45.1K
Downloads
548
Episodes
Activism, politics, and beer from PA-based Raging Chicken Press
Episodes
Wednesday May 18, 2022
Wednesday May 18, 2022
On this episode of the Wednesday Show, Cyril and I take a look at yesterday's PA primary elections and what the results tell us about Pennsylvania, Republicans, and Democrats. We'll also take a look at the latest reporting over at the Bucks County Beacon.
You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.
What to check out:
- The Bucks County Beacon: https://buckscountybeacon.com/
- Cyril’s newsletter: https://cyrilmychalejko.substack.com/
Monday May 16, 2022
Monday May 16, 2022
On this episode of Out d'Coup LIVE, we'll be taking a deep breath before tomorrow's PA primary. There is a lot at stake. I'm interested in what's on your mind and how you're going to be spending your Election Day. Taking your comments and thoughts.
You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress/
If you want to help us end the domination of right-wing money tipping the scales to the extreme.on our school boards and in our communities, we’ve made that easy. Simply drop a donation to the Raging Chicken Community Fund at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/. Help us support community organizing and school board candidates that our communities and our children deserve.
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
Monday May 09, 2022
Monday May 09, 2022
On tonight’s show, I welcome Jonathan Kassa to the program. Jonathan is a Director on the North Penn School Board. He is also a national expert in school and campus safety. North Penn has experienced the same kind of right-wing extremism flooding school board meetings across Bucks County. North Penn found its meetings disrupted by members of Moms for Liberty and ReOpen Bucks. In the last school board election, North Penn also saw the flood of right-wing money into the campaign. Jonathan Kassa has been unwavering in calling out extremism, warning about the threat to our democracy, and insisting on defending our kids and communities.
Link:
- Bucks County Beacon, "Right-wing misinformation leads to rape and death threats at PA01 elementary school," by Cyril Mychalejko https://bit.ly/3LYX96o
You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress/
If you want to help us end the domination of right-wing money tipping the scales to the extreme.on our school boards and in our communities, we’ve made that easy. Simply drop a donation to the Raging Chicken Community Fund at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.
Help us support community organizing and school board candidates that our communities and our children deserve. Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
Friday May 06, 2022
Monday May 02, 2022
Monday May 02, 2022
On today’s show, I welcome Garen Meguerian to the show. We'll be talking about his three-part series in the Bucks County Beacon on how defamation lawsuits can be used as weaponized tools of censorship. He digs into how a "rash of defamation suits filed by prominent local Republicans underscores the need for stronger laws protecting the right to free speech in Pennsylvania."
Meguerian is an experienced litigator and trial lawyer licensed in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the State of New Jersey. He has represented clients in both state and federal courts. He is AV peer review rated from Martindale-Hubbell reflecting achievement at the height of professional excellence and integrity.
Meguerian received his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1995, where he served as an Associate Editor of the American Criminal Law Review. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Honors Philosophy from Villanova University in 1992, where he was awarded the University's Valedictory Medallion.
Meguerian is a member of the National Employment Lawyers Association, and the Chester County Bar Association.
Check out his webpage: https://www.garenmlaw.com/
You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress/.
If you want to help us end the domination of right-wing money tipping the scales to the extreme.on our school boards and in our communities, we’ve made that easy. Simply drop a donation to the Raging Chicken Community Fund at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/. Help us support community organizing and school board candidates that our communities and our children deserve.
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
Monday Apr 25, 2022
Monday Apr 25, 2022
On today’s show, I welcome Daisy Pitkin to the show. We'll be talking about her new book, On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union. On the Line is a first-person account of a five-year campaign to unionize the industrial laundry factories in Phoenix, Arizona. This is a book for every current or future union organizer or anyone who joins the long-haul struggle for justice and solidarity. As I’ve said to anyone who was willing to listen - on any platform - On the Line is a heartbreaking, hopeful, truthful, complicated, and beautiful book.
Daisy Pitkin has spent more than twenty years as a community and union organizer, working first in support of garment workers around the world, and then for U.S. labor unions organizing industrial laundry workers. Her essays have been awarded the Montana Prize, the DISQUIET Literary Prize, the New Millennium Award, and the Monique Wittig Writer’s Scholarship. She grew up in rural Ohio and received an MFA from the University of Arizona. Pitkin lives and writes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she works as an organizer with an offshoot of the union UNITE. Find her at daisypitkin.net and follow her on Twitter at @daisypitkin.
You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at patreon.com/rcpress.
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
If you want to help us end the domination of right-wing money tipping the scales to the extreme.on our school boards and in our communities, we’ve made that easy. Simply drop a donation to the Raging Chicken Community Fund at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/. Help us support community organizing and school board candidates that our communities and our children deserve.
Friday Apr 22, 2022
Friday Apr 22, 2022
Biden administration is teasing a new round of student debt cancellation and relief. The Education department said on Tuesday that this could mean debt cancellation for about 40,000 borrowers and three years of additional credit for more than 3.6 million borrowers seeking income-driven repayment. That could add another boost to the economy and the long-term well-being of tens of thousands of Americans. Bankrate study.
