First, we speak to Dr. Johnny Eric Williams who is Chair of the Department of Sociology at Trinity College in Connecticut. Professor Williams has a special interest in the covid-19 pandemic and how it has been handled in this country. Covid continues to have an impact, but now there is an official consensus to act as though it has disappeared. The neglect of public health is a result of neoliberal policies. He joins us from Hartford, Connecticut.
Josmar Trujillo is a writer and activist based in New York City. He joins us to talk about policing in New York under mayor Eric Adams. You can find him on twitter @josmar_trujillo.
Dr. Philippe Gendrault joins us to discuss presidential election results in the French overseas territories of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana. The candidate who was considered right wing, racist and even fascist, won the votes of majority Black populations. But the results don’t explain a more complicated story of voter apathy born of political disaffection and protest. Dr. Gendrault speaks to us from San Francisco.
(For Ferguson, Baltimore, Million Workers March, Arab Spring, Standing Rock, Occupy, Jackson Rising, Fight for Fifteen, Extinction Rebellion, #Me Too…)
When the dust settles, as in all U.S. disasters, there will be a tale to tell of who mattered and who was sacrificed.
Colonized people, with a horrific historical connection to both science and medicine in this country, must examine science in service of the state.
The penal system remains a source of diseases that spread among prisoners at rates far exceeding those in the communities from which they came.
The necessary political demand is not that we make better, more humane prisons and jails, but that we abolish prisons and jails altogether.
