Podcasts about Zuccotti Park

Andrew Serra is the author of several books, including The Dead Florentines, La Petite Parisienne, and Zuccotti Park. In 2018, he published Finding John, a memoir of his experience as a firefighter responding to the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He has been featured on FOX-5 NY Good Day Wake Up, NY1 News Around the Boroughs, and Z100 Elvis Duran and the Morning Show. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children. He is a retired New York City fire captain and since retiring from the Fire Department, him and his wife spend 2-3 months per year living in Italy. Him and his wife have long considered traveling as a gateway to understanding and seeing the world in a different light. After many years of living with the effects of 9/11, he wrote and published a memoir about his experiences. The writing process was therapeutic and helped him move forward. The newest book is a historical novel about a terrible factory fire in 1911 where 146 (mostly young immigrant women) were killed. Many of the survivors went on to fight for changes to fire safety laws that still exist today. https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B087KYTT7Chttps://www.andrewserra.com/

Listen to episode 13 first, or start at the beginning at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld. 2011-2013 Navy Seals kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan (“Osama Bin Laden is Dead”) A white supremacist kills 78 people in Norway (“Breivik”) Food Not Bombs founder, Keith McHenry, and others are arrested for serving food in Orlando, Florida (“Ballad of Eola Park”) Riots in every major city in England (“London is Burning”) Occupy Wall Street begins with a protest in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan (“Occupy Wall Street/Stay Right Here”) Teenager Trayvon Martin is killed while walking down the sidewalk and his killer is found to be innocent, on the basis of having been “standing his ground” (“Trayvon”) CeCe McDonald is attacked at a bar in Minneapolis and is jailed for “standing her ground” and killing her attacker (“Ballad of CeCe McDonald”) NATO has a summit in Chicago where the FBI infiltrates protest groups and entraps people (“Meanwhile in Afghanistan”) Spotify launches their Free Tier and destroys the lives of millions of musicians (“A Penny A Play”) A train with 72 cars full of Bakken crude exploded in Quebec, killing 47 (“Oil Train”)

Reflecting on the Occupy movement's 13th anniversary: A deep dive into its impact on democracy, economic inequality, and the ongoing fight against the wealth gap.  (episode originally released September 11, 2024)This show is made possible by you! To become a sustaining member go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate Thank you for your continued support!Description: Were you one of the hundreds of thousands of people on the streets during the Occupy movement? For many the movement was a political awakening, as people rallied to end economic inequality and support democracy in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. On this 13th anniversary, how does the spirit of Occupy live on? And what progress — if any — has been made when it comes to the wealth gap? Joining us for that conversation is Marisa Holmes, author of the recently released book “Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This Is Just Practice” and director of “All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story” which looks at the takeover of Zuccotti Park in New York City in September 2011. Also joining us is Taifa Smith Butler, President of Demos, a public policy organization working to build a multiracial democracy and economy. Previously she was a leader at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. Award-winning journalist Amir Khafagy returns to co-host this episode. Our guests explore the links between economic inequality and authoritarianism and ask how far we've come as a nation to create structural, policy and practice-based changes on the economic front. How can we create a people-led economy that will lead to collective power? All that, plus a commentary from Laura.“During Occupy, we really rejected representative politics because it seemed not responsive to people's needs . . . So we just thought, ‘We're going to do this ourselves'. We have to build alternatives ourselves from the bottom up through mutual aid networks . . . That's what I think is going to transform the economy . . .” - Marisa Holmes“Demos has always talked about the inextricable links of economic power and political power. As I think about where we are historically with the retraction of resources, with the threat of authoritarianism and fascism and this demographic shift that is happening in our nation and the inequality that continues to proliferate, if we do nothing, we'll be looking at apartheid in America.” - Taifa Smith ButlerGuests:• Taifa Smith Butler: President, Dēmos• Marisa Holmes: Author, Organizing Occupy Wall Street• Amir Khafagy: Journalist, Report for America Member, Documented Watch the episode cut airing on PBS stations across the country at our YouTube channelSubscribe to episode notes via Patreon Music In the Middle:  “Walk-in'” by The Pimps of Joytime featuring Roy Ayers from the Occupy This Album compilation.  And additional music included- "Steppin"  by Podington Bear. Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:• “Trust-Busting 2024 with Stacy Mitchell & Matt Stoller: A Bipartisan Battle Against Monopoly Power” Watch / Listen or Download Podcast• Debt, Democracy & Disarray: Astra Taylor on “The Age of Insecurity”. Watch / Listen or Download Podcast• Catastrophic Capitalism: Marjorie Kelly & Edgar Villanueva on “Wealth Supremacy”  Watch / Listen or Download PodcastRelated Articles and Resources:• Overview of Demos' Economic Democracy Project & Case Studies, Read /Download Here• All Day All Week- An Occupy Wall Street Story made with the Occupy Wall Street Media Working Group, Watch Here• Rewind:  As Obama's re-inauguration approaches, Americans celebrate other key anniversaries. But the promised land remains elusive, by Laura Flanders, The Guardian, Read Here   Laura Flanders and Friends Crew: Laura Flanders, along with Sabrina Artel, Jeremiah Cothren, Veronica Delgado, Janet Hernandez, Jeannie Hopper, Sarah Miller, Nat Needham, David Neuman, and Rory O'Conner. FOLLOW Laura Flanders and FriendsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraflandersandfriends/Blueky: https://bsky.app/profile/lfandfriends.bsky.socialFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/LauraFlandersAndFriends/Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lauraflandersandfriendsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFLRxVeYcB1H7DbuYZQG-lgLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lauraflandersandfriendsPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/lauraflandersandfriendsACCESSIBILITY - The broadcast edition of this episode is available with closed captioned by clicking here for our YouTube Channel

This week:  13 years later, how does the spirit of Occupy movement live on?This show is made possible by you! To become a sustaining member go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate Thank you for your continued support!Description: Were you one of the hundreds of thousands of people on the streets during the Occupy movement? For many the movement was a political awakening, as people rallied to end economic inequality and support democracy in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. On this 13th anniversary, how does the spirit of Occupy live on? And what progress — if any — has been made when it comes to the wealth gap? Joining us for that conversation is Marisa Holmes, author of the recently released book “Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This Is Just Practice” and director of “All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story” which looks at the takeover of Zuccotti Park in New York City in September 2011. Also joining us is Taifa Smith Butler, President of Demos, a public policy organization working to build a multiracial democracy and economy. Previously she was a leader at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. Award-winning journalist Amir Khafagy returns to co-host this episode. Our guests explore the links between economic inequality and authoritarianism and ask how far we've come as a nation to create structural, policy and practice-based changes on the economic front. How can we create a people-led economy that will lead to collective power? All that, plus a commentary from Laura.“During Occupy, we really rejected representative politics because it seemed not responsive to people's needs . . . So we just thought, ‘We're going to do this ourselves'. We have to build alternatives ourselves from the bottom up through mutual aid networks . . . That's what I think is going to transform the economy . . .” - Marisa Holmes“Demos has always talked about the inextricable links of economic power and political power. As I think about where we are historically with the retraction of resources, with the threat of authoritarianism and fascism and this demographic shift that is happening in our nation and the inequality that continues to proliferate, if we do nothing, we'll be looking at apartheid in America.” - Taifa Smith ButlerGuests:• Taifa Smith Butler: President, Dēmos• Marisa Holmes: Author, Organizing Occupy Wall Street• Amir Khafagy: Journalist, Report for America Member, DocumentedFull Uncut Conversation - Listen, Available via our podcast feedFull Episode Notes are located HERE.  They include related episodes, articles, and more.   Laura Flanders and Friends Crew: Laura Flanders, Sabrina Artel, David Neuman, Nat Needham, Rory O'Conner, Janet Hernandez, Sarah Miller, Jeannie Hopper, Nady Pina, Miracle Gatling, and Jordan Flaherty FOLLOW Laura Flanders and FriendsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraflandersandfriends/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LFAndFriendsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/LauraFlandersAndFriends/Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lauraflandersandfriendsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFLRxVeYcB1H7DbuYZQG-lgLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lauraflandersandfriendsPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/lauraflandersandfriendsACCESSIBILITY - The broadcast edition of this episode is available with closed captioned by clicking here for our YouTube Channel

While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation.  The following is from our episode Solving Economic Inequality: An Occupy Movement for this Moment?  And was recorded on July 23rd, 2024.  These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.  Become a member at https://LauraFlanders.org/donate Description: Were you one of the hundreds of thousands of people on the streets during the Occupy movement? For many the movement was a political awakening, as people rallied to end economic inequality and support democracy in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. On this 13th anniversary, how does the spirit of Occupy live on? And what progress — if any — has been made when it comes to the wealth gap? Joining us for that conversation is Marisa Holmes, author of the recently released book “Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This Is Just Practice” and director of “All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story” which looks at the takeover of Zuccotti Park in New York City in September 2011. Also joining us is Taifa Smith Butler, President of Demos, a public policy organization working to build a multiracial democracy and economy. Previously she was a leader at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. Award-winning journalist Amir Khafagy returns to co-host this episode. Our guests explore the links between economic inequality and authoritarianism and ask how far we've come as a nation to create structural, policy and practice-based changes on the economic front. How can we create a people-led economy that will lead to collective power? All that, plus a commentary from Laura.“During Occupy, we really rejected representative politics because it seemed not responsive to people's needs . . . So we just thought, ‘We're going to do this ourselves'. We have to build alternatives ourselves from the bottom up through mutual aid networks . . . That's what I think is going to transform the economy . . .” - Marisa Holmes“Demos has always talked about the inextricable links of economic power and political power. As I think about where we are historically with the retraction of resources, with the threat of authoritarianism and fascism and this demographic shift that is happening in our nation and the inequality that continues to proliferate, if we do nothing, we'll be looking at apartheid in America.” - Taifa Smith Butler Guests:• Taifa Smith Butler: President, Dēmos• Marisa Holmes: Author, Organizing Occupy Wall Street• Amir Khafagy: Journalist, Report for America Member, Documented Full Episode Notes are located HERE.  They include related episodes, articles, and more. Laura Flanders and Friends Crew: Laura Flanders, Sabrina Artel, David Neuman, Nat Needham, Rory O'Conner, Janet Hernandez, Sarah Miller, Jeannie Hopper, Nady Pina, Miracle Gatling, and Jordan Flaherty FOLLOW Laura Flanders and FriendsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraflandersandfriends/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LFAndFriendsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/LauraFlandersAndFriends/Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lauraflandersandfriendsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFLRxVeYcB1H7DbuYZQG-lgLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lauraflandersandfriendsPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/lauraflandersandfriendsACCESSIBILITY - The broadcast edition of this episode is available with closed captioned by clicking here for our YouTube Channel

REPEAT SHOW. David Graeber and David Wengrow are the co-authors of "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). "This is not a book. This is an intellectual feast. There is not a single chapter that does not (playfully) disrupt well-seated intellectual beliefs. It is deep, effortlessly iconoclastic, factually rigorous, and pleasurable to read." — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author, "The Black Swan." Tiokasin talks with co-author David Wengrow, a professor of comparative archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He is a visiting professor at New York University. He is the author of three books, including, "What Makes Civilization?" David has conducted archaeological fieldwork in various parts of Africa and the Middle East. Co-author David Graeber (d. 9/2/2020) was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He was the author of "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" and "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory," and was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, The Guardian and The Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. Production Credits: Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), Host and Executive Producer Liz Hill (Red Lake Ojibwe), Producer Malcolm Burn, Studio Engineer, Radio Kingston Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Audio Editor Kevin Richardson, Podcast Editor Music Selections: 1. Song Title: Tahi Roots Mix (First Voices Radio Theme Song Artist: Moana and the Moa Hunters Album: Tahi (1993) Label: Southside Records (Australia and New Zealand) 2. Song Title: Rich Man's War Artist: John Trudell with Jesse Ed Davis Album: AKA Graffiti Man (1992) Label: Rykodisc 3. Song Title: Prayer Artist: Tiokasin Ghosthorse with vocals by Lisa Bodnar Album: Ghosthorse Ksa (2007) Label: Ghosthorse 4. Song Title: Darker Than a Shadow Artist: Terry Callier Album: Speak Your Peace (2002) Label: Mr Bongo 5. Artist: Terry Callier Album: It's About Time Album: The New Folk Sound (1965) Label: Prestige Records 6. Song Title: Waiting on a War Artist: Foo Fighters Album: Medicine at Midnight (2021) Label: Roswell Records AKANTU INTELLIGENCE Visit Akantu Intelligence, an institute that Tiokasin founded with a mission of contextualizing original wisdom for troubled times. Go to https://akantuintelligence.org to find out more and consider joining his Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/Ghosthorse

Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destruction of the same ecological web, from pollution in the air that rains down onto a playground, or the clearing of a wildlife habitat to make way for a fossil fuel pipeline.Dave Cortez has been organizing for environmental justice in Texas for the better part of two decades. He lives in Austin now, but the love and passion that guides him came from the Rio Grande, the Sierra Madre Mountains and the high desert of West Texas. And from fighting a copper smelter and other threats to the land, air and water in and around his native El Paso. Dave has a fierce love for his El Paso Community. But cutting his teeth as an environmental justice organizer in his hometown wasn't easy. Dave is now Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he's bringing his El Paso roots and years of experience on the streets and in the communities around Texas to the Sierra Club's statewide campaigns.I've known Dave for many years and used to regularly attend environmental justice meetings in Austin that he helped organize. I've seen him rise from an on-the-ground organizer to the leader of the Texas chapter of one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the world.Our conversation tracks his education as an environmental justice organizer. From the playgrounds of El Paso to the gentrifying neighborhoods of Austin, his story reflects the changing nature of the American environmental movement and the exciting possibilities of more robust connections between community-based frontline environmental justice struggles and the large and powerful environmental organizations with nationwide influence.You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Dave CortezDave Cortez is a 3rd generation El Pasoan now based out of Austin where he lives with his partner and six year old daughter. He grew up and learned organizing on the frontera, where industrial pollution, poverty, gentrification, racism and the border wall are seen as intersecting issues. Dave serves as the Director of the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter, and has been organizing in the Texas environmental movement for 18 years. Dave is supporting staff and volunteers across Texas who are organizing for power by centering racial justice and equity alongside frontline communities directly impacted by polluting industries.Quotation Read by Dave Cortez"There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Malcolm knew this. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew this. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. We are not perfect, but we are stronger and wiser than the sum of our errors. Black people have been here before us and survived. We can read their lives like signposts on the road and find, as Bernice Reagon says so poignantly, that each one of us is here because somebody before us did something to make it possible. To learn from their mistakes is not to lessen our debt to them, nor to the hard work of becoming ourselves, and effective. We lose our history so easily, what is not predigested for us by the New York Times, or the Amsterdam News, or Time magazine. Maybe because we do not listen to our poets or to our fools, maybe because we do not listen to our mamas in ourselves. When I hear the deepest truths I speak coming out of my mouth sounding like my mother's, even remembering how I fought against her, I have to reassess both our relationship as well as the sources of my knowing. Which is not to say that I have to romanticize my mother in order to appreciate what she gave me – Woman, Black. We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. We do not have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding. We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is not to lie to ourselves. We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about – survival and growth. Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between anti-poor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people. I ask myself as well as each one of you, exactly what alteration in the particular fabric of my everyday life does this connection call for? Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives." - Audre LordeRecommended Readings & MediaTranscriptIntroJohn Fiege  Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destruction of this same ecological web: from pollution in the air that rains down onto a playground or the clearing of wildlife habitat to make way for a fossil fuel pipeline.Dave Cortez has been organizing for environmental justice in Texas for the better part of two decades. He lives in Austin now, but the love and passion that guides him came from the Rio Grande, the Sierra Madre mountains, and the high desert of West Texas—and it came from fighting a copper smelter and other threats to the land, air, and water in and around his native El Paso. Dave has a fierce love for his El Paso community but cutting his teeth as an environmental justice organizer in his home town wasn't easy.Dave Cortez  Two of my close family members worked at the plant. My dad's brother worked at the plant and then worked at Chevron on the other side of town. And then his brother in law, worked at the plant and retired. And here I was, this younger punk, you know, sort of just not super close to the family, showing up at events and they asked what I'm doing and, oh, they think I'm a paid protester, you know, forget my education, forget what's at what I'm actually saying. You know, it's, deep cultural assimilation. It's deep colonization, sort of this Stockholm syndrome that develops out of poverty and repression. It's horrific, and it's sad to watch. People fiercely defend the only thing that has helped them in their eyes and not be able to acknowledge the harm that's been done. It's not different from, you know, addiction in that way, or depression.John Fiege  Or domestic abuse. Dave Cortez  Exactly. It's heartbreaking. It still hurts me to talk about. John Fiege  I'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.Dave Cortez is now Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he's bringing his El Paso roots and years of experience on the streets and in the communities around Texas to the Sierra Club's statewide campaigns.I've known Dave for many years and used to regularly attend environmental justice meetings in Austin that he helped organize. I've seen him rise from an on-the-ground organizer to the leader of the Texas chapter of one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the world.Our conversation tracks his education as an environmental justice organizer. From the playgrounds of El Paso to the gentrifying neighborhoods of Austin, his story reflects the changing nature of the American environmental movement and the exciting possibilities of more robust connections between community-based frontline environmental justice struggles and the large and powerful environmental organizations with nationwide influence.Here is Dave Cortez.ConversationJohn FiegeWell, you grew up in El Paso in Far West Texas, and it's right on the border of Mexico and New Mexico. Can you tell me a bit about growing up there, and your family and how you saw yourself in relationship to the rest of nature.Dave Cortez  I've got a little picture I'm looking at my my very first demonstration. It's a bunch of kids, kids meaning college kids, my my age at the time, about maybe 22, 23, and a big peace flag and we're hanging around what was called Plaza de Los Lagartos, Plaza of the Alligators. And we're there I think we're protesting, must have been continuing invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but you know, I keep it up. And I keep pictures of the mountains of West Texas, the edge of the Rockies is what cuts into the central central part of El Paso, the Franklin Mountains. And then you have the Rio Grande, the heart and soul of that land. And on the other side of the river, those mountains continue into the Sierra Madres all the way down to the coast. It's majestic. It's, you know, that land is as colonized as is its people. You know, it's been, the river has been dammed up upstream in New Mexico, and two reservoirs to provide water for agriculture and farming and things like that, recreation. It was the only area of water that we we had access to when I was a kid. We would drive up to Truth or Consequences and load up on nightcrawlers and whatever other tackle and bait, and then take my dad's car and drive along somewhere, find a good spot. And fish from the shore for a couple of days at a time, camp, and, you know, that was a desert lake. It was wild for me, because we didn't have water, you know.John Fiege  So tell me about what you did. Dave Cortez  Well, we would just go up there. That was, that was our place to go get get access to water, you know, away from the desert, you know, growing up in El Paso, you just, it's It's dry, it's desert, we get, we used to average nine inches of rain a year, it's down now, you know, but the Rio was, it's always been sacred and it was special, it was a place you could go and see water. Not all year round, but most of the year and see it flowing and you look in any direction, away from the mountains, and you can see what feels endless, but it's actually you know, two or more hundred miles to the horizon, you see Thunder heads 30, 40, sometimes 45 or 50,000 feet high way far away, you think maybe you hope maybe those might come your way, maybe we'll get lucky and get a little bit of rain. Most times they don't. But with that sometimes you're blessed with the outflow that carries the smell of creosote, a native plant in the region that everybody's come to call the smell of rain. And, you know, even if you don't actually get the rain yourself, you might get some of those breezes and some of that wonderful smell. And it's, it's life giving, it's restorative. As a kid, you know, I was fortunate that my family made an effort to take us out into the desert quite a bit, we would go chase storms, we would watch lightning, my father would turn the AM radio to a blank station so we could hear the the lightning on the radio, the static pop. And we got a real kick out of that and we'd go off roading and find spots and park and you know, just hang out. And that was a pretty common thing for a lot of folks around town is just to get out into the desert. You know, my my heart and soul and my spirit is connected to that land, it is part of that land, I draw strength from those mountains, from that river. I worry about moving further away, what that might do to me, how how that might be a strain. Even just being here in Austin 600 miles away, it feels very far. You know, my family was middle class, I call it 80s middle class. And, you know, both my parents worked. I have two older siblings. And you know, we were all in public school and doing our thing. You know, everything seemed, you know, like The Wonder Years kind of situation. And you know, you don't when you're young, if you're fortunate, you don't see a lot of the issues around you. It wasn't until my teens, my parents split. And I was living with my mom and started to see a lot more other sides of life, some of the struggles, and just kind of notice more about the town, about the culture. But it was really when I moved back to El Paso after college, here in Austin at St. Edward's, where I studied political science and philosophy and environmental policy. When I moved back, it all started to come together how much I missed, how much I was removed from about my community and my culture in my youth. You know, so the language is the biggest example. We did not speak Spanish in my family. It was something my parents spoke to each other when they needed to talk about something that we didn't need to know about as kids. John Fiege  Right, right. Dave Cortez  You know, we didn't know about our indigeneity we weren't raised around that, we didn't know about the cultural connection to the land. I think in some way the spirit in my family drew us towards it. We would go spend time around those things, but we didn't really have conversations about it. And the biggest thing I didn't know about was how heavily polluted and contaminated the air was growing up. I tell a story about going into middle school. This time I was in in private school and Catholic school. Just being out on the playground it's a you know, concrete schoolyard kind of situation. And you run your hand on the on the railing and there's yellow chalk-like stuff and you don't think twice about it because it's like chalk. Or it's dust. Well, you know, in that part of town, downtown El Paso, it's because of the copper smelter. We had a 110 year old lead and copper smelting operation called Asarco that was less than two miles away from where I was going to school. And you know, you move on, maybe, you're a kid, maybe you wash your hands, maybe you don't. And it just, you know, when I moved back, I thought of that--I thought of all the times, I used to play in the dirt, like every other kid in El Paso does, you know, you don't got Barton Springs to go to or Greenbelt Creek, you play in the dirt, dig tunnels, and that stuff gets in you. And that's loaded with heavy metals, arsenic, cadmium, lead, you name it. It was it was a huge shock for me to learn that the land that I was around as a child, and the air that I was around as a child was just heavily contaminated. And I knew nothing about it. John Fiege  But what was the experience like when you were actually in college and getting more heavily into activism? Like what was motivating you? And how did you see yourself in relationship to other folks?Dave Cortez  Right on. Well, I can't leave out that the reason I came to Austin was because of my older brother and my older sister. I had never seen green, like this town, when I came to visit my sister in the summer. So I just was blown away, everything was green, there was water, it rained, I just felt like an oasis and I wanted to come here. So I went to St. Ed's, which ended up being, you know, expensive as hell, but really cool in the sense of, you know, an opportunity to learn, to be away from home. You know, and so, I didn't really know what to make of this town when I was here. I didn't know what to make of the people, the students, but by the grace of the Creator, in serendipity, I was thrown into a class on social movements. And that's a study in the 1960s. And so, you know, I developed a really foundational experience learning about the broader politic of American civil society, in that case, which blossomed into deeper learning around political theory and rhetoric, dating all the way back to some of the Greek philosophers, and modern day political thinkers, but I really got a ton of wild information into my head. In 2006, it wasn't here in Austin. It was on North Padre Island. The Austin Sierra Club was organizing a trip, there was a woman I liked at the time. And we were were fancying each other and were like, "Hey, let's go camping. I don't know what a crawfish is. But they're doing a crawfish boil. And they say they're going to clean up the beach." So we grabbed my SUV when we went and set up, and it was awesome to be out there around all these people we didn't know, you know, offering us free food and beer and just, you know, associating on this beach. And that, I really loved. Folks might not know this, it's like 60 plus miles of primitive Beach, outside of Corpus Christi. But I didn't quite understand what we're really doing until the next morning, right at dawn, when I was awoken by these huge sounds of tractor trailers hauling right by the water right in front of us. Just a caravan of them driving down to the other end of the beach to do gas drilling. You know, we get out of the tent, and we're watching this and I mean, you just want to, you know, throw something at those trucks, you know, and go put your body in front or something like "What the hell's going on?" And you're just watching the rubber, the plastic, you name it just fall off these trucks. And in their wake is just a mass of debris, and trash. And this is all in endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle habitat, its nest a nesting area for the Kemp's ridley sea turtle. And that's why we were there. And so, you know, right after that we all commiserated and got to work and picked up more trash than I think, you know, I've ever picked up. And I'm still shocked that that was allowed. But that's really where I started to take a turn and understand more about how the state facilitates this destruction, the destruction of the land and for the profits of few. And shortly after that I graduated, and that was it for my time in Austin.John Fiege  So after you graduated from college, you went back to El Paso, and you became an environmental justice organizer for El Paso, ACORN. And it was shortly after your time there in 2009, that right wing activists did a big hit job on ACORN and brought down the organization in the US for the most part. An ACORN was was a powerful community organizing group at its height, and it had this unique community based organizing model. Could you talk a bit about the ACORN organizing model and how it, possibly, I assume, became part of your organizing DNA?Dave Cortez  Just like learning about the 1960s is a pillar of my practice. The  work with Acorn is right there with it. You know, it shaped me, maybe it's just because it's one of the first things I learned about, but it'll be with me, as long as I do this work and have breath in my lungs. You know, some people were quick to point to that it's built out of the school of the Industrial Areas Foundation and Saul Alinsky model of community organizing, and yeah, that's true. But, you know, I didn't know any of that. I didn't, you know, I was, I was just taken in by these folks. There was a guy, recovering addict, just trying to make his money doing his canvassing while I was hanging out at a coffee shop, kind of where I was living in El Paso, the university. And there's my day off and I'm out there hanging out. There's this dude, his name was Ken. Ken let me know how they were planning to reopen the ASARCO copper smelter, the big 120 820 foot tall smokestack that I grew up around, and I was shocked. And, and that's, you know, like I studied all these things. And I was like, wow, I cannot believe that that's right there, my mom lives over here, you know, she works there, I live over here. And, you know, I told them, whatever I can do to help: get more letters, spread a petition around, whatever I can do. And they invited me in to meet the team, which was a small team. And the first task they gave me was actually nothing to do with that it was just to go distribute information about free tax prep, helping people in a really poor community, not far from where I went to middle school in which is not far from the smelter, get access to tax prep, in English and Spanish. And at the time, I had a, I had a mohawk. I covered that thing up real fast. I wore a straw cowboy hat and went door to door knocking on people's doors, let them know about this. And Jose Manuel, the the lead organizer at the time, the director saw me and, you know, was into it. And, you know, they offered me a job after a few days of that. And the job was doing the same thing, plus inviting people to come to a community meeting about the reopening of ASARCO. So here's a way that we can help you. With some, you know, with your money, basically, your your bottom line, and also, there's a situation happening, that can affect and will affect your your health and well being, and the safety of your family. At the time, I didn't realize that there was a very intentional strategy there. But that strategy is essential to the work that we do as environmentalists and in climate justice activists around the country, and here in Texas, people are struggling, and you got to find ways to help them directly with what they're struggling with day to day, which is often their pocketbooks. And so if you can do that, you're going to build some trust, you can build some relationships, and then you might be lucky to talk to them about another bigger, more complicated issue.John Fiege  That seems to be, like, a really beautiful definition of the difference between environmental justice organizing, and traditional environmental organizing, where environmental justice organizing, you have to start with the community, and make sure everybody you know, you have to deal with everything, you can't just isolate an environmental issue. Would you agree with that?Dave Cortez  Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know where that came from. I again, I'm not a I've read all the books about these things, but that, the model that was picked up by so many organizations and NGOs is is you know, it's it's almost like counter revolutionary, it's almost counterproductive. Like you're intentionally trying to marginalize your base in silos, you know, so, so whatever we do, you know, I try to espouse that in folks, some of the work we've done around Austin and other parts of Texas, that's the route we go, talk about bills, talk about bills every time and then, you know, start to figure out what else is going on, you know. With ACORN, a major flaw in the national model was that they would want to sign people up to be bank draft members, like you, you'd push a card onto them, "Hey, send this card in with your bank info or something. And we'll sign you up, you know, so you get access to our help." And obviously, I didn't do that. And as the work evolved, and we got more people canvassing and doing the work, we didn't do that either. It went against our values. Now, if there were middle class people, people with more means, yeah, we'd asked them to do that, too.John Fiege  To contribute a certain amount each month.Dave Cortez  Yeah. But we also did things differently, in the sense of, we organized, we found, you know, folks who are highly motivated by the issues, students, artists, residents in the nearby communities who wanted to contribute, and contribute their time, That theory in the ACORN model of, you got to get people financially bought in to be committed, I think can be challenged and there's lots of ways to get people plugged in. And so, one other key here was, you know, I wasn't brand new, this work wasn't brand new. There had been people fighting ASARCO before I was involved, obviously, and it had ebbed and flowed in terms of how much community opposition from just, like, working class people was centered. There was a lot of wealthier folks, politico types, you know, people who worked for legislators or senators or city people, you know, academics, things like that. And there was a handful of working class people in a smattering of workers from plant workers. So our job was really to find more just like students and people in the impacted communities, but it had been going on for so long that people were really drained. You know, parents who, whose children had MS as a result of this or had other health problems, they eventually backed off because it was just too exhausting to go up against the machine of the Texas State Government and go testify, and struggle, and they just couldn't do it anymore. You know, so we had to find new people and inject new life. You know, we made it a point to work with some of the younger folks to start a--not really an acorn chapter--but just a group on the campus called students for reform. And those kids are amazing, a couple dozen students, Chicanos, for the most part, all going off to do awesome things in their lives. But for three, three years, four years, they they led the fight, they're on campus challenging the administration to disclose more information and trying to represent student opposition to the reopening of the smelter.John Fiege  I was looking up some articles about ASARCO. I found this this one 2010 article from John Burnett, who's a NPR correspondent based in Austin. So he talks about in 2009, the US Justice Department announced the settlement of one of the largest environmental bankruptcies in US history, in which ASARCO would pay a record $1.79 billion to settle claims for hazardous waste pollution in you know, at 80 sites, as many as 20 states, including the copper smelting operation in in El Paso. And he quotes some interesting community members like an 82 year old former maintenance worker named Miguel Beltran, who says, "you can't get a job here in El Paso compared to ASARCO, ASARCO is the best place to work. We were just like a family." And John Burnett, also quotes an anti-smelter activist named Debbie Kelly, who says, "They marketed very well. And the people of El Paso were brainwashed believed that this was the most wonderful thing El Paso could possibly have, this tall polluting contaminating smokestack." And this is this classic tension and environmental justice organizing. The big polluter in town is often the biggest and best paying employer as well, especially for folks with limited education. And these working folks often side with the company in some ways, and then at some times, kind of accepting the environmental problems for the economic opportunities. And the smokestack itself is this shining symbol of progress and prosperity that goes way back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. What was your experience with this tension between economic opportunity and environmental health in the organizing, and how that was represented in the media?Dave Cortez  Well, let's take a few cracks at it, because it's a big question. You know, I'll start with my family, two of my close family members worked at the plant, my dad's brother worked at the plant and then worked at Chevron on the other side of town. And then his brother in law, worked at the plant and retired. And here I was, this younger punk, you know, sort of just not super close to the family, showing up at events, and that's what I'm doing and "oh," they think, "I'm a paid protester," you know, forget my education, forget what I'm actually saying. You know, it's, it's deep cultural assimilation. It's deep colonization, sort of this Stockholm syndrome that develops out of poverty and repression. It's horrific. And it's sad to watch, you know, people fiercely defend the only thing that has helped them, in their eyes, and not be able to acknowledge the harm that's been done. It's not different from, you know, addiction in that way.  Or, or depression in that way. John Fiege  Right.  Or domestic abuse. Don't talk about it. Dave Cortez  Domestic abuse. Exactly. You know, it's heartbreaking. It still hurts me to talk about. But, you know, that was the case. And you know, in that situation, just try and make peace with your family just, you know, get through the gathering. And you go on in, you know, some of my family was very supportive, you know, like, "yeah, that stuff's bad, and we should do better." You don't get investments in the well being of a community that like say, in Austin and all this money flooding here and STEM education being invested in and, you know, pre K access and, you know, nature based education and Montessori education, things like that. All of this is part of that, that conflict that pushes you to try and find the best thing you can for your family. And any of the workers that I organized alongside say the same thing. They were so proud and happy--Daniel Adriano another sort of lead visible face against the reopening of smelter, he's a former steel worker, you know, he tells a story about like, his dad worked there, his uncle, his cousins, you know, it was just like a family thing, like everybody, if you could get a job at ASARCO, you knew you'd be okay. You could raise a family, maybe even your wife or your spouse, your partner wouldn't have to work. But, you know, behind that, that Golden Gate, there was a lot of things that people weren't being told. You know, things like, maybe you shouldn't be taking your work clothes home and washing them. Right. They sent people home to wash, and that's very common in heavy industry in the 80s 70s 80s and 90s, you know, these these companies do that. In Danny's case, his kids got sick, you know, and they developed health problems. And he points to that as part of the reason washing his clothes in the same machine with, as his kids clothes. His wife feels guilt about that. Heavy guilt. John Fiege  Yeah. That's hard. Dave Cortez  You know, it's violating. You know, they had them--that settlement came because they, well, in part because ASARCO was caught for illegally incinerating hazardous chemical weapons waste materials from Colorado, in the smelter in these men weren't told about it. And they shoveled this stuff in there and were exposed to, you know, not recycled waste, just direct waste from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wow facility, a weapons manufacturing facility, Dow Chemical weapons manufacturing facility. That stuff was burned and they were exposed. You know, it's infuriating. And once they learned that, and they were falling ill and they had some evidence, they tried to organize other workers, let them know former workers let them know what was going on. And, and they encountered the same thing that I encountered with my family: just like this, this wall of acceptance, this willful ignorance. You know, I don't know about that, you know, just like denial, denial. And that was really hard on them. They got ostracized, they lost a lot of friends. You know, and so they found allyship in other people whose families had been sick, residents on the other side of the river in the Colonias, whose children had been severely sick, who were bleeding every night because of bloody noses and heavy metal contamination. You know, they found allyship with Debbie Kelly in the current place, which is sort of a wealthier neighborhood, you know, the educated, more white affluent folks who didn't want the smelter around. And this, that's how the "Get the lead out" coalition really came together it was--you just had these different interests aligned around this lack of justice, but the worker piece was always--and the economic piece was always always, you know, the straw that would break our back. And when ASARCO hired a PR firm, Teresa Montoya, to build their campaign, their marketing campaign to reopen the smelter, that was their big thing. I want to work for ASARCO I want to work for ASARCO and they march out all these Chicanos and throw them in front of a plant in their hard hats and talk about the good jobs and the pay. You know, it's tough to compete with. I know the people in Port Arthur, in Corpus Christi, even down in Brownsville, you know, and you name it. John Fiege  It's the same story everywhere. It's the same story.Dave Cortez  In Appalachia, as well, with the coal miners. Absolutely. The amount of energy it takes to fight Goliath. You know, you never have enough you never have enough resources. You got a PR firm In, you know, this facility was owned and run ASARCO, Grupo Mexico owned by Carlos Slim, at the time the wealthiest man in the world, you know, like, you're never going to have enough just to stop the bad thing. How are you going to strategize and organize in a way where you're talking about building the good, and replacing it with something better and taking care of these people? It's doable, it absolutely is. But at the time, when you're in the sock like that, it's very hard to pivot. And it's very hard to motivate people who have resources to give you those resources to bring on people to pay them to do that work. It's a boxing match, take your hits, and wait for the time to throw a punch. You know, and I think one thing that really hurt people hurt ASARCO a lot, was when it came out that at their operations in Arizona, El Paso and elsewhere, in the 70s and 80s, they had been using health standards, health assessment screenings that were based on a false standard that black men and brown men had a 15% higher lung capacity than white men, therefore, they could be--they could work 15% longer, they could be exposed 15% more than white men. And that came out. And you know, we had some incredible, dedicated educated volunteers who were digging this information up, who were, you know, putting it to the to the news outlets. And without the news outlets putting that information out there, like the New York Times that put it out about the hazardous chemical weapons waste, you know, we wouldn't have been able to really punch back. But that stuff came out and then we could organize with it. We made materials out of it. I made sure everyone knew that, you know, this is the kind of crap that this place was built on, no matter what they say now you can't trust them. John Fiege  Right. Yeah. And this--another thing that John Burnett brought up in this NPR story is, he quotes some longtime community members who said that when the winds were blowing to the south toward Juarez in Mexico, the smelter would crank up production and send pollution directly into Mexico where they could, they could do nothing to regulate it or stop it even worse than in the US. And that's a pretty insidious and cynical route around US environmental regulations. American companies have this long history of sending their polluting factories and jobs overseas. But in El Paso, they could just send the pollution directly to Mexico while keeping the plant and the jobs in the US. Were you able to do any cross border organizing in El Paso to combat this kind of flagrant disregard for air pollution in Mexico?Dave Cortez  I wasn't able to myself, or it wasn't a choice I made to do myself on the broader scale. Marianna Chu, who worked at the time for the Sierra Club, and as an independent activist and organizer did a whole hell of a lot and deserves a ton of credit. Marianna, and others were also were able to build relationships in the Colonias and get to talk to people that were, you know, the definition of directly impacted, right on the other side of the river. You know, you drive through, you pass on I-10, and you look to the left where you're passing through downtown, and it's just colonias and that's Colonia Felipe and some students who we'd found and became acquainted with at UTEP and were filmmakers and they were able to get over into the colonias and document the lived experience of some of these folks, and it's horrific, and they made a short film, I'm happy to share called The Story of Cristo and it's a little boy, you know, who's like that, he's bleeding, bleeding every night, because he's got heavy metal contamination, two years old. You know, and that story spread. You know, it was similar to other families all throughout the Colonia. Dirt roads, just full of metal, not a lot that could be done unless there was funds provided for it. And part of that settlement in relation to the chemical weapons waste was that ASARCO would give money to an outfit in Mexico to pave those roads. You know, that's it. Accept no wrongdoing. No, no responsibility. We don't admit nothing but, here, take this and leave us alone.John Fiege  Literally, sweeping it under the rug. They're just laying asphalt over the dust.Dave Cortez  Absolutely. I mean, that's that's absolutely right. And, you know, one interesting intersection here with with the colonias there was, as we marched towards the end of 2007 and 2008. You know, we're still fighting the plant, it started to become more and more dangerous and people were less responsive, and less receptive to being interviewed on camera with our comrades, and the gangs, were starting to move in to the Colonia and control things more. And that was that it wasn't safe anymore you can, the last thing you should be doing is driving over there with a camera. And so those stories sort of drifted away, those folks. And we weren't able to really work with them a whole lot more, because the narco war was starting to take root.John Fiege  Because it's, it's how it's the same thing they do to fight you, they give your neighbor a job, and then and they get your neighbor working against you. Dave Cortez  Absolutely, I mean, you know, you're not going to go toe to toe with the same weapons, you got to find a way to find their weak spot and cut them at that weak spot. And, you know, I learned that, I learned that in this fight, you know, we weren't scared of these people. We weren't scared of their minions. We weren't scared of the, you know, the former workers who wanted the plant to open. We weren't scared of them. They tried. Everybody tried to intimidate you, you know, but I'll start with, with that part, first, as a critical strategy. My, you know, 23 year old high energy, Mohawk wearin' self, right, like, I thought I knew it all and was ready to go, just like against that jerk down on Red River Street in Austin. And, you know, the first public meeting, debate, whatever, that we helped organize, some of those, those workers were there outside and they were, you know, they pick a smaller person, a woman to argue with, and she ain't scared of them. But you know, soon enough, there's, there's four or five of them around her and oh, man, you know, machismo is something all of us from the border suffered from and that kicked in hard. You just get into it with these guys. But, you know, that is not the way, that is not the way. You know, arguing and fighting, especially with the people, even though they're trying to get you to do it. The people who want a job in these facilities, the community members who just want a better way for their life, you cannot let the people at the top pit us against each other. That's why it's so important to be anchored in community talking about the nuance, you know, how to step and where, what to look out for, and really trying to build together, it has to be at the forefront.John Fiege  Isn't that the history of American industrial capitalism, that for it to work, the, the industrialists need to pit various groups of people against one another, whether it's along lines of race, or income, or religion, or geography, or immigration status, or, or whatever. Like, that's, that's how it works. You need to divide people by those things, so they don't get together and they don't, they don't form a allegiances.Dave Cortez  That's right. That's right. I mean, it's, but it's not something that's created by the oligarchs and the industrial capitalists and the power holders. It's something that they exploit, right? It's a, it's a wound that's already there. And, you know, it's something that concerns me greatly about broader civil society, and our failures to build community, in relationship in brotherhood and sisterhood. You know, in a true spirit of mutual solidarity, the more that we neglect doing that work, the easier it is for something to divide us or someone to exploit it, we see it, there's an endless amount of examples we can point to. But if you start your work in trying to build something better, and build through a positive relationship, it's going to feed in the long run, it'll help you endure all of the struggles that are going to come the conflicts, you know, the the infighting, the personality disagreements, whatever, you got to have some foundation and I learned that from that, that night outside the UTEP Library arguing with these guys that, "No, we got to we got to find a way to work with these workers. We got to really center the fact that people need work in jobs." And and that's where, you know, I really started to become close with, not the guys I argued with, other workers who were already disaffected, Charlie Rodriguez, and Danielle Riano and Efrain Martinez and others. You know, they became, in some ways they already were but from my work, they became the center of what we're trying to do and focus on, that this is actually not what we want these, these jobs are not the kind that we need, because look what they did to me. And so that's one piece. We've got to find a way to get people more meaningfully involved with the policies we're trying to change, so there's just a far greater number of people pushing for positive investment in something that is, you know, not just like NGO staff, you know, like, the less NGO staff and those boardrooms, the better. You know, get every day, people in their meeting, pressing for these decisions, and calling for it, and that makes it much harder for the special interests to push push their own agenda.John Fiege  Well, that's a good transition to Occupy Wall Street. So in 2011, Occupy Wall Street began in New York City in Zuccotti Park. And then the movement quickly spread around the world, including to Austin. And I know you were heavily involved in Occupy Austin, and its campaign to get the city to divest from commercial banks. I participated in a couple of those occupy Austin Bank actions. And I don't think I'd met you yet. But, you know, as many people might remember, one of the big discussions and debates around Occupy was whether and how to organize and whether to make formal demands, which always makes me think of Frederick Douglass who famously said, "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did. And it never will." But those words from Frederick Douglass, were not the guiding light of many occupy organizers and participants, I'd love to hear you talk a bit about your experience with Occupy Austin, and the internal debates and conflicts about what it was and how it should operate. And what you brought away from that whole experience that you put into your organizing work after that. Dave Cortez  Yeah, it was one of the most exciting times of my life so far, you know, to be able to three, four, sometimes five nights a week, meet up with 50 to 60 people not at a general assembly, but a working group meeting, and everybody's there ready to, you know, talk and break out and figure out the next step for getting people to close bank accounts. And, you know, organizing the rally and building the art and all those things. It was organic. I'm so happy that, I'm fortunate to have that experience in this city, and in this country. It was real, you see the romanticized version of uprisings in film, in writing, and on the news, different ways around the world. But, you know, this was that, at least the closest I've been to it, and it wasn't just the, you know, the sign holding, and, you know, petition gathering, we did all that. But it was, I mean, like people were, people were in, you know, the sacrifice time away from whatever they had going on around them to contribute to something better, and I have never seen an appetite, so large for participating and contributing to something that can change the world. I've seen it tried to be engineered a whole lot by NGOs. And it's laughable. It's insulting, you know, but for me at the time, it was it was like a dream come true. I remember a week before occupy launch, there was a meeting happening at Ruta Maya, and the room was full of people, and, you know, a bunch of white dudes, hippie yoga types on stage, you know, talking about some stuff, but I'm up there front row, just, you know, like, eager. And just like listening, I'm like, "This is great," you know, so they open the mic for everybody to come up and have something to say. And it was awesome. I'd just never seen it. You know, I was like, "wow, this is the Austin I always wanted to see," you know. Sure enough there was a meeting after that the next day, and the next day after that. And that kind of continued on for a few days. And then and then there was the day of the launch and lots of people packing City Hall. I mean, you couldn't move there were so many people out there and there were people talking for hours. Everybody was just willing to stay. And you know, I can't, I just can't believe how patient people were for weeks. And just like hanging out. You know, I think they just wanted something different. And they wanted to be part of something, like I said, Now, me, day one. I'm like, "yo, if we're gonna be out here, we need some data." And I got my clipboard. And my dear friend and former partner Betsy had been working for a group that was doing foreclosure organizing and getting people to move their bank accounts or close their bank accounts. And so, you know, I got some, some materials from her and took up like six clipboards, to the to the rally. And that was my whole shtick was just like, "Hey, y'all, we should close our corporate bank accounts," and people loved it. You know, it was like, "hey, here goes, put your name down, if you want to help out," and I mean, I filled up pages and pages of this thing, people who wanted to help out or close their bank accounts. And from that, you know, like, you'd find more people that were like, "Hey, I used, you know, I can help with that. And I used to work at a bank," or, you know, "I've got some time on my hands," you know. And so we, it was rad, because while all the noise was happening, the day to day that people were more familiar with Occupy Wall Street. You know, the the General Assemblies, the infighting, the conflicts with the unhoused folks and things like that, we had this parallel track of our bank action crew, which was doing, building switch kits, and, you know, trying to reach out to people to, you know, help walk them through how to close their bank accounts and stuff like that, or organize marches on the bank, so people could go in and come out and cut their credit cards, so we could all celebrate, you know, like, that was, that was great. That's classic organizing. I, you know, if you weren't down in City Hall, every day for that first month, you're missing out on something, you know, I don't think people appreciate enough how much work people invested into trying to maintain a space, like, maintaining a physical encampment is, you know, the people with the most knowledge on how to operate a small, little civil society is the people have been doing it before, which is our unhoused folks, you know. And there was a huge class conflict, that really emerged quickly, that the police and the city manager and others began to exploit, you know, by trying to bring more unhoused folks down to City Hall, allowing some to sell and distribute drugs, not enforcing any oversight, you know, we had women attacked, you know, and attempted assaults and things like that, that they were just looking the other way on. Because they wanted this to go away. And it was up to us to figure out how to manage that. And that really became the core of the non-bank action, kind of conversations. You know, everybody wanted to do solidarity with everything else. But it was really about, like, how do we keep this thing going? And how do we maintain our presence here? You know, do you negotiate with the city? Who negotiates? Who's responsible? Do we just say, you know, F-U, we're not going to talk to you all, you know, but like, through all that, like, some amazing friendships were developed, and I mean, like bonds, true, real friendships, and people may not be super close anymore, but all it would take is a phone call or text to bring people back together. You know, it's something I'll just value for the rest of my life.John Fiege  Yeah, totally. And in 2015, The Austin Chronicle named you the best environmental activist in Austin for your work as, "The heart and soul of Sierra Club's 'Beyond Coal' campaign in Central Texas." And I know you've done all kinds of work with the Sierra Club. But I wondered if you could talk about what the fight has been like to transition from dirty energy to clean energy in Texas, which, of course is the oil capital of the country. And looking over the years you've been doing this work, what stands out? What have you learned from this massive campaign?Dave Cortez  Like you said, it's Texas, we're the number one carbon emitter in the country, and a huge one in the world and the United States cannot meet the modest two week goals in the Paris Accords unless Texas gets its act together, you know, and we got some real problems here, not just from fossil fuel pollution, but from industrial and toxic pollution and just from our livelihoods, you know, there's another story out yesterday, you know, are we going to have power next week, because we're going to hit hit the peak of the summer. You know, it's hard to think about the fight for clean energy in Texas without thinking about the power of the fossil fuel and industrial industries. There's there's been a battle since 2000 and 2005 to stop new power plants and advocate for clean energy. The fuel type changes and you know, back then it was coal and then it is gas and and now, it's like, oh my god, we just don't have enough power. Now, how do we get it? But it's still the, you know, trade associations, the Association of Electric Companies in Texas, you know, Oncor, which is an electric distributor company, NRG, you go down the line, Energy Transfer Partners, all of these fossil fuel corporations, making billions and billions of dollars, still call the shots, they still influence, and basically direct, decision makers on what is going to be acceptable in terms of, even, discussion. You can't even get a hearing in the state legislature on flaring reduction, which is a very modest thing. Because they have enough influence to make sure that that conversation is not even going to happen. And their members, like Energy Transfer Partners, and others are some of the biggest donors to politicians in the state. So, you know, why shouldn't we listen to those people? Kelsy Warren, Dakota Access Pipeline CEO, behind Energy Transfer Partners, gave a million dollars, his largest donation ever to Governor Abbott, right immediately after the legislative session. And this is after his company made well over a billion dollars, I think it's closer to $2 billion, coming out of the winter storm, Energy Transfer Partners. While people died, these people decided it would make better financial sense and profit sense to go ahead and withhold supplies of gas to power plants and gas utilities, and let the price go up before they would deliver that gas and therefore make a ton of money. Forget that more than you know, some say 200, some say 700 people died, many of them freezing to death, many of them carbon monoxide poisoning during the storm, forget that. It's all about the money. And that's the biggest takeaway here, just like we would be fighting Carlos Slim, and ASARCO and other folks, you got to look at what the interest is, you know, why are people supporting this? Why are they facilitating this? I know, it's easy to just say, well, we just got to vote these people out. Well, you know, we've got to come up with strategies that will allow us to do that. We've got to come up with strategies that will make it so, in this state that's so heavily corrupt and captured by corporate interests, fossil fuel interests, industrial interests, that we're going to find a way to cut into their enabling electorate. Their enabling base. And it's more than just a voter registration strategy. It's more than just a mobilization strategy, or getting people to sign a petition, it gets back to what we started talking about with ACORN. What is their base? Where are they? What are their interests? And where does it make sense to try and make some inroads, and cut away? And unfortunately, we just don't have enough of that happening in Texas. There's an effort to try to build coalitions with, you know, some social justice and some youth focused organizations. But we're all part of that same progressive "groupthink" or Democratic base, that we're not actually doing much to expand, other than registering some new voters. And there's a lot of unpacking that needs to happen. You know, can we go talk to some steel workers or some people on the Texas-Mexico border, who started to vote more for Republicans and Trump, because they were worried about the Green New Deal? They're worried about losing their oil jobs. Why, I mean, like, to this day, we haven't made that pivot collectively as a movement, and it's hella frustrating.John Fiege  Yeah, it gets back to what we were talking about earlier with, you know, kind of the DNA of environmental justice orientation to this work, the work has to be intersectional if you want to transition Texas, the oil capital of the world, to to non-fossil fuel based energy, you know, you need to deal with, with voting rights, you need to deal with the bad education system, you need to deal with healthcare issues, you need to deal with police brutality, and you know, it's like it's all connected. To think that we can remove this issue of decarbonizing our energy source from all of that other, you know, what some people see as messy stuff is delusional, it just doesn't doesn't work, doesn't make sense. Especially, and it's so obvious in places like Texas, where, you know, what are they doing? They're just trying to, they're trying to suppress the vote, like, they know what the deal is, you know, they're they're losing numbers. They need to disenfranchise more voters in order to maintain this system. Dave Cortez  You know, there's an important caveat and distinction for environmentalists, environmental justice folks, or whatever. You know, if you talk to John Beard with Port Arthur Community Action Network, you know, he's a former steel worker. His whole pitch in Port Arthur is about youth engagement jobs, investing in the community. He's willing to talk to the companies, things like that. It's not environmental-first type of thinking. But the enviros, and you'll see this any legislative session, if you pay attention, we are on the far losing side of the losers. Okay, the Democrats being the losers, you know, Democrats in Texas carry House Bill 40, which is the ban on fracking bans. You know, Mrs. T, Senator Senfronia Thompson out of Houston, she authored that bill, Black Democrat, you know, revered for her work on voting rights and reproductive justice. You know, enviros, we are way, way out of the mix. And so even if we got those organizations doing the work you're talking about, to speak about climate change, speak about the grid, you know, pollution, things like that, we'd still be part of that losing side. And I'm not saying we need to need to be building out into red country, or rural country. It's a critique of the broader progressive movement that we aren't doing enough to find people, the greater majority of people that don't participate in our process, in politics, in voting, except in presidential elections. We are not doing enough to reach people who are just going about their lives and do not give a s**t about the things that we post online about our petitions or positions, or our op-eds, or whatever. That is where the fight is, we've got to draw more people in while the right wing tries to keep more people out. That's our only pathway. And so--John Fiege  What does a just transition mean to you?Dave Cortez  It's what we've been talking about, it's a whole shift in, you know, the operating system of a of a community, whether it's a town of 50,000 people or a state of, you know, 25 million. Just transition means that we're taking into full consideration, our triple bottom line, you know, our health, and shelter, and food, you know, our economics, our jobs, and ability to put, you know, bring income and get the things that we need. And, you know, just the land and our ecology. Just transition has to anchor that we are--that those things are connected, and that they're not--they can't be separated, that in order for our families, and our children and our neighbors and all that, to have a future and have a livelihood, we need to be concerned about our air quality, concerned about our water quality, but also about the quality of their education, the access to healthy food and grocery stores. If you were to talk to people and ask them to envision what, you know, their dream society looks like, which is a hard thing for people to do nowadays. You know, you'll hear some of these things and just transition is the process that we take to get there. It's not about you know, getting a worker from a fossil fuel job into a clean energy job.John Fiege  Well, and speaking of that, you know, in addition to your beyond coal and just transition work, you've done a lot of work with low income communities of color in Austin around a whole assortment of things: illegal dumping, access to green space, community solar and solar equity, green gentrification among among a bunch of other stuff. Can you talk about gentrification and how Austin has changed in the time you've been there and the tension that's emerged about Austin becoming one of the greenest but also increasingly one of the least affordable cities in the country? Dave Cortez  Yeah it's tough. People in Austin are largely still here to just party, have fun, make money. You know, they're really eager to do what they moved here for, you know, go do the cool thing and the restaurant, and the corporate soccer game and whatnot, you know, fine, whatever, I'm not trying to harp on people who want to have a good time, the problem is that there's no thread of the greater good of civil society, of trying to care for those in town that struggle and have the least. That doesn't exist here. It's just, it has lessened every year, it might be new people moving here might be more money here, and people being displaced. But you know, for the most part, with gentrification, the white wealthy middle class here is strong, you know, median family income is close to $90,000, you know, qualifying for affordable housing, you can make a ton of money and still qualify for affordable housing. And the people that move in, my brother calls them the new pilgrims. They're not super interested in learning what was there before, they're interested in what's around them now, and what might come in the future. And we do have a responsibility to make sure that we not just offer up but press on people at the doors, at community events, you know, cool, fun, s**t, barbecues and things like that, to learn what was there before they came, you know, sort of an onboarding into the neighborhood. And we did some of this in Montoplis, my old neighborhood that I lived in before I moved to South Austin, you know, people who I was like, "man, they're never going to help us," they're just, you know, part of that new white, middle class "new pilgrim." When I learned the history of the community, and the issues that were going on, I said, "Hell, yeah, whatever I can do," from, you know, cooking funding, speaking, writing letters, coming to meetings, you name it, you know, but we had to keep on 'em. And we had to give them a meaningful task. There is a lot of power, gentrification sucks. But I've really tried to work with myself on not being--automatically hating folks for just trying to move in into a home. But you do have to challenge folks on how they behave after they've moved in, you know, in Austin with our urban farming and desire for new urbanism and density and things like that, the culture of I know what's best is so thick, and it's really hard to stay patient. But I try to, even when I get mad and angry and frustrated, I try to remind people of what's called the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, and the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's Principles of Anti-Racism, encourage them to read them, and to do everything they can to just shut the F up, and go listen to the people that they're talking about in affected communities. And get a sense of where you might be able to build some common ground.John Fiege  I actually wanted to spend a minute on that because, you know, you started, or you were one of the organizers, who started environmental justice group in Austin years ago, and I went to a bunch of the meetings. And I feel like that's where, you know, we got to start hanging out a bunch for the first time. But you would always start the meetings with the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing. And, you know, those came out of this meeting hosted by the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice and Jemez, New Mexico back in the 90s. Can you talk more specifically about the principles and why they're important to the work you're doing?Dave Cortez  So when you're thinking about undoing racism, or being an antiracist or antiracism work, you know, you're acknowledging that you're confronting a built system, something that's built under a false construct, race, you know, and when you're going to combat that, there's, you know, there's a lot of issues to it or whatever, but the Jemez principles will help you see, how do you approach people and talk about it? You know, for example, listen, let people speak is one of the principles, you know, listen to the people on the ground. Don't barge in there don't don't come in with your your petition and your fancy stuff and, or be online and be a dick. You know, go try to introduce yourself and get to know people. You know, ask questions. That's okay. You know, people were very generous for the most part, whether they're Black or Brown or or Native or Asian, or you name it, you know? If you're able to ask questions and listen about an issue, people will likely talk, you know. Trying to work in solidarity and mutuality is another big one for me, you know, it's not just about like, "I'm here to help you," versus, "I'm here because our struggles are connected and intertwined. And for me and my family to be successful and get what we need, it depends on your family, and your people being successful and getting what you need. How can we work together to make sure that we everything we do reinforces that and that we lift each other up?" A lot of things that we see is very transactional in the advocacy and activism world, you know, sign this, and then we'll go do that for you, or will tell the person to do the thing and change? It's not so much how can what can we do to help you directly, like we talked about bills and taxes and things like that. But also, we have to know that, what is it we're gonna get out of it, it's not just this potential policy outcome. There's tremendous value in human relationships. And in culture and community building, you're going to learn about the people in your community, you're going to learn about the history, you're going to learn, you know, and make new friends and maybe some recipes, maybe, you know, some new music or something. It's limitless. You know, humans have tremendous potential in beauty. But we we rob ourselves of that by, you know, retreating into our silos in our, in our four walls. You know, Jemez can give something--these are short, short, little principles that can give people something to read and reflect on, they can be kind of abstract and theory based, but when you're advocating for change, and then you look at these and you ask yourself, "sm I doing this?" There's tremendous potential for learning, and changing how we do our work.John Fiege  And the Sierra Club is one of the oldest large-scale environmental groups in the world. And it's traditionally been a white organization. Its founder John Muir made racist remarks about Black and Indigenous people, and in 2020, the Sierra Club officially apologized for those remarks and the white supremacist roots of the organization. In Texas, with your work and your presence, I feel like you've really helped the Sierra Club evolve there, where you are, and you th

