8 O'Clock Buzz

WORT 89.9FM Madison · UW Madison Cartography Lab’s We Are Here: Local Mapmakers Explore the World That Connects Us Exhibit

We Are Here: Local Mapmakers Explore the World That Connects Us is an exhibit that was developed by the UW Madison Cartography Lab and currently showing at the Overture Center until January 16th. The exhibit features work from both current students and alumni from their current places of employment and aims to let people know that Madison is a hub and important place of cartography training.

Tanya Buckingham Andersen is the Creative Director at the University of Wisconsin Cartography Lab in the Geography Department. She has worked in cartography for more than 20 years, and joins Friday Buzz host, Brian Standing, to talk more about the exhibit.

 

 

(Images courtesy of GeoJango Maps on Unsplash and Tanya Buckingham Andersen)

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WORT 89.9FM Madison · John Nichols On Biden’s Prosecution of Julian Assange

On December 10, a London High Court approved the extradition of the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, to US authorities. Assange has since appealed the ruling to Britain’s Supreme Court. The U.S. government’s charges against Assange raise some important questions about the future of journalism and First Amendment protections of a free press. The national correspondent for The Nation magazine and associate editor for The Capital Times, John Nichols, condemns Biden’s prosecution of Julian Assange.

A co-founder of the media-reform group Free Press, he has testified before UN forums and congressional committees on media issues, and has twice keynoted world congresses of the International Federation of Journalists. John joins Friday Buzz host, Brian Standing, to discuss more on this topic.

 

 

(Images courtesy of Kaitlin Johnstone on Pixabay and Robin Holland) 

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This country needs to make a decision: honor an individual who was a slaveholder and committed genocide of Native Americans, or someone who escaped slavery and committed her life to rescuing others from slavery, helped the Union army, fought for women’s sufferage, and more? Dr. Clarence Lusane, Associate Professor of Political Science in the School of International Service at American University, talks about his upcoming book “Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman vs Andrew Jackson and the future of American Democracy“.

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How did wealth inequality fare in 2021?

U.S. corporate after-tax profits hit a record high of $2.5 trillion in the third quarter of 2021, further enriching wealthy executives and shareholders according to the Institute for Policy Studies.

Chuck Collins, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies talks about their recent article, “The Year in Inequality in 10 Charts“, and how Biden’s Build Back Better bill provides a popular start to enriching society by making those making more than $10 million/year pay their fair share.

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Today on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz with Dr. Damita Brown…

Alexis Tardy is a lead activist for EmpowerED Families and founder and Chair of Call x Response.  She joins us from Indianapolis to talk about what she’s up to from healthcare to education and building community partnerships.

More about EmpowerED Families: https://empoweredfamiliesindy.org/ 

More about Call x Response: https://www.facebook.com/CallxResponse/ 

Alexis Tardy is a Minister who chairs the clergy activism group Call and Response. She also works as the Lead Organizer at EmpowerED Families. Before returning to Indianapolis in 2020, Alexis led as the Program Director at Faith and For the Sake of All, where she organized trainings and workshops to end racial disparities in Saint Louis. As a consultant for Urban Strategies, she mentored youth and worked with families and community leaders in Ferguson, Missouri. Alexis earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Public Affairs at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and a Master of Divinity Degree from Eden Theological Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri. She is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry in Womanist Preaching at Memphis Theological Seminary. Alexis is deeply committed to justice and Black and Latinx families while working toward equitable communities. She resides in Indianapolis, Indiana with her dog KoKo.

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Today on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz with Dr. Damita Brown, co-facilitators of the 350 Madison Arts Collective, Dianne Brakarsh and Russ Bennett join us to discuss politically conscious art and using art as activism.  350 Madison Arts Collective is part of 350 Madison, dedicated to averting the climate crisis, through the use of creative, humorous and artistic means.

More info on the 350 Madison Arts Collective: https://350madison.org/ccampaigns/art-collective/ 

Listen in Madison at 89.9FM or online anywhere at wortfm.org.  Support your community radio with a donation online at wortfm.org!

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Dianne Brakarsh is a choreographer and long-time community dance organizer who has been creating performance pieces and flash mob dances for years, to amplify the messages of various social and environmental justice issues. 

Russ Bennett is an RN who worked as a community mental health nurse in Madison before recently retiring.

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If you were going to make a list of the world’s most difficult – and most essential – jobs, nurses would be at the top of most people’s lists.  Long hours, difficult working conditions, high stress and people’s lives quite literally in one’s hands – not everyone is cut out for the nursing profession, even under the best of circumstances.  With the healthcare system struggling to keep up with a global pandemic run amok, healthcare union busting and  a legacy of budget cuts, working conditions for nurses have deteriorated.  Small wonder then, that nurses who can are retiring in droves, exacerbating staffing shortages everywhere.  Add to that the expanding health demands of a rapidly aging population, and demand for nursing staff has never been higher.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the U.S. will need more than a million more nurses to meet demand by 2030.  In such an environment, you would expect nursing schools to be overflowing with new recruits.   Not so, says Rayna LeTourneau, Assistant Professor of Nursing at the University of South Florida and founder of WIRES Wellness, Intervention, Resources, Education and Support.

1918 Red Cross recruitment poster

Carl Rakeman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

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WORT 89.9FM Madison · Voces de la Frontera Puts Pressure On Congress To Bring Immigration Reform

On Thursday, U.S. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough struck a blow to Democrats’ hopes of getting immigration reform into the Build Back Better bill, saying that proposed immigration law changes could not go through the Senate majority-vote reconciliation process. This was the third attempt by Senate Democrats to include immigration reform in the bill and the third time their hopes have been dashed thanks to the ridiculously Byzantine rules of the Senate. Wisconsin’s Voces de la Frontera is not giving up, however, and is still pushing Congress to bring immigration reform home for the holidays. Armando Ibarra is a founding member of Voces de la Frontera’s Essential Worker Rights Network, and he joins Friday Buzz host, Brian Standing, to talk more about this.

 

 

(Image courtesy of Voces de la Frontera)

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WORT 89.9FM Madison · Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee Statue To Be Recycled Into A Work That Will Reflect Racial Justice

In January of 2019 a 112 year old stone cenotaph containing the names of 140 Confederate prisoners of war who died at Camp Randall was removed from Madison’s Forest Hill Cemetery after a long debate.

The removal of Confederate monuments has been an ongoing process since the 1960’s but has recently began picking up steam due to events like the murdering of George Floyd in 2020 and the Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally in 2017. What is to be done with these multi-ton bronze white elephants once they come down is another topic of debate. In June earlier this year the City of Charlottesville announced that they would be giving the Robert E. Lee statue to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to be melted down to create public artwork that will “reflect racial justice,”

WORT Alum and the current General Manager of WTJU 91.1 FM at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Nathan Moore, joins Friday Buzz host, Brian Standing, to talk more about this.

 

 

(Images courtesy of James DeMers on pixabay and Nathan Moore)

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Today’s media over-emphasizes the issues surrounding white males in society and under-emphasizes the problems of women of color in the U. S., according to Andrea L. Press, co-author of the book “Media-Ready Feminism and Everyday Sexism“. In her book, she evaluates the portrayal of women in some of our popular media, including television (think about the comparisons of coverage of Trump vs. Hillary Clinton), Wikipedia (which favors the achievements of men over those of women), and even Tinder.

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