NYCHA Housing New York’s Flint:  While Tests Showed Children Living in NYCHA Apartments Were Being Poisoned by Lead, the de Blasio Administration’s Response was to Challenge the Tests
with
special guest, NY Times, investigative journalist, David Goodman

Mikaila Bonaparte has spent her entire life under the roof of the New York City Housing Authority, the oldest and largest public housing system in the country, where as a toddler she nibbled on paint chips that flaked to the floor.  In the summer of 2016, when she was not quite 3 years old, a test by her doctor showed she         had lead in her blood at levels rarely seen in modern New York. 

Two Thousand children living in New York City's public housing have been poisoned by lead in recent years, a shocking new report issued by the city's Department of Health reported showing how many kids younger than 18 were found with elevated levels of the toxic substance in their blood. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg! Meanwhile, the city’s response to NYCHA children whose ingestion of lead is toxic to many tissues and organs including the bones, heart, kidneys, intestines, and reproductive and nervous systems and the brain, which is the organ that is the most sensitive to lead exposure was to deny the evidence.  

While the mayor claimed at a Bronx press conference had he been presented along the way that these reports from the Department of Health that were being contested, “that would have been the day that we started the process of turning all that around.” In fact, he had mountains of evidence “presented” to him.  The Daily News, for example, wrote in April 2015 about the Housing Authority’s habit of contesting every positive lead test: When a 2-year-old who’d spent his whole life in a Brooklyn project tested positive, NYCHA performed a test and declared the apartment lead-free.  NYCHA contested 95 percent of the “positive” tests it received from the city Department of Health from 2010 to 2018.  As early as May 2016, e-mails obtained by The Post showed, NYCHA officials briefed top levels of City Hall that 202 children had tests showing elevated lead levels in 2010-2015. In April 2016, it was revealed that then-NYCHA chief Shola Olatoye had lied about conducting apartment inspections, which the agency had stopped from late 2012 through May 2016; de Blasio still insisted on defending her. Still new emails released by City Hall show that de Blasio apparently tried to hide the extent of the problem from the public.

Amidst these revelations, tenants are outraged. Danny Barber president of NYCHA’s citywide “Council of Presidents said, “He lied. He outright lied and if it was anybody else that lied they would be locked up and put into jail. We’re tired of it. The mayor should be held accountable.”

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Mexico "will never be the piñata of any foreign government," AMLO has said. What we know of Mexico’s New President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador "AMLO" positions on the Renegotiated NAFTA Trade Agreement & Immigration 

with 
Laura Carlsen, the director of the Americas Policy Programme, Centre for International Policy; she is based in Mexico City.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador , commonly known by the acronym AMLO, took his seat as Mexico's new President on Saturday. However, it’s been four months since AMLO, won Mexico’s presidential election promising during his run to usher in a "fourth transformation" of Mexico giving us some insight into his relationship to the US on trade and immigration.

Migrants (including women, children, and families) have trekked across Mexico headed towards the US-Mexico border to apply for asylum in the United States. Many have walked over 3,000 km across Mexican territory with only their backpacks, their children, and their chants, fleeing violence and poverty at home. Since the migrants set off, president Trump has tweeted his opposition and threatened both Honduras and Guatemala with sanctions if they were to allow the caravan to cross their borders and has sent the military to the US-Mexican border. And recently the Mexican government responded by sending riot police to the border to prevent the migrants from crossing. The images of black-clad security forces using their shields against mothers and babies were shocking and disturbing. The visibility of the migrant caravan – aided in part by Trump’s tweets and statements – has forced a discussion on how undocumented migrants are treated in Mexico and what role the country would play in future. In fact, Mexico’s southern border has seen a steady increase in checkpoints, detention centres, and guards. At times, Mexico has been responsible for deporting more Central American migrants than the United States. However, we don’t expect AMLO to pay for Trump’s wall either - he did publish a book called "Oye, Trump" ("Listen Up, Trump") and he has condemned Trump’s plans to build a border wall

And, while U.S. relations didn’t count as a deciding factor for Mexican voters, the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement "NAFTA" has been a dominant issue during the transition period resulting and has now resulted in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement "USMCA" which an AMLO team participated in negotiating and which Trump called the teamwork "fantastic." And while AMLO said he would work to tackle the poverty in Mexico, where an estimated 44 percent of Mexicans live below the poverty line and 7.6 percent in extreme poverty will the USMCA mean raising wages and create jobs in Mexico? Laura Carlsen will probe the terms of the replacement of NAFTA by the USMCA and discusse whether it represents a confrontation looming on the horizon, as it continues the same economics AMLO professes to oppose.
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CNN Shamefully Bows to Right-Wing Mob in Firing of Analyst Marc Lamont Hill, After His UN Speech Calling for Equal Rights for Palestinians  
with
Ali Abunimah, Founder of The Electronic Intifada, whose books include One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, and The Battle for Justice in Palestine. He has been an active part of the movement for justice in Palestine for 20 years.
 
