"Concerns rising inside White House over surge in violent crime," CNN tells us. "America's Crime Surge: Why Violence Is Rising, And Solutions To Fix It," proclaims NPR. "Officials worry the rise in violent crime portends a bloody summer," reports The Washington Post.

Over and over this summer we have heard – and will no doubt continue to hear – the scourge of rising crime is the most urgent issue on voters' minds. Setting aside the way media coverage itself shape public opinion, the rising murder rates in urban areas is indeed very real and its victims disproportionately Black and Latino.

In response, like clockwork, Democrats and Democratic Party-aligned media have allied with conservatives and right-wing media are rehashing the same tired responses: more police, longer sentences, and tougher laws. But this time, they assure us it will be different: it won’t be racist and overly punitive. Instead, in addition to the return of 1990s Tough On Crime formula. we will get enough nebulous reforms and anti-bias training that it will somehow be enlightened and consistent with the demands of Black Lives Matter.

But everything we know about the past 50 years tells us this will not be true. Indeed, if more policing and prisons solved crime, the United States would be the safest country on Earth, but, of course, it is not. According to The American Journal of Medicine, compared to 22 other high-income nations, the United States' gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher despite imprisoning people at rates 5-10 times what other rich nations do.

So why do lawmakers and the media always reach for the same so-called "solutions" when it comes to crime? What are the assumptions that inform how we respond to an increase in homicides and other violent crime? How can the wealthiest nation in the world throw billions of dollars, more police, longer sentences, and tougher prosecutors at our high murder rates only to continue to wildly outpacing the rest of the so-called developed world on this, the most urgent of metrics?

On this episode, we explore the origins of "crime," what crimes we consider noteworthy and which are ignored, how property rights and white supremacy informed the crime we center in our media, how the crimes of poverty, environmental destruction, wage theft, and discrimination are relegated to the arena of tort, with its gentle fines and drawn out lawsuits – while petty theft and drug use results in long prison sentences. We’ll study how these bifurcations inform both media accounts of crime and how we respond with more police, and longer sentences the second we are faced with so-called crime waves.

Our guests are Civil Rights Corps' Alec Karakatsanis and sociologist Tamara K. Nopper.

Ep142: The Summer of Anti-BLM Backlash & How Concepts of "Crime" Were Shaped By the Propertied Class

In June 2020, founders of the ride-request app Lyft announced that they had launched “allyship dialogues“ and were committed to fighting “systemic racism” which they said is “deeply rooted in our society.” The same month, an Uber marketing campaign proudly recommended to “racists” that they should “delete Uber,” as they were unwelcome customers. At the same time, the food delivery service app DoorDash announced a series of initiatives to “support Black-owned restaurants.”

Everywhere we turned, as popular uprisings against police violence and white supremacy filled the streets, Silicon Valley gig app companies that rely on and profit from the labor of predominantly Black and brown workers, insisted they too were committed to fighting racial injustice.

But something curious was unfolding at the same time these multi-billion dollar companies paid lip service and made token donations to bail funds and civil rights groups: they were simultaneously pumping tens of millions more on pushing support for Proposition 22 –– a ballot initiative in California — that would exempt app-based transportation and delivery companies from a state law that required them to classify drivers as employees, permitting those companies to not provide essential benefits like healthcare, paid time off, and unemployment insurance.

With 78% of ride-hail app drivers in San Francisco being people of color and 55% of Uber drivers in California identifying as such, the law would overwhelmingly impact nonwhite, disproportionately immigrant communities.

Knowing this, and compelled by the broader corporate efforts to exploit the George Floyd uprisings as a branding opportunity, companies like DoorDash, Uber, Lyft and other app-based employers rushed to present the diminishment of worker protections not as manifestly anti-Black and anti-brown anti-labor laws, but actually empowering to drivers of colors.

Spending millions on advertising, a patchwork of large donations to community groups planting op-eds in Black and Hispanic press, and focus-grouped language about employee “freedom,” “independence,” “being your own boss,” “flexibility” and general rise-and-grind framing, Super PACs alongside Bay Area and LA-based marketing firms aggressively targeted minority communities to back Prop 22, despite all independent analysis and labor organizations insisting it would be bad for workers of color.

On this Season 5 Premiere of Citations Needed, we detail how this plan played out –– and ultimately won, how corporations buy off organizations and adapt nonprofit speak to harm communities of color, and how the idea of “third worker categories” –– like the ones pushed by Uber and Lyft are suspiciously similar to Jim Crow-era efforts to strip black and immigrant workers of the rights white workers were winning under the then-New Deal.

Our guest is Veena Dubal, Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

143 - How Silicon Valley Uses Hollow "Anti-Racist" Posturing to Sell Its Exploitative Business Model

TrueAnon is back with updates on Ghislaine Maxwell’s impending trial and the quest to serve Prince Andrew court papers by Virgina Giuffre

Episode 185: Randy Andy Runaway Dandy

In this recording of a Live Interview for Patrons from 9/22, we speak with The Nation sports editor Dave Zirin about his new book, The Kaepernick Effect, and how a series of protests in youth sports, namely among black youth, set off firestorms and backlash in dozens of small towns throughout the country. And what the "leave politics out of sports" ethos says about the evergreen importance of racial disciplining in sports media.

Live Interview: How The Kaepernick Effect Revealed Reactionary Forces in Youth Sports. w/ Dave Zirin

To hear the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/TrueAnonPod
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Brooklyn Media Bluecheck Noah Kulwin (twitter.com/nkulw) joins us to walk through the collapse and reanimation of OZY Media, take stock of the lyin fake news media and journo-splain just what it is the hell that all these people do … and why

Episode 190: Blog Of A Madman (trailer)

Matt goes off live on http://www.twitch.tv/chapotraphouse

Topics: Chill out, Q&A, Congressional democrat shenanigans, Book club requests

Grill Stream

193 - Art of the Meal 10.19.21

In this News Brief, we recap the recap of Powell's life, from the handwringing over his Iraq UN speech to the erasure of his role in covering up My Lai massacre to training rightwing death squads in Central America and the central importance of Good Intentions when venerating our beloved, bipartisan war-makers.

News Brief - Colin Powell: Stumbling Empire Personified

This week we look at the New York Times's Jan 6 profiles in courage. Then we discuss the various reactions to and takes on former Secretary of State Colin Powell's death.

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 221: But Anyways

This week we discuss a local controversy, an anti-Biden rap song by veterans, the Build Back Better bill, and the workshopping of Jan 6

Check out Tom's podcast Faces In The Corner: https://soundcloud.com/facesinthecorner

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 222: The Sissification Of The American Male

Subscribe today for access to all premium episodes!
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Chapo Trap House

571 Teaser - Own John Candy's Soul in the MetaVerse

In this News Brief we recapped how, in the face of a once in a generation opportunity to relieve poverty and (barely begin to) curb climate change, US media largely gave us personality, Horse Race coverage, and defensive snark, aiding conservatives efforts to winnow down the bill to a fraction of its original size.

News Brief - Reconciliation Bill Negotiations: A Media Autopsy

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Live Interview: How The Kaepernick Effect Revealed Reactionary Forces in Youth Sports. w/ Dave Zirin

Citations Needed Podcast