District 34 Podcast

In this episode we take a look at life after hate. We speak with three ex right wing extremists about how they became radicalized and about how they exited the movement. Chris Buckley is an ex Imperial Nighthawk with the KKK that now works with Parents for Peace. Frank Meink and Chris Leek are both ex Neo Nazis.

Full interview with Chuck Leek on Status Coup: https://youtu.be/zZNGquZvpjM?t=5253

Karen Bass welcomes Bernie Sanders to Los Angeles for a Get the Vote Out rally in Playa Vista. Includes speeches from Jane Kim, Rusty Hicks, Adam Conover and others.

LA City Council Members Martinez, Cedillo and De Leon- along with labor  leader Herrera- discuss how to preserve their political power in a  racially motivated closed door meeting. 

You’ve probably seen videos of angry right wing extremists accosting  school board members and turning school board meetings into culture-war  battlegrounds. Tina-Desiree Berg spoke to a parent of a trans child in the Conejo Valley school district about what she has seen and experienced. 

Actors Equity has petitioned the NLRB on behalf of Strippers United.  They held a joint rally to announce and celebrate the partnership.  Speeches from the AE president, LA City Council candidate Hugo  Soto-Martinez, and the ladies of Star Garden. Interviews with Hugo Soto-Martinez and attendees.

Alex Salazar is a former LAPD cop. He talks  about his time as an officer during the  Rampart scandal- and about  how racism, lying, and "sociopathic" behavior brainwashed him into being what he calls a "super pig". He now conducts investigations into civil rights issues.

This year, Sunland-Tujanga hosted it's first Pride Festival. Several political candidates, activists and elected officials came out to support them.

Coverage of the Women's March Rally to protect Roe v Wade in downtown Los Angeles.

The Orange County District Attorney Debate sponsored by the bar association was held in Fullerton this week. Here is the full debate between the current DA Todd Spitzer and challengers Pete Hardin, Bryan Chehock and Mike Jacobs. Both Hardin and Chehok were the winners and showed a deep understanding of the problems facing our criminal justice system.

Spitzer verbally went after BLM activist Tatiana Turner who was sitting in the first row multiple times. Turner is being over-prosecuted by his office for protest actions. The moderator- who has donated 16k to Spitzers campaign and was a groomsman at his wedding, eventually had security throw her out for coughing. Meanwhile, Spitzer fans called her a bum and disgrace with no recourse. We interviewed Turner from prison on a previous episode if you are interested in more details on her prosecution.

We spoke with Marc Mixon on developing a third party in the state of  Washington. Their goal "is to represent the interests of the  majority  and to create a system that values each person and supports  economic  and social justice for all". They will start running candidates in the  next election cycle.

The Progressives Democrats of America held their annual luncheon at the California Democratic Party Convention. Let's listen in.

Between June 2019 and June 2020,  Forensic News published several articles and a podcast about the business  affairs of British-Israeli security consultant  Walter  Soriano, after he was summoned by the US’ Senate Intelligence  Committee. In response, they were sued by  Soriano. Although the defendants are all based in the United States  and Forensic News is incorporated in the state of California, the  lawsuit has been brought in London.

“We believe that the lawsuit that has  been brought against Forensic News is a SLAPP,” the undersigned  organisations said. SLAPPs abuse the law in order to silence critical  coverage on matters of public interest" the Council of Europe Platform for the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists stated in their press release in support of Forensic News.

Tina-Desiree Berg spoke with the publisher and one of the journalists personally named in the suit.

Mariupol is a vibrant city in the Southeast of Ukraine that has been ground zero in the 8 year civil war fought between Russian separatists on the one side and Ukrainian nationalists on the other. It is a complex situation that has been made more deadly by Putin's invasion ans war crimes. Caught between the two extremist groups, and global geopolitics, lie the majority of citizens who just want peace. We spoke with one of them as she hid from Russian bombs in a basement.

Dr. Assal Rad graduated with a PhD in Middle Eastern History from the  University of California, Irvine in 2018. Her PhD research focused on  Modern Iran, with an emphasis on national identity formation and  identity in post-revolutionary Iran. With this background, Assal works  with the policy team on research and writing related to Iran policy  issues and U.S.-Iran relations.

We discuss the ongoing crisis in Yemen, Ukraine, and issues with Israel.

This week on the podcast, Tina-Desiree Berg is joined by civil rights  attorney JiYoung Carolyn Park, and activist Brittani Nichols from Ground  Game LA to discuss the upcoming Sheriffs election. Also important state  bills that could change the dynamics.

This week SCOTUS heard the case Dobbs v Jackson. This case- centered on Mississippi's Gestational Age Act- looks at fetus viability. Viability is the central holding in both Roe and Casey. The Fifth Circuit unanimously blocked the Mississippi law from going into effect because both cases bar states from banning abortion before fetal viability.

Bryant Odega is graduate of UCLA with a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and Minor in Labor Studies. He is running for the Los Angeles city council in CD 15.

 "I'm  running because since 1925, our district has never had a Council Member  who looked or lived like the majority of us. We are renters, we are  people of color, we are working-class. We are a district with a diverse  and culturally significant history. But the political elites have been  dominating our politics for far too long. Everyday Angelenos deserve to  be represented by everyday Angelenos.”

We discuss current issues facing the district from real estate development corruption to environmental justice.

Eric Levai  is a national security journalist based in California. He hosts and produces the podcast "Counter Intelligence". Eric joins me to discuss his latest articles in the Daily Dot and Forensic News. 

Join me with guests Pat Cote and Leila Charles Leigh, hosts of the Punch  Up Pod- on a conversation as who the progressive sell-outs are. We also  discuss the state of the left in California.

Activists marched from Pershing Square to City Hall, where they held a rally in support of abortion rights.Includes remarks from Gloria Allred, Maria Shriver, Barbara Streisand, Hilda Solis, Holly Mitchell, Planned Parenthood and Paxton Smith.

Marc Francois joins Tina-Desiree Berg to discuss the ongoing immigration crises that has manifested in Del Rio at the border and the underlying factors that brought us to this point.

Salem is a Kensington-based millennial activist running for  Pennsylvania’s 2nd Congressional district. He lives in Philly with his  life partner, Zane, and his hairless cat, Chicken.

Salem credits his political activism to growing up in poverty,  growing up LGBTQ+, and the Occupy protests in 2011. As a volunteer, he  worked on the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama

This month we heard the biotech billionaire owner of the LA Times exclaim that billionaires should not be allowed to own newspapers. He's right.

In light of this. I re-examine Peter Theil's take down of Gawker with Peter Sterne- who originally reported on it for Politico.

Highlights from the Medicare for All March in Los Angeles. We hear from AB1400 Sponsor Ash Kalara, Shahid Buttar, Wendy Carillo, Maria Estrada, Dr. Paul Song, Ron Placone, Jimmy Dore, Maebe A. Girl, and many more!

I sat down with street journalist Taylor Eve, or @Waterspider on Twitter, to discuss the events surrounding the Wi Spa protest violence over the past two weeks. One of her viral videos has had over 7 million views on Twitter. 

Youth activists spent three days camped out in front of Senator Diane Feinstein's office trying to pressure her to sign on to Ed Markey's Civilian Climate Core bill. Includes speeches and interviews.

Sheriff’s deputies chased and shot a security guard in the back multiple  times at an auto repair shop in Los Angeles named Andres Guardado. He  was just 18. Security footage shows that Guardado was kneeling with his  back to the deputies, posing no threat whatsoever, when he was shot.  Miguel Vega, the officer who fatally shot Guardado, had previous  complaints against him. The officers claim that Guardado had a gun- but  there is no evidence that that is true. The Sheriff’s Department has  been accused of criminal misconduct in handling the case. They point to  the fact that Sheriff Deputies ripped security cameras off the walls of  nearby buildings and took them. Andrew Haney, manager of Freeway Auto  Shop, where Andres worked as a part-time security guard, said the  Sheriff’s Department took security footage from his shop without a  warrant, and Memo Torres of nearby LA Taco had a video showing where  security cameras were broken off the walls.

