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

Peoples Organization for Progress Endorses Bernie Sanders  

New Jersey’s Powerful Grassroots Peoples Organization for Progress Takes Bernie Sanders to Heart
with

Larry Hamm, veteran activist, Chairman the People’s Organization for Progress

POP has rarely departed from a long-standing policy of not supporting candidates for office and engaged in a rigorous debate and careful consideration before reaching its position on how to relate to the 2016 presidential election.  POP’s Chairman Larry Hamm acknowledged the struggle of Bernie Sanders to date to build support in urban communities, specifically with Black and Latino voters.  “It did come up and it will continue to come up, but the fact remains that many of his basic positions will benefit black people,” said the activist. “Single payer healthcare, raising the minimum wage, affordable college, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure. Although those specific  platform planks may not be addressed specifically to African-Americans, black people know that they will benefit from those things.”  Sanders, who had a campaign rally stopped by young Black Lives Matter activists, has by far, the most left leaning stance on all of the issues, especially the economic and racial justice issues that matter most to the organization. “Bernie Sanders is the first self-described socialist to ever have gotten this
close to the Presidency of the United States,” said founder and chairman Lawrence Hamm.  “While we should be deeply concerned by how Republican candidates like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have taken the Republican Party so far to the right, we, on the left, should be just as active as they are and should give serious consideration to how the Sanders campaign could possibly take the Democratic Party from the center right to the left,” said Hamm.
PlusFormer Secretary of Labor Robert Reich
Six Responses to Bernie Skeptics


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The Panama Papers - Cracking Open Kleptocrats and Plutocracts Piggy Banks  

Cracking Open Kleptocrats and Plutocracts Piggy Banks:
The Panama Papers
with James Henry
,
who has written extensively about global banking, debt crises, tax havens and economic development.  Henry is former chief economist at the international consultancy firm McKinsey & Co. and is now a  senior fellow at the Columbia University Center for Sustainable  International Investment  and senior adviser with the Tax Justice Network, which has estimated in their study, “The Price of Offshore Revisited,” that total wealth in tax havens was between $21 trillion and $32 trillion.  James Henry's books include The Blood Bankers: Tales from the Global Underground Economy, and the forthcoming The Pirate Bankers. 


Attorney, James Henry takes us through one of the biggest leaks in journalistic history, 11.5 million documents  to reveal  the secretive offshore companies used to hide wealth, evade taxes and commit fraud by the world's dictators, business tycoons and criminals.  This massive leak of documents has blown open a window on the vast, murky world of shell companies, providing an extraordinary look at how the wealthy and powerful conceal their money. The  data breach occurred at a little-known but powerful Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, which has an office in Las Vegas, a representative in Miami and a presence in more than 35 other places around the world.  The firm is one of the world’s top five creators of shell companies, which can have legitimate business uses, but can also be used to dodge taxes and launder money.  

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160 Bangladeshi Immigrants Seeking Asylum Being Deported - 26:14  

From Hurt and Hope During Holy Week Towards Resurrection
with 

The New Sanctuary Coalition NYC
and

Fahd Ahmed, Exec. Director, DRUM – South Asian Organizing Center  

The U.S. is scheduled to deport over 160 Bangladeshis who had requested asylum. These men have been kept in detention under deplorable conditions, so much so that they were driven to go on hunger strikes to bring attention to their plight. Now, they are fighting for basic human rights against their imminent deportation. But, on Easter Friday, a special day for many Christians a broad
coalition led by faith-based organizations came to Federal Plaza in a pray out to raise up the principles of that holy day by protesting the deportation of their brother Bangladeshis and advocating for changes to our immigration policies that lift up the common humanity of all and provide people with the opportunity to live in dignity.  The protestors surrounded Federal Plaza, speaking the words of pain and suffering that immigrants experience and railed against a system that punishes and destroys families and communities.


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