Judging Laphonza Butler and the Democrats’ record on labor

Hello from yet another devastating news week!

[0:30] We begin by addressing Hamas’s recent attack on Israel, to which Netanyahu responded with a declaration of war. (We’ll have an area expert on the show next week to talk about all this at greater length.) [12:10] In the second half of the episode, we discuss the new U.S. Senator from California, Laphonza Butler, and how her appointment by Gavin Newsom (following Dianne Feinstein’s death) factors into next year’s race for that seat. We explore the organizer-to-politician career path and ponder how labor-y a labor candidate has to be.

In this episode, we ask:

What would unbiased media coverage of Israel/Palestine actually look like?

Has the (online) left overcorrected on identity politics and started to judge “diverse” figures too harshly?

For more, see:

* More on where Laphonza Butler fits into the California Senate race and her labor-world connections

* An excerpt from Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag

* Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman

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