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.

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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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Health Care Workers Tell Bloomberg:
We’re Not Meeting Sandy Survivors’ Health Needs   

Members of the NYS Nurses Association, NY Physicians for a National Health Program, DC 37, Local 436 of the United Federation of Nurses and Epidemiologists, and other health care organizations, along with Occupy Wall Street demonstrated at City Hall protesting that thousands of New Yorkers who are homeless, or trapped in their homes without power, without elevator service, and heat and hot water are experiencing a health emergency. The healthcare responders recounted their experiences and articulated the medical services needed for the hurricane’s victims in Staten Island, the Rockaways, Coney Island, and Red Hook. They also emphasized the need to expedite reopening local clinics and Coney Island and Bellevue Hospitals to provide care for their

communities. 

 

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesRadioSandySurvivorsHealthEmergency
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Chris Hedges

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent set out to look at those areas in America that have been offered up for exploitation in the name of profit, progress, and technological advancement, to show what life looks like in places where the marketplace rules without constraints, where human beings and the natural world are used and then discarded to maximize profit – the result, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.

Hedges talks about the western plains, where Native Americans were sacrificed in the race for land and empire. He then travels to the old manufacturing centers, and the coal fields that fueled the industrial revolution, but now lie depleted and in decay and then looks at the slave-like conditions of immigrant farm workers.

Hedge's talks about the people at the bottom of the American economy and argues that without profound change poverty will deepen and flood the nation. He then talks reversal and remedy, how to bring people out in protest, and rebuilding the kind of movements that protect us, such as Occupy, where a new generation revolted against the corporate state of by and for the 1%, that bequeathed to us an economic, political, cultural and environmental catastrophe.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesRadioChrisHedges-DaysOfDestructionDaysOfRevolt  play stream
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A Building Bridges Special Report

On Hurricane Victims in NYC's Coney Island:
After The Storm: Coney Island’s Beleaguered Residents Remind Us That The Real Devastation Is Continuously Drowning In Poverty

Coney Island’s residents wander about amidst the mounds and mounds of sand, pushed blocks back into their streets and homes by Sandy in this oceanfront community. And there’s the historic Nathans eatery, its boarded up plywood sheets have been partially pried loose by wind and rushing tides that threatens to ripe dangerously down the streets. Every-where is a landscape of small stores with their fronts blown out, ominous high water marks ringing what’s left of their exteriors and their inners just dangling wires wiping about furiously from the frigid, ocean  wind  blasts. Everywhere are the cherished furnishings and belongings of the areas residents, now all jumbled together and tossed on the streets looking like the carelessly left playthings from a child’s dollhouse.

Disabled, elderly residents are still trapped on the uppermost floors of their public housing developments, without heat and light, without water, amidst the power outage. Other tenants and low-income home owners in the area have lost all their life’s possessions. And there are so many without food, and who face the prospect of prolonged homelessness. Coney Island’s residents were drowned out by a hurricane, but before Sandy they were as well drowning in poverty, and now it seems they’ve been hung out to dry, by a plutocracy who could very well provide storehouses of food immediately and build “we the people” veritable Taj Mahal’s in which to live our lives.

Government has virtually ignored the residents of Coney Island and mass media has covered them almost exclusively to sensationally and raise the fraudulent specter of looting. But, there’s another reality as well, there amongst the devastation are brigades of youth tirelessly shoveling the sand back, bringing the scarce resources, bottled water an other necessities they can find to their neighborhoods. Again and again they’ve climbed the stairs to assist and offer their concerns, refusing to leave or ignore their sisters and brothers –the power of the people's collective will and energies provides fortitude and hope for one of our communities, fighting to rise above the tides.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesHurricaneVictimsInConeyIsland-ASpecialReport  
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Dr. Cornel West on Poverty In America


Cornel West, is one of America’s most gifted, provocative, and
important democratic intellectuals, now focusing much of his energy on his second national tour to heighten awareness of poverty in the U.S., aggressively committing to stopping Stop & Frisk practices and resisting efforts to privatize public education and against school closings.

