Kevin Alexander Gray, writer, activist, organizer, and author of “Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics” talks about his ideas for needed coalition building: a multi-racial, multi-issue, multi-ethnic, multi-gender, and multi-generational movement to develop and promote programmatic progress for Black Politics.

In mid-August, for the first time, the 12 wealthiest individuals’ assets have exceeded $1 Trillion. Jan talks with Omar Ocampo, researcher for the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, about how their wealth has increased by $283 Million since March, while at the same time the average American has struggled to buy food and make rent payments in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ACLU of Wisconsin has called upon Governor Evers and Attorney General Joshua Kaul to investigate crimes and/or civil rights violations by Law Enforcement officials in Kenosha during protests of the Jacob Blake Shoot, according to ACLI-WI Advocacy Director Molly Collins. In addition, the ACLU has called for the resignation of Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis and Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth for fostering a “white supremacist mindset in Kenosha law enforcement”

Damita Brown talks with..

* Kailea Saplan from Tone Madison about her recent article challenging Madison’s plan for downtown recovery, and how helping businesses is coming ahead of fixing policing and racism in Madison.

* Mahnker Dahnweih, Director of Community Power Building from Freedom, Inc about police brutality, the attempted murder of Jacob Blake, and what we as a community can do to reform and heal.

Photo by Ken Fager on Flickr

100 years ago, if you were an industrialist who wanted to keep unions out of your plant, you hired the Pinkerton detective agency to infiltrate the unions and, if necessary, bust some heads. Today, corporations employ more subtle, but perhaps more effective strategies  to prevent their workers from organizing.  Law firms such as Ogletree Deakins and IRI Consultants have worked not only with high-profile corporations like Google and Ikea, but also with nonprofits like the ACLU of Kansas, to block union drives among their employees.  John Logan is a professor and the director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University who has studied modern-day union-busting outfits.

On Friday August 28th, the Republican Party of the United States wrapped up its nominating convention. Ostensibly taking place in North Carolina, the convention was largely a virtual event, although with more in person activities then the Democratic Convention the week before. Throughout the week President Trump and his Republican colleagues painted a picture of both a more dangerous and a more promising America the many in the grips of pandemic and unrest might have felt. Joining us once again  to analyze how successfully the GOP delivered their message, Allison Prasch from the University of Wisconsin Communications Arts Department.

On Monday August 24th, researchers in Hong Kong announced they had discovered a 33 year old man who had contracted COVID-19 a second time after recovering from a prior infection 4 months earlier. This represents the first confirmed case  of re-infection of the SARS COV-2 virus. The Hong Kong man’s second infection is completely asymptomatic, but it still raises concerns about  the effectiveness  and duration of natural immunity to the virus. Dr. Jeff Pothof is the UW Health Chief Quality Officer.  He joined Monday Buzz host Brian Standing on Monday, August 31.

Democracy in Crisis is a special online series of global roundtable discussions about the use of randomly-selected citizen assemblies to further democracy.  Democracy in Crisis is produced by Ahmed Teleb, Brian Standing, the 8 O’Clock Buzz and WORT-FM.

Welcome to the third and final episode of “Crisis in Democracy,” an in-depth series right here on WORT.  In our previous two episodes, we’ve heard about how representative democracies around the globe are failing to live up to their promise and some innovative ideas to get citizens involved in their own government.  Today, we explore the promise and challenges of citizen juries and assemblies — government by random selection, otherwise known as “sortition.”  Joining host Brian Standing are:

* Dr. Paul Cartledge, is the A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow, Clare College and Emeritus A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University. He is the author of many books on Athenian history, culture, and politics including Democracy, A Life.

* Hélène Landemore is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Her research and teaching interests include democratic theory, political epistemology, theories of justice, the philosophy of social sciences, constitutional processes and theories, and workplace democracy. Hélène is the author of Democratic Reason and Open Democracy, as well as a book in French on David Hume, two edited volumes, and multiple peer-reviewed articles. Her research has been featured in the New York Times, the Boston Review, Slate, the Washington Post, L’Humanité, Le Monde, and recently the New Yorker. She is a member of the core group behind the Democratizing Work movement. She is currently serving as expert consultant for the Fr...

