Obama’s Immigration Reform, The Truth Or A Cruel Hoax?
with
Amy Gottlieb, Immigrant’s Rights Program Director,
American Friends Service Committee .

Amy Gottlieb holds aloft the banner of immigrants across this country demanding humane immigration reform, discussing what a humane immigrant reform policy should look like and explains and critiques the substance of the 844 pages of immigration reform proposals currently under debate in the Congress
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A Bangladeshi Worker's Dream
with
Maksuda, a Bangladeshi garment worker

On a U.S. tour organized by the National  Labor Committee, Maksuda describes the harsh conditions of her life and work.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesObamasImmigrationReformABangladeshiWorkersDream

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The Blood, Sweat & Tears Of Bangladesh’s Garment Workers Stain The Clothes of Multi-National Corps. Who Reap Huge Profits From Workers' Misery
with
Barbara Briggs, Asst. Dir., Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights
and
Kalpona Atker, Ex. Dir., Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity

To date, more than 500 are confirmed dead, 2,044 people have been rescued, more than 1,000 of them injured and 1,000 people are unaccounted for, or still trapped inside the concrete wreckage of the collapsed garment factory in Bangladesh. Meanwhile, the Western multinational corporations who subcontract sewing their brands to Bangladesh, an economy where 80% of its exports are from the apparel trade stubbornly refuse to join workplace safety plans in Bangladesh. They still refuse to compensate the injured and the families of those who previously died sewing their brands. Since the infamous Tazreen factory fire blaze in November where 112 died there have been dozens more factory fires since and now hundreds killed in this week's Rana Plaza building collapse. How many people will have to sacrifice their lives for the corporate bottom line?  

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesRadioTheBloodSweatTearsOfBangladeshsGarment

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What Then Must We Do?
withGar Alperovitz, author, What Then Must We Do?  and The Next

American Revolution: Beyond Corporate Capitalism and State

Socialism 

While there's been no shortage of commentary about the structural crisis plaguing the American economic and political system, from wage stagnation and chronic unemployment to unchecked corporate and state power and growing inequality, analyses that offer practical, politically viable solutions to these problems have been few and far between. Gar Alperovitz is a rare and stunning exception. Through his new book and film and his research and his activism, Alperovitz highlights efforts already under way in thousands of communities across the U.S., from co-ops and community land trusts to municipal, state, and federal initiatives to organize and democratize capital.  Alperovitz marshals years of research to show how bottom-up strategies can work to check monopolistic corporate power, democratize wealth, and empower communities.

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Preventable Deaths: The Texas Explosion & The Tragedy Of  Workplace Fatalities          
with
Tom O'Connor,  Dir., Ntl. Council for Occupational Safety & Health

The latest work place tragedy, the explosion last Wednesday at Texas’ chemical and fertilizer plant left at least 14 people dead and more that 160 injured.  In the last year, on average 4,500 people died in workplace accidents.  But, while the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has jurisdiction over 7 million workplaces the U.S. spent only $558 million a year on OSHA, as increasing numbers of workers died.  With a gutted agency it’s not uncommon for some companies to go years without inspection. The Texas plant hadn’t been inspected since 1985 and even then despite being cited for serious violations for storage of anhydrous 
ammonia was fined a mere $30.  
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Remembering the Triangle Fire
with 
Sophia Henderson Holmes

Poet Sophia Henderson Holmes reads from her epic poem commemorating the lives of those who died at the Triangle Fire. The poem itself serves as well as a tribute to Sophia herself, who has since passed on but has left us her stirring words and the challenge to organize for workers' rights. 
 

