A Public Affair



On today’s show we’re joined by Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a self-identified Republican who was awakened to the “imperial hubris” of the United States after 9/11. He has since criticized aspects of US foreign policy, especially the Iraq War, and is in favor of holding military officials accountable. Col. Wilkerson and host Esty Dinur talk about the role of APAC in US foreign policy, how big oil shapes US wars from Iraq to Ukraine, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the threat of Trump’s Christian nationalist cabinet picks. 

Lawrence B. Wilkerson is a retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Featured image via S L O W K I N G.

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We’re joined today by Will Williams for the 13th (or is it the 15th) annual fireside chat with host Allen Ruff. They reflect on the changes they’ve seen in the last few years,including the recent presidential election, and they discuss the settler colonial history of Thanksgiving. From the first official Thanksgiving in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 to President Abraham Lincoln’s declaration of Thanksgiving as a federal holiday in 1863 in the middle of the Civil War, the holiday has always been intertwined with warfare and conquest. Callers chimed in to share their gratitude for the program, share a quotation from Winona La Duke, and comment about some Americans’ willful ignorance of history. 

Will Williams is a Vietnam veteran, a local peace veteran activist, and a long time friend of the show.

Image by Natasha G from Pixabay

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On the day before the Thanksgiving holiday, today’s guests are prepared to talk politics. Host, Ali Muldrow is joined by three representatives of the Madison area Democratic Socialists of America: Liz Bynum Sorrell, Halsey Hazzard, and Adithya Pugazhendi. They talk about all the hot issues that you may or may not be ready to chat about with your friends or family tomorrow, from the presidential election, to Gaza, and local school board elections. The DSA representatives shared their campaign, Free School Meals for Madison, that aims to address food insecurity and food debt within MMSD. 

Liz Bynum Sorrell is a researcher, facilitator, and organizer. Currently, she is co-managing Madison Area DSA’s Free School Meals for Madison Campaign.

Halsey Hazzard is a library worker, a union member, and Madison Area DSA’s current Comms Coordinator. 

Adithya Pugazhendi is a tech worker and one of the co-chairs of Madison Area DSA.

Featured image courtesy of Sara Gabler/WORT.

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Today’s guests talk about the value of quality organic sauerkraut, soil quality, and human health ahead of next week’s Acres Eco-Ag Conference held in Madison. At issue is the dangers of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Glyphosate inhibits the effective uptake of various minerals that are essential for plant growth and it impairs the growth and quality of plants for subsequent years. But it is used in 90% of corn and soybean crops.

The effects of glyphosate on soil, plant, and animal health are well known, including causing cancer and other diseases in humans. But a recent study done by today’s guests, Dr. Don Huber and Dieter Harle shows that sauerkraut can be used to degrade glyphosate in the soil.

Their article, “Saga of Soggy Sauerkraut,” documents the application of raw sauerkraut juice, the byproduct of the cabbage fermentation process, on fields in Wisconsin. These experiments revealed that sauerkraut juice reduced the levels of glyphosate in the soil and increased the yield of corn and soy crops planted the next year on those same fields. 

Today’s show was hosted by Bert Zipperer and Pete Hardin. Their show, Mondays with the Milkweed, can be heard weekly on WORT.

Dr. Don Huber is a Professor Emeritus of plant pathology at Purdue University. He has been a voice of caution on the use of Roundup for two decades. 

Dieter Harle is a dairy livestock consultant with over five decades of experience in the field. His work focuses on livestock health. 

Featured image via Flickr.

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On today’s show, award-winning writer Rebecca Nagle says that the legacy of colonization is a problem not just for Indigenous peoples but a problem for US democracy. In her conversation with host Douglas Haynes, she highlights the tension between the US imagining itself as a democracy versus acting like an empire. The history of Andrew Jackson ignoring the US Constitution is a key example of this, and the subject of her new book, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land out now from HarperCollins. In it, Nagle untangles the long history of US Supreme Court cases addressing Indigenous sovereignty and the “unrelenting policy of ethnic cleansing” that drove her ancestors West into what is now Oklahoma. 

Rebecca Nagle is an award-winning journalist and a citizen of Cherokee Nation. She is the writer and host of the podcast This Land. Her writing on Native representation, federal Indian law, and tribal sovereignty has been featured in the Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Guardian, USA Today, Indian Country Today, and other publications. She is a Peabody Award nominee and the recipient of the American Mosaic Journalism Prize, Women’s Media Center’s Exceptional Journalism Award, and numerous honors from the Native American Journalist Association. Nagle lives in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

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On today’s two part show, Esty Dinur speaks about what can be done to strengthen movements around immigration and other social justice issues. First Dinur speaks with photojournalist David Bacon who has a long history of documenting and fighting for immigrant rights. Bacon’s most recent piece in Dollars and Sense is Domestic Workers: A New Face of Solidarity. He joins the program to discuss what needs to be done to protect the most vulnerable.

