Delete Your Account Podcast

This is just a teaser for today's episode, which is available for Patreon subscribers only!   We can't do the show without your support, so help us keep the lights on over here and access tons of bonus content by subscribing on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. While you’re at it, we also love it when you subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts.  This week, Roqayah and Kumars celebrate Halloween on the After Hours feed with friends of the show Bryan Quinby, Donald Borenstein and Mattie Lubchansky. Bryan is the co-host of Street Fight Radio, alongside Brett Payne, and the cocreator and costar of an upcoming live action comedy series on Means TV. Donald is a freelance journalist and filmmaker whose work has appeared on Means TV. Mattie Lubchansky is the associate editor of The Nib and the author of the Antifa Super Soldier Cookbook as well as the upcoming graphic novel Boys Weekend. The gang discusses Halloween traditions from candy to costumes before sharing their favorite scary movies and

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Kooper Caraway, president of the South Dakota Federation of Labor, he’s also the former statewide representative for AFSCME Council 65, which represents workers in South Dakota, North Dakota and Minnesota. Previously, Kooper worked with the American Federation of Teachers and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Kooper joins us to discuss the wave of strikes sweeping across the United States: over 10,000 John Deere workers, 1,400 Kellogg’s cereal factory workers, over 24,000 nurses and healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente, and many more. We discuss the tactics being deployed by employers—like attempting to hire non-union workers—and why it's imperative that workers hold the line and continue to fight back. Kooper explains the optimism present among workers, and how this has driven a new generation of union members and organizers.  Follow Kooper on Twitter @KooperCaraway. If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, sub

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by immigration attorney and returning guest Sophia Gurulé, policy counsel and staff attorney with the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project at the Bronx Defenders, a public defender nonprofit in New York City. Sophia was also involved in the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project in Dilley, Texas where she helped provide legal services to asylum-seeking women and children and advocated for an end to family detention. Sophia sheds light on the Biden administration’s mass deportation of Haitian refugees and how right-wing judges anointed by the Federalist Society are keeping the most draconian Trump policies in place. The gang also picks up where Sophia’s last interview left off, discussing Biden’s immigration plan and its shortcomings, Bill Clinton’s immigration legacy and the history of the prison-to-deportation pipeline, and why movements for climate justice, workers’ rights and prison-industrial complex abolition can’t shy away from the demand to abolish bo

This is a free clip of our Patreon-only episode with Brett and Bryan of Street Fight Radio. Subscribe at Patreon to hear the rest! On this episode of Delete Your Account After Hours, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by the hosts of Street Fight Radio, Brett Payne and Bryan Quinby.  Brett and Bryan update us on their latest post-pandemic lifestyle choices—from Bryan's weight loss to Brett's flashy new paint job—and what types of hedonistic misadventures they've been up to.  The gang also gets into the spooky season a little early by talking aliens, 9/11 conspiracy theories, and Brett and Bryan try their luck at another game of Ohio or Nohio. Finally, we learn why Bryan thinks "wrestling is back" thanks to the AEW, and how the WWE has failed audiences and wrestlers, paving the wave for a more exciting and creative world of wrestling. Follow Brett on Twitter @BrettPain and Bryan @murderxbryan. You can also follow the official Street Fight show account @StreetFightWCRS.

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by socialist congressional candidate and political organizer Imani Oakley, formerly legislative director for New Jersey Working Families, deputy chief of staff in the New Jersey State Assembly, and constituent advocate in the US Senate. She is also the first Dean of Movement Building at the Movement School and recently declared her candidacy in New Jersey’s 10th congressional district, challenging four-term incumbent Donald Payne Jr. in the June 2022 Democratic primary.  Imani describes the experiences that galvanized her to get involved in policy making at the highest levels of government while pushing her further and further to the left, from witnessing police brutality in her neighborhood to working in the district office of Senator Cory Booker. Imani also talks about her work at Working Families, where she took on New Jersey’s wildly corrupt ballot design, protesting the Biden administration’s eviction inaction with Cori Bush on the Capitol steps, her vision for

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Shanti Singh and René Christian Moya. Shanti is the Legislative and Communications Director for the statewide tenants rights organization Tenants Together. René is an organizer with the L.A. Tenants Union and campaign coordinator for ACCE, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.Shanti and René join us to discuss the consequences of evictions in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, and how the eviction moratorium has played out for renters. We examine the impact of the moratorium, the lack of tenancy protections, and the displacement of the homelessness in California. The crew also discusses the nefarious ties between members of the real estate industry and property owners and their efforts to further criminalize the unhoused communities in California.Follow René on Twitter @rcmoya84 and you can also visit the LA Tenants Union’s website at join.latenentsunion.org to become a member. You can follow Shanti on Twitter @uhshanti and Tenants Together @tenant

