What's in The Canada Files this week? First, today is Nakba Day, so Editor Aidan Jonah and host Adam Riggio (that's me!) will talk about how The Canada Files is demonstrating Palestinian solidarity on this most awkward independence day. in more detail, we discuss the recent coup attempt in Venezuela that makes the Bay of Pigs look like the Battle of Guadalcanal, where an American mercenary group tried to organize a ragtag crew of incompetents to ride across the Caribbean and kidnap or kill President Nicolas Maduro. We contrast the vilification of Maduro with the fascistic presidency of Ivan Duque in neighbouring Colombia. Finally, I discuss some research I'm doing on how popular reaction to COVID may drive more people to wasteful suburban development, and the ecological destruction such a movement could cause.

Radical Democrats Radio

Right-Wing Coups in Venezuela and Colombia

Our latest collaboration with the Canada Files, their managing editor Aidan Jonah and I discuss the recent defeats for progressive candidates at the ballot box, what were the seeds of those defeats, and what real progressives can do to escape losing hope.

Bright Futures After Defeats – Bernie Sanders & Jeremy Corbyn

Canada Files Managing Editor Aidan Jonah joins Adam for a talk about the upcoming rent strike for all regions of North America under lockdown to slow the spread of COVID.

April 1: Rent Strike Across North America!

Radical Democrats Radio is launching a new series in collaboration with The Canada Files, a journalism startup building progressive media for foreign and domestic news and analysis. Today, we're talking about the constantly escalating conflict between the United States and Iran, as well as some reflections on the future of Canada's progressive political party, the New Democrats.

Radical Democrats at The Canada Files

The third episode of People Vs Power! Our featured interview is with Leah Kalsi, a candidate for the New Democratic Party in the district of Willowdale in north Toronto. She's an autism analyst whose frustration with the Ontario government's ignorant cuts to social services drove her to community activism and her candidacy for Canada's federal parliament. I'm also talking with my friend Dapinder Singh Randhawa about the housing crisis among international students and Indian immigrants in western Brampton. Plus, this is the first podcast since starting Radical Democrats Radio that includes a vocal musical outro. God help you for staying long enough to hear that.

People Vs Power 3 – One Bold Woman From Willowdale

The People Vs Power series of Radical Democrats Radio returns with two new interviews with progressive political leaders. - We talk in Adam's backyard with Branko Gasperlin, the NDP candidate for the Etobicoke-Lakeshore district, the southern end of the old Toronto borough of Etobicoke. We talk about what made Branko the man he is today, a life of public service that he sees taking him to represent his communities in Parliament in Ottawa. - A sometimes-difficult phone conversation with Bev Buckway, former mayor of Whitehorse and recent chair of Yukon's federation of municipalities. We chat as best we can through signal interference about the nature of the housing crisis facing northern cities like Whitehorse, and chat about the unique circumstances of Canada's Arctic lands.

People Vs Power: Introducing Candidate Branko Gasperlin

People Vs Power Episode 1: Where We Stand Now Hello (0:00); What is People Vs Power? (0:45); We are a progressive show (3:19); How our elections work (4:45); Fixed election dates (5:00); Full partisan disclosure (7:50); What you can do to help win an election (8:01); About our hosts’ progressive candidate: Branko Gasperlin (9:22); How our hosts joined electoral politics (10:42); Regular segment: Tory Crimes! (17:00); But also Liberal Crimes (18:11); What Liberal MP will stand up for people in poverty? (21:55); Trudeau’s indifference to Trump’s concentration camps (22:54); Canada’s immigration detention camps (23:50); Liberal indifference to rural, northern, Indigenous poverty (24:27); Doug Ford’s Ontario (26:08); Bri on Ford’s cuts to create a docile populace of paupers (26:50); Adam on Ford’s stinking corruption (28:58); François Légault’s Québec (31:56); Redefining secularism in racist terms (32:36); The nationalist and fascist history of the concept of “La vivre ensemble” (34:41); And that’s our show! (37:42); An appeal to the coming refugees from England (39:57).

People Vs Power: How to Overthrow a Government Legally

How the harms people suffer under a cruel government spread beyond policies and institutions, all the way into people's hearts and everyday lives. How we create a society without friends. Radical Democrats Radio returns with Stories About Autism and Doug Ford's Ontario. Music by the man of Mumbai, Toronto, and bloody St. John's Newfoundland, FamLi.

Stories About Autism and Doug Ford's Ontario

Contrary to popular belief, taking Indigenous knowledge and culture seriously doesn't harm Western culture. In fact, it makes us stronger. My reflections this episode turn on the work of Anishinaabeg Canadian philosopher Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. I try to understand and explore her epochal ideas. My interview today is with Ian Borsuk, an environmental activist and community organizer from Hamilton, Ontario.

Grounded Knowledge in Practice – Exploring in Reconciliation

I interview Professor Bernie Wills about the future of Canadian governance, which will end up a lot like Medieval European governance if justice is done. We talk about the freedom to form your own communities, your own laws and moralities, to see what communities are truly viable or too deranged to live. I talk about the latest and greatest scandal of Justin Trudeau's government, and its extra spitball in the eye of an insult to one of Canada's greatest Indigenous jurists. I reflect on the epochal philosophy of Anishinaabeg thinker Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Busy show in 35 minutes.

Indigenous Philosophy, Freedom to Live, and Canada's Genocide

Today's episode features an interview with Ian Borsuk, one of the chief campaign staff at Environment Hamilton. This is a group that uses media advocacy to call out corporations for causing harmful pollution events, and community organizing to teach communities how to advocate for their own rights to clean, vibrant ecologies.

Organizing the People to Protect Their Ecologies

Discussing Canadian New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh's struggles to maintain his bonafides with progressive activists, while also appealing to a multicultural, suburban electorate to get himself into parliament and maybe even prime minister by 2019's end. My conversation with Bernard Wills of Memorial University continues, as we discuss the history and philosophy of how the state and the concept of sovereignty developed. Plus, I discuss the Yellow Vests and the unreachability of extremists.

Squeezing What Little Democracy We Can Get!

An interview with professor Bernard Wills about his latest book, Believing Weird Things. Bernard confronts and breaks down the ideology of Islamophobia, radical nationalist politics in the West, and the crisis of conservatism's intellectual emptiness in our era, among many, many, many other things. We also examine some of Antonio Negri's concepts of resistance, and how resistance to oppression fuels political creativity. What is political creativity anyway? You'll get one good idea when you listen to the show.

"Resistance is prior to power"

Talking with author, journalist, and educator Marcie Bianco some simple questions – Does America have a future? What makes social media such a powerful tool to manipulate and enslave us? Are our universities and colleges even capable of this new literacy challenge at all? All these meditations and more in Bianco's in-progress book, Freedom.

Was Online Illiteracy a Seed of 2010s Fascism?

Talking with Matt Nicolaïdis, a progressive activist with the New Democratic Party in Canada, about the issues that matter most to rural Ontarians, and rural people throughout North America. We talk about the ongoing water crisis in the town of Tottenham, Ontario, and how the politics of ecology – clean water, stopping pollution, sustainability – can revitalized progressive politics in the small towns and farming communities of Canada and the United States. We're also talking about a recently published book of essays, Believing Weird Things by Bernard Wills, particularly how those essays engage with the contemporary politics of extremism. * Support Radical Democrats Radio on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/radicaldemocrats/

The Secret to Rural Progressive Organizing: Ecology

The podcast radicalizing all kinds, forms, and vectors of democracy in thinking and action since 2018.

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