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

Walmart Guest Workers Fight Forced Labor = 26:04  

http://archive.org/stream/WalmartGuestWorkersFightForcedLabor play stream
http://archive.org/download/WalmartGuestWorkersFightForcedLabor/GuestSeafoodntl2.mp3 download


Louisiana Guest Workers Expose Forced Labor Coverup At Walmart Supply Chain and Take Protest To Walmart Board Member’s Home


Mexican guest workers, who peel crawfish for C.J.’s Seafood in Louisiana confronted their bosses after being forced to work shifts of up to 24 hours, weren’t allowed to take breaks, were cheated out of their overtime pay and were threatened with physical violence. Ana Diaz, one of the workers said that, “when we wanted to take breaks the supervisor threatened to hit us. When one of our co-workers called the police because she couldn’t take the treatment, then our boss threatened to hurt our families.” Despite the threats,workers walked off their shift and demanded payment of their unpaid wages. The workers have extended their protest to Sam’s Club, a Walmart subsidiary that buys 85 percent of C.J.’s crawfish and marched on the New York offices and penthouse of Walmart board members.

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Huge NYC March Against Stop and Frisk and the New Jim Crow - 27:36  

Thousands in N.Y.C. Say STOP Frisking Our Communities:

Community and Labor Say No To Racial & Ethnic Profiling and the New Jim Crow


Thousands upon thousands marched in NYC's Father's Day stop Stop and Frisk march organized by civil rights and labor unions in protest of the policies of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and implemented by NYPD Police Commisioner Kelly. Under Mayor Bloomberg, in 2011, 685,000 New Yorkers were stopped by the Police. Of those that were stopped 605,328 were completely innocent of any wrong- doing. African-American youth constituted 350,743, or 53% of those stopped and Latinos comprised 223,740 or 43% of those stopped. In response to the profiling and efforts to criminalize Black and Latino youth, and following yet another fatal police shooting thousands came together to demand: End Stop and Frisk; End The “Drug War” Against Our Youth; End Mass Incarceration;End the New Jim Crow;  & Stop the Implementation of ICE’S Secure Communities Program in New York and Mass Deportations. Building Bridges presents the march highlights.

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Workers of the Food Chain Unite; Excluded Workers Fight and Win - 27:24  


http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesWorkersOfTheFoodChainUnite/foodchainntl.mp3  download http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesWorkersOfTheFoodChainUnite  play stream

The Hands That Feed Us:
Workers of the Food Chain Unite, Demonstrate and March


Workers and supporters of The Coalition of Immokalee Workers‘ Campaign Fair Food at Chipotle and the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United's Dignity at Darden Campaign met at the Capital Grille restaurant on E. 42nd St. in NYC and then marched to a nearby Chipotle Restaurant for a boisterous joint demonstration against worker exploitation by these two large chain restaurants. Joining the protest were members of Local 1500, UFCW, the Brandworkers’ Flaum Appetizing campaign and Hot and Crusty Bakery workers, all celebrating organizing victories. The demonstration was the kick off to a daylong conference by 14 unions and workers centers throughout the country which constitute the Food Chain Workers Alliance which is organizing the close to 20 million workers throughout the U.S. in the food system – on farms and in food processing and meatpacking plants, warehouses, grocery stores, restaurants and food service establishments.
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Excluded Workers Fight and Win
with
Ai-jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance


At a time of decline for traditional labor organizations, Ai-jen Poo from the National Domestic Workers Alliance describes the growth and successes of domestic workers organizing in NYS and around the country. They have recently joined in an alliance, the Excluded Workers Congress, with other immigrant based worker movements, many taking the form of workers centers, representing national alliances of workers in restaurants, day labor, taxi, formerly incarcerated workers, guest workers & farmworkers. This is a rare hopeful moment for workers too long excluded from labor law protections who need more support from the union movement that in turn needs their vitality and innovative approaches to organizing.

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NYC Rally Opposes Racially Based Marijuana Arrests - 27:58  

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesNycRallyOpposesRaciallyBasedMarijuanaArrests play stream
http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesNycRallyOpposesRaciallyBasedMarijuanaArrests/nycarrestsntl.mp3  download

New Yorkers Rally To Oppose Racially Biased, Illegal And Costly Marijuana Arrests And Stop-And-Frisk Practices Of Mayor Bloomberg's NYPD!


Mayor Bloomberg, now presides over the largest initiative in the country to arrest young men of color on false marijuana possession charges - an outcome of the controversial stop-and-frisk practices conducted by NYPD. Evoking Charles Dickens’ famous novel, protestors declared that biased policing practices under Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly were creating "A Tale of Two Cities". One is for white residents where marijuana possession was decriminalized in 1977, where they are seldom stopped and frisked, and mothers do not fear that their children
will be unlawfully rounded up by the police. The other New York City is for the hundreds of thousands of people of color who are stopped even though the overwhelming majority of them are innocent of any wrongdoing; tens of thousands are illegally searched, falsely charged, arrested and incarcerated for
marijuana possession (even though it’s not a crime in New York); and mothers live in fear of the police unlawfully snatching their children off the streets. Underscoring the two city theme at the end of the rally, about a dozen young white people blocked the entrance to NYPD headquarters exposing themselves to arrest
by police as they denounced the racially biased police practices – the police refused to arrest them!

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Supreme Court, Arizona's Anti-Immigration Law and Mass Incarceration - 27:17  

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesSupremeCourtArizoniaAnti-immigrantLaw  play stream

http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesSupremeCourtArizoniaAnti-immigrantLaw/sb1070ntl.mp3  download


High Court Signals Receptivity To Arizona's Anti-Immigration Legislation Which Could Result In Mass Incarceration Of Latinos
With
Isabel Garcia, Director of Derechos Humanos, in Tucson, Arizona
Foster Maer, Senior Litigation Counsel of Latino Justice, PRLDEF


The lawyer arguing against provisions in Arizona’s anti-immigration law said that if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds SB 1070 there could be “mass incarceration” of Latinos. And, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer who had signed the proposed legislation into law in 2010 agreed as she stood on the court house steps after its argument that incarceration of Arizona’s estimated 400,000 undocumented immigrants was up for consideration, if the highest court lifted the block on SB1070’s enforcement. During oral argument on SB 1070 by the high court Justice Scalia cynically suggested mass incarceration could be avoided by “simply deporting these people,” and in the one-hour argument both conservative and liberal justices expressed skepticism to the challenges to the Arizona law, filling immigrants, and immigration advocates with apprehension. Meanwhile, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Indiana and Utah have proposed or enacted similar legislation and await the court’s ruling expected in June. We’ll parse out the arguments and discuss what’s at stake for the country's immigrant populations, and the fabric of democracy.

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