The national discourse has been focused on the deterioration of the
“middle class”. But this framework ignores the plight of the
growing number of working poor and those not included in the workforce, suffering crushing poverty. Organized labor’s wages and benefits are under threat, chronic, high unemployment persists, increasing numbers of workers are falling off the unemployment benefit rolls and those new jobs created increasingly paying poverty wages. The recent Census shows that more than 46 Million Americans last year were living below the poverty line ($22,314 for a family of 4), the highest level since 1993.

However, the rise of poverty has been ignored by politicians and the mainstream media. But,author,lecturer,public intellectual Cornel West is a welcome exception to that reality. He has co-authored the new book “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto” and has been traveling the country broadsiding his message that now is the time to confront the underlying conditions of systemic poverty in America.

He’s broadcasting the message that there are nearly 150 million
impoverished people in America, who aren’t responsible for Great
Recession, yet they pay the price for it. The poor did not create the
deindustrialization of America, unmitigated corporate profiteering
and greed, more than a decade of foreign wars and unregulated tax
benefits for the wealthy. Rather, the housing and jobs crisis the
plutocrats created have fostered a poverty unseen in generations,
crossing race, age and gender lines.

Cornel West places the eradication of poverty in the context of the
nation’s greatest moments of social transformation - the abolition of slavery, woman’s suffrage, and the labor and civil rights movements. As did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. West raises ending poverty as the defining civil rights struggle of America’s 21st century. Building on the legacy of Dr. King he asks us to re-examine our assumptions about poverty in America, confront our dormancy and travel the road laid out to undertake to eradicate poverty, to redistribute the wealth and challenge the system that thrives off of inequality.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesNationalDr.CornelWestOnPovertyInAmerica  
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How Class Works: The RepublaCrats and Their Servant Economy
With
Jeff Faux, renowned economist, Founding Pres., Economic Policy Institute, author of The Global Class War and The Servant Economy

Faux explains why neither party's leaders have a plan to remedy America's unemployment, inequality, or long economic slide that America's political and economic elite spent so long making. While Republicans and Democrats brawl in public, in effect they have already cut a deal: the “American Dream” will have to be sacrificed. Faux will take us on a historical tour of the rise and fall of the idea that democratic government has a responsibility for shaping the future, delivers a savage indictment of Wall Street financiers and their Washington toadies who promote an age of austerity for the people and an age of gluttony for themselves.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesTheRepublacratsServantEconomyWithJeffFaux_339  play stream

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So Rich , So Poor - The Crisis of U.S. Poverty Today

with
. Peter Edelman, Author So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard To End Poverty In America. Prof., Georgetown University Law Center ,he was top advisor to Senator Robert Kennedy and was a member of President Clinton’s administration until he resigned in protest of Clinton’s signing, 16 years ago the Welfare Reform and Reconstruction Act.
. Dr. Avis Jones DeWeever, Executive Director of the National Council of Negro Women, who has been described as a change agent, living on the intersection of race and gender and fighting for justice every step of the way
. Frances Fox Piven, professor of political science and
sociology , Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her latest book is Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven: The Essential Writings of the Professor Glenn Beck Loves to Hate.

The income-level disparity in this country is now wider than at any point since the Great Depression. How can this country be so wealthy yet have a steadily growing number of unemployed and working poor.In the past we took important positive steps without which 25 to 30 million more people would be poor, but poverty fluctuates with the business cycle. The structure of today’s economy has stultified wage growth for half of America’s workers — with even worse results at the bottom and for people of color—while bestowing billions on those at the top.

What is happening to the people behind the statistics and especially the continuing crisis of young people of color, whose possibility of a productive life too often is lost on their way to adulthood. This is crisis of poverty is the most critical American dilemma of the twenty-first century.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesSoRichSoPoor-TheCrisisOfU.s.PovertyToday

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What The Lonmin-Marikana Mining Massacre Says About The New South Africa
With
Mazibuko Jara, editor, “Amandla, South Africa’s new progressive magazine Standing for Social Justice”, a leader of the Democratic Left Front in South Africa, bringing together 40 South African social movements into a broad anti-capitalist front, former media officer of the South African Communist Party, and first chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign challenging big pharma and an AIDS denialist government to win ARV treatment.

