Erik Vargas, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation at the Philadelphia Liberation Center, says the action he’s seen in that city has been both mind-boggling and terrifying. Protests have gone from a few dozen to a few hundred people at a time, to several protests per day of hundreds or thousands. People are showing that they’re willing to be hurt and die for actual systemic change, and they won’t stop for anything short of it. Now is the time for ideological education and rigorous organization, he says, to maintain momentum, and to make sure our lens remains trained on repressive systems, not “bad apples.”
Jack Rasmus, economist, radio show host and author of “The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump,” reminds listeners that today’s mini-recovery is only very, very qualified good news. Consistently undercounted are the part-time jobs lost, the gig jobs lost, or the unemployed independent contractors. And the Labor Department itself admits that its own labor survey is so limited as to be barely meaningful. There’s also no way we see a V-shaped recovery, he says. Get ready for the big W, austerity programs that only exacerbate public pain, and a decade before we get back the jobs we’ve lost. Meanwhile, of course, the same people who always profit will continue to use their corporate power to line their pockets with our recovery money.
An academic physician working in DC who wishes to remain anonymous joined to explain how his hospital is joining in on the performative allyship movement. But large hospitals are built to make money, and they make that money by exploiting the most vulnerable of their labor force. If your institution is institutional racism, how can it call out institutional racism? Hospitals are cutting costs, exploiting staff, and crawling with police, because they remain pillars of a capitalist system, he says.
Misfit hosts Bob Schlehuber and Jamarl Thomas also broke down New York’s decision to erode our right to habeas corpus, DC’s efforts to evict soldiers from its hotels and Fox News’ latest bro meltdown.
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