Jennifer's parents lived through the Nakba and Jennifer lived in Ramallah for a time. She discusses her lived experiences and shares her thoughts on the current conflict.

On March 25th, Mitch O'Farrell sent police in riot gear toting less-lethals to Echo Park Lake to clear the homeless encampment. This week the park re-opened and the displaced unhoused returned for a press conference.

I spoke with public health expert, Dr. Blaine Pope, on the anti masker movement that has risen from the remnants of the Trump years in Los Angeles.

May Day is a historic celebration of workers and workers rights. In this weeks episode we look at two ongoing workers rights issues- One at Kroger Grocery stores, and another at Amazon.

Muad Hrezi is running for election to the U.S. House to represent CD 1 in Connecticut, for the Democratic primary in 2022. He is an educator, track coach, and former US Senate staffer for Chris Murphy. We discuss his Libyan background, foreign policy, and his other ideas and policy positions.

Alex Rubinstein is an independent journalist who has shared live  coverage of social movements in the United States including Black Lives  Matter, Standing Rock, Charlottesville, the inauguration protests  against Pres. Trump, and from inside the besieged Venezuelan Embassy in  Washington, DC. He currently lives in Mexico City.

Walker Bragman is a journalist and JD whose work has been featured in Paste Magazine, the Intercept, HuffPost, the Independent, Salon, Truthout, and the Hill. He discusses he latest piece in Jacobin on how Kamala Harris failed to investigate bad police shootings in Anaheim when she was AG in California.

Dr. Zogby is the founder and president of the  Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based organization that  serves as a political and policy research arm of the Arab-American  community. He is also a Fellow at the Sanders Institute. We discuss the current situation with the ICC and Palestine and what role the Biden administration will play in it.

A coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party on March 6 and swept all five party leadership positions in a contested election. Judith Whitmer was elected chair. The establishment had moved $450,000 out of the party's coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s account. The DSCC plans to use the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a first-term Democrat. The staff members who resigned included the party’s operations director, research director, communications director, and finance director.

Colin Kalmbacher is an attorney and writer. He received his J.D. from Texas A&M School of Law and his LL.M. in International Law and Intellectual Property from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in  Manhattan. He is an editor at legal news and analysis site Law & Crime News. We discuss recent events.

Interview with Kitty Stryker, published author whose work has appeared in Teen Vogue, Vice, Cosmopolitan and others- identifies as an anarchist activist, queer femme, Juggalo ethnographer and leftist doomsday prepper located in the San Francisco Bay Area

Labeled “Antifa militant” by Andy Ngo and “quite profound” by Chuck D of Public Enemy, AWKWORD has fought for justice and equality through protest song, political organizing, digital strategy and street journalism for nearly a quarter century. He is a co-founder of TEN DEMANDS, co-creator of Ten For Justice: The Road to Abolition, and founding member of Our United Left.

Tatiana Turner is currently i jail because she is unable to make an exorbitant one million dollar bail.

Turner is a BLM activist that attended a rally in Yorba Linda last September. Trump supporters showed up in numbers that day and were quite hostile. At one point they surrounded Turners car and she called 911. She received no assistance so tried to drive away in a panic hitting a man and a woman. Trump supporters smashed the back the window of her car- prompting her to panic further. She contends she feared for her life, yet DA Todd Spitzer claims she intentionally tried to kill the Trump supporters.

Sean Beckner-Carmitchel spoke with Turner over the phone about justice, the movement and the events in Yorba Linda.

We spoke with activist General Jeff on the issues currently surrounding the unhoused in Los Angeles and recent events in Skid Row.