Midday

Tom's guest on this archive edition of Midday is Alec MacGillis, an award-winning reporter for ProPublica whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and The Atlantic, among other publications. His latest book is about Amazon, and about the seismic shifts that it has caused not only in the American economy, but in American culture as well since Jeff Bezos started his on-line bookstore in the summer of 1994. The new book is called Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America.

Bezos will step aside as Chief Executive this summer, but Amazon’s dominance in the economy will remain unparalleled. It is an enormous marketplace that dwarfs its nearest competitor in on-line retail sales. Its servers hold the data for companies across the globe, including some of Amazon’s fiercest rivals. And the ways it influences the health and well-being of communities large and small, and the ways in which it has changed the very nature of work are myriad.

Amazon’s distribution system is massive. It has warehouses within 25 miles of nearly half of the US population, including two in the Baltimore metro area, from which more than 6 billion packages are delivered every year.

In his latest book, Alec MacGillis takes us into those warehouses, and the lives and communities of the people who work there. With assiduous reporting and powerful writing, he chronicles the enormous imprint of Amazon, and its far-reaching effects on American society.

Alec MacGillis joins us on the line from his home in Baltimore.

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At the outset of the Coronavirus pandemic, it was widely assumed that African Americans and LatinX people were more reluctant to get the COVID 19 vaccine than White people. Since then, it is now apparent that while access to the vaccine is different for African Americans, rates of hesitancy between races is about the same. In fact, data shows that Republican men, most of whom are white, are more likely to be unwilling to receive the vaccine than Black people.

The narrative about vaccine hesitancy among people in communities of color grew out of distrust of medical research that is premised on the experience in two famous cases: one is Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman who died of cancer in the 1950s, and whose extraordinary cells were harvested for research by doctors at Johns Hopkins without her consent. Those cells are still used for research today. The second is the case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which men who were infected with the disease were left untreated.

The unethical and deadly behavior of researchers in the Tuskegee Study was revealed in 1972. And for more than a decade, Johns Hopkins has honored the legacy of Henrietta Lacks, and used her story to study its implications for informed consent in medicine.

Informed consent is the focus on this archive edition of Midday.

Tom's guest is the award-winning author and medical ethicist, Harriet A. Washington.In her latest book, Washington states, flatly, that “We have frequently abandoned informed consent and today remain guilty of burgeoning medical experimentation without consent of any type.” She goes on to say that “Informed consent, or even simple consent, have been withheld consistently in research with African Americans.”

Her book is called Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent. Harriet Washington joined us in February, on Zoom.

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Tom's next guest is an author whose debut novel explores the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a keen eye, a compassionate and insightful ear, and a large dollop of fearlessness.

Rebecca Sacks presents a sprawling cast of characters that include university students and teachers, professional soccer players and soldiers, a cartoonist from Jerusalem, a journalist from Germany, a couple of Jewish Americans, and a sprinkling of children.

Like the long history of the conflict in which this novel is placed, Sacks’ story revolves on an axis that is surprising, as her characters act, on a certain level, with poignant predictability.

The book is called City of a Thousand Gates.

Rebecca Sacks joins us from Los Angeles.

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Many school-age children in Maryland and around the country are back in classrooms, as schools long shuttered by COVID-19 reopen, and educators and parents grapple with the stark reality that many students have experienced a significant learning loss during this pandemic year. On the other hand, some kids have been thriving in virtual school.

Part of the funding earmarked for education in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is directed toward closing the gaps in academic achievement and resources that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and improving school infrastructure in underserved communities.

Tom's first guest today is Dr. Khalilah Harris, who heads K-12 Education Policy at the Center for American Progress. She’s also a Senior Fellow at the Maryland Center for Economic Policy. She served as the first deputy director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans during the Obama Administration.

Khalilah Harris joins us on Zoom…

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Supplies of the three federally approved COVID-19 vaccines continue to grow, and in Maryland, the vaccination rate is accelerating. As of today, the state is officially in Phase 2A of its vaccination priority program. All Marylanders age 60 or older are eligible to receive a vaccine. As of next Tuesday, March 30, anyone over the age of 16 with an underlying medical condition will become eligible. And last week, Gov. Larry Hogan announced that all Marylanders over the age of 16 will be eligible for a COVID 19 vaccine by the 27th of April.

Tom's first guest today is the person in charge of making sure the state has enough vaccines to administer, and the infrastructure needed to get the shots into peoples’ arms.

Dennis Schrader is Acting Secretary of the Maryland Department of Health. He joins us on Zoom…

To check on your current eligibility to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and to schedule a vaccination for yourself or members of your family, go online to covidvax.Maryland.gov or call 855-MD GO VAX (1-855-634-6829) for more information.

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Tom's next guest today is Baltimore City Comptroller Bill Henry. He served on the City Council for 12 years, before unseating longtime comptroller Joan Pratt in last June’s Democratic primary. He ran unopposed in November to become the first new comptroller Baltimore has had in 25 years.

The comptroller is the city's fiscal manager and watchdog, and in that capacity, he sits on the Board of Estimates, the Board of Finance, the Biennial Audits Oversight Commission, and the Boards of Trustees for both of the City's pension systems.

Since taking office exactly 107 days ago, Mr. Henry has focused on modernizing the Comptroller’s office, and making the work of the Board of Estimates more transparent.Comptroller Henry joins us on Zoom to discuss some of the other reforms on his agenda.

[Due to an unscheduled Internet outage during the broadcast, a brief portion of Comptroller Henry's remarks were lost.]

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Beyond the massive protests over last year's police killing of George Floyd, a remarkable reckoning on America's troubled racial history — especially the unresolved legacy of slavery — has been very much in evidence in our area over the past many months. Case in point: William Walters and his son Henry Walters, the namesakes of the Walters Art Museum here in Baltimore. Henry Walters’ gift to the City of Baltimore in the 1930s of the priceless collection of art that he and his father had amassed was a generous act of philanthropy, and the collection has been enjoyed and revered by millions of art lovers and scholars over the years.

Last week, the Walters announced that it has revised the written history that is published on their website to reflect the fact that William Walters supported the Confederacy, and that his son, Henry supported activities that honored the Confederacy well into the 20th century.

This disclosure comes in the context of at least two other area institutions, Johns Hopkins University and Hood College, where information has surfaced about their namesakes' links to slavery.

Today on Midday, a conversation about ways to acknowledge and act on the symbols and stories that represent America’s long history of racism and racial inequality.

Later in the program, Tom is joined on Zoom by two racial justice activists who'll share their perspectives on what should and can be done with such information.

A. Adar Ayira is the principal consultant with Ayira Core Concepts, a consulting firm that provides Anti-Racism/Anti-Oppression /Equity education. She’s also a co-founding member of Baltimore Racial Justice Action, and a member of Associated Black Charities.

Also joining Tom is David Fakunle, chair of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He's also an associate faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the CEO of DiscoverME/RecoverME, an organization that provides enrichment through the African oral tradition. In addition, Dr. Fakunle is the director of Wombworks here in Baltimore, and a member of the Maryland State Arts Council.

But first, Tom speaks with Dr. Julia Marciari-Alexander, an art historian and the director of the Walters Art Museum here in Baltimore since 2013. She joins us on Zoom…

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Tom's Newsmaker guest today is Baltimore City Police Commissioner Michael Harrison.

While the Maryland General Assembly is considering multiple bills to reform policing, and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott has introduced a public safety plan, the City Police Department continues to implement reforms mandated by the 2017 Consent Decree with the US Department of Justice. In the most recent Consent Decree hearing in January, the judge overseeing the process had good things to say about the department’s progress in hiring and training programs, but also demanded that it start showing palpable results when it comes to monitoring and punishing officers for misconduct.

Last month, the department reported a dramatic decrease in misconduct complaints, as it announced new policies governing stops, searches and arrests.

The BPD can point to certain categories of crime that have decreased in recent months, but homicides and non-fatal shootings continue to plague several areas of the city where violence has long been a regular dimension of daily life.

Commissioner Michael Harrison is our guest for the hour today. He joins us on Zoom from BPD headquarters in Baltimore. We also welcome listener calls, emails and tweets.

Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

Tom's guest today has written a thoughtful and insightful book on the subject of racial inequality. Heather McGhee is the former head of the think tank, Demos, an organization that focuses on inequality. She is now the board chair of Color of Change, an on-line racial justice advocacy group with 7 million members.

Her new book is called The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. McGhee’s reporting is assiduous and compassionate. She explores the history — and the lunacy — of policies and norms that proliferate belief in a racial hierarchy.

This insidious allegiance to racial hierarchy has dominated the United States since its founding. No aspect of American life is spared, and no issue, be it education, health care, housing, voting, or climate change, has been unaffected. McGhee makes the case that White unwillingness to align with Black people in common cause has not only been crushing for African Americans, but for millions of White people struggling for opportunity as well.

She writes, “America’s racial inequality is not only the most extreme manifestation of our inequality, but also the template, setting up a scaffolding of hierarchy that increasingly few people, of any race, can climb.” The Sum of Us also makes the case that the reasons for racial panic among White people are actually our biggest strategic assets, and our country’s greatest salvation.

Heather McGhee observes that we have reached the productive and moral limit of the zero-sum economic model, and that we have to get on the same page in order to turn the page on race in America. If we are able to do so, the rewards are plentiful. They are what McGhee calls the Solidarity Dividend.

Heather McGhee joins us on Zoom.

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(This program was originally broadcast on March 3, 2021)

Tom's guest in this archive edition of Midday is the American author, George Saunders. He’s published hundreds of short stories, and his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2017. Saunders’ short stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s and many other magazines, and collected in best-selling books like The Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and which Time Magazine called one of the ten best books of the decade.

Tom describes George Saunders as "a wholly original, surprising and powerfully imaginative writer whose work is unlike anything I’ve read before. His writing seems to re-invent the rules for how fiction is structured and re-imagine how storytelling can unfold."

In 1997, George Saunders joined the faculty of his graduate school alma mater, Syracuse University. Earlier this year, he published his 11th book, which is a fascinating peroration that draws on his experience in the classroom.

Saunders has chosen seven stories by a quartet of famous Russian authors: Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Gogol. He examines, explains, and riffs on each story, and in the process, with joy and wonder and delight, he offers insight into how we read, and how great authors write.

It’s called A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Masterclass on Writing, Reading, and Life.

George Saunders joins us on Zoom from Oneonta, New York.

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