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“Renters Are the Sleeping Giants of LA Politics”—Plus the Hidden History of AIDS

On this episode of Start Making Sense, Peter Dreier reports on the fight for control of LA, and Kai Wright and Lizzy Ratner talk about “the plague in the shadows.”

Jon Wiener

February 21, 2024

Nithya Raman won a Los Angeles City Council seat as a progressive political newcomer.(Richard Vogel / AP)

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“Renters are the sleeping giants of LA politics,” plus the Hidden History of AIDS | Start Making Sense
byThe Nation Magazine

A political battle is underway in Los Angeles, where landlords, multi-millionaires, and the police are trying to defeat the leading progressive on the city council. Their key issues are protection for renters and new taxes on mansions.

Also on this episode of Start Making Sense: A new podcast brings us stories from the early days of HIV & AIDS. It's about how the epidemic decimated poor communities of color and the people who refused to stay out of sight. WNYC's Kai Wright and The Nation's Lizzy Ratner are behind the new show, Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows.

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A political battle is underway in Los Angeles, where landlords, multimillionaires, and the police are trying to defeat the leading progressive on the City Council. Their key issues are protection for renters and new taxes on mansions. Peter Dreier has the story for us.

Also on this episode of Start Making Sense: A new podcast brings us stories from the early days of HIV & AIDS. It’s about how the epidemic decimated poor communities of color and the people who refused to stay out of sight. WNYC’s Kai Wright and The Nations Lizzy Ratner are behind the new show, Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows.

Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

The Mob Attack on UCLA’s Gaza Encampment, plus Israel, Hamas, and Rape | Start Making Sense
byThe Nation Magazine

Lots of pro-Palestine encampments on college campuses have been attacked by local police, but UCLA was different: a pro-Israel mob attacked the encampment on April 30. The attack continued for three hours before police stepped in, and they didn’t arrest any of the attackers. The next night, the police themselves attacked and shut down the encampment. UCLA Professor and Chair in Jewish History, David Myers has our report.

Also on this episode: There’s no doubt that Israeli women and girls were raped during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7; but there is little evidence to support Israel’s charge that rape was a “premeditated, systematic” strategy by Hamas—offered as a justification for Israel's destruction of Gaza and killing of 35,000 civilians. At the same time, evidence is growing of sexual abuse of Palestinian women held in detention by Israel. Azadeh Moaveni reports on the findings of her reporting for the London Review of Books.

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Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


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