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Obama Budget Attack On Social Security Hangs Seniors Out To Dry
with
Bob Borosage, Co-Director, Campaign for America’s Future


The median income of people over age 65 is less than $20,000 a year. Nearly 70 percent of the elderly rely on Social Security benefits for more than half of their income and nearly 40 percent rely on Social Security for more than 90 percent of their income. Meanwhile, the President pushing the myth that Social Security and Medicare face economic collapse and that the budget deficit imperils the fiscal solvency of the nation has proposed a cut in the annual cost of living adjustment that will be a substantial hit to a population ill-prepared to see a cut in its income. Government programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are critical to keeping seniors out of financial crisis. Now, the President has proposed slowing the growth of Social Security benefits and lowering the rate of increase in Social Security payments, also veterans’ benefits and federal pensions. Obama’s budget also contains cuts to Medicare services. All this will come at the cost of those who are already financially at risk.
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President Rips Off Social Security Robbing Peter 

To Pay Paul


Senator Bernie Sanders and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka protest the President’s budget proposals which will further bend the backs of thosealready shouldering the burden of the plutocracy’s financial disasters by eroding payouts to Social Security.
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http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesObamaBudgetAttackOnSocialSecurityHangsSeniorsOutTo

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Largest Strike Ever of Fast Food Workers Echoes
MLK’s Last Campaign For Striking Memphis Workers

Across New York City hundreds of fast food workers walked off their jobs. It was the second strike in their ongoing Fast Food Forward campaign for higher wages and union recognition.  The strikers day culminated in a march with supporters in Harlem, where many strikers carried signs that read “I Am A Woman”.  The signs, and strike, which was held on the anniversary of the assassination of MLK in Memphis, echoed his support for striking sanitation workers' call for workplace rights and racial justice.

http://archive.org/details/BuildingBridgesLargestStrikeEverOfFastFoodWorkers
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Love, Justice, Family and Equality
with Emily Hecht-McGowan, Family Equality Council

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two potentially landmark cases: the challenge to Proposition 8, which took away the freedom to marry from same-sex couples in California, and the challenge to Section 3 of the misnamed "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA), which denies legally married same-sex couples over 1,000 rights, protections and responsibilities under federal law simply because they are gay.  Never before has the court heard two significant gay rights cases simultaneously.  Emily Hecht-McGowan, Director of Public Policy for the  Family Equality Council joins us to look at these two cases which could be a defining moment in the LGBT community's decades-long struggle for equality under the law. 
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Children’s Voices On Love, Justice, Family and Equality
with
Zach Wahls
The son of two moms, Zach Wahls, speaks before the Democratic National Convention on "My Two Moms"
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No Justice, No Pizza – Domino's Beware!
with The Justice Will Be Served Campaign
Pizza workers and supporters rallied against their employer Domino’s over years of unpaid wages and retaliation experienced when they stood up for their rights.  During the rally they celebrated their first of its kind court ruling permitting them to sue Domino’s Pizza Corp. as a joint employer along with the individual franchise holder, which would also apply to other fast food workers in establishments like McDonald's and retail workers at places like Walmarts.  The right of the Latino, African and Bangladeshi workers to proceed with the suit they filed in 2010 against Domino's Pizza’s franchise owner David Melton and the Domino's Corp. is a huge victory. The workers had commenced suit after receiving below the minimum wage, were forced to make deliveries during extreme weather conditions, and didn’t have a place to take a break or eat during their excessively long work hours.

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McDonald’s Student Guest Workers Abuse Stirs Protest

Latin American and Asian student guest workers participating in the U.S. State Department’s J-1 program, expected decent work and a meaningful cultural experience in the USA.  Instead, they were sent to  work at McDonald’s,who paid them below the minimum wage and when they complained of the exploitation were subjected to retaliation.  So, they went on strike against the Pennsylvania stores where they worked and then came in protest to NY’s Times Square McDonald’s with supporters from National Guest Worker Alliance, UnitedNY and the Retail Action Project.  There they further announced their plans to take their protest directly to McDonald’s headquarters and the home of CEO Don Thompson if McDonald’s doesn’t take responsibility for ending labor abuses for all its workers.

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http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesMcdonaldsAbuseOfStudentGuestWorkersStirsProtest/mcdonaldsguestntl.mp3   download

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Cops Who Killed Kimani Gray

Focus Of 5 Prior Federal Civil Rights Lawsuits

Another stolen Black life!  Sixteen year old, African-American Kimani Gray was mortally wounded after 7 of the 11 bullets fired entered his body both the front and the back.  The murderous shots were fired by Sergeant Mourad and
Officer Jovaniel Cordova, who had already racked up five civil rights violations in federal lawsuits. Both Mourad and Cordova were accused of exploiting the “stop-and-frisk” tactic and going outside the confines of the law to hide their
involvement.  Building Bridges reports from the scene, Brooklyn’s east Flatbush section where there has been more than a week of community protests following the latest death of a Black teen, resulting from the policies and practices by the NYPD in communities of color.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgescommunityProtestsPoliceKillingOfKimaniGrayInBrooklyn
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Palestinians Refuse To Be “Cleansed” From Their Land
with
. Dennis Banks, American Indian Movement (AIM)
. Alice Walker, writer
. Zwelinzima Vavi, Gen. Sec., Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)

AIM leader Dennis Banks, renowned author Alice Walker, and South African labor leader Vavi came together to an international tribunal to grapple with Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and strategize how to build greater support internationally for Palestinian self-determination.  They reveal Israel as an
occupier, an aggressor, confiscating Palestinian land and removing the indigenous residents and then when faced with resistance, operating in a fashion that each panelist viewed through the historical lens of their own people’s brutalization.   Dennis Banks reflected on the genocide of Native Americans. Walker referenced the enslavement of Africans and American institutional racism and Vivi thought that the South African system of Apartheid was echoed by Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
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Building Bridges says, SOS, Save Our Station! 

Don’t allow WBAI radio to go silent!

PLEASE CONTRIBUTE BY GOING TO THE WBAI WEBSITE
http://www.give2wbai.org/category_s/1830.htm
and pledge in the name of Building Bridges

Building Bridges broadcasters Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash give voice to the working class in this intensified period of attacks on it over WBAI radio. Our priorities draw inspiration from Dr. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech at

NYC's Riverside Church, to build a movement for fundamental change of the U.S. economic system, to end discrimination, poverty, and militarism.

WBAI, which steadfastly refuses to be politically manipulated by financing itself through corporate advertising or commercial underwriting is facing its most severe financial crisis in its 53 year history.  While we have a number of debts to satisfy and upcoming expenses, our most urgent  need is to maintain our broadcast signal.  We owe the Empire State Building, where our antenna is located, enabling us to transmit over a 150 mile radius, $250,000 payable by the end of March.  It’s due or die time.

There isn’t a progressive cause that WBAI hasn’t provided broadcast time for, and helped to build support for, at home or around the world.  And, now we need you to support your broadcast voice as we never have before, to assure that we

don’t lose this institution that has worked for all your causes, like no other media has done for as long and consistently as WBAI.  It’s your station, to advocate for you, to champion your causes and build our movements.

We will not go quite into that good night – certainly not with your financial help. Help us pay our most immediate and necessary debt to Save Our Station, to Save Our Antenna.

Whose Station?  Our Station!  Make it so, contribute generously now.

Please post this urgent message to your contacts, listserves, webpage, Facebook,

and other social media.

In Solidarity
Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg

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Workers Rising, Low-Wage Worker Organizing
with
. Steven Greenhouse, journalist, N.Y. Times
. M. Patricia Smith, Solicitor of the U.S. Dept. of Labor
. Dorian Warren, Assoc. Prof., Columbia University
. Angelo Falcón, Pres. and Founder, National Institute for Latino Policy
. Debra Axt, Co-Ex. Dir., Make the Road, N.Y.
 
The Center for Popular Democracy and United N.Y. organized Workers Rising, a conference to celebrate and discuss the exciting new formations and activism of low-wage workers in 2012 to drive that momentum towards more victories in 2013. In 2012, a wave of worker organizing rose across low-wage industries in NYC and across the nation, propelled by workers’ anger at poverty wages and
intolerable working conditions. Supported by community, faith- based groups, unions, and elected officials, these workers participated in nationwide protests at Wal-Mart, led the first coordinated strikes in the history of America’s fast food industry, unionized at car washes and groceries, and took on major N.Y.C.
retailers efforts to offer only part-time work. 

