Prisons and Politics w Brandie from True North Radio (Interview #34 and Red Reviews #9 plus more)
Hey everyone, I’m happy to once again bring you another episode of The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist. This time around I have another great interview. I’m talking to Brandie, host of True North Radio and we talk a lot about politics and prisons in Saskatchewan. I had to cut this down a bit again but if you want the full interview then you can find the slightly longer version by becoming a patron, or you can email me at mindofaskepticalleftist@gmail.com to tell me you want a copy of the audio or a link to the video. Then I have a short section for Ask an Anarchist, I added a bit of post conversation commentary but I think this will be the last of the episodes with Rene and then I’ll move onto questions and comments I received on Tiktok and Instagram . Then we have Red Reviews number 9 where we talk about Nixonland by Rick Perlstein and then you get about 10 minutes of Anarchist Reading Corner where I read an excerpt from the book The Anarchist Turn.
Before I get into too much I want to thank Christopher Taylor for becoming a new patron at the Definitely an Anarchist level. If you want to become a patron then you can do that at patreon.com/skepticalleftist or you can send me a one time donation at buymeacoffee.com/skepticallefty. If you can’t afford that then a like, comment or share would help a lot. This whole thing is about getting more eyes watching and more ears listening and maybe we can radicalize some folks.
I was on Damien Marie AtHope’s youtube channel again this past week so if you like hearing me talk then make sure to check that out.
I’ve had a few things going on lately that I kind of wanted to talk about. First obviously is the wild shit happening in Afghanistan. I would love to have something important and profound to say but I don’t know enough. I just hope that we can convince our governments to let all the refugees in because helping people in need is kind of what I think the entire point of having a society is. I could also comment on the bullshit liberal apologism for how bad Joe Biden actually is. He hasn’t accomplished anything that people farther left wanted and somehow we’re supposed to forgive the fact that he sucks because it’s only been 6 months. It’s always funny how the Republicans don’t give a fuck and do whatever they want in the first week and it takes months to undo it but for the Democrats they always beat themselves before they even get started. I really really hate the Republicans but the Dems deserve to lose if they can’t get more progressive legislation going and fuck all the people who claimed they would “pull Biden to the left” or “hold him accountable because we don’t worship our leaders like Trump supporters do”. I really wish that liberals could be honest with themselves. Anyway, enough complaining about liberals because in Canada we have an election so we have a different kind of Liberal we can complain about. Justin Trudeau sucks ass, he sucks all the ass and then breathes in our faces with his shitty breath and tells us that we have to vote for him or else Erin the dipshit O’toole will win. I can’t speak for anyone but myself but I’ve had enough of his placating oil companies and lack of action on helping Indigenous communities. And the fucking Canadian liberals are on social media already telling us that a vote for the NDP is the same as a vote for the Conservatives. No the fuck it isn’t and if you could pull your head out of the bullshit team sport that is democracy then you might actually consider voting for someone or something that matters. In case viewers/listeners didn’t already know, I prefer to vote for ideas and not people. I dislike party politics and I think that way too many people are way too invested in believing that things can improve without changing the dynamics of the system. Electoral reform was supposed to do that but Trudeau back off of that promise because it wasn’t beneficial to him and yes I’m still fucking pissed about that too. There are a lot of different options for how we could run our electoral system but the one we have serves the party who holds onto power and that is why it will never change.
Speaking of change, I’m interested in getting involved in a tenants union and I’d love to get involved with some kind of general strike organizing in Saskatchewan and Canada so if any listeners know of any direction I could start looking in I would greatly appreciate it. I’ve done a little bit of digging but when you google general strike Canada you pretty much only get results from the Winnipeg general strike and while that is very cool it doesn’t help me.
So I guess that’s all I’m going to rant about today. I’m pissed at all the liberals, I’m pissed at conservatives, I’m pissed at the atheist community for not being as progressive as they should be, I’m pissed that skeptics think politics isn’t the right thing for them to talk about, and I’m pissed at communists who think anarchists don’t have anything valuable to say. As you’ll find out in this episode’s Anarchist reading Corner both anarchism and marxism benefit from each other and they can each solve some of the problems in the other.
Brandie’s links
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvuNhCE7hgglyqUiHu5izTA
https://twitter.com/homefiresk
Brandie’s Comrades
https://twitter.com/nicolesaraue (apologies for misspelling her name in the video)
https://www.facebook.com/nicole4douglaspark
https://twitter.com/mearaconwayNDP
https://www.facebook.com/mearaconwayNDP
Red Reviews
Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
https://www.amazon.ca/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing-America/dp/074324303X
(I hate sharing an Amazon link but I had trouble finding a better way to get this)
Justin's Links
https://www.instagram.com/justinclarkph/
https://newspapers.library.in.gov/
https://www.justinclark.org/s/Truth-Seeker-Article-May-August-2021.pdf
Anarchist Reading Corner
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745333427/the-anarchist-turn/
My Linktree https://linktr.ee/Skepticalcory
Envirocollective http://www.envirocollective.ca/
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From Many Peoples, Strength
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFNDfb47NYEo3al00zXGDtQ
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcmRypxUSoGh7JAsZp83OqA
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