Essential Dissent

From the Last Days of the U.S. Empire

Essential Dissent is a news podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 108 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Essential Dissent, a news show with 108 episodes published.

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  Essential Dissent

  Due Process in Chains

  Sep 3, 20261h 10m

  First Baptist Church, Community Room 309 N. Cayuga St, Ithaca Speakers: SEAN CHUNG, author of Due Process in Chains: A Self-Help Journal for Protecting Your Rights in the Criminal Justice System Topic: Legal strategies to hold guards accountable for their abuses JASON HOGE, former LAW-NY Reentry program director Topic: Legal resistance to employment and housing discrimination; correcting and clearing records CARL WILLIAMS, Cornell social movement lawyering clinic director Topic: Strategies for decarceration and abolition Event organized by Central New York Communities for Justice info: cnycfj@gmail.com Co-sponsors: OAR of Tompkins County - TC Workers Center - Southside Community Center Greater Ithaca Activity Center - Civic Ensemble & ReEntry Theatre Program Tompkins County SURJ - Group 73 of Amnesty International (Ithaca) - REACH - Ithaca Catholic Workers • Party for Socialism and Liberation, Upstate NY - Ithaca Democratic Socialists of America - Ithaca Committee for Justice in Palestine Donate via Village at Ithaca, select "Central New York Communities for Justice"

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  Essential Dissent

  Raymond Craib - Adventure Capitalism

  Jun 18, 202626 min

  A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age Imagine a capitalist paradise. An island utopia governed solely by the rules of the market and inspired by the fictions of Ayn Rand and Robinson Crusoe. Sound far-fetched? It may not be. The past half century is littered with the remains of such experiments in what Raymond Craib calls “libertarian exit.” Often dismissed as little more than the dreams of crazy, rich Caucasians, exit strategies have been tried out from the southwest Pacific to the Caribbean, from the North Sea to the high seas, often with dire consequences for local inhabitants. Based on research in archives in the US, the UK, and Vanuatu, as well as in FBI files acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, Craib explores in careful detail the ideology and practice of libertarian exit and its place in the histories of contemporary cap­italism, decolonization, empire, and oceans and islands. Adventure Capitalism is a global history that intersects with an array of figures: Fidel Castro and the Koch brothers, American segregationists and Melanesian socialists, Honolulu-based real estate speculators and British Special Branch spies, soldiers of fortune and English lords, Orange County engineers and Tongan navigators, CIA operatives and CBS news executives, and a new breed of techno-utopians and an old guard of Honduran coup leaders. This is not only a history of our time but, given the new iterations of privatized exit—seasteads, free private cities, and space colonization—it is also a history of our future.

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  Essential Dissent

  Flock Off! Ithaca

  Jun 12, 202647 min

  This episode is “Flock Off! Ithaca - Organizing Against Mass Surveillance”, which is a panel from the 2026 Upstate Anarchist Book Fair, held May 2nd and 3rd in Binghamton, NY. Flock Off! Ithaca is a group of Ithaca, NY residents who successfully pressured the Ithaca City Council to terminate its contract with Flock Safety. According to the Ithaca Voice, in March of 2026, "the Ithaca Common Council passed a resolution that directed the city attorney and city manager to terminate the city’s contract with Flock Safety at the “earliest possible opportunity.” The resolution also states that all Flock Safety equipment, such as license plate reader cameras and gunshot detection devices, must be turned off and disconnected within 14 days of the contract being terminated. It adds that the company must remove all related technology “as soon as practicable” after the contract ends.” When the cameras did not come down within that time frame, members of the group covered several of the cameras with opaque plastic bags to disable them. https://ithacavoice.org/2026/06/activists-cover-flock-cameras-with-black-bags-call-for-faster-removal/ The annual Upstate Anarchist Book Fair is co-sponsored by PM Press and Riot Act Books. PM Press is a radical independent publisher that amplifies bold political ideas and vital stories, operating a warehouse in Binghamton, NY. Riot Act Books is an anti-profit, volunteer-run bookstore in Binghamton that co-organizes community events. https://pmpress.org https://www.riotactbooks.com

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  Essential Dissent

  Flock Off! Ithaca

  Jun 12, 202647 minS0

  <p>This episode is “Flock Off! Ithaca - Organizing Against Mass Surveillance”, which is a panel from the 2026 Upstate Anarchist Book Fair, held May 2nd and 3rd in Binghamton, NY.</p> <p>Flock Off! Ithaca is a group of Ithaca, NY residents who successfully pressured the Ithaca City Council to terminate its contract with Flock Safety.</p> <p>According to the Ithaca Voice, in March of 2026, "the Ithaca Common Council passed a resolution that directed the city attorney and city manager to terminate the city’s contract with Flock Safety at the “earliest possible opportunity.” The resolution also states that all Flock...

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  Essential Dissent

  Jarrod Shanahan - Every Fire Needs a Little Bit of Help

  Jun 7, 202649 minS0

  <p>https://pmpress.org/</p> <p>A decade of American society coming apart.</p> <p>Every Fire Needs a Little Bit of Help collects a decade of reflections on recent US struggles—Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the George Floyd Rebellion—alongside accounts of the rise of Trumpism, the alt-right, an apocalyptic shift in popular culture, to paint a dense and complex portrait of a decade of protracted social crisis. </p> <p>Jarrod Shanahan reports from the ground. On the streets in 2014, from the depths of the Rikers Island penal complex, inside the alt-right underground and the carnival of T...

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