East Anchorage Book Club with Andrew Gray

Send us Fan Mail Reverend Lise Adams Sherry was chosen to be the permanent minister of the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in March 2022. She grew up in a small town in Oregon as a regular church-goer thanks to her grandmother. As a teen, she questioned the central tenets of the Christian faith, and moved away from organized religion until stumbling into a Unitarian Church in Vancouver...

Send us Fan Mail On this special July 4th episode, Andrew interviews Jasmin Smith: lifelong Alaskan, entrepreneur, and community organizer. From her youth in Eagle River to her leadership on the Mountain View Community council; from the formation of her landmark company, Baby Vend, to her heading up the most recent Juneteenth celebrations on the Delaney Park Strip, all is discussed. Also, on the s...

Send us Fan Mail Michael Burke grew up in upstate New York and first moved to Anchorage in the 1980s. He has been the senior pastor of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in midtown for over 20 years. 2009 in Anchorage is colloquially known as “the summer of hate.” That year an equal rights ordinance was proposed by the Anchorage Assembly and conservatives came from near and far to testify against eq...

Send us Fan Mail Jim Obergefell and John Arthur embarked upon a life together when they were in their early 20s in Cincinnati. Twenty years later, when John was dying of ALS, they began a battle with the state of Ohio to have Jim recognized on John's impending death certificate as his surviving spouse. That case made it's way to the US Supreme Court, and in the landmark decision Obergefe...

Send us Fan Mail Caitlin Shortell was born and raised in Anchorage. She returned home after earning her law degree at Northeastern University in Boston and worked as an Assistant Public Defender at the Alaska Public Defender Agency (2003); as an Assistant Attorney General at the Alaska Attorney General's Office (2004-2008); and as Human Rights Advocate at the Alaska State Commission for Human...

Send us Fan Mail In 2014 marriage equality was achieved in Alaska thanks to a case called Hamby vs Parnell. Although there were 5 couples involved, it was named after Matt Hamby who is our guest today along with his husband Chris Sheldon. They discuss their lives, the case, and the future of marriage equality in Alaska.

Send us Fan Mail Anchorage Attorney Scott Kendall served as Sen. Lisa Murkowski's campaign attorney in 2010 and her 2016 campaign coordinator. He then served as chief of staff for Governor Bill Walker. In the last month he represented Alaska Redistricting Board members Melanie Bahnke and Nicole Borromeo in action against the Alaska Redistricting Board itself. Today we talk about redistricting...

Send us Fan Mail Kameron Perez-Verdia, Assembly member for west Anchorage, spoke persuasively at the Assembly meeting on May 10, 2022, about why he couldn’t vote to fund Mayor Dave Bronson’s planned emergency shelter at Elmore and Tudor, but then he changed his mind at the last moment voting in support of that funding. His vote was decisive ensuring that the funding was approved. We discuss his su...

Send us Fan Mail The Alaska-based Twitter handle “Hrrrl Scouts” started in Fairbanks in 2016 as a group effort, but has been just one person  in Anchorage since Spring 2020. From their frank sexuality to their in-depth Twitter  threads of municipal government, Hrrrl Scouts has become an important asset to the Anchorage left; however, they are definitively not a Democrat.  Hrrrl Scouts is not offic...

Send us Fan Mail In 1970 Alaska repealed its abortion law making abortion legal here three years prior to Roe vs Wade. One Alaskan senator who voted to legalize abortion – three separate times as he will point out -- was Joe Josephson. That same year he lost the democratic primary for the senate race to replace Bob Bartlett who had died in office; Republican Ted Stevens went on to win that electio...

Send us Fan Mail Former acting Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson was Anchorage's leader for an extremely turbulent eight months. The decision to go into public service in today’s political environment is a fraught one, but imagine taking over as mayor during a pandemic after a scandal took down the previous mayor. That was what Austin Quinn-Davidson did on October 23, 2020, and as you’ll hear today...

Send us Fan Mail Newly re-elected Midtown Assembly Member Meg Zaletel has been through the wringer. After surviving a recall election last fall while she was sponsoring Covid mitigation mandates which led to the most vicious Assembly meetings in Anchorage history, she was named the interim director of the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness (ACEH). We talk about all of that and her hopes for t...

