Your Call

On this edition of Your Call, we're discussing the California Mandela Act, a bill on Governor Newsom’s desk that would ban solitary confinement for pregnant women, people under 26 or over 59, and those with mental or physical disabilities. It would ban solitary for anyone outside of those populations for more than 15 consecutive days or more than 45 days in a 180-day period.

Governor Newsom has until September 30 to sign or veto AB 2632. We’ll speak with solitary confinement survivors to learn about their experience and advocacy to end this inhumane practice.

Guests:

Hamid Yazdan Panah, immigration attorney, advocacy director for Immigrant Defense Advocates, and founding member of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, and the Northern California Rapid Response and Immigrant Defense Network

Dolores Canales, co-founder of California Families Against Solitary Confinement, community outreach director for The Bail Project, founder of the Family Unity Network, commissioner on the Probation Oversight Committee of Los Angeles County, and a member of the advisory council for the Unlock the Box campaign

Kevin McCarthy, UC Berkeley student and member of Berkeley Underground Scholars, who spent nine years and four months in solitary confinement at California state prisons

On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we're discussing the impacts of extreme heat on our bodies.

The World Health Organization warns that exposure to hotter than average conditions compromises the body’s ability to regulate temperature and can result in a cascade of illnesses, including premature death, disability and heatstroke.

Guests:

Dr. Paul English, director of Tracking California for the Public Health Institute

Tony Wolf, postdoctoral researcher in kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University

On this edition of Your Call’s One Plant Series, we're discussing a major court victory against Formosa Plastics Group, which planned to build a $9.4B petrochemical complex in St. James Parish, Louisiana. The complex, located just one-mile from an elementary school in St. James Parish, would have included 10 chemical manufacturing plants and numerous support facilities spanning 2,400 acres. It would have been used to make plastics, much of it single use.

Activists have been fighting this plan for years, saying the multi-billion corporation has a record of damaging communities and ecosystems around the world. The St. James Parish complex would have doubled to tripled the levels of cancer-causing pollutants currently harming residents from existing industrial plants, according to EarthJustice. This area has among the highest concentrations of toxic chemicals in the US. The cancer rates are 50 times higher than the national average.

Guest:

Sharon Lavigne, founder of the faith based environmental justice group RISE St. James

On this edition of Your Call's Media Roundtable, we're discussing the widespread anti-government protests in Iran over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, after she was detained by the country's so-called morality police.

Protests have spread to more than 80 cities and towns. Dozens have been killed by the Iranian regime’s security forces.

Iran has shut off the internet in parts of Tehran and Kurdistan, and blocked access to platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp, in an attempt to curb a growing movement that has relied on social media to document dissent, according to the Guardian.

Guest:

Farnaz Fassihi, award winning foreign correspondent and the United Nations Bureau Chief for the New York Times

On this edition of Your Call, we're discussing an investigation into the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which fueled the rise of the modern religious right and its formal marriage to the Republican Party, according to journalist Sarah Posner.

"The reach of this regressive theology into our national politics is now at a historic apex, with Dobbs energizing the right’s pursuit of ever more punitive crackdowns on abortion and a revitalized offensive against LGBTQ rights," she writes.

Last month, the SBC said it was being investigated by the Department of Justice following an explosive Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News report revealing two decades of sexual abuse, coverups, and intimidation of survivors in the church, implicating some of its most powerful leaders. "They were pastors. Deacons. Youth pastors. They left behind more than 700 victims," according to the report.

Guest:

Sarah Posner, reporting fellow with Type Investigations and author of two books, including Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, And the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind

On this edition of Your Call, we’re having a wide ranging conversation with Elie Mystal, author of Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution.

Mystal argues that if we don't expand the Supreme Court, the next 30 years of US law will be decided by six conservative judges. In his book, he says we have to change the way we talk about the courts and the Constitution, which have been co-opted by conservatives.

Guest:

Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation, Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center, and author of the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution

On this edition of Your Call, investigative climate journalist Geoff Dembicki discusses his new book, The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change.

Dembicki studied hundreds of confidential industry documents, revealing how some of the world's major oil companies have ignored warnings about climate devastation since as early as 1959. He writes, "My reporting has made me realize there was nothing inevitable about the chaotic future we face, with all of the natural systems that support us collapsing. It did not have to come to this."

Dembicki also tells the stories of people fighting back: the Seattle lawyer who brought Big Tobacco to its knees and is now going after Big Oil; a young Filipino activist who saw her family drown in a climate disaster; and a former engineer at Exxon who was pushed out for asking hard questions.

Guest:

Geoff Dembicki, investigative climate journalist, regular contributor to the Tyee and VICE, and author of two books, including The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change

On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet series, climate scientist Kimberly Nicholas discusses her new book, Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World.

She argues that we need people with the courage, compassion and imagination to transform themselves, and society, in the ways that science tells us are necessary to maintain conditions for life on Earth to be able to thrive.

Guest:

Dr. Kimberly Nicholas, senior lecturer in sustainability science at Lund University in Sweden, and author of Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World, and the monthly climate newsletter, We Can Fix It

On this edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, we discuss the two hour PBS FRONTLINE documentary Lies, Politics and Democracy, which traces how officials fed the public lies about the 2020 presidential election and embraced rhetoric that led to political violence.