Just Solutions

Thousands of climate justice advocates and Indigenous leaders are mobilizing in Washington DC this week for the “People vs. Fossil Fuels’’ protests. They are demanding that President Biden declare a climate emergency, ban new fossil fuel leases on public lands, and end subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. Our guest today is Sharon Lavigne, winner of the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America for her grassroots work that successfully stopped the construction of a $1.25 billion plastics manufacturing plant alongside the Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Her work continues as she battles yet another proposed chemical plant in her community. Sharon Lavigne is in Washington DC this week to participate in the People vs. Fossil Fuel protests.

The World Health Organization has recently issued a report that warns “The burning of fossil fuels is killing us,” but still, governments worldwide are failing to take action to curb emissions. A year ago, on the campaign trail, Joe Biden promised to ban oil and gas permitting on federally Our guest today is Jean Su, Energy Justice Program Director and Senior Attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity who says President Biden must use his executive powers to speed the end of the fossil fuel era and ignite a just, renewable-energy revolution.

Progressive activists are building a movement to expand the Supreme Court and restore ideological balance. Currently, the country’s highest court has a 6-3 Republican majority. Groups like Demand Justice say this leads the court to consistently rule in favor of corporate and partisan interests. They’re working to reform the Supreme Court, expand circuit and district courts, and champion new judges with experience as public defenders.  Our guest today is Tamara Brummer, an organizer and strategist with Demand Justice, who says our democracy demands that we add seats to the Supreme Court.

It’s been ten years since thousands of protesters took to the streets of downtown Manhattan to “Occupy Wall Street.”  Some Occupy protestors set up camp in New York’s Zuccotti Park for nearly two months and the occupy movement spread around the world. 

In early October 2011, “The Occupied Wall Street Journal” began publication to document the protest and the underlying issues. One of the journal’s founders, Arun Gupta, joins us to reflect on the ten-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, its influence on subsequent protests, and the role of media in the movement.

The latest figures from the US Department of Agriculture show that more than 38 million people in the United States experienced hunger in 2020. Households with children were even more at risk and now, as many as 1 in 6 kids are facing hunger this year. A group of Democratic lawmakers is calling on President Biden to convene a national conference on food, nutrition, hunger, and health to design a roadmap to end hunger in America by 2030. President Biden has just pledged $10 billion to fight hunger globally and domestically. Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, a National Call for Moral Revival, and author of the upcoming book We Cry Justice, joins us to talk about the reality of hunger in America, how it needs to be urgently addressed, and how poverty and hunger are connected to voter suppression.

4 years ago Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and severely damaged critical infrastructure. In the aftermath, mutual aid centers sprung up across the island as a bold grassroots relief effort emerged with the goal of restoring power to the people. But how is Puerto Rico doing now and is that grassroots movement still going strong, and how are other communities struck by natural disasters responding with these types of grassroots initiatives? We speak with Juan C. Dávila and Tom Llewellyn, the filmmakers behind the award-winning documentary “The Response: How Puerto Ricans Are Restoring Power to the People.”

Rights of Nature: The recognition that Nature itself has rights and it’s not just property to be controlled and commodified. We’re seeing people around the world enforcing these rights on behalf of ecosystems in countries like Ecuador and New Zealand.

David Pettit, Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, joins us to discuss how a growing number of communities are looking at creating and enforcing environmental protections by using Rights of Nature as a legal framework.

50 years ago, inmates in Attica, a maximum-security prison in upstate NY, held an uprising to protest dehumanizing prison conditions. A bloody crackdown by state police left 39 dead. Attica paved the way for the modern anti-prison movement. Today we are joined by Tyrone Larkins, one of the Attica survivors and Soffiyah Elijah, Executive Director of Alliance of Families for Justice, a group that is working to change the landscape of injustice in American courts and prisons.

Taifa Smith Butler is the new president of Demos, a progressive think tank aimed at creating a just, inclusive multiracial democracy and economy for all. So what would that look like? And what legislation is needed to help us get there?  Demos is calling on Congress to pass the For the People Act saying this transformative voting rights bill, has racial justice at its core and would expand political power in Black and brown communities.

On today’s show, we look at the climate crisis and its disproportionate impact on people of color. During Oregon’s recent triple-digit temperatures, health officials reported that about two-thirds of heatwave deaths were people of color. The Natural Resources Defense Council says more than half of Latinos in the U.S. live in the country’s three most climate-vulnerable states and a new report shows that Latinx people are twice as likely to live in the areas most exposed to wildfires as the rest of the population. Today’s guest is Felipe Benítez, the executive director of Corazón Latino, a national non-profit organization that seeks to generate social, environmental, and conservation initiatives that foster natural resource stewardship.