A Public Affair

On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by Martín Espada who has just published a new volume of poetry, Jailbreak of Sparrows. Espada is a longtime friend of WORT and former Madisonian. He reads from his collection on the air and discusses the supple power of language. 

Ruff asks Espada about the importance of his father, Frank Espada, who was a civil rights activist, documentary photographer, and a leader in the Puerto Rican community in New York City in the 60s and 70s. Espada’s father plays an important role in his body of work. 

Espada reminds listeners that progress isn’t linear, it “loops in figures of eight.” He reflects on Donald Trump’s use of the poem, “The Snake,” and says that mass deportations require mass collaboration; but we can refuse to collaborate. Espada says that poets endure by writing engaged poems.

Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator, including Floaters, winner of the National Book Award, Vivas to Those Who Have Failed, and The Republic of Poetry, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His many honors include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Featured image: the cover of Jailbreak of Sparrows. 

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Wisconsin’s Spring Election results are in, and host Ali Muldrow breaks down the results with Nick Ramos and Iuscely Flores. They talk about the role of big money in the Supreme Court election, the rise of constitutional amendments, and how fair maps are changing the terrain of Wisconsin’s electoral system. 

Ramos and Flores reiterate the need to keep fighting for our democracy. As Ramos says, the beat goes on. This means listening to your neighbors. Flores says the work of organizing is the work of talking to each other. She adds that we still need a permanent and independent redistricting process in Wisconsin to end the effects of the state’s gerrymandered maps. Fair maps mean everyone has a fair chance at influencing the political process.

The leadup to yesterday’s election garnered national and international attention. But voters responded to Elon Musk’s support of candidate Brad Schimel by voting in Judge Susan Crawford by overwhelming margins. Ramos says that issues at the federal level, like the looming cuts to Social Security and Medicaid, motivated people to show up at the polls for a local election. Wisconsin voters reminded the mega wealthy that money doesn’t vote, people do.

Nick Ramos is a lawyer, advocate, and community organizer who serves as the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. 

Iuscely Flores is a community mobilizer and storyteller and serves as the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition Organizing Director.

Featured image: remix of Wisconsin counties and a voting sticker by Sara Gabler/WORT.

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On today’s show we take our cue from you, our listeners. Host Esty Dinur opens the phone lines to discuss current issues in national and state politics with callers. They cover the abduction of pro-Palestinian activists, Kristi Noem’s photoshoot in El Salvador, the importance of independent media, and more.

Wisconsin is under the microscope because of our state Supreme Court election next week. Billionaire Elon Musk promised voters money in exchange for their votes, but deleted a social media post saying he would “personally hand over” $2 million hours after he posted it. 

Tesla shares are down around the world, and folks are planning protests this weekend as part of an ongoing Tesla Takeover movement.

Listeners offer book reviews and methods for staying engaged in civic life including 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action. Callers encouraged more people to get involved in WORT.

Featured image of a vintage phone via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

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On today’s show, Allen Ruff speaks with David McNally about the first few months of the Trump Presidency. They talk about Trump’s real estate plans for Gaza, the attacks on universities, Tesla Takedown, and the model organizing of Ella Baker.

McNally has written about the “grifter capitalist,” a new iteration of the classic American figure of the con man. Grifter capitalists like Donald Trump tend to be connected with real estate and finance; they’re wheelers and dealers, self-promoters, and they don’t actually understand the modern global economy, says McNally. 

For instance, Trump’s tariff offensive is inappropriate to the reality that most imports to the US are “intra-company transfers” of US multinational corporations. And because the grifter capitalists don’t understand the global economy, there are more fault lines in the Trump presidency than we realize. 

McNally will be part of a national day of action on April 17 organized by the American Association of University Professors.

David McNally is a radical socialist activist and award-winning scholar. Authoring over 60 research manuscripts, seven books, and countless public lectures and articles, he currently holds the Cullen Distinguished Professorship of History & Business at the University of Houston, having recently moved from Toronto, where he taught and organized at York University for over thirty years.

Featured image of a protest sign at a Tesla Takeover event in Brooklyn via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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Continuing with host Ali Muldrow’s feminist book club series, on today’s show, Muldrow speaks with Annie Menzel, author of Fatal Denial: Racism and The Political Life of Black Infant Mortality. They discuss white racial innocence, the birth justice movement, and the history of obstetrics. Menzel diagnoses how white expertise and authority shape the world of reproductive health for mothers and birthing people. 

Fatal Denial reframes the conversation about Black maternal health away from viewing Black parents as problems. Instead, as Muldrow asserts, the book makes clear that the conditions of Black America are the conditions that white people have created. 

The two also discuss how the anti-abortion movement has shied away from discussing infant and maternal mortality. Menzel says that the myth of the “true baby” as a white cherubic innocent upholds a white patriarchal domestic order. And we can see this myth alive and well in the phenomena of trad wives and nostalgic maternity. Instead, Menzel discusses what it means to be on the side of life. 

Annie Menzel is a political theorist, former midwife, and Associate Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at UW-Madison. Her work focuses on understanding how white supremacy, colonization, and gender-based oppression shape human reproductive life, health, and care. 

Featured image: a remix of the cover of Fatal Denial: Racism and The Political Life of Black Infant Mortality. 

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This week the climate advocacy group Greenpeace was ordered to pay $660 million in damages to Energy Transfer, the oil company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. The protests against DAPL in 2016 and 2017 were organized by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Indigenous water protectors. Greenpeace peacefully supported the protests but was charged with defamation by Energy Transfer. 

