The Takeaway

The drinking water system in Jackson, Mississippi, failed its 150,000 residents this week after severe floods overwhelmed the city's outdated facilities. Thousands of residents have no clean drinking water and little to no water pressure, meaning they cannot even flush their toilets.

But this current crisis has been decades in the making due to disinvestment and neglect. Many residents already lived under a “boil notice,” meaning their water wasn't safe to use without first boiling out contaminants, or even didn’t use their tap water at all, due to lead contamination.

We speak with Mississippi Public Broadcasting reporter Kobee Vance and Aisha Nyandoro, CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, to understand how the city got here and what must be done.

Brandon Dale, New York ambassador at Hunters of Color, talks to us about the importance of representation amongst hunters as well as the interdependency between hunting and wildlife conservation.

On Tuesday, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev died at the age of 91 in a hospital in Moscow. In 1990, Gorbachev won a Nobel Peace Prize for his part in ending the Cold War.

His passing comes at a pivotal moment in history, when Russia is seeking in so many ways to reassert its dominance, whether it be through Putin's invasion of Ukraine or his desire to reverse so many of the policies that were Gorbachev’s legacy. Across much of the West, Gorbachev was hailed as a forward thinking statesman who enacted meaningful, liberal reforms. But those reforms ultimately led to the end of the Soviet Union, leaving Gorbachev with a mixed legacy amongst his fellow Russians. Today the Guardian reported that current Russian president, Vladimir Putin will not attend Gorbachev’s funeral. 

We're joined by Masha Gessen, a Russian-American journalist, staff writer at The New Yorker, and author of “Surviving Autocracy” for more.

For decades, the Rohingya people — a minority ethnic group in Myanmar — have been the target of violence and brutality under Myanmar's military regime. In 2017, the military launched a targeted campaign of attacks. Since then, at thousands of people have been killed and over 730,000 were driven into refugee camps in Bangladesh.

In March 2022, the U.S. State Department formally recognized this situation as a genocide. August of this year marked the fifth year of this ongoing genocide which has created one of the largest iterations of today's global refugee crisis. 

There have been a number of concerted efforts to rid the country of the Rohingya through campaigns of unspeakable violence. Human Rights Watch, along with other human rights organizations and watchdogs, report that these campaigns of terror have included mass killings, gang rapes, and relentless torture at the hands of the Burmese security forces. 

In 1982, the Burmese, military-controlled government enacted the Burmese Citizenship Act which defined a total of 135 recognized "national races." This allowed military and government persecution to escalate, and the Rohingya people have been treated as if they are "illegal immigrants" or "stateless" in a country in which many of them were born and have deep ancestral roots. 

To better understand the history and current plight of the Rohingya, we spoke with Raïss Tinmaung, founder of the Rohingya Human Rights Network and Canada Coordinator for the Free Rohingya Coalition. His parents fled persecution in Myanmar in 1978. We also hear from Shayna Bauchner, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in the Myanmar division. 

If democracy requires the participation of equals, has the U.S. ever really been a democracy? Professor Jedidiah Purdy of the Duke University Law School says no.

He joined to discuss his new book, "Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy Is Flawed, Frightening — and Our Best Hope," which argues that the best version of democracy is a never-ending, always-shifting participatory process... and that’s something that the United States has yet to achieve. 

Since gaining the right to vote, 18-21 year olds have never turned out at the same rates as older citizens. Is it a matter of apathy? Access? Or both?

In July, Senator Elizabeth Warren along with Representative Nikema Williams filed a bill called the “Youth Voting Rights Act,” in an effort to expand youth access to voting.  The bill would allow 16 and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote so that they’re ready to vote on their 18th birthday, expand voter registration access at public universities and colleges, and require institutions of higher learning to have on-campus polling places.

Recently youth voter turnout has actually increased.  In 2018’s midterms, we saw historic voter turnout rates among people aged 18-29, and in the 2020 Presidential elections, about half of 18 to 29 year olds voted, an 11% increase from 2016.  

