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

Prisoners Strike, Say No To Slave Labor - 27:32  

Prisoners, Say No To Being Used As Slave Labor and
Withhold Their Labor Power In Nationwide Strike

with
Cole Dorsey and Michael Forest, Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, Industrial Workers of the World


Prisons can’t run without inmates, in more ways than one. Prisoners wash floors, work in the laundries and kitchens, and provide a large amount of the labor that keeps their facilities running. In return, they earn pennies per hour
or even no pay at all.  That’s sparking what may have been the largest prison strike yet as inmates across the country stopped working on Sept. 9. The strikers are calling for an end to forced labor and what they call “prison slavery”. And, it’s no coincidence that they picked Sept. 9 as the strike date: It was the 45th anniversary of the Attica rebellion, when prisoners at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York demanded their rights in one of the most significant civil rights occurrences of the century. 

"I'M BEGINNING TO BELIEVE THAT `U.S.A.' STANDS FOR THE UNDERPRIVILEGED SLAVES OF AMERICA" wrote a 20th-century prisoner from Mississippi in a letter detailing 

the daily violence he witnessed behind prison walls. His statement resounds with a long tradition of prisoners, and particularly African-American prisoners, who have used the
language and narrative of slavery to describe the conditions of their imprisonment. In the year 2000, as the punishment industry becomes a leading employer and producer for the U.S. "state," and as private prison and "security" corporations bargain to control the profits of this traffic in
human degradation, the analogies between slavery and prison abound. 


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The Racial Wealth Divide - 27:55  

The Country’s Racial Wealth Divide
with
Dedrick Asante-Muhammed, Director of the Racial Wealth Divide Initiative at the Corporation for Enterprise Development


Racial and economic inequality are the most pressing social issues of our time. In the last decade, we have seen the catastrophic economic impact of the Great Recession and an ensuing recovery that has bypassed millions of Americans,
especially households of color.  A new report looks at the country’s racial wealth gap, finding that if current public policies stay the same, it will take more than two centuries for black families to accumulate the same amount of wealth that white families have today.  For the average Latino family, it’ll take 84 years. Building Bridges will focus on the essential role that wealth plays in achieving financial
security and opportunity.


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Standing Rock Sioux Fight Dakota Oil Pipeline - 28:18  

“Like A Tree That Standing By The Water We Will Not Be Moved”: Fighting on All Fronts Lawyers Declare Victory In Defense of the Camp Sacred Stone Water Protectors as Federal Judge Dissolves Injunction
with
Jeff Haas, National Lawyers Guild attorney


Even before the Dakota Access’s pipeline security turned violent activists faced harsh responses as Governor Dalrymple, who declared a state of emergency, removing water and sanitation resources from the reservation, and the police have set up roadblocks around the reservation. Dozens of protesters have already been arrested, and police have spread false rumors of violence from the peaceful protectors.  But, as the struggle continues there’s been an important victory on the legal front as U.S. District Court Judge Daniel L. Hovland dissolved a temporary restraining order against Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II and other participants in the protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).  “Although the judge went out of his way to show his disdain for many of the water protectors, he also became aware that this was a political controversy that he likely could not control and the mechanism of an injunction was unwieldy and likely ineffective in light of the determination of those resisting the pipeline construction over sacred sites and threatening the water supply,” said attorney Jeff Haas.  Attorney Hass discusses the lifting of federal court prohibition on protests against the pipeline and  the legal challenges as local authorities and the criminal courts are now charging as felonies, nonviolent actions of protesters including peacefully locking themselves to stationary earth movers
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Who's Banking on the Dakota Access Pipeline?
with
Hugh MacMillan, senior researcher on water, energy and climate issues at Food & Water Watch. 

Hugh recently wrote the report which states: "Powerful oil and gas companies are taking appalling steps to override the Sioux’s Indians objections, using their immense financial resources to push for building the Dakota Access Pipeline, which will further line their pockets.  Behind the companies building the pipeline is a set of even more powerful Wall Street corporations that might give you flashbacks to the 2007 financial crisis." Among the companies funding the project are Citibank, Wells Fargo, UBS, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, SunTrust, Credit Suisse and TD Securities. We’ll discuss the financial institutions that are fostering widespread drilling and fracking to increase our disastrous dependence on fossil fuels.

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African American Unemployment Still Double White Rate; FCP Home Attendants Fight Back - 28:14  

Institutional Racism in the U.S. labor market - What is to be done?
with
William Spriggs, Chief Economist to the AFL-CIO and professor in, and former chair of the Department of Economics at Howard University. Bill is also former assistant secretary for the Office of Policy at the
United States Department of Labor


The so-called recovery of the US economy has not been equally kind to everyone. Even as the unemployment rate has decreased, the unemployment rate for African Americans, is currently more than twice as high as that for white Americans. Indeed, nationwide in 2015, 9.6% of African-Americans were unemployed compared with 4.6% of whites. This 2 to 1 ratio of African American to white unemployment has persisted for at least the last 50 years.
This unemployment gap is not one of skill or education , it is because of the very real and persistent discrimination prevalent in the U.S. labor market. And, did you know that it would take 228 years for African-American families to
amass the wealth of white families ?
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FCP workers invite all home attendants to join them in demanding stolen wages, and ending mandatory 24-hour shifts 
with 
National Mobilization Against Sweatshops(NMASS)
Aint't I A Woman Campaign



Home attendants who have worked as many as two decades for First Chinese Presbyterian Community Affairs Home Attendant Corp. (FCP) caring for elderly and ill patients in their homes, were forced to work 24-hour shifts for as many as seven days a week, but paid for only 12 or 13 of these hours. The workers were also denied overtime pay.  But, they’re not taking this lying down.  Joined by workers from Chinese American Planning Council and workers from other
agencies, the FCP home attendants are demanding  that FCP resolve their case immediately by paying the workers their owed wages, and they’re headed 


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