A Public Affair

On June 5, Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt charged the Waupun Correctional Institution’s warden, Randall Hepp, with misconduct in public office. Eight other Waupun employees face charges of felony inmate abuse. Three of them are also charged with misconduct.

On today’s show, host Esty Dinur talks with Sheriff Schmidt about the arrests and ongoing problems at Waupun. We’re also joined by attorney Lonnie Story who represents the families of Donald Maier, Cameron Williams, and Tyshun Lemons who died in Waupun, and whose deaths are the cause of the arrests earlier this month.

At issue is the ongoing lockdown, which the state’s Department of Corrections calls “modified movement.” But Sheriff Schmidt says that the lockdown didn’t contribute to the deaths. 

Attorney Story also represents the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit. He says his clients are asking for restoration of medical, psychological, and dental treatment along with better conditions in the prison in general. Waupun is an over 125-years old facility that is infested with rodents and insects and where inmates are exposed to contaminated water. Since the warden at Waupun has been removed, attorney Story says a receiver should be appointed to run the prison. 

Attorney Lonnie Story represents the families of three men who died in Waupun Correctional Institution in the last year. He also represents the 10 lead plaintiffs from Waupun who have filed a class action lawsuit demanding an end to the facility-wide lockdown.

Dale Schmidt is the Dodge County Sheriff, President of the Badger State Sheriffs’ Association and President, and the Dodge County Executive Law Enforcement Association.

Image courtesy of Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

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On today’s show, host Allen Ruff discusses Israel’s military complex with author and political activist, Jeff Halper. They cover Israeli armaments, including F35s and training programs in the US, like the one at Georgia State University. Halper has written about instruments of population control and the use of Gaza as a “laboratory” to create “permanent pacification.”

Halper argues that you have to understand settler colonialism to understand what’s happening in Gaza right now. He defines settler colonialism as what happens when one population arrives in a place with the intent to take over. The occupying group then invents a narrative about why they’re entitled to the land rather than the indigenous population. In combination with ethno-nationalism, narratives of entitlement form the basis for Zionism. 

Settler colonialism is a “unilateral” project, says Halper, who adds that we have to adopt an anti-colonial language. That means getting rid of the idea that there are “two sides.” 

Jeff Halper is an anthropologist, Israeli anti-occupation activist, and founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He is also the author of multiple books including, War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification (2015).

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The local partisan primary election is coming up on August 13, 2024. And in the second episode in our series of interviews with candidates for Dane County Executive, we’re joined by Wes Sparkman who entered the race in February. 

News Director, Chali Pittman, spoke with Sparkman about his experience in leadership and management, including his work with Dane County, participation on several local advisory boards, and over 10 years working for the Madison Police and Fire Commission. 

Sparkman says he’s running to ensure that “Everyone in the county gets an opportunity to grow and thrive.” This is a big task that he says will require lots of listening, helping communities throughout Dane County sustain their growth, developing social service programs for mental health and addiction, and finding more opportunities for subsidized and “fair” housing. 

Wes Sparkman has worked in local government for over two decades. He’s the director of the Tamara D. Grigsby Office for Equity and Inclusion, where he works to implement equal employment, civil rights, racial and social justice, and organizational change to establish equity in public service. 

Photo by Chali Pittman for WORT.

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REAP Food Group was founded in the late ’90s, and officially registered as a nonprofit in 2002. For the past two and a half decades, it’s worked to connect the community with local food producers.

You might know REAP best through the Farm Fresh Atlas, a directory that helps consumers find local food in Wisconsin.  A print edition of the Atlas might be hanging on your fridge. It’s also now a web database, and the 2024 edition details over 400 farms, farmers’ markets, and producers.

The Farm Fresh Atlas is one example of REAP’s collaboration and understanding of regional food systems. Now, REAP is heading up a new, USDA-funded collaborative to create a food systems action plan for the Dane County region.

The action plan is dependent on input from local farmers, food retailers, institutional buyers, food banks and pantries, community organizations, and local residents. Our guests today liken the project to putting together a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle in order to build a more complete picture of our local food system.

REAP’s Executive Director Phil Kauth and Events Coordinator/Farm Fresh Atlas Cooardinator Noah Bloedorn join us in the studio for more on the action plan. Bill Warner, of Snug Haven Farm and the Dane County Food Council, also joins us for a conversation about growing south-central Wisconsin’s food systems.

