8 O'Clock Buzz

Despite promises to “drain the swamp”, the Trump administration has appointed lobbyists, private executives, and many with corporate interests. Max Moran and the Revolving Door Project investigate Executive Branch appointees and candidates to try to determine their personal interests and look to those who actually want to serve the public good. Today he talks with Jan Miyasaki about his recent article “Biden’s cabinet could do a lot – if he resists the urge to fill it with ‘consensus’ picks“, Biden-announced appointees, and suggests qualifications for those who may best serve as IRS executives, anti-trust leaders, and other positions of importance in the new Executive Branch.

“Justice is not in the courtroom, but in the ways in which we acknowledge the legacies of the violated”. Laura Levitt, Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies, and Gender at Temple University has written on Holocaust victims’ issues, and in her latest book “The Objects that Remain”, writes about the recovery process of those who have been involved in individual attacks of violence of a more personal nature.

Today on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz with Damita Brown (in exile)…

Allison Bell Bern from Allies for Black Lives joins to talk about what it means to be an ally and what we can do right here in Madison to support anti-racist efforts and the Movement for Black Lives.

In the second half, Adam W McKinney from DNAWORKS joins to talk about their current exhibition, “Fort Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr Fred Rouse,” social justice activism and community building using dance and current tour working to support healing our community.

Photo by Ken Fager on Flickr

Despite the sitting President’s desperate and unfounded denials of the election results, presumptive President-elect Joe Biden has started assembling his transition team and has begun the process of laying out an agenda for his first term.  Among his first announcements, Biden has tabbed former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as his Special International Envoy on Climate Change.  The very fact that Biden plans on re-establishing the position of climate envoy seems to indicate, as Biden promised during the campaign, that climate change will re-emerge as a focal issue for the new Administration.  On the other hand, Biden’s campaign promises in support of fracking, and his longstanding corporate ties have many environmentalists nervous.  University of Washington geoscientist and environmental author Scott L. Montgomery joined Monday Buzz host Brian Standing on November 30, 2020.

(Photo of Joe Biden by Gage Skidmore)

In 2000, the U.S. Presidential election was decided by one vote among only nine voters.  In a notorious 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped a Florida recount, effectively handing Republican George W. Bush the Presidency over Democrat Al Gore. Twenty years later, President Trump’s campaign has filed multiple lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election vs. Democratic challenger, and apparent President-elect, Joe Biden.  With a newly minted 6-3 conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court — a majority that includes 3 of the lawyers that successfully argued Bush v. Gore — could history repeat itself?  Franciska A. Coleman is a Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Wisconsin Madison, and she joined Monday Buzz host Brian Standing on November 30, 2020.

[Photo of US Supreme Court building by Mr. Kjetil Ree. – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1906516]

Moderate Democrats in Congress, like Virginia representative Abigail Spanberger and Oregon representative Kurt Schrader, have publicly blamed the Black Lives Matter movement and calls to “defund the police” for recent Democratic losses in the House of Representatives.  But, looking a bit further down the ballot, in the elections most relevant to criminal justice, progressive reformers won and won big.  Reform-minded District Attorney candidates in Orlando, Colorado, Detroit, Austin, Los Angeles and Chicago won on campaigns to hold police accountable, end cash bail and reduce incarceration.  Caren Myers Morrison is a Professor of Law at Georgia State University and she argues these election results are a sign that the American public is moving away from traditional ideas of “law and order.”

In this special ExPO hour (Ex-incarcerated Prisoners Organizing), host Jerome Dillard interviews 3 recently released inmates of several Wisconsin prisons to get the facts about the COVID infection risks to inmates. They relate their experiences of a lack of PPE, lack of proper quarantine of infected inmates and staff, their struggle over COVID-related health concerns. A common theme is that a prison sentence should NOT be a death sentence.

Today on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz with Damita Brown and Sikowis (in exile)…

Damita and Sikowis talk about speaking truth about Thanksgiving by celebrating Truthsgiving and the upcoming December Challenge from Dane County Timebank, healing and honing our anti-racist practices every day of December.

Ronnie James from Des Moines Mutual Aid and Great Plains Action Society joins to talk with Sikowis about their efforts in Des Moines to support the needs of the houseless and those facing food insecurity, as well as their bail fund established to support those arrested protesting for our freedom.

Trisha Etringer from Vote Mob and Great Plains Action Society joins to talk with Sikowis about fighting COVID-19 in Native communities in Sioux City, and supporting the needs of the houseless in their community.

In November of 1918, President Woodrow Wilson issued his annual Thanksgiving proclamation.  He spoke about the end of the first World War, saying that peace “has not came as a mere cessation of arms, a mere relief from the strain and tragedy of war. It has come as a great triumph of right.”  Nowhere, however, did he mention the real killer of that year, a devastation that would end up killing six times as many Americans as those who perished in combat.  The influenza pandemic was at its peak in November of 1918, and despite warnings from a variety of public health officials at the time, the country was in no mood to ignore the holidays.  This year, we once again find ourselves facing the risk of infectious disease just at the time when we want most to spend time with our family and friends.  Melissa Hawkins is an epidemiologist and a professor of public health at American University, and she joins us now with some tips for a safe and celebratory Thanksgiving.

In November of 1621, so the story goes, the Wapanoags shared a harvest feast with the English colonists of the Plymouth Plantation in what is now the state of Massachusetts.  That event, now etched in our collective minds as the first Thanksgiving, has come under increased scrutiny in recent years.  Was that a peaceful sharing of bounty and gratitude, or the prelude to displacement, territorial landgrabs, and the destruction of an indigenous culture?  As a result of the expansion of European settlement, many indigenous traditions, including the very agriculture that produced much of the food eaten at that first Thanksgiving, have vanished.  Christina Gish Hill is an anthropologist at Iowa State University, and she is part of a team of researchers that are trying to restore traditional Native American agriculture to the people who once practiced it.