In honor of Earth Day we rebroadcast last year’s Earth Day special. The original show post can be found here. 

First Kata Beilin talks with host Esty Dinur about her documentary film, Maya Land: Listening to the Bees, which “tells the story of the conflict that erupted between Mayan beekeepers and the Mexican government in 2011, fomented by the planting of genetically modified soy in the Yucatan peninsula.”

Then, cultural historian Jenny Price talks about her book, Stop Saving the Planet! “Ninety-eight percent of the popular solutions refuse to challenge how our economy works,” she says—and until they do, we will continue to fail both the planet and the people who call it home.

Kata Beilin is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and faculty director of Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of In Search of Alternative Biopolitics in Contemporary Spain: Anti-Bullfighting, Animality, and the Environment in Contemporary Spain (Ohio State University Press, 2015) and co-editor of Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian Debates (Vanderbilt University Press, 2016). She recently directed and produced the documentary film Maya Land: Listening to the Bees (2022).

Jenny Price is a public writer, artist, and historian and a research fellow at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto (W.W. Norton, 2021).

Photo by Dmitry Grigoriev on Unsplash. Music in the intro is Chopin – Mazurka Op7No5 by Blue Dot Sessions.

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On March 7th, Cassandra Dixon, a peace activist from Wisconsin, was attacked by Israeli settlers while visiting and volunteering in the Masafer Yatta area of the West Bank. She was struck in the heard resulting in a fractured skull and concussion. At the time she was with Ali Awad on his grandfather’s land. Ali and his family has been the victim of violence from Israeli settlers in attempt to remove them from the land.

Cassandra Dixon joins us into the studio and Ali Awad joins us by phone from the West Bank.

More information about the incident can be found on the Madison-Rafah website. Cassandra and Ali were also featured on the podcast Occupied Thoughts.

Ali Awad is journalist and activist from the village of Tuba in Masafer Yatta. He is co-founder of the new media project Humans of Masafer Yatta.

Cassandra Dixon is a residential carpenter in Madison, Wisconsin and lives near Wisconsin Dells at a Catholic Worker house that provides hospitality to low income women, and families visiting a loved one at a nearby federal prison. She is also a founder of Palestine Partners.

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

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In 2021, President Biden announced an executive order to forgive student loans up to $100,000  for individuals with an annual income of less than $125,000.  The state of Nebraska and five other states  challenged the order and the case is now in front of the US Supreme Court. Another case to be decided by the Supreme Court challenges the Department of Education’s plan that forgives and additional $10,000 for borrowers who received a Pell Grant.

Joining us to talk about the cases are Dalié Jiménez and David Nahmias. The Supreme Court is expect to rule on the case this summer.

Dalié Jiménez is a Professor of Law and the Director of the Student Loan Law Initiative at the University of California-Irvine.

David Nahmias is a staff attorney with UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice. He leads the Consumer Law Advocates, Scholars & Students (CLASS) Network.

Photo by Good Free Photos on Unsplash

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During the 2021-22 school year, more than 1,600 book titles were banned in schools and libraries across the country. According to a report by the group PEN America, the wave of bans represents a coordinated campaign to remove books with LGBTQ+ characters and storylines. They also target books involving characters of color.

Today’s guest is the author of two young adult memoirs. George M. Johnson’s first book, All Boys Aren’t Blue, has been banned in 29 school districts, making it the 2nd most banned book in the country. They joins us to talk about what it is like to have a critically acclaimed booked that is banned from schools and libraries.

George M. Johnson is an Award-Winning Black Non-Binary Writer, Author, and Executive Producer. They are the author of the New York Times Bestselling memoir “All Boys Aren’t Blue.” The book discusses George’s adolescence growing up as a young Black Queer boy in New Jersey. Their second memoir WE ARE NOT BROKEN was released in September of 2021.

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Last week, the Wisconsin legislature’s Joint Finance Committee held public listening sessions about the 2023-2025 state-wide budget. They will start rewriting Governor Evers proposed budget next month. In Evers budget, he includes at 15% increase to public schools, but the proposed funding for the UW-Systems falls more than $100 million short of what they asked for. This is all happening as the UW Systems Board of Regents approved tuition increases for the first time in a decade.

Today on A Public Affair we are breaking down to funding short falls and the financial realities of education funding for K-12 and the UW Systems.  First we talk with Representative Kristina Shelton (D-Green Bay), the ranking Democrat on the Assembly Education Committee. Then we talk with Jon Shelton, associate professor and chair of democracy and justice studies at UW-Green Bay. Jon also serves as Vice-President for Higher Education of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin.

 

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

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Environmental activist, lawyer and politician Fábio Feldmann joins us on A Public Affair to discuss climate change, Indigenous land rights, and the political realities in Brazil.

Fábio Feldmann is an environmental activist, lawyer, and political figure. He was elected Brazil’s Federal Deputy for three consecutive terms (1986 – 1998) and participated as Constituent Deputy in the drafting of the 1988 Constitution. He is largely responsible for the environmental language in the constitution. He also authored many laws regarding environmental protections.

Photo by Raphael Nogueira on Unsplash

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When Kyle Wiens was in college, he dropped his laptop causing damage that he was pretty sure he could fix, but when he went online to look for a manual–it didn’t exists. Turns out that company that manufactured his computer intentionally made it hard to fix it on his own. This sent Kyle on a journey to create iFixit.

iFixit is a source for more than 90,000 free repair guides for a wide-range of items–from tablets to coats, laptops to cars, oxygen machines to microwaves.

CEO Kyle Wiens joins guest host Patty Peltekos on A Public Affair to talk about the problem of planned obsolesces and the Right to Repair Movement.

Image by Jan Kuss from Pixabay

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The Communications Decency Act (CDA) is Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was enacted when the internet was just making its way into US homes. 26 words found in that act protect internet sites from the being held responsible for content created by their users. The fate of Section 230 of the (CDA) is now in the hands of the US Supreme Court Justices.

Associate Profess of Law Alan Rozenshtein joins us to explain Section 230 and offer his insight on what the court might decide.

Alan Z. Rozenshtein is Associate Professor of Law at University of Minnesota. He is a senior editor at Lawfare, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Scholars Strategy Network, and a visiting faculty fellow at the University of Nebraska College of Law. He was previously an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Image by Andrzej Rembowski from Pixabay

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In his newly released book, Quinn Slobodian follows the journey of radical libertarians as they search for a place for capitalism to operated without being hindered by democracy. He joins guest host

Giuliana Chamedes to talk about Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy and what it can tell us about the future.

Quinn Slobodian is the Marion Butler McLean Professor of the History of Ideas at Wellesley College and will join the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University as a professor of international history in January 2024. He is also an associate fellow at Chatham House and co-director of the History and Political Economy Project. His previous book is Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. His work has also been featured in the New York Times, Guardian, and New Statesman.

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A food forest is a diverse planting of edible plants that attempts to mimic the ecosystems and patterns found in nature. By planting in a way that mimic a natural forest where the pants grow together vertically. The idea is to create a resilient, reliable, self-sustaining, and regionally-appropriate garden.

Joining us to talk about food forests, tree planting, and land stewarding are Brad Lancaster from Dunbar/Spring Neighborhood Foresters in Tucson, AZ and Emily Steinwehe from Wisconsin Food Forests in Madison.

Books mentioned in today’s show: Brad Lancaster’s Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond (more info can be found at HarvestingRainwater.com) and Wisconsin Food Forests’ F is for Food Forest: An ABC Book .

Image by MegLearner from Pixabay

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