FEATURING CHRIS TYREE – Many Americans are turning away from sugary drinks in an effort to be healthier. They’re choosing instead bottled water. The bottled water market is growing exponentially and offers both convenience and an assurance of cleanliness. But just how clean and pure is bottled water?

A new investigative report on bottled water around the globe may just make you rethink your bottled water habit. Orb Media, in a follow-up to a story from last year called Invisibles: The Plastic Inside Us, examined bottled water from a variety of manufacturers around the world and found disturbing levels of microscopic pieces of plastic – or microplastics – floating in the water. Essentially when you drink bottled water, you’re drinking a bunch of plastic with it.

Read the new report ‘Plus Plastic: Microplastics Found in Global Bottled Water,’ HERE.

Chris Tyree, a journalist with Orb Media. He just wrote the article, Plus Plastic: Microplastics Found in Global Bottled Water. We had had him on our program last year to discuss his earlier piece, Invisibles: The Plastic Inside Us.

**This interview was originally broadcast on March 30, 2018.

FEATURING MARY BETH PFEIFFER – There are many potential disasters on the horizon related to climate change. Most of us have probably not considered ticks and the diseases they carry to be chief among those problems. But a new book by investigative journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer alerts us to the alarming rise in Lyme disease and what she calls “the First Epidemic of Climate Change.”

The book, called simply Lyme, traces how the growing incidence of ticks in our warming climate has resulted in the spread of a disease that doctors still struggle to understand and treat. Both the medical community and our government have yet to catch up to the dangers of this as-yet invisible epidemic.

For more information visit www.thefirstepidemic.com.

Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an award winning investigative journalist. She was a reporter for the Poughkeepsie Journal from 1982-2015 and is the author of Crazy in America: The Hidden Scandal of Our Criminalized Mentally Ill. Her new book is called Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change.

**This interview was originally broadcast on April 24, 2018.

FEATURING PAUL EHRLICH – A routine part of American childhood has become orthodontic care and the possibility of braces. But is orthodontic care a modern phenomenon for which there was no need in earlier generations of humans? A new book called simply Jaws, contends that our industrialized world has changed how children breathe and eat and led to a rapid evolution in oral development. The results are not crooked teeth and the requirement of braces, but epidemic levels of poor sleep, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, and more.

Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 best seller The Population Bomb, Bing Professor of Population Studies Emeritus and President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. He is co-author with Sandra Kahn of the new book, ‘Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic’.

FEATURING KEVIN KUMASHIRO – Within months of Oklahoma’s public school teachers historic walkouts out over Republican-led austerity measures that impoverished them, teachers flocked to run for state-level office – and won big. In the state’s primary in late June, voter turnout was at a record high and of the 100 or so teachers and school administrators that ran for office, a whopping 55 made it past the primary races, unseating at least six incumbent Republicans.

An August 28th primary run-off will determine how many will make it to the November general elections. The teachers are buoyed by the political power they exercised to win wage concessions.

But the recent Supreme Court decision on the Janus Vs. AFSCME case, which was made on partisan lines, was a blow to public school teachers’ unions. Those educators who see the value in their union membership rallied in cities around the country after the ruling to say they’re sticking with their union rather than opting out of paying agency fees.

Kevin Kumashiro is the education correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali. He’s the former dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco, a leading expert on educational policy, school reform, teacher preparation, and educational equity and social justice.

FEATURING SAM BROOKE – Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin has cut dental and vision health insurance for nearly half a million residents of his state in a move being denounced as cruel and vindictive.

The announcement came on Monday, after a judge on Friday blocked Bevin’s proposal to reform his state’s Medicaid plans in line with Donald Trump’s desire for, “work requirements” for the poor. Instead of dropping the plans for reform the governor simply decided to end insurance for about 460,000 Kentuckians and called it, “an unfortunate consequence” of the judge’s ruling.

Democratic State representative Joni Jenkins criticized the Governor’s actions saying, “We have folks that are showing up for dental appointments that they made months ago and neither they nor the providers are really certain what the rules are…And that’s just unacceptable for government to be operating this way.”

Sam Brooke, Deputy Legal Director with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

FEATURING KARLOS K. HILL – A newly built memorial and museum in Montgomery, Alabama addressing the stain on American history that was racial terrorism has been lauded by activists and others. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice was spearheaded by the Equal Justice Initiative is a memorial to the victims of lynchings in America. Together with the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, it might be the nation’s most important symbolic expression of the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow America.

A couple of years ago, a powerful book addressed the history of lynchings in America called Beyond The Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory, and its author Karlos K. Hill joined us as a guest to discuss that book. Today we welcome Karlos back to our program to reflect on the new lynching memorial and the museum which he has just visited.

Karlos K. Hill, Professor and Department Chair at the Department of African and African American Studies University of Oklahoma, specializing in the history of lynching and the anti-lynching movement in the US, author of Beyond The Rope: The Impact of Lynching on Black Culture and Memory.

