The Takeaway

What is Ethical Artificial Intelligence? We talk with Timnit Gebru, founder and executive director of DAIR (Distributed AI Research) about creating AI that is rooted in people from the beginning and works to serve marginalized communities. 

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency issued an emergency order to shut down a metal processing facility in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the EPA, the facility, which is run by TAV Holdings Inc., has generated lead and other pollutants that pose a quote “imminent and substantial” danger to the public and the environment. 

Experts say the facility might just be the state’s next Superfund site — a designation for the country’s most hazardous waste sites. Like many environmental threats, the TAV waste site is located in a predominantly Black community. In fact, a recent analysis from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that the neighborhoods surrounding the state’s 18 current Superfund sites are more likely to be Black. 

For decades, Black people in this country have felt the heavy toll of environmental racism. A study published by University of Michigan in 2016 shows that communities of color and low-income neighborhoods are targeted by polluting industries. At the same time, people of color are more likely to be exposed to high levels of fine particulate air pollution, which causes tens of thousands of deaths every year. 

For more on this, The Takeaway spoke with Christina Fuller, Associate Professor at Georgia State University School of Public Health, and Drew Kann, an enterprise reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covering climate and environmental issues. 

Tensions at the Russia-Ukraine border continue to run high. And U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that these tensions could escalate into a crisis in the coming days. Embassy staff and diplomats from several countries have begun evacuating from their posts in Ukraine, and US officials and other NATO allies are urging citizens to leave the country.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials are trying to tamp down the panic calling the evacuations “needlessly alarmist.”

The Takeaway gets an update on these growing tensions from Alex Ward, a national security reporter at Politico.

This month, thousands of public employees have been demonstrating in Puerto Rico to call for wage increases and better working conditions. At the center of these protests have been teachers, who have not been given a base salary raise in 13 years. We hear from the head of the Puerto Rico Teachers’ Association about why the teachers have been demonstrating and then turn to AP reporter Dánica Coto for the latest.

We also speak with Fernando Tormos-Aponte, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at University of Maryland Baltimore County, about Puerto Rico’s history, economic struggles, and governance as we take a closer look at the recent protests by public workers demanding higher wages and better pensions.

The mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida prompted our nation to discuss gun violence in schools, but the overwhelming reality is that all over the country a majority of lives lost and forever changed by gun violence happen on a daily occurrence, barely garnering headlines. 

Teyonna Lofton was an 18 year old, beaming high school graduate when she had just been honored by friends and family with a car parade. As she waited at a gas station to buy a soft drink, shots rang out, and she fell hard, praying that she wouldn't die.

We spoke with Lofton, now a 20 year-old Sophomore at the University of New Orleans about the day she was shot, her story of survival, and the ongoing crisis of gun violence in the U.S.

Data compiled by the gun safety advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety shows that nationwide there were 202 incidents of gunfire on school grounds in 2021, which led to 49 deaths and over 100 injuries, so we began the show by looking at  the psychological toll of school shootings with Dave Cullen, author of the books Columbine and Parkland: Birth of a Movement and Laura Wilson, associate professor of psychology at University of Mary Washington and editor of "The Wiley Handbook of the Psychology of Mass Shootings.”

We heard from Nicole Hockley who lost her 6-year-old son, Dylan in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting; David Hogg, one of the survivors from the Parkland shooting, and now a fierce advocate for change; Teyonna Lofton, gun violence survivor and activist; and Representative Robin Kelly about reform efforts being made in Congress.  

In the aftermath of the Parkland shooting, there was a flood of youth activism coming out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. 

The Parkland teens took to social medial; they spoke out on cable news; they testified before Congress; and they also amassed one of the largest youth protests in U.S. history. 

The Takeaway recently spoke with one of the Parkland teens — now twenty-something — who was front and center in that movement: David Hogg, gun violence prevention activist and co-founder of March For Our Lives.

In our fourth installment of the series, Black.Queer.Rising., San Antonio Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez joins us to discuss his election as the first openly gay Black man elected to office in Texas.

In a 4-3 decision, the court ruled that the GOP-drawn electoral maps violated the state’s constitution because lines minimized the influence of Democratic voters. In a tweet, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said, “The maps violate a voter’s fundamental right to vote.”

The maps would have given Republicans a good chance of winning 11 Congressional seats, compared with three for Democrats, despite voters in the state being closely divided between the two parties. Now, the North Carolina General Assembly has until Feb. 18th at 5pm to submit new maps. 

For more on this, The Takeaway spoke with Derwin Montgomery, a former Democratic member of the North Carolina General Assembly.

Far-right demonstrators, self-described as the “Freedom Convoy,” have been protesting in Ottawa, Ontario against the Canadian government’s pandemic-related measures, including vaccine mandates, for the past two weeks starting the last weekend in January. The protests started with some truck drivers demonstrating against vaccine mandates required for the US-Canadian border. The disruptions have spread beyond Ottawa, blocking multiple parts of the border and disrupting supply chains, including a bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan that serves as an essential part of the supply chain for the automobile industry.

According to the Canadian outlet Global News, several of the organizers of the convoy are far right extremists with a history of Islamophobia and racism. At the beginning of protests, multiple participants were seen bearing swastikas and Confederate flags at the demonstrations.

The outsized effects of this movement’s actions stand in sharp contrast to the fact that roughly 90 percent of Canadians are vaccinated, and nearly 90 percent of Canadian truck drivers are vaccinated as well.

The Takeaway spoke with Regina Bateson, an assistant professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa, to find out what’s going on in Ottawa.

And after just two weeks, messages of support have spread far beyond Canada and inspired copycat movements in Australia, New Zealand,, and parts of Europe. The protests have also included support from U.S. far-right figures and have started drawing in more extremist individuals. We also hear from New York Times technology reporter and author of "An Ugly Truth," Sheera Frenkel, who has been following these developments online.