We also talk about other new projects from REAP, including “Mosaic Dinners,” a storytelling and community-building project in partnership with Dane County Food Collective and UW-Madison Art Department Artist-in-Residence Marlon F. Hall.

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“I’ve never felt more Jewish than I do nowadays,” says A Public Affair host Esty Dinur near the end of an hour with radical ideas about combating antisemitism and divorcing it from Zionism. We start the show with Professor Omer Bartov who explains his personal journey from writing about the Holocaust to writing on Israel-Palestine and how the actions of Israel has led to an increase in antisemitism.

Then Esty talks with Ben Lorber and Shane Burley about their brand book Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism. Ben and Shane will be doing a book talk at A Room of One’s Own on Tuesday, June 25th at 6pm.

Omer Bartov is Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies in the Department of History at Brown University. His many books include Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples (2021), a  novel titled The Butterfly and the Axe, which was published in January 2023 and Genocide, The Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis

Ben Lorber is senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, a social movement think tank, where he studies and publishes on antisemitism and white nationalism (analyst Chip Berlet was s guest on this show). He previously worked as national campus organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, supporting justice driven young Jewish communities across the country, and has written extensively on antisemitism, Israel/Palestine and Jewish identity. 

Shane Burley is the author of several books on the far-right and social movements, and has contributed to NBC News, Jewish Currents, Al Jazeera, The Baffler, The Daily Beast, Haaretz, In These Times, Yes! Magazine, Tikkun, and The Oregon Historical Quarter.

Image of Bartov by Bildungsstätte Anne Frank, CC BY 3.0, Link

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Emma Claire Foley is a writer and filmmaker based in New York. Her writing and commentary has appeared in Newsweek, NBC, the Guardian, and elsewhere.

Image by The Nation Museum in the Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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William Freeman was a 15-year-old in the the early nineteenth century who was convicted of a crime he insisted he didn’t commit. He was sentenced to five years of hard labor in Auburn prison in New York State. He, and the rest of the prisoners, worked without pay, and when Freeman challenged the system, it had violent repercussions.

In her latest book Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit, Robin Bernstein uses Freeman’s story to lay out the twisted history of anti-Black racism in the prison for profit industry. Robin joins host Ali Muldrow to talk about the book and the way the North invented profit-driven prison labor.

Dr. Robin Bernstein is the Dillon Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. She is the author of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, which won five awards. Her latest book is Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit (University of Chicago Press, May 2024).

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Today, we kick off the first of our candidate interviews for Dane County Executive. The seat that longtime Executive Joe Parisi recently retired from in the middle of his term. Four candidates will face off in the August primary, and Dana Pellebon’s name will be the first on the ballot. Pellebon joins WORT News Director Chali Pittman to discuss her priorities for the county and highlight some of the biggest issues facing Dane County–including housing access, criminal justice reform, and county funding.

Dana Pellebon is the executive director of the Rape Crisis Center and formerly headed up housing and operations at Porchlight. Until this spring, she served as a Dane County Board Supervisor, representing much of Fitchburg for District 33. A theater professional for decades, Pellebon has directed, acted and produced many works and participated in theater groups across Madison. 

Photo by Chali Pittman for WORT

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With the 2024 Madison Jazz Fest is in full swing, A Public Affair host welcomes some Madison locals to talk about two jazz legends with Wisconsin ties. First we talk with Dean Robbins about his new children’s book The Fastest Drummer: Clap Your Hands for Viola Smith! The book, which is illustrated by Susanna Chapman, offers a fun and bright biography of Smith, who started her nearly 100-year-long career at the age of 13 and is recognized as one of the few female professional drummers of the early twentieth century.

Then, Douglas is joined in studio by two folks behind the new documentary film String Theory: The Richard Davis Method. Artistic Director of the Richard Davis Foundation for Youth Bassists (RDYB) Peter Dominguez and RDYB Executive Director Catherine Harris join the program to talk about Richard Davis’s work, legacy, and impact on their own lives. The film is showing at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art on Thursday June 13th, 2024 at 7pm for free as part of the Jazz Fest.

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

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On today’s special pledge drive show, Esty Dinur talks with historian Lauren Benton on her new book They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence. The book is a historical account of how imperialism has redefined war and peace. She joins Esty to talk about the ongoing impact of imperial violence on indigenous peoples worldwide and the unequal nature of truces and ceasefires.

Lauren Benton is the Barton M. Biggs Professor of History at Yale University and recipient of the Toynbee Prize for significant contributions to global history. Her books include A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 and (with Lisa Ford) Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850.

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