Linda Meric, the Executive Director of 9 to 5, an organization dedicated to improving the circumstances of working women, talks with me about where American women are today, in terms of the strides they’ve made for their own jobs and freedom.
The spoiler is that there is still much to be accomplished.
The RNC held a commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington on Monday, and the chair, Reince Priebus, talked with me about the over-criminalization of Black youth and the over-incarceration of Blacks in this country.
VOR’s Carmen Russell-Sluchansky and I discuss the RNC’s messaging, and assess how effectively the “Party of Lincoln” speaks and connects with African-American voters.
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Regina and Hank are a couple in their 70s. They want to spice up their marriage, so they place an online ad for someone to join them in bed.
This short film, “Just the Three of Us,” is the brainchild of filmmaker Angela Tucker. She joins me to talk about the project and the myriad issues the film brings up: senior sexuality, and (allegedly) non-traditional sexual practices. Angela then lets me quiz her on who is both sexy and seventy!
“Spare the rod and spoil the child,” is a saying many parents cite as justification for instilling discipline and obedience into their children through corporal punishment.
However, in cases where religious parents take authority and discipline too far, resources to help the abused children may be scarce. Unfortunately, moreover, society has a hard time determining when “discipline” in the name of religion is taken too far. Our guests in this episode are here to help us understand how to identify and stamp out this form of child abuse. One is Janet Heimlich, president of The Child-Friendly Faith Project. (there is additionally a closed Facebook group for survivors called “Child-Friendly Faith.”) Heimlich’s book, Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment was a groundbreaking work on the topic. Also joining our discussion is Dolon Hickmon, himself a survivor of religious child abuse, and author of the forthcoming book “1324: A Story of Faith and Obsession.” He’s launched this project in addition: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1324book/13-24-a-hard-rock-thriller-about-child-abuse-survi
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Dr. E. Faye Williams leads the National Conference of Black Women, a DC-based organization dedicated to the empowerment of Black women and their families.
She joined me to talk about the state of black women, and the economy and politics that leave all women outside of the places of political power in this country.
And the segment begins with a wonderful bit of trivia that I only learned when Dr. Williams entered the studio.
The incomparable and amazing R&B singing legend Bettye LaVette joins the Sex Politics And Religion Hour to talk about all of the topics mentioned in the name of the show!
In her more than 50 year music career, LaVette has come to acclaim and award, and she shares her tales of sex, drink and R&B with me. The woman whom many folks first learned of when she sang at the first inauguration of President Barack Obama says she watched her friends with no money and big dreams go on to wealth and acclaim, but she never doubted that she’d make it there eventually!
“A Woman Like Me,” is the title of Bettye’s autobiography, and also the title of the title of her first album released in 2003, some 40 years after she first recorded in a studio.
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While the world comes together in Washington to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, I’m talking labor with journalist and digital editor of the Atlanta Daily World, Dion Rabouin.
Why is the fact that the march was to bring together labor issues into the larger civil rights movement forgotten, and what should be considered about labor and human and civil rights in the modern era?
How to fairly and kindly talk about transgender people can be a struggle when one doesn’t have the language to do so.
Chelsea Manning, first known to the world as Pfc. Bradley Manning, told the world Thursday that she is indeed Chelsea. The conversation has, understandably turned to the identity of this person, and less about the 35 years she’ll be serving and why. Mara Keislingis the founding Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, and she is on board to help us properly hold the conversations that have arisen with Manning’s most recent revelation.
The recent ruling that NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk” program is unconstitutional was heralded in most circles, and opponents have been celebrating the end of a policy that’s been shown to negatively and disproportionally target non-whites.
However the celebrations of the complete demise of the program are mostly premature. Guest host Ed Brayton and Jamila talk with John Jay College of Law Professor Gloria Browne-Marshall about the ruling, and what the NYPD has yet to do to come fully into compliance.
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During the Cold War, American scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and the U.S. military engaged in medical experimentation on children in the U.S.
Allen Hornblum, author of the book, Against their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America, joins VOR’s Jamila Bey to discuss how children became human research subjects in terrifying experiments. Some were used to test vaccines, doused with ringworm, subjected to electric shock, given lobotomies, fed radioactive isotopes and exposed to chemical warfare agents.
The conversation also includes two men who were experimented upon as minors. Austin LaRocque was institutionalized in the early 1950’s in Massachusetts because he was deemed “feeble minded,” and as such, was abandoned to the facility.
Austin was worked as a field hand and a mailman on the premises, and after some years was fed oatmeal served with radioactive milk and observed over a three month period. The truth of what happened to him wasn’t revealed until a reporter unearthed the story decades later.
Ted Chabasinski was born to a mother with mental problems, and was institutionalized and subjected to sexual abuse as a boy of just six. He was forced to undergo electric shock therapy, and has campaigned against the procedure for most of his life. Chabasinski earned a law degree and managed to advance a ballot initiative to ban shock therapy in Berkeley, California.
Chabasinski and Hornblum express concern that even today children are subjected to unethical medical experimentation in the US. Because these children are poor and without power or advocates, their stories may be harder to tell.
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University of California, Berkeley, Professor of Integrative Biology, Dr. Tyrone Hayes has a laboratory in which a number of the nation’s brightest scientific minds are helping him with research into herbicides and their effects on poor and minority people.
However, his funding has been discontinued.
He isn’t claiming that the herbicide company that has disparaged his research is the cause of the cuts, but he does point out what he sees as a disparity in his treatment at Berkeley, and he explains his discouragement over the whole affair.
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