How Big Tech Impacts The Homies in LA and The Bay (with Alejandro Villalpando)

Tech companies are divesting from California claiming bad governance and high taxes are the cause. The gentrifiers leaving seems like a victory in the immediate but echo a history of colonization– invaders extracting what they want and leaving when everything is ruined–in the long term. How do people in the hood feel about big tech corporations and what does tech got to do with abolition? How do we frame our organizing around gentrification in the wake of these seismic economic shifts and environmental disaster? Abolitionist and scholar Alejandro Villalpando comes through to discuss these questions from the perspective of living in the same community he grew up in. 

Alejandro Villalpando received his Ph.D. from the Department of Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Riverside. He is a born-and-raised South Central Los Angeles and son of a Guatemalan immigrant mother and Mexican immigrant father. Dr. Villalpando is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pan African Studies and the Latin American Studies Program at Cal State LA. His work can be understood generally as lying within the intersection of Black, Ethnic, and Central American Studies.

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Host: J. Khadijah Abdurahman, Ilan Mandel
Music: Drew Lewis

Links for the Episode:
Chicanx/Latinx Caucus
The Rams’ Stan Kroenke Represents the Worst of the NFL
Businesses Are Fleeing California. Blame Bad Government.
The Abolition Open School: How We Spread the Message (an ASA 2020 Freedom Course)
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Number of Latinos dying daily from Covid soars 1,000% in Los Angeles
The University of California has fully divested from fossil fuels. It's the largest school in the US to do it.
If CalPERS Divested from Coal, Why Does It Still Have $6.5B Invested?
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Facebook’s Role in the Genocide in Myanmar: New Reporting Complicates the Narrative
The Gig Economy Is White People Discovering Servants
Margari Hill Muslim Anti-Racist Coalition (MARC)
"East of La Brea" Is Changing How Writers Rooms are Formed
Central American Studies Twitter Handle
CSU Cops Off Campus IG
“Why Did You Kill that Boy?” Los Angeles Sheriff’s Officers Fatally Shoot Salvadoran-American Teen
Stop LAPD Spying Coalition

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