Left Handed Leftist
Are you tired of hearing the same old corporate-approved talking points from the mainstream news and sellout politicians who promise change and never deliver? If the answer is yes then you're in the right place.
We're here to talk about what the oligarchs don’t want you to hear and give a leftist perspective on the current news and social justice movements in Maryland, nationally, and around the world. Calling out corporate politicians and big-money interests that have dominated our lives by highlighting the power of the working class and the movements fighting back.
Every Wednesday we’ll either be taking a deep dive through news stories the media establishment wants you to ignore or conversing with issue experts, grassroots activists, community leaders, and leftist candidates/elected officials about how we move forward.
Get ready, it's time for a leftist takeover!
Left Handed Leftist
*Trailer* Protecting Our Backyard: District 9’s New Direction w/ Imara Crooms
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This is the trailer for the full episode that will be posted on 3/18!
In this week's episode of the Left Handed Leftist, we're joined by Imara Crooms, candidates for Prince George's County Council District Maryland. We discuss economic justice, holding developers accountable, lack of healthcare options and more. He points out the need of community organizers and participating in public financing.
Interested in being a guest on the podcast, send us an text!
If you enjoyed this episode make sure to rate us 5 stars and hit the notifications bell to stay up-to-date on new episodes every Wednesday.
In terms of data centers in general, just like it's just it is yet another in like a long history of American boondoggles, right? Like, I got to use the word boondoggles. Joe Biden would be proud. One thing that's helped Prince George's County is that all around the nation, people are saying no on this issue. If they had been faster in getting them approved in the county, we'd be out of luck. It they were slow enough that all around the country people were saying we don't want this. So it's it was a lot easier uh for folks to sort of get on board on this issue. So much credit to the organizers, the no landover data coalition. Seeing the work those folks have done, like that, that is what it is to be an organizer. I am an organizer by, I can't say by trade because I, you know, don't get paid. But you know, I've got a long history of organizing with yes, thank you. I've got a long history of organizing with DSA. So like I, when I see people do it, I am like just intensely impressed, super touched. And they're still doing it. They're continuing to do it. And that's important. Because those of us who have been around for a while, from the days of Occupy, from a women's movement, from Black Lives Matter, right? Like, we know that people with power are relentless on these issues. So, like that choice to mishear people, that choice to hear, like, oh, we don't want data centers in our population centers, which is fundamentally not what anyone ever said. No one ever, no one was ever like, oh, we don't want data centers in my neighborhood. You know, this wasn't a NIMBY issue. People said, we don't want them in the county. Uh and the choice by our elected officials to mishear that is a really standard choice of power, a power in politics. And I'm really touched and impressed that I feel like people are seeing through that. And yeah, it makes me feel really positive about my neighbors.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. That's that's awesome. And then playing devil's advocate here is that do you what is your response to people or to some of the even current current council people who say that while we understand the the issues with the water, utilities, electricity, environment, jobs, all the myriad of problems that we all see. This will bring in so much money into the county and so much economic development so that so that we're able to fund fund some of these other projects. What do you say to those people?
SPEAKER_01I mean, they know better. They know that's not true. There are there are specific tax incentives and loopholes that have been levied for these organizations to ensure that they don't. So what's frustrating to me is that I don't my stance on against data centers is not like set in stone. It is, to me, in an ideal world, we would be capable of regulation. America's not capable of regulation. Maryland is not capable of regulation, Prince Georgia's County in particular is not capable of regulation. We cannot trust our elected officials to sufficiently regulate a harmful industry to the point that it won't be doing harm. They've just shown that we have no reason to trust them again. And so, like, yeah, in an ideal world, data centers wouldn't have to be bad. In an ideal world, data centers could be community-centric and like add jobs or whatever. That's not what's gonna happen. And there's a sea of data at this point, like reporting from our own task force, reporting from the NAACP, showing that all these promises are not true. And so when your elected rep uh when your elected officials try to play devil's advocate, you know, and they're like, oh, well, you know, I want to hear both sides. There's no both sides on this issue. There's there's the side of the people you're representing, and there's the side of developers, there's a side of people with money. And like normal, no reasonable human being can uh can conclude that if it is in someone's money to interest to see something done, that they care about the community. Right? Like the only reason to be pro data centers is if you're gonna make a ton of money off of them. And we the public are not. We never are the people who make money.