Then Dinur speaks with organizer Nicole Carty about her recent article for the Intercept titled How to Fortify Against the Trump Agenda While There’s Still Time: A violent, white supremacist regime is coming, but there is room to organize — and capture the backlash when it fails. They discuss the impact the Trump administration will likely have on the movement to build an truly multiracial democracy.

Image: Norma Palacios (front) with domestic workers rallying in Los Angeles on behalf of striking workers at an Audi plant in Mexico, February 10, 2024. Credit: © David Bacon.

David Bacon is a writer and photographer, and former factory worker and union organizer. His latest book is More Than a Wall/Mas que un Muro (Colegio de la Frontera Norte, 2021).

Nicole Carty is a political strategist and movement organizer based in New York. Nicole currently serves as Executive Director of Get Free a youth-led movement to reckon with and repair the harm of white supremacy in order to realize a multiracial democracy for all.

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On today’s show, Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno joins host Jade Iseri-Ramos to discuss her new book How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America. The book profiles a bilingual K-12 program and highlights how schools reinforce Latinx as a radicalized group. At the heart of Chávez-Moreno’s argument is the understanding that race is created to Otherize and oppress groups and that the construction of Latinx as a race serves to situate the group in a racial hierarchy. Chávez-Moreno argues that without intentional anti-racist and anti-race teaching, school programs centered around Latinx culture and Spanish language perpetuate racialization.

Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno is an award-winning researcher, qualitative social scientist, and assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the Departments of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and Education. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education in Curriculum and Instruction.

Chávez-Moreno’s research has been published in top-tier journals such as Review of Educational Research, Educational Researcher, American Educational Research Journal, Research in the Teaching of English, and Journal of Teacher Education. Dr. Chávez-Moreno’s research has been recognized with multiple awards, including from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division G Social Contexts in Education; AERA Latinx Research Issues Special Interest Group (SIG); AERA Bilingual Education Research SIG; American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education; and National Association of Bilingual Education. Notably, she was a fellow of the 2020–2022 cohort of NCTE Research Foundation’s Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color, and she was awarded a 2022 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. Most recently the National Council for Teachers of English awarded the 2023 Alan C. Purves Award to her article in Research in the Teaching of English, “The continuum of racial literacies: Teacher practices countering whitestream bilingual education.”

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Originally aired on February 21st 2024,  Professor Michael Bernard-Donals tells WORT that the conversation around precarity in higher education has become more common in recent years. “We’re talking about it in terms of the elimination of tenure protections or the threat of the elimination of tenure protections for faculty members,” he says. “That precarity is visible in terms of the job insecurity of non-tenure track faculty and instructional staff. It’s seen in the reach in from legislatures around the country, on what faculty members can teach, or what they can say in public spaces.”

Professor Bernard-Donals joins host Diego Alegría to talk about his latest book The Vulnerability of Public Higher Education, which traces the history and the current crisis of public higher education in the U.S. through the work, the rights, and the responsibilities of faculty.

Michael Bernard-Donals is Chaim Perelman Professor of Rhetoric and Culture and Nancy Hoefs Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He served as UW-Madison Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff, and he is now the Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Research on Writing. His previous books include Forgetful Memory: Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust (SUNY Press, 2009) and Figures of Memory: The Rhetoric of Displacement at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (SUNY Press, 2016).

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Construction of a new permanent men’s shelter on Madison’s Eat Side began earlier this year. The shelter, which is scheduled to open at the end of 2025, is one of several programs aimed at supporting a growing number of people experiencing homelessness. On today’s show, Douglas Haynes speaks with Karla Thennes, Executive Director of Porchlight, a nonprofit organization that is Dane County’s largest provider of low cost housing and homeless services and the organization that will operate the new shelter. Haynes is also joined by Alisha Henning, who’s Volunteer Coordinator with The Beacon, a homeless Day Resource Center operated by Catholic Charities Diocese of Madison.

They highlight the growing homelessness issue, noting a 48% increase in the Beacon’s daily census from 2022 to 2023 and a 51% increase in 2024. They discuss the challenges of affordable housing, with rent increases outpacing fixed incomes, particularly affecting the elderly. Both organizations emphasize the need for comprehensive services, including mental health support and employment training.

Photo by Chali Pittman for WORT News

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