Building Bridges Radio: Your Community & Labor Report

Produced and Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash over WBAI,99.5FM in the NYC Metro Area

WHO WE ARE

WORKERS OF THE WORLD TUNE IN! Introducing "Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report"

Our beat is the labor front, broadly defined, both geographically and conceptually. We examine the world of work and workers on the job as well as where they live. We examine the issues that affect their everyday lives, with a particular sensitivity towards human rights abuses, environmental concerns and the U.S. drive for global domination. We record their global struggles and provide analysis of their efforts to empower themselves and transform society to provide greater democratic, human, social, political and economic rights. Each program consists of feature stories, generally interviews, within a historical context, often accompanied by sound from demonstrations, rallies or conferences, and complemented and enhanced by poetry and instrumental or vocal -- people's culture.

Over the years Building Bridges has produced a weekly one hour program, Mondays from 7-8 PM EST, covering local, national and international labor and community issues over radio WBAI-Pacifica 99.5 FM in New York. We also produce half hour version, Building Bridges National, which is distribtued to over 40 broadcast and internet radio stations.


For more information you can contact us at knash@igc.org
In Struggle Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash

Zero Dark Thirty Controversy: Torture, Art, and Politics - 28:17  

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 Reject Keystone Pipeline; Ramsay Clark at 85 - A Life Celebrated - 27:51  

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.

play stream
http://archive.org/download/BuidingBridgesCanadianOilWorkersRejectKeystonePipelineRamsayClarkAt/xlramseyntl.mp3 download

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The Central Park Five, Exonerated But Justice Still Denied! - 28'  

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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Greek SYRIZA Leader Tsipras in NY Condemns Austerity; NYC School Bus Strike Update  

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. 

play stream
http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesGreekSyrizaLeaderTsiprasInNyCondemnsAusterityNyc/greecentl.mp3
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