1810 - The Senate's Wrongheaded Sex Trafficking Bill w/ Alana Massey & Laundering Racism in America w/ Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Today we present two interviews taken from Sam's nationally syndicated radio program, Ring of Fire.

Alana Massey (@AlanaMassey), journalist and author, joins us to discuss the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA, the controversial "anti sex trafficking" bill that recently passed the Senate. While SESTA sounds like a good idea on its surface, sex workers' rights advocates and many who work with trafficking victims say it will hurt the victims of trafficking more than it helps. The misguided notion that shutting down online advertising will stop sex trafficking rather than driving it further underground. How amending the Communications Decency Act will damage online freedom. The challenges of identifying trafficking victims in the US. Why those involved in the sex trade themselves are in the best position to identify and help trafficking victims, and why the police do more harm than good. The kinds of services that would actually help trafficking victims and why a "harm reduction" approach is preferable to an "abolitionist" approach.

For more, check out Massey's piece in Allure Magazine, 'If You Care About Sex Trafficking, Trust People in the Sex Trades — Not Celebrities.'

Khalil Gibran Mohammed (@KhalilGMuhammad), professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, joins us to discuss his piece in The Nation, 'How the Alt-Right Uses Social Science to Make Racism Respectable.' How Derek Black, son of prominent white nationalist and Stormfront.org founder Don Black, renounced his father's teachings and what scholars have learned from him. The common misconceptions of racism in the US as aberrational, isolated, and historical, rather than widespread and foundational. The misconception of white nationalists as uneducated yokels, rather than professionals and small business owners. The through lines from the alt-right to the alt-lite. How white nationalists use respectability politics, cherrypicked facts, and "the free exchange of ideas" to give their beliefs a veneer of scientific rigor. How the racist right uses the current movement against police violence to their rhetorical advantage with those who lack a systemic critique of state violence.

For members, Sam and Janeane talk to Arundhati Roy.

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