OBSCENE

Perry Grossman, is Voting Rights Attorney. He focuses on litigation and advocacy efforts concerning voting rights and election law issues.

Perry’s cases include New York Immigration Coalition v. U.S. Department of Commerce, the successful challenge to the Trump Administration’s efforts to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census; League of Women Voters v. New York State Board of Elections; an ongoing state constitutional challenge to a statute requiring voters to register at least 25 days in advance of an election.

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While Voter Suppression and Disenfranchisement have a deep impact on elections, Dr. Bernard L. Fraga research found that there still a gap in voter participation amongst marginalized groups even if voting barriers were removed. We discuss this and his book "The Turnout Gap" in this interview.

Dr. Bernard L. Fraga is a political scientist who studies American elections, focusing on racial/ethnic politics, voter turnout, and the impact of election laws on voters and politicians. He is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University, and received his B.A. in Political Science and Linguistics from Stanford University and Ph.D. in Government and Social Policy from Harvard University.

 

Prof. Fraga is interested in how group identities and electoral contexts shape political behavior.

 

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On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization’s office in China heard the first reports of a previously-unknown virus behind a number of pneumonia cases in the city of Wuhan.

 

On March 11, 2020 that virus, now named COVID-19 better knowing as the Coronavirus outbreak was now characterized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization.

 

Today the NYTimes wrote: The number of known corona virus cases in the United States continues to surge. As of Tuesday afternoon, at least 5,002 people in 49 states, plus Washington, D.C. and three U.S. territories, have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a New York Times database at least 93 patients with the virus have died. “The pace of diagnosis is expected to quicken as the virus spreads and testing becomes more widely available. More state and private labs have started running tests for the coronavirus in recent days, increasing the capacity to identify new patients after weeks of delays and test kit shortages.”

 

On twitter Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “The Families First” bill was about many things but first and foremost: testing testing testing. I urge Senators to pass this legislation today, to make testing free and to provide masks, make it available ASAP. Any delay, is a delay, in testing.

 

While we wait on relief legislation to be passed by our federal government  The CDC have advised us:

·     To wash are hand often with Soap and water for at least 20 seconds

·     Use an alcohol based hand sanitized with at least 60% alcohol if soap and water are not available.

·     Cover you coughs or sneezed with a tissue or cough or sneeze into your elbow not your hand.

·     Stay home as much as possible. Social distancing can slow the spread.

 

These are confusing and scary times and so, like many of you, I wanted a bit more clarity about what this virus is, and why it’s difficult to find a vaccines, so I turned to my friend, Dr. Hazel Levy, is a virologist and a research scholar in the bio-medical sciences, in STEM education, and in higher education policy. She was the first Black American woman to have an independent and National Institutes of Health funded research laboratory in the history of the University of Florida's College of Medicine. Dr. Levy is a social justice community organizer, serving as the vice-Chair of the Women of Color Caucus of National Women’s Liberation's Gainesville, FL chapter, and was the founding faculty advisor to UF's Black Women in Medicine student organization. 

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Maya Contreras interviews political wonk Stephen Robinson. Stephan is a writer and social kibbitzer based in Portland, Oregon. He's on the board of the Portland Playhouse theater and writes for the immersive theater Cafe Nordo in Seattle. "Wonkette is an American online magazine of topical satire and political gossip, established in 2004 by Gawker Media and founding editor Ana Marie Cox. The editor since 2012 is Rebecca Schoenkopf, formerly of OC Weekly. Wonkette covers U.S. politics from Washington, D.C. to local schoolboards. Taking a sarcastic tone, the site focuses heavily on humorous breaking news, rumors, and the downfall of the powerful. It also deals with serious matters of politics and policy, producing in-depth analysis".