We know that in 2020 Gen Z made up 10% of eligible voters in the U.S, and that they are more ethnically and racially diverse than previous generations. They’re also on target to be the most educated generation yet. But as we approach the 2022 midterms, what do Gen Z and other young voters want? And how do they assess the state of our politics and democracy? We hear from young callers about what issues are motivating them in the 2022 elections.

Then, we hear from 19-year-old Anya Dillard, activist and founder of The Next Gen Come Up, and 23-year-old Benji Backer, founder and president at American Conservation Coalition about how they see the state of voting and the health of our democracy. 

Louisiana’s Office of Juvenile Justice, also known as the OJJ, oversees five facilities including one in Jefferson Parish in New Orleans, called Bridge City Center for Youth. And the Bridge City Center, which houses inmates as young as 13 years old to the age of 21, has had repeated reports of violence within the facility, and multiple escapes.

In July, six young people incarcerated at Bridge City, overpowered a guard and escaped. One of those who escaped was accused of shooting a person while trying to steal a car.In response, LA Governor John Bel Edwards announced he’d carry out a plan to enhance security and address leadership issues at Bridge City. He also announced that he would temporarily relocate a portion of the 50 juveniles at Bridge City to LA State Penetierian- known as Angola. Governor Edwards said they would not have any direct contact with adult inmates at Angola, and would be housed in a separate facility.  

But advocates and families of those at Bridge City, say this move would be dangerous for the teens and young adults in juvenile detention, and filed a federal lawsuit to block this move. 

Last week a federal judge placed a temporary hold on the plan to move the juveniles to Angola. For more on this we spoke with Jacqueline DeRobertis, a staff reporter with The Advocate. 

The protests we see now have their foundation in the previous century and borrow from the intellectual work of black renegades.

We talk to Robin DG Kelley about the 20th-Anniversary Edition of his seminal book "Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination," the future of social movements, and the possibilities they can bring for our collective future.

Since its founding in 1910, more than 130 million youth have participated in scouting with The Boy Scouts of America. Today it remains one of the largest youth organizations in the U.S., with more than 2 million members and nearly 900,000 adult volunteers. 

But the Boy Scouts of America find themselves in financial straits. After mounting lawsuits alleging sexual abuse, the BSA filed for bankruptcy in February of 2020. More than 82,000 survivors of alleged abuse have filed claims against The Boy Scouts. In order to fund whatever claims are ruled payable, the BSA has proposed to federal judges the creation of a $2.7 billion dollar trust to compensate the claimants.  In order to create the fund, the BSA has called on local Boy Scout chapters to make contributions to the national organization.  If the plan goes through, no further claims of past sexual abuse can be brought against the Boy Scouts of America or its chapters. 

One of the Boy Scouts largest assets is land. In order to pay their contributions, local Boy Scout chapters have been selling their land, or announcing intentions to do so across the country. Much of this land is preserved, pristine land, and is a hot commodity for the interests of both developers and conservationists.

We explore what is being described as "The Great Boy Scout Land Sell-Off" and the legal and ethical questions of how, and to who, the land is being sold.

We first hear from Molly Osberg, freelance writer and reporter and author of the recent Curbed piece "The Great Boy Scout Land Sell-Off."

Then we hear from Keith Ainsworth, an environmental lawyer based in New Haven, Connecticut, and Tim Kosnoff, an attorney representing victims of sexual abuse from the Boy Scouts.

Seventeen years ago today, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana as a category 4 storm. It caused more than 1,800 deaths, and roughly 200,000 people were displaced from the Gulf Coast area.

Edward Buckles Jr. was 13 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and this month, he released the documentary “Katrina Babies” on HBO. The film intimately documents the experiences of children who were traumatized and displaced by the catastrophic levee failures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, including Buckles himself. 

We talked with the writer and director Edward Buckles Jr., and we spoke with Denese Shervington, founder and CEO of the Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies, a national non-profit health organization based in New Orleans that explores the intergenerational impact caused by the trauma of Hurricane Katrina in its research and advocacy.