Now, a North Dakota ruling in favor of Energy Transfer could have far reaching effects on first-amendment rights and is an alarming instance of a corporation using a lawsuit to intimidate activists. Greenpeace is appealing the verdict. 

In light of these developments, on today’s show we’re re-airing a conversation from October 5, 2018 in which host Esty Dinur speaks with women on the front lines of oil pipeline protests. Anne White Hat is an activist and water protector who was arrested for protesting the Bayou Bridge Pipeline at the L’Eau Est La Vie Camp, a resistance camp in Louisiana. Paulette Moore is the director of the new film The Eagle and the Condor: From Standing Rock With Love. They discuss Standing Rock and the making of the film with Germaine Tremmel, Manju Dhat, and Rebecca Kemble.

Featured image of a pipeline protest via Leslie Peterson on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

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In a time when public trust in government is near historic lows, today’s show highlights regional efforts to revamp civics education. Host Douglas Haynes is joined by Kate Ullman and Adah Lambeck to talk about two initiatives to educate and engage young people in the political process. Ullman and Lambeck discuss how focusing on policies not “politics” is the key to engaging young folks. Lambeck says that young people are motivated by local issues that impact them, like gun violence. 

The Legislative Semester is a nonpartisan civics and government curriculum that engages students in the legislative process. Students explore their own perspectives on a variety of current political issues, learn to use civil discourse in discussing controversial topics, assume leadership roles among their peers. This student-centered and research-based curriculum is expanding rapidly in Dane County and beyond. Ulman says teachers continue to feel confident in this approach to teaching about current policy issues in a non-partisan way. 

And at the same time, Madison high school students are organizing a coalition to advocate for a state constitutional amendment to allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote in school board elections. Though school board elections are nonpartisan, this issue is seen as partisan by the Republican controlled state legislature. But if passed, it would create a direct connection between school boards and students. 

Adah Lambeck is a senior at Madison West High School. Lambeck testified at a Dane County Youth Commission, calling on their support on an initiative proposed by the West High School Civics Club to let 16 and 17 year olds in Dane County vote in school board elections. 

Kate Ullman was a member of the education faculty at Northland College, and a former Middleton High School government teacher. She founded a non-profit organization and now works with teachers interested in using the Legislative Semester government curriculum in their classrooms. She also coordinates the Wisconsin Civic Learning Coalition and serves on the steering group for the Wisconsin Civic Health Initiative.

Featured image, remix of The Legislative Semester.

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On today’s show, Carlos Dávalos is joined by two atmospheric scientists, Mayra Oyola-Merced and Ángel Adames Corraliza from the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They discuss how weather systems differ across tropical and mid-latitude regions, how meteorological data is in question under the Trump presidency, and the politicization of weather agencies. And they advise people to pay attention to weather issues from around the world like the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), the potential collapse of the rainforest, and the increasing number of aerosols in the atmosphere from wildfires.

The history of modern meteorology is a Western history, but people around the world have had complex understandings of the weather for much longer than our modern data systems. Adames Corraliza explains the Taino hurricane cemi, a pre-colonial numinous object that represents the counter-clockwise circulation of hurricane winds. 

Oyola-Merced describes the inequities in weather system research, which lies primarily in the northern hemisphere. But there are open access sources of satellite weather data that counteract the dominance of the Global North in weather science. 

Featured image of Ángel Adames Corraliza, Mayra Oyola-Merced, and Carlos Dávalos courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

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On today’s show, host Allen Ruff speaks with journalist, media critic, author, and activist Norman Solomon about his article, “How the Warfare State Paved the Way for a Trumpist Autocracy.” Solomon says that so many military projects are being undertaken under the name of “defense,” but this is a smokescreen for vast amounts of spending that support the “warfare state.” He writes that “militarism has been integral to the rise of the billionaire tech barons who are now teaming up with an increasingly fascistic Donald Trump.”

When Trump first ran for president in 2015, he understood that the nation’s thrill for the War on Terror had wanted, says Solomon. But Hillary Clinton’s campaign was set on the status quo when it came to military spending. That’s why, Solomon says, that Trump could simultaneously call democrats “wimps and warmongers.”  The reality is that both parties are war parties. And now Trump can say he wants peace in Ukraine meanwhile supporting Israel’s renewed genocide in Gaza. 

Solomon will be part of a teach-in tonight on how to organize against authoritarianism. 

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, includes an afterword about the Gaza war. 

Featured image: remix of the cover of War Made Invisible by Sara Gabler/WORT.

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On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow speaks with Emily Callaci, author of Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor. In it, Callaci writes about the second-wave feminist movement, Wages for Housework, and the important questions about unpaid labor, gender, economy, and social reproduction that it raised. Muldrow calls the book “immensely relevant for this moment.” 

Callaci describes the 1970s as a time when social movements were focused on expanding people’s rights. But the Wages for Housework movement tried to address what they thought was a fundamental source of inequality: the economic inequality in the home due to the invisible, unrecognized, and unpaid labor of women. She says that this movement was asking for two things: a paycheck and a change in thinking about how we organize our society. 

They talk about how love becomes a mechanism of exploitation, and how women are oppressed by the expectation of their care work. Callaci says that men lose out by being told that care work isn’t for them. One response is to distribute labor equally across partnerships and genders as well as across the community. Callaci says that the Left needs to claim the terrain of supporting domestic labor, care, and mothering, so that the value of this work isn’t based on the misogynist rhetoric of childrearing being the natural domain of women. 

Emily Callaci is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where she teaches courses on African History, Reproductive Politics and Global Feminism. Her most recent book is Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor, which is now available at bookstores. She is a mother of 2 and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Featured image: remix of the cover of Wages for Housework by Sara Gabler/WORT.

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