The Takeaway

More movie fans are back in theaters this year than last, but the 2022 box office is still below pre-pandemic levels. So if you’re on the fence: which releases are actually worth checking out in theaters this summer? Marvel’s latest, "Thor: Love and Thunder," topped the box office this weekend, but did it live up to expectations? And what’s still to come? The Takeaway turns to Rafer Guzman, film critic for Newsday, and Alison Willmore, film critic for New York Magazine and Vulture, for their recommendations on what to see and what to skip.

Last week, WNBA star Brittney Griner appeared in Russian court and pled guilty to drug trafficking charges. Griner has been wrongfully-detained in Russian for over 140 days, and she recently wrote to President Biden, saying "I’m terrified I might be here forever." A few days later, We speak with Dr. Danielle Gilbert, Fellow at the Joan Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, about what to expect next in Griner’s case and what legal strategies might be at play.

Prices are high and they're going higher. In June, the Labor Department reported that a key inflation measure, the Consumer Price Index, had increased by 8.6 percent year-over-year – the largest 12-month increase in 40 years. New numbers will be out this week – and they are expected to stay high.

In response to this inflation, and in order to stabilize it, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by three quarters of a percentage point in mid-June – the biggest hike since 1994. And the Fed has indicated that additional rate hikes are expected in the coming months. 

While these higher rates are supposed to “cool” the economy down, some economists worry that this could hurt the job market, cause higher unemployment, and potentially trigger a recession.

To hear more about what's going on with the economy we spoke with Damon Jones, economist and professor at University of Chicago.

In this Deep Dive, Melissa and Dorian take an in-depth look at water insecurity, access and cleanliness. They start off with Sera Young, associate professor anthropology and global health at northwestern University.

Then Josina Morita, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District in Cook County about how the infrastructure bill will aid in improving water systems. 

Jonathan Nez, president of the Navajo Nation and Bidtah Becker, Associate attorney with the Navajo tribal utility authority join for a discussion of water issues in Indian Country, with a specific focus on Navajo Nation.

Reverend Roslyn Bouier, executive director of the Brightmoor Connection Client Choice Food Pantry explains how water shut offs affect the citizens of Brightmoor in Detroit, Michigan. 

And finally Tom Mueller, research assistant professor of geography and environmental sustainability at the University of Oklahoma will discuss how water insecurity and plumbing poverty affects rural area. 

Some music from this episode by:

I Think Like Midnight (http://www.ithinklikemidnight.com/) & The Sometime Boys (https://www.thesometimeboys.com/)

Joining our hosts to discuss the racial and class inequalities infecting application of the Death Penalty is Samuel Spital, Director of Litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. They speak with Sabrina Butler Smith, the first woman exonerated from death row, about her experience of being wrongly convicted of murdering her infant and sent to death row in Mississippi. We also get a look from a victim’s perspective through a conversation with Jennifer Pinckney, Widow of Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was murdered by Dylan Roof.

Finally, the hosts explore the processes and procedures of putting inmates to death with Lynden Harris, Director of Hidden Voices and Editor of "Right Here, Right Now: Life Stories from America’s Death Row" and Sister Helen Prejean, anti-death penalty activist, spiritual advisor to men and women on death row, and author of "Dead Man Walking," "The Death of Innocents," and "The River of Fire."

On today's Deep Dive, Melissa and Dorian take an in-depth look at sex work and how it's been criminalized in the United States, starting off with journalist and former sex worker Melissa Gira Grant, who discusses the history of criminalizing sex work in the U.S.

Then Cecilia Gentili, principal consultant and founder of Trans Equity Consulting, and LaLa B. Holston-Zannell, trans justice campaign manager in the National Advocacy Department at the ACLU, explain the idea of sex work as work and why some advocates are calling for full decriminalization.

Yasmin Vafa, executive director of Rights 4 Girls, discusses concerns that sex work increases opportunities for sex trafficking, particularly the trafficking of children.  

RJ Thompson, managing director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, helps break down some of the stigma surrounding sex work as well as how and why male sex workers are often left out of conversations around sex work.

And finally Elexus Jionde, author, content creator and founder of Intelexual Media, explores how technology, digital communication and the “realites” of the virtual world will continue to shape the future of sex work.

Some of the music on this podcast was made by Touque (https://davidaaron4.bandcamp.com/album/soho-sessions), Hannis Brown (https://www.hannisbrown.com/), James Perry, and j. cowit (https://jcowit.bandcamp.com/)

Joining our hosts to discuss the history of U.S. Health Insurance and how it compares to other countries is Julia Lynch, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jamila Michener, associate professor in the department of Government at Cornell University about the connections between health inequities and our insurance system.

We also take a look at the creation of the Affordable Care Act with one of its architects Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel who currently serves as Vice Provost of Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter Suderman, features editor at Reason, joins us to discuss the current state of healthcare and health insurance and how both parties could make changes to their approaches on both.

Finally, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal discusses expanding health insurance for Americans with her Medicare for All Plan and how it will restore dignity to every American through adequate health insurance coverage. 

After the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act and even Loving v. Virginia, one major issue around the racial justice movement remained unaddressed: fair housing.

On April 11, 1968 President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Fair Housing Act into law.  Because of this, April is National Fair Housing Month. All month, advocates, organizers, and communities commemorate this landmark piece of Civil Rights legislation which outlawed discrimination in housing.

On this episode of The Takeaway, Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren take a Deep Dive into the history and current state of fair housing in America, 54 years after the passage of the National Fair Housing Act. 

Guests:

Lisa Rice, President and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance

Jim McCarthy, President/CEO of Miami Valley Fair Housing Center

Michael Allen, Attorney and Partner at Relman Colfax

Ava Deakin, lead plaintiff in Deakin v. Old Town Triangle Association

Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia

Even before the excruciating weight of the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty rates rose for the first time in five years. In 2020, there were 3.3 million more people living in poverty than in 2019. Poverty rates rose among white and Hispanic Americans, and for the 1 in 5 Black Americans already living in poverty, there wasn’t much room for the rate to go up. All were poorer in 2020 than the year before.

A package of pandemic-era policies stemmed rising poverty in 2021; however, many of those temporary measures have expired as consumer prices continue to rise, leaving many American families and workers economically vulnerable. According to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, the monthly child poverty rate increased from 12.1 percent in December 2021 to 17 percent in January 2022, the highest it's been since the end of 2020. Black and Latinx children experienced the largest increases in poverty rates.

This 4.9 percent increase accounts for the nearly 3.7 million more children living in poverty after the Child Tax Credit ended. The monthly Child Tax Credit payments "buffered family finances amidst the continuing pandemic, increased families’ abilities to meet their basic needs, reduced child poverty and food insufficiency, and had no discernable negative effects on parental employment."

"I think one of the core themes of my work–across multiple sectors and fields–has been a focus on poverty. And the fact that poverty is not an ordained or natural system or condition, but a system of policy choices," says Dorian Warren, co-host of our Deep Dives, co-president of Community Change, and co-chair of the Economic Security Project. 

The experience of poverty is even more widespread than the official definition tells us. Yet, the perception of poverty remains contentious for many Americans. Research shows that Americans overwhelmingly identify themselves as 'middle-class,' even when they’re not. Groups like Confronting Poverty have developed tools like the poverty risk calculator to help people better understand economic hardship and risk. Awareness is just one facet of the ongoing fight against poverty. The anti-poverty and low wage workers movement is leading “a national call for moral revival.”

 On June 18, 2022 the Poor People’s Campaign led a mass demonstration in Washington, D.C. Thousands of people from all over the country attended. Ahead of the march, we spoke with the Poor People's Campaign co-chairs Bishop William Barber, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Director of Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary. Repairers of the Breach and the Kairos Center were the anchor organizations of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

Dorian was there as well, both as an organizer and observer, covering the march for The Takeaway. In this Deep Dive, Dorian joins The Takeaway in critical conversation around today's anti-poverty and labor movement and the voices defining what economic, racial, and social justice can and should look like. 

Conservatives have long invoked the specter of the 1857 Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott vs. Sandford in their fight against abortion rights, likening embryos and fetuses to slaves with no due process. Progressives now, too, are drawing parallels between the stripping of rights from people who may get pregnant and the infamous majority opinion penned by then-Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote, "a Black man has no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Missing from this historic analogy, however, are the experiences of Black women, whose enslavement and forced reproduction was fundamental to America's rise. We speak with Dr. Deborah Gray White, Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, about this not-so-distant history and the possibilities it holds for all American women.