Marlene Pray (she/her) is a queer activist, sexuality educator, and community organizer whose work spans over three decades of LGBTQ+ advocacy, anti-racism, and social justice movement-building. She founded and directs the Rainbow Room, Bucks County’s LGBTQ+ youth center at Planned Parenthood Keystone, which has been a lifeline for queer youth in the region for 24 years.

A PhD candidate in Human Sexuality Education, Marlene has trained educators, organizations, and communities across the country on LGBTQ+ inclusion, racial equity, and youth empowerment. Her public service includes serving on Doylestown Borough Council, where she championed the borough’s LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination ordinance, and she continues to lead through board roles with the NAACP and NAMI Bucks County. Marlene lives in Doylestown and brings her whole self to the work — as an organizer, mother, homicide survivor, and earth-based celebrant committed to collective liberation.

She joins me today to kick off Pride Month, to talk about its history as a riot, as protest, and as a demand, and what the fight for LGBTQ+ rights looks like today.

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ALSO LISTEN TO:

• How Local Journalism and Pro-Democracy Reporting Can Protect Main Street from Hate and Political Extremism, with Phil Williams
• Journalist Jordan Green on Why the Neo-Nazi Movement Is an Escalating Threat to US Democracy
• The History of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in America, with Bill Mullen and Christopher Vials

Music by Maf é Tulà and Cartas a Felice, "La Loca." Panela Music.

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Welcome, welcome everybody to a special edition of The Signal from the Bucks County Beacon. Today guest host Kevin Mahoney talks with Cyril Mychalejko, the editor-in-chief of the Bucks County Beacon, about this week’s primary elections. We’ll take a look at the results and focus on two of the contested Democratic primaries: the PA 01 House race to face Brian Fitzpatrick in November, and the PA 16th State Senate race that will challenge Moms for Liberty darling, Jarett Coleman. What do the results mean in November's mid-terms?

We’ll also take a little stroll down memory lane as Cyril celebrates his fourth anniversary with the Beacon! That’s right, Cyril basically has the equivalent of a presidential term with the Beacon - and what a few years it has been.

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"I believe if we just give the AI revolution to tech billionaires we're going to have political unrest in this country." Ro Khanna is a Bucks County native who is a U.S. Representative in California’s 17th District. He is also vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Last month he wrote an article in The Nation, “AI for the People”, which laid out his vision “for an AI revolution that works for the many not just the billionaires.” He joins us today to talk about why he is an an AI-democratist, his policy vision for regulating this disruptive technology, and why we cannot allow Big Tech oligarchs to build a society where “AI ‘progress’ is defined by their wealth rather than by our democracy.”

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READ:

• AI for the People, by Congressman Ro Khanna
• “The Nation” Is Siding With Humanity, by Katrina vanden Heuvel and John Nichols
• What We Need to Ask Ourselves About AI, by Senator Bernie Sanders
• As AI Breathes Down Our Necks, It’s Time for a Luddite Renaissance, by John Nichols

ALSO LISTEN TO:

• Reading George Orwell in Trump’s America, With Laura Beers
• How Local Journalism and Pro-Democracy Reporting Can Protect Main Street from Hate and Political Extremism, with Phil Williams