President Biden’s first budget proposal includes an enormous investment in education, including more than doubling the federal Title I program, which directs funding to high-poverty schools, from 16 billion dollars to 36 billion dollars. The Biden Administration would also add money targeted to supporting nurses, counselors and mental health professionals in schools, child care, Head Start programs, community schools, and would include a new program aimed at desegregation.  Our next guest argues that all that largesse means more federal control over local education.  Nicholas Tampio teaches political science at Fordham University and is the author of “Common Core:  A Threat to Democracy.”

A 2020 study from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank found that blacks in Wisconsin, on average, earn 48 cents for every dollar earned by whites.  The same study also found that blacks are 23% more likely to be living in poverty than whites.  The Federal Reserve study is only the latest of a stream of reports that clearly show Wisconsin as the worst state in the nation when it comes to racial disparities.  This month, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism launches a new series focused on racial income inequality to uncover the ins and outs of how that disparity manifests itself.  Joining us once again is WCIJ Managing Editor Dee Hall.

WORT 89.9FM Madison · The Friday Buzz’s own Ankur Malhotra tells his Story on India’s Covid-19 Crisis

The Friday Buzz’s own Ankur Malhotra grew up in New Delhi and came to Madison to get his MBA at the UW School of Business. Now living in Madison he travels to India and other spots abroad for his work with his music label, Amarrass Records.

He also DJ’s the Friday Buzz, lending it an eclectic and sometimes witty mix of music, as well as on another WORT show, Pan Africa. Ankur talks with Jonathan Zarov to tell a more intimate, personal story about what is going on in India and how it has affected his family in India.

Photo courtesy of Ankur. 

WORT 89.9FM Madison · Aakar Patel on India’s Governmental Repression

A journalist turned activist and dissident, Aakar Patel has worked in senior editorial positions at leading media organizations in India including the Deccan Chronicle, Mid Day, and Asian Age. In 2015, he joined international human rights organization Amnesty International as executive director for Indian operations.

Due to his writing and activism, Patel has been the frequent target of vitriol and threats from the Indian right wing parties and their allies. Over the years he’s had his home raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation and been arrested for tweeting. He joined Jonathan Zarov and Ankur Malhotra to talk about the current state of governmental censorship and repression in India.

WORT 89.9FM Madison · Buzz – 4-28 – 21 – Schroeder – Liners – Ross

 

In this month’s 8 o’clock Buzz — ExPO hour, Jerome Dillard talks with community organizers Ron Schroeder, ExPO fellow, David Liners, Executive Director of WISDOM, and Shannon Ross, President of “The Community“, about a wide array of prison-reform and return-to-community issues ranging from comments on the proposed WI State budget, expansion to community-based alternatives to parole revocation, treatment alternatives and diversions from incarceration, expansion of the earned release program, and much more.

In Victorian England, “Perambulating Libraries” started delivering books to rural residents.  In 1904, the People’s Free Library in South Carolina started sending a mule-drawn wagon full of books out into the hinterlands.  Called by many names, Bookmobiles or book wagons have tried to expand public libraries’ reach to underserved populations.  The Dane County Library Service, the Madison Public Library and the Madison Public Library Foundation’s version of the bookmobile is called “The Dream Bus.”  Here to tell us more about it is Tracy Herold, Director of the Dane County Library Service.  Welcome, Tracy. Also joining us is Liz Boyd, Marketing Specialist for Madison Public Library.

The Federal Reserve has reported that by the end of 2020, U.S. college students had amassed a record 1.7 trillion dollars in student debt.  The average student carries a debt load of almost forty thousand dollars.  Graduates trying to keep up with those monthly payments has ripple effects throughout the economy, with young people forestalling families, home ownership, taking unrewarding jobs or simply defaulting on their loans.  The issue has gotten the attention of elected officials, with some in Congress, such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren calling for elimination of up to 50,000 dollars in student debt, and President Joe Biden arguing for a more modest forgiveness of 10,000 dollars per student.  Bates College Philosophy Professor, Paul Schofield, however, argues that the government should just make taking on that much debt illegal.

On March 29, 2021, when news broke that the Chicago Police had shot and killed 13-year old Adam Toledo, CNN reported the incident as “an armed confrontation.”  The Chicago Police Department released an image of a gun on twitter, and reported Officer Eric Stillman as the victim of “aggravated assault on a police officer,” by a “John Doe” “between the ages of 18-25.”   Long after multiple media outlets repeated the official police line verbatim, another story emerged.  Bodycam footage released three weeks later shows Adam Toledo dropping his gun, and raising his hands in the air, when Stillman shot him.  Stillman is now on administrative leave.  Why, though, were the media so quick to accept the Chicago Police Department’s version of events?  Danielle Kilgo is the John and Elizabeth Bates Cowles Professor of Journalism, Diversity and Equality at the University of Minnesota.

 

Have you ever seen those folks juggling all manner of objects on Library Mall? That’s the Madison area Jugglers Club. And they’d like you to join them—no matter your skill or lack thereof.

From April to the end of October, the group meets weekly on the Library Mall, in front of the Wisconsin Historical Society. If it is raining heavily or extra windy, they can be found under the skyway of the Chazen Art Museum.

You can join them on Sundays, 2-4pm, and Thursdays, from 7-10pm… or whenever they stop juggling. For more information or to get in touch, head to their website. 

For more, Buzz host Jonathan Zarov speaks to Mark Hayward, who has been a member of the Madison Area Jugglers since 1989. He’s a full-time professional juggler and yo-yo man for 20 years, and a member of world champion juggling team The MadFive. 

You may know Dana Pellebon from her work with many Madison theater companies, such as StageQ, Madison Theater Guild, and Broom Street Theater, or her work at nonprofit organizations.

Today she joins the Buzz as executive producer and co-founder of the Loud ‘N Unchained Black Theater Festival. It’s a free, online presentation of Black theater and performance artists, presenting monologues and spoken word, one-person shows, a play reading, and drag artists. The festival takes place next weekend, Friday April 30 and Saturday May 1. You can find a schedule for the festival here.

Photo courtesy Dana Pellebon.