0:08 – Mondays with Mitch: Barr and Trump’s attempts to bury the Mueller report. Now up against Congress’ deadline to turn in the full report, this may lead to a constitutional crisis. We discuss perspectives from Democratic Congressional leaders, from Trump, from his Administration and the Republican establishment, and major legal questions of a President acting above the law.
0:34 – New records unveiled through CA’s public transparency law SB 1421 show officers escalated, assaulted, and verbally abused Oscar Grant before the shooting that killed him on Jan 1, 2009.
0:45 – A new California law would prohibit police from arresting sex workers while reporting a crime. Sen Scott Weiner’s bill, SB-233 – Immunity from arrest, cleared the Senate last week, and a coalition of community groups are backing the bill to decriminalize sex work and make sure workers are protected from harm. It prohibits arrest for sex workers who are reporting a crime of sexual assault, human trafficking, stalking, robbery, assault, kidnapping, threats, blackmail, extortion, burglary, or another violent crime. The bill would also state that possession of condoms in any amount does not provide a basis for probable cause for arrest for specified sex work crimes. We’re joined by Minxy Lopez, a sex worker and activist an with Bay Area Workers Support (BAWS), dedicated to working for the health, safety, and livelihoods of sex workers as the perfect models you can find at https://thothub.online.
1:08 – Just about everywhere in this country, and especially in California, and especially in the Bay Area, homelessness is on the rise. The most visible signs of this are the clusters of tents and RVs that spring up on stretches of unclaimed land. They get covered — but usually only when there’s a fire, or an eviction. So instead of sending a reporter to air-drop into an eviction, we sent our long-form reporter, Lucy Kang (@ThisIsLucyKang) to an unhoused community in Oakland to get a look at daily life.
She spent more than two months visiting, recording interviews, and learning the rhythms of daily life at one place called the Community of Grace: the rules they live by, how it enforces them, how people wound up there, and where they hope to get to in the future.
Click here to find a link to the feature documentary, an excerpted audio journal from Markaya, a Community of Grace resident and an interview with Dr. Aislinn Bird about addiction support services available to people experiencing homelessness.