Occupy Revisited: The Movement that Shook the WorldWe go back to the streets of Zuccotti Park with "Occupy Revisited: The Movement that Shook the World." Occupy Wall Street exploded onto the global stage in September 2011, sparking a widespread movement against economic inequality and the influence of big corporations on government. In this episode, we trace the origins of the movement, examine its profound impact on political discourse, and explore its enduring legacy in contemporary social and political movements. From passionate protests to the powerful slogan "We are the 99%!", we still feel the effects of OCCUPY.

Occupy Revisited: The Movement that Shook the WorldWe go back to the streets of Zuccotti Park with "Occupy Revisited: The Movement that Shook the World." Occupy Wall Street exploded onto the global stage in September 2011, sparking a widespread movement against economic inequality and the influence of big corporations on government. In this episode, we trace the origins of the movement, examine its profound impact on political discourse, and explore its enduring legacy in contemporary social and political movements. From passionate protests to the powerful slogan "We are

Comedian Ted Alexandro is the guest, there's pizza news, and our topic is: "Pizza Expo".Ted Alexandro is a super respected New York comic, who has done Letterman, Conan, Kimmel, and has had two half hour specials on Comedy Central. His recent special “CUT/UP” can be found on YouTube. He is also Jim Gaffigan's opening act. Check out tour dates at tedalexandro.com.Ted makes us laugh about his Wikipedia inaccuracies, making pizzas with his own Ooni oven, and parenting. Also some road pizza stories with Jim Gaffigan. This podcast is brought to you by Ooni Pizza Ovens. Go to Ooni.com for more information.Follow us for more information!Instagram: @pizzapodparty @NYCBestPizza @AlfredSchulz4Twitter: @PizzaPodParty @ArthurBovino @AlfredSchulzTikTok: @thepizzapodpartyThreads: @pizzapodparty @NYCBestPizza @AlfredSchulz4

In this episode, we start our exploration of power. We seek to introduce the concept and begin to frame how individuals interested in social change might start to think about power in their own work. To explore how power operates in our world, we look at how revolutionary movements of the past have both confronted and utilized power. Our guest scholar for this conversation is Dr. Michael Hardt, Professor of Literature at Duke University. --- Michael Hardt's writings explore the new forms of domination in the contemporary world as well as the social movements and other forces of liberation that resist them. In the Empire trilogy -- Empire (2000), Multitude (2004), and Commonwealth (2009) -- he and Antonio Negri investigate the political, legal, economic, and social aspects of globalization. They also study the political and economic alternatives that could lead to a more democratic world. Their pamphlet Declaration (2012) attempts to articulate the significance of the encampments and occupations that began in 2011, from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park, and to recognize the primary challenges faced by emerging democratic social movements today. His new book, The Subversive Seventies, focuses on how the revolutionary movements of the 1970s confronted and sought to change power structures. While his work on power is extensive, the publications below provide a useful introduction to his scholarship addressing the topic: Hardt, M. (2023). The subversive seventies. Oxford University Press.  Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Harvard University Press. The Social Science for Public Good Podcast is a project of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance and VT Publishing intended to make social science theories accessible and available to individuals and organizations seeking to promote social change. Music: Purple-planet.com

Police arrested protesters at the Federal Reserve in lower Manhattan today following a demonstration originating from Zuccotti Park against fossil fuel investments. Meanwhile, hourly parking meter rates across the city will rise starting next month. Also, with increasing COVID rates and the new school year underway, the New York City Department of Education has removed its school COVID case map; Amy Zimmer from ChalkBeat provides insight. Lastly, as hip-hop celebrates its 50th year, WNYC and Gothamist highlight women like Peaches Rodriguez, a breakdancer turned comedian.

Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn. Marisa Holmes is an organizer, filmmaker, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the director of two non-fiction feature films, All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story, which captures the occupation at Zuccotti Park, and After the Revolution, a non-linear narrative of the post-2011 context in North Africa. In addition, she has authored numerous short films and articles. Her work has appeared in Truthout, Paris-Luttes, Nawaat, PBS, and Al Jazeera, and We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation. She teaches courses on social movements and media at Rutgers University and Fordham University. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn. Marisa Holmes is an organizer, filmmaker, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the director of two non-fiction feature films, All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story, which captures the occupation at Zuccotti Park, and After the Revolution, a non-linear narrative of the post-2011 context in North Africa. In addition, she has authored numerous short films and articles. Her work has appeared in Truthout, Paris-Luttes, Nawaat, PBS, and Al Jazeera, and We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation. She teaches courses on social movements and media at Rutgers University and Fordham University. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn. Marisa Holmes is an organizer, filmmaker, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the director of two non-fiction feature films, All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story, which captures the occupation at Zuccotti Park, and After the Revolution, a non-linear narrative of the post-2011 context in North Africa. In addition, she has authored numerous short films and articles. Her work has appeared in Truthout, Paris-Luttes, Nawaat, PBS, and Al Jazeera, and We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation. She teaches courses on social movements and media at Rutgers University and Fordham University. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn. Marisa Holmes is an organizer, filmmaker, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the director of two non-fiction feature films, All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story, which captures the occupation at Zuccotti Park, and After the Revolution, a non-linear narrative of the post-2011 context in North Africa. In addition, she has authored numerous short films and articles. Her work has appeared in Truthout, Paris-Luttes, Nawaat, PBS, and Al Jazeera, and We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation. She teaches courses on social movements and media at Rutgers University and Fordham University. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn. Marisa Holmes is an organizer, filmmaker, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the director of two non-fiction feature films, All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story, which captures the occupation at Zuccotti Park, and After the Revolution, a non-linear narrative of the post-2011 context in North Africa. In addition, she has authored numerous short films and articles. Her work has appeared in Truthout, Paris-Luttes, Nawaat, PBS, and Al Jazeera, and We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation. She teaches courses on social movements and media at Rutgers University and Fordham University. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn. Marisa Holmes is an organizer, filmmaker, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the director of two non-fiction feature films, All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story, which captures the occupation at Zuccotti Park, and After the Revolution, a non-linear narrative of the post-2011 context in North Africa. In addition, she has authored numerous short films and articles. Her work has appeared in Truthout, Paris-Luttes, Nawaat, PBS, and Al Jazeera, and We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation. She teaches courses on social movements and media at Rutgers University and Fordham University. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn. Marisa Holmes is an organizer, filmmaker, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the director of two non-fiction feature films, All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story, which captures the occupation at Zuccotti Park, and After the Revolution, a non-linear narrative of the post-2011 context in North Africa. In addition, she has authored numerous short films and articles. Her work has appeared in Truthout, Paris-Luttes, Nawaat, PBS, and Al Jazeera, and We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation. She teaches courses on social movements and media at Rutgers University and Fordham University. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Organizing Occupy Wall Street: This is Just Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn. Marisa Holmes is an organizer, filmmaker, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the director of two non-fiction feature films, All Day All Week: An Occupy Wall Street Story, which captures the occupation at Zuccotti Park, and After the Revolution, a non-linear narrative of the post-2011 context in North Africa. In addition, she has authored numerous short films and articles. Her work has appeared in Truthout, Paris-Luttes, Nawaat, PBS, and Al Jazeera, and We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation. She teaches courses on social movements and media at Rutgers University and Fordham University. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Photo: No known restrictions on publication. @Batchelorshow #POTUS: The pseudo events of Zuccotti Park and the Manhattan Indictment & What is to be done? Dan Henninger, WSJOpinion https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-targeting-of-donald-trump-alvin-bragg-indictment-media-attention-biden-2024-new-york-jury-a8fa2a75

