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

Building Bridges:Teachers Strike and Protest in Colorado and Arizona -  

Teachers Take the Lessons of the Classrooms to the Streets
from West Virginia to Arizona and now Colorado
with
.  Joselyn Palomino, Denver High School Teacher of Mexican-
   American Literature
.   Cat Berrett, English teacher at Phoenix Union High School District


The victorious wildcat strike in W. Virginia ushered in a new wave of teacher and state worker activism and strikes organized by the rank and file with their unions racing to catch up.  Teachers without bargaining rights in Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona and where striking is illegal and their unions weak summoned their courage and walked off the job.  The most recent addition to this calvalcade of militancy is the Colorado teachers who with their union the Colorado Education Association shut down the statewide school
system for two days last week. At the same time Arizona teachers went on strike after weeks of militant demonstrations. . The strikes and mass protests often been led by the workers themselves forming new organizations often based on face book sites which host full-throttle conversations of what to do next such as Arizona’s face book group that organized the #RedForEd campaign and Kentucky’s KY120 United. They are fighting years of budget
cuts which translate into low wages and benefits and as importantly for these workers reduced school budgets meaning overcrowded classrooms, lacking basic supplies, updated books and educational materials. They are fighting for themselves and their students and have rejected deals to separate the issues.

Workers have been under brutal attack and unionization has been in decline for over 40 years. The employer offensive against unions has included all-out war against militant action and especially strikes. Yet it has only been in the periods of struggle and strikes for the private sector in the 1930’s and late 40’s and the public sector in the 1960’s that unions have grown and workers prospered. Now
the West Virginia workers have sparked workers across the land to embrace their rekindled militancy. 

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