A Public Affair

You can not walk down the street, turn on your tv, or scroll social media without being reminded that we are in a presidential election year. In November, Former President Donald Trump will go up against Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris is the first woman of color–a Black woman–to running for president as the Democratic Party’s nominee in US history.

On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow, who herself is a Black woman holding a elected seat, is joined by two other local elected officials. County Supervisor April Kigeya and Madison Alder Sabrina Madison are in the studio to talk with Muldrow about the Harris-Walz campaign, the role of race in elections, and reflect on their own experiences.

April Kigeya is the 2nd Vice Chair of the Dane County Board and has a passion for working with children & families; underrepresented communities and others who can’t advocate for themselves. To that end, she is heavily involved in her community: She sits on the Board of Directors for Dane Dances, is Chair of the Overture Center’s Community Advisory Board, and is a member of the Executive Committee for the Democratic Party of Dane County. She is also a member of the African American Opioid Coalition and the UW-Madison Black Cultural Center Advisory Board.

Kigeya was also the first person of color to serve on the Middleton Police Commission and served as the Co-Chair from 2021-2022 and was named one of Wisconsin’s most influential Black Leaders in 2020.

Sabrina Madison is Alder for District 17 on Madison’s Common Council. She is committed to addressing systemic issues and advocating for equitable policies. Sabrina is also the founder and CEO of The Progress Center for Black Women. There Madison is dedicated to fostering a community where Black women can excel as influential CEOs, business owners, and community leaders. She is also a community organizer, poet, master collaborator, and mother. 

Madison has spearheaded transformative events like the Black Women’s Leadership Conference, the Conversation Mixtape, the Black Business Expo, and the Black Excellence Youth Conference. She has been recognized by Essence as one of 100 Woke Black Women, the Best of Madison Business | Brian Howell Excellence in Innovation Award, and acknowledgment as one of Greater Madison’s most influential figures by In Business Magazine.

The post Discussing the Election with Sabrina Madison and April Kigeya appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The last night of the Republican National Convention featured a speech from Hulk Hogan, during which the pro wrestling icon would proceed to remove his jacket, tear through his shirt, and yell “Let Trump-o-Mania run wild!”. The crowd went wild. The same night also featured Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, who introduced former President Trump before his nomination.

Why did a wrestler speak during one of the nation’s premiere political events? Part of the answer is that “Trump has been a fan of professional wrestling since he was a child,” says journalist Josephine Riesman. “He really, really respects wrestlers and wrestling promoters.”

Riesman has spent years studying researching the evolution of pro wrestling. She unfolds that history while telling the biography of Vince McMahon, co-founder of the modern WWE, in her recent book Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America (Atria Books, 2023). The book was a New York Times bestseller and was listed as one of NPR’s “Books We Love” for 2023.

The book isn’t only for fans of pro wrestling. It’s also for those new to pro wrestling, who are trying to understand the modern political moment and the rise of Donald Trump. Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame. McMahon is one of Donald Trump’s closest friends. He and his wife, Linda, are major Republican donors. Linda served in Trump’s cabinet as the administrator of the Small Business Administration.

And in tracking the evolution of the modern pro wrestling movement — and its playful distinction between fact, fiction, and fantasy — Ringmaster a useful lens for the modern Republican Party.

Riesman joins News Director Chali Pittman to unpack concepts like kayfabe and neo-kayfabe, the entanglements between Trump and McMahon, and why Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt away at the RNC was a perfectly logical conclusion for this moment.

About the guest: 

Josephine Riesman is a journalist and essayist, as well as the author of the biographies Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America and True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee. She was a longtime staffer at New York magazine and its culture site, Vulture, and her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, VICE, The New Republic, and elsewhere. You can follow her on Instagram @josie.zone.

The post The Neo-Kayfabe of Pro Wrestling and the RNC, with Journalist Josephin... appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

“I’m profoundly motivated this Labor Day,” Jon Shelton tells A Public Affair host Douglas Haynes. Shelton, Vice-President for Higher Education of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin, joins the program to discuss the labor movement in Wisconsin’s public universities. We also hear from Daniel Levitin, co-president TAA-Madison, the labor union representing all graduate student workers at UW–Madison.

They have this conversation in light of a recent regent vote to lay off 32 tenured-faculty at UW-Milwaukee, the creation of new protest guidelines for UW-Madison, and five UW campuses shutting down.

Photo by Jonah Brown on Unsplash

The post Labor Organizing in Higher Ed with Jon Shelton and Daniel Levitin appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, guest host Jeliel Peña de First speaks with Nindik Figueredo about the ongoing election crisis in Venezuela. On July 28th Venezuela held a presidential election in which opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez ran against President Nicolas Maduro. Despite many Venezuelans’ hope that they could get out from under the rule of Maduro, the National Electoral Council announced that Maduro won with 51% of the vote. However, the Council did not supply the printed voting machine receipts to support the win. 

Meanwhile the opposition party has published thousands of receipts that support their belief that Edmundo Gonzalez is the winner. Their evidence shows Gonzalez receiving about 70% of the votes. Since election night, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets and more than 2,000 have been arrested and more than 20 people have been killed.

Figueredo stands in solidarity with the protestors. She shares her experience organizing a peaceful protest on August 17 in Madison. Figueredo and Peña de First also talk about the work of Maria Corina Machado who was the co-founder and leader of the vote-monitoring group Súmate as well as the founder of the Political Party Vente Venezuela.

Nindik Figueredo is from Barquisimeto, Venezuela where she studied law at Fermín Toro University. In 2017, facing the growing violence and repression in her country, Nindik decided to emigrate to the United States. Since 2021, she has been part of the team at Voces de la Frontera, where she serves as a community organizer for the immigrant workers network. In her role, she coordinates efforts to offer educational workshops on rights and protections for immigrant workers, significantly contributing to the empowerment of her community. She is also a mother and wife. 

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The post An Update on Venezuela’s Presidential Election with Nindik Figueredo... appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.



As students, teachers, and families get ready for the 2024-2025 school year, host Allen Ruff speaks with social critic and educator, Henry Giroux.

They talk about how colleges and universities cracked down on student dissent and protest last spring in response to Israel’s war on Palestine and US universities’ complicity in that violence. Some students will arrive on campuses this fall and find that their ability to demonstrate and protest is more limited and potentially criminalized.

With this new reality in mind, Giroux and Ruff decipher the reactionary trend to discipline and punish, and Girioux says we can see the repressive state apparatus at work in the policing of students and faculty protestors. 

Giroux says that young people understand that domination is economic, intellectual, and pedagogical. And he adds that educational institutions are crucial sites of struggle within democracy and they should be defended. He says that educators should be given more power and that students shouldn’t be treated as passive receivers in the education system. 

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.

The post Back to School with Henry Giroux appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The city of Madison is about to enter a new era of public transportation. On September 22, the long awaited Bus Rapid Transit or BRT is scheduled to launch the new East-West line. The BRT launch is the culmination of Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway’s MetroForward initiative made possible by federal funding for infrastructure development. 

On today’s show, host Ali Muldrow is joined by Mayor Rhodes-Conway and Justin Stuehrenberg, the General Manager of Metro Transit. They talk about the Mayor’s vision for transportation in the city and how the BRT line developed even through the pandemic. 

They inform listeners about the park and ride facilities at the East and West terminus, so if you’re driving in from outside Madison, you can still benefit from the BRT line and avoid parking downtown. Mayor Rhodes-Conway and Stuehrenberg also discuss how the BRT line was designed with high school students in mind. They say that the new electric buses are better for the environment and that having better transportation options is crucial for addressing housing concerns as well. 

“Creating a good transportation choice will make life better for everyone,” says Mayor Rhodes-Conway. 

Find out more about the BRT upgrades at mymetrobus.com and send your questions and comments to [email protected].

Image courtesy of the City of Madison.

The post Get Ready for BRT with Mayor Rhodes-Conway appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

Last month, the Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH), put on a rally the day before the Republican National Convention. The “We All Belong” rally was a multi-racial, interfaith, and ecumenical gathering that brought together over 750 participants who celebrated the idea of the Beloved Community. 

It was at that rally that host Sara Gabler met today’s guest, Amanda Tyler. At the rally, faith leaders spoke about the ideology of white Christian Nationalism–an ideology that Tyler and others say has co-opted Christianity’s teachings by substituting the message of Jesus to “love thy neighbor” with xenophobia and a thirst for political power.

On today’s show, Tyler talks about how white Christian nationalism is an ethno-nationalist identity rather than a theological position. Christian nationalists want to enshrine a very contemporary and very exceptionalist vision of Christianity into American political and civic life. And they’re finding some success in states like Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, as Tyler has written about. But Tyler shares how groups like Christians Against Christian Nationalism support the separation of church and state with theology and Biblical passages. 

Amanda Tyler is the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, also known as BJC. Tyler is the lead organizer of BJC’s Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign and co-host of the BJC’s Respecting Religion podcast.  She is a member of the Texas and US Supreme Court Bar, and she has worked in Congress, private practice, and as a law clerk for a federal judge. In 2022 and 2023, Tyler testified to Congress about the threat of white Christian nationalism, and she has a book called How to End Christian Nationalism coming out in October from Broadleaf Books.

The post Christians Fighting Christian Nationalism with Amanda Tyler appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, host Karma Chávez returns to chat with education scholar Rachelle Winkle-Wagner about her new book, The Chosen We: Black Women’s Empowerment in Higher Education. They talk about how, as a white woman, Winkle-Wagner built trust with the Black women she interviewed for the book, and how her relationship to Black feminist theory–especially the idea of collective liberation–developed over the years. 

Winkle-Wagner also shares her findings on how Black women navigate race and gender at HBCUs and predominantly white institutions (PWIs). She offers suggestions for how PWI’s like UW–Madison can better support Black women, especially at a time of cuts to diversity, equity, and inclusion funding.

Winkle-Wagner’s book focuses on the role of community support and is drawn from research conducted over the course of a decade. It documents the experiences and oral histories of 105 accomplished, college-educated Black women who graduated between 1954 and 2014 from both HBCUs and predominantly white institutions. Winkle-Wagner’s findings demonstrate that maintaining connection and community among themselves—a Chosen We—has been the primary way that Black women have persevered and thrived in and beyond higher education for generations.

Rachelle Winkle-Wagner is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She earned her PhD from Indiana University in Education Policy Studies with a concentration in higher education and minors in sociology and qualitative inquiry. Prior to coming to UW–Madison, she held positions on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She is the author of nine books, including The Unchosen We: Black Women and Identity in Higher Education.

The post How Black Women in Higher Ed Support Each Other with Rachelle Winkle-W... appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

On today’s show, Esty Dinur hosted a roundtable about the side of the Democratic National Convention that doesn’t normally get talked about. First we heard from Halah Ahmad about the way the DNC avoided talking about the war in Gaza, and how the Harris campaign looks likely to continue the Biden Administration’s tepid response to the genocide. Then Nick Wylie from the Public Media Institute and WORT’s own news team of Chali Pittman, Faye Parks, and Carlos Dávalos shared what they saw during their reporting in Chicago, including the disconnect between the frustrated protesters and the jubilant convention-goers.

Halah Ahmad is an activist and spokesperson for Listen to Wisconsin. Nick Wylie is the managing director for the Public Media Institute based out of Chicago.

Image courtesy of Chali Pittman/WORT News Department

The post A Dissonant DNC Holds Itself Above Protesters appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The DNC is wrapping up this week in a celebratory mood, but with the Gaza War hanging over the convention. Guest Bill Ayers joins the show to talk about the state of left activism and protest in the light of the current moment. He points out that the situation is similar to the famous Democratic Convention of ’68, but has several key differences, including the speed and power of the peace movement in making its demands heard. The conversation also touches on the contradiction of movement making when it comes into contact with electoral politics, and how left-leaning people need to look beyond the vote to make their voices heard.

Bill Ayers is a Chicago-based organizer, a former fugitive, a retired education professor from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an activist in the abolition movement. His book “When Freedom in the Question, Abolition is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Action” is available through Beacon Press.

Image Courtesy of Beacon Press

The post Bill Ayers and the Way Forward for Abolition and Liberation appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.