Sad Francisco

Self abnegation is the total denial of oneself—which is how Emile Suotonye Deweaver describes what it took to get paroled by a white supremacist institution that is about reproducing power hierarchies, not repair or rehabilitation. He writes about the experience (plus notes on shibari and Dungeons & Dragons) in his new book about surviving 21 years in the California prison system, Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine.

Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine https://thenewpress.org/books/ghost-in-the-criminal-justice-machine/

Emile's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/emilesuotonyedeweaver/

Previous episode with Emile on Gavin Newsom's 'Norway Model' for Prisons https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/YzM1NzZmMjktNTQ5OC00NjhiLTliOTQtOGE2ZGU5ZjUxOWQxstice-machine/

Gavin Newsom's 'Norway Model' for Prisons (previous episode with Emile) https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/YzM1NzZmMjktNTQ5OC00NjhiLTliOTQtOGE2ZGU5ZjUxOWQx

Annalise Ophelian directed and StormMiguel Florez co-produced MAJOR!, the beloved documentary about the beloved Miss Major. The Roxie is screening the movie for its ten year anniversary this month; its messages about community, role models and resilience are relevant as ever given our current political moment.

Annalise and StormMiguel discuss how to make a documentary without objectifying your stars, making movies in the Bay, and their more recent film projects.

MAJOR! Trailer https://vimeo.com/173777439

Tickets for June 8 at the Roxie https://ticketstripe.com/MAJOR10

The Whistle http://stormflorez.com/the-whistle.html

Looking for Leia http://lookingforleia.com

Annalise is offering free consults on navigating support letters (and pro bono appointments for getting a letter) for trans people http://www.drophelian.com

Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco

Protest is an expression of shared anger and a way to meet and skill-build with people whose politics are aligned with you own. But how do you measure the success of a protest if you have specific material demands?

It's an eternal question with no obvious answer that Andrew Lee deals with in their recent essay, "The end of protest," up now on Substack.

Andrew's "The end of protest" https://substack.com/@xandrewleex/p-161567796

Defying Displacement (AK Press) https://www.akpress.org/defying-displacement.html

Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco

Tourmaline's work spotlighting the life of Marsha P. Johnson began with collecting a popular archive online, then a film, and now a biography that's out May 20. In the book, you learn about the notorious Black, trans heroine who moved to New York when she was thirteen, rioted at Stonewall, protected the dolls with Sylvia Rivera and their group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries/STAR, performed in and around the Village, and left the door open behind her for future queer and trans people, and everyone who believes we should be allowed to self-determine our destinies.

Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/677583/marsha-by-tourmaline/

Happy Birthday Marsha - Tourmaline and Sasha Wortzel's movie about Marsha (free with a library card on Kanopy) https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/happy-birthday-marsha

The Personal Things - animated short film Tourmaline made about Miss Major (with Micah Bazant, Pamela Chavez, and Hope Dector) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzafzVv2G2E

Even if you don't use Spotify, the streaming platform's anti-labor orientation means it's affecting musicians and thus, the music you listen to, which Liz Pelly covers in depth in her new book, "Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist." Discussed this episode: Spotify's in-house "fake"/ghost artists, how it uses a "payola-like" system to charge artists to get discovered, Walter Benjamin's "aura loss," and more.

Liz's website https://lizpelly.info

Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C6719844

Critical Listening (Liz's new podcast with Max Alper) https://www.patreon.com/criticallistening

Bay Beats - SF Public Library's music streaming service https://baybeats.sfpl.org

Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco

CJ Trowbridge discusses his latest land project, the High Desert Institute, and a previous one that was featured on the 2023 reality show "The Garden: Commune or Cult?"--where the founding of an anticapitalist, consensus-based community was chronicled by corporate TV channel producers for a Discovery Channel audience. We also talk about the Cyberpony Express mesh network he's working on (basically, a parallel internet outside the clutches of the telecoms oligarchs like AT&T).

CJ on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@cjtrowbridge

CJ on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@CJTrowbridge

High Desert Institute https://highdesertinstitute.org

Castro Media on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@castromedia.org

Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco

AI is coming for our jobs, the environment, and is even starting to stand-in for human creativity. Derek Allen, Sam Kirchner and Varvara Pavlova are part of the newly formed direct action group Stop AI, which is particularly concerned about the existential threat of Artificial General Intelligence and the potential for robots to outsmart humans, which Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says is coming this year.

Stop AI https://www.stopai.info/ "Lavender: The AI machine directing Israel's bombing spree in Gaza" (Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine) https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

Brian Merchant's book "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech" covers the history of the Luddite movement https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C5986948

Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco

Erica Meiners and Priya Kandaswamy on how prison guard unions use the valor of labor movement to reinforce the prison industrial complex.

TW: Discussion of brutality, murder, sexual assault and suicide of prisoners at the hands of prison employees.

"Prisons Are Anti-Labor Institutions. We Need an Anti-Carceral Labor Movement." (Truthout) https://truthout.org/articles/prisons-are-anti-labor-institutions-we-need-an-anti-carceral-labor-movement/

Legal Aid Society: "I'm Just Collateral Damage. The Human Cost of an Illegal Prison Strike" https://legalaidnyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/LAS_PrisonersRightsProject_ClientStoriesReport_Final.pdf

Southern Poverty Law Center on white supremacy among prison guards https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hate-watch/new-york-fired-racist-prison-guard-identity-evropa-membership/

Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco

Malcolm Harris, on how pragmatism has been monopolized by centrists who fail to take climate change seriously—the same kind of centrists who'd trust tech industrialists to save the human race. We discuss why you need a pharmacist on your apocalypse team, and Malcolm's new book, 'What's Left', which understands how our survival depends on anti-capitalist collectivity, unlike Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's Libertarian-leaning Democratic Party think tank bestseller, 'Abundance.'

'What's Left' https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/whats-left/9781668646861/?lens=little-brown

"What's the Matter with Abundance?" The Baffler https://thebaffler.com/latest/whats-the-matter-with-abundance-harris

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After last November's election, everyone from campaign consultants, to media critics, to Donald Trump himself credited alt-right media and the manosphere for making the US a more welcoming place for repressive, retrograde politics and values.

Ome (@sugarskullangelic on social media) is a sociologist and host of the podcast Liberación Army Radio, who speaks to why it's not just Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan followers who get sucked into the alt-right pipeline.

Ome's Linktree

Ome serving the public interest through analysis of the Khalil and Danisha Carter TikTok drama

Pieces mentioned:

Cheryl Harris's 'Whiteness as Property'

Olufemi O. Taiwo's 'Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else)'

Silvia Federici's 'Caliban and the Witch'

Arguably Somaya on TikTok

Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco