Name: News Brief: How Brandon Johnson's Win Upends US Media's Patronizing, Simplistic "Crime" Narratives by Citations Needed Podcast
Duration: 21 min
Description: In this public News Brief, we break down Johnson's "surprise" win and how it upends every lazy media trope involving local Democratic politics pushed over the last two years.

What if the Super Bowl was invaded by aliens?

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I Want To Believe

Artists Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson join the show to talk about the state of the animation industry, AI art, and of course the famous Garfield cum comic

BUY THE BOOK https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Justice-Warriors/Matt-Bors/9781952090226

PAID PROTEST 04/06
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JUSTICE WARRIORS w/ Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson

"Parents fighting schools to protect their kids are heroes, not book-banners," Fox News tells us. Are Privatized Public Libraries So Bad?" asks CityLab. "Huntsville Public Library could be privatized in aftermath of pride display dispute," reports Houston Public Media. 

For decades, public libraries have been under attack. Repeatedly, influential rightwing and centrist individuals, corporations, and governments––from Phyllis Schlafly to Ron DeSantis––have coordinated campaigns to weaken one of the most beloved and least means-tested public institutions in the country. They seek to, at best, restrict the materials, functions, and decision-making power of public libraries, and at worst, destroy public libraries completely, tossing aside the people who depend on them for education, employment, and often survival.

What is it about public libraries that inspires such contempt? What's responsible for the chasm between the US population's perceptions of public libraries––which are overwhelmingly positive––and policymaking that seeks to ruin those libraries? And who suffers when one of the few true public goods left in the US is targeted and seized by reactionary forces?

On this episode, we examine the decades-long right-wing assault on US public libraries, the history of book bans and defunding, attendant efforts to privatize public libraries, and how these intersect with the labor struggles of librarians nationwide.

Our guest is president-elect of the American Library Association, Emily Drabinski.

Episode 179: From Budget Cuts to Book Bans — The Decades-Long Assault on Public Libraries

In this public News Brief, we break down Johnson's "surprise" win and how it upends every lazy media trope involving local Democratic politics pushed over the last two years.

News Brief: How Brandon Johnson's Win Upends US Media's Patronizing, Simplistic "Crime" Narratives

In this public News Brief, we detail how uncritical acceptance by centrist––and even liberal––media that the US is seeing an unprecedented "labor shortage" is helping justify repealing child labor protections in roughly a dozen states.

Media's Credulous "Labor Shortage" Reporting Helps Lay Groundwork For Repealing Child Labor Laws

This week we talk a wide range of topics, mostly centered on what's going on in states like Tennessee: mass shootings, anti-trans bills, centralization of power in state governments, etc. To do it, we've enlisted our Tennessean friend Mina Shedd from Middle Tennessee DSA. To wrap it all up, we cover an op-ed from the New York Times about "Wagon Wheel Gun Reform"

You can find and support Mina's many projects on Twitter at: @ScrewballDetctr

And you can support us on Patreon at: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 286: Feuerbach, Texas (w/ special guest Mina Shedd)

Hello Damned Fam, we're behind an ep because of Jake's landlord trying to kill him with a giant rat he made in a lab etc, so we've decided to release an ep or two from behind our paywall. Here's a great interview we did that should probably have been released publicly anyways. ENJOY

Author and activist Jarrod Shanahan comes on the show to discuss his books Captives and States of Incarceration. Be sure to send your feedback to Jake Flores@twitter.com

UNLOCKED: Go Directly To Jail w/ Jarrod Shanahan

This week it's a grab bag of allergy-fueled bits and news, followed by an op-ed from a friend at the NYTimes about the formula for making crime go up

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

Episode 287: Big Time Criminality

Bob Dylan goes to Deadwood, Thomas Friedman opens up some boxes, Cop City comes to West Virginia, Letcher County speaks its piece

Support striking WGA workers: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/the-snacklist-support-striking-workers

And support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 289: Work Smarter, Not Harder

"Thank God for the hard hats!" declared Richard Nixon during his first term. "Why the construction workers holler, ‘U. S. A., all the way!,’" read a 1970 New York Times headline. "The Day the White Working Class Turned Republican," read another New York Times headline, 50 years later in 2020.

We're now more than five decades since this narrative first arose: The hardhats love America, and the hippies hate it. Whether Nixon or Trump is in the White House, news media, film, and TV tell us that the working class—good, honest blue-collar folk—are people of God, family, and country, unlike those spoiled, rich, out-of-touch lefty elites.

This binary framework is presented as organic, the result of working people and unions feeling left out by the lofty exclusivism of the Left. But, as history shows, this didn’t happen entirely naturally or spontaneously; the "hardhats vs. hippies" narrative was, in part, manufactured by right-wing political and union operatives, more concerned with a McCarthyist imperative to destroy any and all social movements in the global south than with any notion of worker justice and liberation.

On this episode, we explore this history, looking at the ways in which rightwing factions of organized labor bolstered dangerous US foreign policy throughout the Cold War, deliberately crafting the false yet persistent notion that union members, and the working class more broadly, are and should be patriotic hawks at odds with the anti-war Left.

Our guest is labor historian Jeff Schuhrke.

Ep. 182: Hardhats vs Hippies and the Cold War Curation of the Conservative Union Guy Trope

On this Live Show Beg-a-Thon, recorded on May 17, we discuss the pop culture phenomenon and appeal of pseudoarchaeology in its many forms, from fraudulent alternative history books like Erich von Däniken's 1968 book, Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, to television series like "Ancient Aliens" and "Ancient Apocalypse."

Alongside guest Dr. David S. Anderson, we discuss how phony "what if?" theories often go beyond the goofy, guilty pleasure premises of extraterrestrial visitors and lost civilizations to promote Eurocentric, racist pap and a mindless distrust of "the scientific establishment" in the stupidest and least productive way possible.

Live Show Beg-A-Thon: The Very Real Social Brain Rot of Ancient Aliens and Ancient Apocalypse

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.

News Brief: How Brandon Johnson's Win Upends US Media's Patronizing, Simplistic "Crime" Narratives

Citations Needed Podcast

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