In Episode 238 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes stock of the Democratic ticket's new vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and the role he played as Minnesota governor in two of the major activist struggles in the North Star State over the past years—the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising, which began in Minneapolis; and the fight against Line 3, which delivers Canadian shale oil to US markets, and imperils the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabe indigenous people.

MAGA excoriates Walz for his supposed coddling of the "rioters" in 2020, when in fact the National Guard troops he mobilized committed human rights abuses. On the other hand, he did open a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis police department, finally resulting in a consent decree mandating "changes to address race-based policing." Similarly, Walz capituated to the oil interests on Line 3, which went operational in 2021. But despite this betrayal, he has won plaudits from progressives for his policies in support of labor and decarbonization of the state econmy. And the cannabis legalization bill he signed in 2023 expicitly recognizes the sovereign powers of Native American nations, allowing a cannabis economy to take hold on the state's Anishinaabe lands.

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Tim Walz and the struggle in Minnesota

"All the messages from pop culture present Asian American as an apolitical thing.  It was really shocking and liberating to find out that actually, Asian American politics was rooted in radical organizing and rooted in grassroots arts movements."  -- Ryan Wong

This episode of Audio Interference focuses on Basement Workshop (active 1970-1986), an arts and political organization based in New York City's Chinatown that served as a hub for the developing Asian American movement.  Elena Levi speaks to curator and writer Ryan Wong, whose exhibition, Serve the People: The Asian American Movement in New York was presented at Interference Archive in 2013-2014.  The episode also includes portions of Ryan's talk at an event celebrating the release of the latest issue of Signal (http://s1gnal.org/), a journal of international political graphics and culture.

Ryan's article on Hyperallergic includes more information on Basement Workshop and other Chinatown arts organizations:
https://hyperallergic.com/330442/a-brief-history-of-the-art-collectives-of-nycs-chinatown/

More on Serve the People:
http://interferencearchive.org/serve-the-people-the-asian-american-movement-in-new-york/

Issue #6 of Signal:
https://justseeds.org/product/signal06/

This episode features the song "Yellow Pearl" by Chris Kando Iijima, Joanne Nobuko Miyamoto, "Charlie" Chin from the recording entitled A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle by Asians in America, PAR01020, courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.  (p) (c) 1973.  Used by permission.

Link:  https://folkways.si.edu/chris-kando-iijima-joanne-nobuko-miyamoto-charlie-chin/a-grain-of-sand-music-for-the-struggle-by-asians-in-america/american-folk-protest/music/album/smithsonian

Other music used includes "Artifical Intelligence" and "One and Only" by Ryan Andersen, courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Produced by Interference Archive.

Audio Interference 49: Ryan Wong and Basement Workshop

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Tim Walz and the struggle in Minnesota

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