Radio Free Fresno

SouthofShawMedia
Radio Free Fresno Podcast

Politics, news, and the arts from the 559, coming to you from South of Shaw Avenue in Fresno, CA! Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/southofshawmedia/support

  1. 03/04/2021

    Adventure Church, Tower Theatre, and the Proud Boy Cop in Fresno, CA

    It’s a story of a historically inclusive, friendly, nightlife hub in Fresno, symbolic of more than just a really old building that stands very tall among the other Tower District buildings, it’s the spot where Pride Parade stops and starts and it has hosted the Reel Pride Film Festival for decades now—Tower Theatre is also an icon of LGBTQIA civil rights in Fresno, and the diversity of people in Tower spans class, race, gender, sexuality; Tower Theatre is in the one single most diverse and inclusive neighborhood in Fresno and that is what it symbolizes: equality, equity, love. It’s also a story about right wing agitators and harassment, of weekly Sunday rallies by the LGBTQIA community, allies, and Tower District residents, of Officer Fitzgerald, the cop with Fresno PD seen participating in the harassment of LGBTQIA activists at their Sunday rallies while off duty and was revealed to be an extremist proud boy, punisher cosplayer, kids’ ‘mentor’, and founder of a militia-esque Sons of 1776 right wing group. Leftists and BIPOC in Fresno have long known that there was one overtly fascist far right cop serving on the Fresno pd. At a livestream event held in downtown Fresno back in January 2020, a livestream was uploaded to facebook showing a low resolution livestream of a group of proud boys with at least one man in an American Guard hoodie, chatting with and embracing a Fresno police officer in full uniform (the star on the upper arm is visible at times). While it is very low res, the livestreamer follows the man hugging the far right people and then walking to the fresno squad car. He then gets inside, does a U-turn, slows down near the livestreamer as she gets closer, and turns on his siren lights before speeding off. It is obvious a member of law enforcement spent quite a lot of time on the side being friendly with the Proud Boys and American Guard before walking to, entering, and driving his squad car. https://youtu.be/y7vxG_4nPyo [livestream copyrights acquired by United Leftist Coalition from original livestreamer] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-02-28/fresno-evangelical-church-tries-to-buy-tower-theatre https://kmph.com/news/local/religious-leaders-gather-in-support-of-save-the-tower-theatre-movement https://gvwire.com/2021/03/14/tensions-flare-at-tower-theatre-protest-as-sale-dispute-heads-back-to-court/ (audio heard in this podcast is from this gv wire episode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2DVHrnFL4 https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article249939048.html https://abc30.com/fresno-police-proud-boys-tower-protest/10418161/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/southofshawmedia/support