Stephen is also a playwright. Last year, he cowrote the world premiere adaptation of Tom Robbin’s JITTERBUG PERFUME for the immersive theater, Cafe Nordo, in Seattle's Pioneer Square. He’s excited to collaborate again with co-artistic directors Erin Brindley and Terry Podgorski for CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER, a modern take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. This production is an ambitious multi-story, multi-room musical experience with a six-course tasting menu included with admission. Cafe Nordo is not just a great theatre space. It’s also one of Seattle’s best bars and restaurants all in one. He’s thrilled to add his own style of humor to an evening of eat mes and drink mes. The play runs from April 2 to May 31. Go to rabbithole.art for details.

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Hello, I’m your host Maya Contreras and welcome to a new season of obscene. This is a special holiday episode, the official new season of Obscene will start the first week of January 2020 were I’ll be talking to candidates running for office, voting rights, and policy issues you should be on the lookout for at the ballot box and so much more.

 

Before I get into the interview today I first want to bring your attention to an article published last month by StoryBench, a news division of Northeastern University’s School of Journalism. It’s an article that I think deserves more attention, and confirms a lot of underlying frustrations I have expressed on Twitter and that other have also been disheartened with. I talking about how legacy media has handled the coverage of the 2020 Election Cycle thus far. 

Here’s a paragraph from the Storybench article titled: How news media are setting the 2020 election agenda: Chasing daily controversies, often burying policy:

"It’s a paradox of examining political coverage. Are news media just reporting what the political candidates are talking about? Or does political journalism really set the agenda by selecting stories around specific news items, scandals and issues du jour?

Our topic analysis of ~10,000 news articles on the 2020 Democratic candidates, published between March and October in an ideological diverse range of 28 news outlets, reveals that political coverage, at least this cycle, tracks with the ebbs and flows of scandals, viral moments and news items.

This tendency, in turn, allows important issues such as health care, climate change and reproductive rights to fall off the agenda every time a Trump-driven media cycle emerges from some new outrage or a flavor-of-the-day controversy pops up."

So, I agree! This is what has been missing from the 2020 Conversation. This is why I asked with Shimica Gaskins Executive Director of the children’s defense fund in California, to have a conversation with me about policy, specifically policy that some of the leading 2020 Candidates have proposed around children and families – everything from Baby Bonds to Universal Pre-K.

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Except from the Episode: "Hello everyone! It’s me, Maya Contreras, host of Obscene podcast! On the last episode, you heard an excerpt of my interview with Ben Williams of the Princeton Gerrymandering project. 

Here is the full episode. I hope you’ll enjoy it.  On June 27th, The Supreme Court essentially blocked the citizenship question from being added to the Census. On July 3rd, it was determined that the Census would be printed without it. I wanted to post this episode about Gerrymandering and the Census, shortly after that, but just as I went to post it, the citizenship question and whether or not it was going to be added to the Census was in limbo yet again."

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Excerpt from this episode: 

"It’s the 4th of July, and I know a lot of folks out there aren’t feeling very patriotic, and I completely empathize. It’s difficult to feel patriotic given what is happening at the border, with reproductive rights, and when there are military tanks rolling down the streets of DC that took over $2.5 million dollars away from protecting our parks, but I digress. One of the reasons I wanted to do a fourth of July podcast episode is because I wanted to touch on a few issues that are keeping many in our country from fully participating in our democracy, like gerrymander and voter suppression, and how the biases in our political reporting is damaging to our discourse, but I also wanted to this episode to touch upon something that should inspire you just a bit. In 488 days, we have a change once again, set the tone of what we want out of this country. And I don’t know about you, but I’m going to save my sparklers for Nov 3rd, 2020.

In this episode, I speak with Meg Heckman. Meg is an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University. I also speak with Rebecca Sive,  author of Vote Her In: Your Guide to Electing Our First Woman President (2018). But first I speak with Ben Williams. Ben a Legal Analyst and serves as the lead for the Princeton Gerrymandering Project's research and organizational partnerships."  

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On Episode 11 of Obscene, Host Maya Contreras interviews Reproductive Justice Advocate, Renee Bracey Sherman on the importance of Abortion Storytelling, Abortion Funds, and Abortion Access.

