Outspoken

Chavela Vargas was a Latin Grammy-winning artist well-known for her music. The Costa Rican/Mexican singer is remembered as the Rough Voice of Tenderness and is the focus of this week's Outspoken with Joy Silver podcast.

It's an enlightening herstory lesson as Joy talks about the beloved performer who passed in 2012 at the age of 93 with Emmy Award winning filmmaker Joyce Callo and actress-singer Stephanie Trudeau who sings Chavela's songs to tell her story.

Trudeau's docu-cabaret show, Becoming Chavela, is now a short film produced with Callo and will be featured by the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Jeffrey Bernstein is running for Palm Springs City Council in District 2 this November. He is a small business owner who has been active in local non-profit organizations, and on community boards including the Measure J Committee. On this episode of Outspoken with Joy Silver, Mr. Bernstein discusses many of the key issues on his campaign agenda ranging from how to help homeless citizens to economic development to helping the fire department improve emergency response when paramedics need to transport a patient to implementing green energy in commercial real estate. Learn more about his action plan. You can also visit his campaign site at www.JeffreyForPS.com.

This week on Outspoken the spotlight turns to President Biden’s Safer America program. Nearly $40 Billion of the American taxpayers are at stake. Joy Silver welcomes lawyer and writer Jessica Pishko back to the discussion as an expert and author writing about one of the greatest threats to democracy in America: Sheriffs. She enlightens us on the administration’s program and what effect it will have on law enforcement in the USA and particularly on elected county sheriffs including past Oathkeepers member Chad Bianco who was recently re-elected by merely 16% of registered voters as Sheriff of Riverside County, California.

Pat Leach is the founder of the African Immigration Initiative, Coachella Valley. Her dedication to African immigration is to assist people through empowerment by finding the resources they need to succeed whether in detention, as asylum seekers struggling in the USA, or deported and trying to find safety. This includes food, health, lawyers, housing, bond payment applications, letters, electronics, and political activation. She discusses United States immigration policy and its history, as it affects Africans and others seeking refuge with Joy Silver on this episode of Outspoken. Pat observed the perilous challenges and conditions in Cameroon personally, and she shares those observations with us immediately upon her recent return from Africa.

There has been much controversy around the status of campuses and curriculum at College of the Desert in the Western Coachella Valley. Rubén AríAztlán Pérez currently serves as the Chairman of the C.O.D. Board of Trustees and joins Joy Silver on this episode of Outspoken. Nearly $1Billion in bond measures have been approved by voters over the past twenty years to - among other things - fund the building of satellite campuses. In this conversation, Mr. Pérez talks about the most recent controversies surrounding the construction sites, building, and educational offerings at a new Palm Springs West Valley campus and the Roadrunner Motors automotive technology center in Cathedral City. Pérez is one of two trustees running for re-election this Fall.

As tens of millions of Americans watch the United States Congressional Select Committee Hearings on the January 6, 2021 Attack and hear more evidence of the former president’s role in planning and fanning the flames of riled up insurrectionists, many wonder if Trump’s white privilege may prevent him from facing prosecution. Journalist and civil rights activist Allison Gaines is a returning guest on Outspoken to ponder this issue with host Joy Silver on this episode.

Ms. Gaines is the founder of Justice Can’t Wait. She is also published at Writers and Editors of Color, Medium, Zora, Momentum, and Level.

On this episode of Outspoken, host Joy Silver’s attention is on the Riverside County Auditor-Controller race to be decided on November 8. Incumbent Paul Angulo has served for 12 years managing tens of billions of dollars in assets and an annual $7 Billion budget. He is being challenged this year by relative newcomer Ben Benoit, mayor of Wildomar and son of a former state legislator and county supervisor who worked in law enforcement.

Angulo points out on this podcast that Benoit does not hold the minimum statutory requirements for the office (C.P.A. or 4-Year Degree) and says his opponent's broad support comes from county officials including the controversial Sheriff Chad Bianco, a former member of the White Supremacist Oath Keepers organization, who among others refuses to cooperate with legally-mandated audits to be performed by Angulo's office. As you'll hear in this conversation with Joy, he asserts Bianco's refusal to cooperate with they county's system of checks-and-balances makes the agency a "private militia."

Visit Angulo's website at www.PaulAngulo.com.

On this episode of Outspoken with Joy Silver, a challenge is issued to the President of the national Log Cabin Republicans organization. Charles Moran’s recently-published Op-Ed in Gannett newspapers including The Desert Sun in Palm Springs cried foul when the GOP’s state convention in Texas excluded the gay republican group, pleading their case of embracing the former president and his policies. Joy points out that while Moran criticizes ‘cancel culture,’ his organization has already been cancelled by the party of Trump – even as Log Cabin members continue to bond with their abusers and pour in money while voting for GOP candidates. She offers a solution to a dilemma that crosses party lines.

On this episode of Outspoken with Joy Silver, Riverside County Deputy Public Defender Roger Tansey shares his views on the Case for Prosecution of President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Tansey’s legal experience includes serving as a law clerk from 1983 to 1985 for the Honorable Volney V. Brown of the United States District Court. Tansey has also worked on the international extradition of one of the last cases of a Nazi war criminal in the United States. He discusses the legal thresholds Justice Department officials must weigh and overcoming the political hurdles inherent with making an airtight case alleging the previous administration conspired to commit seditious acts against the United States of America.

With 20 million people viewing the January 6th Congressional Hearings in real time and tens of millions more learning the details of how democracy almost died in the USA at the start of 2021, Joy talks with Julie Bornstein, a former California Assemblymember, Attorney and Former Adjunct Faculty at California Desert Trial Academy. A Coachella Valley resident, Julie shares her thoughts about voting and its power, the case for prosecution of the former president and other insurrectionists, and where things are generally going in the hearings on this episode of Outspoken with Joy Silver.

This episode is presented through the generous sponsorship of Harcourts Desert Homes in Palm Springs, California.