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

Huge WIN For Carwash Workers To Unionize - 28'  

Huge WIN For Carwash Workers To Unionize
 

One of the most exciting of the numerous low-wage worker organizing campaigns around the city and across the nation is that of the predominantly immigrant, car wash workers who recently scored a unionization victory in Flushing, Queens. Workers at the Jomar Car Wash voted over- whelmingly to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). This is the sixth car wash workers election the union has won since the launch of its aggressive organizing campaign in NYC. They have been organizing in the WASH NY campaign, a joint effort of Make the Road NY and NY Communities for Change, along with the RWDSU.
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“I Am A Man,” 
Say Carwash Workers In Suit To Uphold Dignity
 

The struggle to unionize carwash workers extends across the country. In Santa Monica, California labor leaders, immigrant rights advocates and members of the faith community gathered to support carwash workers who are standing up for justice. The carwash industry is known for abusive and illegalpractices, but now there's a class action lawsuit filed by the Mexican AmericanLegal Defense and Educational Fund against Santa Monica carwash owners to CLEAN up the industry and uphold the dignity of every worker.

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Organizing Mississippi Nissan Workers - 27:35  

Mississippi’s Nissan Factory Auto Workers
Take Message of Worker’s Justice to NY’s International Auto Show
with
.  Raphael Martinez, auto worker Canton, Mississippi
.  James Brown, auto worker Canton, Mississippi


The United Auto Workers union launched a major union drive at
the transplant Nissan factory, in Canton, Mississippi in the heart of
the anti-union South.  The Canton plant, with 3000 workers has wage disparities with other Nissan plants, serious discord over limited and onerous  health benefits policies and is employing growing numbers of temporary workers, creating a two-tier wage and benefit system to both super exploit the part-time workers and undermine the maintenance of a full-time work force’s wages and benefits.  Nissan has interrogated workers about their involvement in organizing and forced them to attend anti-union meetings several times a week and try to scare the workers intimating that if they unionize the plant could close and they would lose their jobs.  But, the workers from this plant that can build 400,000 vehicles per year are building support for worker justice, both nationally and
internationally and are now taking their message to consumers attending the International Automobile Show.
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Actor Danny Glover, along with Rank & File Nissan Auto Workers Demand Good Jobs 

Mississippi  Congressperson Bennie Thompson, Derrick Johnson, Pres. of the Mississippi NAACP along with noted actor Danny Glover bring their support to the UAW’s efforts to unionize Nissan Mississippi auto plant. 

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Obama's Immigration Reform; A Bangladeshi Worker's Dream - 28'  


Obama’s Immigration Reform, The Truth Or A Cruel Hoax?
with

Amy Gottlieb, Immigrant’s Rights Program Director,
American Friends Service Committee
.

Amy Gottlieb holds aloft the banner of immigrants across this country demanding humane immigration reform, discussing what a humane immigrant reform policy should look like and explains and critiques the substance of the 844 pages of immigration reform proposals currently under debate in the Congress
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A Bangladeshi Worker's Dream
with

Maksuda, a Bangladeshi garment worker

On a U.S. tour organized by the National  Labor Committee, Maksuda describes the harsh conditions of her life and work.

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Building Bridges: The Blood, Sweat & Tears Of Bangladesh​'s Garment Workers - 26:57  

The Blood, Sweat & Tears Of Bangladesh’s Garment Workers Stain The Clothes of Multi-National Corps. Who Reap Huge Profits From Workers' Misery
with

Barbara Briggs, Asst. Dir., Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights
and

Kalpona Atker, Ex. Dir., Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity

To date, more than 500 are confirmed dead, 2,044 people have been rescued, more than 1,000 of them injured and 1,000 people are unaccounted for, or still trapped inside the concrete wreckage of the collapsed garment factory in Bangladesh. Meanwhile, the Western multinational corporations who subcontract sewing their brands to Bangladesh, an economy where 80% of its exports are from the apparel trade stubbornly refuse to join workplace safety plans in Bangladesh. They still refuse to compensate the injured and the families of those who previously died sewing their brands. Since the infamous Tazreen factory fire blaze in November where 112 died there have been dozens more factory fires since and now hundreds killed in this week's Rana Plaza building collapse. How many people will have to sacrifice their lives for the corporate bottom line?  


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Beyond Corporate Capitalism and State with Gar Alperovitz - 28:05  

What Then Must We Do?
withGar Alperovitz, author, What Then Must We Do?  and The Next
American Revolution: Beyond Corporate Capitalism and State
Socialism 

While there's been no shortage of commentary about the structural crisis plaguing the American economic and political system, from wage stagnation and chronic unemployment to unchecked corporate and state power and growing inequality, analyses that offer practical, politically viable solutions to these problems have been few and far between. Gar Alperovitz is a rare and stunning exception. Through his new book and film and his research and his activism, Alperovitz highlights efforts already under way in thousands of communities across the U.S., from co-ops and community land trusts to municipal, state, and federal initiatives to organize and democratize capital.  Alperovitz marshals years of research to show how bottom-up strategies can work to check monopolistic corporate power, democratize wealth, and empower communities.
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