   "I called for a single democratic state where everyone votes.
    Jews, Muslims, Christians and everyone else deserve to live
    in peace and safety. And with self-determination. No one’s
    freedom should come at the expense of others." Dr. Marc
    Lamont Hill

"This is precisely the message Israel and its lobby are most terrified of -- because it resonates with ordinary people. This is why they smear and defame people who call for justice and equality.”  Ali Abunimah wrote this after CNN abruptly fired Temple University professor, political commentator, and Black Lives activist Dr. Marc Lamont Hill after he was falsely smeared as anti-Semitic for his testimony at the United Nations, where he eloquently discussed Israeli apartheid, intersectionality between the Black and Palestinian freedom struggles, and a one-state solution of justice and equality for all people throughout historic Palestine.  

Wrote Abunimah: "The accusations against Marc Lamont Hill are outright lies promoted by high-level operatives of the Israel lobby in their latest effort to silence and punish anyone who dares speak out in support of Palestinian equality and freedom from Israel’s brutal regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.

They perfectly match the kind of smear and sabotage tactics revealed in the censored Al Jazeera documentary on the U.S. Israel lobby that was recently published in full by The Electronic Intifada."

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How California’s Fire Weary Public by Taking Over the Commercial Utility Behemoth PG&E Could Cast a Vote for Climate Justice
with
Johanna Bozuwa is a Research Associate at the Democracy Collaborative which works to carry out a vision of a new economic system where shared ownership and control creates more equitable and inclusive outcomes, fosters ecological sustainability, and promotes flourishing democratic and community life.  Her  research focuses on energy democracy and the just transition away from the fossil fuel economy.


A long-awaited report of the federal government, notwithstanding the climate destructionist policies and practices of Trump, has delivered an unmistakable message on climate-fueled disasters: The effects of climate change, including deadly wildfires, increasingly debilitating hurricanes and heat waves, are already battering the United States, and the danger of more such catastrophes is worsening and poses a severe threat to Americans' health and pocketbooks, as well as to the country’s infrastructure and natural resources. However the report avoids policy recommendations despite its sense of urgency and alarm. 

Now, amidst the potential bankruptcy of the California utility PG&E, whose negligence is believed to have played a role in California’s most recent devastating fire, along with three other wildfires across the state in 2017, there is an opportunity for the public to take control of the state’s energy destiny.  California’s takeover could serve as a model for other states fed up with the predatory practices of investor-owned utilities and jumpstart a wider shift across the country toward democratically controlled renewable energy.

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Queens Residents Are Outraged Over Amazon HQ2 Plan To Turn LIC Into a Company Town
with
Maritza Silva-Farrell is Executive Director of ALIGN (Alliance for a Greater New York)
and
Greg LeRoy is executive director for Good Jobs First and is quoted in the New York Times recently as saying “as we documented in a study last April, the Crystal City and Long Island City subsidy offers are among the many HQ2 bids that remain completely hidden. Citizens have no idea what their elected officials have promised to a company headed by the richest person on earth.


Community organizations representing more than 200,000 members across New York City and State are concerned that NY is rolling out the red carpet for Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.  Why are the Mayor and Governor handing the keys to the city to Amazon, whose market value, which surpassed Microsoft's in February 2018, making Amazon the world's third most valuable company?  Bezos holds 78.9 million shares of Amazon stock. He is now the richest man of all time, with an estimated net worth of $105 billion dollars. 

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Conversations in Black Freedom Studies: The Struggle for Voting Rights & the Poor People’s Campaign
with
Rev. William Barber, a passionate preacher, anti-poverty activist, and civil rights leader. Barber has emerged as perhaps the most important figure in progressive U.S. Christianity. Prof. Cornel West, in a blurb for Barber's book The Third Reconstruction, said he was "the closest person we have to Martin Luther King, Jr. in our midst."


In 1968 Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King championed the Poor People’s Campaign to unite people of all backgrounds against oppressive government policies. Today, Rev. William Barber is leading a modern resurgence of the effort, challenging racism, voter suppression, poverty, militarism, and environmental devastation issues that continue to be at stake in the 2018 midterm elections. 

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"Fight for $15 " Embraces #MeToo Movement in Striking McDonald’s  
with
Annelise Orleck, Professor of History, Dartmouth College and author of  “WE ARE ALL FAST-FOOD WORKERS NOW: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages"                                    


Emboldened by the #MeToo movement, McDonald’s workers staged a one-day strike at restaurants in 10 cities to pressure management to take stronger steps against sexual harassment in the workplace. Organizers say it was the first multistate strike in the U.S. specifically targeting sexual harassment. Orleck will analyze the significance of this development in the context of the #MeToo movement, women’s labor history, and the growing activism and unionism of low wage women workers in the U.S. and around the world

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Kavanaugh's Anti-Labor Track Record
with
Sharon Block,  Executive Director of Harvard's Labor and Worklife Program

The AFL-CIO’s President, Richard Trumka described Trump’s nominee Brett Kavanaugh for his second pick to the Supreme Ct. as having a “dangerous track record protecting the privileges of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of working people.”  The Service Employees International Union, one of the country’s largest just tweeted that “confirming Kavanaugh would tip the scales of justice against working people.” To ready us for the battle at hand Sharon Block, Executive Director of Harvard's Labor and Worklife Program makes the case that Kavanaugh’s record reflects a sustained and, at times, aggressive hostility to the role of the law in protecting the vulnerable and less powerful.

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Supporting Immigrant Labor, Fighting For Their Rights
with
Pablo Alvarado, executive director, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON)
and

Kent Wong, Director of the UCLA Labor Center and founding president of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance


Whether immigrants workers, documented or undocumented seek to hold crooked and exploitative bosses accountable for wage theft, and pay that is below the prevailing wage or  work just too many hours for too little pay and benefits and are subject to abusive treatment to their personage, such as sexual harassment or want the freedom to push for decent jobs and organize unions without risking arrest, they deserve legal protections.  Now with Trump threatening to bring a reign of lawlessness to American cities, the most precarious workers are subjected to more militarized and extensive workplace raids, mass arrests, family separation and expedited deportations.  

Then there is the all-too-familiar story of scape-goating immigrant workers and deliberately pitting them against American workers as big corporations cut wages as they seek to reap bigger profits. They replace one set of workers with another—from other regions or other countries—or by automating work. Meanwhile, CEO pay and bonuses continue to rise while workers’ wages fall. When you are scrambling to find work or getting beat out for a job by someone willing to work for less, there’s an allure to an anti-immigrant stance. But taking that bait doesn’t get us very far.

The issue may not come up in contract talks, but a safe, fair workplace regardless of immigration status is key to social inclusion, promoting economic fairness, and helping communities exercise the rights they do have—especially those without a say in who gets elected to office.

Migrants seeking asylum and immigrant workers aren’t pulling the strings of our rigged economy. Those making the decisions that cause economic hardship can more likely be found at Mar-a-Lago, not at the border. If we don’t focus on holding the ultra-rich and greedy corporations accountable, workers will continue losing. All the raids in the world will not help native-born and documented workers with job security.

This false notion that we are in competition with immigrants limits our ability to see each other, even when the collateral damage is children. At this moment, wealthy corporations and billionaires, not immigrant children and their parents, are sacrificing workers for profits. We should see this as a warning. When people are so dehumanized that forcing kids to sleep in kennels becomes acceptable, the value of life for everyone goes down.   Instead of scapegoating children, mothers and fathers, we should reconnect with our humanity and demand change from the true source of our hardship: an out-of-control corporate class. Let’s be clear: We have found the culprit, and it’s not our fellow workers and certainly not children.

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Delegation Builds Legal, Legislative Supports for Central American Migrants and TPS Holders 
with
Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, Executive Director, The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, who is driving the landmark Centro Presente vs. Trump lawsuit challenging the termination of TPS

A high-profile delegation of federal and local elected officials, immigrant advocates, and legal experts just completed their travel to Honduras and El Salvador to bolster ongoing fact-finding efforts to build legal defense and legislative supports for  Central American asylum seekers and migrants, including Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, in the US.  Delegation participants toured San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa, and San Salvador, cities wracked by escalating violence, poverty, and impunity that has driven unprecedented levels of migration from Central America since the 1980s. Iván Espinoza-Madrigal will talk about the delegation’s findings and raise awareness of the conditions driving migration from the region—and the negative consequences that await an estimated 250,000 TPS holders.

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The Supreme Court Doesn't Have to Overturn Roe to Decimate
Abortion Rights
with
Talcott Camp, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project


Now that President Donald Trump has nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, it will be up to the Senate to fully vet him so that the American people can determine whether he will uphold the basic civil rights and liberties relied on by everyone in this country. This is particularly true when it comes to abortion rights, where Kavanaugh’s prior opinions on the subject, coupled with the fact that Donald Trump vowed to only
nominate justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, give rise to serious concern about women’s continued ability to access abortion if Kavanaugh is confirmed. A new Supreme Court Justice could effectively decimate women’s access to abortion, even without overturning Roe outright. Overturning Roe would be catastrophic, but it is not the only scenario in which politicians would be able to
shut down abortion care. The court can give them back the power to do so by simply upholding whatever obstacles they throw in a woman’s path.

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Right Wing Takeover of the Supreme Court: Democracy in Chains: the Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
with
Nancy MacLean, Author and Professor, History & Public Policy at Duke University

The Janus Supreme Court decision in June and our current struggle over Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court vacancy, are only the most recent manifestations of the Right’s decades long game plan to not only unravel the New Deal of the 1930's and the civil rights revolution of the 1960' but beyond that to establish property rights over democratic rights as the basis for our government..

Prof. MacLean traces this counter revolution's 60 year plan to eliminate unions, suppress voting rights, privatize public education, and stop action on climate change.  Their agenda is not just to alter specific legislation or court decisions or who gets elected but to fundamentally  alter the rules of democratic governance by voter suppression and gerrymandering along with instituting Constitutional and judicial changes.

Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. Billionaires launched this movement with the aid of an academic and intellectual elite. And leading this charge was multi-billionaire Charles Koch and Professor James McGill Buchanan who forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the Southern white elite’s power.

Prof. Buchanan and Charles Koch developed a diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Now their strategy is bearing a poisonous fruit. which we must understand to effectively fight back. 

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"Killing Gaza”
with
Max Blumenthal, director and writer of the new film “Killing Gaza”, senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and award-winning author of "Goliath, Republican Gomorrah,
and the 51 Day War"
and

Dan Cohen, journalist, cinematographer and editor of “Killing Gaza”  

On May 14th the Israeli military slaughtered at least 60 unarmed Palestinians and wounded 2,700, of whom 200 were children, as some 60,000 massed at Gaza's enclosure fence demanding their Right to Return to their homelands. But this isn’t the first time Israel has murdered unarmed Gazan civilians.  Independent journalists Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen, in a film just released to coincide with the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe”, which commemorates the 1948 war that uprooted 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, creating a refugee crisis that is

still not resolved talk about documenting Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza beginning with the 2014 aerial bombings of what is oftentimes described as the largest open-air prison in the world.  

Blumenthal and Cohen talk about chronicling the “Killing of Gaza”, beginning in 2014 and give us the context for and sadly recount their expectation of this latest murderous attack on Palestinians by Israel supported by US tax dollars. They give us a chilling accounts of war crimes committed by the Israeli military, and recount

the experiences of the survivors just days after escaping indiscriminate shelling, bombings and summary executions.  They talk about walking through the rubble of Gaza’s devastated landscape and their discussions with the survivors of the slaughter who offer them their testimony of the war crimes they experienced, which they long for the world to recognize and prosecute their torturers.  

Our documentarians, talk about their recordation of the daily struggles of the people of Gaza, as they endure, freezing winters, where babies freeze and sweltering summers without shelter.  While Blumenthal and Cohen give voice to the pain of a people under constant siege, they also give voice to the Gazans’ acts of creative resistance and their reaffirmation of life by artistic expression

with the brush, and through literary works to youth’s break-dancing and rapping their resilience, their potential and resolve to break the occupation.  Blumenthal and Cohen explain that the people of Gaza collectively will continue to channel their pain, their anger and energy to the maintenance of their history, the preservation of their culture and the reclamation of their land and for a free, free

Palestinian. 

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The South African Revolution Continues: First dismantling the Racialist State and Now Dismantling the Capitalist State that Fostered Apartheid 

featuring in a two-part exclusive an expanded conversation with Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of SAFTU, the South African Federation of Trade
Unions.

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (“SAFTU”) is the voice of the workers in the struggle for a socialist society. It was formed by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, the largest union in South Africa, with more than 350,000 workers and numerous other unions, as an alternative to the Coalition of

South African Trade Unions, which has capitulated to state capital, including defending the South African government's role in the Marikana massacre of 34 striking miners in August 2012.  Cyril Ramaphosa who is currently the President of South Africa was a member of the Board of Lonmin plc, formerly the mining division of Lonrho plc, a British producer of platinum group metals operating in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa, which owns the Marikana mine.

We asked SAFTU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi about the history of the South African freedom struggle which overthrew apartheid, but left in place the capitalist economic system, which has continued the exploitation of the working class and fostered mass economic inequality, and whose corruption has been rife under each of the successors to President Mandela.  Vavi talks about these issues and how the now Ramaphosa administration new developments are reaching a crisis: mass unemployment; heightened inequality; and new proposals restricting the rights of unions; and proposals that would gut minimum wages.  He also relates the upsurge amongst the masses, with youth in the

forefront of the protests was led to the general strike in April. 

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Teachers Take the Lessons of the Classrooms to the Streets
from West Virginia to Arizona and now Colorado
with
.  Joselyn Palomino, Denver High School Teacher of Mexican-

   American Literature
.   Cat Berrett, English teacher at Phoenix Union High School District

The victorious wildcat strike in W. Virginia ushered in a new wave of teacher and state worker activism and strikes organized by the rank and file with their unions racing to catch up.  Teachers without bargaining rights in Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona and where striking is illegal and their unions weak summoned their courage and walked off the job.  The most recent addition to this calvalcade of militancy is the Colorado teachers who with their union the Colorado Education Association shut down the statewide school
system for two days last week. At the same time Arizona teachers went on strike after weeks of militant demonstrations. . The strikes and mass protests often been led by the workers themselves forming new organizations often based on face book sites which host full-throttle conversations of what to do next such as Arizona’s face book group that organized the #RedForEd campaign and Kentucky’s KY120 United. They are fighting years of budget
cuts which translate into low wages and benefits and as importantly for these workers reduced school budgets meaning overcrowded classrooms, lacking basic supplies, updated books and educational materials. They are fighting for themselves and their students and have rejected deals to separate the issues.

Workers have been under brutal attack and unionization has been in decline for over 40 years. The employer offensive against unions has included all-out war against militant action and especially strikes. Yet it has only been in the periods of struggle and strikes for the private sector in the 1930’s and late 40’s and the public sector in the 1960’s that unions have grown and workers prospered. Now
the West Virginia workers have sparked workers across the land to embrace their rekindled militancy. 

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Morristown, Tennessee subjected to the largest workplace raid by immigration authorities in over a decade.
with
Camila Fyler, Integration Director, The Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition who has been stationed in Morristown since the raid to help coordinate financial Assistance to the families and secure legal representation for immigrant detainees.
and
Beatrice who has experienced the loss of many of her family member in the raids.in which hundreds of families have been impacted


Federal agents, with the assistance of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, stormed into Southeastern Provision, a meat-processing plant in Bean Station, TN. As helicopters circled above the factory and agents blocked doors, around 100 workers were rounded up and filed into buses without any opportunity to explain who they were, how long they had been there, or whether they were subject to federal immigration law at all. 54 community members living in East Tennessee for decades, some of whom had devoted over ten years of labor to that factory, were shipped out of the state without even a chance to say goodbye to their spouses and children. Their families were told nothing, and were left to wonder what had happened to loved ones who never came home.

This is a humanitarian crisis.  At least 160 children are missing a parent, nearly 600 students in a single school district have stayed home out of fear, and participation in the economy and community has been chilled.  Hundreds of
families whose lives have been torn apart.

It's hard to imagine another kind of crisis that would cause 5% of the district's children to stay home that wouldn't trigger some kind of intervention or at least public response.  We’ll talk with the people in Morristown and its surrounding
communities about the human costs of this unconscionable abuse of power on the children devastated by this assault on their families, and on the  thousands who are rightly afraid to go to work, take their kids to school, or even leave their
homes. The disaster stemming from the recent immigration raid continues to unfold. But, we know from similar raids in previous decades that the impact on children's health, on the school system, and on the local economy can last for
years to come.  This is no time for silence! 

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A coalition for an “International Labor Offensive to Free
Mumia Abu-Jamal and All Political Prisoners” is gaining momentum.
with
Jacky Hortaut, union organizer, member of the CGT in France; an
American studies Professor in Tours and Clermont-Ferrand
Universities and author of a book about women in prison dedicated to
the “Move” sisters and chair of Collectif Libérons Mumia, and organizer
of a local chapter of Just Justice Tours Le Collectif, which represents
roughly 10 cities, unions, human rights associations, and political
parties in France.
and
Dr. Claude Gillaumaud Pujot, a professor in France who wrote the
2007 Abu-Jamal biography, “A Free Man on Death Row”, who says
“Mumia is an example to all of us because he remains an activist even
after spending 30-plus years in hell.”    

A call for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners is picking
up steam, with solidarity actions on his status hearing on in Philadelphia,
plus a court hearing on April 30, which could eventually lead to his freedom.
After years of global community meetings, protests, petitions and legal
challenges, the people’s movement succeeded in taking Mumia off death
row in 2011 and elevating Mumia to internationally recognized stature. 

Mumia now has name recognition rivaling top-tier athletes and entertainers and
is considered a hero to all people seeking liberation - having inspired millions
around the world, from Berlin to Brazil, Georgia to Ghana, who rally regularly on
his behalf demanding he receive release or a new trial.  In France Mumia is
considered a freedom fighter because of his advocacy for the oppressed
everywhere.  Mumia is the “voice of the voiceless,” who chronicles the legacies
of people’s struggles worldwide and one of the greatest threats to U.S.
imperialism is the uprising of “young Mumias” from the streets of Philadelphia
to the streets of Paris. We’ll talk with French activists about their understanding
and concerns that our courts in rejecting all challenges to evidence of Mumia’s
guilt have fueled questions worldwide about the fundamental fairness about the
U.S. court system and demand that the freedom fighter Mumia, advocate for the
oppressed everywhere be released or receive a new trial.

Twenty-five French cities have made Mumia Abu-Jamal an honorary citizen
including Paris and two streets have been named after him in Saint Denis and
Bobigny. And, one-hundred and twenty European representatives have
mobilized for medical care for the now ailing Mumia, as he approaches his
64th  birthday.  Mumia has wrongly spent more than half his life in prison, most
of which time was on death row and in solitary confinement, before the Supreme
Court held that application of the death penalty to Mumia was unconstitutional
and instead shackled him with a life-sentence for a crime, the killing of a police
officer that he did not commit.  

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Farm Workers fast and march in their "Boot the Braids" campaign against fast-food giant Wendy's to stop sexual violence in the fields
with
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers and allies 

For years, farmworkers with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and their allies have called on Wendy’s to join all of its major competitors in the Fair Food Program, a uniquely successful approach to eliminating human rights abuses in the agricultural industry. Instead of joining the Program, Wendy’s has taken its
tomato purchases to Mexico, where workers continue to confront wage theft, gender-based violence, child labor, and even slavery without access to protections.  Now tens of thousands strong, and endorsed by over a hundred organizations the CIW is asking you to join a boycott against Wendy's, until it does the right thing.

The struggle against poverty and for freedom must be led from the ground up, and the farmworkers of the CIW have been some of our bravest leaders these many years.Building Bridges brings you voices of the shero farm workers who have been Fasting for Freedom because they believe we need a fundamental shift in our nation’s moral narrative which places the lives of workers and the
dispossessed at the center.  The CIW’s Fair Food Program has given workers a real voice in the decisions that affect their lives.  And, with that voice they are transforming the agricultural industry where they work – eliminating slavery, violence, and sexual harassment in fields — where these abuses have persisted for generations. But, the fast food giant Wendy’s has refused to
support the Fair Food Program — and worse yet, it abandons growers who are doing the right thing to instead buy from an industry in Mexico — where they know sexual assault to slavery continue to thrive with impunity — is the very definition of amoral and unacceptable.”
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Oscar López Rivera on U.S. Colonialism After Hurricane Maria

Oscar López Rivera has been called the Nelson Mandela of Puerto Rico. Indeed, like the South African legend, Rivera was imprisoned for his anti-colonial activism and spent decades in prison. But in January 2017, after serving 35 years of his 70-year sentence, President Barack Obama, as one of his last acts in office,

commuted Rivera’s sentence. In May 2017 Oscar López Rivera was a free man.

Oscar López Rivera has become a symbol of resistance to people the world over and became one of the longest serving political prisoners in the world. Among those who spoke out for his release were Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Pope Francis, Senator Bernie Sanders, playwright Lin Manuel Miranda and others. Organizers of the 2017 National Puerto Rican Day Parade designated him as

the National Freedom Hero.  Recently Lopez Rivera sat down with Building Bridges’ Mimi Rosenberg, to discuss his frustration and anger with the American government, detailing how Puerto Ricans have been treated since the Caribbean island became an unincorporated territory of the United States in 1898. He

lamented that Puerto Ricans “are still a colonized people 120 years later,” Lopez Rivera said, “Puerto Ricans didn’t ask for citizenship; we didn’t want it. Since being colonized, Puerto Ricans haven’t been treated as humans; we have been marginalized, exploited and used by the United States who wanted our sugar cane and to create military bases.”  Lopez Rivera said there are two things he knows how to do best- struggle and work. He stated multiple times that he has never advocated any form of violence and this “fight for independence” must be an act of love. “People who love freedom and justice should care about Puerto Rico,” Lopez Rivera emphasized. “We have the potential to be a free nation, but it’s up to us. We will struggle and do what needs to be done.”  Lopez Rivera also spoke at length about Hurricane Maria and the humanitarian crisis taking place. Although it struck September 20, 2017, there are still more than 400,000 people without power. More than 550 residents were killed, and others are still missing. Maria is considered the worst natural disaster to ever strike the area.

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The ‘two-state solution - did it ever mean more than an expanding colonial state, Israel ruling over a Palestinian Bantustan?
with
Jeff Halper Coordinator of the Israeli Committee against House
Demolitions and author of War Against the People: Israel, the
Palestinians and Global Pacification 


Jeff Halper provides a powerful indictment of the Israeli state’s “securocratic” war in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, drawing on firsthand research to show the pernicious effects of the sub-liminal form of unending warfare that was conducted by Israel, an approach that relies on sustaining fear among the populace, fear that is stoked by suggestions that the enemy is inside the city limits, leaving no place truly safe & justifying intensification of military action and militarization in everyday life. Halper shows, the integration of militarized systems—including databases tracking civilian activity, automated targeting systems, unmanned drones, and more—becomes seamless with everyday life. The Occupied Territories, Halper argues, is a veritable laboratory for that approach.  Halper goes on to show how this method of war is rapidly globalizing, as the major capitalist powers and corporations transform militaries, security agencies, and police forces into an effective instrument of global pacification.  


Halper is a supporter of the Boycott Divestment and Sanction Movement and the academic boycott of Israel, and considers Israel to be guilty of “apartheid” and of a deliberate campaign to “judaize” the occupied Palestinian territories.  He critiques the political and territorial viability of a ‘two-state solution’ and raises the mainly nonviolent strategies to solve the Israeli-Palestinian within one state.

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While ICE Raided Nearly 100 7-Eleven Stores in Pre-Dawn Nationwide Sweeps, California Unions Resists Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Actions
with
Rusty Hicks, President of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor

California unions are moving to protect undocumented workers and immigrants against attacks from the Trump regime.  They are vigorously supporting AB450, a bill introduced by state Rep. David Chiu, D-San Francisco, which gives undocumented immigrants “affirmative protections” against indiscriminate raids by agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). 
And then they darned their armor, after learning agents from the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be visiting a 7-Eleven store in Koreatown to conduct interviews and an audit, and decided to stage a protest outside of the store, holding signs that read, “Immigrants are welcome here.”  ICE raided close to one hundred 7-Eleven stores nation-wide, including five in Los Angeles.  While people were arrested in other states, none were arrested in Southern California, however ICE issued a statement
saying there were would be more raids to come. 

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Teacher and Utility Unions on the State of the Puerto Rican Labor Movement After Maria and Governor Rossello's Plans to Privatize the Public Power Company and Schools
with 
Fredyson Martinez Estevez, Vice- President of the Irrigation & Electrical Workers Union, Unión de Trabajadores de la Industria Eléctrica y Riego,
and
Mercedes Martínez Padilla, President of the Teachers' Federation of Puerto Rico/Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico

In Puerto Rico, hundreds of thousands of people are still reeling from the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria. In a time of such dire need, the Trump administration has failed to provide the support needed to restore water to 7% of Puerto Rican residents and power to the nearly one in three residents, paving the way for a catastrophic announcement. The decision to privatize Puerto Rico’s state-owned power company which follows the same dangerous path mapped out in the Trump administration’s draft infrastructure
plan.

