KQED's Forum

Hundreds of thousands of workers in industries ranging from health care to coal mining are on strike, in a massive wave of labor actions being dubbed “Striketober”. But even off the picket lines there may be quieter indicators of worker rebellion. Employees are quitting at record rates and employers are struggling to find workers, even after hiking up wages. To former Labor Secretary and UC Berkeley Professor Robert Reich, these are signs that American workers may finally have the bargaining power to push back against low wages, long hours and bad working conditions. “You might say workers have declared a national general strike until they get better pay and improved working conditions” he wrote in an opinion piece for The Guardian.  We’ll talk to Robert Reich about this moment and the future of labor. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this month, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation that makes California the first state in the nation to require health care facilities to offer screening for hepatitis B and C, which if left untreated can lead to fatal liver disease and cancer. Almost 90% of people with chronic hepatitis B in California are members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. Black Americans have the second highest rate of chronic infection. We'll talk about how the law will work and take your questions.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last month, Marie Wilcox of Woodlake, Calif., the last known fluent speaker of the indigenous language, Wukchumni, passed away. Before she died, she dedicated herself to preserving the language by putting together a Wukchumni dictionary and recording herself speaking. Similar efforts are underway across California, a state where some 100 indigenous languages were spoken before the arrival of Europeans. Many of those languages have disappeared entirely and some have only a few fluent speakers left. We talk about what it takes to save a language and the work of the California Language Archive at the University of California, Berkeley.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was a hot October weekend. Typical Bay Area fall weather, and the end of fire season. A small fire that had broken out in the hills above the Caldecott Tunnel looked nearly extinguished. But then the wind kicked up, and suddenly what had been a campfire-size blaze, became an inferno. That firestorm would go on to kill 25 people and destroy 3,400 homes. Thirty years ago, it seemed like an anomaly. Today, fires so large that they create their own weather systems have become an annual event. We’ll talk about lessons learned from the Tunnel Fire with people who lived through it and with those trying to prevent another conflagration from happening again.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

California’s historic Reparations Task Force heard testimony last week on anti-Black racism in housing, education, banking and the environment as part of a series of meetings considering the impact of slavery in the state. Vice chair of the task force, Dr. Amos Brown, emphasized the importance of the hearings, declaring: “We need to make sure that these testimonies are shouted from the house top and throughout the length and breadth of this state of California.” Commissioned by Assembly Bill 3121 last fall to “study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans,” this task force is the first of its kind in the U.S. We’ll talk to task force chair Kamilah Moore about the recent hearings and key questions the group is exploring in their study, including who would qualify for reparations.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Puffy jackets, colorful patterns and statement accessories aren’t just trendy wardrobe staples among young people. Senior citizens are showing off what enjoying old age can look like through their unique styles. Photography projects such as Advanced Style and Chinatown Pretty capture the joy, wisdom and stories of neighborhood elders who boldly express themselves through their outfits. We’ll talk with the creators of those projects and discuss what we can all learn from the senior fashionistas strutting the sidewalks in our own communities.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When labor economist David Card began studying the minimum wage in the 1990’s, conventional wisdom, and economic theory, held that an increase in the minimum wage would lead to job loss. But in a move that revolutionized the way economics could be done, Card and his colleague, Alan Krueger, compared the real world data from a state that raised the minimum wage to one that didn’t, and found that the increase didn’t kill jobs. This “natural experiment” allowed Card to study the effects of policy changes or chance events in a way similar to clinical trials in medicine. Another natural experiment found that an influx of immigrants did not lower the wages of low-skilled native born workers. Forum talks with Berkeley professor David Card about his work, the “credibility revolution” in economics that it spawned and winning, with Stanford professor Guido Imbens and Joshua Angrist from MIT, the Nobel Prize in economics.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thirty years ago, a small, mostly-extinguished grassfire was stoked by a hot, dry wind that ignited a firestorm in the Oakland and Berkeley hills killing 25 people and destroying more than 3,400 homes. As the Bay Area remembers the Tunnel Fire, we talk to Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf about the lessons the city and firefighters learned from the tragedy and her own memories of that fire which destroyed her family home.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump on Monday sued the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection to prevent it from accessing a broad swath of records from his administration. The filing came just before the Committee convenes on Tuesday to pursue criminal contempt charges against Trump ally Steve Bannon for his refusal to cooperate with investigators. We'll talk to Los Angeles Congressman Adam Schiff, who sits on the Select Committee, about his efforts to hold January 6 rioters and their enablers to account, and about his new book "Midnight in Washington," which details the antidemocratic forces still at work in the U.S. political system.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his new book, "The Loneliest Americans," Jay Caspian Kang sets out to challenge the assumed solidarity of Asian Americans of different classes and waves of immigration. What unites all the peoples from all the different places in the globe’s largest continent? Maybe not enough to create a cohesive political unit, Kang argues. We’ll talk with Kang, a staff writer for the New York Times Opinion page and New York Times Magazine, about his book, radical politics, and Berkeley through the eyes of a recent East Coast transplant.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices