This is Democracy

Jeremi and Zachary, with their guest Shoshana Krieger discuss the challenges in finding affordable rent in big cities. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "They Say a House is Just a Metaphor".  Shoshana Krieger is the Project Director of Building and Strengthening Tenant Action (BASTA) at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. BASTA organizes Austin renters to work with their neighbors to ensure that all Austinites have access to safe and affordable housing by facilitating the development of tenant associations and building renter power in Austin. BASTA targets slumlords who profit off of renting substandard properties, the conditions of which negatively impact the health of families. Prior to her work at BASTA, Shoshana was a staff attorney at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County (NLSLA) and a tenants rights organizer at Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES). Shoshana has a J.D. and M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA. This episode of This is Democracy was mixed and mastered by Isaiah Thomas and Will Shute.

Jeremi and Zachary, with guest Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols, draw upon perceptions of historical pandemics to learn how our nation can move beyond COVID-19. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "This Peaceful Dawn". Christopher McKnight Nichols is Director of the Center for the Humanities and the Sandy and Elva Sanders Eminent Professor in the Honors College at Oregon State University, where he is an associate professor of history. An Andrew Carnegie Fellow, Nichols is best known for authoring Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age (Harvard, 2011, 2015), and he is editor or author of five other books, including the recently published Rethinking American Grand Strategy (Oxford, 2021). His next book, co-edited and co-authored, is Ideologies and U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories (out from Columbia University Press in 2022). This episode of This is Democracy was mixed and mastered by Sofia Salter.

Jeremi and Zachary, with guest Alan McPherson, discuss what we can learn from the long history of democratic efforts in Cuba, and how many of them were caused by America's foreign policy. Zachary sets the scene with his poem titled "Certainly Probable". Alan McPherson is Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple University. He has written and edited 11 books, the most recent of which is Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet’s Terror State to Justice.

Jeremi, Zachary, and guests Drs. Robert Edelman and David McDonald discuss the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, and the politics attached to the international sports competition. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "They say that sport unites the world". Robert Edelman is Professor of Russian History and the History of Sport at the University of California, San Diego. He has written four books including: Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the USSR and Spartak Moscow: A History of the People’s Team. He has consulted on documentaries for HBO, PBS, ESPN and CBS. Together with Christopher Young from the University of Cambridge, he is co-editor of the University of California Press’s new series Sport in World History, and is co-editor with Wayne Wilson of the The Oxford Handbook of Sports History.  He is the co-director with Young of an international research project on the history of Cold War sport under the auspices of the Cold War International History Project.  The first of two conference volumes, entitled The Whole World Was Watching was recently published by Stanford University Press.   David McDonald is the Alice D. Mortenson/Petrovich Distinguished Chair in Russian History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of, among many titles: Divided Government and Russian Foreign Policy, 1900-1914 and “Sport History and the Historical Profession,” in R. Edelman et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook to Sport History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 61-78.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary talk with Wendy Davis and Eric Cervini about their perspective on voter intimidation, and their lived experience with the "Trump Train" incident in 2020. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "I Knew We Had Arrived". Wendy Davis represented the 10th district in the Texas Senate from 2009 to 2015. She was previously on the Fort Worth City Council. Wendy Davis was serving as a surrogate for the Biden-Harris campaign and was present on the bus when the Trump Train harassed its occupants. The October 30 attack barred her from campaigning for herself and for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris when the Biden-Harris campaign decided to cancel scheduled events due to safety concerns. The former Texas state senator and 2020 congressional candidate remarked that the bus incident was further evidence of a rising temperature in American politics, and that she had never experienced this kind of intimidation before in all the many campaigns she’d run and opposed. After the October 30 attack, Davis considered speaking out about her experience but did not immediately come forward because she feared for her safety.Dr. Eric Cervini is an award-winning historian of LGBTQ+ politics and culture. His first book on queer history, The Deviant's War, was a New York Times Bestseller, an Editors’ Choice, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. It won the Publishing Triangle’s Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction and was voted the “Best Read of 2020” at the Queerties. As an authority on 1960s gay activism, Cervini serves on the Board of Directors of the Harvard Gender and Sexuality Caucus, and on the Board of Advisors of the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of gay American history. His award-winning digital exhibitions have been featured in Harvard’s Rudenstine Gallery, and he has presented his research to audiences across America and the United Kingdom.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary speak with their guest, Nataliya Gumenyuk about the challenges, struggles, and opportunity for democracy in the Ukraine. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "Peace; the Privilege, the Chore". Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian author, documentary filmmaker, and journalist. She specializes in conflict reporting, human rights, and foreign affairs. Gumenyuk is a founder of the Public Interest Journalism Lab, aimed at popularizing public spirit journalism and overcoming polarization. Since the 2014 revolution in Ukraine, she has  reported on events in Eastern Ukraine. Gremenyuk is one of the few journalists regularly traveling to occupied Crimea. In 2020 Gumenyuk published a book of her reporting, "The Lost Island. Tales from Occupied Crimea' based on 6 years of her reporting.  She is also the author of the book “Maidan Tahrir. In Search of a Lost Revolution” (2015), based on her reporting on the Arab Spring. 