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by labor and tech reporter extraordinaire Edward Ongweso Jr., a staff writer at Vice’s Motherboard and cohost of This Machine Kills, a podcast about the political economy of tech.  Ed shares a bit about his own history as an organizer, which saw him involved in the successful campaign to pass the country's first ride-hail vehicle license cap for drivers in New York City, before expanding on his reporting about the nationwide strike of Uber and Lyft drivers on July 21. The gang discusses the package of antitrust legislation targeting the tech sector currently waiting for a floor vote in the House of Representatives, the provisions of the PRO Act reportedly included in Democrats’ Senate infrastructure bill and how they would impact labor struggles in the gig economy. Ed explains why Uber’s business model is not what it seems and that it is unprofitable by design, situating the company’s practices in the context of the possibility of a tech bubble in the stock market

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by grassroots organizer and abolitionist Mariame Kaba, known best as @prisonculture on Twitter. Mariame, whose work focuses primarily on dismantling the prison industrial complex, is also the founder of Project NIA, an advocacy group focused on ending youth incarceration, and co-founded a number of other organizations including the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women. Mariame describes the impact that mutual aid has had during the pandemic, and how mutual aid functions as an act of solidarity, especially during times of crisis when communities are left without resources. We also discuss her new, New York Times bestselling book "We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing And Transforming Justice" and the abolitionist principles that help guide her work. The crew also examines the emotional satisfaction and fallout behind high profile cases like those of Bill Cosby and Derek Chauvin, and why retribution and revenge are not th

Enjoy this free teaser of our interview with Sarah Jaffe. Subscribe at Patreon to hear the whole thing!   This week Roqayah and Kumars are joined by returning guest and labor journalist extraordinaire Sarah Jaffe, cohost of Dissent Magazine’s Belabored podcast and the author of two books: Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, and a new book out this year from Hurst and Bold Type Books, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone.   The gang starts off with the latest on the Palestinian general strike and takes stock of how the BDS movement has shifted US political discourse on Israeli apartheid before moving across the pond as Sarah explains the role of anti-Palestinian propaganda in the UK Labour Party. Sarah debunks business owners’ claims of a “labor shortage” in the US and takes a sober look at the state of the labor movement today before ending on a sporting note.   Follow Sarah on Twitter at @sarahljaffe, keep up with her work on her personal w

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined—from Ramallah, Palestine—by Rawan Eid and Fathi Nimer, creators of the resource hub Decolonize Palestine. Previously, Rawan organized for Students for Justice in Palestine and the Democratic Socialists of America. After moving to Palestine, she began working for a feminist organization in Ramallah and attending meetings at a local youth group dedicated to sharing Palestinians’ stories and providing a space for discussion. Fathi Nimer is a political scientist, activist, and a former teaching fellow at the Democracy and Human Rights program at Birzeit University. Rawan and Fathi describe the lessons they've drawn from their personal lives in creating Decolonize Palestine, and how the long arm of Israeli apartheid has impacted and dictated their day to day experiences—from accessing identification cards, the difficulties they face in traveling to Jerusalem from their home in Ramallah, and even something as simple as having a pet. We examine how far the discourse on Pa

Kumars and Roqayah are joined this week by India Walton, a registered nurse, community organizer and candidate for mayor of Buffalo, New York. She is a founder and former executive director of Fruit Belt community land trust, an historic grassroots housing justice organization, and also former lead community organizer for Open Buffalo’s Opportunity and Justice coalition. She’s already picked up endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America and New York’s Working Families Party. They call her the unofficial Mayor of Buffalo, she’s just looking to make it super official. We talk to India about her ideas for transforming the city of Buffalo, including her ideas around policing and public safety, housing, food access, COVID response and more. If you want to support India's campaign, you can volunteer or donate. If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show on App

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by returning guest Sydney Ghazarian and first timer Ashik Siddique, both climate organizers with the Democratic Socialists of America’s Ecosocialist Working Group and coordinators for DSA’s Green New Deal and PRO Act campaigns. Syd is the Los Angeles-based founder of the Ecosocialist Working Group and previously came on the show to tackle everything from racism in the environmentalist movement to what we can learn from indigenous-led pipeline blockades, as well as her article in In These Times outlining an agenda for escalating climate organizing through labor tactics. Ashik serves on the steering committee of the Ecosocialist Working Group and is a research analyst with the National Priorities Project, an initiative of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.  After Ashik shares a bit about his personal path to organizing and the left, the gang jumps into the history of US labor law and breaks down how the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, whi

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again from the top of the hour by Brett Payne and Bryan Quinby, hosts of Street Fight Radio and the creators and stars of an upcoming live action comedy series on Means TV, in their first appearance on the show since November. The gang catches up, discussing Biden banning blunts and recent innovations in the field of getting high. Brett and Bryan talk about the community response in Columbus to the police murder of Ma’Khia Bryant before tackling electoral politics, identity politics, and the banality of J.D. Vance.  Follow Brett on Twitter @BrettPain, Bryan at @murderxbryan, and the Street Fight show account @StreetFightWCRS, and as always you can hear Street Fight Radio wherever pods are cast. If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts. We can't do this show without your support!!!

