From pedestrian plazas to pop-up-parklets…cities are looking to create spaces for people to gather, interact and create.  But are some people being left out of this new urban renaissance? This week:  from Detroit, to Montreal, to Istanbul, people are reclaiming the commons.  How do we create public spaces that are embracing and inclusive?

Featuring:

Susan Silberberg, MIT lecturer in Urban Design and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning;Jane Jacobs, urban planning expert; Shannon Franssen, coordinator at Solidarité St-Henri; Fred Burrill, housing rights advocate; Erik Howard, The Alley Project founder; Freddy Diaz, Mary Luevanos, Detroit artists; Hugo Camarena, Alley Project neighbor; Neil Brenner, Harvard Graduate School of Design Professor of Urban Theory; Roberto Bedoya, Tucson Pima Arts Council executive director 

Pregnant women in America’s prisons are being shackled to their beds and cells. Others are being sterilized, some say, against their will. Correctional institutions claim the policies are for safety’s sake, and that consent is always obtained. But others see a larger pattern at work.

On this edition, from shackling to sterilization, thousands of incarcerated people are struggling to maintain control over their own reproductive health. 

Featuring:

Locked up for month, years, or decades.  Poetry is form of self-expression that’s become vital to the incarcerated.  In Prison, Poetry can keep you sane, and help you move towards a better future.  To mark National Poetry Month, we bring you a special production by the Prison Poetry Workshop. We go from California’s San Quentin prison, to a group of Alabama prison poets. And we’ll meet a legendary prison poet of the 1960’s who helped spark a literary movement.

Featuring:  Andrew Gazzeny, San Quentin prisoner poet; Etheridge Knight, formerly incarcerated poet; Janice Knight-Mooney, Etheridge’s sister; James Depp, poet and friend of Etheridge; Melba Boyd, former Broadside Press employee; Ira Smith, Guy Carter, AJ Payne, Sarge Daniels, Calvin Green, Staton Correctional Facility poets; Keyes Stevens, Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project facilitator; Dwayne Betts, formerly incarcerated poet

Who's watching you? Nowadays it seems everyone wants to get their hands on our personal data. From the FBI to the welfare department, to some of the country's biggest retailers. On this edition, we take a closer look at the world of surveillance.

Featuring:   

Cesar Chavez has made it to the big screen. Millions of people are now learning about the legendary farmworker organizer. But where did Chavez get his organizing philosophies?

This week, Paul Ingles and Carol Boss of Peacetalks radio take us down ‘The Non Violent path of Cesar Chavez’, through conversations with Chavez’ colleague and friend Delores Huerta, and Jose Antonio Orozco, author of the book, Cesar Chavez and the Common Sense of Nonviolence.

Noise pollution is a growing problem. Effecting everything from the lives of people living under airplane flight paths, to marine life. On this edition, we’ll hear from people struggling to be heard over the din of our noisy modern life and ask, is there anywhere left in the world you can get some peace and quiet?

Needle exchange programs began springing up in the 1980’s during the AIDS crisis.

Countless lives have been saved by providing IV drug users with clean needles.

But even now, with hundreds of programs across the US and throughout the world, some states still view distributing needles as illegal.

This week, WABE reporter Jim Burress takes us to ‘The Bluff’, a neighborhood in Atlanta where a needle exchange program—breaking the law every day– has become a vital part of a struggling community.

Our world is generating more and more nuclear waste, but have no permanent place to dispose of it.  But the nation of Finland has a plan. They’re building an underground cave, to hold thousands of tones of nuclear waste, for at least 100 thousand years.  

On this edition, we hear excerpts of the film, “Into Eternity”, which explores the logistical and philosophical quandaries around the construction of something that if it works, might very well outlast the entire human race.

Before it was legal in the United States, some doctors would risk arrest to provide women with access to safe abortions. When that wasn’t possible, some sought abortions from unsafe providers, often with deadly consequences.

The Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, and the numbers of people dying after having an abortion dropped, but are we now seeing a return to the past?

On this edition, what can the time before abortion was legal tell us about the dangers of restricting access to abortion today? We’ll hear a special radio adaption of “Motherhood by Choice not Chance” a documentary produced and narrated by Dorothy Fadiman.

We profile women of Greenpeace, the legendary eco-activist organization. Hettie Geenan is first mate on the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior. Leila Deen leads the campaign against fracking. And Laila Williams connects Greenpeace with indigenous communities, women’s groups and people of color.  Happy International Women’s Day March 8th!

Featuring: