WPKN: Politics, Policy, and Planet Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Monthly Labor Report hosts, Richard Hill and Michael Zweig, interview Leonard Aguilar, secretary-treasurer of the Texas AFL-CIO, about the reach and growth of union organizing in Texas -- with special focus on Latinx participation and projected voting patterns.
Interview by Michael Zweig and Richard Hill, Oct. 1, 2024

 The Resistance Roundtable show interviews Branko Marcetic who discusses his recent Jacobin Magazine articles on Biden's horrific Gaza policy; and the apparent decision by the Harris campaign to keep Tim Walz off the campaign trail.
Interview by Scott Harris, Richard Hill and Ruthanne Baumgartner, Oct. 12, 2024

Jay Young and Cheri Quikmeyer discuss the work Common Cause is doing on election protection, i.e. addressing voter suppression, mass purges of the voting rolls, intimidation of poll workers, GOP election deniers’ threats to delay certification of vote totals and thus sow chaos, and the group’s recruitment of volunteers to be poll watchers.

Wajahat Ali discusses the presidential debate and election campaign, with a focus on Trump’s threat to democracy, his demonization of immigrants and white supremacist rhetoric and action, as well as corporate media’s skewed election coverage.  Ali is also author of “Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American.”

Parker Malloy discusses her critique of corporate media for “sanewashing” Trump’s often unhinged and incoherent speeches and interviews — as well as soft-pedaling or sanitizing Trump and Vance’s advocacy of disturbing policies such as Trump’s ‘violent day’ of policing that will end crime, the lie that Democrats advocate the killing of babies after they’re born, and Trump and Project 2025’s plan for the US military to round up millions of immigrants (both legal and illegal) for mass deportation.

Norman Solomon talks about his latest book, “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine,” with a just published revised edition that includes a new afterword on the Gaza War. On the one year anniversary of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, he’ll examine the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel in the conflict, and corporate media’s bias reporting on Israel’s now expanding regional war that has resulted in the slaughter of more than 42,000 Palestinians and thousands more now being killed in Lebanon.

Sarah Kendzior discusses the current state of affairs ahead of the 2024 U.S. Election.

https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/

SARAH KENDZIOR BIO

I am the bestselling author of THE VIEW FROM FLYOVER COUNTRY (2018), HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT (2020), and THEY KNEW (2022). My next book, THE LAST AMERICAN ROAD TRIP, will come out in 2025. From 2018 until 2013, I was the co-host of Gaslit Nation, a weekly podcast which covers corruption in the United States and the rise of authoritarianism around the world. I live in St. Louis, Missouri.

I now write essays regularly at Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter. It’s free — you should subscribe!

I am well-known for my coverage of the Trump administration and its aftermath and for writing about authoritarianism, kleptocracy, transnational organized crime, racism and xenophobia, media, voting rights, technology, the environment, and corruption, among other topics.

From 2016-2020, I was a regular columnist for the Globe and Mail, and from 2012-2024, I was a columnist for Al Jazeera English. I have written for dozens of other outlets including Fast Company, NBC News, POLITICO, Quartz, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, Marie Claire, De Correspondent, The Atlantic, Medium, Radio Free Europe, POLITICO Europe, The Chicago Tribune, The Baffler,  Blue Nation Review, Alive Magazine, Ethnography Matters, The Common Reader, The New York Daily News, La Stampa, Slate, World Policy Journal, The Brooklyn Quarterly, Belt Magazine, Centre for International Governance Innovation, Teen Vogue, City AM,  Opinio Juris,  HRDCVR, World Politics Review, Shondaland, and The New York Times.

In addition to working as a journalist, I am a researcher and scholar. I have a PhD in anthropology from Washington University in Saint Louis (2012) and an MA in Central Eurasian Studies from Indiana University (2006). Most of my work focuses on the authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union and how the internet affects political mobilization, self-expression, and trust.

My academic research has been published in American Ethnologist, Problems of Post-Communism, Central Asian Survey, Demokratizatsiya, Nationalities Papers, Social Analysis, and the Journal of Communication.

Dulce Guzmán discusses how the issue of immigration is being debated by the candidates and covered by the news media in the 2024 presidential election, with a focus on Donald Trump’s demonization of immigrants stoking hate and fear, and an assessment of Vice President Kamala Harris’ stated policies on immigration, with a review of her recent trip to the U.S. Mexico border on Sept. 27.

Julie Houk talks about her group’s work in Georgia, including the filing of a lawsuit to bar enforcement of provisions in a new Georgia law that would permit baseless mass challenges to large swaths of eligible voters, and concern about new rules issued by Georgia’s election board requiring a hand count of Election Day ballots that could cause a consequential delay in certifying the state’s presidential election winner, endangering the democratic process.

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent with The Nation magazine, who talks about her recent article, “An Abortion Ban Killed Amber Thurman—and Likely Many More,” with a focus on how these deaths may carry political consequences in this year’s presidential and congressional election.