Jara discuses the current political situation in South Africa in the aftermath of the Lonmin-Marikana mineworker massacre, and its broader context, including internal ANC battles in the lead up to its conference in December and what it means for working class struggles and efforts to build the left

http://archive.org/download/TheLonmin-marikanaMiningMassacreAndTheNewSouthAfrica/jarantl.mp3
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We are proud to announce that Building Bridges has yet another outstanding Media Competition award for excellence from the International Labor Communication Association (ILCA) for our program, "The 99% Occupies Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge"covering the Nov.17 2011 upsurge celebrating the two month anniversay of Occupay Wall Street. The 99% delivered a powerful message that the domination of society by a tiny elite of super-wealthy individuals and corporations who caused the economic crisis and lobby against an effective policies to end it , harnessing government to do their bidding is unacceptable. The day started with massive civil disobedience in Wall Streets and the  protests were capped off by a rally and march over the Brooklyn Bridge by tens of thousands determined to take back and redistribute the wealth of this country to those who created it - the 99%.

http://archive.org/stream/OccupyWallStreet-The99OccupiesWallStreetAndTheBrooklynBridge  

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What Chicago Teachers Taught Us

With
Kimberly Bowsky, Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) rank and file
activist, member of CORE, Council of Rank and File Educators and the CTU House of Delegates
and
Brian Jones, former NYC public elementary school teacher, now pursuing a doctorate in urban education, co-narrator of the film “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman” and contributor to the book “Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation”

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has a tentative agreement. Some have proclaimed the strike as the biggest and most inspiring union victory since the 1997 UPS Teamsters strike. While it clearly demonstrates the
resilience of unions and the viability of the traditional strike tactic, it also raises the limitations of what even the best led unions can accomplish through collective bargaining alone today. What are the lessons of the CTU strike for N.Y.C.'s school personnel and its students, and for teacher’s
unions and public workers across the country facing challenges to their very existence?

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesWhatChicagoTeachersTaughtUs  
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The Making of Global Capitalism:

The Political Economy of American Empire
with
. Leo Panitch, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political
Economy in the Dept. of Political Science at York University
. Sam Gindin, former Research Dir. of the Canadian Autoworkers Union and Prof. at York University

Panitch and Gindin discuss the intimate relationship between modern capitalism and the American state, including its role as an informal empire promoting free trade and capital movements. Through a powerful historical survey, they’ll show how the US has superintended
the restructuring of other states in favor of competitive markets and coordinated the management of increasingly frequent financial crises. Analyzing the first great economic crisis of the twenty-first century, they identify the centrality of the social conflicts that occur within states rather than between them and how these emerging fault lines hold out the possibility of new political movements transforming nation states and transcending global markets.
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"The Story of Mouseland"
Narrated by Tommy Douglas, leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and, later, the New Democratic Party of Canada, both social democratic parties.

A political fable expressing the CCF's view that the political system was flawed in offering voters a false dilemma: the choice of two parties, neither of which represented their interests.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesMakingOfGlobalCapitalismWithLeoPanitchAndSamGindin_973   
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Mexican Caravanistas Cross Border & Journey Across US, Their Message, Peace, Justice & Dignity, No To The Increasing Militarization In The Fight Against Drug Abuse

Mexican activists in the first bi-national caravan of more than 115 mostly victims of the drug war arrived in New York on their month-long journey across the US. They called attention to organized crime, money laundering by HSCB, Citibank and other greedy financial institutions who they say are equally responsible for the bloodshed caused by the drug merchants and corrupt Mexican government officials serving them and supported as well by the US government. Memorializing the more than 60,000 who have died, which includes the son of poet Javier Sicilia, a caravan organizer, on both sides of the border, the message is to stop militarizing and treat drug abuse as a public health problem, not a war.
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Ending Mass Incarceration
with
Jazz Hayden, longtime member of The Riverside Church Prison Ministry, a founding member of the Ministry's Campaign to End the New Jim Crow,dedicated to combating mass incarceration and building caring communities.

For the past four years, Jazz Hayden has videotaped police officers as they performed illegal stop and frisks in Harlem as part of his coverage of the Harlem community as a citizen journalist. Now Jazz Hayden the peoples’ documentarian and leading exponent against police and prison abuse, is currently being persecuted by the NYPD and is fighting his own felony charges.

