8 O'Clock Buzz

With a mission to help land trusts and owners protect, maintain, and restore land to its native state, Gathering Waters works to provide the tools and resources to make this possible. In this episode of the 8 O’Clock Buzz, Annual Giving and Outreach Manager Patricia McMurtrie talks about what a land trust is, and how it helps keep water clean and provides natural habitat.

Back in March of 2020, the Dane County Jail had a problem.  The coronavirus pandemic had spread to the Madison area, and Public Health authorities had issued orders seeking to minimize crowds and gatherings of people, particularly in confined spaces to minimize transmission of the virus.  The jail population at the time sat at 772 people, all housed in cramped conditions perfect for COVID-19 transmission.   Within weeks, however, the jail inmate population had dropped by almost 40% to 441, where it sits today.  How did the county manage to do that?  And perhaps more importantly, if people could be released during a pandemic with no risk to public safety, why were they being held there at all?  Eric Howland works with the Madison Organizing in Strength Equality and Solidarity, or MOSES, that recently analyzed the jail population reduction.  Eric Howland joined the Monday 8 O’Clock Buzz on July 6, 2020.

Wisconsin has had a difficult time adjusting to its growing diversity.  Report after report have shown the Badger State to be among the worst in the nation when it comes to racial inequities.  Wisconsin public schools, once lauded for their overall quality, have shown particularly sharp divides between white students and their African-American, Latino, Native American and Asian counterparts.  Multiple studies have linked minority performance to the diversity of the teaching staff.  Yet, despite years of recruitment efforts, Wisconsin’s teaching personnel remain disproportionately white.  A new report from the Wisconsin Public Policy Forum takes a deep dive into the lack of diversity among public school teachers.  Anne Chapman is a Senior Researcher for the Wisconsin Policy Forum, and she joined the Monday Buzz on July 6, 2020.

In 1997, the Republican-led Congress added, and President Bill Clinton signed, a little-debated provision to the National Defense Appropriations Act.  The provision, known as Section 1033, allowed, for the first time, the U.S. military to surplus equipment directly to civilian police forces around the United States.  Although billed as a means of winding down the Cold War, the program ended up radically transforming municipal police departments — with tragic results.  Casey Delahanty is an Assistant Professor of Global Studies at Gardner-Webb University, and he’s studied the violence associated with police forces that obtain military-grade hardware.

William Lazonick, Professor of Economics at UMass-Lowell and author, talks about his most recent publication, “How the Disappearance of Unionized Jobs Obliterated an Emergent Black Middle Class” and the failures of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) over the past 50 years.

There are approximately 12,500 incarcerated persons in Wisconsin’s county jails. More than half of that number have not been convicted of a crime, but remain in jail because they are unable to post bail.

Though many of those incarcerated in Wisconsin’s county jails are eligible to vote, at least 32 counties of the 72 counties in the state do not have a written policy that specifies how people in their care can register to vote and cast a ballot. Another 28 have brief policies with vague language dictating how jail populations can vote.

That’s according to a new report detailing which of Wisconsin’s county jails are taking the steps to ensure incarcerated people have an opportunity to vote — and which county jails are not. It comes from the Wisconsin chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and All Voting is Local, an advocacy organization which works to ensure the right and ability to vote across all populations.

For more, Jan Miyasaki speaks with Peter Burress,  Campaign Manager at All Voting is Local, and co-author of the new report, entitled “Ballots for All: Ensuring Eligible Wisconsin Voters in Jail Have Equal Access to Voting.”

Jan talks with political director for Familias Unidas por la Justicia, Edgar Franks, for an update on the apple packers’ strikes for better COVID protection in Washington State.

Damita Brown talks about making change in our community with …

Art Richardson, Sean Anderson, Gersely Rios and Davica Paul from Milestone Democratic School and how they’re going to change education.

Natalie Yahr from The Cap Times about their People’s Agenda (en español) and how to get politicians talking about real issues.

Photo by Ken Fager on Flickr.

Damita Brown talks with…

* Karl Locher from the Madison Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America about electoral reform and moving the Democratic party to the left and breaking the two party system

* Lorrie Hurckes Dwyer, Ryan Eykholt, and Araceli Esparza from Dane County Time Bank about Police Free Schools and what Dane County Time Bank is doing to better our society

Photo by ken fager on Flickr

WISPIRG and Student PIRGS have begun a New Voter Project to get out the student vote in more than 15 states. Jan Miyasaki speaks to Julia Seremba and Sofia Miller about that group’s plans and activities in advance of the 2020 elections in November.