"Renee Bracey Sherman is a Chicago-born, Midwest-raised activist, writer and reproductive justice activist committed to the visibility and representation of people who have had abortions in media and pop culture. She is among the most vital voices in the United States elevating the conversation about abortion experiences, and using creative and innovative strategies to shift the conversation centering people of color and other marginalized identities. Her work is so influential that the right-wing website Twitchy recognizes her as “the queen of all abortions”.She has trained hundreds of abortion storytellers in the United States and around the world, including elected officials. Renee developed and designed a curriculum for storyteller support and training based on her extensive interviews with abortion storytellers. In 2014, she published the results and recommendations from these interviews in two 20-page guides, Saying Abortion Aloud, which are used and referenced across the reproductive health, rights, and justice field. In 2015, Renee partnered with media critic and author Anita Sarkeesian and anti-rape activist and author Jaclyn Friedman to co-author Speak Up & Stay Safe(r), a multilingual digital guide on handling online harassment.Renee has written for New York Times, the Guardian, EBONY Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Salon, Broadly, Rewire, Bustle, Glamour, and many more. Currently, Renee serves as the Senior Public Affairs Manager at the National Network of Abortion Funds where is the creator of We Testify, the only national and intersectional leadership program for people who’ve had abortions in the United States, created by and for people who’ve had abortions, centering race, class, and gender identity." 

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Episode 11 is with Jalessah Jackson.

What is Reproductive Justice? Host Maya Contreras takes a deep dive on this subject with Jalessah Jackson, Georgia Coordinator at SisterSong.

"Jalessah Jackson is a mother, womanist, and interdisciplinary scholar of training whose research explores the connections between popular culture and critical theories of race, gender, sexualities, and social inequity.  She is the Georgia Coordinator at SisterSong, and in this role, Jalessah marries her lived experiences with her education background to advance reproductive justice work in the state of Georgia. In addition to her role at SisterSong, she has been an educator in both community-based and formal settings and is a Lecturer of Gender and Women's Studies and African and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University. As an educator, trainer, and public speaker, she has addressed countless audiences at schools, conferences and cultural events.Jalessah was a 2018 Errin J. Vuley Fellow at the Feminist Women’s Health Center, and won the 2018 Distinguished Recent Alumna Award from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts where she earned her master’s degree in Gender and Cultural Studies. Jalessah also holds a bachelor’s degree in African and African Diaspora Studies from Kennesaw State University. She currently serves on the Executive Board for the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association (SEWSA), a major regional arm of the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA).Jalessah lives in Atlanta with her partner Jason, and their daughter, Semyra.   SisterSong:SisterSong is a Southern based, national membership organization; our purpose is to build an effective network of individuals and organizations to improve institutional policies and systems that impact the reproductive lives of marginalized communities.SisterSong is a Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective was formed in 1997 by 16 organizations of women of color from four mini-communities (Native American, African American, Latina, and Asian American) who recognized that we have the right and responsibility to represent ourselves and our communities, and the equally compelling need to advance the perspectives and needs of women of color."

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Excerpt from Episode:

What we need in 2020 is something that we’ve never had in the history of this country, a Women President and a Women Vice President.  Its clearer than ever that we need a woman at the top of the ticket, and you won’t find anyone who agrees with that notion more than Rebecca Sive. Rebecca Sive is a speaker and commentator on women’s political leadership and power, a past lecturer at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, and the author of two books, Vote Her In: Your Guide to Electing Our First Woman President (2018), and Every Day Is Election Day: A Woman’s Guide to Winning Any Office, from the PTA to the White House (2013).  As you listen to my conversation with Rebecca she wanted me to remind you all that: There is joy in doing this.There is joy in being a woman running for office.  There is joy in supporting women running for office.There is joy in electing women to serve in office.

Books by Rebecca Sive:

Vote Her In : https://www.amazon.com/Vote-Her-Guide-Electing-President-ebook/dp/B07DL86LHN

Every Day Is Election Day: A Women's Guide to Winning Any Office, from the PTA to the White House: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613746628/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

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