The Takeaway

The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi has laid bare the fraught relationship between the state’s majority-white, Republican leadership and the city’s majority-Black, Democratic leadership. Funding and resources for the city often comes with strings attached that give more control to the state, a pattern the city's Mayor has previously called "paternalistic."

We talk with Jarvis Dortch, executive director of the ACLU of Mississippi and former representative in the Mississippi legislature, about the state's long history of racial politics and what it has meant for the health of the state.

Water pressure was restored this Monday to the city of Jackson, Mississippi — but that doesn’t mean the water from the taps is drinkable. The tap water is swimming with contaminants, putting the city under a "boil water" notice since late July. The city's crisis of crumbling infrastructure caused by decades of underfunding could also take decades to address.

We check in with Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba on how the city is recovering and what’s next for its residents.

NOTE: During this interview, Melissa Harris-Perry asked Mayor Lumumba about lead levels that have been documented in the city’s water in recent years. Lumumba answered, saying “no, the tests that have registered are tests that have seen high turbidity in the water.” While it is true that the City’s water has been found to have elevated turbidity (cloudiness or lack of clarity), tests have also shown that the water contains detectable levels of lead. The Takeaway reached out to the mayor’s office to clarify and we will update this page when we get a response.

In a 2019 Report, PEN America revealed that book restriction policies in American prisons amounted to the nation’s largest book ban. These bans can come from prison-wide, state, or federal policies, and are aimed mostly at material that is deemed sexually explicit, detrimental to security or that disrupts the social order of a prison.But some of these lists can be arbitrary. Previously, books like “Freakonomics” were  banned in prisons in Texas, and a federal prison in Colorado in 2009 blocked a person incarcerated from reading President Barack Obama’s memoirs because they were deemed to be "potentially detrimental to national security."

We spoke with Christopher Blackwell, who is incarcerated at a Washington state facility and is serving a 45 year sentence for crimes he committed in his 20s. In prison, Christopher was prohibited from reading Michael Kimmel's, “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era.” 

We reached out to the Washington State Department of Corrections to hear why they denied access to the book. They said it was rejected because “The content could reasonably be thought to lead or add to tensions between groups specifically in a prison setting.” They also noted that Christopher appealed and was later granted access to the book.

Today, Christopher is an incarcerated writer and a co-founder of the nonprofit Look2Justice. Last month, Christopher wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about having the right to read and to get an education in American prisons, and about his own experience with book restrictions. We spoke with him about book bans in prison, his own experience with it, and the importance of books and education for rehabilitation in prison. 

President Biden’s announcement two weeks ago that his administration was canceling up to $20,000 of student debt for borrowers who make under $125,000 was met with strong reactions.  But debt relief from the federal government has historical precedent.

We speak with Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, about how we as a country have dealt with debt in the past.

In the new book What Should We Do? A Theory of Civic Life, Peter Levine puts forth a blueprint for collective cooperation and action in the face of “collective action problems.” 

Levine cites examples of change—from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to Gandhi’s movement—that exemplify how individuals, acting within a group, are able to reason together, cooperate, act collectively, and compel change.  He then deconstructs the social and political mechanisms that worked to make those movements successful.

We speak with Peter Levine, professor of ​​citizenship and public affairs at Tufts University and author of What Should We Do? A Theory of Civic Life, about his new book and his theory on civic engagement.

After Friday’s loss at the U.S. Open, the journey to retirement has begun for the greatest tennis player of all-time, Serena Williams.

We talked about her storied career, her decision to step away, and the legacy she leaves behind with Amira Rose Davis, an Assistant Professor in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and co-host of the Burn It All Down podcast.

Devastating floods in Pakistan have washed away entire buildings, homes, roads and bridges. These are the worst floods that Pakistan has seen in over a decade. Since mid-June, more than 1,300 people have died from the floods, nearly a third of them children. By some estimates, more than 30 million people are now displaced. 

Last week, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called the disaster "a monsoon on steroids." Also last week, the country’s climate minister said that one third of the country was underwater, and officials have blamed climate change for the disaster.  

For more on the grave impact of these floods, we spoke with Susannah George,  Washington Post Afghanistan and Pakistan Bureau Chief.

Two months from election day, we're kicking off our midterm coverage with a focus on some unique races this cycle: contests where both candidates are women. 

Kelly Dittmar, Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University-Camden and the Director of Research at the Center for American Women in Politics (CAWP) joins us to discuss the unique political lessons we can learn from studying the recruitment, campaigns, media coverage, and outcomes of elections where women are vying for office against other women.

This July, global temperatures were the 6th hottest on record since 1880.

In China, the longest heatwave on record has been accompanied by an extreme drought. The drought has caused major disruptions in the Southwestern regions of the country. Parts of the Yangtze River have dropped so low that supplies can be shipped, power-generating dams are unable to produce enough electricity to run factories and car assembly plants have been rendered non-operational.

China's government has been forced to institute rolling blackouts in some cities. The heat wave and drought are also driving up food prices, in Wuhan. For example, the price of bok choy has doubled in the last month.

We speak with Keith Bradsher, Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, about the crisis.

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.