The woman behind the “Libs of TikTok” Twitter account has been outed in new reporting by Taylor Lorenz in the Washington Post. Lorenz reports that Chaya Raichik, a real estate salesperson in Brooklyn, is behind the account which has spread “groomer” conspiracy theories on social media and has the ears of right-wing lawmakers such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Jeffrey Yass, the head of Susquehanna International Group, and the deep-pocketed right-wing political funder is officially the richest man in Pennsylvania, according to a new analysis by ProPublica. He has collected an average of $1.3 billion a year in annual income from 2013 - 2018. Only five other Americans earned more.
This morning the New York Times released a report that reviewed 21 of Florida’s rejected math books. Florida’s Dept. of Education reported that the rejected books contained “prohibited topics” such as critical race theory and social emotional learning. Only four pages were released by the Dept as examples; one contained a problem set that used statistical data from the Race Implicit Association Test.
Court challenges were filed by a Lycoming County resident calling for the removal of Doug Mastriano and Scott Perry from ballots for next month’s primary because of their participation in the January 6th Capitol insurrection.
Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) is looking to sell off two of the luxury dorms at Edinboro University that were completed just 10 years ago and featured quite prominently in my early reporting at Raging Chicken. “Wall Street on the Susquehanna: PASSHE Bond Scheme Bleeds Education Budget for Beautiful Buildings”
Palisades made headlines again! The Herald ran a piece last week about Palisades reconsidering a live streaming option for school board meetings! The option to live stream meetings would cover both regular bi-monthly board meetings as well as committee meetings.
And Amy was doing some phone backing last night for Alexandra Hunt. We’ll see how that went.
What books are we reading?
You can help support homegrown, progressive media by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month: https://www.patreon.com/rcpress
Donate to the Raging Chicken Community Fund to help us invest in progressive organizing and candidates in Bucks County and across Pennsylvania: https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/
Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u
Monday Apr 18, 2022
Monday Apr 18, 2022
On this episode of Out d'Coup LIVE, I welcome Brett Wilkins to the show. Brett is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Prior to joining Common Dreams in 2020 his articles, focusing on issues of war and peace and human rights, have been published on Counterpunch, Antiwar.com, Asia Times, teleSUR, Mondoweiss, and Venezuela Analysis. He is also the communications coordinator for San Francisco Berniecrats, an Our Revolution affiliate, and was a member of Collective 20, a socialist writers' collective whose notable members included Michael Albert, Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, and Bill Fletcher Jr.
Today we're digging into a his recent article, "Democracy 'Under Siege' in GOP War on Black Voters: Report," which unpacks the National Urban Leagues 2022 report on how "Republican federal and state lawmakers are working 'in concert' with political operatives and violent extremists 'to disenfranchise, delude, manipulate, and intimidate American voters and establish one-party rule."
I hope to dig into more of his current articles as well.
LINKS
- Article: "Democracy 'Under Siege' in GOP War on Black Voters: Report": https://bit.ly/36mbIRL
- Brett Wilkins on CommonDreams: https://www.commondreams.org/author/brett-wilkins
- Brett Wilkins' home page: https://brettwilkins.com/
Help us support community organizing and candidates working to stop the right-wing extremists take-over of our school boards in Bucks County and across PA. Make a contribution to the Raging Chicken Community Fund. Click here for more info: https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/WMW98RQEYV
Monday Apr 11, 2022
Monday Apr 11, 2022
On this episode of Out d'Coup LIVE, I welcome Shanna Danielson back to the program! Shanna is a middle school music teacher in south-central PA. She is a former candidate for state senate and state house, and a 2019 graduate of Emerge PA. Shanna currently serves as Secretary of the Democratic Party of York County, vice-chair of the Northern York Democratic Club, a member of the Democratic State Committee for York County, an elected Auditor for Carroll Township, and has recently been elected as the Southern Region PACE Director for PSEA. And, of course, Shanna is one of the awesome co-hosts of the Sisters of the Night Caucus podcast. Shanna lives in Dillsburg with her husband, son, and many cats.
On tonight's show, we're going to dig into the teaching shortage in Pennsylvania and across the nation. We'll dig into the conditions that are driving more and more teachers to leave the profession and fewer and fewer students choosing to become teachers. Yes, COVID exacerbated these conditions. But the crisis in our public education system runs much deeper.
Links:
- Follow Shanna on Twitter: @shannaforPA
- Sisters of the Night Caucus podcast: https://bit.ly/3E0e4SR
- Pennsylvania Capital-Star article: “Staffing shortage, COVID-19, politics take toll on Pennsylvania teachers,” by Marley Parish https://bit.ly/378JOcp
Monday Apr 04, 2022
Monday Apr 04, 2022
On this episode of Out d'Coup LIVE, I welcome David Backer to the show. David is an associate professor of educational foundations, policy studies, and leadership at West Chester University. He writes a weekly newsletter called Schooling in Socialist America and tweets at @schooldaves.
We'll be talking about his recent article in Dissent Magazine, "Toxic Finance." In that piece, David looks into how outbreaks of COVID-19 in schools across the country exposed the crisis in our schools' long-ignored infrastructure problems. But more than that, he shows how the way the United States finances school building improvements and maintenance worsened the problem. Another case of hiding the ball so students, teachers, staff, and parents get stuck with inefficient, inadequate, and unequal schools. We’ll also talk about some recent proposals - such as the Green New Deal for Public Schools - that would begin to take on the financial barons that profit off public education for personal gain.
Links:
- David Backer, "Toxic Finance," Dissent Magazine
- David Backer's newsletter, "Schooling in Socialist America"