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Southern Workers and Occupy Protest at the DNC

With
. Angaza Laughinghouse, Pres. ,UE Local 150,
North Carolina Public Service Workers,
. Rev. Stephen Copley, Dir., Arkansas Interfaith
Alliance and Chairman, Ntl. Nonpartisan Let Justice
Roll Living Wage Coalition,
. Yen Alcala with the Coalition to March on Wall Street
South and Occupy Charlotte

No, say it ain’t so – was it really so that the Democratic National Convention(DNC) had the chutzpa to convene, of all days, on Labor Day, in a nonunion convention hall, in a right to work state? Well, it’s true! So, there’s all the more reason to join and build bridges with the worker advocates that converged in Charlotte last week. We bring you on the ground coverage with southern worker coalitions organizing public and private sector workers for labor rights in their Southern Workers Assembly; and other activists from across the country who converged on Wall Street South (the second largest concentration of finance capital in the
U.S., after N.Y.C.).
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Undocumented Immigrants’ Freedom Bus Ride!

Undocumented immigrants taking a page from the civil rights movement rode on a bus for justice from Arizona to Charlotte, N.C. to the Democratic National Convention. Across the states they challenged the champions of prejudice by their voices, and with actions against discrimination, harassment, and deportation. They are ready to move the country forward and they demanded that the Democratic Party match their courage by stopping the arrests and deportations and enacting comprehensive immigration reform.
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http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesSouthernWorkersOccupyActivistsAndUndocumented 
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How We Can & Why We Must Stave Off The Assaults On Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security & Public Assistance
With
. Joe Baker, Pres., Medicare Rights Center, serves on the US Dept. of Health and Human Services Medicare/Medicaid Advisory Panel, former NYS Deputy Sec'y for Health and Human Services under Gov. David Paterson
. Timothy Casey, Senior Staff Attorney with Legal Momentum
. Nancy Altman, Co-Chair, Strengthen Social Security Campaign

Sixteen years ago Pres. Clinton and a bipartisan Congress replaced Aid To Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) which has proven to be a disaster for poor parents and children, even more so in the midst of recession and economic downturn. The shredding of the safety net began with AFDC and is expanding with proposals to cut, to privatize, to block grant or set up vouchers for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Both political parties seem willing to sacrifice key elements of these programs at the altar of the budget deficit
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http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesAssaultsOnTheSafetyNet  play stream


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Immigrant Workers Organizing Breeds Energy And Hope

For Labor Movement
With
. Jacob Horowitz, Lead Organizer, National Guestworker Alliance
and the New Orleans Workers’ Center
. Joseph Sanchez, Focus on the Food Chain, Brandworkers' International
. Gaudalupe Palma Deputy Director, Warehouse Workers United, Inland Empire, CA.

Immigrant workers, documented and undocumented are on the move. They’re organizing for labor rights and infusing the workers’ movement with new energy and creativity. We need to make sure every worker, documented or undocumented is protected by our labor laws and we need immigration reform that allows immigrants to be securely part of our country from day one—able to assert their legal rights, including the right to organize. Over two hundred million people, just about all of them workers and farmers, are part of a great migrant stream, a human bond that connects the countries of the developed and developing world.

Who can see more clearly the operation of the global economy than those workers?  Who has a greater stake in
changing it? Who can help us to change our unions, and stop the hemorrhaging of our workers organizations than immigrant workers? Organizing immigrant workers is so necessary for the survival of our labor movement. If we are serious in wanting to build political power, then we must organize immigrant workers, fight for their rights, and make the movement for social justice one that belongs to all of us, documented and undocumented.
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http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesImmigrantWorkersOrganizingBreedsEnergyAndHope/immigrant3.mp3 download

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The Sparks That Ignite Hate: The Growth of American Extremism

With
Chip Berlet, investigative reporter, independent scholar and progressive activist specializing in the study of U.S. right-wing movements

Berlet describes that what happened at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin is both a hate crime and an act of domestic terrorism and discusses what’s feeding white supremacist radicalization. He’s written scholarly articles on conspiracy
theories, religious apocalyptic aggression, and organizations of racist groups. Berlet examines major terrorist plots and racist rampages that have emerged from the American radical right in the context of mass media’s vilification of a
scapegoated group, governmental policing and military policies and the politics of race and gender hierarchies, that stimulate individual and group aggression. Berlet reminds us that whether the “lone wolf” or leaderless resistance cells on the radical right, they can be likened to the mined canaries, warning us of something toxic spreading the fumes of anxiety through our society.

