Sojourner Truth Radio

Today on Sojourner Truth, Nana Gyamfi guest hosts. Nana is an attorney & Executive Director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). Our first guest is co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, Cliff Albright who kicks off the show discussing some of the most contentious races in Georgia during the midterm, voter suppression and the conservative wave of votes cast by white women in Georgia.

WNBA basketball superstar Britney Griner has been sentenced to a 9.5 year sentence in Russia for allegedly carrying cannabis cartridges in her luggage. Britney Griner is a recent example of a Black American being criminalized for a nonviolent crime, and while her case gained international awareness due to her celebrity as a pro star athlete, this is the reality for many Black Americans and immigrants criminalized for marijuana offenses impacting their daily experience, we contextualize the history of criminalization of cannabis in the U.S. and its continued iterations with executive director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and attorney Sirine Shebaya.

To conclude, we discuss French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. Presidential envoy for climate John Kerry and their friendly treatment of Venezuelan President Maduro at the Cop 27 conference with José Luis Granados Ceja, journalist and political analyst and staff writer with Venezuela Analysis, who shares his take on why the West and its allies appear to be changing their narrative and treatment towards Venezuela, a country recognized for its extensive oil reserves.

Today on Sojourner Truth, our Friday round table panel is back with our panelists including: former member of the California State Assembly, and current LAUSD governing school board member Jackie Goldberg, international correspondent Laura Carlsen and historian Dr. Gerald Horne, we discuss the Brazil election and major changes in Israeli politics that place Israel the farthest to the right in its electoral history, we also discuss the U.S. midterm elections and the unexpected victories and losses. as well as the role in this historic midterm of Gen Z, the highest voting majority group than any other age group in the U.S.

The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, or COP27, is the 27th United Nations Climate Change conference and is being held from 6 November until 18 November 2022 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

Today on Sojourner Truth journalist Tina Gerhardt, correspondent for The Nation Magazine covering Cop 27, joins us for the hour to discuss why debt and inequality will be key issues at COP 27 and the first week of COP27 including the speeches given by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, and CARICOM Chair.

At COP 27, countries come together to take action towards achieving the world’s collective climate goals as agreed under the Paris Agreement and the Convention. Building on the outcomes and momentum of COP 26 in Glasgow last year, nations are expected to demonstrate at COP 27 that they are in a new era of implementation by turning their commitments under The Paris Agreement into action. The conference will take place from 6-18 November 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Heads of State and Government will attend the Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Implementation Summit on 7 and 8 November. A high-level segment primarily attended by Ministers will take place from 15-18 November.

Today is Election Day in the U.S. voters across the US will have their last opportunity to go to the polls and vote. It is a critical election that will determine which party Democrats or Republicans will control the House of Representatives as well as the Senate. Additionally, there are other key elections across the country including governors, mayors, judges and senators.

Many are calling this election one of the most critical as it comes at a time that the country is polarized with the influence of Donald Trump strongly felt. This election will determine the direction of the country. Will it go in the direction of Italy, for example and shift further to the right, and if so what does that say about the state of civil rights, womens', lgbtq+rights, immigrants rights and ecological devastation?

Today on Sojourner Truth we bring you a special on the significance and importance of voting, and the fight to defend the vote. You will hear the main speakers at a recent get out the vote webinar organized by the California Poor People's Campaign. Speakers include: Shannon Rivers who opens the webinar with a land acknowledgment, followed by attorney and voting rights icon Barbara Arwine who is with the Transformative Justice Coalition; the Reverend Liz Theoharis who is the joint coordinator of the Poor People's Campaign a national call for moral revival and the Kairos Center, Alan Minsky with Progressives for Democracy and long-time community organizer and co-found of Tia Chucha's Community Center in the San Fernando Valley Trini Rodriguez.

Sojourner Truth Radio continues our November 2022 election coverage. Today, we unpack polling results as they come in with our panelist roundtable including: Attorney and civil rights icon Barbara Arnwine, Progressive Democrats of America Executive Director Alan Minsky, Chicano Liberation and Environmental Justice artivist Bill Gallegos and London-based labor union artivist Sam Weinstein.

Today on Sojourner Truth: our Friday Roundtable is back. Dr. Gerald Horne, international journalist Laura Carlsen and school board member Jackie Goldberg join host Margaret Prescod to discuss the latest developments internationally.

Beginning with the US Senate that has passed a short-term government funding bill that provides an additional $12.3 billion in aid to Ukraine. The Biden administration promises to maintain financial support for Kyiv to battle the Russian invasion. This while Russia has annexed four Ukraine territories in a controversial by force vote that is being condemned as a sham and a violation of international law by Ukraine, the United Nations, and the U.S. and its allies. What does this mean for the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine and its continued impact felt across the globe?

This Sunday's election in Brazil will be one of the most-watched in Latin America, as two polar ideological opposites fight for the presidency in the world's fourth-largest democracy. Current President Jair Bolsonaro, who's been escalating destruction of the Amazon, and casting doubts on the country's electoral system in the run-up to election day, and one of Latin America's well recognized leftists, former Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who is leading with more than 10 points ahead of Bolsonaro in many of the polls, despite two corruption scandals during his tenure that landed him in jail.

Hurricane Ian continues to devastate Florida, Cuba, parts of Canada and now it makes its way to South Carolina, panelists contextualize the correlation between global warming and this historical climate change catastrophe.

Today on Sojourner Truth:

We continue our coverage of the growing movement for restitution and reparations for people of African descent. Today we have an opportunity to hear a wide-ranging discussion on reparations by participants from across the continent of Africa at an event organized by Africans Rising. You will hear a variety of speakers including from Senegal, Kenya, the Sudan and more. Some ask pointed questions, others make statements and/or proposals. The discussion took place during the All-African Movement Assembly held on Aug 29-31, 2022 and organized by Africans Rising.

Today on Sojourner Truth:

Guest host Nana Gyamfi will share excerpts from Vijay Prashad's recent speech: Democracy Beyond the US Empire hosted by the People’s Forum at the famed Riverside Church in Harlem, New York City.

Prashad addresses US myth busting in the Global South and the co-opted words of the movement. Joining her for this discussion and further analysis of the blocades vs. Cuba and Venezuela is Manolo de los Santos, the co-executive director of the People’s Forum and co-coordinator of the People’s Summit for Democracy. Manolo is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

The devastation of the present hurricane to hit Puerto Rico continues to reverberate. Here to discuss what Puerto Ricans are doing to help and for survival is Francisco Andres Santiago Cintron, coordinator of Accion Independista and community coordinator of the Red Comunitaria de Respuesta, which groups more than 13 communities around Puerto Rico on the principal of solidarity and sovereignty.

Our final guest is Tiffany Flowers, abolitionist and organizer who will tell us all about #DayWithoutUS, a campaign to demand immediate action to restore and protect reproductive justice, while connecting people with local reproductive services, and organizing work around labor, race, housing and gender justice.

Today on Sojourner Truth, the yearly UN General Assembly Meetings were held at the UN headquarters in NYC from September 21-23, 2022. It is a time when heads of state or their representatives address the world. The occasion is used to promote, chastise, make proposals on vital issues facing their respective nation and the world. Quite often there is a disparity in focus and priorities when one contrasts the speeches from governments of the Global North to most of those from governments of the Global South. The Global North speeches tend to justify their form of government and their economic and social policies, while the Global South speeches often tend to point to the disparity in wealth and resources and the fact that it is the Global North that causes more of man-made climate change, the environmental crisis, and it is countries of the Global South that bears the brunt of climate.

RE the term Global South, on the movement front, Fridays for Future, the movement founded by environmental justice campaigner and Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, is popularizing the term MAPA which stands for: Most Affected People and Areas, they define MAPA as those communities that suffer the most from the effects of Climate Change.

For todays show, we have selected two speeches from heads of state given at the 2022 UNGA to share with you. One is the speech given by Barbados PM Mia Mottley who gave a pragmatic speech calling out the Bretton Woods Institution, for changing the makeup of the UN security council and the veto power on the council, challenging the IMF and those who prioritize war over ending poverty, to highlighting the plight of Haiti. It is clearly the voice of a head of state of a small island emerging economy. Her comments range from ending the embargo on Cuba to ending poverty, to the reality of the impact of climate change to the challenges of small islands having still to rely on natural gas, to ending poverty and the imperialistic order.

The other speech is from the newly elected President of Columbia Gustavo Petro who makes a strong case for ending the war on drugs which he says has killed a million Latin Americans and is poisoning the forests in his country by spraying pesticides aimed at killing the cocoa plant but does much more damage. He describes a war on the cocoa plant which was sacred to the Aztecs and the imprisonment of those who have few options to make a living other than growing the plant. He poses the question what is more dangerous he cocoa plant or oil and war and addition to greed? He said world powers are becoming irrational.

It is important to move beyond our usual bubble and listen to other voices and points of views, so stay tuned as there is much to learn from these leaders of from countries of the Global South.

Today on Sojourner Truth we bring you Part 3 of our series coverage of the Mass Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls, you will hear from a variety of speakers including: Reverend William Barber II, co-chair of the Poor Peoples Campaign, writer Phyllis Bennis, Planned Parenthood, immigration reform and prison reform organizers, faith leaders, and the testimonies from poor and low income people from across the U.S. detailing their first-hand experience with interlacing injustices: infringement on women's bodies and reproductive rights, generational poverty ensued by low wage work and the war economy/militarism and misallocation of resources, all of which are facilitated by what the PPC refers to as" a distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism, that needs to be reconstructed," in order to end these oppressive injustices once and for all.