A Public Affair



On today’s show, host Allen Ruff speaks with three solidarity activists who recently returned from Cuba as part of a delegation to Santiago de Cuba called Levantate por Cuba. For decades, Cuba has been the target of a vindictive blockade, used as a punishment of the island’s people because they dared seize their own history and break free of neocolonialism from Washington DC and across the hemisphere. 

Jordan Muhammad is a recent graduate, activist, organizer, and substitute teacher based in Chicago. On the solidarity trip Muhammad spoke with many people representing the diversity of the community of La Magdalena, from a sports coach to a hairdresser and farmer. 

Neal Resnikoff is a longtime movement veteran with 70 years experience as an activist in New York City, Madison, and Chicago. He describes how he was a graduate student in Madison when Fidel Castro first rose to power and how he supported getting medical supplies and food into the country. Now, in addition to the blockade, Cubans face a lack of electricity, and electricity is rationed during the day.

Resnikoff and Muhammad discuss the anti-racist curriculum taught throughout Cuba, and how the country addresses systemic and ideological racism. They’re joined by Dr. Howard Ehrman, formerly Chicago Assistant Health Commissioner, and University of Illinois Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Public Heath, who also describes the experience of participating in this year’s May Day parade. Ehrman says that though the Left has shrunk over the last 50 years, he’s seeing a resurgence in support for Cuba, and activists shifting to become younger and more racially and ethnically diverse. 

They also discuss how the Trump administration (and other US presidents) has addressed Cuba, how Cuba fared during the pandemic, and much more. 

Featured image: The Cuba State Capitol (El Capitolio) in Havana via WIkimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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A few weeks ago, host Ali Muldrow spoke with State Senator Kelda Roys about the housing crisis in Madison and Dane County. As the average price of a home has soared to nearly half a million dollars, the number of kids experiencing homelessness in the city is also growing. Today we’re picking up that theme with two guests from local homeless services agencies: Karla Thennes of Porchlight and Jen Ripp of Briarpatch Youth Services.

From her over thirty years at Porchlight, Thennes describes how accessible housing has decreased over the years and the number of people accessing the men’s shelter has exponentially increased. Among other services, Porchlight offers permanent and affordable units, and currently there’s a two year waiting period for applicants to get into their Brooks Street location. 

Ripp describes the challenges that LGBTQ youth face as they try to navigate transitioning into adulthood meanwhile trying to find stable housing. She also explains how she copes with serving this vulnerable population.

We also hear from callers with questions about public housing and federal funding cuts. And today’s guests demonstrate how housing insecurity is compounded by other vulnerabilities, like food insecurity, lack of access to healthcare, and the criminalization of being unhoused.

Karla Thennes is the Executive Director for Porchlight. She serves on the board of directors of Goodwill of South-Central Wisconsin and Downtown Madison, Inc., a member of the United Way of Dane County’s Affordable Housing Fund Committee, an active member of the Downtown Rotary, and the recipient of the Unsung Heroine Award from NAMI.

Jennifer Ripp is a Program Director  at Briarpatch Youth Services with 22 years of experience in the field Social Work, supporting youth and families. She specializes in supporting youth that have experienced involvement in the Youth Justice System and youth experiencing homelessness. Outside of work, she is passionate about community involvement and spending time with family and friends.

Featured image: a technical drawing of a social housing project via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). 

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 In 2023, wellness was a $6.3 trillion dollar industry, it’s also notoriously riddled with grifts and scams. As online  wellness influencers drive the anti vax movement, white Christian nationalists and the Make America Healthy Again movement are transforming body purity into body fascism. On today’s show, host Richelle Wilson is joined by journalist Amy Larocca to talk about the world of wellness and her new book, How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure at a Time.

Larocca started tracing the emergence of our current wellness movement when she noticed the marketing techniques used for luxury products were being used for health products. This was also at a time when healthcare was becoming less and less accessible. Women (especially) have been sold lotions and potions long before, which leads Larocca to say that the beauty standards haven’t changed but the methods and products being sold to them have. Our current wellness moment is only a veneer that covers up the same toxic world of weight loss and thinness. Even the shift to body positivity melted away with the emergence of Ozempic and “the opportunity to be thin on demand.” But it’s hard to escape the promises of “feeling better” and glowing up.

They also discuss the cruel ways that the wellness industry steps in to fill the gaps in mainstream healthcare that leaves so many women and chronically ill people behind. Wellness has also become a kind of secular gospel, expressed through ecstatic movement in CrossFit boxes and SoulCycle studios. And in the US the world of wellness is deeply enshrined in political life with the rise of MAHA. 

Amy Larocca is an award-winning American journalist. She spent 20 years working at New York magazine as both Fashion Director and Editor at Large. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Town & Country and the London Review of Books, among others. She lives with her family in New York and North London.

Featured image: the cover of How to Be Well.

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On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes is joined by journalist Molly Parker to talk about the erosion of educational access in rural areas, the value of regional universities, and Parker’s recent article for ProPublica, “A University, a Rural Town and Their Fight to Survive Trump’s War on Higher Education.”

Parker describes her experience of going to college at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and how this was an adventure for her as a young person from a rural environment. Schools like SIU are affordable and allow students to be closer to family. They also drive up economic growth, and as regional schools contract, so too do the small communities around them. Both students and surrounding communities benefit from arts programming and sports events. Parker says that schools like SIU are resources for curious students no matter how they rank in their high school class. 

Parker traces the threats that the Trump administration poses to higher education overall, including to international students, high-level research, and elimination of DEI programs and scholarships that will hurt many students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. She also describes how interrelated education is with other issues that she covers in her journalism.

Molly Parker is a ProPublica distinguished fellow, reporter for Capital News Illinois, and Assistant Professor of Journalism at Southern Illinois University.

Featured image: a postcard of SIU, Carbondale from 1910 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur is joined by two legal experts from Earthjustice–Andre Segura and Stefanie Tsosie–to talk about the Trump administration’s attacks on the environment. 

They discuss the reconciliation bill that was passed yesterday and what this billionaire’s bill will mean for the environment. Segura says that this bill is a huge giveaway to the oil and gas industry and will make it easier to drill and transport oil and gas, impacting ecosystems the world over. Increased drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, Gulf of Mexico, and beyond will further exacerbate the climate crisis. 

Tsosie says that this bill is just a continuation of what has been an ongoing onslaught on the environment, that includes issues of pipelines like Line 5 in Wisconsin. She debunks the myth that the US is experiencing an energy emergency–an argument commonly made by conservatives to support their drilling projects. Meanwhile the administration is cancelling clean energy projects left and right. Tsosie says that “you can’t put the oil back in the pipeline.”

Andre Segura is a Vice President of Litigation for Earthjustice and is based in Houston, Texas. Andre has been at the front lines of some of the most significant battles for civil rights and racial justice across the country. 

Stefanie Tsosie is a member of the Navajo Nation and a Senior Attorney in the Earthjustice Tribal Partnerships Program based in Seattle, WA.  Stefanie continues to litigate on behalf of tribal clients, most recently the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in their fight against the Line 5 Pipeline, and works to develop partnerships with tribal clients across the country.

Featured image by Simon Ingram via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

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On today’s show, social critic Henry Giroux discusses what he calls the “politics of cleansing,” the multi-pronged offensive currently being waged against civil liberties, dissent, and ultimately democracy by “American-style fascism.” He says that cleansing means to purify in the service of domination. And in his recent article in CounterPunch he seeks a language that is comprehensive enough to describe Trump’s assault on democracy. 

From religious fundamentalism, to educational repression, the imposition of ideological conformity, and attacks on DEI, we’re watching racial cleansing unfold. That’s coupled with the hollowing out of government and the revising of history.

Giroux says that over the years, the Right has learned to appropriate the language of the Left. Words like freedom, that were once emancipatory are now tools of oppression. Freedom becomes the freedom to control the economic system and the freedom to crush dissent. The Right uses the language of dehumanization and brutality, and they’re making a world where people are disappeared. In addition to direct action, we need to reinvigorate the power of civic responsibility and civic courage. 

Henry Giroux is an internationally renowned writer and cultural critic who has authored or co-authored over 65 books. He is McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest and the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy.

Featured image: illustration of Henry Giroux by Jared Rodriguez / Truthout via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

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Continuing our focus on the arts as an antidote in times of political turmoil, today we’re joined by local poet Nate Marshall to talk about his most recent collection, Finna. His poems consider the brevity and disposability of Black lives, question how gendered language is related to violence, and explore the vastness of Black vernacular.

Marshall and Muldrow discuss the weight of writing about challenging moments in history. He says he remains curious about power, language, and masculinity. But too often readers have been primed to expect racialized suffering in Black American literature. And readers too often get caught in the authorial fallacy, that the speaker of a poem is the author. Marshall cautions against flatting Black writing and Black experience. He talks about the human condition being layered, complex, and rich. Muldrow says that writers describe suffering so that the reader can see the launching pad for their resistance. 

They also talk about the labor of writing, their educational opportunities, and the role of the poet in times of political turmoil. Marshall says that his role doesn’t change according to the times because we’re always in a state of turmoil. Regardless, the role of the artist is to sing, he says. Marshall also reads from one of his new, unpublished poems. 

Nate Marshall is an award-winning author and editor from the South Side of Chicago. His most recent book, Finna, was recognized as one of the best books of 2020 by NPR and The New York Public Library. He is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at The University of Wisconsin and lives in Madison, WI with his wife, the writer Alison C. Rollins, and their very cute daughter.

Featured image: the cover of Finna.

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On today’s show we’re rebroadcasting an interview from 2019 in which outgoing News Director Chali Pittman interviewed Ada Deer, the late Native American social worker, activist, professor, lobbyist, and author. They talk about Deer’s life, work, and American Indian history. 

