Our Future on the Line 2024: WPKN Election Podcasts (WPKN)

Maria Hinojosa is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, founder of Futuro Media, and anchor of Latino USA. She sat down with Isabelle Barbour for this feature interview that first aired on WPKN Community Radio in Bridgeport in August of 2024. The conversation includes reflections on changes to the democratic presidential ticket in the Summer of 2024 as well as an update on Maria's time at a MAGA gym.

Brian Tokar discusses his article “Movements for Climate Action: Toward Utopia or Apocalypse?” which examines the climate crisis and how we can chart a new path to a future that is not only sustainable but better than the way we currently live and interact with technology. Tokar will be addressing this topic at Hamden, Connecticut’s Unitarian Society on Sept. 14.

Jeff Halper is an Israeli-American anthropologist, author, lecturer, and political activist  has lived in Israel since 1973. He is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and a co-founder of The One Democratic State Campaign. A Jewish Israeli, Jeff speak to us from Jerusalem about Israel’s entrenched use of humiliation to control the Palestinian population and how this has now begun to reveal some surprisingly unforeseen consequences. (Broadcast on WPKN, June 12, 2023)

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.

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.

Matt Bruenig discusses the important issues examined in his recent article, “Our Verdict on Kamala Harris’s New Plans,” and issues related to economic policies being debated by Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election campaign.

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

Nora Benavidez talks about the coalition led by Free Press calling on corporate media outlets to report on rising authoritarianism and threats to democracy during the 2024 election campaign, covering six practices the media should adhere to during moments of crisis.

Mark Green talks about his newest book titled, “The Inflection Election: Democracy or Fascism in 2024,” which warns Americans that this November will be a choice between a Party of Progress and a Party of Dangerous Extremism that may determine the path for American governance for generations.

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.

The Brennan Center has reported that in 2023, there were at least 356 voter suppression bills considered by lawmakers in 47 states. No matter what Nancy Pelosi tells me in her emails, chipping in five bucks is not going to increase the health of our democracy. Let's talk about what will and also about how the health of democracy impacts our health as Americans. We'll talk to folks from Fair Count, Healthy Democracy, Healthy People, the ACLU and more. This piece was first broadcasted on 5/5/24 by WPKN Community Radio 89.5 FM

Yumna Patel, Palestine News Director for Mondoweiss, reports from Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank about the significance for Palestinians of last week’s military assault on the Jenin refugee camp. In this reporting, she covers the effect on Palestinian youth of the Palestine Authority’s inability to protect them and what “Gazafication” means for the future of the Palestinian nation (Broadcast on WPKN, July 12, 2023)

Steve Wick, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, journalist, formerly of Newsday and more recently editor of the Suffolk Times, talks about his earlier work, two new upcoming books, the importance of local journalism and emphasizes that, “if you want to get the present right, you have to get the past right” which means, he says, uncovering the truth and telling the complete story. (WPKN, September 4, 2024)

Dr. Yara Asi, author and assistant professor at the University of Central Florida, where she studies physical and mental health in conflict-affected and fragile populations. Born in Palestine, Dr. Asi is the author of  How War Kills; The Overlooked Threats to our Healthand a New York Times opinion piece titled Gaza is showing us we need new tools to measure trauma. She will talk to us about the many challenges facing researchers who want to understand trauma in Gaza and translate it into policy. (Broadcast on WPKN May 8, 2024)

Robert Massoud,  Palestinian founder of the Zatoun organization, speaking to us from Toronto about the twenty years he has spent telling the story of Palestine through its olive oil, without being silenced by politicians and media.(First broadcast on WPKN on September 13, 2023.)

Greg Palast talks about Georgia’s five-member state election board, dominated by MAGA election deniers, which adopted new rules raising alarm about the potential for confusion and interference in the election certification process this November, examined his article, “Prepare for November’s Quiet Coup.”

Palast is also the New York Times best-selling author of “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.”

 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

Chris Antal, Staff Chaplain and Dr. Peter Yeomans, Staff Psychologist at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Philadelphia talk about understanding the suffering of moral injury among U.S. combat-deployed Veterans and their facilitation of a 12-week Moral Injury Group and Community Healing Ceremony in which Veterans’ burdens are shared by the community made more more conscious of the realities of warfare. (Broadcast on WPKN, Jan. 11, 2023)

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.”

James Risen will discuss the important issues of race and racism in the 2024 election campaign examined in his recent Intercept article, “Racism Is Why Trump is so Popular,” where he argues: “Trump’s popularity with his base isn’t the result of economic anxiety, as many claimed in 2016. It’s about race and demographics.”

Risen is The Intercept’s senior national security correspondent who waged a seven-year battle, risking jail, after the Bush administration and later the Obama administration sought to force him to testify and reveal his confidential sources in a leak investigation.

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.

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.