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The Zero Dark Thirty Controversy: Torture, Art, and Politics
with
Alexander Abdo, attorney, National Security Project, ACLU
 
Since the release of the award-winning Zero Dark Thirty, many critics have condemned the film, claiming it contains serious historical inaccuracies and accepts some of this country’s worst post 9/11 abuses. Alexander Abdo discusses the relationship and responsibility that prominent works of culture have to the historic narrative and the American public, particularly as many of the illegal practices, torture, extraordinary rendition, and now the advent of extrajudicial killings of American citizens and the “dehumanized others” along with the secrecy that shrouds these practices and lack of accountability for the policies persist.
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Reckoning With Torture
Featuring
Robert Redford and Paul Auster
 
Reckoning With Torture, is a collaborative film project between Doug Liman, Director of the Bourne Identity, the ACLU and PEN American Center that examines the human cost of America's post 9/11 torture program. This excerpt features a collage of readings of testimonies by torture victims and witnesses introduced by Robert Redford plus author Paul Auster reading Manner of Death: Homicide, excerpts from autopsy reports of detainees held in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, December 2002 to November 2004. 

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Canadian Oil Workers Tell Obama Reject Keystone XL Pipeline: It’s Bad for the Environment and Bad for Workers
with
Dave Coles, Pres. Communications, Energy & Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP)

Canada's largest union of forestry, energy, telecommunications,
and media workers at a conference “Confronting the Climate Crisis: Can Labor Help Shape an Effective Strategy?” gave thumbs down to the Keystone XL pipeline stating that  “We oppose export
pipelines that kill off our oil resources and kill jobs in the process … To deal with the unfolding ecological policies crisis we must jettison corporation-centric economic policies in favor of ones that address our world’s social and ecological concerns.”
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Eighty-Five Years Old: Ramsey Clark A Life Celebrated
with
Ramsey Clark, Former U.S. Attorney General, intl. human rights activist

Mumia Abu-Jamal, journalist, activist, political prisoner in tribute to Ramsey Clark said,  “…when the bombs were being readied for Afghanistan and the White House was swearing vengeance, who dared to stage rallies, predicting disaster?  And, in response to Abu Ghraib, Palestine, drone strikes and wild Islamophobia, fueled by fear and ignorance who opposed these developments at every step?  And as capitalism sent jobs abroad, hollowing out the middle class, causing dystopian heels in inner cities, who spoke out against the rapacious greed of Wall Street and the resultant prison industrial complex and the death industry of Death Row?  It was Ramsey
Clark and the organization he helped found in two small rooms of his law office, the International Action Center (IAC) 20 years ago. 
That he took some of the toughest cases in the nation and with the IAC, fought some of the toughest battles against the might of the Empire is telling and high tribute.

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The Central Park Five, Exonerated But Justice Still Denied!
with
Yusef Salaam, exoneree
Sharonne Salaam, parent
Roger Wareham, attorney
 
A long-delayed $250 million NYC civil suit finally goes to trial this year —putting the reputations of some of the city’s most powerful on the line. After 22 years the then teens, Kharey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Raymond Santana, are no longer convicted felons or registered sex offenders, but they’re still best known as the Central Park 5. Each served from 7 to 13 years in prison for a rape they didn’t commit, after Mayor Koch, the police, prosecutors and the media, along with mogul Donald Trump, who actively advocated for the death penalty for the youth, whipped the city into a racist lynch mob. Now, 22 years & counting, after five convictions, then one shocking confession that upended the lives of all involved the Central Park jogger case is about to break open again — pitting the city’s most powerful crime fighters against each other and the teens they wrongly jailed for the attack, who still await justice.

