Building Bridges Radio: Your Community & Labor Report

Produced and Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash over WBAI,99.5FM in the NYC Metro Area

WHO WE ARE

WORKERS OF THE WORLD TUNE IN! Introducing "Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report"

Our beat is the labor front, broadly defined, both geographically and conceptually. We examine the world of work and workers on the job as well as where they live. We examine the issues that affect their everyday lives, with a particular sensitivity towards human rights abuses, environmental concerns and the U.S. drive for global domination. We record their global struggles and provide analysis of their efforts to empower themselves and transform society to provide greater democratic, human, social, political and economic rights. Each program consists of feature stories, generally interviews, within a historical context, often accompanied by sound from demonstrations, rallies or conferences, and complemented and enhanced by poetry and instrumental or vocal -- people's culture.

Over the years Building Bridges has produced a weekly one hour program, Mondays from 7-8 PM EST, covering local, national and international labor and community issues over radio WBAI-Pacifica 99.5 FM in New York. We also produce half hour version, Building Bridges National, which is distribtued to over 40 broadcast and internet radio stations.


For more information you can contact us at knash@igc.org
In Struggle Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash

Ferguson & Beyond; Walmart Arrests Dozens Who Sit-Down 28:29  

Walmart Arrests Dozens Who Sit-Down 
For $15/h Wage and Full-Time Hours

Martha Sellers and Maria Camarena, Walmart employees talk about the workers and their supporters arrested outside a Walmart store calling on the company and its owners—the Waltons—to end the illegal threats to and retaliation against workers calling for $15 an hour and consistent, full-time work at the country’s largest private employer. Hundreds of 
supporters rallied outside the store in Pico Rivera, California the site of the first Walmart strikes in 2012 to buoy the strikers – meanwhile the Walmart behemoth brings in $16 billion in annual profits and its  owners build on their $150 billion in wealth, the majority of Walmart workers are
paid less than $25,000 a year.  
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The Fire Next Time: Ferguson & Beyond Communities Organize  

Even were there to be an indictment of police officer Wilson in Ferguson, or of officer Pantelo for the strangulation of Eric Garner justice would remain elusive.  As long as police have license to kill Black and Brown men and women, and as long as people of color are economically marginalized, 
and state policies that intimidate, harass, criminalize and result in the imprisonment of targeted Black and Brown people persist there is no justice, no peace!   Thenjiwe McHarris discusses the significance of the protest movement in Ferguson and of UN Hearing she recently attended 
in Geneva where Ferguson was being discussed by The United Nations Committee Against Torture which heard testimony by Michael Brown’s parents.

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Electorate​'s Push to Raise the Minimum Wage - 27'  

Four for Four...Even in "Red States" 
the Electorate’s Push to Raise the Minimum Wage“

Peter Davis, campaign activist for Time for a Raise campaign, 
a project of Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of Responsive Law 
and 
Paco Fabián , with the Good Jobs Nation an organization of low-wage workers employed by government contractors who are joining together to urge President Obama to use Executive Orders to give them a living wage and a voice on the job.  The Good Jobs Nation campaign is supported by a coalition of national faith and advocacy organizations, including the NAACP, Demos, Interfaith Worker Justice, Change to Win.

After last week’s election disaster, there’s some good news, in the 
minimum wage wins through ballot initiatives are sending a clear message: Americans across the political spectrum want to raise the minimum wage.  Now the electorate along with congressional progressives and allies are demanding more Presidential action to help low-wage workers and boost the economy.  Buoying this message in support of a rise in the minimum wage Peter Davis and Ralph Nader just co-wrote a letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi which states: "Buried underneath the coverage of the Democrats’ second midterm 'shalackin' in a row is a stark public sentiment 
that provides a path forward for your caucuses during the upcoming lame duck session... a minimum wage raise passed in every state in which it was on the ballot.

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Chris Hedges: Poverty, Racism & Policing, Mass Incarcerat​ion, Resistance & Social Transforma​tion - 28:30  


Poverty, Racism & Policing, Mass Incarceration, Resistance 
and Social Transformation
featuring
Christopher Hedges, author of twelve books, including the best seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt,” New York Times 
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, the recipient of Amnesty International's Global Award for Human Rights Journalism, Truthdig columnist, educator behind the walls of the US prison system, and activist. This important public intellectual, and activist Chris Hedges gives a rousing analysis of increasing poverty and how our racist system has used policing and mass incarceration, but as well the resistance of those targeted and the struggle for social
transformation.

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BP May Be Fined Up to $18 Billion for Gulf Spill - 26:56  

BP May Be Fined Up to $18 Billion 
for “Willful Misconduct” for Spill in Gulf
featuring
Antonia Juhasz, an oil and energy analyst, author, journalist and activist. She has authored several books, including Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill, Juhasz is currently writing a feature article for Harper's Magazine on the impacts of the disaster on the deep ocean following her participation in a submarine dive to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico at the site of the spill

Federal Judge Barbier held that BP routinely put profit over prudence, people, safety, and the environment and the result was and remains catastrophic in the four years since the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig which killed 11 workers and sent millions of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

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