On today’s show:
0:08 – Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC), a legal analyst and Supreme Court Correspondent for Slate Magazine joins us to round up this week’s Supreme Court decisions including a dissenting opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas which appears to support marijuana sale and cultivation.
0:20 – The Arab Resource Organizing Center calls for a week of actions in defense of Palestine. We speak to Wassim Hage, a community organizer with AROC.
0:34 – Continuing our coverage of LGBTQ liberation this month, we speak with Andres Molina of The LGBT Asylum Project, which provides legal representation for LGBT asylum seekers fleeing persecution due to sexual orientation, gender identity and HIV status.
0:42 – Some history from the KPFA Archives on the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots of 1966 in San Francisco. Brian Edwards-Tiekert (@bedwardstiek) spoke in 2016 with Pomona College historian Victor Silverman (@victorsilverman).
0:53 – As part of our ongoing coverage of California prisons, Sherman Bell spoke with us. He is currently incarcerated at the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison (SATF) in Corcoran, CA. On Friday, he ended a 31-day hunger strike to protest what he calls “long abuses of power” by California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation personnel – and a lack of accountability over their role in spreading COVID in state prisons. Sherman spoke with KPFA reporter Lucy Kang (@ThisIsLucyKang) by phone.
We reached out to SATF and CDCR, but they were unable to provide a response in time for broadcast.*
1:08 – We return to this conversation from last month with Char Adams (@CiCiAdams_), who covers race for NBC. She investigates police violence against children.
1:34 – The San Jose Unified School District voted to end its contract with the San Jose Police Department. Alicia Chavez, an organizer with Silicon Valley Debug joins us to reflect on this historic move. Laurie Valdez (@laurievaldez16) also joins us. She an activist and mom in San Jose, and the partner of Antonio Guzman Lopez, who was killed by San Jose State University Police in 2014. She founded Justice4Josiah.org – named for her son Josiah, in pursuit of justice for the death of his father Antonio.
*We received an email from a CDCR spokesperson after broadcast that included the following statements:
“California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran (SATF), like all CDCR facilities, immediately responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and took several measures to protect staff and the incarcerated population… CDCR’s response efforts were anchored in guidelines from federal and state health care and public health authorities and the federal receiver in charge of prison health care.”
“CDCR cannot comment on a person’s protected health information; however, SATF has safeguards and policies in place when an incarcerated person is on a hunger strike. These policies include monitoring by medical and custody staff.”