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

Protesting Wal-Mart's Brave New World of Business - 28:55  

Wal-Mart May Be The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism 
But Now Its Workers at 1,500 Sites Across the US Risk Jobs and Arrest for Regular Hours, Better Pay, Benefits and Respect! 
with
the Wal-Mart workers and supporters, speaking out, 
engaging in civil disobedience and their arrests at the Secaucus,
NJ store protest

Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest retailer, second-largest corporation, and largest private employer (with over 1.4 million workers).  The Walton family is the richest family in the world, their wealth inherited from Sam Walton founder of Wal-Mart. Collectively, the Walton’s own over 50% of the company, and are worth a combined total of $150 billion.  In 2011, six members of the Walton family had the same net worth as the bottom 30% of American families combined. Wal-Mart made $16 billion in profits last year. Meanwhile Wal-Mart workers oftentimes make so little that they 
qualify for public benefits.  

Labor Historian Nelson Lichtenstein calls Wal-Mart a “template” firm. The Wal-Mart model of employment is based on low wages, low benefits and rapid job turnover, has become the template for American firms to follow, This model erodes the American middle-class standard of living, while its principals accumulate unimaginable profits. But, brave Wal-Mart workers aren’t taking this lying down - they risked their jobs to take part in more than 
1,500 protests around the country on Black Friday, including engaging in civil disobedience in nine cities -- Chicago, DC, LA, Dallas, Minnesota, Sacramento, Seattle, the Bay Area and New Jersey.  These actions came on the heels of strikes throughout the month in Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Ohio and Dallas and the rise of fast food workers’ strikes and unionization drives and movements across the country for increasing the minimum wage. 

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