn about the role of Evangelicals in defending Zionism here: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/15/washingtonmarchfor_israel

For more on Jonathan Choe’s work around antisemitism, why not check out this tweet he liked: https://twitter.com/FlowerLeftist/status/1791856443777597723

Check out some of the key lottery winners at SPD and how much they are going to get: https://www.divestspd.com/p/top-spog-back-pay-recipients-include

Check out this database to see how big a check you are about to cut to each of your favorite cops: https://sea-kelp.github.io/backpay/

Finally, donate to DivestSPD, they do excellent work: https://ko-fi.com/divestspd

Greg and Brian get together to talk about the meaning of the mass repression of protest on college campuses as well as uncover what happened to a suburban staple.

Become a Patron and get all the extra Freak content here:
https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak

Greg & Brian catch up on all the exciting news from the past couple of weeks, from the constant need to struggle against revisionism to the new SPOG contract.

Check out The Stranger’s writing on the proposed SPOG contract: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/04/05/79457408/in-new-police-union-contract-seattle-gives-cops-huge-pay-raises-but-gets-little-accountability-in-return

Friends of the show Ryan Archibald and Brendan McElmeel are back to finish our discussion of the Byzantine structure of higher education institutions. We uncover the rot at that core of higher education and, guess what, it’s the same rot that is hollowing out everything in America!

Want to learn more about the onset of neoliberalism? Check out Ending the Myth!
https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/podcast/episodes/ending-the-myth-ep-23-rollback-pt-2-neoliberalism

Want to learn more about the way that neoliberalism has hollowed out higher education, see the work of Chris Newfield: https://chrisnewfield.org/?page_id=93

For more on the Byzantine funding of the university system, see The Dig podcast’s interview with Dennis Hogan: https://thedigradio.com/podcast/higher-ed-crisis-w-dennis-hogan/

Get more Mechanical Freak content by becoming a Patron!
https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak