A Public Affair

A 2015 Child Trends study found that one in 14 children in the US either has (or has had) a parent incarcerated.  That is more than 5 million kids. In a new anthology, Advice to 9th Graders: Stories, Poetry, Art & Other Wisdom, teens impacted by prison share their hurts, fears, dreams, and hopes through personal reflections and creative expression. It also offers insights, practical guidance, empathy, and encouragement to soon-to-be high schoolers.

The anthology is edited by Amy Friedman, with support from Leticia Longoria-Navarro and Victor Trillo, Jr. Amy and Victor join host Ali Muldrow and Dee Star to talk the book. They also tell us about   the impact of the PATHfinder Network which sponsors high school clubs for justice system-impacted teens.

We also hear from 2 students from Parkrose High School in Portland, Tyler Stonebraker and NM. They read pieces from the book and tell us what the PATHfinder Club as meant to them.

Amy Friedman is an author and criminal justice activist. In 2013 she launched POPS the Club, with her husband who is a writer and high school teacher. It is an inclusive space for youth who have been stigmatized and silenced by their experiences with the prison system. From a single club at Venice High School in Los Angeles, POPS the Club expanded to schools across the country. POPS the Club is now a part of the Pathfinder Network.

Victor Trillo Jr. is a founding team member of The PATHfinder Club and also works as a youth mentor. He has a deep understanding of the impact of incarceration on individuals–first as the son of a man who was in prison throughout Victor’s childhood, and later as a prisoner himself. He is a powerful advocate for children of the incarcerated and is the Program Coordinator for The PATHfinder Club and POPS the Club. 

Music used in today’s show includes Long Lantern by Blue Dot Sessions and The Neon Age by Blue Dot Sessions

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The “meet the growers” section on the American Hazelnut Company website reads,

We are not young. We have planted hazelnuts that will outlive us, growing old with our children and grandchildren. As our descendants watch the climate continue to change, the deep hazel roots will hold strong through heavier and heavier storms and longer and longer droughts. We plant hazelnuts because they are resilient. Because they will nourish our communities – human, animal, and soil – for decades as the world changes around them. This will be our legacy.  

The hazelnuts found in Nutella are from European hazelnut trees, but the hazelnuts that are native to the Upper Midwest are the American hazelnut (Corylus americana). They are smaller and sweeter. The shrub-like tree is hardy and blight resistant, making it ideal for our Wisconsin winters, and the changing climate. In the early 2000s eco-conscience farmers across the Midwest began building planting hazelnuts. Today, growers in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Norther Iowa and Illinois are often growing hybrid hazelnuts–a cross between American and European hazelnuts.

On today’s show, host Douglas Haynes talks with hazelnut farmer Paul Ronsheim and UW-Extensions Woody Crops Specialist Jason Fischbach. They discuss the process of growing hazelnuts, how the early spring is impact the plants, and the numerous ways to cook with hazelnuts. You can find a bevy of recipes here.

Photos courtesy of American Hazelnut Company

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Last week, Republican lawmakers in the Arizona state legislature sued President Biden over his designation of the Baaj Nwaajo I’tah Kukeveni Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument. The designation prohibits new uranium mining and preserves more than 900 thousand acres of federal land. We discuss the threat of uranium mining and fight for preservation with the Sierra Club’s Sandy Bahr, but first we talk about an environmental issue closer to home.

Host Esty Dinur is joined by Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC)’s Andy Olsen to discuss an alleged illegal logging operation in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (CNNF). During a recent visit to the forest, Olsen saw thousands of stacked logs that would meet the US Forest Service’s definition for old growth. In a letter that he co-wrote with managing attorney Scott Strand to the CNNF Supervisor, Regional Forester, and District Ranger, he says, “once these trees are logged, we lose the option to protect these mature forests and lose their carbon stores for decades or centuries, even as the perils of climate change become more obvious and pressing.”

Andy Olsen is a senior policy advocate at ELPC, leading the Farm Bill Clean Energy and Rural Solar programs. His work has been reflected in Farm Bill legislation and rules, and thousands of clean energy projects. Andy has worked for years to advance clean energy in Wisconsin, in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors

Sandy Bahr is the director for the Grand Canyon Chapter of Sierra Club. Originally from Michigan, she has made the Sonoran Desert her home for more than 35 years and worked actively on environmental protection issues in Arizona for the past 30.

Image of the Sunfish Timber Sale provided by Andy Olsen

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Following a two day hearing at the High Court in London that concluded yesterday, Two High Court judges will now decided if  Julian Assange, the founder WikiLeaks, will be extradited to the United States to face 17 charges of Espionage. In Kevin Gosztola’s recent article for The Progressive titled “Julian Assange’s Last Chance to Avoid Extradition,” he argues that the Espionage Act has never been used against someone outside the US. He goes on to say that prosecuting Assange, who is an Australian citizen, “gives a green light to countries around the world that it is possible to protect their government secrets by charging international reporters or editors with crimes.”

Kevin Gosztola is the author of the book Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange. He joins A Public Affair host Allen Ruff to remind listeners of the case facing Assange and what is at stake for the  freedom of the press.

Kevin Gosztola is an American journalist, author and YouTuber known for work on whistleblowers cases, WikiLeaks, national security, and civil liberties. Formerly the managing editor of Shadowproof, he writes for The Dissenter.  Kevin produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure.”

photo: Espen Moe, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Today’s guest Professor Michael Bernard-Donals says 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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At the beginning of this month, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes outlined the crime data from 2023 year during his State of Public Safety address. On today’s A Public Affair, host Ali Muldrow sits down with the Chief to talk about the recent trends in Madison and his tenure with the city so far. 

Shon F. Barnes is Madison Police Department’s Chief of Police. He has been in that role since he was hired by the Police and Fire Commission in February of 2021. Previously, he worked as  the Director of Training and Professional Development for the Civilian Office of Police Accountability in Chicago. In 2015, Chief Barnes was named a LEADS Scholar,by the National Institute of Justice for using innovative technology to reduce crime. It was just announced that Chief Barnes will be inducted into the Evidence-Based Policing Hall of Fame this summer.

Photo by Brian Standing for WORT-FM.

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“It’s 2024: an election year. A year many of us are dreading. A Biden and Trump rematch seems inevitable. Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has called it quits, and Nikki Haley has suffered two consecutive primary defeats. Trumpism is strong, stronger even despite his legal woes. Will Trump even be a candidate on the ballot? How will the Trump faithful respond if he’s not? How do we respond if he is and he wins? The January 6 insurrection had many talking of civil war? Is the United States about to enter a second Civil War? Is it already in one for insurrectionist the long awaited day had finally come. The tree of liberty was due for a watering so the blood of patriots and tyrants needed to be shed. Though unsuccessful in overturning the 2020 election, the insurrection served as a preamble of what was to come the 2024 election and assumed governmental takeover by an increasingly reactionary and fascistic right. But is this simply fear mongering on my part, to bandy about fascism and civil war? Is that leftist hyperbole? Or is the threat of civil war real?”

Those are the stakes that today’s host, Andrew Thomas lays out at the beginning of today’s program. Jeff Sharlet, the author of A National Book Critics Circle Finalist The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, joins Andrew to talk about the fracturing nation and the divisive reality in which we live.

The Undertow comes out in paperback on March 5th.

Jeff Sharlet is the New York Times best-selling author or editor of eight books, including The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War and The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. His reporting on LGBTIQ+ rights around the world has received the National Magazine Award, the Molly Ivins Prize, and Outright International’s Outspoken Award. His writing and photography have appeared in many publications, including Vanity Fair, for which he is a contributing editor; the New York Times Magazine; GQ; Esquire; Harper’s Magazine; and VQR, for which he is an editor at large. He is Frederick Sessions Beebe ’35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College.

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Last month, while South Africa was accusing Israel of genocide in the International Court of Justice and the court handed down it’s ruling, Germany announced it would file a Declaration of Intervention on behalf of Israel. In response, Namibia President Hage Geingobon released a statement against Germany. The presidency said, “Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza.”

On today’s two part show, host Esty Dinur spends the first 20 minutes with Herbert Jauch to understand the historical context in which the late Geingobon made these remarks.

Then, we talk with Wisconsin-based Palestinians Mohammad Hamad and Janan Najeeb about the continued loss of civilian life in Gaza. Mohammad tells Esty that he has a large family that lives in different areas in Gaza. “I lost over 20 right now from cousin, extended family, sister and so on,” he says. “And the situation in Gaza… it’s a dire situation. North area of Gaza, it’s starvation. I have been in touch with them with those who’ve stayed in northern Gaza because they don’t have the means to travel to the south, physically. They have disability, they need wheelchairs. And the fear of also it’s not going to be a safe area in the south, which is they are correct. There is no safe area in Gaza.”

Herbert Jauch is the chairperson of the Economic and Social Justice Trust in Namibia. He is co-editor of the book Towards Democratic Development States in Southern Africa.

Mohammad Hamad was born in Gaza to a family displaced twice, in 1948 then 1967 to the area called today Gaza Strip. He was born later but his parents and some of his siblings went through the Nakbah. He came to the USA to complete his graduate studies in engineering and he lives in Wisconsin with his family. 

Janan Najeeb is a Palestinian American Muslim and the founder and current executive director of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition. She runs the Islamic Resource Center, a cultural center and Islamic lending library, publishes the Wisconsin Muslim Journal, directs the Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival. On on October 8th, she convened the Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine, which now includes more than 60 organizations working toward a permanent ceasefire, the end to Israeli occupation in Palestine and Palestinian liberation.  

Photo by WORT’s Chali Pittman from Saturday’s Stop the Hate rally

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On today’s A Public Affair, Allen Ruff welcomes nation affairs correspondent John Nichols to the show to have a wide-ranging conversation. However, thanks to a numbers of callers, they stuck largely to the Israel-Hamas war, the US support of Netanyahu, and the impact of Zionism on US politics.

John Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books including the New York Times bestseller It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and his writing has been featured in The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, among others.

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Each year, sisters Michelle Hendrix-Nora and Regina Hendrix take about 20 Beloit-area teenagers on a trip to tour Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the country. In many ways, this all began for the Hendrix sisters as college-bound teens. Ms. Hendrix-Nora says an influential teacher was an University of Arkansas Pine Bluff graduate and encouraged her to seek out an education at an HBCU.

On today’s show, host Yuri Rashkin talks with Michelle Hendrix-Nora about her mission to expose students to the opportunities that await them at one of the country’s 107 HBCUs. They are also joined by Dr. Melanie Carter from the Center for HBCU Research, Leadership, and Policy at Howard University. They talk about the history of HBCUs, the recruitment in a post-Affirmative Action era, and the power of a web of support for Black college students.

Michelle Hendrix-Nora is an administrator with the Beloit School District. For the last 12 years, Michelle and her sister, Regina Hendrix, have organized the Rising Knights HBCU College Tour.

Dr. Melanie Carter is Associate Provost & Director of the Center for HBCU Research, Leadership, and Policy and Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Howard University.

Image by Ernie A. Stephens from Pixabay

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