The Progress Report – Details, episodes & analysis

After nine years as Progress Alberta's executive director and the editor of the Progress Report, Duncan Kinney is moving on to stabler, more raise-a-family-able things. Join us as we reminisce about some of our greatest hits during Duncan's tenure and talk frankly about the issue of 'activist journalism.'

Jeremy and Duncan review the state of the ANDP leadership race, offer their predictions, and tell you how they'd fill out their ballots today.

Canadian Anti-Hate Network writer and research Peter Smith joins host Duncan Kinney to talk about the recent spate of far right protests at all-ages drag reading events and other queer events in Alberta—and the counter-protests that resist them.

Our guest Abdul Malik makes the case for why the UCP's new union busting bill is actually good. Plus Duncan follows up on his story about the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator war criminal statue by going down the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator rabbit hole. 

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Further reading:

• Opinion: Alberta labour needs the UCP’s union busting bill
• Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex denies that statue they have of a Nazi collaborator war criminal is a Nazi collaborator war criminal
• What does a worker look like?
• How a network of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists penetrated Canada’s Conservative Party to lobby for military conflict
• Long-Distance Nationalism: Ukrainian Monuments and Historical Memory in Multicultural Canada
• INCO imported ex-Nazis, RCMP report says
• War Criminality: A Blank Spot in the Collective Memory of the Ukrainian Diaspora
• Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations
• The Jakarta Method book review

The UCP have dramatically changed the rules around municipal elections in Alberta making it easier for conservatives to win and for big money to sway elections. We dissect the rule changes and the upcoming municipal horse races in Edmonton and Calgary with Romy Garrido. 

We discuss the the organizing and struggle to end police brutality in Calgary and rural Alberta with comedian, public speaker and organizer Adora Nwofor. 

What does society look like when community safety isn't handled by armed cops authorized to kill people? In part two of our conversation on disarming, defunding and dismantling the police with Reakash Walters and Molly Swain, we discuss the abolitionist position.

Edmonton and Calgary spend nine times more on the police than they spend on housing the homeless or social programs. Combined the two cities spend $750 million a year on cops. We talk with Reakash Walters and Molly Swain about how to divest from police and invest in the community. 

The UCP are trying to snatch away financial, social and education benefits from 2100 former foster kids. It's incredibly cruel and totally needless and A.C. and her lawyer Avnish Nanda have taken the government to court and won to keep these benefits – for now. We talk about this case with Nanda and Jenn Prosser an organizer and campaigner who grew up in foster care and kinship care during the aftermath of Klein's cuts. 

We have friend of the pod Jeremy Appel on to talk about how his latest story for the Progress Report, The Manitok Manoeuvre, as well as the Sprawl getting shutout of the media bailout, the Herald caring more about "big beef days" than dead meatpacking workers and the Progress Report's transition to a full-time media organization. Show notes at www.theprogressreport.ca/jeremy_appel_manitok_meatpacking_postmedia_manifesto