Earlier this year, the Southern Poverty Law Center named Moms for Liberty an extremist hate group. This is after Moms for Liberty endorsed 275 winning school board candidates nationwide in 2022. They continue to targeting thousands of school board seats and are calling for books bans and censorship of history lessons. They also use their platforms to harass teachers and school administrators and advocate for the dismantlement of the Department of Education. Much of their hate is targeted towards the LGTBQ+ community.

On today’s program, we try to understand the seeming swift rise of Moms for Liberty. First we are joined by Syracuse University Professor of History Margaret Susan Thompson. She helps us understand the legacy of far-right women’s groups in the US.

Then, we speak with Mother Jones senior editor Kiera Butler about her extensive reporting on Moms for Liberty, including her recent attendance at their conference in Philadelphia.

Margaret Susan Thompson is a professor of history and political science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse. University.  She teaches, among other subjects,  an honors seminar on White Nationalism/Right Populism in Modern America. She received her PhD from the UW-Madison.

Kiera Butler is a senior editor at Mother Jones. Her reporting is focused on how purveyors of disinformation target online communities of women. Her August 2022 piece “The Most Powerful Moms in America Are the New Face of the Republican Party” offers a deep dive into the making of Moms for Liberty.

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While people of color are quickly becoming the majority of the US populations, the perspectives of white America still dominate the media that is made and consumed daily. Now media makers of color are rising up to advance a set of different narratives. Today’s guest, Sonali Kolhatkar, is the author of the new book Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice. It tells stories that counter the racism and disinformation that have long dominated America’s political and cultural landscape. 

She joins us to talk about how a racial justice lens can dramatically change stories. She also unflinchingly shares her own experiences of racism in the field of journalism.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice. She is the host and producer of “Rising Up,” a popular, daily, drive-time program on KPFK, Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles. (She formerly hosted “Uprising.“) She is also Senior Correspondent and Writing Fellow of the Independent Media Institute‘s Economy for All project and was formerly a weekly columnist at Truthdig. Sonali is also the founding Co-Director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, a US-based non-profit solidarity organization that funds the work of RAWA.

Headshot photo credit: Amanda McIntosh

 

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Solastalgia is the feeling of existential distress caused by environmental change. The term was coined by the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht, who describes it as “the homesickness we feel while still at home.” The new book Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World gives voice to the feeling.

Editor Paul Bogard and contributors Leah Naomi Green and Cynthia Belmont join us on the program to share their pieces and explain their relationship with our changing world. Host Douglas Haynes also has a piece in the anthology.

Paul Bogard is author of The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light, which was shortlisted for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.  He is also author of The Ground Beneath Us: From the Oldest Cities to the Last Wilderness, What Dirt Tells Us About Who We Are. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, Salon, Los Angeles Times, Outside, Audubon, Conservation, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere.

Leah Naomi Green is the author of The More Extravagant Feast. She teaches Environmental Studies and English at Washington and Lee University. Her chapbook, The Ones We Have, received the 2012 Flying Trout Chapbook prize. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, Poem-a-Day, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Orion, Shenandoah, Ecotone, and Pleiades.

Cynthia Belmont is a professor of English, Writing, and Gender and Women’s Studies at Northland College. Her writing has been published in the  Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Harpur Palate, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Flock, among others. She has a piece featured in the anthology Appalachian Ecocriticism and the Paradox of Place.

Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

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On July 3rd, Israel launched a large-scale air and ground military aggression against the Jenin refugee camp, cutting off thousands of Palestinians, killing at least 12 Palestinians, injuring more than 100, some of them in critical condition. The Israeli army destroyed more than 250 homes and the entire infrastructure in the camp.

Ahmed Tobasi, the Artistic Director of the famous Freedom Theatre, told journalist Vera Sajrawi, that the attack reminded him of the 2002 “Battle of Jenin,” in which the Israeli military caused widespread devastation and heavy civilian casualties.

 Vera Sajrawi joins us on A Public Affair to explain what is happening in Jenin now. Palestinian-American Human rights activist Huwaida Arraf also speaks with us about that atmosphere around Palatine and what listeners can do to help.

Vera Sajrawi is a Palestinian journalist based in Israel and a writer at +972 Magazine.

Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian-American attorney and human rights activist. Over the past two decades she has been involved in a number of legal and grassroots initiatives for Palestinian rights. She is the cofounder of International Solidarity Movement , a Palestinian-led non-violent resistance movement, which has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Photo Attribution: Mujaddara. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license and accessed via wikimedia

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Today, host Allen Ruff talks with friend of the show Max Elbaum about his recent piece “MAGA Authoritarian Rule or Third Reconstruction?” in Convergence Magazine. Elbaum joins us to explain what is happening, and what he sees as the way to overcome. “We need to build an independent progressive power of  organizations and individuals in this country who will advocate a third reconstruction–a robust multi-racial, gender-inclusive democracy and economy that will work for all, a sustainable planet, environmentally–as a pathway to the end of capitalism,” he says.  “And that process takes time.”

Max Elbaum is an author and long time left-wing activist. He is a member of the Convergence Magazine editorial board and the author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che , a history of the 1970s-‘80s ‘New Communist Movement’ in which he was an active participant. He is also a co-editor of Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections.

