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

The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy - 28:48  

Attica, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy! 
with
Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood In The Water


Although much has been written about the take over and ensuing assault on the Attica prison by state police and national guard troops some four days later which resulted in the murder of forty three individuals, including ten hostages, one statement by a 21 year old spokesperson for the inmates, himself later executed by police after they retook the prison, rings no less true or powerful today, some 45 years later:

Forty-five years after the rebellion at Attica, one of the greatest civil rights uprisings of that century stunned the nation, millions of Americans mostly men and women of color are locked away in prisons often for decades. But, Attica continues to serve as the inspiration, most recently for the largest prison strike in the history of this country and as Eddie Ellis, our 
recently deceased WBAI radio journalist, prisoner reform advocate and former Attica prisoner who was locked in one of the secured areas of the prison during the uprising said: “the bloodshed at Attica did something important it exposed what was being done to people and it also showed what men were able to do in a few short days when we work together. That history will serve us, one way or another. The choice, as it has always been, is up to us to dismantle the system of mass incarceration”. 

Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood In The Water, draws from more 
than a decade of extensive research and sheds new light on every aspect of the uprising and its legacy, giving voice to all those who took part in this forty-five-year fight for justice: prisoners, former hostages, families of the victims, lawyers and judges, and state officials and members of law enforcement. Blood in the Water is the searing and indelible account of one of the most important civil rights stories of the last century.

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People Get Ready for a New Economy - 27:16  

People Get Ready for a New Economy
with

Robert W. McChesney, Professor at the University of Illinois  

Join Robert W. McChesney as he posits that the U.S. needs a new economy whose revolutionary technologies are applied to effectively address environmental and social problems and used to rejuvenate and extend democratic institutions. Based on intense reporting, rich historical analysis, and deep understanding of the technological and social changes that are unfolding, McChesney proposes a bold strategy for democratizing our digital destiny—before it’s too late—and unleashing the real power of the Internet, and of humanity. 

Humanity is on the verge of its darkest hour—or its greatest moment. The consequences of the technological revolution are about to hit hard: unemployment will spike as new technologies replace labor in the manufacturing, service, and professional sectors of an economy that is already struggling. The end of work as we know it will hit at the worst moment imaginable: as capitalism fosters permanent stagnation, when the labor market is in decrepit shape, with declining or stagnant wages , expanding poverty, and scorching inequality. Only the dramatic democratization of the economy can address the existential challenges we now face. Yet, the US political process is so dominated by billionaires and corporate special interests, by corruption and monopoly, that it stymies not just democracy but progress. The great challenge of these times is to ensure that the tremendous benefits of technological progress are 
employed to serve the whole of humanity, rather than to enrich the wealthy few. 

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Indigenous Mindanao People in Philippines Fight for Food, Land & Justice - 28:59  

Indigenous Lumad Leaders from Mindanao, in Their Fight for Food, Land, and Justice Take Aim at US Funding Philippino Militarization 

On April 1, 2016, the Philippine National Police opened fire on an estimated 6,000 peasant and indigenous farmers who had barricaded a national highway in the southern Philippines.  Three were killed, more than 100 wounded, and at least 70 detained. The farmers were demanding the distribution of food relief after more than 7-months of drought had caused widespread famine.  Since 2010, at least 70 indigenous people from the southern island of Mindanao (collectively known as Lumad) have been killed for their outspoken stand to defend their ancestral domains from economic and ecological plunder. The Philippines has the world’s second largest gold deposits, more than half are
in Mindanao. Even indigenous community schools have

come under attack through military occupation and vilification. Currently, there are nearly 3,000 indigenous individuals who have been displaced from their communities
due to military occupation in an effort to clear the land for mining operations.  Indigenous people of the Philippines are increasingly being vilified, harassed, and murdered for defending their ancestral land from foreign corporate interests. 


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