Democracy in Crisis is a special online series of global roundtable discussions about the use of randomly-selected citizen assemblies to further democracy.  Democracy in Crisis is produced by Ahmed Teleb, Brian Standing, the 8 O’Clock Buzz and WORT-FM.

Welcome to the second episode of “Democracy in Crisis” an in-depth series right here on WORT.  In our first episode, we heard from global experts about how and why electoral, representative government seems to be failing the promise of democracy.  Today, we explore some alternatives to electoral politics that may get us closer to the ideal of “government of, by and for the people.” Joining host Brian Standing for this episode are:

* Linn Davis is the Program Manager at Healthy Democracy in Oregon, a leading organization in the field of citizens engagement and participation. He holds a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from Portland State University and a BA in history from Grinnell College. Prior to Healthy Democracy, he worked at PSU’s Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies and at Metro, the Portland area’s regional government. His first career was in journalism, including stints at National Public Radio’s On the Media and at several newspapers and magazines in South Africa and India.

* Dr. Jane Suiter, is an Associate Professor at Dublin City University. with a focus on the public sphere and in particular on scaling up deliberation and disinformation. She is a research fellow with both the Irish Citizen and Constitutional Assemblies, and a founder member of We the Citizens, Ireland’s first deliberative experiment.  She was the joint winner of the Brown Democracy Medal in 2019 and the President’s Award for Research.  She has published in 30 plus journals including Science, International Journal of Political Science, Electoral Studies, Politics and the International Journal of Communication and is the author of Reimagining Democracy: Lessons in Deliberative Democracy from the Irish Frontline.

* Dr. Lyn Carson, is a professor with the Business Education Unit at The University of Sydney Business School and is now Research Director at New Democracy Foundation in Sydney, Australia.  For the past 25 years she has taught and researched in the field of deliberative democracy, asking how the wider public can help to resolve policy challenges. She was involved in convening or supporting Australia’s first Consensus Conference, the first Deliberative Polls, the first Australian Citizens’ Parliament, numerous Citizens’ Juries and Community Summits and a host of other public deliberations at local, state and national levels.

* Dr. Hans-Liudger Dienel researches planning and citizen participation as part of the social science faculty at Technical University Berlin and co-founder of Nexus Foundation Berlin. He studied mechanical engineering, history, philosophy and sociology in Hanover,

Democracy in Crisis is a special online series of global roundtable discussions about the use of randomly-selected citizen assemblies to further democracy.  Democracy in Crisis is produced by Ahmed Teleb, Brian Standing, the 8 O’Clock Buzz and WORT-FM.

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s western-style democracy appeared ascendant and inevitable.  U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush hailed events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union as heralding a New World Order, based on democracy and global capitalism.  But the last thirty years have seen, not an expansion of democracy, but a rebirth of authoritarianism.   Across the globe,  electoral fraud, political corruption, disenfranchisement of political minorities and the specter of fascism now seem the rule rather than the exception.  In 2017, the London-based Economist Democracy Index hit its lowest score ever, including the downgrading of the United States from a “Full Democracy” to a “Flawed Democracy.”  Today, we start a three-part series, Democracy in Crisis, which will explore the failures of our current electoral system and perhaps, provide some hope for an alternative model.  Joining WORT host Brian Standing are:

* Dr. Roslyn Fuller trained in law before writing her PhD in Democracy and International Law at Trinity College, Dublin. She frequently writes and lectures on issues pertaining to technology, ancient and modern democracy, privacy and international law, with her work appearing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Financial Times, BBC, The Nation, and Forbes. She is the author of five books, including Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose and In Defence of Democracy (recently a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards). She ran as an Independent on a platform of direct digital democracy in the 2016 Irish national elections, and is the Managing Director of the Solonian Democracy Institute.

* Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to returning to Harvard, he taught at Stanford Law School, where he founded the Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is the founder of Equal Citizens and a founding board member of Creative Commons. His books include: They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy, Fidelity & Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution, America, Compromised and