Plum Radio

This week, we’re joined by 25-year old Manhattan, Kansas resident Fanny Fang, who is running for office in her local county commission.

Fanny decided to throw her hat in the ring when incumbent commissioner Marvin Rodriguez said that the county wasn’t at risk for COVID-19... because there weren’t many Chinese people living there. Fanny will be the only Democrat and female candidate on the ballot, running against 3 Republicans, including Rodriguez, to represent District 2.⁠

Fanny grew up in her parents' store in Kansas, The Asian Supermarket, and returned to her hometown after college to help run the operation. We hear from Fanny about her campaign platforms, running for office in our new virtual normal, and the pride she has for multiculturalism in Kansas politics.⁠

Dolly and Joey also discuss how the Post Office arrested Steve Bannon on the boat of exiled Chinese billionaire Miles Guo, the Wuhan pool rave, and how the state of California being on fire sits at the intersection of COVID, climate change, and California’s prison system.

--

We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and want to be part of the vision.

Terry Wong, one of the partners of Blood Bros BBQ, home to the first Vietnamese pitmaster in Texas, joins us to talk about how his restaurant and the food and beverage industry have been struggling through the pandemic. Terry shared that they’re lucky to have 50% of their regular revenue, but now have higher costs and spend an additional 3-4 hours a day packaging to-go condiments for the new dining normal.

Dolly and Joey also discuss this week’s big news: Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s VP pick, and read audience responses from our poll on @listentoplumradio IG.

--

We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and want to be part of the vision.

Korean American viral TikTok creator, Young Kim (@youngqim), joins us this week to talk about the TikTok ban, using viral short videos to stir conversations around race and social justice, conservative TikTok holes, and how learning our history helps us unlearn  internalized racism and the model minority myth.

Dolly and Joey also defend bottom feeders 🦐🦐, discuss WeChat, and drag private utility FirstEnergy, whose customers are without power in New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Isaias and also bribed corrupt politicians like Larry Householder of Ohio to bail out their coal power plants.

--

We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and want to be part of the vision.

Season 2 of Plum Radio is here! Rachel Ramirez (@rachelreports), an environmental justice reporter and Saipan native, joins us to talk about her home, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), its history of colonization, and how the U.S. military is making COVID-19 worse on the islands while opening new live-fire training bases on indigenous burial grounds.

The U.S. Department of Defense is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter of any government agency on the planet, and Guam and CNMI, as faux colonies that are largely used as U.S. military bases, suffer from both health and climate issues as a result of their presence. As we more openly question the militarization of U.S. police, we must ask ourselves: how has the U.S. military impacted our Asian communities, especially the Pacific Islands?

--

We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on Instagram (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and want to be part of the vision.

We’ll be back on Sunday, August 2 with a brand new season 2! Stay tuned and see you all soon.

We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and want to be part of the vision.

Dolly and Joey are on vacation for 2 weeks, so here's a special unlocked episode we released to just our Patreon subscribers last month. This is the *first* episode of Plum Radio ever made.

We recorded this way back in February before we launched as an IG live show. Do you remember February? We don’t either.

But we *do* remember the presidential bid of Andrew Yang, who was promising everyone free money with slogans like “Make America Think Harder,” and for some reason, “MATH.” Back in 2019, the Boba Guys endorsed Yang with a picture of a red, white, and blue boba drink with the caption “Not left, not right...but boba.”

To us, this was the perfect representation of a term we’d heard, “boba liberalism”: packaging yourself for easy consumption, with sugary politics to mask structural problems.

Which led us to our first guest: Jenny G. Zhang, staff writer at Eater and author of the essay, "The Rise (And Stall) Of The Boba Generation."

This pilot episode set the foundation for Plum Radio and what we are trying to do: reject politics as usual, relearn our history, reclaim our narrative, and build political consciousness in our community.

We hope this is only the beginning of more conversation and interesting times ahead. Let’s spill some tea!

--

We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and want to be part of the vision.

Kevin Cheng, the development manager of Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, joins us to talk about the $1M+ donations they received during the protests after George Floyd’s death, why they stopped taking donations, and how, in a just world, bail funds would cease to exist. Also this week: the rise of fascism around the world, from the Philippines to Hong Kong to Brazil to right here in the U.S.

Plum Radio season 1 is in the books! We’ll be taking a two week break, back again with Plum Radio season 2 in August. While Dolly and Joey go full Asians on vacation, we’ll be releasing bonus episodes of Plum Radio each week so you won’t have to go a week without us 🤠

--

We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and want to be part of the vision.

Calling Korea on this week of Plum Radio! We discussed the politics of K-pop, BLM protests in Korea, and COVID-19 responses in the U.S vs Asia with Keda of the Soju Black (@thesojublack), a podcast and show created by two Black ex-pats living and working in Korea. Dolly and Joey also discuss the new Hong Kong National Security Law, Hamilton, and the Floor is Lava.

--

We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and want to be part of the vision.

Kristina Wong joins us to talk about her career as a performance artist, elected official, and overlord of Auntie Sewing Squad, a mutual aid project sending volunteer-sewn masks and other essential supplies to communities in need, from Los Angeles to the Navajo Nation.

We talked about how the spectacle of reality TV can be a substitute for therapy, how politics is a natural extension of performance art, and how Kristina brings these worlds together to help vulnerable communities.

Dolly and Joey also discuss: a blessing and a hole from our adopted homeland of Texas, how Gen Z freethinkers played the tech industry with a scam to funnel money to Black-led organizations, and the campaign to #FreeUrooj and #FreeColin (who we mistakenly call Chris in the episode, sorry!!).

We’re almost at our June goal of 100 Patreon subscribers, so THANK YOU to our 31 (!!) new subscribers this week! If you haven’t yet, follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and subscribe to us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you want to support independent media and are here for the culture.

Happy Juneteenth! This week we’re joined by Laurel Chor, a journalist and photographer from Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s most recent movement began over a year ago in March 2019 with the introduction of a controversial extradition bill that deepened Beijing’s reach into Hong Kong’s legal and judicial affairs.

We caught up with Laurel about how the protests have evolved, the fears around the draft of Beijing’s National Security Law for Hong Kong, the rise of both nationalism and calls for independence, and shared tactics between Hong Kong protests and the recent #BLM protests here in the States.

We also sent blessings to the ILWU Juneteenth port shutdowns, the Supreme Court blocking Trump from ending DACA, and, for the third week in a row: K-pop fans.

--

We pride ourselves on being independent media at Plum Radio. Follow us on IG (@listentoplumradio), and support us on Patreon (patreon.com/plumradio) if you’re here for the culture and want to be part of the vision.