    18 min
  2. 18/03/2021

    Atlanta Incel Shooting & FOSTA/SESTA in SW

    The Atlanta shootings are currently being investigated as both a potential hate crime and as an act of sexist killings by an incel (although acting out on violent fantasies about women is generally more of a darkcel thing to do, as per their sexist ideology on being ‘red pilled’ versus being ‘black pilled’). From the Redpill Handbook, a collection of reddit incel essays being distributed as a kind of incel manifesto, to incelese, a coded dialect of English (includes words like “mogged”, i.e. "that chad wrist mogged me”), incels have built an ideology, an internet presence, and now, a death count. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/how-the-alleged-murder-of-a-blogger-has-revealed-the-dark-reality-of-incels Is it really new though, or is it a reactionary take on traditional patriarchy? Or is it an extremist form of patriarchy? The kind of unspoken message sex workers get when they start is, “if you leave the kitchen, anything that happens to you out there is your own fault because you never should have done sex work. You should’ve found a mate and reproduced and made your husband tortillas for life. If you had done that, you would be safe. If you refuse, you are fair game.” And by ‘fair game’ they mean it in the Most Dangerous Game way, the serial killer murder for sport way.  Sex workers have usually been the first victims of serial killers. They have limited rights, both as human beings in regards to assault and theft, as well as limited labor rights to organize, to unionize, to protect themselves. FOSTA/SESTA is a bill that was passed in the name of sex traffic victims, yet it is the one bill that has endangered sex workers and victims of sex trafficking across the board due to the inability of sex workers to use the internet to vet clients with each other. Without that, many sex workers went back to working without any way to ensure their safety.  https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5598&context=flr From an academic study entitled, “FOSTA: A Hostile Law with a Human Cost” by Chamberlain (Fordham Law Review, 2019): “Street work is more dangerous than indoor work and can even be lethal.269 Rape and assault are prevalent and seen as inevitable, and workers are at risk of violence from clients and law enforcement alike.270 As the internet became a ubiquitous utility, sex workers were able to move the negotiation and solicitation stages of their business to online forums that did not demand physical presence.271 Sex workers gained the means to create an electronic record of client communications,272 screen potential clients,273 and communicate with one another about dangerous clients, safe spaces, and other industry-specific health and safety tips.274 The shift online revolutionized the industry, imbuing sex work with a previously nonexistent level of safety and decreasing the need for third parties as security or advertisement intermediaries.275 The effect was striking: a 2017 study found that “from 2002 to 2010, when Craigslist’s erotic-services site was active and solicitation moved indoors, the female homicide rate fell by seventeen percent.” We should not ignore how society, how congress, how our legislation, worked to create dangerous conditions for sex workers in America, especially FOSTA/SESTA. Sex workers are treated like the lowest caste of society, they are perceived as morally depraved, as lesser than other workers, as less worthy of justice in the even they are harmed, and the advent of OnlyFans becoming a somewhat socially acceptable thing in modern times, has done little to remove the stigma and risk of doing in real life sex work. We need to change how society and the law treats sex workers.  https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/17/us/shooting-atlanta-acworth --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/southofshawmedia/support

    10 min
  3. 11/02/2021

    Story of Dr. Maischak's Exile At Hands of Fascists

    In 2017, Dr. Lars Maischak, a professor of history at #CaliforniaStateUniversityFresno​, tweeted about how history shows us Trump is a fascist, and that, historically, fascists must hang for fascism to die. Dr. Maischak is no stranger to fascism--his family was German leftists during #WWII​......his tweets reflected his life experience, his academic research, and his personal ethics. Not only was he attacked by Breitbart and the alt-right over the tweet, but he was also railroaded by the university system and suspended from his professorship. The university rejected his first amendment rights and accused him of inciting violence (although the secret service investigated, they found no evidence that Dr. Maischak had or intended to incite violence, contrary to CSU Fresno's stance). They further blamed Dr. Maischak for the controversy, saying he 'should've known better, he does. He knows better than them. Still, despite being proven right after the atrocities Trump committed since 2017, Dr. Maischak's life continues to be upended and his employer, a public university, has refused to support him and continues to insist they were in the right to punish him. Never punish a historian for giving a historically accurate analysis of the past, present, and future. You should be taking notes, not censoring him.   Links to Move On petition  https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/california-faculty-association-take-a-stand-against-neo-mccarthyism Link to saved emails  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1B0VnAfIlTqE6Z4NmzlMelf9NAm-rJqnP --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/southofshawmedia/support

    53 min
  4. 13/01/2021

    Attack on the Capitol-Sierra Unified School District's Meeting on James Hoak Trustee

    Content warning: contains justification of capitol attack, and encouragement for repeated attacks against those who oppose the attacks and/or the the employment of James Hoak as Sierra Unifed School District board of Trustees member *(18 minutes and on) "[Samantha]: you guys are all subject to what's going on. And if you don't think that they're coming for you-they're coming for you.")  #JamesHoak was elected to the school board of trustees for Sierra unified in CA recently and attended / was approving of the attack on the Capitol during the January attack. Not surprising to Latinx people in Fresno, CA--quite a bit aways from the Sierra Foothills, yet Fresnans are oddly the people closest to Hoak's radical politically ideologies--a frequent agitator and disrupter of cultural events and non-cultural political events in Fresno, CA, he was seen to be advocating for and explaining the actions of a mob of MAGA attackers beating police with sticks/metal pipes/etc during his zoomed in 'reporting' of events on his now deleted video *video here: https://www.facebook.com/EattherichStirfried/posts/1752950961539632 More about Hoak here: https://abc30.com/sierra-unified-capitol-protest.../9570956/ JamesHoak, #capitol attendee and trustee of the #sierraunifiedschooldistrict is no stranger to immigrant rights activists in Fresno. Traveling from his home city, where he is now a #SierraUnified school district trustee, he was a frequent MAGA livestreamer known to antagonize, disrupt, and livestream the faces and personal identities of local immigrant rights activists in Fresno.  Going as far back as 2018, as seen in this video, James Hoak would use inflammatory language against #immigrants and was one of a group of #proudboys from the #centralvalley who were listed during this news story on a pro-migrant caravan rally (crashed by proud boys, including James Hoak) as a "self-proclaimed" Nationalist (a common dog whistle for white supremacists who believe in an ethno-state of Whites only).  Hoak can be seen being interviewed in this local news story from 2018 around the 30 second mark, his name clearly visible, and the reporter quotes them at the end saying they are nationalists.  Migrant caravan immigrant rights rally, Fresno, CA, 2018, crashed by proudboys, including James Hoak interviwed by reporter with name disclosed: https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/local-news/migrant-caravan-supporters-and-protesters-rally-at-a-busy-fresno-intersection/1618119313/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_KSEE24_News&fbclid=IwAR0F5jzqYf_Aj2UerZxG-ATO3d-nTwKcPLV_zodCtUXRQgVAQajQQ7JNEO0 Mayday cultural event personal livestream where Mr. Hoak is seen mid-video up close to be livestreaming immigrant people's face before organized activist Latinx members approach and block his view of immigrant bystanders. Host takes the video, host is not affiliated with the event--this was supposed to be a cultural dance and music event celebrating workers for mayday. This event was not political, it was a cultural dance/music event that quickly soured after MAGA hats appeared and began to film an elderly lady in a veil sitting alone on a cement bench that is seen at the start. Towards the end, Host sent a proxy to film up close to the MAGA hats, and James Hoak is clearly the one in the blue shirt. Please skip towards the end to see the blue shirt up close for identification purposes. Thank you. host. https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=2226409804112738&ref=watch_permalink --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/southofshawmedia/support

    1h 20m
  5. 19/12/2020

    Two Sides of the Same Capitalist Coin-History PhD Interview (F.I.A. Series)

    F.I.A. Podcast Series with Dr. Lars Maischak - Episode 1: Two Sides of the Same Capitalist Coin This is the first podcast in a series of interviews with Dr. Lars Maischak, a history PhD from Germany who lectures at California State University, Fresno. This series is entitled, “Fascism in America” (F.I.A. Series) and looks at America through historical context, modern day events, and the lived experiences of Dr. Maischak, both his German lived experience, as well as his experiences recently in America. Our first episode is called “Two Sides of the Same Capitalist Coin” and Dr. Maischak explains how both conservatives and neoliberals play a role in fascism gaining power—using the example of German merchants from the 1800’s as a means to explain how this came to be. Contrary to popular belief, conservatives and neoliberals hold the same capitalist ideals, and we look at how these ideals play out on the global scale, as well as what that means to American modern day events and political ideologies. This is the link to the book discussed in this episode by Dr. Lars Maischak: https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/economic-history/german-merchants-nineteenth-century-atlantic?format=PB People who don't want to or cannot spend $30 on the full length book, can read an older manuscript (Dr. Maischak’s dissertation) that is available for free (but has stuff missing compared to the book: https://csufresno.academia.edu/LarsMaischak Stay tuned for more of this series, Fascism in America, with lecturer of history, Dr. Lars Maischak! Only on Radio Free Fresno, an op-ed project of South of Shaw Media! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/southofshawmedia/support

    25 min

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Politics, news, and the arts from the 559, coming to you from South of Shaw Avenue in Fresno, CA! Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/southofshawmedia/support

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