Audio file  RIPMEDICALDEBTDRAGSHOW.mp3    Transcript  Good morning, comrades. You're listening to I'm just said WMNF like that is the community radio station. When I grew up in Saint Petersburg, like Tampa Bay, it was like in NPR affiliate and everything. But this is not WMNF. This is WHIV. 102.3 low Power FM I'm a little throwed right now. This is Robert of good morning. Comrade Jeff has made his way back to fight for labor rights in Virginia, right? I'm a little throwed because we're not recording in the studio. This is not live, so please hold all calls. But this is in the home studio. And I'm with my lovely wife Aaron, who is a in and out, you know, guest. Of the podcast also host guest licensed mental health profession. And she's here. So it's like having your very own doctor Katz.  I'm also in the world's squeakiest chair, so sorry, everybody.  It's very squeaked out.  And also I have really bad vocal fry. So your.  Vocal fry is fine. You it's authoritative.  No, apparently no amount.  How do you figure that?  Because I've I've spoken to Ben.  That men are trash like you've told me this. On various occasions. So why are we concerned of what men think?  Because your listeners, you're. Mostly men. I'm.  Assuming, I mean they are when I run the when I run the, I'm trash I'm I'm trash.  You guys aren't. Trash, though, so that's so don't complain about my. Local fry, so we'll be fine. We're all good.  No, there is definitely a trash can that lives inside of me. So and also I just had to grab my keyboard from because we have our cat Ozzie, who is chilling out, but he loves to like lay on the keyboard and then it's just like a random like, what's going to happen when he does it. Usually he screws up video games. He's trying to screw up recording of a podcast right now, but he's such a.  Our other at Henry likes to attack my laptop when I'm using it, especially when I'm on a training or a conference call and she likes to send fund messages to the other participants.  Good boy. That's so awesome.  And then I get a bunch of messages back. I think your cat sent me a message. And it's like, yes.  Yeah. What did it say?  No, mostly it was like a lot. Of days and ages.  Ohh, a sassy a sketch lot of case.  No, that's where she. That's where she was standing.  Lot of case sassy, sassy cats, sassy cats.  JKL drive.  What's going on, Aaron? Somebody tried to steal our cat? I found out.  I guess that's going on OK.  Speaking of cats. So I come home and like both of our neighbors, our neighbor from up the block and and our neighbor next door is like there was a guy cause we have a, you know, our we have cats who have three cats and they're like indoor outdoor cats and.  And before you all come for us, we tried to make them be indoor cats. And these cats have figured out how to escape from the house. Robert came into our room, just not 15 minutes ago and stated that our cat Annie had we took away her normal. Escape route. She normally jumps on top of Roberts Arcade cabinet and then into the cabinet above our closet, and then shimmies up the air conditioning vent. Because, you know, she really wants to get outside.  To the attic.  But we moved to the video Gamer Cabinet video cabinet, anybody?  Over the age of.  Well, so we move that. So she just scaled the wall.  Yeah, she just was like Spiderman and just dug 1 claw into another and just vertically straight vertically scale. I think she looked back at me like she surprised herself like she's plotting it. She's like, I don't know. But I'm gonna give it. We can give. It a A you know, a world. And then she was just up in the crawl space, looking down at me like. Man, I did it.  Like there's literal cat claw. Like in the wall.  I'm looking at.  So, yeah. So we did really try to make these cats stay indoors. They just refused.  But yeah, so both our neighbors are like, hey, we have a cat Annie who, like, runs wild and free.  So anyway.  And like she just, you know, hangs out with everybody. She comes with us when we walk our dog, she walks it. She walks with us around the block. She just, you know, we'll get pets from everybody. Well, apparently there was some, like, hipster. Dude, they they described him as a tall white guy. Thin, with short shorts on cowboy cowboy boots and a tank top. And I'm like this man came straight out of the Bywater to try to steal my cat. They said he just he like and he came over to him for some pets. He picked up Annie and just started walking down the street and Annie was like, screaming bloody murder, like trying to get away and our neighbor. That came out like what's going on and was like, you put that cat down right now like, because that's not your cat. That's the blocks cat.  She is truly the blocks cat. I get sad about it sometimes cuz I did want her to be my cat. Which is why I adopted her. That you know the block needed her and she showed up, you know? She answered the call.  It's insane. How's how's work going for you?  Works good. We're finally staffed properly because they decided to give us. All of. A praise so.  That's great. Yay.  Yeah, that's crazy. You know, you get to like, you give people more money, they're more willing to.  They want to do things.  Work for you? But yeah, I can't really talk about my work just because HIPAA, but yeah. People are still struggling.  It's pretty bad out there.  Yeah, it's not. As bad as it could be, but it's.  Did you see? I guess we'll just do like. We'll we'll eat our we'll take our eat our vegetables first before uhm. Our dessert, did you see in Tennessee, the governor has the Governor of Tennessee has signed a bill that's going to. Make drag shows illegal.  Which I truly don't understand because Nashville is The Bachelorette capital of the world. From what I understand, and I don't understand how you can have a Bachelorette party without a drag brush.  Yeah, I mean, I can't go back to Nashville now, but yeah, he's a trash bag for sure. But did you see on top of that, on top of all that pictures were dug up of him in high school at a powder puff football game?  So funny and it's sad, but funny.  So he is. He is in a dress. And literally like the reporter that confronted him with, it was like. Like it must be like 4 Chan news.com cause he literally said is this you this you? What do you got to say about this? And he was just like, oh, that was in good fun.  Yeah, every drag brunch I've ever been to has been in good fun too, so I don't understand drag show.  I know.  I shouldn't just keep saying drag brunch. I'm just really basic.  You just you just gotta have eggs with your.  So that's mostly when I see drag.  You gotta have eggs with your drag show.  I'm either watching drag wrestling or I'm on drag brunch. There's truly no in between for me.  And dry wrestling about two weeks ago, that was. Pretty good that. Was great. It was pretty nice.  It was fantastic. But this is, you know, I not to be talked kind of light hearted about something so terrible. But you know. My mom has. Sometimes has asked me, you know, why I'm. I'm kind of down frequently and I don't really know how to explain to her that I have a really sick feeling in my stomach that. You know how similar the times are to the Weimar Republic and what came after the Weimar Republic is not something that. I particularly want to live through. Or have ever have happened. Again, again, again.  Yeah, I'm not looking forward. To the the reboot of cabaret. Like, that's not a thing I want. To watch.  And ironically, they probably wouldn't allow.  Well, that's the whole point. That's the point of the original one, is it not?  I've never seen it. I'm going to. Be honest with you.  Honestly, I've never seen it either, but the premise makes me mad because I'm like, if you people were in the street instead of like, come to the cab or maybe. Y'all could have done something about this.  We might be being really unduly harsh on characters of cabaret.  Probably more likely.  Please let us know but. I you know, the targeting of trans people and not that drag people drag Queens and kings are trans all the time, you know, but just targeting the because you actually look at the law, it does ban trans people from performing anything. Because it's specific to, I think it says the language is something like performing in the cultural makeup, including dress accessories. You know, style all of that of the a person who's the opposite of the gender you were assigned at birth. So essentially it's not drag, it's it's trans people doing anything in front of other people ever. And that's really scary. That is really scary. You know, it's it's the cliche. At this point, but the reason the reason? It gets said so much is because it's true. It's, you know, they. Came for the communists and and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. They came for the Jews. I didn't speak up. I wasn't a Jew. They came for the Catholics. I I am Catholic. But you know what I'm talking about. And it's just. I just. I don't really. Know what to do with my feelings about it. To be honest. Because, because again, like it's so stupid. Like it's so stupid that you it's almost as if you don't want to take it seriously because they're just so outlandish and buffoonish. But, you know, even, and that's part of that's part of the poison of it. Is that they are so goofy and so hypocritical and so out of control that it almost becomes not real, which I think is something that happened a lot during the Trump administration. So, you know, I don't, I don't know what to do.  So just to get. To get the full scope of this, I'll read this is from cnn.com because you you're saying how bands, all performances and I can't remember. I I'm sure I've read this already, but I just can't remember this specifics. It's like my brain wanted to block them out. So let's see CNN politics by Shawna Mizzell March 2nd. 2023 Tennessee becomes first state in 20, 2020 to restrict drag performances. Republican Governor Bill Lee signed into law Thursday afternoon that will restrict public drug show performances in Tennessee, making his state the first to do so this year. The state Senate passed the bill earlier Thursday, along with party along party lines, to admit adult cabaret performances on public. Again, my cat just moved my mouse public property so as to shield them from the view of children threatening violators with a misdemeanor and repeat offenders with a felony. The bill, which the Tennessee House passed last week, defines an adult cabaret performance as a performance that features topless dancers, go go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers. Male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a what is that word? It's not.  Period periods.  That is my new SAT word.  It means up period means basically blue. Like it means it means like you know, I don't know what upsetted he is, but I can't say what asity is.    But I know when I see period.  You all right? That's a wild word. Republicans hold supermajorities in both the House and the Senate. The law will go into effect on July 1st, 2023. Tennessee measure is the first of nearly a dozen such bills presently working their way through the GOP LED state legislatures. Republican state the performances expose children to sexual themes and imagery that are inappropriate, a claim rejected by advocates who say the proposed measures are discriminatory against the LGBT. New community and could violate First Amendment laws. Yeah, I wonder. Yeah, like this feels like something. The ACL, this. This feels like an ACLU slam dunk, but we'll see. But it doesn't matter because it doesn't matter if it gets. Repealed or not? There's already a chilling effect. That's the point. The cruelty is the point not to actually protect children from anything. See as. Blah blah blah blah blah as transgender issues and drag culture are increasingly becoming more mainstream. Such shows, which often feature men dressing as women and exaggerated makeup while singing or entertaining a crowd. Though some shows feature body or content, have occasionally been the target of attacks, and LGBTQ advocates say the bills under consideration add to a heightened state of alarm for the community. Like I said, it's the chilling effect they want. It's the chilling effect. They're going to get. Republicans state Senator Jack Johnson. Who sponsored the Tennessee legislation, told CNN on Thursday that the bill was not meant to target drag performances or transgender. People except you just literally spelled out in the language of the bill what a drag show is. That's that's wild that that is. That is 1987, George.  Orwen. Well, that's how they. Get around the ohh that was all in good fun because of course the. High school. Actually, I should even say, of course, but theoretically, a high school skit is probably not going to have a lot of, like sexual nature. And like a lot of body this, but why am I like I there was a guy. In my high school. He used to show us all his Beatus like frequently. Yeah, this was before me too, but.  And then I fell in love.  Then I reflected on it as an adult and I was like, why didn't any of? The teachers stop that.  Ohh it was like a known. Thing. Ohh yeah.  Yeah, it was a theater thing.  Oh God.  perient shows and it's like, OK. Yeah, maybe they're not doing like old school vaudeville acts, but you know. What are they going to call body? What are they going to call period. I wish they hadn't written that word.  That's that's a wild world, yeah.  That's a wild word, but it's it's like, OK, so if you have a trans comic and they're talking about their dating life and they're talking about their sex life, is that going to be considered something that's too much that's, you know, afoul of the law? You know, it's there's a law. If you are a CIS woman who likes to dress. More masculine and you're in a show. Are they going to consider that to be you are dressing in the some a clothing of a gender other than your assigned birth? You know it's it's just, you know, and and we're we should be used to these things by now because I mean it's it's. I'm not gonna say it started with Trump because it obviously didn't, but it, you know, the last four years they've gotten especially ridiculous with their their language and their and their long. But yeah, it's it's, it is wild.  Our dog's. Being very bad right now. OK. So our little dog is being super bad. All our animals like these animals are smarter than they lead on because they just like, oh, are you trying to do something or are you trying to do a thing that, like, requires some kind of like concentration and quiet? So now it's time for me to get all my big feelings.  Getting rowdy, we're getting rowdy.  They're the worst.  And then Henry just, I don't know. Is this a cat thing? They every time they know they're being bad. And and you start to say. Stop doing that. They stop and start grooming. Like who? Me couldn't possibly be.  Oh my God this. This little cat. I love, I love them, but they are. Awful real bad. They're real bad. Love them, but they're real bad. So yeah, we're talking about how. The United States is kind of becoming a hellscape. Drag is like you cannot be a assigned male at birth and wear a a dress and sing a song in the state of Tennessee anymore. And like I said, the the the really interesting bit is that. Keep reading from the CNN article ahead of the bill signing. Lee the governor faced accusations of hypocrisy after an unidentified Reddit user posted a photo from 1977 high school. His 1977 high school yearbook, which purports to show the future governor dressed in women's clothing and a wig. Alongside female students dressed in men's suits, we had this when I was in high school because I'm old enough and.  No, everybody's high school, everybody.  Ohh y'all had that too. It's power, power, power, whatever.  Everybody's high school. Has the. Oh, no, I was. Just gonna say dude dressed and dressed.  Oh, it's like. Oh, I was gonna say the girls played football and then the guys were cheerleaders or whatever. That's why I assume I saw this picture. It's it. But like that's why I assumed it's from. But no, he like, like I said earlier, he responded to that. Oh, that was that's. But that's different though. Just like you know, normal scumbag behavior. But like you said, you don't know what to do and then I have to repeat what I've said. I've said many a time on this on this show is that you know, we have to embrace the struggle. The struggle is going to go on after we're dead. But take heart, knowing that when they start doing stuff like this. What they have been doing, they're losing. They're like the reactionaries are losing. This is the safest time in human history. A new world? A new.  I just feel like. They've said that in the Vimar Republic too.  World is struggling to be born. No, I don't think so. No, I don't. I know. I I've watched them. To be honest, I've watched documentaries about the Vimar Republic and people were way. I know what you're saying and I I think it's a good analogy, but people were way more apathetic because they had just come off of World War One where Germany took a Big L.  I forgot that and that was. Yeah, that. Was OK. Fair so yeah. OK, that's something. It's not as bad as the vimar public yet, OK?  No, it's not. It's not. But like these are. These are definitely things to be aware of. So when I say like we do live in the safest time in human history, that doesn't mean like people are not gonna. There's not stochastic terrorism. People aren't going to be killed and hurt by these reactionaries, and people's lives aren't going to be ruined. But. And you take a step back and you look at, you know, the macro picture of time. We are winning. We will win. Culture never locks in the conservative the idea of a conservative movement is the idea on its face is dead on arrival because you cannot conserve culture. Culture will change. It's going to change the things that conservatives enjoy now were the, you know. 100 years ago liberal positions and we keep backing them into more and more. Well, we can't come right out and hate. You know queer people, so we've got to do this indie. Around again and. And make up lies about how drag they're all groomers and how drag story hour is is grooming your children.  And let's not get it twisted. This is not specifically, this is obviously about LGBTQ people and and targeting them, but it is not just about targeting LGBTQ people. They're targeting the idea of satirizing a a social norm, a gender, you know, a gender norm is a social construct. And drag is, you know its whole purpose is to satirize, you know, the expression of that social construct. And so. The idea that we're banning that it's like, OK, well, what other social constructs are we not going to be able to talk about? And we're not gonna be able to laugh about and right next. And that's, you know, I like to think anybody listening to this show, you know, cares about the fact that they're targeting LGBTQ people anyway. But I do think that there's a lot of people. Who would be apathetic to the idea of banning a drag show? Because maybe they don't go to them, they're just they don't know what's in a drag flow, but kind of if you're talking to someone like that, it's it's not about the show itself, it's about the satirization of a social norm, and it's about. Not wanting to make fun of things that are are conservative, I mean, you know, you know, typical gender norms are, you know, the gender by an area that's a very conservative idea. And so it's it's about not moving forward with with changing societal ideas and expectations, you know. It's it's they want to go back to the 50s with all of the nonsense and terribleness. And I think that message could possibly, you know, sway some people who maybe are a little bit more apathetic. To drag just because they don't understand.  Not even. Yeah, I wouldn't even say sway them. I would say the apathy is kind of the, you know, in a place like Tennessee, like, let's be real. Like outside of Nashville and maybe Memphis, people are going to be like, say what? Well, that doesn't affect me and I don't care. So I don't. I don't. It sounds great to me. UM. But they're like, just to hammer home the point. There's definitely like two ways to look at it. Like look at this. The one way is when you talk about, you know, mainstream culture that. Western Society is moving backwards. Just in our lifetimes, we've had these are mainstream things. These aren't even. These aren't even. Like fringe things, we've had movies like too Wong Foo. Thanks for everything. RuPaul's Drag Race is like a mainstream thing.  Let's talk about Mrs. Doubtfire's track.  It's a. It's a man in a dress. Right, I know, but. Yeah, it's a crazy. Like, I'm not talking about, like, we're gonna. We're gonna have some kind of a college. You know, we're not going to sit here and and and sit in a classroom and tear Mrs. Doubtfire apart. It's a stupid movie, but the point is it was a movie. People took their kids to see. My parents took me to see and it was about a man. Wearing a dress. Not even doing drag actually like pretending to be a woman for like the worst reasons.  Literally a a man. Wearing a dress. Who is using? Pretending to be a woman to target and harass a woman which is like everything that they're worried about happening now and yet. And yet it was just good old fun.  So you can look at that as Western, as Western culture regressing. I'm choosing and this is from the cynical guy like I am not that glass. Half full guy. I'm the cynical guy for sure, but I look at this as. This is the best they have, like they are drowning in a sea of acceptance and change and they are grasping for any land they can. And this is the best they've come up with. In the long arc of history. This is not. This is gonna look at. This is gonna not even the long. Five years from now, this is going to be on some kind of CNN. Remember the the twenty 20s. And everybody's gonna go, that was.  Honestly, the the fact that most older Republican men know what a drag. Show is at. This point means that drag has truly come into the mainstream.  Thank you.  We actually talking. About this, this weekend is one of our favorite documentaries that we watched when we just started dating was small town gay bar and it was about. A bar in a small southern town that was very tucked away kind of word of mouth. And it was where people in the queer community could congregate. And it was it was, you know, one of the only places where they could. Other queer people, and where they could openly be themselves, and it was a really great documentary, definitely recommend it. But you know, even in smaller towns there is more, you know. People know of a gay person. Now you know back, back when that was filmed, people wouldn't be, wouldn't feel ever able to come out to their families. And while there's still a lot. Of people who don't. Feel able to do that to come out to their families. You know, there are still a lot of people who do, even in conservative town. So we really have moved very far. I really have to keep reminding myself of that just because it is very easy to get down and not to say that you know you're not allowed to have negative feelings about what's going on and not allowed to be sad and grieve. But I know for me if if I start feeling so negatively, it starts to feel like there's nothing I can do, so why try? And so it is very important to to acknowledge our progress and to acknowledge all of the people who made that progress happen and all of the people who are still battling apathy in order to make progress happen now and all. The people all the. Wonderful humans in Tennessee who I know are going to push back on this. Whether it's not going to be the majority of the state. Unfortunately, but I know that there are going to. Be some very fierce, fierce defenders of the queer community, both the community themselves and allies. And honestly, this is a meme I just saw. I'm like, I really am getting old. I go on Facebook, just look at memes now. Like but it said if you if you harass my transgendered buddies my I'm going to start identifying as a problem spicy. Is that the? Only good. I identify joke. Identify as joke.  It's pretty good.  And then there was another one. It was like, hey, if you like you harm the queer community, my pronouns are gonna be your pronouns are gonna be, was, and were. I'm terrible at. I like explaining memes into a podcast. This is truly the most millennial I've ever been in my life.  All right. It's all right, Mama.  But but I just. Yeah, I think humor is appropriate. I think. Do whatever you need to do to feel. To feel the hope that you need to keep moving on in this fight because it is like this is truly scary stuff, and the fact that it's being enacted by the world's. Stupid people is like it's not making me feel good, just the. State of democracy, you.  Yeah, like and again, just realize that you're we are all fighting battles that we've already won. But the battle still has to be fought. Like we have to fight, we have to. Fight these people and tooth and nail. To make sure as. Few people are hurt. By rack, Sherry politics is possible, but realize it's over. Like we we we've already won.  Like culturally, it's over. You know, does this state agree? So we're not fighting the culture anymore. We're we're fighting the state, we're fighting people who?  These conversations I really do. And to put my, you know, kind of conspiratorial hair on these conversations have already been had obviously to put bills like this forward in Republican think tanks in circles because they know they they know it's over. So the only the only hope is is to try to. Is to try to take the minority that they do have and Lord over the majority of what people want through legislation like this. That's that's all they have. That's all they have left. That's why. That's why the Republican Party has to gerrymander districts cause they can't win.  Well, yeah, see, The thing is like the thing. Is that they are gerrymandering, though, so it's we can't just say they, oh, they're not. They're not winning because they have to do XYZ, but it's like OK, they have done XYZ so they could continue to win.  I know. I guess what I'm saying is they're doing that because. They're losing, no.  I understand that, but it's we can't use that as a.    I don't know. That we should use that as a metric just because it's easy to get complacent and, you know, we're looking at a potential Trump de Santis 2024. So I'm not, I'm not like.  Trump's gonna Trump's gonna win. That I don't even think.  You know, they're just they're just. Like they're just literally calling each other pedophiles, and they both like, well, OK, allegedly.  I don't even think this. I don't even think the Saints. I don't even think the. Saints is going to declare.  Allegedly, Trump is a pedophile.  Allegedly. Allegedly.  I'm I'm I. Don't know. I don't know anything about DeSantis, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was a pedophile.  I don't even think De Santis is going. To declare you.  Don't think so.  Did you did you read the other day? So he had De Santis had a rally thing and some? I don't know. In some county, in Florida, and people showed up in Trump gear and he had them physically removed.  Oh, I love that for everybody.  So, uh, what? Like it's over. Like that's it, because now a million people are going to come. To every one of his things.  That is true.  And it's going to look awful.  That is true. So even better, we are looking at.  A Trump, Trump, Trump, Biden.  From Tom Cotton and then Trump is going to mysteriously have a heart attack while eating his seventh Big Mac of the day.  Oh, God, that's just.  And we're going to have a Tom Cotton presidency. So love that for us. Anyway, I'm just a ball of sunshine. I just sometimes I think that I have a pretty balanced about my views of the world and that I'm like, I feel like I'm pretty realistic about things. And then I'll say something so wildly dark and pessimistic that I'm, like, maybe being in crisis domestic violence. And working out of jail for the last eight years has actually. Maybe colored my views on the world more than I anticipated.  Yeah, that'll do it. No, that that will definitely do it. That'll that's that's what the kids call a big downer.  That's a downer.  It's a big Debbie downer.  Yeah, it's an. L It's an L.  Yeah, you're just eating elves.  Eating elves.  Eating them.  Like BFR, that's trauma.  I've never heard that before.  Oh, I can't because it's going. To be it's B. Asleep for real? OK, it's my new favorite Gen.  I just got on period I period a like last week.  I don't know if that's still doing that, but that. Is really funny.  I just got on him. Yeah. So I don't know. I'm old. I'm. I'm not old. I think I'm the oldest person on TikTok.  I can't can't judge. No, there's some much older men and.  It was like.  They have all messaged me. Yeah, I get messages from people named Sugar Daddy M12. So how I don't.  Know on TikTok.  Tick tock.  How you don't even this is the first I've. Heard of this? You even?  Why don't you ask China? I don't know.  You don't even have like content.  No, I do. I do have a couple of things. I've been tagged in. Because my friend, my high school friend likes to make tick tocks when we get together in the summer.    So I have like 3 tick tocks I'm tagged in, they have like 5 views apiece. Apparently one of those 5 views was Sugar Daddy Mike. And he liked what he saw. And he would like to support my lifestyle.  I was gonna say, what are they talking about in the PG13 version?  They said you're so beautiful. I would like to get to know. You yeah. And they usually put like a dollar sign.  It ain't trickin if you got it.  They don't got it so. That's that's the. Thing, that's the thing. There's, like, established routes to go. If you want an actual sugar daddy or sugar baby. And it's not TikTok, but certainly not.  My God. What is doing? What is going on?  Cause like I'm not above letting a generous older gentleman fund my lifestyle, but that gentleman is not going to.  Right.  Find me via TikTok.  That's rough. This is for this is. Ooh, you learn something new every day. Good morning, comrade.  So if you thought my voice was hot. The rest of you is hot. Too hot enough that.  Yeah, I I would agree.  No, it's probably a Nigerian scammer.  That's like a reverse scam? How does that work?  Because they'll say.  I want to send you this is because this is another message I've gotten. They want to send you a check for $500.00 for you to go get your nails done and a massage. And then. But they have to do it via. Vanilla card.  Yeah, of course.  What are?  Because that's how everybody.  Those those prepaid spending cards.  That's how everybody transfers money. In 2023.  So either you're gonna get scanned of money, or you're gonna help someone launder money. So either way, no thank you.  Dang, tick talking wild.  So it did that did check my ego a little bit. I'm not going to lie to you. I was like, oh, this isn't actually a generous older man wanting to fund my lifestyle because my beauty is just so overwhelming. It is a person who thinks I might be dumb.  You could be on, like, 90 day fiance. You could be that Lady.  Oh, I would be so good on that show.  Just be like meeting some guy from the. Dr. the. Dominican Republic and be like, oh, he totally loves me. Now for the good. We've do station ID's, we listen to one of 2.3 W HIV. FM New Orleans and we love you.  And all wars.  That was end all wars. Oh, that was the wtix thing. And we love you, which is very creepy. Yeah, if you're driving.  Hey, sorry. They're just trying to spread. A little love in the world.  I know, but drive if you're driving through the east at like. 2:00 AM and it's just listening to the oldies and then it's WTX New Orleans and we love it's. And there's just a a pile of burning tires and it just looks like. Bartertown on the.  You sound like you live in Metairie.  No, because they would never. They cause I think bartertown's cool for Mad Max beyond Thunderdome.  So that was actually a compliment.  I'm cool.  Yeah, he's like, no, that was a good thing.  I'm cool with that.  But what is your good?  OK, so I got a letter in the mail and I'm going to read it to you. And you hear.  This is the official letter.  Hear the paper crumple. It's like this is an official show. Dear Robert Johnson, we are sending you. We are sending you this letter to share the good news that on behalf of a national donor, you no longer owe the above referenced medical debts. It was almost $1200. To auctioneer. Because of our national 5013 C nonprofit, RIP Medical debt bought and abolished the debt. This active medical debt relief was provided by. Li can't Al Ed Allendale. I'm going to go with Allendale, a public. What's that?  And then I think that's beer.  Nah, it says a public benefit corporation. I mean, beer is a public benefit. I mean, what? What is that now? You got me interested. Now you got me interested. What is the ale?  What is it lol?  Yeah, let's take a look. Value based care. Else what is this? It's like a primary care.  It's. Oh God.  I don't know. It's the position LED accountable care organization. What is that, Aaron, you are.  With primary care for primary care, you know what this is going to be, someone that I'm going to have to work with at some point and I'm going to be annoyed about it more than.    Likely, but honestly, we're why are we trashing them?  I bet.  They bought.  Your medical debt. Yeah, I know. So I don't know.  Just don't look.  I just. I'm not. I don't even know them too.  I'm sorry. That was just like.  I'm just like I was.  Corporate speak like that, just like truly triggers me to. Before I became. A social worker. So. It just really. I just assumed nothing good will come of it.  So we're we're we're on all Dale to learn more, please visit alladale.com/louisiana. Our abolishment of this medical debt is a no strings attached gift. You no longer have any obligation to pay this debt to anyone at any future time because it has been cancelled as a gift of our 5013 C charity. You do not earn any income or owe any taxes on this cancellation of. Debt, we have enclosed FAQ.  Blah blah blah.  Blah blah. Here's the FAQ. Of what happened here? I think the FAQ is very who is RIP medical debt? We are a nonprofit national charity. That fund that raises funds from donors and uses those funds to acquire and abolish medical debt. Our IRS number is blah blah blah blah blah our. Since our founding in 2014, as medical Debt Resolution Inc, we have abolished over 8.5 million of medical debt. Helping nearly 5.5 million people. Are there strings attached? No rest assured, the debt reference in the letter is no longer owed and you do not have to take any action. Why are you doing this? Probably the most important part. Medical debt often results from unplanned, unexpected illness and accidents. About 1/3 of US adults have difficulty covering unexpected mental health care bills. Medical debt also is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US in many areas and for many reasons. Patient balances after insurance have been growing and many people remain uninsured. We are doing this to relieve. People of the burden of medical debt to enhance their economic opportunities and to enable them to leave to lead healthier, happier lives. Now paper crumple. Again, this is my rush, Landon. He always. Paper I used to hate. Listen to. Rush Limbaugh all the time.  Why did you listen to Rush Limbaugh?  I hate. I used to hate listen anytime like.  Oh, I thought you said hated listening. To it's like you did someone make you?  No, I would listen to him anytime. Something like when Obama like, won twice like I was like Rush Limbaugh. Let's go. Yeah, because you know, he's gonna lose. His mind. Yeah, you know, so it's like stuff like that, but. OK, so my first thought is since you were talking about Sugar Daddy scams, I was like, this is obviously a scam. What is this? So I did a little deep digging and no, it is not a scam. It's 100% real. It was started by two guys who were actually. Debt collectors, they they were executives at some like debt collecting thing. On Wall Street, across from Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street happened. They go down there and just hang out and be like what's going on. And then they find they people found out who they were. And then they're like, hey, we've got an idea. And they started this, like, rolling jubilee of really of buying people's medical debt. And then we're leaving it. And honestly. OK so my thing is this. That that thousand, that $1000, almost 1200 bucks was from a CPAP machine that I own. I paid the what do you call it? The copay or? Whatever. So I paid the copay which was $500.00 off of my and I I have a good job. I have insurance. Thank God all these things like. I'm an atheist, but I thank God every day that I've I've made it to this point in my life where I, you know, I have these things, but. It's absurd because Aaron can testify. My snoring has been so loud since I was 20 and I would stop breathing at night and wake up in the middle of the night and I could pass out anywhere because I was so tired all the time and. I was just dying, you know, like. And she made me. She's like you have to go get this checked out. They're like you have sleep apnea. You could die at any moment. So, and we have to run a bunch of tests and then then you have to pay $2000.00 for a machine that's going to keep you alive and make sure you don't stop breathing in the. Middle of night. Which seems like. It's not even seen. Let let let me scratch seem out of there that it's the most perverse, disgusting, sick thing ever. When you tell someone you know as a doctor, you're telling somebody how important a piece of equipment is and how, Oh my God, thank God we got to you when you did and. By the way, we need 2K before this that we can give you this thing that's so in. And it's I paid for the $500.00 copay and I was like, gotcha. I was like, gotcha auctioneer because you're never seeing the rest of this. I'm like, you're not. They would send me bills and I would just throw them in the garbage cause I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm not paying. For this like this is crazy.  I have. I just gotta build just because it was been a few months ago now, but I got a bill for like $1200 when I got a new IUD and I was like, I thought this was covered under the ACA, and sure the actual IUD was covered, but not the removal of my previous IUD. And I said, well, I'm just not paying that.  Get out of here.  So you know, it's not not paying it.  I'm. I'm sitting here at work and I'm like researching. I'm researching this 5013 C and for a guy like me, who I've Erin, can attest. I've literally said, you know, the words have come out of my mouth. I don't have emotions. I started to tear up, and it wasn't because. Like, I wasn't gonna pay. That actually was never gonna see that money. Bill collectors were never gonna see. I wasn't gonna pay it. I wasn't worried about. It but. It got me to think about all the people who were just crushed. Lives ruined, completely bankrupt because they have, you know, they've got a long term cancer, somebody in their family needs, you know, long term care and they're just crushed under medical debt that they're and that they've been helped by this and. Literally have their life change by this, like rolling jubilee of people like ourselves who give money to this organization that buys up people's debts for pennies on the dollar and just. Tears them up.  Also I want to I want to say sorry to all jail because I was very snarky to you and I just looked up what you do and. A good job.  We're just making all the friends out of here.  I, but I do really think you should change some of the wording on your website because you sound like an insurance. But they're actually what's called an accountability management. It's here, it's it's an accountable care organization. So what that is is essentially they function. So basically how this insurance companies pressure doctors and like other medical places to. To do the most inexpensive things possible, and and that's a really terrible thing cuz it comes at the cost of patient care, accountable management organizations. Are they essential? Are advocating for the consumers, so it's generally and it's generally for. If you start want to start an independent private practice. Usually it's really, really hard because you have to have relationships with those insurance, so you'll send like it's just really difficult. So if you do end up wanting to do that, you can enjoin in accountable management. Organization and they'll help you hook you up and figure out how to give the best care for clients. It gets rid of a lot of Medicare waste, a lot of Medicaid waste, which is often. The for profit insurance companies are doing and it's just it's a good thing. So sorry everybody.  Nice, but like I was telling Aaron as a joke. Like, yeah, I'm an atheist. Like, I don't believe in a buy and buy. But I was like if somebody was to knock on my door and proselytize to me right now, like, this is this would be the time I'm most open to it because I just kept thinking in my head up, just like a God of the Old Testament. It's like I sent you, Bernie Sanders. I sent you another. I sent you another Jewish prophet. That you refuse to listen to. So now I've got to work around this.  Which I think is so dramatic. But like when he said that the other day I was like, OK, I know we're, we're both sad about Bernie losing, but let's not.  Oh, it's fine. I'm. It's fine but. No, it's just that something like this exists, and this has been existing for, you know, decades now or decade, decades, almost since Occupy is amazing and it just it's perverse that it has to exist, that it does exist and it's and it shows how badly we need. Medicare for all, like yesterday for because. The way I describe it to people who are like, oh, I don't want that, you know, they're going. It's like we're getting taxed as American citizens out the wazoo right now. And we're receiving little. To know return our social services are inept at being the most, the most generous assessment is they're inept. So if we're going to be taxed, if you know if they're going to take money out of my check, like, let me get some of that back. So I don't have to worry about can I cough up. 2 racks. To make sure I don't die in the middle. Right. It just, it just feels like in the richest country to ever exist. This is a perverse situation.  And this was actually the same, same organization that was featured on John Oliver, if you remember, I think that was a few years ago, they did this.  Yeah, it was like 3 or 4.  They yeah, they they did this. And John Oliver, the show donated a bunch of money, bought a bunch of debt and forgave it all and. I think part of, I mean he's he's he seems like a good egg, but I think he was especially upset about the idea of medical debt just coming from the NHS in England. He is British. If you don't know who John Oliver is in England does have, you know, a government run National Health care system.  Which is actually socialized medicine, like Medicare for all like. It's not even that. It's not even the NHS. So I'm just saying this. I'm interrupting this. So if anybody, you know, cause you've got that next level of reactionary who who knows a little something. So if they ever try to come at you with like, oh, the NHS is in shambles or the NHS, you know doesn't work, right, well, the NHS is not Medicare for all. We're not talking about an act like auction or Turo. Being run by the government, it's just the government. I mean, it's just auction or Turo. Your local doctor sends that check. Bill to Uncle Sam to to dark Brandon instead of you. That's the only difference.  They're already doing for people who are on Medicaid. And so it's not like a new model, it would just be including more people in the model that already exists.  The best, the best healthcare I ever and I have. You know, I have decent insurance now through my employer, which is an all another a just atrocity. It's it's surreal. It's 1984, George Orwin. That we that we even have. The best health insurance I ever got. Was through Medicaid like when I when I I didn't have a job. Until I got another one I got on. Absolutely the best insurance I've ever.  Had you know?  Like the my prescriptions were doggone near free. I well, I started seeing a therapist then because I didn't have to pay a copay. It was it like Medicaid, literally I, I mean this might be a little too. It was definitely life changing. It could have even.  Saved my life. I would agree with that. And just to just to as an example of how petty insurance companies are, I had a client who had disability. I think it was like $1100 and he made just too much with this ability that he didn't also qualify for Medicaid. So he had Medicare, but not Medicaid, so he still had to had to co-pay for prescriptions. And he also had a pretty serious drug addiction and so didn't generally have a lot of money at the end of. Month and would just like not be able to afford his $4 heart medication. And so like, I would just end up buying them a lot of times like what am I gonna do?  $4 dude.  Have him have a heart attack cuz he couldn't pay for four $4.00, but it's like and I think he was. Covered by like United. Or something. So it's like it's so absurd. It's like. They're just nickel and diming the poorest people and.  Yeah. So that's why I want to, you know, yeah, no, 100%. So that's funny. You say that about United?  Preaching the choir. But my God, it's bad.  So I here in new here in New Orleans, I had united is in Louisiana, United is the one that does our Medicaid.  So there's actually multiple Medicaid providers. So there's United Healthcare, there's healthy blue, there's Louisiana healthcare connections, Aetna and Humana.    So we have five different providers that. So basically, all of the Medicaid money gets funneled into those into those insurance companies, and they have a specific plan for Medicaid. And if you are on Medicaid, I believe you're allowed to change providers once a year. And if you're on Medicare, I believe you can change once 1/4.  So I had united Medicaid, so I didn't know that was a thing. So I got a job working for the city, and now I also united, does the insurance for the city so. The thing is, when I will call for a specialist and I'll call a specialist and they'll be like what insurance do you have? And I'll I'll say united and immediately they'll be like, well, we don't and I'll be like, I work for the City of New Orleans, and you can hear their tone change and they go. OK. Because they're so ready to be like, Nope, no, not doing Medicaid, but it's and. And I'm. I want to be like. You dirty dog like. The Medicaid that you're pooling is was better than the insurance.  And the reason so the.  I have now.  Reason why they don't want because it's like. OK, insurance is insurance is insurance and it's because the government refuses to pay some of the prices that the insurance companies will pay. And it's if you've ever gotten a hospital bill where they charged you $500.00 for two aspirin, which is real and not uncommon, the government just says no.  Yeah, that happens every day that happening random.  So that's the reason why these insurance companies.  That's awesome.  Because, like why they don't? Why they're lobbying against. A Medicaid, because you would, you would think, OK, if everybody has insurance that's more clients for these insurance companies, but they don't want that because they it it's less profit for them and the hospitals don't want that because hospitals are generally not nonprofits, we're lucky in.  Plus profit.  In this state that you know, or at least in New Orleans, that most of the hospitals around here are nonprofits, but. You know that's not the case in a lot of places in the country. And so the hospital, hospital administrators don't want, I almost said hospital staff. And I'm like, no those nurses. They would give you. That aspirin for free, if they could. But the hospital administration want to be able to charge, you know, whatever, and part of that is because they have to pay such high salaries. To the doctors because the doctors all have like $400,000 in education, debt and so on and so forth. And so you. A lot like as we were talking about earlier in the show, like part of the reason why a solution like Medicaid for all or Medicare for all is so abhorrent to so many people is because it's going to, it's going to be like. The first domino and a domino effect of showing how inflated so many costs are and how few people are benefiting from that money.  Yes, yes. And that's why that's why they fought so hard against Obamacare, which was just Romneycare, because once you get that wedge. In there it goes back to this all loops back to their previous conversation. Once you get that wedge in there and you show people no, this is how things should.  Be yeah. So for instance, if you have Medicaid, at least in Louisiana, they'll pay for your cancer treatment like they'll pay for your cancer treatment.  Then you know there's no. Going back, you know, watching window.  There's not gonna. There's not a question if you're gonna. Get chemo or not? But private insurance companies, if you meet your maximum benefit amount. She might not get. Chemo so it's. Like the hospitals, wanna keep charging insane prices? The insurance companies want to still make that profit, but part of the way they make that profit is by being able to deny you from certain procedures. Like there's zero reason why your CPAP had to cost $1500.  That's insane. That's absolutely insane.  Yeah, like, I actually just go sleep at myself because we're both old and can't breathe properly. If you are wondering why I sound a little more chipper cuz I'm actually sleeping like fantastic, highly recommend. And I'm I went through and this is this is honestly like, so dystopian. I went through a startup, an Internet startup, to get my CPAP.  That's so gross.  I logged, I said how to get, cuz I tried to sign up for a sleep, study through oschner and the first available appointment wasn't until April and this was back in. Back in November of last year, I was going to just have to wait, but it was getting so bad that I was forgetting English like I just could not remember words my cognition.  And what's one of the main things about they tell you about, oh, we can't do socialized medicine cause there's gonna be waitlists.  Show that.  I have insurance through my employer. Now you're telling me I am going to die. But can you just please not do it for like 4 months till we can?  Get you in? Yeah, yeah. So I have a private insurance as well and I was content to just wait, but yeah, like I said it was. It was getting bad. So I I googled how sleep studies New Orleans and app came up. I basically filled out a survey. They got me connected with a Doctor Who was like, yeah, you should probably get a sleep study. They ordered the sleep study. They mailed it to me. I wore it at night. Transmitted all the data via the app and then they were like, yeah, you're like not breathing. Apparently I was getting 6% of the REM sleep.  I was supposed to.  Get and sleep. So basically REM sleep is where you repair your cognition, so that's where you kind of like sort and process all the information you got during the day and then deep sleep is where your body. The parents itself. So I was getting enough deep sleep, but I wasn't getting any REM. And for you know, people who don't know that much about insomnia. Basically, when you have insomnia, your body goes from light sleep where are not really. It's kind of like that period before you get to the other part. You go from light sleep to deep sleep because your body is in survival mode. You need your body more than your smarts in order to survive. So it goes to. You repair your body, so you might not wake up feeling sick, but you're not. Be able to remember anything like I was at work just like it was. It was perfect. It was affecting my job. Performance honestly, which is why I looked for the sleep study and yeah, so they sent me the device, got it back. I have it. I'm paying. I financed my CPAP. So yeah, we're doing great as a society, but it's. So yeah, so. It's just like. You should be listening to good morning, comrades. If you're not pro single payer healthcare, but.  Yeah, absolutely. But we're running out of time, but I I invite everybody to check out ripmedicaldebt.org, see what they're about. Just on their web page, big splash screen just. I'll just read it to you just as it says, abolish medical debt at pennies on the dollar every $100 you donate relieves $10,000 in medical debt. Who I mean. The amount of people that that, this, that this nonprofit is helping. In this six sad world is. I I really can't understate how awesome they are, so thank you for helping me. And we'll see you guys next time I love. You, babe. I cut it off. You're not on there. You can't. Tell me you love me back.    But anyway, yeah. But So what? They're giving themselves cover to be able to say, well, no, we're not anti trans. Are you saying that all trans people are going to be having body shows are going to be having  

Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in American Podcast.In Season 1 Episode 2  last year, I spoke with Professor Emeritus of Democracy & Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Harvey J. Kaye. He is an award-winning author and editor of 18 books on history and politics -including Take Hold of Our History: Make America Radical Again and FDR on Democracy.  In S1 E2, we talked about his book Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. He's a really gifted speaker and a real pleasure to talk to.  At that time, Harvey suggested he come back for another conversation, this time about FDR's Economic Bill of Rights.  I'm really happy to say that that conversation has finally arrived. In addition, we will be joined by his friend, activist, and Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America, Alan Minsky. Alan is a lifelong activist, who has worked as a progressive journalist for the past two decades. He was the Program Director at KPFK in Los Angeles from 2009-2018. He also has coordinated Pacifica Radio's national coverage of elections. Before that, Alan was one of the founders of LA Indymedia. He is the creator and producer of the political podcasts for The Nation and Jacobin Magazine, as well as a contributor to Commondreams and Truthdig.Alan's activism began in college with union solidarity work and opposition to US involvement in Central America. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Alan was active in the counter-globalization and media democracy movements. In 2011, he began organizing for Occupy Wall Street in the months leading up to the occupation of Zuccotti Park. Alan began working with PDA in 2014.This country has seen its share of opulence and struggle. But what about its share of democracy? We live in an era, not unlike the Gilded Age, which flourished from 1877 to 1900. The Gilded Age was marked by extreme concentrations of wealth and the rise of powerful industrial titans known as the Robber Barons; men like Jay Gould, JP Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. Corruption, unprecedented immigration, and the concentration of wealth by the 1% were just a few of the things that characterized that period of American history. This explosion of economic prosperity for a few arose only 12 years after the Civil War, which raged between 1861 and 1865, and only a few months after Reconstruction which lasted until 1877. The Age of the Robber Barons or the "Gilded Age" was followed by a very different set of challenges, including events like WWI, which began in 1914 and ended in 1918. Along come the roaring twenties, then there was the Great Crash of 1929, and the Great Depression which lasted until 1939. In addition to all these hardships, Americans had to confront the Great Dust Bowl, from 1930 until 1936, caused by shortsighted federal land policies, changes in regional weather, and new mechanized farming techniques which led to the erosion of vital topsoil.FDR won the election to the New York State Senate in 1910 as a democrat and quickly became associated with the progressives of the party.  He was elected governor of New York in 1928 and again in 1930. He was first elected President in 1932. He was re-elected President in 1936, 1940, and once again in 1944. He died in office during his historic 4th term in office and is largely credited with bringing the United States out of the worst economic disaster America had ever faced, as well as a devastating World War.Harvey, Alan, it's an honor to be able to share your insights into FDR and as importantly, your proposal for a new Economic Bill of Rights. There's a lot to get into, but first, how are you doing?

David Graeber and David Wengrow are the co-authors of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). "This is not a book. This is an intellectual feast. There is not a single chapter that does not (playfully) disrupt well-seated intellectual beliefs. It is deep, effortlessly iconoclastic, factually rigorous, and pleasurable to read." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author, The Black SwanTiokasin talks with co-author David Wengrow, a professor of comparative archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He is a visiting professor at New York University. He is the author of three books, including, What Makes Civilization? David has conducted archaeological fieldwork in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.Co-author David Graeber (d. 9/2/2020) was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He was the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, and was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, The Guardian and The Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement.Production Credits:Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), Host and Executive ProducerLiz Hill (Red Lake Ojibwe), ProducerMalcolm Burn, Studio Engineer, Radio Kingston, WKNY 1490 AM and 107.9 FM, Kingston, NYTiokasin Ghosthorse, Audio EditorMusic Selections:1. Song Title: Tahi Roots Mix (First Voices Radio Theme Song)Artist: Moana and the Moa HuntersAlbum: Tahi (1993)Label: Southside Records (Australia and New Zealand)(00:00:44)2. Song Title: Rich Man's WarArtist: John Trudell with Jesse Ed DavisAlbum: AKA Graffiti Man (1992)Label: Rykodisc(00:32:05)3. Song Title: PrayerArtist: Tiokasin Ghosthorse with vocals by Lisa BodnarAlbum: Ghosthorse - Ksa (2007)Label: Ghosthorse(00:37:55)4. Song Title: Darker Than a ShadowArtist: Terry CallierAlbum: Speak Your Peace (2002)Label: Mr Bongo(00:43:37)Artist: Terry CallierCD: It's About TimeAlbum: The New Folk Sound (1965)Label: Prestige Records(00:52:27)5. Song Title: Waiting on a WarArtist: Foo FightersCD: Medicine at Midnight (2021)Label: Roswell Records(00:55:47)AKANTU INSTITUTEVisit Akantu Institute, an institute that Tiokasin founded with a mission of contextualizing original wisdom for troubled times. Go to https://akantuinstitute.org/ to find out more and consider joining his Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/Ghosthorse.

Join Haymarket and Jewish Currents for a discussion about what the Jewish left learned from Occupy Wall Street. This fall, the tenth anniversary of Occupy Wall Street also marks a decade since what came to be known as “Occupy Judaism,” a loose series of ritual protests that emerged at Zuccotti Park and at other Occupy encampments around the country. The most visible of these took the form of a Kol Nidre, the evening service that marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, which fell on October 7th in 2011, a few weeks into Occupy Wall Street's short history. As the holiday approached, a group of Jewish participants in the nascent movement, led by organizer Daniel Sieradski, began planning a service to be held in a plaza across the street from Zuccotti Park. The event that is remembered as Occupy Yom Kippur drew hundreds of people and attracted considerable press attention, registering a new current in American Jewish life. Occupy Yom Kippur, and the broader activities of Occupy Judaism, turned out to presage a much larger wave of left Jewish movement-building. Though most Jewish organizers at Occupy were not involved in Occupy Judaism, or in Jewish organizing more generally, many of the founders of organizations like IfNotNow first came together in Zuccotti Park; the movement's energy also revitalized already-existing groups like Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ). Ten years ago, identity-based organizing occurred only on Occupy's fringes, and anti-racist and anti-imperialist organizing, including around the occupation of Palestine, was pushed outside the movement's frame altogether. But in the years since, Occupy's limitations have impelled a generation of organizers to try to rectify its omissions, galvanizing anti-racist organizing in the US and a new wave of Palestine solidarity activism. Following a Jewish Currents oral history on the same topic, this event will explore how the contemporary Jewish left was changed—perhaps, formed—by Occupy Wall Street ten years ago. Speakers: Daniel Sieradksi is a web developer and digital strategist as well as an advocacy journalist, digital organizer, and movement-builder. He has worked with a variety of organizations, including Repair the World, JTA News, JDub Records, the JCC in Manhattan, the Educational Alliance, Jewish Funds for Justice, and the New Israel Fund. Sieradski is the former publisher of the pioneering weblog Jewschool.com and the founder of Occupy Judaism. Tamara Shapiro (Tammy) is the Program Director for the NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives. Previously she was one of the lead coordinators of Occupy Sandy, a citizen-led relief effort, as well as Rockaway Wildfire and Worker Owned Rockaway Cooperatives, a worker-owned coop incubation project with residents hit by the hurricane. She also served as a lead strategist and facilitator of the InterOccupy network, created and implemented a networked hub structure for The People's Climate March, and worked at The Murphy Institute for Labor Studies. Prior to these roles, she was the first Director of J Street U, and one of the founders of IfNotNow. Audrey Sasson is the Executive Director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, and the organization's first Mizrahi leader to serve in the position. She has 25 years of broad movement experience as a social worker, organizer, coalition-builder, and campaign director, on issues ranging from immigrant worker struggles and tenant rights to sustainable economies and racial justice. Arielle Angel is the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents. This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and Jewish Currents. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/le12N2Q06t0 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join us on Patreon for Part 2: www.patreon.com/whatslefttodo If Patreon isn't your thing, please join us in supporting this work with a contribution over at: www.whatslefttodo.com/support This week we have 1/4 of The Trillbilly Workers Party, with Aaron Thorpe, who is, ironically, originally a yankee. The son of Jamaican immigrants growing up in NYC was pretty apolitical until he began sneering at the denizens of Zuccotti Park during Occupy as a high minded employee of the DNC (!!), believe it or not. He picked up his sister's copy of The Communist Manifesto shortly after, and...well...you know the rest

Air Date 10/6/2021 Today we take a look at what precipitated Occupy Wall Street and the legacy it left behind as we can see it now from 10 years after the encampment at Zuccotti Park in the heart of the financial district in NYC. Be part of the show! Leave us a message at 202-999-3991 or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com  Transcript BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Get AD FREE Shows & Bonus Content) BestOfTheLeft.com/Refer Sign up, share widely, get rewards. It's that easy! SHOW NOTES Ch. 1: Occupy Wall Street Analysis and Legacy Part 1 - Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff - Air Date 9-16-21 This program is devoted to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) on its 10th anniversary. Prof. Wolff discusses OWS as a historic turning point, as legacy for the US left, and his personal experience. Ch. 2: Occupy at 10 with Astra Taylor Part 1 - The Dig - Air date 9-25-21 It's Occupy Wall Street's tenth anniversary. Dan interviews Astra Taylor. Ch. 3: The Legacy of Occupy Wall Street, with Ruth Milkman and Nastaran Mohit Part 1 - Belabored - Air Date 9-24-21 We discuss Occupy's ramifications for organizing and class consciousness with Ruth Milkman, labor scholar at City University of New York's School of Labor and Urban Studies and Nastaran Mohit, Organizing Director of NewsGuild of New York. Ch. 4: Occupy Wall Street Analysis and Legacy Part 2 - Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff - Air Date 9-16-21 Ch. 5: Occupy at 10 with Astra Taylor Part 2 - The Dig - Air date 9-25-21 Ch. 6: The Legacy of Occupy Wall Street, with Ruth Milkman and Nastaran Mohit Part 2 - Belabored - Air Date 9-24-21 Ch. 7: Keith Olbermann reads first collective statement of Occupy Wall Street - Countdown MEMBERS-ONLY BONUS CLIP(S) Ch. 8: Will Occupy Wall Street Affect 2012 Election: Glenn Greenwald Interview - David Pakman Show - Air Date 11-14-11 Glenn Greenwald in 2011 gives analysis of the political dynamics that led to Occupy Ch. 9: Prophetic article calling for the occupation - Majority Report - Air Date 10-25-11 Speaking with Christopher Ketcham about his article calling for destain for bankers and discussing the progressive movement of the 1880s Ch. 10: Occupy at 10 with Astra Taylor Part 3 - The Dig - Air date 9-25-21 The legacy of Occupy live on, even in Joe Biden VOICEMAILS Ch. 11: A response for Alyson from Boulder - Scott from Canada FINAL COMMENTS Ch. 12: Final comments on the ideological splits on the left dating back to Occupy Wall Street MUSIC (Blue Dot Sessions): Opening Theme: Loving Acoustic Instrumental by John Douglas Orr  Voicemail Music: Low Key Lost Feeling Electro by Alex Stinnent Activism Music: This Fickle World by Theo Bard (https://theobard.bandcamp.com/track/this-fickle-world) Closing Music: Upbeat Laid Back Indie Rock by Alex Stinnent SHOW IMAGE: Description: Occupy Wall St. protesters in New York march down the street holding a large white sign that says "OCCUPY" in black letters. Other protesters behind them hold smaller protest signs of cardboard and poster board and wave flags.  Credit: "Occupy_12_17_DSC_0334" by Michael Fleshman, Flickr | License | Changes: Cropped   Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Listen Anywhere! BestOfTheLeft.com/Listen Listen Anywhere! Follow at Twitter.com/BestOfTheLeft Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com

On September 17th, 2011, approximately a thousand people massed in lower Manhattan at the towering edifices of the “Vatican of capitalism.” This movement, known as Occupy Wall Street, called attention to the obscene inequality and devastation of 21st century capitalism on full display in the wake of the fiscal meltdown. Already by that October, in cities around the world, millions had occupied their own symbolic Wall Streets. Although the encampment in Zuccotti Park was relatively short lived, many have argued that this protest movement changed the language and perhaps the focus of our politics, making “the 99%” part of the lingua franca. On the tenth anniversary of Occupy, this episode offers an assessment of the movement's long-term impact according to four Occupy activists.

It's pretty crazy to think that it's already been a decade since Occupy Wall Street — but, at the same time, it also feels like forever ago. So much has changed since the encampment in Zuccotti Park, and subsequently, the thousands of encampments which popped up all over the world. But, sadly, a lot remains the same. And actually, if you're looking at wealth inequality and the power of the financial sector — things might even be worse. But no matter what your thoughts are on the Occupy movement, it's impossible to deny its sweeping impact, not just on the left, but much more broadly as well. You may have heard folks say that Occupy Wall Street was a failure — and if you're talking about how the movement failed to, say, overthrow capitalism and usher in a new era of eco-socialism devoid of subprime loans and hedge fund managers, then yes, sure, Occupy definitely didn't accomplish that. But to say the movement was a failure is to overlook so, so much. And that's what we want to talk about in this episode: the things that Occupy gave us. The networks that were built, the ideas that were shaped around democracy — not just the electoral form of democracy that's confined to the ballot box, but real, direct democracy — the space that was created to exercise the muscles of solidarity and cooperativism, mutual aid and political organizing, as well as the shifts in public discourse…in the next hour, we'll look at how the chaotic, fervent explosion that was Occupy Wall Street manifested from the moments after the encampments were cleared to today — ten years later. Featuring: Chris Hedges – Journalist and author of many books, including Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt, and most recently, America: The Farewell Tour Ethan Earle – Paris-based political consultant who has written extensively about Occupy Wall Street Stephanie Luce – Professor of labor studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and also a professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center Ruth Milkman – Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City Nathan Schneider – Professor of media studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder and author of Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy Tamara Shapiro – NYC activist and facilitator, a co-founder of Movement Netlab, and currently the Program Director at the NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives Esteban Kelly – Executive Director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Co-ops Music by: ​ Do Make Say Think Chris Zabriskie Taylor Deupree Karl Blau American Football Thank you to Bethan Mure for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. This episode of Upstream was produced as part of a collective of podcasts brought together to explore the legacy of Occupy Wall Street, in light of the 10 year anniversary. Through this project you can also hear analysis on the impact of Occupy from shows like The Dig, Economic Update, and Belabored — all podcasts that we would highly recommend checking out. The producing partners for this project are the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's New York office and The New School's Milano program. You can learn more and listen to some of the other episodes by visiting RosaLux.NYC/Occupy Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support Also, if your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on social media: Facebook.com/upstreampodcast twitter.com/UpstreamPodcast Instagram.com/upstreampodcast You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcast and Spotify: Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/upst…am/id1082594532 Spotify: spoti.fi/2AryXHs

It's pretty crazy to think that it's already been a decade since Occupy Wall Street — but, at the same time, it also feels like forever ago. So much has changed since the encampment in Zuccotti Park, and subsequently, the thousands of encampments which popped up all over the world. But, sadly, a lot remains the same. And actually, if you're looking at wealth inequality and the power of the financial sector — things might even be worse. But no matter what your thoughts are on the Occupy movement, it's impossible to deny its sweeping impact, not just on the left, but much more broadly as well. You may have heard folks say that Occupy Wall Street was a failure — and if you're talking about how the movement failed to, say, overthrow capitalism and usher in a new era of eco-socialism devoid of subprime loans and hedge fund managers, then yes, sure, Occupy definitely didn't accomplish that. But to say the movement was a failure is to overlook so, so much. And that's what we want to talk about in this episode: the things that Occupy gave us. The networks that were built, the ideas that were shaped around democracy — not just the electoral form of democracy that's confined to the ballot box, but real, direct democracy — the space that was created to exercise the muscles of solidarity and cooperativism, mutual aid and political organizing, as well as the shifts in public discourse…in the next hour, we'll look at how the chaotic, fervent explosion that was Occupy Wall Street manifested from the moments after the encampments were cleared to today — ten years later. Featuring: Chris Hedges – Journalist and author of many books, including Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt, and most recently, America: The Farewell Tour Ethan Earle – Paris-based political consultant who has written extensively about Occupy Wall Street Stephanie Luce – Professor of labor studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and also a professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center Ruth Milkman – Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City Nathan Schneider – Professor of media studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder and author of Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy Tamara Shapiro – NYC activist and facilitator, a co-founder of Movement Netlab, and currently the Program Director at the NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives Esteban Kelly – Executive Director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Co-ops Music by: ​ Do Make Say Think Chris Zabriskie Taylor Deupree Karl Blau American Football Thank you to Bethan Mure for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. This episode of Upstream was produced as part of a collective of podcasts brought together to explore the legacy of Occupy Wall Street, in light of the 10 year anniversary. Through this project you can also hear analysis on the impact of Occupy from shows like The Dig, Economic Update, and Belabored — all podcasts that we would highly recommend checking out. The producing partners for this project are the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's New York office and The New School's Milano program. You can learn more and listen to some of the other episodes by visiting RosaLux.NYC/Occupy Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support Also, if your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on social media: Facebook.com/upstreampodcast twitter.com/UpstreamPodcast Instagram.com/upstreampodcast You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcast and Spotify: Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/upst…am/id1082594532 Spotify: spoti.fi/2AryXHs

It's pretty crazy to think that it's already been a decade since Occupy Wall Street — but, at the same time, it also feels like forever ago. So much has changed since the encampment in Zuccotti Park, and subsequently, the thousands of encampments which popped up all over the world. But, sadly, a lot remains the same. And actually, if you're looking at wealth inequality and the power of the financial sector — things might even be worse. But no matter what your thoughts are on the Occupy movement, it's impossible to deny its sweeping impact, not just on the left, but much more broadly as well. You may have heard folks say that Occupy Wall Street was a failure — and if you're talking about how the movement failed to, say, overthrow capitalism and usher in a new era of eco-socialism devoid of subprime loans and hedge fund managers, then yes, sure, Occupy definitely didn't accomplish that. But to say the movement was a failure is to overlook so, so much. And that's what we want to talk about in this episode: the things that Occupy gave us. The networks that were built, the ideas that were shaped around democracy — not just the electoral form of democracy that's confined to the ballot box, but real, direct democracy — the space that was created to exercise the muscles of solidarity and cooperativism, mutual aid and political organizing, as well as the shifts in public discourse…in the next hour, we'll look at how the chaotic, fervent explosion that was Occupy Wall Street manifested from the moments after the encampments were cleared to today — ten years later. Featuring: Chris Hedges – Journalist and author of many books, including Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt, and most recently, America: The Farewell Tour Ethan Earle – Paris-based political consultant who has written extensively about Occupy Wall Street Stephanie Luce – Professor of labor studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and also a professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center Ruth Milkman – Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City Nathan Schneider – Professor of media studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder and author of Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that Is Shaping the Next Economy Tamara Shapiro – NYC activist and facilitator, a co-founder of Movement Netlab, and currently the Program Director at the NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives Esteban Kelly – Executive Director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Co-ops Music by: ​ Do Make Say Think Chris Zabriskie Taylor Deupree Karl Blau American Football Thank you to Bethan Mure for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. This episode of Upstream was produced as part of a collective of podcasts brought together to explore the legacy of Occupy Wall Street, in light of the 10 year anniversary. Through this project you can also hear analysis on the impact of Occupy from shows like The Dig, Economic Update, and Belabored — all podcasts that we would highly recommend checking out. The producing partners for this project are the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's New York office and The New School's Milano program. You can learn more and listen to some of the other episodes by visiting RosaLux.NYC/Occupy Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support Also, if your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on social media: Facebook.com/upstreampodcast twitter.com/UpstreamPodcast Instagram.com/upstreampodcast You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcast and Spotify: Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/upst…am/id1082594532 Spotify: spoti.fi/2AryXHs

Joe Biden is deporting 15,000 Haitian refugees who crossed the border at Del Rio, Texas, to a country ravaged by assassination, earthquake, poverty, and gang violence—it's a disastrous move. Amy Wilentz comments; she's been reporting on Haiti and Haitians for more than two decades. Also: Ten years ago this week, a small group of young radicals declared “We are the 99 percent” and set up camp in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan's financial district. Instead of a few people protesting for a few days, the movement exploded; hundreds of thousands of people joined Occupy camps in more than 600 US towns and cities. CUNY professors Ruth Milkman and Stephanie Luce comment—they've written for The Nation's special issue on the 10th anniversary of Occupy. Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

Hello from Zuccotti Park! The 10th year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street; Vietnamese American voting; and Vietnam's battles with Covid. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

On this, the 10th Anniversary of Occupy Wallstreet we republish our podcast of the 5th Anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, this archival episode of Democracycast was recorded live on September 17, 2016. Dean Edwards introduces Sanna Camera and Aisha Dabo from Dakar, Senegal. Jo Ellen Kaiser moderates as John Harvey, Jan Weinberg and Sally Gellett report from Zuccotti Park in New York City where the OWS movement gathered. They interview Sumumba Sobukwe from Occu-Evolve, Ken Gale from EcoLogic, Dana Stein, Jackie Splain from InterOccupy and others. Issues discussed include political, social, economic and environmental issues for the U.S. and the world. Mark Taylor-Canfield comments from Seattle. Michael Buell reports from San Diego with Global Occupy News Now and Occupy Toronto. For more information about OWS and it's history, there are many books on Amazon, videos at www.ustream.tv/stopmotionsolo and more information for listeners toward the end of the episode. Released: 2021-09-18  Duration:  02:08:37    Links from the 10th Anniversary Zoom production:   https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/occupy-wall-street-changed-everything.html    Study by the New York Times https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/562862-changing-the-subject-2.html    Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance https://shutitdownnow.org    For further information about Democracy Watch News see: https://www.twitter.com/dwatchnews https://www.facebook.com/dwatchnews Listen or Direct download: http://democracycast.libsyn.com   Hosts: Dean Edwards, Democracy Watch News, coordinating editor, International service, North America service, Salem, OR, USA. Steve Barnes - Democracy Watch Media Assistant Producer - Audio & Podcasts. Jo Ellen Kaiser.  John Harvey https://twitter.com/digitallywired  Coordinating Editor. North America Service Jan Weinberg. Sally Gellert  Democracy Watch Media Assistant Producer for Telecommunications.  Mark Taylor-Canfield's many news outlets:  Contributing Editor http://muckrack.com/mark-taylor-canfield  https://twitter.com/MTaylorCanfield      https://www.facebook.com/mtaylorcanfield  Mark's music:  https://soundcloud.com/mark-taylor-canfield     Mark on YouTube    https://www.youtube.com/user/mtctvmedia                    Mark's weekly report @ Jeff Santos Show https://revolutionradionetwork.com Every Tuesday 12:30 PM     Pacific Time. Jeff Santos Show. Democracy cast theme, electronic music - by Mark Taylor Canfield. Sumumba Sobukwe from Occur-Evolve. Ken Gale from EcoLogic. Dana Stein.  Jackie Splain from Inter Occupy. Michael Buell.

