East Anchorage Book Club with Andrew Gray Andrew Gray

Amber Batts is a founding member of the Community United for Safety and Protection (also known as CUSP), an Alaska-based group of current and former sex workers, sex trafficking survivors, and allies working towards safety and protection in Alaska’s sex industry. Amber began working as sex worker at the age of 30 to escape an abusive marriage while supporting her two young children. We discuss her path through the Anchorage sex industry, the Alaska legal system, and her political advocacy tod...

Rebecca Braun of Juneau moved to Alaska about 30 years ago initially to work for the forestry service. She then taught math and science at Juneau-Douglas High School before randomly applying for a journalist position with The Alaska Budget Report. The Alaska Budget Report, which no longer exists, was a nonpartisan publication that covered state government in depth. In 2005 she purchased that publication and became the editor-in-chief; she did deep dives into the VECO bribery scandal as well a...

Donna Arduin is most well known in Alaska as Governor Dunleavy's 2019 director of the Office of Management and Budget. She is currently staff for representative Ben Carpenter of Nikiski. As Dunleavy's OMB Director, she advised major cuts to the state budget including eliminating the state ferry system, dismantling the University of Alaska, and drastically cutting funding for the K-12 public education system. Prior to her work in Alaska, she earned a reputation as a "budget fixer" for her work...

Jeremy Applegate is the chief of Wage and Hour for the State of Alaska Department of Labor. The goal of today’s episode is to inform workers, particularly seasonal workers who may have never worked in Alaska before, of their rights. Important things to know up front: workers are entitled to a written contract at the start of their employment which specifies how much they will be paid, when they will be paid, and how they will be paid. Most workers in Alaska are entitled to the state minimum w...

Municipal attorney of Bethel Libby Bakalar is today's guest. Libby became famous in Alaska for her blog, One Hot Mess, and then her social media presence as One Hot Mess Alaska. Her outspokenness led to her unlawfully firing by the Dunleavy administration when she was working there as an assistant attorney general. Today, we discuss all of that as well as her complicated feelings about the conflict in Israel as a Jewish woman and descendant of Holocaust survivors.

Today is the final episode in our series on Transgender Rights. I, Rep. Andrew Gray, explain the purpose of this series and broadcast the special order that I gave on the Alaska State House floor on April 17, 2024. It provides an olive branch to folks who may be on the other side with regards to these issues. It is my sincere belief that the vast majority of those opposed to trans rights have not had conversations with trans people, their families, or health care providers. If they had had th...