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Greece’s Radical Left Coalition SYRIZA Leader in Alexis Tsipras in U.S. Says No To Austerity Politics
with
Alexis Tsipras, member, Hellenic parliament, Pres. of the Synaspismos political party, head of the SYRIZA parliamentary group, and leader of the opposition since June 2012

The Radical Coalition of the Left (Syriza) has become Greece's second-largest party following its dramatic success in parliamentary election’s. It has campaigned steadfastly against the recovery blueprint for Greece drawn up by
the European Union (EU) & the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The party is led by the country's youngest political leader, Alexis Tsipras. Tsipras talks about the unpopular EU-IMF plan, known in Greece as the ''memorandum'' and says that the election result represented radical change in both Greece and Europe, showing that people are not prepared to settle for "barbarous memorandums" and bailouts.
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ATU Local 1181 Strike Update
with
Jimmy Hedge, Exec. Board Member/Delegate, Amalgamated Transportation Union (ATU) Local 1181

Members of Local 1181 have been on strike, walking picketlines, with the weather in the teens since Jan.16, in protest of NYC's most recent special education contract bid, which would exclude their Employee Protection Provision (EPP) guarantees. The bid fails to protect both special ducation students, & NYC's most experienced and safe drivers and escorts jobs.  Local 1181 members all come from modest means, and keeping their EPP’s, their job security is about maintaining their livelihood and the integrity of their union. 

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Against The Death Penalty: Wrongful Conviction & Exoneration
with
Jeffrey Deskovic, exoneree, The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice

Exoneration has been incredibly important for those who oppose capital punishment  —since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 138 death row inmates have had their convictions overturned. Building Bridges highlights The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation For Justice that came into being for the prevention and eradication of wrongful convictions, as the result of its founder’s own wrongful conviction for rape and murder at age 16.  At 33 years of age Jeff was exonerated and left prison, with a mission to prevent what happened to him from happening to others.

 

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Mayor Bloomberg Provokes School Bus Strike, Hurting
Workers, Parents and Children
with
Richard Gilberg, Attorney, ATU Local 1181
and
Jimmy Hedge, Exec. Board Member, ATU Local 1181

Union busting is disgusting.  NYC's Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, representing school bus drivers, escorts, and mechanics was forced onto picketlines to save its very existence, due to Mayor Bloomberg's insistence on removing Employee Protection Provisions from contract language affecting the 9,000 workers. This change would impact current and future union members, allow companies to low bid contractors due to cheap labor, and put 150,000 children’s lives in the hands of inexperienced drivers to navigate the hectic streets of NYC.  This is a lose lose situation for union members and parents and children!  

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Lincoln Used Greenbacks To Fight Civil War, Can’t We To Eradicate Debt!

With
Timothy A. Canova, Prof. of Law & Public Finance

In 1862 Pres. Lincoln signed an act to create a new government-issued paper money, Greenbacks, not redeemable in gold or any precious metals. His successful experiment helped finance the North to prevail in the Civil War. We’ll explore why Lincoln chose this path and the lessons we can learn, including discussing the issuance of a $1 trillion dollar coin, as our recovery is threatened by obsessive concern by both parties about cutting deficits and funding the government – the so-called debt limit and the fiscal cliff.

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Unprotected Sandy Cleanup Hires Face Health and Safety Threats.
With
Joel Shufro, Exec. Dir. NY Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (“NYCOSH”)
and
Luzdary Giraldo, NYCOSH Community Outreach Organizer

NYCOSH is demanding employers and government agencies respond to the massive health and safety violations thousands of cleanup workers face in the wake of Sandy, so as not to repeat the 911 fiasco which continues to cost the lives of first responders. Thousands of Sandy workers are facing health and safety hazards as they clean up the wreckage, and are forced to work 10 - 12 hour
shifts often without even receiving the minimum wage.
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350 Economists Warn Obama and Congress:

Unwise Deficit Reduction Could Kill Recovery.
Economy Needs Growth and Jobs, Not Austerity.
With
. Robert Pollin, Univ. of Massachusetts, Economist and
co-director, Political Economy Research Institute (PERI)
. Teresa Ghirarducci, Director of the Schwartz Center for
Economic Policy Analysis at the The New School

Warning that the U.S. economy is still “marked by mass unemployment, rising poverty, and declining wages.” 350 prominent economists issued a statement with the Campaign for America’s Future that, “the fragile recovery is threatened by obsessive concern with cutting deficits that
has infected both parties.”