 

Photo by Carson Daniel on Unsplash

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The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Christian web designer from Colorado at the end of last month. The court the courts conservative majority decided that the graphic artist could refuse to work with same sex couples on the basis of religious liberty.

Joining us to talk about the decision and what it might mean for the future is Columbia Law School’s Elizabeth Reiner Platt, University of Miami School of Law’s Caroline Mala Corbin, and Vox’s Ian Millhiser.

Elizabeth (Liz) Reiner Platt  is the Director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School.

Caroline Mala Corbin is Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law. Her scholarship focuses on the First Amendment’s speech and religion clauses, particularly their intersection with equality issues.

Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States.

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

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On this A Public Affair episode, sub hosts and spouses Jade and Alex Iseri-Ramos interview the authors of the new book Baby Making for Everybody. The book is a how-to guide for LGBTQ+ and solo prospective parents. It covers everything from fertility tracking, legal considerations, choosing a donor and/or surrogate and more, all while considering the unique barriers that queer and solo parents can face.

Ray Rachlin and Marea Goodman join us to talk about their works as queer midwives and the lack of accessible information that lead them to write this book. 

Ray Rachlin is a licensed midwife and founder of Refuge Midwifery in New Jersey. She is a member of the Queer and Transgender Midwives Association. Ray earned their BS in midwifery at Birthingway College of Midwifery. 

Marea Goodman is a licensed midwife, writer, and founder of Restore Midwifery in Santa Cruz County, California. She earned her midwifery degree from the National Midwifery Institute. 

Image by Moondance from Pixabay

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43 million people in the US collectively owe  $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. More than 90% of that balance is owed to the federal government. As an attempted to ease the financial burden on borrowers, President Biden announced a plan to forgive up to $20 thousand per borrower last August. However, the plan immediately faced legal challenges and was ultimately struck down at the end of June by the US Supreme Court.

Joining us to talk about the current realty facing borrowers are Kat Welbeck from Student Borrower Protection Center and Benjamin Lee from Ascendium Education in Madison.

 

Resources mentioned in this episode: debtsmarts.org, studentaid.gov, and cancelmystudentdebt.org

Image by 3D Animation Production Company from Pixabay

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How does your garden grow — and how can it grow to be more resilient in extremes brought on by climate change?  

We’re joined by Sally Morgan, organic gardener and co-author of “The Climate Change Garden,” recently published from Cool Springs Press. Morgan shares practical tips for how gardeners can set up their gardens to adapt to the torrential rains, storms, heatwaves, droughts and other extremes that are a product of climate change.

She – and host Esty Dinur, a master gardener herself – take listener calls, including advice on how to get hanging planters to flower, how to deal with a zealous herb like mint, and a mindful reminder to appreciate even the “weeds” in our garden, like lambsquarters and prickly lettuce, that are also edible plants.

Sally Morgan is a botanist with a lifelong interest in gardening. She writes frequently on her blog livingononeacreorless.co.uk on topics that affect gardeners,  like climate change, healthy soils, biodiversity, and sustainability. She is editor of Organic Gardening magazine, teaches classes and workshops, and grows an organic, one-acre plot and walled garden at Empire Fire in Somerset, England.

She’s the author of several books, including  The Healthy Vegetable Garden and Living on One Acre or Less. Her most recent book, co-authored with Kim Stoddart, is The Climate Change Garden: Down to Earth Advice for Growing a Resilient Garden (Cool Springs Press). You can follow her on Twitter @Sally_Morgan.

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In Greg Mitchell’s new documentary, we learn the history of the Memorial Day Massacre — the day in 1937 when Chicago Police shot and killed ten unarmed demonstrators, and wounded some forty others, during a strike organized by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Initial media accounts of the May 30 event portrayed it as a riot action, excusing police action as provoked by a dangerous mob. Newspapers across the country supported false accounts that the unarmed protesters fired the first shots.

Documentation of the incident — filmed by a camera crew from Paramount Pictures, a producer of newsreels at the time — was buried for some time. Paramount refused to release the newsreel for several weeks, leaving the dominant media narrative unchallenged.

That changed when a US Senate committee, co-chaired by Wisconsin’s Senator Robert LaFollette, Jr,  uncovered the film evidence of what actually happened — and changed the course of the pro-police narrative of the massacre.

The massacre, and the aftermath, are the subject of a new documentary that debuted on PBS earlier this year.  It’s not just a story of a largely forgotten or unknown past, but a story of corporate power that conveys various lessons for the present.

On today’s show, host Allen Ruff is in conversation with award-winning documentarian Greg Mitchell. He’s producer of the Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried. His 2021 documentary film Atomic Cover-up screened at over fifteen film festivals, and his 2022 film The First Attack Ads: Hollywood vs. Upton Sinclair aired on hundreds of PBS stations. He’s author of over a dozen books on topics ranging from whistleblowers to capital punishment. Follow him on Twitter @GregMitch.

Public domain image of the Chicago Day Massacre, sourced from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Series: Committee Papers of the Senate Subcommittee Investigating Free Speech and Labor from the 78th Congress, ca. 1/1943 – ca. 12/1944 (National Archives Identifier: 306196).

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