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

While Batterers Go Free, Their Victims Get Prosecuted - 26:29  

While Batterers Go Free, Their Victims Get Prosecuted
featuring

Marissa Alexander, survivor of and organizer in defense of legal rights for victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse
Sumayya Coleman, lead organizer for the campaign to Free Marissa Alexander and the African-American/Black Women's Cultural Alliance .

Marissa Alexander, the Florida mother whose case became a rallying cry for anti-racism activists and survivors of domestic violence, was released recently after three years of incarceration.  Alexander, in fear for her life had faced up to 60 years behind bars for firing a single warning shot to
deter her abusive husband.  The public outcry in support of Marissa was successful in causing the sentence to be reduced, but nevertheless Marissa was forced to plead guilty to assault in exchange for credit for time served and received two years of electronic monitoring and house arrest. Marissa whose case has drawn national attention should be free and her case continues to raise larger issues of public interest and social around the state’s criminalization of victims of domestic and sexual violence. Marissa’s case has long sparked outrage about the unequal application of the law for both Black Americans and women. Marissa was prosecuted by Angela Corey, who was also the prosecutor in the trial of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the February 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin and who evoked “stand your ground” laws  in his defense, while Marissa who was in actual fear for her life was denied the right to use that defense.  Marissa granted us an exclusive interview where she and her critical supporter Sumayya Coleman speak about the plight of and in defense of legal rights for victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. 

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Insurgent Trade Unionism in South Africa - 28:31  

Insurgent Trade Unionism in South Africa
featuring
Luke Sinwell, senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg
,
whose research includes radical theories and practices of participatory 
governance, social movements and housing struggles, ethnographic research methods and action research. In addition to his book on Marikana, he is co-editor of Contesting Transformation: Popular Resistance in Twenty-First Century South Africa  

The Marikana massacre, which witnessed 34 mineworkers being gunned down by the police August 16, 2012 arguably marked a key turning point in South African history. However, we know very little about the informal networks that were created by mineworkers in order to challenge management not only at Lonmin (Marikana), but also at Amplats and Impala South African.  Luke Sinwell works closely with militant workers, especially miners, and the Left,
particularly the Democratic Left Front, and will talk about mining, capitalism and the spirit of Marikana.  Recently the Democratic Left Front acting in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S. held a march on the U.S. consulate in protest against the police murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, linking police brutality in the U.S. to what militants face in South Africa.
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Plus
350,000 Member Strong Union Leader at Forefront of Organizing United Front Against South Africa’s Class Inequalities
with Irvin Jim, Secretary General,
National Union of Metal Workers South Africa (“NUMSA”)
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Rev. Barber Calls for a New Reconstruction in America through Grassroots Activism For Racial and Economic Justice - 27:14  

Rev. Barber calls for a New Reconstruction in America through
Grassroots Activism For Racial and Economic Justice
with
Rev. Dr. William Barber
is the President of the North Carolina NAACP, 
and leader of Moral Mondays Movement whose effectiveness of organization has lifted him into the ranks of national civil rights leadership.  He is helping transform the political landscape of North Carolina and sparking progressive grassroots activism in other states as well calling this nation to justice, equality and compassion. 

“‘We’ is the most important word in the social justice  vocabulary.  The issue 
is not what we can’t do, but what we Can do when we stand together. With an upsurge in racism/hate crimes, criminalization of young Black and Brown males, and insensitivity to the poor, we must Stand together now like never before,” says the Rev. William Barber, leader of the nationally-recognized North Carolina Moral Mondays movement.  “The problems we are dealing with are not going to be solved until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power.”

The Rev. Barber called for Grassroots Activism For Racial and Economic 
Justice and a New Reconstruction in America in this speech delivered at Union Theological Seminary in NYC.

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Baltimore: Problems And Conditions Precipitating Police Brutality - 28:24  

Baltimore: Problems And Conditions Precipitating Police 
Brutality In The Community!
with
Stephan Janis, author of You Can't Stop Murder: Truths About 
Policing in Baltimore and Beyond and Why Do We Kill?: The 
Pathology of Murder in Baltimore. Janis' recent stories include 
The True Toll of Policing in Baltimore - The Arrest of a 7-Year-Old and A Walk Through The Neighborhood Where Freddie Gray 
Lived and Died

As protesters decry Freddie Gray's death and plan more rallies in Baltimore, we speak with Stephan Janis, an award-winning investigative reporter with The Real News, who has authored two books exposing corruption and incompetence in the Baltimore police department, and we’ll examine the confluence of poverty, poor governance, and racial animus that fuels police violence in the city.  
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Voices From the Epicenter of Protest
with 
Eddie Conway, The Real News Network Correspondent and a 
veteran of the Black Panther Party recently released who was held 
as a political prisoner for four decades in a government frame-up.

Eddie Conway speaks with residents of Gilmor Homes about the charges brought against 6 Baltimore police officers

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Building Bridges: Roll Back Low Wages: Stories of New Labor Organizing with Sarah Jaffe - 27:59  

Roll Back Low Wages: Nine Stories of New Labor Organizing in the United States 
with 
Sarah Jaffe, labor journalist, author of Roll Back Low Wages Albert Scharenberg, co-Director Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, NY Office  

The Fight for $15 Campaign comes against a backdrop of the mass incarceration and other forms of state violence against people of color and immigrants, stagnating wages, chronic unemployment, underemployment and starvation pay, and Building Bridges will drill down deeper to examine the economic conditions behind the Fight for $15 Campaign and the coalescence of workers groups stimulating these campaigns and new forms of organization for interest of the working class.  If we were to select one word to best describe the most important current trend in the economy of the United States, “precarity” would be a leading candidate.  America’s middle class is shrinking and recent polls suggest that possibilities for merit-based advancement are at their lowest point ever. A growing number of people work low-wage jobs under precarious circumstances, often without long-term job security, health care, or possibilities for advancement or retirement. Many quite literally find them- selves one sick day away from being fired and replaced by another person desperate to feed her or his family.Precarity in our working lives, or in those of our neighbors, our friends, or our loved ones, has increasingly become the new norm. With inequality on the rise, the U.S. government largely beholden to corporate interests, and austerity the economic recipe du jour, the implications are significant for the future of working people

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