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

Landmark Stop & Frisk Decision; NYPD Killing of Ramarley Graham - Fed Gov Must Investigate - 27:46  

Analyzing The Landmark Decision
Holding Stop & Frisk Unconstitutional
with 

Samuel Walker, criminal justice expert, witness in the historic trial

Judge Scheindlin's decision confirms what the communities subject to being stopped and frisked  already knew, the NYPD's Stop & Frisk program violates the constitutional rights of Black and Latino New Yorkers every day.  Samuel Walker, takes us through Judge Scheindlin's voluminous decision to discuss what a monitor can do, what they’ve done in other states, and Judge Judge Scheindlin's  other recommendations included in her decision and still others that institutionalize the attack on racial profiling.  We’ll also discuss AG Eric Holder’s comments on minimum sentencing and criminal justice reform.
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Calls for Fed Gov to Investigate NYPD Killing of Ramarley Graham
with
Constance Malcolm, mother of Ramarley Graham


In the wake of a grand jury’s failure to indict killer cop Richard Haste, Constance Malcolm, the slain youth’s mother said,  “[I] am more than outraged, Richard Haste broke into our home and killed my son in cold blood.  The criminal justice system has failed us, just as it failed the family of Trayvon Martin.  We demand an immediate federal investigation into my son’s death.  We will continue to fight without rest until we win justice.”

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesLandmarkStopFriskDecisionNypdKillingOfRamarley

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Detroit: Pensions, Racism and Bankruptcy - 28'  

Detroit: Pensions, Racism and Bankruptcy 
with
. Ross Eisenbrey, VP, Economic Policy Institute
. Richard (RJ) Eskow,  Senior Fellow, Campaign for America's Future
. Al Garrett,  President AFSCME Council 25

Detroit's economic woes can be tracked to capital flight, governmental policies and the results of institutional racism, not the wages and benefits its public workers received. But, ignoring these bedrock realities Michigan's Governor Snyder has appointed an Emergency Financial Manager for the cash strapped Detroit, Kevyn Orr ,  who has rushed into bankruptcy - seeking to balance the books on the workers's backs.  His bankruptcy filing will result in pilfering workers’ pension funds, while fundamentally ignoring the causes of the City's fiscal crisis.  Bankruptcy will seriously wound pensioners, despite the fact that the unfunded portion of the pension funds are minuscule and the plan's nconstitutional under Michigan’s Constitution.  Orr's undue attention to public workers pensions is part of a nationwide trend targeting the retirement security of working Americans -- especially pensions, Social Security, and Medicare.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesDetroitPensionsRacismAndBankruptcy  
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http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesDetroitPensionsRacismAndBankruptcy/detroitbankntl.mp3 
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Building Bridges: The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom - 27'  

Fifty Years Later, Commemorating and Learning from One of the Great Moments in History - The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs, Freedom and Civil Rights  
with 
Professor William P. Jones, author of The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and Forgotten History of Civil Rights 

We’ll probe deeply into the significance of the massive 1963 march and the movement it inspired with civil rights and labor historian William P. Jones .  While in a resounding cadence, King lifted the crowd when he told of his dream that all Americans would join together to realize the founding ideal of equality, the very power of  King speech has also narrowed our understanding of the march organized by A. Philip Randolph Pres. of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Prof. Jones reminds us that this was a movement of sustained grassroots organizing, linked locally to women’s groups, unions, civil rights and faith-based organizations across the country – it was a movement of the grassroots.  Prof. Jones restores the march to its full significance and with his fresh, compelling history delivers a new vision of this emblematic event and the broader movement it propelled and what it instructs for building a movement now for Jobs Freedom and Civil rights as we get ready to return once again  to March on Washington on August 24th to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the first March to demand the implementation of its still unrealized goals of Jobs and Freedom.
  http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesThe1963MarchOnWashingtonForJobsAndFreedom  
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http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesThe1963MarchOnWashingtonForJobsAndFreedom/MarchJonesntl2.mp3  

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Building Bridges: Restaurant Workers Discrimina​tion Is As American As Apple Pie - 27:44  

Restaurant Labor Leader Responds to Paula Deen Controversy: 
For Restaurant Workers Discrimination Is As American As Apple Pie
with
Saru Jayaraman, Co-Founder and Co-Director, Restaurant 
Opportunities Centers United, Director of the Food Labor Research Center at U.C. Berkeley, author Behind the Kitchen Door

Lisa Jackson who sued Paula Deen, said that her “lawsuit has never been about the "N-word,”  its purpose was “to address Deen’s patterns of disrespect and degradation of people that she deems to be inferior.”  The former manager at Deen’s restaurant Uncle Bubba's Seafood and Oyster House, sued Deen and her brother Bubba Hiers saying that the work environment was rife with discrimination, and she could no longer tolerate Deen’s abuse of power as an owner, nor Mr. Hier’s despicable behavior routinely.  Unfortunately, the revelations about  Deen's treatment of workers of color is neither new or unique in the restaurant industry. More than a third of all workers of color, who were surveyed reported that they experienced discriminatory treatment on the basis of race, including verbal abuse, being passed over  a promotion, racial epithets, and more. This treatment has real impact for the lives of workers and their families - because they have been discriminated against, workers of color are segregated into the industry's lowest-paying positions and segments (e.g. fast food rather than fine dining). Saru Jayaraman takes us Behind The Kitchen Door to expose the extensive discrimination and hardships of restaurant workers. 

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

http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesRestaurantWorkersDiscriminationIsAsAmericanAsApplePie/sarurocntl.mp3   download

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