**This segment was originally broadcast on May 22, 2018.

FEATURING SHARON KANN – The Trump administration is reviewing rules to eliminate federal family planning funding for Planned Parenthood in the latest Republican attack on the abortion provider. The funding plan that Trump could adopt would return to a Reagan-era norm where abortion providers would not be eligible for reimbursements for a broad array of family planning services for low-income Americans. The move is a thinly veiled attempt to pander to Trump and the GOP’s evangelical base.

Meanwhile a new study by Media Matters for America has found that there is a dearth of abortion-related news in the media and that Fox News dominates coverage – with mostly inaccurate information.

Sharon Kann, Abortion Rights and Reproductive Health Program Director with Media Matters.

**This segment was originally broadcast on May 22, 2018.

FEATURING NIC CHA KIM – Hundreds of thousands of Americans, immigrants, and their allies, attended June 30th rallies in more than 700 cities across the country. Under the banner of “Keep Families Together,” the marches and protests held on Saturday were an indication of the mass disapproval Americans have of the Trump Administration’s decision to criminally prosecute all undocumented immigrants and thereby separate parents from children.

In Los Angeles where we are based, thousands of people flooded the streets of downtown. A few days earlier activists had begun camping out in front of the ICE prison as part of a movement begun in Portland, Oregon to abolish ICE. Our field correspondent Nic Cha Kim files this report from the L.A. Detention Center Sidewalk Camp Out and Saturday’s rally, as part of our on-going series Rising Up In the Streets.

Nic Cha Kim, Field Correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali.

FEATURING ROBERTO FLORES – Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is the new President elect of Mexico. Voters handed Obrador, or AMLO as he is called, a landslide victory, which came as no surprise after months of polling that showed he would win. He is the first left-leaning President to lead the country in decades and Mexicans, tired of corruption and violence, are hopeful today.

Winning 54% of the vote in a field with 3 other major party candidates, AMLO has a broad mandate to reshape the country. His election spells bad news for the Trump administration who he has vowed to protect Mexicans against.

Roberto Flores, Professor of Chicano Studies at Cal State LA, long-time Chicano activist based in Los Angeles, and founder of East Side Café, a space in El Sereno that was in part inspired by the Zapatistas.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is the new President elect of Mexico. Voters handed Obrador, or AMLO as he is called, a landslide victory, which came as no surprise after months of polling that showed he would win. He is the first left-leaning President to lead the country in decades and Mexicans, tired of corruption and violence, are hopeful today.

Winning 54% of the vote in a field with 3 other major party candidates, AMLO has a broad mandate to reshape the country. His election spells bad news for the Trump administration who he has vowed to protect Mexicans against.

We will have an in-depth analysis of what this election means for Mexico on tomorrow’s show.

Here in the US, hundreds of thousands of Americans, immigrants, and their allies, attended June 30th rallies in more than 700 cities across the country. Under the banner of “Keep Families Together,” the marches and protests held on Saturday were an indication of the mass disapproval Americans have of the Trump Administration’s decision to criminally prosecute all undocumented immigrants and thereby separate parents from children.

Jess Morales Rocketto with the National Domestic Workers Alliance told NBC News, “I have literally never seen Americans show up for immigrants like this.”

In New York, marchers crossed the Brooklyn Bridge chanting, “immigrants built this bridge,” before heading to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE building and yelling “shame.”

In Washington DC where the main rally was organized, award-winning playwright Lin Manuel Miranda sang a song from Hamilton.

In Boston, a Brazilian mother whose story we have been following addressed the crowd. Lidia Karine Souza, who has sued the US government to get her 9 year old son Diogo back from the government told protesters, “We came to the United States seeking help, and we never imagined that this could happen. So I beg everyone, please release these children, give my son back to me.” Also in Boston, Senator Elizabeth Warren called for ICE to be abolished – a familiar refrain that activists have been demanding and that is now being echoed by several members of Congress.

In Bedminister, New Jersey, a few hundred people gathered outside a golf course where President Trump was spending the weekend.

And in Atlanta, Georgia, Representative John Lewis, whose is an icon of the civil rights movement, gave a rousing speech.

In Los Angeles where we are based, thousands of people flooded the streets of downtown. Our correspondent Nic Cha Kim attended the rally and on tomorrow’s show we’ll bring you his full report-back.

In an interview with Fox Business News on Sunday, Trump made light of the calls to abolish ICE conflating it as a Democratic election-related message that would hurt his rival party. “All it’s going to do is lead to massive, massive crime,” he said, adding, “I think they’ll never win another election. So I’m actually quite happy about it.”

Meanwhile Associated Press is reporting that Border Patrol arrests have dropped sharply last month. The report, from an anonymous government official means that a four-month increase since February was reversed. Border Patrol, “made 34,057 arrests on the border with Mexico during June, down 16 percent from 40,344.” The numbers for June were still double that from last year. Analysts disagree why the numbers have changed with some citing Trump’s harsh border enforcement finally having a deterrent effect, and others suggesting harsh summer temperatures are responsible.