The Takeaway

Back in 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs." More than 50 years later, it's clear that what was a war on drugs in principle turned into an assault on marginalized communities in practice. That’s a tone very different than what we heard from President Biden earlier this year during the State of the Union address. At his address, the Biden said, "There is so much we can do: increase funding for prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and recovery. Get rid of outdated rules that stop doctors from prescribing treatments. And stop the flow of illicit drugs by working with state and local law enforcement to go after traffickers. If you’re suffering from addiction, know you are not alone. I believe in recovery, and I celebrate the 23 million Americans in recovery."

And it’s not just President Biden. Even conservative politicians like like Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton have advocated for treatment rather than punishment to address opiod addiction – a  a drug epidemic where white Americans largely have been the public face. To be clear opioid use is a crisis. In 2019 over 70 percent of overdose deaths in the US involved an opioid. And according to research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, overdose deaths between 2009 and 2019 actually hit Black communities the hardest.Even as this crisis is being discussed in ways that are different from previous drug epidemics, there is still a lot of stigma for those seeking recovery from opioid use disorder, also known as OUD. This month the Department of Justice sent an important message with hopes of addressing that stigma. The DOJ issued guidance explaining that people who are recovering from opioid use disorder are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act, known as the ADA. This includes anyone taking prescription medications as part of their treatment.

We speak with Ryan Hampton, an advocate and author of the book “UNSETTLED: How the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy Failed the Victims of the American Overdose Crisis.” Ryan is also a person in recovery from opioid addiction. We also speak with Kassandra Frederique, executive director at Drug Policy Alliance, a non-profit that works to end the war on drugs.

April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate we’re going to chat with a series of young poets about their love for poetry. In this installment we’ll speak with Kevin Gu, the 2021 National Student Poet representing the Northeast region of the United States for The National Student Poets Program.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration extended the national COVID-19 public health emergency for another 90 days. The move will prolong the period in which insurance and Medicaid is required to cover Covid-19 tests, and extend other pandemic related benefits. It comes at a moment when cases continue to rise in some parts of the country, but hospitalizations and deaths remain down.

We speak with New York Times science and global health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli about how the Biden administration and local leaders are handling the current stage of the pandemic.

Last month, a federal judge in Richmond, Virginia ruled that the use of a geofence warrant to make an arrest in a robbery case was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourth Amendment. Civil liberties advocates have raised concerns about geofence warrants for a long time because they give police data for anyone whose phone was in a given area during a specific timeframe.

The Takeaway speaks with Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, about what this latest ruling means for the use of geofence warrants going forward.

On February 13, 2020, Olivia Warren, staff attorney at the Center for the Death Penalty Litigation and former law clerk of the newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, brought national attention to the federal judiciary when she testified before the House Judiciary Committee.

In her testimony,  she gave a deeply personal recount of the sexual harassment she says she faced while serving as a law clerk for the late LA-based, Appellate Judge Stephen Reinhardt. In her testimony, Warren alleged that Judge Reinhardt persistently sexually harassed her and that the system meant to protect people like her did just the opposite.

Aliza Shatzman is a family law attorney and former law clerk in Washington D.C. and similarly to Warren's experience, she claims she too was a victim of gender discrimination and retaliation while clerking for a judge in D.C. Superior Court from 2019 to 2020. 

In a written Statement for the Record submitted to the House Committee on the Judiciary, she recalled her painful experience of harassment at the hands of a D.C. federal judge, including “[her] attempts to report the mistreatment, how the system failed [her] when she tried to report, and [her] efforts to seek justice for herself and accountability for the misbehaving former judge.”

When she filed her complaint against the judge to the D.C. Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure, she found out that there were very few legal protections from harassment and retaliation for law clerks who reported judges' misbehavior. Currently, judges are excluded from anti-discrimination laws, and in July 2021, Congress proposed a bill that would fix this: the Judiciary Accountability Act (JAA). The law would empower judiciary employees who experience abuse, harassment, and retaliation to sue judges under Title VII, along with a number of other measures that create more accountability for judges.

For Shatzman, this is just the base level of change needed. She believes the federal judiciary needs meaningful structural change to occur within a system that does little to protect law clerks and other court employees from harassment. We spoke to her about how pervasive this issue is and the legislative efforts being taken to hold judges more accountable. 

Editor's note: We reached out to the D.C. Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure for comment on this story and have not yet heard back. Any comments will be updated and made available ASAP.

On Monday, A New York jury found R&B singer R. Kelly guilty on all 9 counts against him which included racketeering and sex trafficking charges. We speak with dream hampton, showrunner and executive producer of the docu-series “Surviving R. Kelly” about what this conviction means to her and Kelly’s numerous victims.

 Correction: At 9:05 minutes in the interview, the guest says that Stephen Henderson produced BET's awards shows. She meant to refer to Stephen Hill, the former president of programming for BET Networks.

If you have yet to get swept up in the wave of cryptocurrency investments, you are not alone. While it may seem that bitcoins and ethereum are making millionaires out of early-adopters, there is much to understand about the individual risks of buying digital currencies and the potential dangers cryptocurrency poses to our economic system as well as the environment. We speak with John Beccia, co-founder and CEO of FS Vector, and Hilary J. Allen, author of “Driverless Finance,” about fintech, cryptocurrency, and the importance of regulation.

Gordon Plaza – a subdivision in New Orleans’ Desire neighborhood, was established in the late 1970s and was supposed to be an opportunity for New Orleans’ emerging Black middle class to buy into the American dream. But the dream that was Gordon Plaza quickly dissolved into a nightmare for the residents of this community when they discovered the very foundation of their community was toxic.

In the early 1900s, the land that Gordon Plaza now occupies was low lying, swampy, and largely vacant,  New Orleans used this area as a dumping ground for the city’s waste. It was called the Agriculture Street Landfill. For decades, residents in nearby neighborhoods complained about the site and eventually it was closed. But then in 1965, the city temporarily reopened the Agriculture Street Landfill as a dumping ground for debris from Hurricane Betsy. Most of the new residents who first bought in Gordon Plaza in the 1980s did not know their homes sat on a toxic site. But within a decade, debris and residue became visible as sealed oiled drums literally popped out of the ground in family’s yards.

Under intense pressure from environmental activists and distressed residents, the  Environmental Protection Agency began to test Gordon Plaza’s soil and found 140 toxic and hazardous materials, more than 40 of which were known to cause cancer. In 1994 the EPA declared the area a superfund, or hazardous waste site. In the mid-1990s, the EPA financed a $20 million remediation project to remove contaminated soil from some areas of the property and replace it with new soil, but now that residents in the area knoe the land they owned was a former landfill and dumpsite, they are seeking more than just new dirt for their backyards. They want a way to relocate, and residents are still fighting with the City of New Orleans for the funds to do so. 

In 2016, the City amended its master plan and included a portion about Gordon Plaza residents. It provided a five year timeline to “Identify and apply for Federal, State, and other funding or resources to relocate consenting residents of the Gordon Plaza Subdivision that was built on the Agriculture Street Landfill.” That five year timeline ended in 2021. Residents have estimated that it will now cost $35 million to relocate the 54 families on still living on Gordon Plaza. On January 6, 2022, the New Orleans City Council earmarked $35 million in the capitol Budget to help relocate residents. But that money is not guaranteed. 

According to a 2019 report from the Louisiana Tumor Registry, Gordon Plaza’s census tract has the second highest cancer rate in the state, although the report also says it’s hard to prove links between cancer and certain exposures.

We spoke with Wilma Subra, technical advisor to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, and President of Subra Company, an environmental consulting firm. Subra has been working as an environmental consultant for residents on the site since the late 1980s.

We also spoke with two residents, Jesse Perkins and Marilyn Amar, who currently live in Gordon Plaza. They bought their houses without knowing about the dangerous toxins they might be exposed to on their own properties. You can learn more about residents' advocacy at GordonPlaza.com.

Statement from the City of New Orleans from John F. Lawson II, Deputy Press Secretary:

The City of New Orleans is working closely with the Environmental Protection Agency to identify additional resources to redevelop the existing Agriculture Street Landfill and properties near the site, such as those in Gordon Plaza, into a sustainable solar farm that would increase the City’s power resilience and minimize greenhouse gas emissions.To date, EPA has provided technical assistance to the City in funding the science and engineering work for a project Feasibility Study through its Superfund Program.

The Feasibility Study estimates building the solar farm will cost approximately $10 million. At present, $2 million in bond funding has been allocated to developing the solar farm project. The $35 million earmark by the New Orleans City Council is not actually tied to the City's project.The most critical element of moving this project forward is property appraisal and acquisition. To that end, the City plans to re-release a Request for Proposal for a third party firm to assist with determining property acquisition costs within the undeveloped property and within Gordon Plaza this month.The Cantrell Administration remains committed to bringing this project to a thoughtful resolution.

Medical gaslighting is when people feel that their symptoms are dismissed or not treated appropriately by health care providers. Women and people of color are more likely to experience medical gaslighting. We speak with Dr. Karen Luftey Spencer, professor of health and behavioral sciences at the University of Colorado, Denver and Dr. Jamila Taylor, director of health care reform and senior fellow at The Century Foundation about the medical gaslighting of women and people of color.

Since 2019, "A Black Lady Sketch Show" has served as a testament to just how wonderfully weird and insightful things get when some of the best Black women comedians gather.  Its success is due in large part to the vision of creator and star Robin Thede. 

Thede joined The Takeaway to discuss the third season of "A Black Lady Sketch Show," which just kicked off on HBO.