Episode 282 - How to be Independent (w/ Ajamu Baraka)

Great episode! (as usual) :-)

You’re not wrong.. but there will never be a majority of people who embrace veganism. A lot of what you listed could also be aimed at monocultural factory farming of plant-based products. If we took meat completely out of our diet, we would still need a food industry revolution. Telling people they will not be allowed to hunt or fish because animals are sentient is not ever going to work.

Hear, hear!

I hope so. I've heard her say things like that before and had the same reaction.

Randy Hendrickson

Thank you! I completely misunderstood

Tyler Sambucci

Agreed. She's referring to Democrats telling people it was safe to go out and stand in line at crowded polling places for hours during the primary so they could vote for Biden after Bernie had dropped out because he was worried about Covid. And it was a dangerous and cynical move by Dem leadership to get a jump on things.

Randy Hendrickson

Briahna said “knowing what we know now about covid” in reference to people going out to vote in the 2020 primaries. What does this mean? Covid was a real threat during that time, our hospitals were packed. I hate to criticize because she’s constantly getting unfairly dogpiled for this stuff but we can all still agree that covid was a deadly virus and a threat to in-person voters

Tyler Sambucci

Tldr

Bob K Ross

Hi Brie- this is totally off topic but I’ve noticed kinda recently how you have made some off hand comments about veganism- the hamburger thing, the mom at school trying to advocate for veganism, whether it’s immoral to raise a child vegan. I think, as Glenn said many episodes ago, for you to really sit down with this topic. It touches literally every faction of everything- a corporate controlled food system that controls politicians, the known health outcomes and their repressions, the environmental impact, the social impact the way it has outsized effects on polluting rural communities including rural Black communities, the way they recruit undocumented workers, the high rates of domestic abuse, mental health and suicide at rates that is only next to people who have seen war, the exploitation of workers, the recent laws in Iowa and elsewhere abiyt having children work in slaughterhouses (cuz guess why no one wants to do that work??) and finally at the heart of it, the complete exploitation and commodification of the bodies of mostly female sentient living breathing lives who we decide have turned to profit because we think we own this planet. The roots that “dominion” has in our culture because secularism is still influenced by centuries of religious belief. How the working class never consumed the obscene amounts of animal products we do now up until less than a century ago. This is a LEFTIST issue, it’s a human animal and environmental rights issue, it’s a climate corporate and political corruption issue and its a huge ethical issue at this particular juncture of the state of human beings on this planet. We don’t need to always hear the same thing from different people about electoral ism and how awful the Democratic Party is. Have some animal rights activists on. Watch Dominion and the Smell of Money. Not all vegans are leftists (many are but some are libertarians because it aligns in similar ways, liberals even conservatives) but the left are hypocrites for not engaging with this topic to scoff it off like it’s nothing or fringe just so they can continue eating burgers because they wanna exclaim it’s not a working class issue. It 100% is. And it’s about corporatism, commodification and exploitation not to mention the jailing of activists just like other environmental activists or the cop city activists. Any leftist who scoffs has never engaged with it on a substantive level and I would really like you to engage with this topic instead of making jokes about our last hamburger or comparing a family raising their kids vegan as being an ethical dilemma akin to gender reassignment surgery before 18. Thanks love your show, always a fan but please get around to touching this topic.

Excellent episode

Bide

Love the Pink Floyd outro

Single payer, socialized healthcare for ALL, no more "insurance" grift. Corporate dictatorship of the US has had many decades to reform but that time has passed- there is no middle ground for brothers and sisters dying because they're poor, revolution NOW

I absolutely hate when people say stuff like a we can get a public option based on income because it doesn't make sense to have that and private insurance.As long as their is a overlap of care the system is going to be bad. The Australia /Ireland system of universal coverage but you can buy private insurance on top of that to get access to private clinics is the only middle ground I can see that makes sense right not. But of course medicare for all is the best option of the most people.

Just so everyone knows: the ACLU and DSA in Kansas did fuck all to help with ballot access for the greens or for Howie Hawkins to be recognized as a non party affiliated candidate in 2020. Wouldn’t spread the word, would not offer legal help. Do not trust them. However, some people collect signatures professionally and some may not align with you perfectly or closely politically but you should trust these people as they’re often committed to actually doing the hard work of talking to people and getting signatures. It’s how Jill Stein got an independent ballot line in the state and this is a tactic worth investing in rather than wasting your breath on the DSA and ACLU.

Nick Grayson

This was spectacular! I agree with so much of what he said... What you both said.

Jonathan Kadmon

An interesting discussion! Mr. Ajamu Baraka's entry, like Prof. Cornel West's, thickens the plot on the Left. Splitting the vote may backfire as a strategy if it is only the votes on the Left that split without doing much damage on the Right. If the Right unites behind one candidate, which is likely if Trump is taken out of contention by criminal indictments, then DeSantis can be the only serious candidate for Republicans. RFK Jr's candidacy is causing a lot of ripples given his open hostility to the military industrial complex and big pharma (on Joe Rogan's podcast he spoke with rare candour for anyone in American politics) which hearkens to his father's 1968 populist campaign that showed great promise to unite Left and Right only to be tragically cut short prematurely by assassination.

Nathan Ngumi

The forces that are keeping Med4All are not into incremental changes either, and our politicians remain COMPLETELY owned by the private health insurance industry. It will take the same amount of political capital to move them to do this as it would Med 4 All. Basically we have to destroy the industry completely to even get a small change, but of course we would go for the big prize if we got that far. Its this political capital argument that makes me want to skip a Public Option and go straight to single payer. Because, as we saw with Biden, they are just as far away from passing Public Option than Med4All. They are just not allowed to do, and that wont change unless the industry is completely taken out. I definitely think it is a great step towards Med4All though, if we were actually a functioning democracy. but when they say "how are we gonna pay for it?" or "People dont want to lose their current coverage" and Dems offer half-measures in its place, just know thats all in bad faith and the truth is, none of it is allowed as long as the private health insurance has such a firm grip on our legislative bodies.

I'm throwing this out there for Medicare-For-All movers and shakers b/c I haven't heard it: We already have a health program ready to copy-n-paste for the rest of America in the form of the Veteran's Administration. (Check out "Best Healthcare Anywhere" by Phillip Longman for short summa.) It's the 'Honda Accord' of care. We've had open source medical records since the late 1970s and a recent study on surgical care confirmed it's still solid: https://www.facs.org/for-medical-professionals/news-publications/news-and-articles/press-releases/2023/veterans-affairs-healthcare-is-as-good-as-non-va-care-for-many-operations/ We've seen the vet population decline as our WW2/Korean citizens pass on and the Vietnam cohort is much smaller. When us Millennials become the old timers, the VA will have to reallocate funds and priorities, especially in rural areas. The privatization schemes of Obama (Choice Act) and Trump (Mission Act) have chipped away at the system, but Biden has been better than most on this score. Why not run on opening the VA to the families of veterans to fill in those gaps instead of trying to go from 0 to 60mph? This could be the test pilot we never and will never get with politicos continuing to dangle the juicy carrot of single payer over our heads. Is this something Bernie didn't consider in 2016/2020, Bri?

Alexander Lemons