Send us Fan Mail Lying above Latvia, Estonia is the northern most Baltic country. Estonia’s capital city, Tallinn, is a short ferry ride from Helsinki, the capital of Finland. From 2001 - 2003, I lived in Tallinn. I have watched the war in Ukraine with particular alarm given so many of my friends live so close to the conflict. In this episode, I speak with two of them: Eva Finch , an Estonian livi...

Send us Fan Mail In December 2021, the East Anchorage Book Club held a Zoom event with Rabbi Abram Goodstein of Congregation Beth Shalom and Reverend Matthew Schultz of First Presbyterian Church. These two local progressive clergy co-host a podcast together called “What Divines Us.” After months of holding Zoom events that were not recorded, we experimented with recording this one; however, at the...

Send us Fan Mail Homelessness has been front and center in Anchorage politics for years, but particularly during the covid pandemic with the conversion of the Sullivan Arena into an emergency mass shelter. The debate has been dominated by those of us who have never been homeless; in fact, few of us have ever had a meaningful interaction with a homeless person. Today we talk with a woman who has ex...

Send us Fan Mail Eitan Hersh is a political science professor at Tufts University in Boston where he focuses on US elections, civic participation, and voting rights. In 2020 he published his second book, Politics is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change .  That book led to the start of this podcast, so it is a great honor to have him on the show. Eitan...

Send us Fan Mail Vanessa Stephens is a third-generation Chugiak resident running to represent district 2 on the Anchorage Assembly. She happens to be transgender but is adamant that this is not an important aspect of her campaign. Much of her advocacy focuses on making Chugiak-Eagle River more compliant with the Americans for Disabilities Act, as she has been using a wheelchair for over 20 years....

Send us Fan Mail Save Anchorage is a powerful far-right propaganda machine that exerts a strong influence on our current mayoral administration and is informally led by Eagle River Assembly woman Jamie Allard. Today we are joined by community organizer and early member of the Save Anchorage Facebook Group, Yarrow Silvers . We are also joined by the anonymous Blogger The Blue Alaskan; The Blue Alas...

Send us Fan Mail Many of us think of Eagle River-Chugiak as a conservative stronghold where an independent non-partisan candidate wouldn’t have a chance. However, the truth is that Eagle River-Chugiak, like most parts of Alaska, is a heterogeneous community with many different voices. Assembly Candidate Gretchen Wehmhoff is counting on that diverse population taking a chance on her. After 21 years...

Send us Fan Mail Here in the Anchorage School District our student body is over 60% students of color while less than 15% of our teachers identify as non-white. Today we sit down with Danyelle Kimp and Rozlyn Grady Wyche, founders of the Alaska Coalition of Black, Indigenous and People of Color Educators (ACBE) who advocate for better hiring practices that address this racial disparity. But beyond...

Send us Fan Mail This is the first part of our exploration of the private Facebook group Save Anchorage. These staunch Bronson supporters dominated the mask debate last Fall and are currently fielding viable candidates in our upcoming local elections. Here to talk about it is independent reporter for the Midnight Sun Blog Matt Buxton. He is one of the most prolific journalists working in Alaska to...

Send us Fan Mail On this special bonus episode we debunk an inflammatory story about Assembly chair Suzanne LaFrance. The inaccurate article was authored by Suzanne Downing, a widely read right-wing blogger. For Anchorage residents who have been watching  Suzanne LaFrance chair the assembly this past year, the story seemed farfetched. LaFrance does not present herself as someone with an out-of-con...

Send us Fan Mail The first two openly gay Anchorage Assembly members, vice-chair Christopher Constant and former chair Felix Rivera , talk about their experiences growing up, what their lives were like in Anchorage prior to politics, and what their lives have been like since joining the Assembly in 2017; we also discuss conflict with the mayor's office. This interview was recorded on Friday,...

Send us Fan Mail Longtime East Anchorage resident Donna Mears recently announced her candidacy for the new senate seat which pairs East Anchorage with South Eagle River. The incumbent senator is far right Republican Lora Reinbold, and Ms. Mears, a progressive Democrat, provides a dramatically different alternative to Senator Reinbold. Ms. Mears is a civil engineer for a local construction and demo...

Send us Fan Mail In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, our guest is Celeste Hodge Growden who discusses the brutal racism she experienced as an Anchorage municipal employee during the 1980s and '90s. The discrimination she faced inspired her to civil rights work, and she was elected president of the Anchorage branch of the NAACP in 1993, an office she would hold longer than anyone else...