Jean Claude Alvarez, a recently arrived asylum seeker, joins the 8 O’Clock Buzz to recount his months long journey traveling from Venezuela, primarily on foot.  His arduous trek included a month long walk through the rain forest between Columbia and Panama and a crossing of the Rio Grande River.  Joining Jean Claude during the interview were Adriana Soto from Interpreter’s Cooperative of Madison, and Dennis Noonan from the Madison Catholic Worker group.  The Interpreter’s Cooperative provides services to help with the transition of non-native English speakers to our area, and the Catholic Worker group has recently purchased a single-family residence in Madison to provide transitional housing for recently arrived immigrants from Latin America.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

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Chaos Riddle and Meg Nog from Santas Without Chimneys are live in the studio on the 8 O’Clock Buzz to talk about their efforts to provide holiday gifts for those less fortunate children in our community.  The organization identifies “highly mobile” kids in the area with the help of social service agencies and personal observations, and asks them for their three wishes for the upcoming holidays.  They try to fulfill those requests with donations, but at the very least to provide warm clothes, books, crafts and bicycles whenever possible.  They are in need of volunteer drivers and phone callers, as well as food cards and financial assistance.  It’s also possible to sponsor a child with this type of assistance.  Santas Without Chimneys is located at 201 S. Stoughton Road and you can find them on the web.  Volunteers can just show up at the facility.

Photo by Mike Arney on Unsplash

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Today on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz with Tara Wilhelmi and RR Moore talk with Papa-Kobina Brewoo, Creative Movement Artist, Ceo and Director of The The Hitterz Collective about his story, street dance, and their up coming BAM Festival

More on BAM Festival  Battle Art Music coming up this weekend (12/15-17) at at Arts Lit Lab, My Arts Madison, Madison Circus Space: https://www.thehitterzcollectivellc.com/event-details/b-a-m-festival

More about Antoine’s Ugly Sweater Comedy and Poetry Jam on December 16th at Wil-Mar Center, see: https://www.facebook.com/ComedyAndPoetryJam/ 

Listen in Madison at 89.9FM or online anywhere at wortfm.org.  Support your community radio with a donation online at wortfm.org!

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WORT 89.9FM Madison · There Are No Bugs In Winter Zero Budget Science Fiction Born Out Of Pandemic

If you’re stuck inside during a global pandemic as winter descends, what do you do to keep from going stir crazy?  Well if you are University of Wisconsin researchers Claudia Solis-Lemus and Daniel Pimental Alarcón, you use your time to make a zero-budget science fiction film.  The resulting film, “There Are No Bugs in Winter,” won the best science fiction film award at the 2023 Hispanic International Film Festival.  The film is the brainchild of writer and director Claudia Solis-Lemus, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, and  writer and actor Daniel Pimental Alarcón, a professor of biostatistics and medical informatics.

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WORT 89.9FM Madison · “Of The Embers” Tells Story Of Milwaukee Newhall House Fire

On January 10, 1883, at 4:00 in the morning, Milwaukee residents noticed flames in the windows of the fashionable Newhall House Hotel.  By the time the Milwaukee Fire Department arrived at the scene, the fire had consumed the roof, and firefighters could see people in the windows screaming for help.  Firefighters found their ladders entangled in the newly installed electrical wires downtown, and were unable to reach the upper floors of the building.  When all was said and done, 76 bodies were pulled from the wreckage, but because the hotel register was consumed in the fire, no one really knows how many people died that night.  It remained the deadliest hotel fire in the United States for decades.  In her new work of historical fiction, “Of the Embers,” author Rita Williams Atkinson chose to retell the story of the Newhall House fire through the eyes of those who lived through it.

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WORT 89.9FM Madison · Low Income Housing Tax Credit the Good, the Bad and the Complicated

Born out of the conservative “trickle down” economics of the Reagan Administration, the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit, has – somewhat improbably – become the single largest creator of affordable housing in the United States.  Since 1986, the tax credit program has created some 2.5 million rental units and about 90 percent of the affordable housing built across the nation.  The program continues to receive  bipartisan support in Congress.  But, as evidenced by the dearth of housing affordable to all sectors of American society and the exploding affordability crisis in urban areas across the nation, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit has its flaws and shortcomings.  Dan Emmanuel is a Research Analyst with the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

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Sasha Rosser joins Tony Castañeda and Eli Wilz on the Thursday 8 O’Clock Buzz to talk about her past, present and future. In 2022, Sasha abandoned, to the horror of her mother, her degree in neuroscience and career as a data scientist to found Cheshire Cat Comedy, a production company based in Madison that organizes stand-up and variety shows across Wisconsin. She has been keeping busy, presumably to the great delight of her mother, producing an ever-increasing number of comedy shows. Variety being the spice of life, Rosser’s show range from standup and improvisation to burlesque and comedians performing while eating hot peppers. Eli is hosting her show, Madison’s “sauciest variety show”, Friday, December 8 from 7-8:30 at the Crucible. It will feature not only Mona Montague serving award-winning nerdy burlesque (nerdlesque), but also Leslie Mitchell, who was recently crowned Iowa’s Funniest Person.

Photo courtesy of Marija Zaric on Unsplash.

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On Wednesday, 10 pro-Trump fake electors from Wisconsin agreed to settle a civil suit brought against them for their actions in 2020, wherein groups of Republicans cast false electoral votes for Trump and sent them to Congress. Former VP Mike Pence’s refusal to certify the slates of fake electors (from Wisconsin along with 6 other states) helped spark the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6.

Thursday Buzz host Tony Castañeda is joined today by Jeff Mandell, an attorney with Law Forward, who in collaboration with Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP), brought the case on behalf of Democratic voters from Wisconsin, two of whom served as Biden electors. Mandell explains that the settlement includes a statement from the Defendants acknowledging that their false votes were cast as part of a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 election and disrupt the peaceful transition of presidential power. Additionally, the electors pledged not to serve in the 2024 electoral college, or in any election involving Trump.

Photo courtesy of Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash.

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Unless you don’t own a TV, you’ve seen the ads for “Medicare Advantage” plans — supposed low-cost commercial plans claiming to provide better coverage than Medicare. James Kahn, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology and Global Health at UCSF, talks about the $100 billion annual corporate payoff for attracting inexpensive enrollees, upcoding disease severity, and biased price-setting procedures — a cost to taxpayers which could be used to improve healthcare in the U.S. His solution — single payer healthcare provider.

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As they say in politics, “Follow the money” — the same goes for environmental damage: and it’s hard for communities impacted to discover where the money trail leads. Merel van der Mark, Forests and Financial Coordinator for Rainforest Action Network, talks about their efforts to build a worldwide database of financiers of environmental damage, detailed in their “Banking on Biodiversity Collapse Report“.

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