download  

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http://archive.org/stream/Low-wageWorkersRallyToRaiseMinimumWage  
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Workers in low-wage jobs, car washers, taxi drivers, airport workers, daycare providers, restaurant workers and retail employees joined in solidarity with organized labor, community organizations, religious leaders and politicians to demand better pay, benefits and working conditions for ALL workers. They rallied to call for fair wages on the three-year anniversary of the last increase to the federal minimum wage. The Day of Action in over 30 U.S. cities was in support of legislation in Congress to raise the minimum wage to $9.80 by 2014. The rallies followed on the heel of new data showing that large corporations with more than 100 employees hire the majority of the country’s low-wage workers (66%) – and that their recovery signals it is time to improve wages for the lowest-paid workers. New data from the Economic Policy Institute also shows the wideranging impact a minimum wage raise would have on America’s workers and on improving the economic growth.

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Bringing Home The Gold:
What’s To Love And Hate About The Olympics
with
Dave Zirin
Dave Zarin, writes about the politics of the world’s favorite pastime, sports.  He’s been named one of UTNE Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World”.  He’s the winner of Sport in Society and Northeastern University School of Journalism's 2011 Excellence in Sports Journalism Award.  Most recently he collaborated with Olympic icon Dr. John Carlos in writing the book, The John Carlos Story, he’s published Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love,  A People’s History of Sports in the United States, and Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports. Actually he’s the best darn sports-writer in the United States.  Zirin joins Building Bridges to scrape away at the gold surface and reveal some serious Olympic tarnish.   
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http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesDaveZirinOnOlympicGold play stream

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Today’s Opinion, Yosvany Terry’s Latest Musical Journey


Composer, musician Yosvany Terry has helped redefine the Afro-Cuban and contemporary jazz idiom in the New York music scene. His new release Today’s Opinion reflects his deep cultural roots as well as the versatility of his musical styles. This exceptional, multilayered recording Today’s Opinion is accessible and profound and Yosvany Terry previews it on Building Bridges.  

http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesRadioYosvanyTerrysLatestMusicalJourney-Todays/terrystntl.mp3 download

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Coke Workers Sue Calling Plants A “Cesspool Of Racial Discrimination”

With
. Yvette Butler, a mechanic, fired from the Maspeth, Queens, plant
. Ramon Hernandez, a haulage driver, fired from the Elmsford, Westchester, plant
. Ray Rodgers, Director, Campaign to Stop Killer Coke


Sixteen African-American and Latino production workers are suing Coca-Cola, accusing the company of relegating them to less favorable assignments, unfair disciplinary action and retaliation for complaining. The workers say they were
subjected to racial epithets, and the people who used them went unpunished, according to the complaint. The suits are centered on two production plants — one in Maspeth, Queens, and another in Elmsford in Westchester.

Sondra Walker, a merchandiser at the Maspeth plant, said she had “never been called so many names as I have been at Coca-Cola,” citing “Nappy Head” and “Aunt JaMamma” as examples. Walker describes in the complaint an incident
in which a white employee complaining about cleaning a sewer allegedly said: “What am I, a n----- or something?”
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Turn The Lights Back On For Locked Out Con Ed Workers
with
John Melia, Spokesperson, Local 1-2 Utility Workers Union


Building Bridges brings you an exclusive update on contract negotiations with the locked out NYC workers of Local 1-2 of the UWUA and Con Ed.

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Con Ed Wants To Turn The Lights Out On Worker Power

With
Harry Farrell, President
and Members of Local 1-2 Utility Workers Union


We’ll bring you exclusive, from the picket-line interviews with workers and the latest on negotiations with Local 1-2 leadership in the New York City’s Con Edison lockout. Con Edison illegally, more than a week ago, without notice, in the midst of bargaining over pensions, health care and wages locked out its 8,500 workers, after the union refused to surrender its ability to strike. While the sides have returned to the bargaining table tensions run high with injuries to the scab management, thinking it can do the workers jobs and service cuts to our neighborhoods.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesNysConEdLockoutVs.WorkersPower play stream
http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesNysConEdLockoutVs.WorkersPower/conedntl.mp3
download

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