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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.

Rebecca Solnit on Long Term Strategy, plus Resisting ICE in Small Town America / Start Making Sense
byThe Nation Magazine

It’s been only a couple of weeks since the No Kings 3 protests, but we can see now how protest and resistance are changing in America: that one it wasn't just bigger than the previous No Kings. It was different: Deeper and more connected. Rebecca Solnit argues that to understand resistance and change today, we need a much longer perspective than a couple of years. Her new book is The Beginning Comes After the End.

Also: Minneapolis made history with its mobilization against ICE. But what about the rest of the state, where the immigrant population has been growing for a couple of decades? What kind of resistance has developed there? Emma Janssen went to small town Minnesota to find out. She’s a writing fellow at The American Prospect.  

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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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