The Caribbean; Energy; Profit & Hate

18 September 2017 – Every time Denise Oliver-Velez is on our show I learn so much! This week we asked Denise to join us to cover what is happening in the Caribbean following Hurricane Irma. I particularly loved the posts Denise put up at Daily Kos on Puerto Rico and the history of the word “hurricane” as well as her thoughts on the subject. We spend most of our time on Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, the places where Irma really did first make landfall in the US. (If you thought that was Florida you weren’t alone.)

In our Lying Liar Lie of the Week segment Will talks about an attack against a trans woman during a protest at Speaker’s Corner in the UK. Fortunately, it was caught on video and Will walks us through it as well as posting the video and some stills here.

In Lying Liar I talk for just a minute about Equifax who is making the obviously false statement that “they are doing everything they can.” This is clearly not the case and I’m quite sure we will be talking about them in the near future.

In Will’s big block he talked about climate change, weather, alternate energy and politics. It’s appalling to think that the states which most need to confront new kinds of energy generation are fighting it the hardest.

In my block I get into the profits being made by Facebook, Google and tech in general, to promulgate hate. The blood money tech companies are taking as they act as conduits for hate groups (and terrorism) is much more costly to society than it is profitable in annual reports. We simply must find an effective way to address this.

And one more thing…

In a special election, scheduled for 26 September, Florida State Senate candidate Annette Taddeo is facing an extreme get-out-the-vote (GOTV) challenge. She is running in District 40, which is Miami-Dade, and many of her prospective constituents are among those who had to evacuate. Flippable.org has identified this race as one which can be won but needs immediate help. Anything you can do would be appreciated. Carrots! – Arliss

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A note on Lying Liar, the video we have is pretty shaky, and while it’s clear what happens in said video, it’s a chaotic scene. So to make things easier for our listeners, I’ve got stills from the video to walk folks through what happened, followed by the video in full.

Look for the red bus, as the scene we’re paying attention to starts just below it. A woman in a blue jacket and purple hat approaches a group of chanting protesters. She gets into an animated conversation with them and then pushes into the crowd, raising her camera above their heads. The crowd pushes back and blocks her camera with signs. Look for the bright spot to the right of the images below:

A pushing match breaks out, and we lose sight of the altercation, catching glimpses through the crowd as the Camera pans away. But when the camera re-focuses on the scuffle, the woman who started the altercation has grabbed one of the Trans protesters by the throat. You can see her just to the right of center, our view over the shoulders of two onlookers:

We lose sight of her again, but the camera returns to her, and she’s still got her hands on the protester she’s chosen to attack:

And at this stage, when she’s grabbed a protester by the throat, dragged them halfway across a footpath, and enthusiastically participating in a fight she started, another protester punches her to get her to release the person she’s grabbed:

Despite pretty clear evidence to the contrary, showing her starting this altercation and then enthusiastically engaging in the resulting fight, she is claiming martyrdom and… in a rather weird twist, saying she wants to spank people.

Which is just gross.

–Will

The full video is below:

Moving Forward & Denise Oliver-Velez

14 November 2016 – As was said so beautifully by American civil rights lawyer and Sikh, Valerie Kaur, in her moving piece in the Washington Post following the white supremacist massacre of the Charleston Nine, she still felt optimism “Because today we mourn. Tomorrow we organize.” Many of us are still spinning with emotions following the 8 November election we must take a breath to grieve, we must take care of ourselves, our families and our loved ones – and then we must organize. Fast. There is no time to waste.

Our guest for the interview this week is Professor Denise Oliver-Velez (@DeOliver47). Denise’s experience as a civil rights activist goes back to the Young Lords Party and the Black Panthers. Though she has won some, she has also lost many struggles and her perspective on losing and still moving forward seemed perfect for this time in our Party, our movement and our hearts.

I begin the show talking about grief and making sure we are all clear that there is no “right” way to grieve. People will grieve in many different ways but the bottom line is that we are resilient. This too shall pass. I must say, however, I am done with being nice. I am finished with letting radical left purists, bigots, white supremacists, sexists and Confederate flag traitors, people who are the least among us, believe that I find them anything other than deplorable. I am through trying to reason with the irrational and the stupid. Consider this your pre-rant warning. Moving forward, I would like to see Rep. Keith Ellison become the new Chairman of the DNC. He would be a unifying voice and a much needed one. I am also going to invest my time in the coming Obama/Holder National Democratic Redistricting Committee project. I’m going to put my energy into getting rid of the incredibly harmful national gerrymander. This project begins with the 2017 elections in VA and NJ so again, time is of the essence.

Will spends time talking about some reorganization within the Democratic Party and about the “we oppose everything” tactic which has served the GOP so well during the Obama administration. Will deeply believes that in addition to the important big tent work the Democratic Party has been doing to become increasingly more inclusive, some of that needs to be directed toward the specific and forgotten needs of rural (and by “rural” he does not mean just rural white) communities. He also brings into real focus the scam which masquerades as the American Green Party. He also pointed out that Donald Trump has a legitimacy problem, and no mandate, because Hillary Clinton got more votes than any presidential candidate in history with the exception of Barak Obama himself.

As we all try to figure out for ourselves the best way to keep heart, I have to say one of the things which did me the most good this past week was the soothing and still hilarious “F*ck That: An Honest Meditation” on YouTube. I highly recommend it. Carrots! – Arliss

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“Hopping Mad” Debuts!

21 September 2015 – We survived the launch! It would have been better had it not taken us about eight hours to record the show only to later discover that we still had a strange audio problem in a couple of places but all-in-all we are still in one piece and we are downright hoppy with the result. It’s hard to be anything but thrilled with the end product because we had such a wonderful time talking with SUNY professor and Daily Kos feature writer, Denise Oliver-Velez. I think it’s obvious that Dee is basically a progressive rock star. She answered questions about hope, Puerto Rico, the Latino get-out-the-vote effort and education. I especially loved the conversation about the fact that the Moral Mondays platform and the Black Lives Matter platforms are putting forward issues that are not “new” contrary to the commentary by mainstream media. Dee, with her wealth of perspective on progressive movements closed out by commenting on the difference between getting out the word in the 1970s versus the social media of today but she was sure to say, “The revolution will be slogged, not blogged.” We make change by talking with one another directly.

Will and I began the show talking a little bit about how we got started in the space that ultimately lead to “Hopping Mad.” We then went on to talk about the need for a new New Deal via job guarantee programs.

So, here it is, the very first Hopping Mad…