A Public Affair

As the now regional war between Israel and Hamas continues, more than 43,000 people in Gaza have been killed. At least 100,000 have been injured. These numbers are most definitely an under count. Today’s first guest is Wilhelmi Massay, a critical care and trauma nurse based in Omaha, spent 6 weeks treating the sick and injured in Gaza. He tells host Esty Dinur that “Israel is committing it’s final solution,” comparing the ongoing war to the Nazi Holocaust. Massay is one of the many health care workers who have signed a letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris  demanding a ceasefire.

We continue the conversation with Raed Jarrar, advocacy director for DAWN. Jarrar enlightens us on the strategic plans that are being enacted by the Israeli military: blocking humanitarian aid, creating military corridors, using starvation as a method to drive out the remaining population, and consolidating Israeli control over Gaza through long-term settlement expansion. Jarrar calls the effort an ethnic cleansing. 

Photo Israeli West Bank barrier, graffiti Montecruz Foto, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Earlier this year, the Jewish advocacy group Anti-Defamation League reported a record breaking  8,873 of antisemitic incidents in 2023. That is an increase of 140% compared to 2022. In light of this reality, host Ali Muldrow sits down with the director of Edot Midwest Regional Jewish Diversity and Racial Justice Collaborative Shahanna McKinney-Baldon. They discuss the reality of being both Black and Jewish in a time of rising hatred.

About our guest:

Shahanna McKinney-Baldon is the Founding Executive Director of Edot Midwest Regional Jewish Diversity and Racial Justice Collaborative. She is a longtime educator in Jewish and public school settings.  In addition to leading Edot, McKinney-Baldon works at The University of Wisconsin-Madison Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Shahanna sits on a number of boards including the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors for Reconstructing Judaism and the Jews of Color and Allies Advisory for the Reconstructionist Movement.

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Early voting is open, and hundreds of thousands across Wisconsin have already cast a ballot. As presidential candidates rain down on Wisconsin in the lead-up to Election Day next Tuesday, we take a look at an item on your ballot: another constitutional amendment.

The referendum was authored and placed on the ballot by the Wisconsin Legislature. It would change a word in the Wisconsin constitution, flipping every to only US citizens allowed to cast a ballot. If approved by a simple majority of voters next Tuesday, the amendment would prevent municipalities from permitting people who are noncitizens from voting in local elections.

No municipality in Wisconsin currently allows noncitizens to vote. And people without citizenship are federally prohibited from voting in federal elections, like for President or Congress, by a sweeping 1996 law. A handful of municipalities in just three states permit people without citizenship to vote in local elections. So, too, in Washington DC, which in 2022 approved the measure.

But — should the right to vote in local elections be expanded? How does this measure in our nation’s long history of expanding suffrage? How does this ballot measure tie into false claims of illegal voting and anti-immigrant rhetoric during this presidential year?

“The struggle to expand democracy has always been a political fight,” says one of our guests, journalist John Nichols.

Wisconsin is one of eight states this November with the same ballot measure. UW-Madison professor Benjamin Márquez says in those states — which include  Kentucky, Idaho, South Carolina, Missouri, Oklahoma, North Carolina and South Carolina— he expects voter approval to be “a clean sweep.” 

About the guests: 

John Nichols is associate editor at The Capital Times, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, and author of more than a dozen books, including It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism (co-authored with Senator Bernie Sanders). You can follow him on X at @nicholsuprising.

Benjamin Márquez is Professor of Political Science and Chican@ and Latin@ Studies at UW-Madison, where he teaches and researches on Latino and American politics and Mexican American social movement organizations. He’s the author of many publications, including a comprehensive political history of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). 

Professor Márquez mentions a book during the interview, he’s referring The Right to Vote (2000) by Alexander Keyssar.

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College Uncovered, from GBH News in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, is a podcast that pulls back the curtain on higher education and expose problems and struggles facing students, administrators, and professors living and working on campuses today. The podcast is on their third season. On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes speak with hosts Kirk Carapezza and Jon Marcus. They highlight the disproportionate impact of closures on rural areas, the debate over student loan debt forgiveness, and the politicization of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. They also touch on the importance of civil discourse in higher education and the potential consequences of the upcoming election on campus policies.

Kirk Carapezza is the Managing Editor and Correspondent for higher education at GBH News. Previously, Kirk has reported for Wisconsin Public Radio in Madison, and Vermont Public Radio in Montpelier.

Jon Marcus teaches journalism at Boston College and Northeastern University. He writes primarily on higher education. A former magazine editor, he has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Wired, Medium.com and the Times (U.K.) Higher Education magazine, among others.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez

Since the deadly attack on an Israeli music festival on October 7, 2023, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has ramped up to what is now a regional war and Hamas has become a widely vilified group. But what and who is Hamas? On today’s show, host Esty Dinur speaks with Helena Cobban, who co-authored Understanding Hamas: And Why That Matters with Rami G. Khouri. Cobban highlights Hamas’ origins in the as a political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, its rise due to dissatisfaction with the Oslo Accords, and its evolution from an anti-Jewish to an anti-Zionist stance

Helena Cobban  is a writer and researcher on international affairs who lives in Washington DC. She is president of Just World Educational and former columnist for The Christian Science Monitor.  She is the author or co-author of several previous books including The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (1984), Re-engage! American and the World After Bush (2008), and When the Rain Returns: Toward Justice and Reconciliation in Palestine and Israel (2007).

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With election day less than two weeks away, today’s show centers upon the choices presented to those on the left. With even John Kelly calling Donald Trump a fascist in recent days, Kamala Harris’s vice president position making her a key enabler for Israel’s ongoing war, and the election results hanging on the votes of just a few swing states, leftist are sitting with an either or neither decision.

Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay

The post Max Elbaum on MAGA, Gaza, and the 2024 Election appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness month, and on today’s show, host Ali Muldrow explores what help is available and what measure are being taken to prevent homicide by an intimate partner. First she speaks with Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes about how police show up in cases of domestic abuse and the just announced the Family Justice/Sensitive Crimes Unit.

Then Muldrow, speaks with Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS) Executive Director Shannon Barry. DAIS offers a wide array of crisis intervention and prevention programs, including a 24-hour Help Line, legal advocacy, support groups, and emergency safety planning. DAIS is the only domestic violence shelter in all of Dane County. They discuss national and local trends and complexities of seeking help. 

DAIS’s help line is (608) 251-4445 or text at (608) 420-4638

Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash

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Early in-person voting begins today in Wisconsin, and we are just two week away from election day. Voters across the region will decided on state-wide referendums, and weigh in on school district and municipal levy increases.

On the ballot for Madison voters, is the question:

Under state law, the increase in the levy of the City of Madison for the tax to be imposed for the next fiscal year, 2025, is limited to 2.97%, which results in a levy of $296,149,162. Shall the City of Madison be allowed to exceed this limit and increase the levy for the next fiscal year, 2025, for the purpose of funding police, fire, garbage collection, parks and library operations and other City services and operations, by a total of 7.4%, which results in a levy of $318,149,462, and on an ongoing basis, include the increase of $22,000,000 for each fiscal year going forward?

On today’s show, host Carousel Bayrd chats briefly with Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway about the referendum and Madison’s current budget deficit. Then, Bayrd really digs into the numbers with Madison’s newest alder, John Guequierre. He lays out what will be cut if the referendum fails, and how we arrived at such a critical moment. More information about the proposed budget and referendum can be found on the City of Madison website.

Photo by Josh Sorenson on Unsplash

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We’re joined on the show today by renowned Palestinian theologian Reverend Dr. Mitri Raheb, for a conversation on the moral and theological dimensions of the war on Palestine.

Rev. Dr. Raheb is the most widely-published Palestinian theologian to date. His latest is Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible (Orbis Books, 2023), which examines Israel’s expansionist ideology and its misuse of biblical language to justify the oppression of Palestinians.

The Reverend Professor joins host Esty Dinur for his perspective on the genocide in Gaza. Dinur and Raheb delve into the parallels between Israel’s settler-colonialism and histories of genocide, as well as the complex dynamics of Christian Zionism. Rev. Dr. Raheb also deconstructs Israel’s expansionist ideology, taking aim at the genocidal theology referenced by Prime Minister Netanyahu along with Christian Zionists and the complicity of Western nations.

Rev. Raheb is also the Founder and President of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, the first and only institution of higher education in Palestine focused on the performing arts, visual arts, and cultural heritage. And, he’s the founder of several nongovernmental organizations, including the Christian Academic Forum for Citizenship in the Arab World (CAFCAW).

He is a founding and board member of the National Library of Palestine, and a founding member of Bright Stars of Bethlehem. He is an elected member to the Palestinian National Council as well as the Palestinian Central Council. You can find more at mitriraheb.org and follow him on Twitter at @RahebM.

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Just yesterday, the Nebraska Supreme Court ordered the state’s elections officials to let Nebraskans with past felony convictions vote.

The decision comes as a new report finds that four million Americans won’t be able to vote this year due to their felony convictions. That’s about one out of 59 adult citizens, or 1.7% of the total US voting eligible population. For African Americans, the rate is three times higher: one in 22 people of voting age is disenfranchised.

All states, except for Maine and Vermont, restrict voting rights based on criminal convictions. Half the states in the nation including Wisconsin deny voting rights to people on felony-level probation or parole. Ten states deny voting rights to some or all of the individuals even after they’ve finished out their prison, parole, or probation sentences and are “off paper.”

The report is titled Locked Out 2024: Four Million Denied Voting Rights Due to a Felony Conviction. It was released earlier this month by The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy organization based in Washington D.C that works for a fair and effective criminal justice system.

Today on the show, host Allen Ruff speaks with Nicole D. Porter. She’s Senior Director of Advocacy at The Sentencing Project, where she focuses on state and local efforts to reform sentencing, voting rights, and confronting racial disparities in the criminal legal system. Her areas of expertise include research and grassroots support around challenging racial disparities, felony disenfranchisement, prison closures and prison reuse. You can follow her work on Twitter @nicoleporter.

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