FEATURING JEAN GUERRERO – The Biden administration this week released video footage and photographs of migrant detention facilities in Donna and El Paso, Texas, where thousands of unaccompanied minors are being processed. The point of releasing the images is, in the words of a Customs and Border Patrol official to, “balance the need for public transparency and accountability.” 

Citing the pandemic, the Biden administration has not allowed journalists to visit the facilities which have become overrun with young refugees. On the same day Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar released images of one Texas facility where more than 400 boys were being held in an area meant for 250. 

Meanwhile U.S. officials are visiting Mexico this week to finalize a deal on sending Covid vaccines to the Mexican government. But critics fear that migrants are being used as bargaining chips. 

 Read Jean Guerrero’s latest article on the Daily Beast called ‘Mexican MAGA Conspiracy Theorists Fan Flames At The Border,’ HERE. 

Jean Guerrero, investigative border reporter contributing to NPR, the PBS NewsHour and other public media. She is the author of Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, which won the PEN/FUSION Emerging Writers prize. Her new book is called Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. She just wrote a Daily Beast article entitled, “Mexican MAGA Conspiracy Theorists Fan Flames At The Border.”

FEATURING JON FASMAN – In the wake of the January 6th violent attack on the Capitol, hundreds of rioters were identified via social media images and videos as well as surveillance cameras. While most of us lauded the idea of justice being done in the face of creeping fascism, the fact that heavy surveillance played a serious role ought to give us pause. In a new book called We See it All, journalist Jon Fasman explores the disturbing extent of mass surveillance. 

Jon Fasman, US digital editor of The Economist, having previously been South-East Asia bureau chief and Atlanta correspondent. His new book is called We See It All: Liberty and Justice in an Age of Perpetual Surveillance.

** This segment was originally broadcast on February 18, 2021.

A 21-year old man identified as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa has been charged with the murders of ten people in a mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado on Monday. The shooting took place at a grocery store called King Soopers and left ten people dead including a 51-year old Boulder Police Officer named Eric Talley who responded to an emergency call. The victims are: Denny Strong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowika, 49; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jody Waters, 65. So far there is no known motive for the killings but Alissa’s brother who spoke to the Daily Beast said, “[It was] not at all a political statement, it’s mental illness…The guy used to get bullied a lot in high school, he was like an outgoing kid but after he went to high school and got bullied a lot, he started becoming anti-social.” The shooting comes less than a week after a horrific series of three linked shootings in and around Atlanta, Georgia that left 8 people dead.

The Boulder shooter used an AR-15 style assault rifle. The mass shooting came just days after a judge overturned a Boulder city ban on assault rifles that had first been enacted after the Parkland mass shooting in Florida. The U.S. Senate Judiciary committee held a hearing on Tuesday titled “Constitutional and Common Sense Steps to Reduce Gun Violence.” Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill) opened the hearing calling the issue of gun violence a “public health crisis,” and added, “We won’t solve this crisis with prosecutions after funerals. We need prevention before shooting.” Senator Richard Blumenthal responded to the standard conservative response of sending “thoughts and prayers” to families of victims. In 2020 alone, gun violence claimed more than 41,000 lives in the U.S. The progressive group Indivisible posted a tweet saying, “You’re going to see another round of ‘we can’t do anything yet, there was a tragedy’ hand-wringing, but we must end gun violence now. Let’s eliminate the filibuster and pass real gun violence prevention legislation.” 

In other news, U.S. health officials have cast doubt on the just-published clinical trial results for the already embattled AstraZeneca vaccine. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases took the unusual step of releasing a statement after midnight saying it was concerned that, “AstraZeneca may have included outdated information from that trial, which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.” According to AP, “AstraZeneca responded that the results, which showed its shot was about 79% effective, included information through Feb. 17 but appeared to be consistent with more up-to-date data. It promised an update within 48 hours.” Meanwhile the Biden Administration is taking steps to inc...

FEATURING MAI-LINH HONG AND TERRY PARK – The Asian American community is reeling from a year of hate and racist attacks that culminated in last week’s horrific shooting at 3 Atlanta-area spas in Georgia claiming the lives of 6 Asian women and 2 others. While Donald Trump’s anti-China rhetoric clearly opened the floodgates of anti-Asian hate since the start of the pandemic, President Joe Biden’s continuation of a hostile posture toward China may also not be helping. Beyond current events there is a deep history of anti-Asian racism in this nation symbolized by immigration policies and white racist mobs, as well as in the realm of U.S. foreign policy and war that has dehumanized Asian bodies, particularly those of women. 

Mai-Linh Hong, Assistant Professor of Literature, University of California, Merced, Co-Chair, Circle for Asian American Literary Studies, and a former attorney writing about race, gender, refugees, and justice; Terry Park, Lecturer, Asian American Studies Program, University of Maryland, College Park. 

FEATURING SARAH ANDERSON – As Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama wrap up a high-profile weeks-long process of voting to join a retail workers union, Senator Bernie Sanders last week shone a spotlight on the absurd inequality that American workers experience. Senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate Budget Committee last week introducing a hearing on inequality in the United States. He had invited Jennifer Bates, an Amazon worker, to discuss the union efforts in Bessemer, Alabama, as well as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Bates accepted the invitation, but Bezos did not. Also invited to speak at the hearing was my guest Sarah Anderson.  

Sarah Anderson, Director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. 

Coronavirus infections in several U.S. states have begun to rise once more after months of declining cases. Scientists fear yet another surge as the race to vaccinate competes with a fatigued population eager to return to normalcy. The city of Miami Beach, Florida over the weekend symbolized the problems of reopening too soon and in a patchwork way as uncontrolled crowds of people swarmed into the city to enjoy their Spring Break. Miami Beach officials imposed a curfew that has now been extended for 3 weeks. According to the New York Times, “Officials went so far as to approve closing the famed Ocean Drive for four nights a week until April 12…The strip, frequented by celebrities and tourists alike, was the scene of a much-criticized skirmish on Saturday night in which police officers used pepper balls to disperse a large crowd of sometimes unruly and mostly unmasked revelers just hours after the curfew had been introduced.” Police arrested more than a 1,000 people. Like other Republican run states, Florida did not seriously enforce shelter-in-place orders and mask ordinances. A recent editorial in the Florida Times-Union called the state’s pandemic response “a horror show,” and offered the following assessment: “Almost 2 million cases and more than 32,000 dead. Businesses closed, people brought to the brink, with little help from a state unemployment system that was designed to fail.”

In other pandemic news, the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, produced in collaboration with Oxford University has finally been assessed in the United States. A large clinical trial conducted in the U.S. concluded that the vaccine offered, “100% efficacy against severe or critical disease and hospitalization,” and had, “79% vaccine efficacy at preventing symptomatic COVID-19.” The AstraZeneca vaccine had been widely used across Europe. But because the vaccine had been associated with rare instances of blood clots – 37 cases out of 17 million—the resulting pause in Europe to conduct an assessment, has now resulted in a massive loss of public trust in the vaccine. A YouGov poll found majorities did not trust the vaccine in Germany, Italy and Spain. However the UK government has moved full-speed ahead with vaccinating its population using the AstraZeneca shot and tensions with Europe, already exacerbated because of Brexit, are now even higher. Here in the United States, vaccine skepticism in Black and brown communities has diminished since last year as per new polls. Non-white communities are now as likely as white Americans to trust the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 va...

FEATURING JANINE AFRICA AND RAMONA AFRICA – As a national conversation about racist police brutality continues with the trial of Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd, the sordid history of police violence against Black Americans is perhaps most shockingly symbolized by the Philadelphia police department’s relentless assault on the MOVE organization in the 1970s and 80s. To this day most Americans have likely not heard of the only aerial police bombing on US soil when Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on top of a house inhabited by members MOVE, in a predominantly black neighborhood in 1985. 

Eleven people were killed, among them 5 children. The horrific bombing came after years of police targeting and violence captured in a 1978 documentary called MOVE: Confrontation in Philadelphia. The film is an astounding, award-winning account of one of many assaults on MOVE. It was shot on the ground during the August 8, 1978, siege of the MOVE home in Powelton Village by police, which first-time filmmakers Karen Pomer and Jane Mancini risked their lives to record. Footage from the film has been included in more recent documentaries about MOVE such as 40 Years a Prisoner and Let the Fire Burn. MOVE: Confrontation in Philadelphia is about to be released for the first time in its entirety online in an newly digitized format. 

The film will be available starting Wednesday, March 24 at 2PM PST / 5PM EST. **Also available on Demand Mar 25-29**

Sign-up for the screening HERE. There’s a $5 charge to join Metrograph.  

Janine Africa, MOVE9 survivor of the 1978 police assault on MOVE who spent 40 years in prison and Ramona Africa, the sole-adult survivor of the 1985 police bombing of MOVE and who spent 7 years in prison. 

FEATURING ANURADHA MITTAL AND DAVID BACON – House Democrats have introduced an ambitious new immigration bill that encompasses President Joe Biden’s plan to offer an 8-year pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. The bill is expected to face stiff resistance among Republicans who appear to have embraced the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant posture wholesale. 

Meanwhile, a new report released by the Oakland Institute on conditions facing guest farmworkers in the U.S. expose horrific conditions akin to slavery. While Trump during the pandemic placed harsh limits on legal pathways to emigrate to the United States, he expanded the program allowing temporary agricultural workers to enter.

Read the report ‘Dignity or Exploitation: What Future for Farmworker Families in the United States?,’ HERE.  

Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute; David Bacon, author of the new report Dignity or Exploitation: What Future for Farmworker Families in the United States?

** This segments was originally broadcast on February 19, 2021.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited  Atlanta, Georgia on Friday in an effort to address growing anger over their inaction on anti-Asian racism and hate crimes. The trip was originally planned as part of a multi-city tour to promote the benefits of the American Rescue Plan. During their visit Biden and Harris met with several state-level Asian American leaders. The visit came a day after a House Judiciary Subcommittee meeting to address anti-Asian hate. But Republican lawmakers, revealing clearly that they are part of the racist problems in America, fixated on their right to criticize the government of China. Across the nation, Asian Americans see the mass shootings in the Atlanta area this week that claimed the lives of 8 people including 6 Asian women, as the culmination of a year of hate. Their fears are well-founded as a new study shows racist anti-Asian social media posts spiked last year soon after then-President Donald Trump first began calling COVID-19, the “China virus” or “Chinese virus.”

As more details come to light about the Tuesday mass shooting eye witness accounts of the alleged shooter Robert Aaron Long rampaging with a gun he had just purchased paint a sordid picture of violence and blood. Police and media, after facing criticism for painting a sympathetic portrait of the suspect, are finally focusing on the victims of the attack. Police have just named all 8 victims comprising 6 Asian woman, 1 white woman and 1 white man: 74-year old Soon Park, 51-year old Hyun Grant, 69-year old Suncha Kim, 63-year old Yong Yue, 49-year old Xiaojie Tan, 44-year old Daoyou Feng, 33-year old Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez, and 54-year old Paul Andre Michels. The incident could be a test case for a newly passed hate crimes law in Georgia. Two other incidents in different parts of the U.S. are now sparking speculation of copy-cat attacks including a shooting at a Seattle-area spa that left one Asian man wounded, and an attack on a 13-year old Asian American boy in New York where perpetrators allegedly hurled racist insults. 

In other news, the House on Thursday passed two major immigration reform bills that would help young immigrants who arrived to the U.S. as children and are registered in the DACA program to obtain legal status, as well as farm workers allowed into the U.S. The Dream and Promise Act passed 228-197 and if it became law would impact 2.5 million so-called “Dreamers” as well as those in the U.S.

FEATURING PAUL SONG – The advocacy group Public Citizen has just published a whitepaper on the impact of the pandemic on a nation that has no national health system. According to its authors, “hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of infections would like have been prevented,” had the U.S. enjoyed a Medicare-for-All system. 

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington has just reintroduced her Medicare-for-All bill that would expand the program currently enjoyed by those 65 years of age and older, to all Americans.

Paul Song, a board-certified radiation oncologist. He is co-chair of the Campaign for a Healthy California, and is on the board of Physicians for a National Health Program. Paul is also the Healthcare Correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali.