100,000 March In "Hands Off" Protest Against Trump/Musk Attacks; Project on Queer Left History

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Published: 08 April 2025

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Out-FM program aired April 8, 2025

NYC Actions Against Trump/Musk Junta

Mar. 29: Thousands March to Reverse AIDS Funding Cuts;

Apr. 5: 100,000 Join "Hands Off" Protest 

On March 29, 2025, 2,000 AIDS and housing activists rallied and marched to the Tesla showroom in the West Village neighborhood in New York, where they held a die-in. Hundreds carrying placards in the style of tombstones lay on the ground representing the victims of Elon Musk and the Trump Administration's cuts to lifesaving services and drugs. 

Out-FM brought you some of the voices of those doing the die-in outside of Tesla's show room last week, this week we bring you, longtime Housing Works manager Anthony Feliciano and Dr. Betty Kolod, a physician treating drug users and chair of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) - New York Metro. They talked about the need for defending Medicaid to end the AIDS crisis and the need for a single-payer healthcare system to eliminate private insurance.

We also brought you voices from the April 5th 100,000-strong New York "Hands Off" protest, one of the 1300 such actions around the country that day. Maya Venir from Israelis for Peace / NYC describes their group's opposition to the Gaza War and demand for a just settlement. Other protesters demanded full funding for President's Emergency Program For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an end to censorship, protection of Trans rights, release of students from ICE detention for free speech activities, a sensible public health pro-vaccine policy, and more -- running the gamut of issues arising from Trump's illegal and cruel policies.

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“Queerly Defiant” History Project on U.S. LGBTQI-TS+ Leftists’ Repression and Resistance

We played the presentation by Out-FM’s Bob Lederer about his multi-media work-in-progress titled “Queerly Defiant, Hidden No More” to document and analyze the experience of U.S. queer and trans anti-racist leftists since the 1960s. A major focus will be how they have faced and fought both repression by the government and homophobia/heterosexism by the U.S. Left. It was one of several presentations yesterday at the Center for LGBTQ Studies or CLAGS at the City University of New York, made by current and recent CLAGS Fellows.

The video of the CLAGS program is here (Bob's talk and slides go from 53:12-1:04; a later Q & A about James Baldwin, in which Bob was one of the responders, goes from 1:12-1:18.)

For more about Bob's project, click here and here.

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Thousands March to Demand Reversal of AIDS Funding Cuts; Attacks Escalate Against Public Broadcasters

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Published: 01 April 2025

Sign up for Out-FM's Weekly Newsletter with show announcements.

Out-FM Program aired Tues., April 1, 2025

Sound file of the program is available below. Press play to stream or green down arrow to download mp3 file.

Thousands March to Demand Reversal of AIDS Funding Cuts

On March 29, 2025, two thousand AIDS and housing activists rallied and marched to the Tesla showroom in the West Village neighborhood in New York where they held a die-in. Hundreds carrying placards in the style of tombstones lay on the ground representing the victims that will die because of Elon Musk and the Trump Administration's cuts to lifesaving services and drugs. 

Out-FM​'s John Riley br​ought you some of the voices of those doing the die-in outside of Tesla's show room, as well as one of the rally speakers, longtime ACT UP member Eric Sawyer.

We also br​ought you the voices from Atlanta​, Georgia, one of the sites of 200 other Tesla Take-Down actions around the country that day.​ That report was prepared by Out-FM's Stahimili Mapp.

Attacks Escalate Against Public Broadcasters

In the second segment, our sibling producer Mimi Rosenberg (left), who hosts WBAI's "Building Bridges" and "Equal Rights and Justice," joined us for an update and analysis of the rising attacks on public broadcasting by the Trump Administration. Mimi is part of the Ad Hoc Working Group to Defend Public and Community Media.

Last Thursday, Trump called the Public Broadcasting System or PBS "a giant scam," "horrible and completely biased," and an arm "of the Radical Left Democrat Party." This is just the latest Administration attack against public broadcasting institutions.

In early February, Trump's Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, Brendan Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 Chapter on the FCC, launched a so-called investigation of PBS and National Public Radio (NPR) for allegedly arranging with their hundreds of local affiliates to abuse their noncommercial licenses -- the same type that Pacifica stations like WBAI has -- by promoting the products and services of their local corporate underwriters. Carr also launched an attack on DEI -- that's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion -- programs by public media. These are the hard-fought but minimal efforts to reverse decades of internal racial and gender discrimination. 

All this created the pretext for the longstanding plan, going back decades, to completely end the Congressional subsidy -- which is only a fraction of their budgets, but still significant, especially for many local stations, especially in rural areas. Although the Pacifica Foundation, which is the parent of WBAI, has not received any federal funds for several years, our network was also targeted for legal attacks in the Project 2025 report.

Last Wednesday, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene presided over a sham of a hearing by her DOGE subcommittee, skewering the heads of PBS and NPR and whipping up a climate to support zeroing out their subsidies. 

For more information about the Ad Hoc Working Group to Defend Public and Community Media​, email Mimi at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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