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

McDonald's Abuse Of Student Guest Workers Stirs Protest - 27:41  

McDonald’s Student Guest Workers Abuse Stirs Protest

Latin American and Asian student guest workers participating in the U.S. State Department’s J-1 program, expected decent work and a meaningful cultural experience in the USA.  Instead, they were sent to  work at McDonald’s,
who paid them below the minimum wage and when they complained of the exploitation were subjected to retaliation.  So, they went on strike against the Pennsylvania stores where they worked and then came in protest to NY’s Times Square McDonald’s with supporters from National Guest Worker Alliance, UnitedNY and the Retail Action Project.  There they further announced their plans to take their protest directly to McDonald’s headquarters and the home of CEO Don Thompson if McDonald’s doesn’t take responsibility for ending labor abuses for all its workers.
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Community Protests Police Killing of Kimani Gray in Brooklyn, N.Y. -27:46  

Cops Who Killed Kimani Gray
Focus Of 5 Prior Federal Civil Rights Lawsuits

Another stolen Black life!  Sixteen year old, African-American Kimani Gray
was mortally wounded after 7 of the 11 bullets fired entered his body both the front and the back.  The murderous shots were fired by Sergeant Mourad and
Officer Jovaniel Cordova, who had already racked up five civil rights violations in federal lawsuits. Both Mourad and Cordova were accused of exploiting the “stop-and-frisk” tactic and going outside the confines of the law to hide their
involvement.  Building Bridges reports from the scene, Brooklyn’s east Flatbush section where there has been more than a week of community protests following the latest death of a Black teen, resulting from the policies and practices by the NYPD in communities of color.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgescommunityProtestsPoliceKillingOfKimaniGrayInBrooklyn
play stream
http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgescommunityProtestsPoliceKillingOfKimaniGrayInBrooklyn/KimaniNtl3.mp3
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Alice Walker, Dennis Banks & Zwelinzima Vavi on Palestine  

Palestinians Refuse To Be “Cleansed” From Their Land
with
. Dennis Banks, American Indian Movement (AIM)
. Alice Walker, writer
. Zwelinzima Vavi, Gen. Sec., Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)

AIM leader Dennis Banks, renowned author Alice Walker, and South African labor leader Vavi came together to an international tribunal to grapple with Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and strategize how to build greater support internationally for Palestinian self-determination.  They reveal Israel as an
occupier, an aggressor, confiscating Palestinian land and removing the indigenous residents and then when faced with resistance, operating in a fashion that each panelist viewed through the historical lens of their own people’s brutalization.   Dennis Banks reflected on the genocide of Native Americans. Walker referenced the enslavement of Africans and American institutional racism and Vivi thought that the South African system of Apartheid was echoed by Israel’s treatment of Palestinian
s.
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http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesAliceWalkerDennisBanksZwelinzimaVaviOnPalestine

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Building Bridges: SOS! Save Our Station! WBAI  

Building Bridges says, SOS, Save Our Station! 
Don’t allow WBAI radio to go silent!

PLEASE CONTRIBUTE BY GOING TO THE WBAI WEBSITE
http://www.give2wbai.org/category_s/1830.htm
and pledge in the name of Building Bridges

Building Bridges broadcasters Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash give voice to the working class in this intensified period of attacks on it over WBAI radio. Our priorities draw inspiration from Dr. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech at
NYC's Riverside Church, to build a movement for fundamental change of the U.S. economic system, to end discrimination, poverty, and militarism.

WBAI, which steadfastly refuses to be politically manipulated by financing itself through corporate advertising or commercial underwriting is facing its most severe
financial crisis in its 53 year history.  While we have a number of debts to satisfy and upcoming expenses, our most urgent  need is to maintain our broadcast signal.  We owe the Empire State Building, where our antenna is located, enabling us to transmit over a 150 mile radius, $250,000 payable by the end of March.  It’s due or die time.

There isn’t a progressive cause that WBAI hasn’t provided broadcast time for, and helped to build support for, at home or around the world.  And, now we need you to support your broadcast voice as we never have before, to assure that we
don’t lose this institution that has worked for all your causes, like no other media has done for as long and consistently as WBAI.  It’s your station, to advocate for you, to champion your causes and build our movements.

We will not go quite into that good night – certainly not with your financial help. Help
us pay our most immediate and necessary debt to Save Our Station, to Save Our Antenna.
Whose Station?  Our Station!  Make it so, contribute generously now.

Please post this urgent message to your contacts, listserves, webpage, Facebook,
and other social media.

In Solidarity
Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg


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Workers Rising, Low-Wage Worker Organizing -28:04  

Workers Rising, Low-Wage Worker Organizing
with
. Steven Greenhouse, journalist, N.Y. Times
. M. Patricia Smith, Solicitor of the U.S. Dept. of Labor
. Dorian Warren, Assoc. Prof., Columbia University
. Angelo Falcón, Pres. and Founder, National Institute for Latino Policy
. Debra Axt, Co-Ex. Dir., Make the Road, N.Y.

 

The Center for Popular Democracy and United N.Y. organized Workers Rising, a conference to celebrate and discuss the exciting new formations and activism of low-wage workers in 2012 to drive that momentum towards more victories in 2013. In 2012, a wave of worker organizing rose across low-wage industries in NYC and across the nation, propelled by workers’ anger at poverty wages and
intolerable working conditions. Supported by community, faith- based groups, unions, and elected officials, these workers participated in nationwide protests at Wal-Mart, led the first coordinated strikes in the history of America’s fast food industry, unionized at car washes and groceries, and took on major N.Y.C.
retailers efforts to offer only part-time work. 


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