This is just a teaser for today's episode, which is available for Patreon subscribers only!   We can't do the show without your support, so help us keep the lights on over here and access tons of bonus content by subscribing on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. While you’re at it, we also love it when you subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts.  This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by political cartoonists extraordinaire Eli Valley and our resident artist Matt Lubchansky to talk all things comics, from Matt’s new book and Eli’s ode to Andrew Cuomo to Roqayah’s Panel Pulp project on Twitter and the cultural politics of superheroes.  Matt is associate editor of the left-wing comics emporium The Nib as well as the writer and illustrator of the long-running webcomic Please Listen To Me, and you can find their work in VICE, Eater, The Intercept, Mad Magazine, Gothamist, Brooklyn Magazine, and many more. Eli is a writer and artist, he’s the author of Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined today by Mark Maher, a staff attorney with Reprieve US. Mark currently works as counsel to six men detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and works on Reprieve US’ death penalty casework.  During this episode Mark goes in-depth discussing the history behind the horrific abuse and internment of some 800 men and boys in the notorious Guantánamo Bay detention camp and how this grave injustice has impacted not only his clients but their families by stripping away their humanity—from reducing them to a number, to keeping them locked away from the outside world for decades without the ability to touch or hold their loved ones. We also discuss the case of Ahmed Rabbani, endearingly referred to as Badr by those close to him, who has been on hunger strike since 2013 and Mark's role in his case as well as how Reprieve works to fight for Rabbani and other men still locked away inside Guantánamo Bay. You can follow Mark on Twitter @mahermark123. You can also follow Reprieve @Repriev

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined from the top of the show by Amanda Yee, an independent analyst and writer in New York City with a specialty in medical anthropology, and Ian Goodrum, a Beijing-based commentator and senior digital editor for China’s premier English language newspaper China Daily. In Amanda’s first appearance on the show in March 2020, she talked about the rising tide of anti-Asian racism and the demonization of China in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.  This time, she and Ian go in-depth discussing the implications of anti-China policy and rhetoric in the context of China’s increasingly formidable role as a global anti-imperialist leader. The gang examines the spike in racist violence against people of Asian descent in the US over the past year and hammers out some of the kinks in the discourse around white supremacy in the wake of the Atlanta massage parlor shootings.  You can follow Amanda on Twitter @catcontentonly and Ian @isgoodrum. You can also follow Ian’s work ov

Kumars and Roqayah are joined today by Danielle Salinas, a certified medical assistant in Oregon and a member of AFSCME Local 328. Danielle recounts visiting Cuba as a public health student and discusses what makes the Cuban health care system unique befores sharing her more a bit of her more recent experience being thrown into the front lines during the pandemic. The gang talks all things vaccines, from vaccine envy and the success of the US rollout to vaccine hesitancy and the merits of comparing the different brands. Danielle offers her perspective on the top stories of the pandemic so far, including the high-risk labor conditions faced by health care workers, liberals being obnoxious, and how to prepare for the next pandemic.  You can follow Danielle on Twitter @veryspooky_. If you want to support the show and receive access to tons of bonus content, subscribe on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. Also, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts. We can't do this show wi

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by Ken Klippenstein, a DC-based investigative reporter with The Intercept whose explosive work has appeared in The Daily Beast, The Young Turks and many other outlets. In his previous appearances, Ken has discussed his exclusive reporting on the Trump administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and the importance of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in revealing government misdeeds and corporate malfeasance.  This time Ken walks us through the implications of the recent Supreme Court decision severely weakening FOIA as well as the effect of the pandemic on transparency and his latest reporting on the FBI spying on Congress in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The gang ends with a retrospective on Trump’s civil legacy on civil liberties, including his expansion of DHS and record number of whistleblower crackdowns, and takes stock of where the intelligence apparatus is headed under Biden.   You can follow Ken and keep up wit

Roqayah is off this week, so Kumars is joined from the top of the hour by independent labor journalist Sarah Jaffe, reporting fellow at Type Media Center, cohost of Dissent Magazine’s Belabored podcast, and the author of two books: Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, and a new book out now from Hurst and Bold Type Books, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. In her new book, Sarah examines the expectation in the neoliberal era that we should love our work, and documents the resistance of workers who fight back against the “labor of love” myth by organizing.  Sarah and Kumars discuss the main themes and historical background of the book, highlighting the commonalities between workers in sectors as disparate as social work and professional sports, as well as the roots of their contemporary struggles in the development of capitalism. They round out their discussion by reflecting on the obstacles to and possibilities of working-class politics in the 21st

This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined by Dr. Abigail Cartus, PhD in epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh; Justin Feldman, epidemiologist and Health and Human Rights Fellow at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; and Jay O'Neal, West Virginia teacher and organizer who co-founded the West Virginia United Caucus within the WVEA. After getting to know our guests, including Jay’s experience leading the West Virginia teachers wildcat strike in 2018 that kicked off a wave of teacher strikes nationwide, Abby, Justin, and Jay help us better understand the impact of the pandemic on the United States' educational institutions and how the pressure to open schools is failing our teachers and students, leaving them at greater risk despite little to no support from state officials.  Abby and Justin explain the myths and realities behind many of the studies being shared on social media, and Jay argues why it's necessary that public health advocacy on behalf of school re-openings involves a thoro