Deer grew up on the Menominee Reservation and graduated from UW–Madison with a degree in social work. She later taught courses that fused Indian history and social work. She also served as Assistant Secretary of the US Department of the Interior as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and was the first woman to fill this position. In 1992, she was the first Native American woman to run for Congress in 1992 and also ran for Wisconsin Secretary of State.

Deer’s memoir, Making a Difference: My Fight for Native Rights and Social Justice, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2019. 

Featured image: cover of Ada Deer’s memoir, Making a Difference. 

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On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes speaks with Dr. Michelle Robinson about the Madison Forward Fund 2.0, which was recently unveiled by the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness. The guaranteed income program will focus on maternal-child health and support 42 families, each getting $500 a month for 12 months. This program builds off of the Madison Forward Fund that ran from 2022 to 2023. 

Robinson provides insightful context on the history of income inequality, the interacting realities of racial and gender-based inequity, and the fact that there is precedent for these kinds of programs in our existing public policy. 

Our economic system is designed to maintain structural unemployment in order to keep wages and inflation stable. But what is our collective responsibility to the folks who get left behind, asks Robinson. That’s where guaranteed income programs come in. GI programs are regular, unconditional cash payments made to a targeted group, usually the most economically vulnerable. Participants use the funds to buy groceries, pay off debt, and close rent gaps. These programs also acknowledge the domestic labor that happens outside of formal employment and the dignity of people who cannot work. 

Robinson frames the problem of income inequality as a matter of dignity. At a time when poverty and wealth disparities are growing, a smaller and smaller number of people are able to afford ends meet. In light of the nearly 60% of the US population who live at or near poverty including 21.5% of people in Dane County, we need social and economic policy that is rooted in freedom, dignity, and care, says Robinson. Farm subsidies, employment tax credits, and tax breaks to corporations are all examples of existing guaranteed income policies. The issue is who is perceived as deserving of economic support. 

Dr. Michelle Robinson serves as Chief Programs and Partnerships Officer at the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness. In this role, she leads the organization’s health equity leadership development, policy and advocacy, environmental justice, and maternal-child health initiatives. She also directs the Madison Forward Fund 2.0, a guaranteed income program, and oversees evaluation, measurement, and impact efforts across FFBWW’s portfolio. Dr. Robinson holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. For over a decade, she has advanced research, policy, and advocacy on cash assistance programs, including guaranteed income, earned income tax credits, and child savings accounts.

Featured image: a graph of net personal wealth from the World Inequality Database via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). 

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On today’s show, host Esty Dinur speaks with three panelists taking part in a program next week to celebrate World Day for Cultural Diversity. Dr. Claudia Calderón, Avexnim Cojti, and Cherie Thunder are part of a panel called Let’s Get Growing: Seeds, Stories & Solidarity happening on May 21 from 5-7pm at Aubergine on Willy Street. 

As part of today’s roundtable, they talk about seed sovereignty, which is the right of people to use and exchange their own seeds in order to maintain the foodways and autonomy. This movement counters the billion-dollar global seed trade, the privatization of seeds as intellectual property, and the selective breeding of seeds by agricultural companies, says Calderón. She recommends a few books on these topics, Flourishing Kin and First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology.

Indigenous communities across the world advocate for seed sovereignty, says Cojti, because of the legacies of colonialism. Following the appropriation of land from Indigenous peoples, colonizers then imposed the commodification of that land as private property, explains Cojti. Her organization, Cultural Survival, resists this appropriation and commodification and supports the maintenance of common land and common agricultural practices. 

Seeds are significant to the cultural, spiritual, and ecological livelihoods of many Indigenous peoples. Thunder discusses the role of wild rice for the Menominee people and the history of harvesting and reseeding wild rice over the last two centuries. 

Dr. Claudia Irene Calderón is a Teaching Faculty, Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an affiliated professor at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. Dr. Calderón uses participatory approaches to facilitate agroecological transitions. With extensive transdisciplinary experience at the intersections between gender, indigeneity, health, and agroecology, she is committed to re-centering ancestral ways of knowing, bridging epistemological divides, and fostering respect for nature to nurture sustainable food systems.

Avexnim Cojti (Maya Kiche), Director of Programs at Cultural Survival. She is from Chuwila, Guatemala. She is the eldest of five sisters, a mom, a sociologist and a Maya calendar ancient knowledge keeper of her community. She has more than fifteen years of experience supporting Indigenous rights and community initiatives upholding community, self-determination and reciprocity with the land. She holds a degree in Indigenous Government Studies from the Institute of Indigenous Government, Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work with elders and a conviction on the right of Indigenous Peoples to traditional health systems takes her to pursue her PhD on Indigenous knowledge transfer about medicinal plants at the University of Toronto.

Cherie Thunder is Menominee, Potawatomi, English, German, Irish, and Swedish. She grew up on the Menominee Reservation in Northeast Wisconsin. Cherie is the Tribal Wild Rice Research Coordinator at the Menominee Department of Agriculture and Food Systems. Since she graduated from UW Madison in 2013 Cherie has worked with non-profit organizations in the Menominee Nation and she strives to create a better place for children to grow into good humans.

Featured image of wild rice via Flickr.

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