0:08 – Hours-long lines at the polls, scores of voters sent to nursing homes to cast their ballots, black voters not receiving confirmation of their registration, voting machines without cords, poll workers without the information necessary to operate the machines, police being called on voting rights observers — these are just some of the stories from Georgia’s election day failure on Tuesday, June 9. We hear eyewitness account from LaTosha Brown (@MsLaToshaBrown).
0:34 – Public health departments are now suggesting residents form “pods” or social bubbles to protect themselves from coronavirus. How would these work? Julia Marcus, infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, talks about adopting a harm reduction approach to Covid-19 safety and takes listener calls.
1:08 – There are reportedly up to a dozen cases of Covid-19 inside San Quentin now. We talk to James King of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights about the conditions inside the prison, and what he is hearing from inside. King was incarcerated in San Quentin until last year. He also sounds the alarm over prisoners being put in solitary confinement as a form of “quarantine.”
1:34 – The California Assembly is about to vote on whether to put a measure on the state ballot in November that would allow voters to decide to repeal Proposition 209, a measure that banned all race-based decisionmaking and affirmative action programs in California. A broad coalition of civil rights, racial justice and community groups and labor unions is supporting the measure, but votes have been on party lines. Vincent Pan, co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, talks about the fight to repeal 209.
1:47 – The Oakland Unified School District board will soon consider a “George Floyd Resolution” that would dissolve their special school police department. This is a fight that advocates have waged for over four years — we talk with Desiree Mims of the Black Organizing Project about why eliminating police in schools is a crucial component of dismantling the school to prison pipeline, and her own experience being policed and pushed out of schools.
Photo from Twitter user @Aleetzia19