8 O'Clock Buzz

Welcome to the first installment of WORT’s Innovations in Democracy series. Over the next three episodes, we’ll be exploring new ways of using digital technology to expand participatory democracy to a larger population of diverse citizens.  Innovations in Democracy is produced by Roslyn Fuller, with assistance from Ahmed Teleb.  In this episode, we focus on the idea of participatory budgeting.  Our panelists include:

* Jez Hall is a founding director of Shared Future CIC, has worked as a consultant for the World Bank and sits on the advisory board of the North American Participatory Budgeting Project. Jez Hall joins us from Manchester, England.

* Rose Wanjiru is the Executive Director of the Centre for Economic Governance, a lead expert in participating budgeting in Kenya, and has worked for the County Governments Executive and Assembly of State and Public Officials.  Rose Wanjiru joins us from Nairobi, Kenya.

* Robert Bjarnason is an experienced serial entrepreneur and a software developer.  He has created technology used in award winning mobile games, the first 3D games on mobiles, by leading industry players such as EA, Square Enix, Eidos and Activision. In 2008 Robert co-founded the non-profit Citizens Foundation that specializes in citizen participation and digital democracy. Robert Bjarnason joins us from Selfoss, Iceland.

* Celina Su is the Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York. She is the author of Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx,  and is a recipient of the Berlin Prize fellowship.  Celina Su joins us from New York.

United States African Command (AFRICOM) was established October 1, 2008 to use U.S. military power to impose U.S. control of African land, resources and labor to service the needs of U.S. multi-national corporations and the wealthy in the United States. Tunde Osazua, Coordinator of U.S. Out of Africa Network, talks with Jan about how AFRICOM, started by President Bush, is a destabilizing presence in Africa, eroding self-determination and sovereignty of those countries, and encouraging insurgency and instability.

The “Polluter Elites” have maintained their grip on energy sources, according to Jennie C. Stephens, Director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, and our society needs to change to an “Energy Democracy” to move forward. Her recent book, “Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy” describes how technology and social change can provide local distributed power and control.

It’s an arts takeover on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz! Host Damita Brown talks with…

Prestigious Serbian flutist and UW-Madison Alumna Iva Urgčić about her upcoming LunART Festival celebrating Black women in the arts October 10th and 17th, 2020

Araceli Esparza from Wisconsin Mujer about Wisconsin Mujer and her upcoming event, “Art and the Intersections of Our Lives” October 11th.

Madison Poet Laureate Angela Trudell Vasquez with Araceli Esparza about arts, poetry and LatinX issues in Madison.

Photo by Tipocracia on Flickr

In this month’s 8 O’Clock Buzz/Ex-PO program, Jerome Dillard talks with Mark Rice, Organizer for MOSES (Madison Organizing in Strength, Equality, and Solidarity) and Allison Frankel from the ACLU about the new report “Revoked: Probation and Parole Feed Mass Incarceration in the United States” — the cycling of individuals from probation back to incarceration without having committed new crimes. 34% of incarcerated persons in Wisconsin are in prison for probation rule violation and NOT for committing another crime!

MOSES is also sponsoring a Listening Session on October 6th of the Madison area candidates running for State Assembly. Tune in!

Damita Brown talks with Christine Nobliss, Founder of Great Plains Action Society about Native American issues and how they intersect with Black issues: voter suppression; Covid-19 impact; missing, murdered and exploited women; land theft; gun violence and more.

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Imagine going to your doctor’s office and leaving with a prescription for a tattoo.  You know, to protect your health.  My grandmother would have been shocked. Then again, imagine being able to temporarily turn off your tattoos, making them invisible when you visit your easily shocked grandmother, but then turn them on again when you’re back in your neighborhood.  Both of those ideas may become a reality, with new dynamically changing tattoo inks.  Carson J. Bruns is a Professor of mechanical engineering and technology, arts, and media in the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

On September 14, after touring some of the 3.2 million acres of land that burned in California’s worst wildfire season to date, President Donald Trump sat down in a roundtable with California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot.  After Crowfoot brought up climate change as a cause for the fires, Trump said, “It will get cooler, you watch.”Trump’s dismissiveness of climate change has come to characterize the GOP approach to the issue.  And yet, according to the Pew Charitable Trust, more than half of self-identified Republicans across the country now agree that climate change is real and think the federal government is not doing enough to combat it.  Younger Republicans are even more likely to see climate change as a threat deserving federal government attention.  Benji Backer is one of those young Republicans — he is the founder and President of the American Conservation Coalition.

Rosemarie Day talks about her new book “Marching Toward Coverage: How women can lead the fight for universal health care”, looking at women as the Chief Medical Officer of their homes, the problems of getting and keeping health care in a country where 50% have employer-provided insurance, and her key healthcare questions for the presidential candidates.

Last week, as Trump signed the U.S.-brokered agreement to normalize diplomatic relationships between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and between Israel and Bahrain — the so-called Middle East Peace Plan, demonstrators outside the White House protested the “Fake Peace Deal”. Huwaida Arraf, International Human Rights Attorney and founder of the International Solidarity Movement for Palestinian rights, talks about the issues in this deal.