The economists’ statement highlighted that drastic spending cuts adopted in a “grand bargain” aimed at avoiding sequestration could have such a contractionary impact on the still-fragile economy that the U.S. could join European countries in plunging into recession as a result of misguided
austerity policies.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesSandyCleanupHiresFaceHealthSafetyDangersAnd  
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Building Bridges Special
for January 1st, Haiti’s 209th Independence Day

Trade Union Leaders From Latin America & Caribbean

Demand UN Haiti Occupation End!
with
. Julio Turra, National Exec. Dir. , United Trade Union Central

of Workers of Brazil (CUT) . Fignolé St. Cyr, Gen. Sec'y, Autonomous Confederation of Haitian

Workers (CATH);
. Jocelyn Lapitre, leader with Front Against Profit (LKP), Guadeloupe
. Alan Benjamin, Intl. Liaison Committee of Workers & Peoples (ILC)
 
January 1st marks the 209th anniversary of Haitian independence. And, in commemoration of Haiti, the 1st Black Republic in the world Building Bridges talks with world-renowned trade union representatives both about the issues of their working classes and about their demand that the foreign military occupation of Haiti known as the UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti or MINUSTAH,

deployed since 2004 immediately end, and that Haiti’s sovereignty and right to self-determination be respected.

The delegation was part of a broad continental campaign that came to the UN to tell its officials “if the United Nations genuinely wants to help the Haitian people, they should do like Cuba and Venezuela. These are the two countries that really helped Haiti after, and even before, the earthquake. There is not a single Cuban or Venezuelan soldier on Haiti’s territory. But there are Cuban doctors. There is Venezuelan oil. Venezuela and Cuba are building an international airport in Cap Haitien. This is the kind of help that Haiti needs.We have problems of roads, water, electricity, and food. Haiti does not need soldiers! Instead of giving us soldiers, give us technicians. We don’t need soldiers they don’t help us with any development. On the contrary, they killed thousands of Haitians by bringing cholera to Haiti, explained the Haitian labor representative. 

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“And The Walls Came Tumbling Down” 
with
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Angela Davis, Soffiyah Elijah,
and Marc Lamont Hill
Recalling in now its 41st year the Attica prison massacre of courageous prisoners who rose up against dehumanizing conditions, thousands came together to follow their lead and resist the burgeoning system of caging human beings.  Insisting that solitary confinement cease, that Attica be closed, and that the pipeline from community to prison be turned off, and rallying against what has now become referred to as the “New Jim Crow” the crowd reached a crescendo after Mumia Abu-Jamal, political prisoner, author, journalist and social critic, reached by phone spoke to them delivering a message that left everyone present with a sense of hope, good feeling and determination, to tear down the walls and shutter the prison-industrial system.

This extraordinary event was sponsored by the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; The Riverside Church Mission and Social Justice; the Riverside Church Prison Ministry; the Correctional Association of New York; the New York State Justice Network and the Campaign to End the New Jim Crow.

 

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Michael Moore On America’s DNA Of Violence
And What Is To Be Done

Michael Moore recalling his film "Bowling for  Columbine",advocated for the release of Native America leader, and artist Leonard Peltier, now falsely imprisoned for 37 years, and in the wake of the latest horrific gun violence seeks to understand what he refers to as the “DNA of violence rooted in American history”.
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Preventing The 99% From Being Thrown Over The Austerity Cliff In Fiscal Showdown
with
Robert Borosage, Co-Dir., Campaign for America’s Future

With politicians demanding cuts in public benefits, Robert Borosage counsels against buying into the “fiscal cliff” fraud. Borosage says, the problem is not deficits; it is "the lack of a foundation for sustainable growth that includes working people. Without a political movement to achieve the latter, very little progress will be made on the former." We must counter the spin and show how we can turn the conversation about debt and deficits to what really matters: putting people back to work, protecting the economically vulnerable and ending giveaways to the wealthy.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesMichaelMooreOnAmericamViolenceAusterityCliffInThe
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Public Housing Tenants Hung Out To Dry In Wake Of Sandy  

