Tag: National Public Radio

One of the most important moments perhaps in the process of a Black child’s life is “The Talk.” The COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the upheaval caused by the recent police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others, are pushing parents with an urgency to have “The Talk” with their children earlier than later.

“I feel sad for the poor culinary workers in Nevada who are being betrayed by their union leaders who are not supporting Medicare for All. Remember, M4A is not about health care; it is about health care financing. The culinary workers are not giving up anything; they are replacing what they have with something far better. They keep their doctors and nurses and hospitals, they get long term care, and they lose their co-pays and deductibles. Yes, they have fought hard for what they have, but M4A means their fighting is at an end.”

New Orleans Criminal Court Judge Arthur Hunter, a former police officer, ruled that seven people awaiting trial in jail without adequate legal defense must be released. The law is clear. The U.S. Supreme Court, in their 1963 case Gideon v Wainwright, ruled that everyone who is accused of a crime has a Constitutional right to a lawyer at the state’s expense if they cannot afford one.

As the Ebola outbreak rages and there are projections of more than 1.4 million persons infected in the next few months, the African Union and the regional bloc ECOWAS have taken a back seat as the international media uses this virus to stigmatize Africa and Africans. Pious statements have been made by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the World Bank warns that Ebola could have “catastrophic” economic costs on the region of Western Africa.

Under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police and Fox News, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) just shut down the entire Urban Dreams website including material on Martin Luther King and Mumia Abu-Jamal authored by Oakland teacher Craig Gordon. OUSD is censoring and attacking the academic freedom of students in the Oakland schools and of teachers. This shameful action must be reversed immediately!

Dr. King led a movement that issued a stirring call for justice. Lyndon Johnson used his remarkable skills to drive an unprecedented response to that call. The prophet and the president were both remarkable leaders. We may not look on their like again. But even so, one thing is still clear: When we build the demand for change, leaders will arise to offer the response.

The strain of cholera brought to Haiti by Nepalese U.N. soldiers in 2010 has spread to the Dominican Republic, Cuba and now Mexico. In the past few months, Mexico has reported 176 confirmed cases of the disease, with one death. The Pan American Health Organization reported that the genetic profile of the strain in Mexico presents a greater than 95 percent match with the Haitian strain.

Eight years after Katrina, nearly a 100,000 people never got back to New Orleans, the city remains incredibly poor, jobs and income vary dramatically by race, rents are up, public transportation is down, traditional public housing is gone, life expectancy differs dramatically by race and place, and most public education has been converted into charter schools.

Dear friends, attendees at the Grassroots Radio Conference: Thank you for your invitation. I join y’all today, this way, by necessity; but we are joined by our common love of radio, still a vibrant medium. This is a challenging time for all of us, whatever our field of endeavor.

Serious allegations have been made about the conduct of the House Ethics Committee in its case against Los Angeles’ Black Congresswoman Maxine Waters. The House Ethics Committee’s investigation has dragged on more than two years, only proving that “improper conduct” occurred on the part the Ethics Committee itself.

On May 23, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision ordering California to release tens of thousands of inmates from its overcrowded prisons on the grounds that their living conditions – including lethally inadequate healthcare – were so intolerable as to be “cruel and unusual punishment.”