It's Casual Friday! Sam and Emma host Astra Taylor, co-founder of the Debt Collective and author of the recent book Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions, to discuss the 10-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. Then Sam and Emma are joined by Heather Digby Parton, proprietor of Hullabaloo and contributing writer at Salon.com, to wrap up the week in news. Astra, Sam, and Emma dive into the start of the Occupy movement, ten years ago today, as a response to the call issued by Adbusters and the failure of the US Government to provide any reciprocity or repercussions for the 2008 financial crisis. Astra reflects on the initial general assemblies and working groups that worked to determine why they were there and what their demands should be, as well as the skepticism that they'd last beyond the first night with the mass police presence in NYC. They expand on this discussion, exploring how the role of police brutality served to somewhat bolster the public view around the movement and helped jumpstart the spread of the movement well beyond just NYC or even the US, even serving to turn the political tide against the Clinton neoliberalism. They discuss the diversity of ideology in the movement, even if it was driven by an anti-establishment ethos, and how that served to help create this open and strong picture of the 99%, before wrapping up with how the movement was eventually forced out of Zuccotti Park and looking at the lasting impact on the progressive left Occupy ultimately had. Then Digby comes on to chat about what we have learned from the CA Recall, particularly in terms of boosting turnout by running against Trump no matter the election, and she, Sam, and Emma also cover the role of the centrist Dems within he general infrastructure shenanigans going on in Congress. Then in the Fun Half, Ronald Raygun calls in to chat about pegging tactics and Sam's wood, Jake from the Bay Area talks appealing to liberals, Ben Shapiro struggles with California not being Texas, and Clarence Thomas offers some incredibly weird words on the new role of the SCOTUS, plus, your calls and IMs! Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here. Join the Majority Report Discord! http://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ (Merch issues and concerns can be addressed here: majorityreportstore@mirrorimage.com) You can now watch the livestream on Twitch Check out today's sponsors: sunsetlakecbd is a majority employee owned farm in Vermont, producing 100% pesticide free CBD products. Great company, great product and fans of the show! Use code Leftisbest and get 20% off at http://www.sunsetlakecbd.com. And now Sunset Lake CBD has donated $2500 to the Nurses strike fund, and we encourage MR listeners to help if they can. Here's a link to where folks can donate: https://forms.massnurses.org/we-stand-with-st-vincents-nurses/ Tushy: Hello Tushy cleans your butt with a precise stream of fresh water for just $79. It attaches to your existing toilet – requires NO electricity or additional plumbing – and cuts toilet paper use by 80% – so the Hello Tushy bidet pays for itself in a few months. Go to hellotushy.com/majority to get 10% off today! LiquidIV: The hot summer months are here and we need to be proactive to keep our body fueled up & hydrated. Liquid I.V. contains 5 essential vitamins—more Vitamin C than an orange and as much potassium as a banana. Healthier than sugary sports drinks, there are no artificial flavors or preservatives and less sugar than an apple. Grab your Liquid I.V. in bulk nationwide at Costco or you can get 25% off when you go to liquidIV.com and use code MAJORITYREP at checkout. That's 25% off ANYTHING you order when you get better hydration today using promo code MAJORITYREP at liquidIV.com. ZocDoc: With Zocdoc, you can search for local doctors who take your insurance, read verified patient reviews and book an appointment, in-person or video chat. Never wait on hold with a receptionist again. Whether you need a primary care physician, dentist, dermatologist, psychiatrist, eye doctor, or other specialist, Zocdoc has you covered. Go to Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY and download the ZocDoc app to sign-up for FREE and book a top-rated doctor. Support the St. Vincent Nurses today as they continue to strike for a fair contract! https://action.massnurses.org/we-stand-with-st-vincents-nurses/ Subscribe to Discourse Blog, a newsletter and website for progressive essays and related fun partly run by AM Quickie writer Jack Crosbie. https://discourseblog.com/ Subscribe to AM Quickie writer Corey Pein's podcast News from Nowhere, at https://www.patreon.com/newsfromnowhere Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! Subscribe to Matt's other show Literary Hangover on Patreon! Check out The Letterhack's upcoming Kickstarter project for his new graphic novel! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/milagrocomic/milagro-heroe-de-las-calles Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel! Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! Check out The Nomiki Show live at 3 pm ET on YouTube at patreon.com/thenomikishow Check out Jamie's podcast, The Antifada, at patreon.com/theantifada, on iTunes, or at twitch.tv/theantifada (streaming every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 7pm ET!) Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattBinder @MattLech @BF1nn @BradKAlsop Read Astra and Jonathan Smucker's piece in New York Magazine "Occupy Wall Street Changed Everything" here. Members can watch here.

On September 17th, 2011, hundreds of people descended on a park in the heart of New York's financial district.Their aim? To protest against the global financial system and its effects on  99% of the population.On this 10th anniversary of the protests, we take a look at what happened, what they achieved, and what impact they might have in the future. The United States in 2011 The 1% vs. the 99% A global sense of uprising The idea behind Occupy Wall Street Meeting in Zuccotti Park in New York's Financial District What did the protestors actually want to change? Famous article by economist Joseph Stiglitz The public perception around the need for change A different model of decision-making The end of the protests What actually happened during the protests? Criticisms of Occupy Wall Street Disorganisation & being tricked about Radiohead playing Did it really represent the 99%? Pushing the idea of the 1% vs. 99% into the public consciousness Legacy of Occupy Wall Street Full transcript, subtitles and key vocabulary available on the website: https://www.leonardoenglish.com/podcasts/occupy-wall-street

Journalist, Professor, and Author Michael Levitin discussed the successes of the Occupy Movement on this 10th anniversary. Michael still has the same passion that he had since Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park in New York City. He tells the story as no one else can. I love his book because he told the real story instead of the false narrative that generally denies the Occupy movement its successes. He did not do that. President Biden gave a speech today on the economy and his Build Back Better plan. What is interesting is while he stresses he is a capitalist and then enumerates policies that are decidedly progressive. --- If you like what we do please do the following! Most Independent Media outlets continue to struggle to raise the funds they need to operate much like the smaller outlets like Politics Done Right SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube Channel here. LIKE our Facebook Page here. Share our blogs, podcasts, and videos. Get our books here. Become a YouTube PDR Posse Member here. Become a Politics Done Right Subscriber via Patreon here. Become a Politics Done Right Subscriber via Facebook here. Consider providing a contribution here. Please consider supporting our GoFundMe equipment fund here. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/politicsdoneright/support

In the latest in an ongoing series of OWS anniversary shows, Ted speaks with comedian Jim Tews. Jim created a short documentary with Ted down at Zuccotti Park in October 2011. You can find it on youtube. 

Ten years ago this week, a group of activists pitched tents in New York’s Zuccotti Park. They said they were protesting against economic inequality and the gap between the people who hold the top 1% of wealth in this country and the rest of us. Soon, people in cities all over the globe launched their own Occupy Wall Street protests, and while police broke up the original protest in New York two months later, Occupy Wall Street went a lot longer and a lot further than many expected. “There were experts, people in the social sciences who had been studying inequality, and were very well aware of its explosive growth in the period since the 1970s. But it wasn’t really on the radar of the general population until Occupy. I think that was one of the major impacts,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociology professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, who has studied the Occupy Wall Street movement. Milkman said while Occupy Wall Street may not have done much to close the growing income inequality gap in this country, it made the issue part of the national political conversation. She also draws lines between Occupy, the Fight for $15, the rise of Bernie Sanders and other social movements that followed, including Black Lives Matter. On today’s show, we’ll talk with Milkman about the legacy of Occupy Wall Street. In the newsfix, we’ll talk about Facebook and a new project from The Wall Street Journal that reveals troubling information about what’s happening inside company. Plus, we’ll hear from one of our favorite listeners and one of best low-key answers to the Make Me Smart question we’ve received in a while. When you're done listening, tell your Echo device to “make me smart” for our daily explainers. This week we'll explain why hit songs are getting shorter, why child care is so expensive and how drive-in movie theaters made a comeback. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter! You can find the latest issue here. Give now to support the show you love and to get the “Make Me Smart” banana pants and ringtones! Marketplace.org/givesmart. Here’s everything we talked about today: “Changing the Subject: A Bottom Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City” co-authored by Prof. Milkman “It’s Been Another Decade Of Income Inequality In The U.S.” from NPR “Occupy Wall Street Did More Than You Think” from The Atlantic “The Facebook Files” from The Wall Street Journal “Amazon hikes starting pay to $18 an hour” from Reuters “Climate change to change behavior, 80% of respondents tell Pew” from CNBC

Ten years ago this week, a group of activists pitched tents in New York’s Zuccotti Park. They said they were protesting against economic inequality and the gap between the people who hold the top 1% of wealth in this country and the rest of us. Soon, people in cities all over the globe launched their own Occupy Wall Street protests, and while police broke up the original protest in New York two months later, Occupy Wall Street went a lot longer and a lot further than many expected. “There were experts, people in the social sciences who had been studying inequality, and were very well aware of its explosive growth in the period since the 1970s. But it wasn’t really on the radar of the general population until Occupy. I think that was one of the major impacts,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociology professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, who has studied the Occupy Wall Street movement. Milkman said while Occupy Wall Street may not have done much to close the growing income inequality gap in this country, it made the issue part of the national political conversation. She also draws lines between Occupy, the Fight for $15, the rise of Bernie Sanders and other social movements that followed, including Black Lives Matter. On today’s show, we’ll talk with Milkman about the legacy of Occupy Wall Street. In the newsfix, we’ll talk about Facebook and a new project from The Wall Street Journal that reveals troubling information about what’s happening inside company. Plus, we’ll hear from one of our favorite listeners and one of best low-key answers to the Make Me Smart question we’ve received in a while. Read the transcript here. When you're done listening, tell your Echo device to “make me smart” for our daily explainers. This week we'll explain why hit songs are getting shorter, why child care is so expensive and how drive-in movie theaters made a comeback. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter! You can find the latest issue here. Give now to support the show you love and to get the “Make Me Smart” banana pants and ringtones! Marketplace.org/givesmart. Here’s everything we talked about today: “Changing the Subject: A Bottom Up Account of Occupy Wall Street in New York City” co-authored by Prof. Milkman “It’s Been Another Decade Of Income Inequality In The U.S.” from NPR “Occupy Wall Street Did More Than You Think” from The Atlantic “The Facebook Files” from The Wall Street Journal “Amazon hikes starting pay to $18 an hour” from Reuters “Climate change to change behavior, 80% of respondents tell Pew” from CNBC

Peter Schiff is an honorary chairman of SchiffGold, founder of Euro Pacific Asset Management, and host of The Peter Schiff Show. He is an economic forecaster & investment advisor influenced by the free-market Austrian School of economics. His best-selling book, "The Real Crash, "warns that the 2008 financial crisis was just the prelude to a larger sovereign debt crisis that may lead to a collapse of the US dollar. In this interview, Peter shares his insights on gold, Bitcoin, and the state of our fragile economy. --- Full bio via SchiffGold.com: Background Peter Schiff's investment career began with Shearson Lehman Brothers in the early 1990s. In 1996, he and a partner started Euro Pacific Capital in Los Angeles, later moving the headquarters to Connecticut. The firm has since expanded, with offices in Scottsdale, Arizona, Boca Raton, Florida, Newport Beach, California, Los Angeles and New York City. Euro Pacific Capital's investment strategy focuses on long-term wealth savings in the face of a declining US dollar with an emphasis on emerging market and commodity-focused investments. Peter is best known for accurately forecasting the 2008 financial crisis. During a Fox News debate in December 2006, Schiff said, “What's going to happen in 2007 is that real estate prices are going to come crashing back down to Earth.” Business news journals reported that Schiff accurately predicted the crisis, while “nearly all [macroeconomists] failed to foresee the recession despite plenty of warning signs.” Peter has also worked in the political arena, first serving as an economic advisor for Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign and later running for United States Senate in Connecticut in 2010 as a Republican. Politically, he leans Libertarian, with an emphasis on fiscal conservatism. Peter started SchiffGold in 2010 after recommending for decades that investors allocate 10-20% of their portfolios to physical precious metals. Peter became concerned that some of his Euro Pacific Capital clients were being misled into purchasing overpriced “numismatic” gold and silver products from gold dealers with unsavory business practices. Peter started SchiffGold to provide a trustworthy alternative that would sell only the most liquid physical bullion products at the lowest possible prices. SchiffGold is backed by Peter Schiff's Guarantee that it will only sell the most liquid physical bullion products at the lowest possible prices. Peter's expertise on money, economic theory, and international investing makes him a highly sought after as a speaker and analyst. He has been quoted and interviewed hundreds of times by media outlets around the world, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Die Zeit, Tokyo Shinbun, South China Morning Post, Investor's Business Daily, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. He regularly appears on CNBC, CNN, CBC, Al Jazeera, Fox News, and Fox Business Network. Peter Schiff's Companies Euro Pacific Asset Management – Founded in 2009, and headquartered in Dorado, Puerto Rico, Euro Pacific Asset Management is a SEC registered investment advisory firm. It specializes in foreign markets and utilizes a traditional value oriented investment strategy in keeping with Peter Schiff's investment strategy.  Euro Pacific manages in excess of $1 billion in a combination of separately managed accounts and a family of proprietary mutual funds. These actively managed strategies provide investors with a long-term focus unique exposure to a variety of global markets. Euro Pacific Bank Ltd. – This offshore, international bank provides private investment services to non-US citizens. It is headquartered in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Peter Schiff's Books Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse (2007) – Peter's first bestselling book predicted in detail the causes and fallout of what would become the 2008 financial crisis. He provides a long-term investment strategy that focuses on foreign markets and hard assets to protect one's wealth during years of economic uncertainty. The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down (2008; Updated 2010) – In this followup to Crash Proof, Peter examined historic bear markets which followed major bull markets in the United States, and lays the foundation for a long-term investment strategy to preserve wealth during volatile times. Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse (2009) – The second edition of Peter's Crash Proof expands on the first edition by looking in detail at the fallout of the financial crisis he accurately predicted. How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes (2010; Updated 2013) – Reimagining a classic economic parable written by their father, Peter and his brother Andrew Schiff use cartoon illustrations and humor to explain the healthy fundamentals of a free market economy. The Collector's Edition released in 2013 features new color illustrations and updated content explaining recent economic developments such as quantitative easing and the European debt crisis. The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy—How to Save Yourself and Your Country (2012) – Peter's latest bestseller explains why Peter believes the 2008 financial crisis was merely the prelude to a much larger crash to come. Paired with Washington's inability to address its sovereign debt problem, the Fed's reckless monetary policies will ultimately trigger a complete collapse of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. Peter Schiff's Media Peter is a regular guest on national and international financial media, including CNBC, Fox Business, BBC, Bloomberg Asia, and BNN. His economic commentary has been published in and quoted by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, Barron's, and Investor's Business Daily. From 2005 to 2010, Peter hosted the short-wave radio show Wall Street Unspun, in which he commented on the latest financial market news. From 2010 to 2014, he hosted the nationally-syndicated The Peter Schiff Show, which filled the 10 AM time slot on the Radio America network starting in 2012. Peter left terrestrial radio in August 2014, though The Peter Schiff Show continues in a podcast format. Peter's personal media outlets: Peter Schiff's Gold News – Peter's daily newsmagazine focused on the precious metals markets. The Schiff Report – The home of Peter's regular video blog on the financial markets, as well as clips from his recent media appearances. His economic forecasting went viral following the 2008 financial crisis with the video “Peter Schiff Was Right”. The Peter Schiff Show – Peter's podcast featuring his commentary and analysis of the global financial markets. Peter Schiff's Notable Appearances: Mortgage Banker's Speech – In 2006, Peter delivered a keynote address at the Western Regional Mortgage Bankers Conference in Las Vegas. He warned of a housing bubble and explained the basic mechanics of how a crash would occur. Practically nobody at the time shared Peter's viewpoint, and his speech stunned the more than 2,000 mortgage bankers in attendance. Of course, his prediction proved to be uncannily accurate, shooting Peter into the national spotlight as a savvy contrarian economist. Peter Schiff Was Right, 2006-2007 Edition – This compilation of Peter's mainstream media appearances in the years leading up to the housing crash and financial crisis became an instant viral hit (with millions of views spread over many versions of the video). As financial commentators laughed in his face, Peter calmly predicted the events of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. It has become a classic example of irrational exuberance and willful ignorance on the part of economists and investment advisors. Daily Show Interview with Jon Stewart – Peter Schiff appeared on the Daily Show in 2009 to explain how he was able to predict the 2008 financial crisis. This brought Peter's warnings of the hazards of irresponsible monetary policy to a much wider American audience. Peter Schiff Visits Occupy Wall Street – Reason TV followed Peter Schiff to Manhattan's Zuccotti Park in 2011, where he represented the 1% in conversations with Occupy Wall Street protestors. Inflation Propaganda Exposed – For years, Peter Schiff has railed against the misleading and often incorrect economic data officially released by government agencies. In particular, Peter believes inflation is grossly underestimated. In this popular edition of his Schiff Report video blog, Peter debunks official inflation measures with a slew of hard, fundamental facts.

We're nearly 10 years on from Occupy Wall Street. We wanted to get a jump on the retrospective before every mainstream news outlet hops on and gives it perfunctory treatment and dismisses it as a failed movement. It wasn't a failure. If anything, it was the scariest movement the establishment has seen since the anti-Vietnam War protests. It was fast but it was furious. And aspects of it continue to resonate through our society. It was the grand awakening from our post-9/11 haze and the people took to the streets to revolt against a system of inequality and systemic oppression. Occupy might have been brutally cleared from Zuccotti Park, but the spirit of the movement lives on through Progressives today and the lessons from it will carry us into the future. This is Occupy at 10: A Love Story.  -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Subscribe to Unf*cking The Republic on Substack at unftr.substack.com to get the essays these episode are framed around sent to your inbox every week. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility. Unf*cking the Republic is produced and engineered by Manny Faces Media (mannyfacesmedia.com). Original music is by Tom McGovern (tommcgovern.com). The show is written and hosted by This Guy Right Here and distributed by Fuhgeddaboudit. Podcast art description: Image of the US Congress ripped in the middle revealing white text on a blue background that says, "Unf*cking the Republic." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Agenda

Ayana Young is a podcast and radio personality specializing in intersectional environmental and social justice, deep ecology and land-based restoration. Graduating summa cum laude with an undergraduate degree from Loyola Marymount University including a double major in Art History and Theology and a minor in Philosophy, as well as education through Columbia University in Ecology and Eastern Religions and Restoration Ecology at the University of Victoria, Young has a strong academic background at the intersections of ecology, culture, and spirituality. She was studying at Columbia when the Occupy Wall Street movement began and amid the burgeoning resistance in Zuccotti Park, she co-created the Environmental Working Group. For The Wild is an anthology of the Anthropocene; focused on land based protection, co-liberaton and intersectional storytelling rooted in a paradigm shift from human supremacy towards deep ecology. For the Wild run their own activist and restoration activities including the holistic restoration of a redwood forest… listen out for this particular part of the conversation as it was a revelation to me that not all tree planting is equal. We also chat about Ayana's background, her journey and her passion for old growth forests. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Find the show notes here ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ *** SOCIALIZE WITH US *** Website Instagram Facebook Twitter YouTube  

What role does food play in social movements? The “People's Kitchen” at Occupy Wall Street (OWS) at Zuccotti Park, in New York City served 3,000 meals a day for free from October 2011 until a police eviction in November 2011 ended the occupation of the park. Content on The Peoples Kitchen is included in Frederick Douglass Opie's book Southern Food and Civil Rights (American Palate, 2017). Follow the Fred Opie show and the content Fred shares on his website, Twitter and Facebook. Take the time to review the show on You Tube, iTunes, Stitcher, and Soundcloud. If you like what you hear and learn, tell others about it and share and post the link to the show. About Fred: https://fredopiespeaks.com/about-us/ Subscribe to our Podcasts: http://www.fredopie.com/podcasts/ Buy Fred's Books: http://www.fredopie.com/books/ Fred's Blogs: http://www.fredopie.com Follow Fred on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frederick.d.opie Follow Fred on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrFredDOpie

On previous episodes we've covered the threat of measles and West Nile virus, but this week another mosquito-borne virus took the spotlight as Eastern Equine Encephalitis, or EEE, was found in mosquitoes in the surrounding area. The CDC describes the disease as rare, with only a few cases per year, but one out of three people die from the resulting flu-like symptoms. Even though the weather is getting colder and will eventually end the mosquito season, take steps to protect yourself if you'll be in an area with mosquitoes. Wear clothing that covers your skin, use a mosquito repellent containing the chemical repellents DEET or Picaridin, or use a natural repellent containing oil of lemon eucalyptus. You can even do your part by calling 311 to report standing water, defined as a place on public or private property where water gathers and remains for more than five days, creating a habitat where mosquitoes may breed. 7 years ago — The Bagel Store in Williamsburg brought back their candy corn bagels. Long before the rainbow bagel would make the shop world-famous, The Bagel Store was experimenting with new color and flavor combos. The shop premiered the orange-and-white swirled candy corn bagel the year before, and in 2012 it was back again, this time paired with marshmallow chocolate-chip cream cheese and alongside the equally-festive pumpkin pie bagel with pumpkin cream cheese! Unfortunately, when I checked in again to see what 2019's fall flavors would be, it looks like the shop has fallen on hard times, and photos posted on their Yelp page show New York state tax seizure notices posted on the closed store's roll-down gates. It's the same tax seizure notices that recently shut down Di Fara pizza and dozens of ice cream trucks in the city. The shutdown hasn't shut down bagel maker Scot Rossillo, who is still posting photos of new creations like rainbow-filled chocolate chip cookies, a waffle bagel, and modified bagel recipes suitable for a Keto diet! 2 years ago on September 27, 2017 — 18-year-old Abel Cedeno stabs two other students at Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation in the Bronx, killing one and injuring another — In September 2019, Cedeno received a 14 year prison sentence for manslaughter, 8 years for assault, and 90 days for criminal possession of a weapon, all of which will be served simultaneously. nn The stabbing became the first killing inside a NYC school in over 20 years. nn Listen to Episode 41 of the podcast to hear more about the attack and Cedeno's sentencing. 5 years ago on September 30, 2014 — Three parachutists make an early-morning jump from 1WTC, landing on nearby street — Three parachutists make an early-morning jump from 1WTC, landing nearby in front of the Goldman Sachs building nn The breathtaking video of the stunt shocked viewers as to how the jumpers accessed the city's tallest building while it was under construction and were able to glide down to the street on parachutes. The answer would come five months later when four men were arrested for the parachute jump. nn One of the men arrested was revealed to have been a construction worker at the site, and they gained access to the site via a hole in a fence. The parachute jump and an earlier trespassing teenager who dressed as a construction worker led to criticism of the building's security practices and the resignation of the site's head of security. nn The four men arrested were fined $2,000 and sentenced to community service, but did not receive jail time for the stunt. Well, we've been tricked before, namely back on Episode 37 in early August, but the Department of Transportation will again try to turn 14th Street into a restricted busway beginning on October 3rd. 14th Street was originally scheduled to convert to a traffic-restricted busway on July 1st to quickly move buses across the city during the L Train shutdown, but then L Train plans were modified to keep the subway open and community groups took legal action against the Department of Transportation's plan. A judge agreed to stop the busway from going into effect until the DOT provided more information, which they did, and it appeared that the buses would be allowed to roam free until another last-minute legal ruling kept cars on 14th Street. The busway was scheduled to begin on August 12th, when traffic would be restricted and buses given priority to increase transit speeds, but downtown community groups submitted a petition renewed their complaints on August 9th, claiming the Department of Transportation hadn't done sufficient studies into the impact that removing traffic from 14th Street would have on the surrounding area. nn This week, an appeals court ruled against the complaints and cleared the way for the busway to take effect, three months later than originally planned. nn Beginning on Thursday, October 3rd, only buses will be allowed on 14th Street between Third and Ninth Avenue from 6am to 10pm, with all other vehicles able to enter the street only for one block to make a local trip. Those vehicles will be required to exit immediately at an intersection to keep the street clear for M14A and D buses, one of the most heavily-used bus lines in the city. Left turns will be banned to keep traffic from backing up in front of the buses and automated traffic cameras will be used to monitor vehicles. The DOT estimates that the changes will increase the speeds of buses by 30%, and the plan is expected to run for 18 months. 8 years ago on October 1, 2011 — 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters are arrested after trying to cross the Brooklyn Bridge by walking on the roadway — 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters are arrested after trying to cross the Brooklyn Bridge by walking on the roadway nn It was the largest number of arrests during an Occupy protest and was one of the largest mass arrests since the 2004 Republican National Convention protests. There was controversy over the tactics used by police, who did not actively prevent the marchers from walking to the bridge roadway but then conducted a mass arrest a few hundred feet up the Manhattan side of the bridge while others on the narrow pedestrian walkway watched from above. The Occupy camp in Zuccotti Park would be cleared a month and a half later but the group would continue various protest demonstrations through the next year. Just a week earlier, the Occupy movement had held a protest march near Union Square, where the large numbers of protesters brought attention to the group and the NYPD's use of mesh nets to corral protesters into makeshift pens. Just south of Union Square, eyewitness video showed a group of young women being sprayed with pepper spray while on the sidewalk, which brought worldwide press coverage and criticism of the NYPD's handling of the growing protest group. 98 years ago on October 5, 1921 — A game between the NY Giants and NY Yankees at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan becomes the first World Series broadcast live on radio — A game between the NY Giants and NY Yankees at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan becomes the first World Series broadcast live on radio nn The Yankees won the first game, played in front of 30,203 attendees, but the Giants would win the overall series 5 games to 3. With two New York teams facing off, it was also the first World Series with all games played at one location, similar to the Subway Series that is played today between the Yankees and the Mets. nn Mike McNally steals home, 10/5/1921 World Series Game at Polo Grounds, 5th inning via Library of Congress In AGBC history: 8 years ago — Ford Transit Connect Taxi Spotted in Lower Manhattan — Wednesday, September 28 8 years ago, New York Apple stores were mourning the loss of Steve Jobs, who died of pancreatic cancer on October 5, 2011. At Tekserve in Chelsea, a memorial was placed in the front window of the store. At Apple stores in the Meatpacking District, SoHo, and on Fifth Avenue, makeshift memorials formed, with flowers and apples placed in front of each store. People used post-it notes to write their own memorial messages, forming colorful displays on the windows of the stores. The walls of post-its would continue to grow, and by the next week, street artist and muralist The Me Nobody Knows would put a custom piece of memorial art at the SoHo Apple store — 8 years ago — Steve Jobs Memorials at Apple Stores in NYC — Thursday, October 6 2 years ago — Suspects Arrested in Terror Plot to Strike New York — The Joint Terrorism Task Force charged two 19-year-old suspects, one Canadian citizen and one from the United States, and one 37-year-old from the Philippines in a terror plot that had advanced to the point of purchasing explosives. All three were charged with terrorism, with the 37-year-old communicating online with the two younger suspects and actively providing funding for an attack against the city. The group acquired bomb-making materials and a cabin outside the city and planned to bomb Times Square, the subway, and conduct random shootings within the city. The Canadian citizen received a 40 year prison sentence, but Pakistan has refused to extradite the American citizen accused in the plot, who had been living in Pakistan at the time of the plot. The older suspect was arrested in the Philippines and the United States has been attempting to secure his extradition since 2017. 1 year ago — Central Park Squirrel Census Will Give City Rodents a Proper Head-Count — The census set out to count the number of squirrels roaming around Manhattan's center. 323 volunteers divided up the park and recorded their squirrel sightings, with the data becoming part of a printed art project with maps and photos from the survey. The final statistical analysis revealed about 2,373 squirrels in Central Park based on the project's observations. It seems a bit low, but it's interesting nonetheless. While nearly 82% of the squirrels were the gray variety, count yourself lucky if you see a squirrel with black or cinnamon-colored fur: They were much more rare in Central Park, with black fur being the least common. A Great Big City has been running a 24-hour newsfeed since 2010, but the AGBC News podcast is just getting started, and we need your support. A Great Big City is built on a dedication to explaining what is happening and how it fits into the larger history of New York, which means thoroughly researching every topic and avoiding clickbait headlines to provide a straightforward, honest, and factual explanation of the news. Individuals can make a monthly or one-time contribution at agreatbigcity.com/support and local businesses can have a lasting impact by supporting local news while promoting products or services directly to interested customers listening to this podcast. Visit agreatbigcity.com/advertising to learn more. AGBC is more than just a news website: It also automatically checks MTA data before morning rush hour and sends out notifications if there are delays on any subway lines, LIRR or MetroNorth trains, and bridges and tunnels. Follow @agreatbigcity on social media to receive the alerts. Park of the day Clearview's Tail — Clearview Expressway at Whitehall Terrace, Queens — A small slip of a park, this land lies at the "tail" of the Clearview Expressway at Hillside Avenue. Parks Events Bronx Fit Fest — Date: October 5, 2019 Join us for free fitness and dance classes, healthy living tips, wellness screenings, and more at Bronx Fit Fest! Activities may include: Yoga Roller and Silent Disco Outdoor spin classes Chairobics Zumba Learn to Salsa Tennis Obstacle Course Line Dance* Healthy living workshops There will also... And now let's check in with our robot friend for the concert calendar: Concert Calendar Here's the AGBC Concert Calendar for the upcoming week: Tedeschi Trucks Band is playing Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side on Tuesday, October 1st at 7pm. Maggie Rogers with Empress Of is playing Radio City Music Hall in Midtown on Tuesday, October 1st at 8pm. Madonna is playing BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in Boerum Hill on Tuesday, October 1st at 8pm. Carrie Underwood with Maddie & Tae and Runaway June are playing Madison Square Garden in Midtown West / Chelsea / Hudson Yards on Wednesday, October 2nd at 7pm. Maggie Rogers with Empress Of is playing Radio City Music Hall in Midtown on Wednesday, October 2nd at 8pm. Sandy & Junior are playing Barclays Center in Boerum Hill on Wednesday, October 2nd at 8pm. Madonna is playing BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in Boerum Hill on Wednesday, October 2nd at 8pm. Incubus with Wild Belle is playing Radio City Music Hall in Midtown on Thursday, October 3rd at 8pm. Madonna is playing BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in Boerum Hill on Thursday, October 3rd at 8pm. Tedeschi Trucks Band is playing Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side on Friday, October 4th at 8pm. Maluma is playing Madison Square Garden in Midtown West / Chelsea / Hudson Yards on Friday, October 4th at 8pm. The Avett Brothers with Lake Street Dive is playing Barclays Center in Boerum Hill on Saturday, October 5th at 8pm. Tedeschi Trucks Band is playing Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side on Saturday, October 5th at 8pm. Madonna is playing BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in Boerum Hill on Saturday, October 5th at 8pm. Phil Collins is playing Madison Square Garden in Midtown West / Chelsea / Hudson Yards on Sunday, October 6th at 8pm. Madonna is playing BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in Boerum Hill on Sunday, October 6th at 8pm. Thanks for listening! Find more fun things to do at agreatbigcity.com/events. New York Fact Here's something you may not have known about New York: The Hudson River is the longest river in New York State, at 315 miles Weather The extreme highs and lows for this week in weather history: Record High: 94°F on October 5, 1941 Record Low: 35°F on October 5, 1881 Weather for the week ahead: Light rain on Wednesday through Friday, with high temperatures peaking at 87°F on Wednesday. Intro and outro music: 'Start the Day' by Lee Rosevere — Concert Calendar music from Jukedeck.com

A quick note on what is undoubtedly the top story of this week: The September 11th attacks. It's a uniquely difficult subject to cover, and one that has a unique interpretation within the city, whether you witnessed it first-hand or have come to understand it by living in the city and walking the same streets. I won't be playing excerpts from eyewitness video of people's final moments. I won't be reinterpreting the attack as a patriotic celebration. I will ask that you look around you and treat your fellow New Yorkers with kindness and compassion to honor those we lost, who were also regular, everyday New Yorkers, walking these same streets. Kindness is stronger than hate. — 18 years ago: The September 11th attacks destroy three buildings in the World Trade Center complex, killing 2,606 people in and around the buildings and 147 aboard the two planes ☮️. Also 18 years ago, just one week after the September 11th attacks, A benefit concert and telethon is simulcast across 35 major television channels and raises over $200 million for the September 11th Fund — 'America: A Tribute to Heroes' featured musical performances from New York, London, and Los Angeles, and a variety of celebrities both hosting the event and answering calls. The money raised went toward cash assistance, counseling, and other services for individuals and businesses impacted by the September 11th attacks, and the Fund would distribute $528 million by 2004. Although 'Tribute to Heroes' was the first fundraiser held, by October 2001, the 'Concert for New York City' would be held at Madison Square Garden with another all-star line-up and raise $35 million for first responders, and on October 21st 'United We Stand: What More Can I Give' concert was headlined by Michael Jackson from Washington D.C. that unfortunately was haunted by technical problems and scheduling issues with performers. Recently I mentioned that 4 years ago, the MTA was facing a string of assaults on workers, and this week the same news appears again. The Transit Workers Union Local 100 reports that assaults on bus and subway workers are up 39% year-over-year, with 85 workers suffering various attacks in the first eight months of 2019. While the MTA and the state have been increasing the law enforcement presence in the subways, transit union president Tony Utano accused the MTA of concealing the increasing assault numbers and not making the statistics public. Earlier this year, the union had also called for greater police enforcement in the subway due to incidents where MTA workers were spit upon. This news of an increase in assaults comes as the transit union is in contract negotiations with the MTA, and workers have been without a contract since May 2019. The MTA is simultaneously trying to address increases in the homeless population within the subway system and a push from Governor Cuomo and MTA head Andy Byford to prosecute fare evasion. This week brought the final sentencing of the student who stabbed two classmates at a Bronx school in 2017. Abel Cedeno was 18 years old at the time and stabbed two younger students with a spring-loaded knife he had purchased from Amazon. One victim survived by was in a coma for several days and of the victims was killed, making the attack the first killing inside a city school in over 20 years. This week, Cedeno received a 14 year prison sentence for manslaughter, 8 years for assault, and 90 days for criminal possession of a weapon, all of which will be served simultaneously. Although the attack was initially explained as an on-going bullying incident, the court documents described the incident that precipitated the attack as a typical school interaction, where one of the victims threw something that hit Cedeno, then claimed that he didn't intend to hit him, but Cedeno challenged the victim to a fight and drew a knife. Further complicating the theory of on-going bullying was testimony given during the trial that the two victims had not had much prior interaction with Cedeno. In an interview with ABC7, Cedeno claimed that he took the knife to school because he felt threatened and that when the attack occurred, he 'just snapped'. In a stunning detail, Cedeno's mother had contacted the school two and a half years before the attack to tell them that he had been taking a knife to school, but administrators failed to take proper action to log the event, instead simply searching his belongings one time and not notifying the school's principal of the mother's concerns. Another terror attack also took place in the city 99 years ago on September 16, 1920 — A horse-drawn wagon bomb explodes outside 23 Wall Street, killing 38 and injuring hundreds — It was an unorthodox way of delivering a bomb, and no one knew the danger that was carried on a horse-drawn wagon as it was pulled along busy Wall Street. In the wagon was 100 pounds of dynamite surrounded by 500 pounds of sash weights, which are heavy cast-iron weights used to counter-balance windows that slide open. The dynamite exploded at noon and sent the heavy shrapnel flying into the lunchtime crowd outside the financial buildings along Wall Street. The attack is still unsolved, but historians believe it was carried out by an Italian anarchist group. The sheer cruelty of the bombing, which seemed to have no intended target and killed a random assortment of innocent people who were nearby, made it difficult to even theorize what the intent of the bombers had been. The federal Bureau of Investigation did find flyers with vague threats stuffed in nearby mailboxes, but they did not directly reference the bombing. It became the worst single loss of life in the city since the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire from nine years earlier in 1911. Today, you can still see damage from the blast at 23 Wall Street, where part of the stone wall has been preserved showing the chips in the stone from the projectiles in the explosion. Just around the corner from the 23 Wall Street bombing, 8 years ago on September 17, 2011 — The Occupy Wall Street movement gathers in the Financial District, eventually settling in a camp at Zuccotti Park — The Occupy Wall Street movement gathers in the Financial District, eventually settling in a camp at Zuccotti Park After planning to camp in either Chase Manhattan Plaza or Bowling Green Plaza, the group lucked out and selected Zuccotti Park, which is designated as a privately-owned public space. The park's status put the protest in kind of a limbo between rules the city could enforce, with police being able to monitor the camp from the sidewalk surrounding it, but otherwise needing to be invited onto the property by Brookfield, the property's owner. The protest camp would last two months until the early morning hours of November 15, when the group was evicted from Zuccotti Park by the city after courts ruled that the protesters did not have a First Amendment right to camp in the park. 168 years ago on September 18, 1851 — The first edition of the New-York Daily Times is published. Six years later, the paper would shorten its name to the New York Times — The paper published six days a week with morning and evening editions and charged one penny for the day's news. A larger, weekly version was printed to be distributed outside the city. Times Square would not be renamed after the paper for another 53 years, so the first offices were downtown at 113 Nassau Street near City Hall Park, then 138 Nassau Street, then 41 Park Row. By 1904, the paper would move to the Times Tower in what was then known as Longacre Square before it was renamed Times Square in honor of the paper. After establishing the Times Square New Year's Eve ball drop from atop their building, the paper would again outgrow the location, expanding and moving some offices westward until completely relocating to their current building on Eighth Avenue. For a bit of local news, that first edition of the New-York Daily Times contained a front page story on the ongoing construction of the fountain in Washington Square Park, which would be completed one year later in 1852. In another attack against the city that gets forgotten in the shadow of 9/11: 18 years ago on September 18, 2001 — One week after the September 11th attacks, letters containing anthrax poison are mailed to four NYC-area newsrooms — The letters appeared to have been mailed from Princeton, NJ and a public mailbox near the Princeton University campus was found to be contaminated with anthrax spores. Letters mailed to Democratic Senators in October 2001 contained a similar threatening note referencing the September 11th attacks. In all, 17 people were sickened and five were killed due to anthrax exposure. Victims included assistants who opened or handled the letters, postal workers who sorted the letters, and a woman from the Bronx whose exposure could never be determined. Although the letters were written to appear as if they were from Muslim extremists, an FBI investigation identified the perpetrator as an American microbiologist, vaccinologist, and senior biodefense researcher at a government facility in Maryland. Bruce Edwards Ivins, a 62-year-old white male, became the focus of the investigation seven years after the incidents, after which he started to show signs of strain and was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital where he went on to suggestively discuss the anthrax letters during therapy sessions. Ivins died by suicide on July 29, 2008 after learning that he had been identified, and the FBI formally closed the case in 2010, identifying Ivins as the sole perpetrator of the letters and detailing how he falsified evidence and attempted to frame co-workers at the governmental research lab to throw investigators off the case. It was back in July when we discussed mosquitoes first testing positive for West Nile virus within the city, and this week, the first human West Nile infections were documented within the city, with one confirmed infection in Brooklyn, two in Queens, and one in Staten Island, although mosquitoes testing positive for the disease have been found in every borough. Now is the time to be prepared and protect yourself from mosquitoes if you will be outside. Wear clothing that covers your skin, use a mosquito repellent containing the chemical repellents DEET or Picaridin, or use a natural repellent containing oil of lemon eucalyptus. Be sure to seal around your window air conditioners so that mosquitoes won't have an easy entrance into your home, and use window screens if you'll be leaving windows open. If you'll be traveling overseas, take special precaution to avoid mosquito bites, and research which vaccinations you'll need to avoid diseases that are common in the areas where you will be traveling. If you're staying in the city, you can even do your part by calling 311 to report standing water, defined as a place on public or private property where water gathers and remains for more than five days, creating a habitat where mosquitoes may breed. The city may have escaped the effects of the most recent Hurricane Dorian, but 81 years ago on September 21, 1938 — A Category 3 hurricane made landfall on Long Island, becoming one of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded to hit New England — A Category 3 hurricane makes landfall on Long Island, becoming one of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded to hit New England It became known as the 1938 New England Hurricane and heavily impacted Long Island, although winds were only 60 to 70mph in NYC, with eastern Long Island taking the worst damage. An estimated 682 people were killed, with damages equivalent to $4.7 billion. A Great Big City has been running a 24-hour newsfeed since 2010, but the AGBC News podcast is just getting started, and we need your support. A Great Big City is built on a dedication to explaining what is happening and how it fits into the larger history of New York, which means thoroughly researching every topic and avoiding clickbait headlines to provide a straightforward, honest, and factual explanation of the news. Individuals can make a monthly or one-time contribution at agreatbigcity.com/support and local businesses can have a lasting impact by supporting local news while promoting products or services directly to interested customers listening to this podcast. Visit agreatbigcity.com/advertising to learn more. AGBC is more than just a news website: It also automatically checks MTA data before morning rush hour and sends out notifications if there are delays on any subway lines, LIRR or MetroNorth trains, and bridges and tunnels. Follow @agreatbigcity on social media to receive the alerts. Park of the day Galileo Playground — 75 WEST 175 STREET, the Bronx — Previously named Macombs Park, Galileo Playground is located in Morris Heights in the west central Bronx. A former vacant lot, the land for the playground was assigned to City of New York / Parks & Recreation on December 30, 1993. Construction of the new playground was completed during the Fall of 1999 and features jungle gyms and spray showers. Parks Events Check out some birds of prey up close at the Central Park Raptor Fest — Saturday, September 14 — The Urban Park Rangers will bring a selection of eagles, falcons, owls, and hawks to this family-friendly event on the East Lawn in Central Park, just inside the park parallel at 99th Street. The event is free and starts at noon. Call (212) 360-2774 for more info. And on Sunday, there will be the 39th Annual Antique Motorcycle Show in Queens at the Queens County Farm Museum — Sunday, September 15, 2019 — Over 100 antique motorcycles will be part of the show, and live music and food will be available. Tickets will cost $11 at the door to benefit the Queens County Farm Museum. The event runs from 11am to 4pm at Queens Farm Park on the border of Glen Oaks and Floral Park in Queens And now let's check in with our robot friend for the concert calendar: Concert Calendar Here's the AGBC Concert Calendar for the upcoming week: GRAVITY and DAY6 are playing Playstation Theater on Friday, September 13th. Two Door Cinema Club and Overcoats are playing Manhattan Center Hammerstein Ballroom on Friday, September 13th. Joanna Newsom is playing El Teatro of El Museo del Barrio on Friday, September 13th. AmaduConcert Music Albums and Amadu are playing Music Hall of Williamsburg on Saturday, September 14th. Kamelot, Battle Beast, and Sonata Arctica are playing Playstation Theater on Saturday, September 14th. The Growlers, The Lemonheads, and The Nude Party are playing SummerStage NYC on Saturday, September 14th. Japanese Breakfast is playing NeueHouse on Saturday, September 14th. Low and Christopher Tignor are playing Murmrr Theatre on Saturday, September 14th. Joanna Newsom is playing El Teatro of El Museo del Barrio on Saturday, September 14th. Jethro Tull is playing Forest Hills Stadium in Forest Hills on Saturday, September 14th at 7pm. Brandi Carlile with Mavis Staples are playing Madison Square Garden in Midtown West / Chelsea / Hudson Yards on Saturday, September 14th at 8pm. Gipsy Kings is playing Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side on Saturday, September 14th at 8pm. Salt-N-Pepa with Loni Love is playing Kings Theatre in Ditmas Park / Flatbush on Saturday, September 14th at 8pm. Shakey Graves and Dr. Dog, Shakey Graves, and Dr. Dog are playing The Rooftop at Pier 17 on Sunday, September 15th. The Body and Assembly Of Light are playing The Bell House on Sunday, September 15th. Joanna Newsom is playing El Teatro of El Museo del Barrio on Sunday, September 15th. Backstreet Boys is playing Prudential Center on Sunday, September 15th at 8pm. Marina with Daya is playing Rumsey Playfield, Central Park in Midtown East on Monday, September 16th at 7pm. Angels and Airwaves are playing Playstation Theater on Tuesday, September 17th. Cold, Awake For Days, and University Drive are playing Brooklyn Bazaar on Tuesday, September 17th. Phantom Planet is playing Elsewhere on Wednesday, September 18th. Malcolm Mooney and The Eleventh Planet and Malcolm Mooney are playing Union Pool on Wednesday, September 18th. Mac DeMarco is playing Brooklyn Steel in Greenpoint on Thursday, September 19th at 8pm. Madonna is playing BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in Boerum Hill on Thursday, September 19th at 8pm. Blink-182 with Lil Wayne and Neck Deep are playing Barclays Center in Boerum Hill on Friday, September 20th at 7pm. Find more fun things to do at agreatbigcity.com/events. New York Fact Here's something you may not have known about New York: If you see a damaged, broken, or dying tree in the city, you can submit a tree service request notifying the Department of Parks Forestry Division of the location Weather The extreme highs and lows for this week in weather history: Record High: 94°F on September 13, 1952 Record Low: 44°F on September 15, 1873 Weather for the week ahead: Possible light rain tomorrow and Sunday, with high temperatures peaking at 84°F on Monday. Intro and outro music: 'Start the Day' by Lee Rosevere — Concert Calendar music from Jukedeck.com

Nicole speaks with Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi about Occupy Wall Street. Steven Thrasher of the Village Voice encountered the NY Post's "Andrea" Peyser at Zuccotti Park and told us about it. Plus MainStreetInsider's Jeremy Koulish on ALEC's voter suppression efforts

Demonstrators were evicted this morning from New York's Zuccotti Park. We hear what's happening in other places. Does the movement have a chance to make political change?

Alex Chadwick spent a weekend at Zuccotti Park with a few Occupy activists...