The Big Shut-In

Mosaic NYC is a small neighborhood church that decided to open a food pantry last April, with the idea that it might help a few hundred neighbors who were suffering in the economic wake of COVID-19. Now, 9 months later, they are serving 2,000 families every week and the need continues to grow. We talk to Sofia, who has dedicated to herself to the project despite her own financial struggles.

Carletha knows how to work, there's no question about that, and she's been working very hard this year. Her job at an assisted living facility has been overfull of challenges and loss, her family is busting the seams of their apartment as they struggle with health challenges, and somehow she finds time to volunteer with the Red Cross and donate food, money, and time to neighbors whose struggles are even greater than her own.

So, we just had an election. Maybe you noticed? Post-game analysis and other topical musings with the always-astute Daniel J. White.

Many of us don't often associate college with homelessness, but as many as 14% of CUNY students have no fixed address - some living on couches, and many relying on shelters or living on the street. How does someone manage to work and study with that kind of personal instability? What if you're also trying to take care of a family while doing it all? And how about now, when COVID-19 has made everything more difficult for everybody? To find out, Char speaks to Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor at CUNY School of Public Health and recent graduate Kassanda Montes, who lived in shelters with her young son for the majority of her time as a student at Lehman College.

Nicole is a person of rare drive and resourcefulness… but with her small business on the rocks and children in open revolt, even she is finding that 2020 is a lot to take.

Checking in back in September with Paul Boschi, event producer extraordinaire (but with very little now to produce), and also an American abroad, to get his perspective on life in Europe and also on the sidelines. Also – there’s an election coming up. Maybe you heard?

The 2020 presidential election is only days away, and everyone agrees the results are going to have momentous consequences for the country, but the importance of this election only serves to underscore serious systemic questions about participatory democracy in the US - who votes? who doesn't? and why? and how? In this episode, we hear from CUNY Law student Melissa Shohet, and Professors Frances Fox Piven of the CUNY Graduate Center and Don Waisanen of Baruch College as they discuss their perspectives on this insidious and complex problem.

Along with doctors, nurses, and first responders, COVID's media "heroes" included an unlikely and previously unheralded group, the "essential workers" - custodians, supermarket employees, delivery drivers, and other solidly blue-collar, often underpaid and under-respected men and women who all of a sudden seemed to be the only ones holding society together. What has this sudden spotlight revealed about the nature of work in America and what we do and don't value and why? Charles Scott, Director of Facilities at the CUNY Graduate Center and John Krinsky, Professor of Political Science at City College weigh in on what was, what is, and what should be in the future.