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Ralph Nader Radio Hour

The Tale of a Town Meeting

Ralph Nader Radio Hour

Ralph Nader

Government, News

4.81.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2025

⏱️ 102 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We hear from citizen activist, Diana Kastenbaum, who organized a town meeting in her congressional district in Western New York State filled with both Democrats and Republicans airing their concerns. How did the district’s representative respond? We’ll hear the whole story. Then, Ralph welcomes back Washington Post tech reporter, Geoffrey Fowler, to discuss his latest report about how Meta promised parents it would automatically shield teens from harmful content. Find out what happened when Mr. Fowler and a group of Gen Z users put that promise to the test. Plus, we hear from RootsAction.org director Norman Solomon about the petition his group and Progressive Democrats of America sent to the DNC for an emergency meeting challenging how the party elites are responding to the authoritarian creep of the Trump Administration. Finally, Ralph calls for listeners to flood the White House switchboard to exhort the Administration to end the indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza.

Diana Kastenbaum lives in Batavia, New York, where she has been an owner in her family business, Pinnacle Manufacturing Company, Inc. for over 45 years. In 2014, she became the CEO of the company making her one of only a handful of women CEOs in the manufacturing field of tool and die casting in all of North America. In addition, she owned her own tech consulting company for 25 years. She has devoted herself to numerous national political endeavors and in 2016 ran for Congress in NY-27.

It wasn't until January 20th when those executive orders started to come out, I started to get really, really nervous. And it woke me up from my hibernation here in Western New York. So I actually had many sleepless nights, and I reached out to some friends. They weren't sleeping too. They were worried. And so we decided to do something about it.

Diana Kastenbaum on her summoning her congressperson for a town meeting

It (the town meeting) was just for people to ask their questions and tell their stories. And I think that's sort of where we are now in town halls is trying to get our friends and our neighbors and our local communities to hear what will happen, what is happening to the people in their communities. There were Republicans there, and they didn't yell or shout or anything like that. There was no disruption, but everybody stayed until the last moment, and everybody listened to these people share their stories.

Diana Kastenbaum

Geoffrey Fowler is The Washington Post's technology columnist. Before joining the Post he spent sixteen years with the Wall Street Journal writing about consumer technology, Silicon Valley, national affairs and China.

I performed an experiment on Instagram where I set up one of those accounts for a teenager that Instagram had promised us would be given special protections. And frankly, it took as little as ten minutes for me to swipe through and see what kinds of stuff Instagram was going to show this kid. And, oh boy, it really went off the rails quickly.

Geoffrey Fowler

It's like there's a dark commercial villain inside this company (Meta) that does whatever makes the most money for them.

Geoffrey Fowler

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and his newest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.

So we're hearing some mea culpas now about, "Oh, we should have told Biden not to run for re-election." But in point of fact, the same mentality, the same risk culture is still in place. And that's where I think the only change is going to come from the bottom up. It's going to come from us folks at the grassroots.

Norman Solomon

The Israelis bombed a home where they killed nine children out of ten children of parents who were both physicians with one American-made missile. That's just one of the tragedies that occurs every day, weaponized by the U.S. government – now Donald Trump – and funded by the U.S. taxpayers who are never asked their opinion on such foreign relation policies.

Ralph Nader

White House Switchboard : 202-456-1414

"Fast for Gaza" organized by Veterans for Peace



Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is John Nichols of The Nation magazine, and you're listening to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

0:06.2

Stand up, stand up. You've been sitting way too long.

0:14.5

Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve's Grove Analyst. My co-host, David Feldman.

0:19.9

Hello, trusty co-host. Hello.

0:22.4

And Hannah is still out, but Francesco DeSantis is here in her place. Hello, Francesco.

0:28.2

Hello, Steve. And we have the man of the hour. Ralph Nader, as always. Hello, Ralph.

0:32.9

Hello, everybody. And the show itself is pretty special. I don't think you've heard the kind of guests that we're going to have. So stay tuned.

0:42.3

Full disclosure, today's first guest is a personal friend of mine. Her name is Diana Kastenbaum.

0:47.8

Diana lives in Batavia, New York, which is in a very large ruby red district in the western part of the state, and Diana did what Ralph has been calling all of us to do over the years.

0:59.4

She organized a town hall and sumpered her congressperson to meet with her constituents.

1:04.9

When Diana told me the story, I said, we need to have you on the show.

1:08.2

We need to amplify this citizen action.

1:10.7

In Diana's district,

1:11.8

the congressperson is Claudia Tenney, a four-term representative. I don't want to say she's a fierce

1:17.3

MAGA Republican, but she's the one who recently introduced legislation to make Donald Trump's

1:23.0

birthday a national holiday. Well, they had a great turnout for the event. Both Democrats and

1:28.5

Republicans showed up, but Claudia Tenney was a no-show. They held the meeting anyway with

1:33.5

guest speakers and citizens in the audience addressing their questions and comments to a

1:37.8

cardboard cutout of Tenney. Where was Claudia Tenney during this town hall? Apparently, she thought

1:43.2

it was more important to go with the delegation of Republicans

1:45.7

for a tour of the now infamous Seacott Prison in El Salvador.

1:50.5

We look forward to hearing Diana tell her story of how she put it all together,

...

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