Whether it’s water or energy, privatization helps Wall Street at the expense of the well being and health of communities, particularly low-income families and people of color. Trump's leaked infrastructure plan similarly provides a blueprint for handing over public land and public water to Wall Street. It seeks to privatize local water systems and other critical public services, prioritizing
limited federal dollars to Wall Street and corporate investors. This scheme would also sell off federal assets and create a new infrastructure fund by opening up federal lands and waters to mineral and energy development benefiting the oil and gas industry.

We’ll speak with representatives of public sector unions in Puerto Rico representing teachers and utility workers about Governor Rossello's plans to privatize their services, and about challenges faced by the labor movement and workers following hurricane Maria and they’ll discuss labor issues affecting those unions under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA)

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Say No to Trump’s Sneaky Tip Theft
with 
Saru Jayaraman, President, Restaurant Opportunities Centers
(ROC) United

The Trump Department of Labor, backed by the National Restaurant Association, is moving quickly to push a new rule that will make tips the property of restaurant owners rather than workers. It recently proposed rolling back a rule that protects workers in tipped industries, including restaurant servers and bartenders, from having their tips taken away by their employers. Under the proposal, federal law would allow restaurant owners who pay their wait staff and bartenders as little as $7.25/hour to pofcket
and confiscate all of the tips left by customers, without having to disclose to patrons what happens to the tips. Tips account for over half of these workers’ income which even together still adds up to poverty wages. More than $5.8 billion dollars will be transferred from workers to bosses under this proposal. Nearly 80 percent of the tips that would be stolen by employers would come from female tipped workers. Many women who work for tips already face harassment and discrimination at work, and this rule adds insult to injury

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New York Immigrant Rights Activists, Ravi Ragbir & Jean Montrevil Targeted by ICE for Deportation

with
immigration attorney, Amy Gottlieb, the Associate Regional Director for the Northeast Region of the American Friends Service Committee, who is responsible for supporting programs in the Northeast Region that focus on immigrant rights and the spouse of activist Ravi Ragbir.

An escalating legal battle is playing out in the case of Ravi Ragbir, Executive Director of the New Sanctuary Coalition, a prominent immigrant rights activist whose detention by federal immigration authorities sparked protests that led to the arrest of 18 people, including elected officials of The New York City Council. Ravi Ragbir, showed up for his regularly scheduled “check-in” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), at the Jacob Javits Federal Building in Manhattan and was then detained, as had been the co-founder, Jean Montrevil of the New Sanctuary Coalition weeks earlier.  Both were immediately transported to the notorious Krome Detention Center in Florida.  Clearly the two immigrants’ rights champions were targeted by ICE and Jean Montrevil

has already been deported to Haiti while Ravi Ragbir remains in detention. We’ll examine the cases of these two immigrant rights activists, to put a human face of the growing numbers of immigrants facing, repression, detention and deportations under the racist/xenophobic immigration policies of Trump/Kelley, one two punch Republican juggernaut!  

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Farmworker women launch their "Harvest Without Violence"
campaign to end sexual violence in Wendy’s fast food supply chain
featuringThe Coalition of Immokalee Workers


Now, amidst the stories that are surfacing about sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape against woman, too often low-wage woman workers have been subjected to sexual violence against their person in their work place, but their voices have oftentimes been eclipsed.  And, we barely think about the workers who are responsible for the bounty of food on our tables.  So, Building Bridges is off to join the formidable farmworker women leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (“CIW”) for a major "Harvest without
Violence" march.  The CIW Women’s Group traveled to the Big Apple to demand a meeting with Wendy's Board Chairman and major shareholder Nelson Peltz to share their powerful stories and demand Wendy’s do its part to end sexual violence in the fields. Join the farmworkers in their Boycott Wendy’s march through Midtown Manhattan to Trian Partners, the multi-billion dollar asset management firm founded by Nelson Peltz, the chairman of The Wendy’s Company, based in New York. Declare that farmworker women should not have to surrender their dignity for the right to put food on their families’ tables!
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