NPR: We Can’t Stop Stopping Cop City

Originally aired October 10 2023

Today we continue the discussion of the Stop Cop City movement, which began in Atlanta but is increasingly national as more cop city developments are announced and met with resistance.

As it grows in scope, it also intensifies locally. In Atlanta, a mass call to action was announced under the heading of Block Cop City, and we were honored to get to speak with Barry, one of the cool folks helping to make the action happen.

NPR: Your Phone is a Cop

Hosts Juniper and Roger discuss surveillance, past and present methods, panopticon and discipline/control societies, and how social media can affect wellness. Above all, they tell you why your phone is a cop in your pocket. How might we find ways to resist the norms of 24/7 surveillance? Tune in turn off find out Ⓐ

Note: our team had to do some improvised recording for this episode, and you may hear a slightly degraded audio quality.

NPR: Moms for Liberty, Bombs for Liberty?

This week, we dive into Moms for Liberty, a national organization that astroturfs policy on the school board and county level under the guise of being “Concerned parents.” The Southern Policy Law Center designates them to be a hate group as their members have quoted hitler and pushed for the erasure and eradication of trans youth.

Recently, they’ve made forays into Davis, holding anti-trans events at the Mary L Stephens Public Library. We chat about the alarm that they’ve brought to the community, via bomb threats and general fashy hysteria, and how we might respond as abolitionists and targets of the group’s hate.

Also, we have an extended Bad Cop segment on a proposed project to expand the Sacramento County Jail.

As always, fire to the prisons; free them all.

NPR: campus, system, state, world

Today, we look at the question of how our abolitionist perspectives can scale down to a place like a specific university campus, and how they also can scale up to address policing at an international level.

Relatedly, we give an update on something relevant to our last show, which focused on labor action and its repression at UC San Diego

Then we explore in more depth the way that university administrators and other kinds of bosses function as cops and work with cops by looking at UCD as an example. Featuring a special guest!

Finally, we move our focus outward to look at what is happening with policing internationally and talk a bit about the relation of US policing to some struggles happening on the other side of the Atlantic.

NPR feat. UCSD community members

On May 5th, a group of UAW affiliates walked on stage at a UC San Diego awards ceremony and disrupted the scheduled events. Why you ask? They were bringing to light the failings of the university administration to uphold the union contract they brokered as a result of the UAW strike of 2022. As a result of this demonstration, 67 graduate students are now facing disciplinary action.

This week, we speak with two UCSD community members about their ongoing struggle. Alex is a graduate student researcher studying cancer genomics at UCSD and a member of the UAW local 2865 academic workers union. Wendy is faculty member at UCSD and part of executive board of San Diego Faculty Association that endorsed the faculty solidarity letter that now 299 signatures (over 100 from UCSD) calling for the withdrawal of the charges.

NPR feat. Davis Books to Prisoners

Featuring a conversation with Colin from Davis Books to Prisoners. Juniper and Mai discuss the carceral system’s emulation of slavery, banned books in prisons, and the B2P mission.

NPR: Kirks Off Campus debrief

TPUSA, known fascidork student org, brought their leader Charlie Kirk to UCD campus on 3/14/23. This week, 4 community members discuss the outcomes and their thoughts on the event as a whole.

NPR feat. Mark Bray

This week we speak with Mark Bray, a historian of human rights, political violence, and politics in Modern Europe at Rutgers University. He is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House 2017), The Anarchist Inquisition: Assassins, Activists, and Martyrs in Spain and France (Cornell 2022), Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street (Zero 2013), and the co-editor of Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader (PM Press 2018). His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Salon, Boston Review, and numerous edited volumes.

You can find out more about what Bray is up to here:

https://markmbray.wordpress.com/

Mark Bray on twitter

NPR feat. Arnoldo Garcia

This week we speak with Arnoldo Garcia from the Chiapas Support Committee.

Find Arnoldo’s art and writing here: https://artofthecommune.wordpress.com/

For ways to support/learn about the movement: https://chiapas-support.org/

NPR w/ Maddalena

We talk with Maddalena, a disabled, chronically ill, autistic, and ADHD PhD candidate at UC Davis who is also a rank and file UAW 2865 member and proud Wildcat striker. She’s a 1st generation college student and a police and prison abolitionist, whose work has included organizing and running expungement clinics in the Central Valley. She has also helped formerly incarcerated and system impacted community members work towards pursuing their formal educational goals, such as high school and college degrees.