A Public Affair

On today’s pledge drive special, host Allen Ruff welcomes back listener-favorite Mouin Rabbani to help us understand the current state of the war in Israel-Palestine. They discuss the International Criminal Court’s warrant for arrest against Netanyahu, question Israel’s willingness to end the war, and highlight US involvement.

Mouin Rabbani is a researcher, analyst, and commentator specializing in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He is the Co-Editor of Jadaliyya.

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Sunday, June 16th is Father’s Day. It is also open day for Madison’s very own top level softball team! For the first time, the Madison Night Mares will take the field at Warner Park. On today’s special edition of A Public Affair host Ali Muldrow is joined in the studio by Marketing and Operations Manager Savanna Rainey and player Rylee Rogers. 

They shine a light on what fans can expect from the team and talk about the importance of coaching, role models, and supportive families.

Rylee Rogers (left) is from Belmont, Wisconsin. She is a freshman outfielder and catcher at Madison College.

Savanna Rainey (right) is the Marketing and Operations Manager for the Madison Night Mares. She is a former catcher from Verona who went on to play at UW-Madison and Howard University.

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Last spring, Madison received its first F-35 despite years of community resistance. The Air National Guard has eight that are currently stationed at Truax air field. That number is slated to more than double in the next year. For those of us living in the Madison area, especially on the Northside, the deafening sound of the fighter jets now interrupt life on a daily bases–often many times a day.

In light of this reality, host Sara Gabler chats with documentary film maker Karen Akins about her film The Quietest Year and the impact of sound on communities. Retired Air Force colonel and anti-F-35 activist Rosanne Greco, who is featured in the documentary, also joins the show to talk about resistance against the fighter jets.

This week, there are two more listening sessions for community members as part of “Madison F35 Community Connection.” They will be held at 6pm on Thursday, June 6th and 9:30am on Saturday, June 8th. You can learn more here.

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Maria Cleaveland, one of today’s guests, says “coffee is often touched by nine separate hands before you consume the product.” From the people who grew, picked, milled, prepared for export, exported, imported, roasted, sold, and finally brewed, so much tenuous labor happens before the first sip.

Inspired by Anne Connor’s recent article “Climate Solutions for the Future of Coffee” for Civil Eats, host Douglas Haynes speaks with a panel of guests about sustainability challenges as well as gender inequalities facing the coffee supply chain. Maria Cleaveland, Blanca Castro, and Amaris Gutierrez-Ray explain all the complexities that go into your morning cup of coffee.

Former A Public Affair producer Richelle Wilson also joins the show to help fundraise!

About our guests:

Maria Cleaveland is a food & beverage and hospitality professional with business development, strategic planning, finance and operations expertise. A veteran of the early specialty coffee scene, she has built wholesale and licensing businesses at Starbucks, Peet’s & Equator Coffees. Notably, Cleaveland managed Starbucks’ initial expansion into US airports and brings an entrepreneurial spirit to every project. Currently she is advising BrewBird, a venture backed startup reinventing the “single- serve” coffee for the 21st century and serves as Sales Director for the Americas at Urnex Brands, the global leader in specialized cleaning for the coffee sector. In her roles, Maria advances sales with technical acumen while advancing gender equity in her volunteer leadership positions. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the US Women in Coffee, a chapter of the International Women’s Coffee Association (IWCA) and serves on the Leadership Council of the Coffee Technicians Guild.

Amaris Gutierrez-Ray is the VP of Coffee for Joe Coffee Company, a roaster and wholesaler in New York City that owns and operates 25 cafes in the 5 boroughs. She is also the founder of the Women in Coffee Project, and is a member of the US Chapter of the IWCA. A lover of stories and the people that tell them, she has always been interested in the culture and communities of the world in coffee. Both inside and outside the workplace, she’s focused on gender, equity, and positively shifting the human patterns that shape our world.

Blanca María Castro has 16 years within the coffee sector in marketing and trade. Blanca started as Marketing Coordinator for the National Coffee Association of Guatemala. As volunteer, supported IWCA Global projects in Central America and later as Coffee Consultant for the International Trade Center, supporting and forming IWCA Chapters in East Africa. These experiences strengthen her coffee awareness more. Fluent in English, French, German and Spanish, counts with a strong network and experience on public relationships, administration and communications, enabling her to identify needs and solutions to approach the coffee market. In 2016 signed contract with IWCA as first formal staff member, coordinating and guiding IWCA Chapter’s programs and projects as Chapter Relations Manager. Last September, when IWCA celebrated its 20thAnniversary, Blanca was appointed Executive Director of this non-profit organization, leading a new staff team of 4 members serving 34 IWCA Chapters in coffee producing and consuming countries… and counting!

Image provided by Blanca María Castro of a recent grafting competition

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On today’s two part, A Public Affair, host Esty Dinur is first joined by Robert Schoville who is best known in Madison as the founder of the Brazilian percussion group, The Handphibians. Robert has spent the last five years living on the Aegean coast of Turkey with his family. He joins us in the studio to talk with Esty about life under the current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the role of the country in the Middle East, and much more. 

Then, textile artist Laila Hasan joins us by phone. For many years she has brought women textile artists together to develop shared sales opportunities for their hand made items. Many of the artist now the sole economic support for their families. She talks with Esty about her art making as well as the current situation in the West Bank.

Laila will be presenting and selling art in Madison on June 9th from 1:30-3:30 at Madison friends meeting house:  (1704 Roberts Court).  There will be snacks. Learn more here. 

Image “Turkey, Fairy chimneys, Natural landscape” by flaviospugna from Pixabay

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In a recent Truthout article, Stephen Zunes writes that the U.S.’s continued military aid to Israel violates both the Section 6201 of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act and the 1999 Leahy Amendment. “The Biden administration refuses to abide by these laws and neither Congress nor the courts have been willing to enforce them,” he says. Zunes joins host Allen Ruff to discuss his latest piece and the global response to the war happening in Gaza.

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he served as founding director of the program in Middle Eastern Studies. He is currently serving as 2024 Torgny Segerstedt Visiting Research Professor at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Image of International Court of Justice in La Hague, Netherlands by Victor R. Ruiz. Used under the Creative Commons License.

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In May 2023, the COVID-19 public health emergency expired. The declaration had previously laid out all sorts of protocols and funding to combat the deadly respiratory illness. The end of the official public health emergency didn’t mean that COVID-19 disappeared. People are still getting newly infected, and millions now suffer from a complicated immune disease called Long Covid. 

Today, host Chali Pittman marks the one year anniversary of the Biden Administration’s declaration that the COVID pandemic was over with guest Paula Tran. She’s Wisconsin’s State Health Officer at Department of Health Services, and the Administrator for the Division of Public Health. She’s the former director of a group at the Population Health Institute that worked to understand root causes of community health. 

Chali and Paula talk about COVID illness, discuss the impact of vaccines and other preventive measures, and dive in to other public health threats as we are all more aware of community health. 

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

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“What is the climate justice issue in Milwaukee? It’s not an issue of an of a sudden disaster. It’s not a flood. It’s about slow violence,” says Arjit Sen. “It’s something that has been happening historically over time, in which Black and brown communities in Milwaukee are not just segregated, but they’re seen as lacking value.” An exhibit currently showing at the Milwaukee County Historical Society and running through June 1st aims to shine a light on slow violence and the resilience of Milwaukee communities. It is a project of the Humanities Action Lab, a coalition of universities led by Rutgers University-Newark that creates traveling public projects on the past, present, and future of pressing social issues.

The show starts with the national exhibition “Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice.” It is participatory public memory project that aims to share the histories of “frontline” communities who have contributed the least to the climate crisis but bear its heaviest burdens

The Milwaukee specific exhibit, “Unfinished Project,” features the work of the Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures (BLC) Field School, which has been an active partner in Milwaukee neighborhoods like Sherman Park, Midtown, Washington Park, and other areas. It is broken into to work up into three categories: Food Justice, Housing Justice, and urban guardians.

Arijit Sen joins host Douglas Haynes along with Camille Mays, founder of Peace Garden Project in Milwaukee and Wilmarie Medina-Cortes, exhibitions and program manager for the Humanities Action Lab. They discuss the significance of community gardens and public exhibits in addressing climate inequality and shared perspectives on community-led efforts for social justice, healing, and creating safe spaces in neighborhoods affected by violence.

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On today’s two-part show, host Esty Dinur is joined by translator Luke Leafgren and publisher Judith Gurewich to discuss Nasser Abu Srour’s book, The Tale of a Wall. Abu Srour is a Palestinian imprisoned in Israel. His book covers decades of imprisonment and the effect it had on his mind, body, and soul. It’s also a book about the history of Israeli occupation and the struggle of the Palestinian people told with great feeling, lyrical prose, and magical realism. 

In the second-half of the show, historian and journalist Rick Perlstein talks about his recent essay, “The New Anti-Antisemitism.” Perlstein is the author of a four-volume series on the history of America’s political and cultural divisions, and the rise of conservatism, from the 1950s to the election of Ronald Reagan

In his article, Perlstein responds to the requests he gets to make historical parallels between current student encampments in protest of the war on Gaza and student protests in 1968. Perlstein says comparing the current encampments to 1968 takes the focus away from the issue at hand and distracts from recent trends in higher education, such as ongoing erosion of liberal institutions by conservatives. He says a closer comparison would be 1980s anti-apartheid protests.

Image courtesy of Penguin Random House/Other Press.

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In an attempt to silence criticism of Israel, accusations of “anti-Semitism” have increasingly been leveled against those protesting Israel’s Gaza war. To discuss this trend, on today’s show, host Allen Ruff is joined by critic and essayist Abba Solomon. 

They talk about the history of Zionism from the nineteenth century on and how this movement had allies in anti-Semitic groups. Solomon shares his insight into strands of non-Jewish Zionism and how Zionism became such a hegemonic viewpoint in the US. Ruff and Solomon also discuss how younger generations of Jews in the US identify less with the state of Israel than older generations. 

Solomon also weighs in on the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would outlaw criticism of Israel and contribute to an effort to smear and intimidate the oppositional movement on US campuses and elsewhere. This position is often based on the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

While certainly not new, the claim that criticisms of Zionism and Israel are anti-Semitic has reached new heights as growing numbers of dissenting Jewish individuals and organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace have been dubbed “anti-Semitic.” 

Abba Solomon is a researcher of the history of American Jews and Zionism. He is the author of The Miasma of Unity: Jews and Israel and The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech “The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews.” 

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