When Hurricane Sandy slammed NYC, tens of thousands of public housing tenants were left without power, heat, and running water; elderly & disabled residents were trapped on the upper floors of the developments, oftentimes lacking food and water and life essential medical needs. Weeks after the wind roared and the water surged the voices of New York City Housing Authority (“NYCHA”) tenants continued to be drowned out, amidst the complacency of NYCHA to the still unresolved issues and conditions. When NYCHA management finally met with the tenants, long after Sandy came and went it was greeted by the pained and angry protestation of the tenants due to its failure to show concern for, response to and accountability for the horrible conditions that many still endure. The chorus of residents decried NYCHA’s response to refusing immediate rent abatements, to compensate them for their suffering and losses during & in the aftermath of the hurricane. Chanting "No services, no rent," many of the residents left the meeting in disgust to reconvene later, formulate demands and plan to take their complaints to NYCHA headquarters. 

http://archive.org/stream/SandyADisasterForPublicHousingTenantsInNy

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Unionize McDonalds, Burger Kings, KFC, Taco Bell, Piazza Hut,

Papa John’s, Dominos, Wendy’s Say Their Striking Workers
In First Ever Fast Food Walk-Out

Hundreds of workers in an organizing campaign, Fast Food Forward, struck New York City’s largest fast food chains to call for decent wages to support their families, and the right to form a union without interference. Fast Food jobs have accounted for the bulk of new jobs added since the recession and are some of the lowest paid in the country. In New York, many workers report earning the state’s minimum wage, $7.25, and getting shifts totaling an average of only 24 hours a week forcing them to rely on public assistance programs to get healthcare and provide for their families.

Now, workers across the US, like those at Walmart, McDonald's, Macy's, LAX, JFK airports, NYC car washes and other retail and fast food stores are joining together to demand decent pay, despite facing retaliation and suspension for trying to form a union.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesFirstEverFastFoodWorkersStrikes

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Walmart & Disney Refuse Responsibility For Worker Compensation In Bangladesh Fire Where Death Toll Soared to More than 121 And Where Labor Organizers Are Tortured and Disappeared
With
Kalpona Akter, Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity

Kalpona Akter, a garment worker since she was 12 years old, faces myriad criminal charges for organizing for labor rights in the garment industry and while she mourns brother labor activists who have been tortured, and others who have been assassinated she is unrelenting in her organizing against the conditions that led to the deaths & critical injuries of hundreds of Bangladeshi garment workers recently.  

Akter discusses the safety risks,  poverty wages, abusive treatment, unsafe conditions faced by workers who sew the clothes we wear, along with the government’s campaign of terror against labor rights activists. Akter places squarely before us the question of why Bangladeshi workers have to die sewing cheap clothing while the brands Walmart, H&M, Gap and Disney make millions and avoid responsibility and compensating the victims of the terrifying blaze for the conditions that resulted in the fiery deaths. 
 

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesRadioBangladeshFireWalmartDisneyRefuseResponsibility

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OUR Walmart Black Friday Protesters

Declare It Red Letter Day For Workers!
With
. Elaine Rosier, Walmart worker, Miami Florida
. Gabe Teneyuque, Walmart striker, St. Paul, Minnesota
. Secaucus, New Jersey Walmart worker allies
 
Walmart faced not only a throng of shoppers on Black Friday but what a union-backed group, Organization for Respect at Walmart, (“Our Walmart”) said was the biggest wave of protests that the retailer had ever seen; 1,000 stores had demonstrations in 46 states, ranging from a couple of community supporters’ asking to talk with store managers about raising wages to raucous demonstrations in California, New Jersey and Washington that each attracted

hundreds of people. “In its 50-year history, Wal-Mart has never seen strikes like those we’re seeing today,” said Lynsey Kryzwick, a spokeswoman for OUR Walmart, which works closely with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. “It will be hard for Wal-Mart to ignore all these workers and their allies calling for change at Wal-Mart from improving the low wages and

unfair working conditions to fighting retaliation. Our Walmart, has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, saying that Wal-Mart had violated federal laws against intimidating workers who seek to strike or otherwise protest by saying there could be consequences — in the form of dismissals, demotions or reduction in work hours.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesOurWalmartBlackFridayProtesters

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