This week, Jeremi and Zachary speak with Dr. Allison Gill about democracy activism and her efforts in exposing lies and keeping people updated in ongoing news while preserving the facts. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "Mi Chamocha." Allison Gill is a veteran, a Ph.D., a former federal government executive, a comedian, an author, and a staunch advocate for the democratic resistance. Her mission as the executive producer and host of the podcast, "Mueller, She Wrote," is to employ her expertise in the absurd amount of Trump Russia news and wrap it up into tasty bites for human consumption; she is committed to do this weekly until the House of Trump falls. Additionally, she is very dedicated to the separation of facts and theory, and she works hard to make sure you know which is which. The truth is the goal, and facts are the tools. Allison hosts and produces a number of additional podcasts for democracy activists and informed citizens, including: "The Daily Beans" and "Clean Up on Aisle 45." Please visit the following podcast links for Allison Gill’s amazing shows: ‎Mueller, She Wrote on Apple Podcasts, ‎The Daily Beans on Apple Podcasts, ‎Cleanup on Aisle 45 with AG and Andrew Torrez on Apple Podcasts.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary speak with Dr. Lorinc Redei about the change that has occured within the European Union. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "What Becomes of a Continent." Dr. Lorinc Redei is a professor at the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin, where he serves as the graduate advisor for the Global Policy Studies Program. He previously served as a press officer in the European Parliament, the directly elected legislature of the European Union. Redei's research and writing focus on European politics, the European Union, and the role of the European Parliament.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary speak with Dr. Robinson Woodward-Burns about the role of state governments in making larger constitutional and political policies for the United States. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, "When They Gather In The Hallowed Halls." Robinson Woodward-Burns is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Howard University, where he researches and teaches on American constitutionalism, civil rights, federalism, DC politics and statehood, and slavery and abolition. His first book, Hidden Laws: How State Constitutions Stabilize American Politics, was published in 2021 by Yale University Press. The book proposes that state constitutional reform has addressed national controversies over elections, voting and civil rights, and economic and labor regulation, steering national political development since the founding era. He has also published on abolitionism, constitutionalism, and social movements in the Journal of Politics, Polity, and the Tulsa Law Review. He has also written on these topics, with a special emphasis on DC statehood, in the Atlantic and the Washington Post.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary talk with Natalie Suri about her experiences as a high school student during the COVID-19 pandemic, graduating during a global crisis, and her new views on the world. Zachary reads his poem, "Like an Elephant." Natalie Suri graduated from McCallum High School in Austin in June 2021. She received many academic honors, including the Trustee Scholar award, the University Interscholastic League Scholar award, and the President’s Award for Academic Excellence. In September 2021 she will begin her studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.