Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's the week of May twenty fifth, twenty twenty five,
and this is what's on the People's News today. May
twenty fifth is the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death,
stripping medicaid from the disabled to benefit billionaires and the
convicted felon Donald Trump. Under the leadership of RFK, Junior
(00:25):
Measles is back Mental Health Month in Houston. All that
and more on the People's News. I'm Steve Gallington. This
is the People's News, and the People's News starts now.
(00:46):
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Speaker 2 (00:58):
We love the People's New.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
May twenty twenty five was the fifth anniversary of George
Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police. Houston remembered
by having a four day memorial and festival remembering Floyd.
On Sunday, a balloon release was held in his honor,
(01:21):
accompanied by gospel music and speeches by religious leaders. Also
on this day, the criminal and corrupt Republican Trump administration
is rolling back civil rights involving police and reform. The
Houston police department received good news this week with the
city approving pay raises and other benefits for its force.
(01:44):
Not included in that was accountability for the officers that
served the community. In the past, we have seen the
botched Harding Street raid that ended in the death of
two innocent people, problems at the HPDE crime lab that
ended with thousands of cases being thrown out because of
unsubstantiated evidence, and now there's a report showing that African
(02:06):
Americans are more prone to be stopped by the police
and detained. The Houston Police Department conducted nearly three hundred
and forty thousand traffic stops in twenty twenty three, over
one third of which were non safety traffic stops for
vehicle violations like broken tail lights, dark tinted windows, or
expired registrations. Black drivers comprised about thirty eight percent of
(02:29):
those non safety traffic stops, despite the fact that black
residents make up only twenty two percent of the city's population.
These disparities are also reflected in rates of arrests, searches,
and use of force during such stops. Black drivers suffered
the most physical force, comprising fifty two percent of total incidents.
(02:51):
Black drivers made up fifty five percent of all searches
conducted by the police during traffic stops, and black drivers
comprised forty nine percent of all arrests arriving from non
safety traffic stops. On this anniversary of George Floyd's death
at the hands of the police, Randall calem reflected that
there is still a long way to go in police
(03:13):
reform in Houston.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Recent statistics of twenty twenty three and in twenty twenty
four show that racial profiling and traffic stops it alive
and well in the city of Houston. Despite the Houston
Police Department are now becoming the highest paid police force
in all of Texas, they still have a big problem
(03:39):
with racial profiling, and that is that African Americans are
stopped more frequently for simple things like registration out and
then they're deserved more often than their counterparts of other ethnicities,
and then use of force is all so much more
(04:01):
slanted towards African Americans. So we see that in the
years since George Floyd in Houston, very little has been
done to prevent racial profiling in traffic stops. And it's
not a small matter. As a matter of fact, in
twenty twenty three, the Houston Police did three hundred and
(04:26):
forty thousand these stops, and over a third of those
were for you know what I call non safety issues
such as a broken lens on a tail light, not
even the light out, just a broken lens, registration out
and things like that. And we see when it comes
to those extremely extremely minor things, it's the African Americans
(04:50):
are bearing the brunt of those stops and which sometimes
even lead to death.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Accountability though the City of Houston gave the Houston Police
Department arrayed, so to speak, without any accountability.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yes, there were, of course there was. As a matter
of fact, I went to city Hall with other activists
throughout the community on Tuesday and Mayor Whitmeyer left before
our week we could speak. We had a press conference,
but then when we were going to speak, he left immediately,
(05:32):
as he has done on other issues which we bring forward.
So apparently he doesn't even want to be listened. He
doesn't even want to listen to what the public is
saying about discrimination in policing. I mean, it was right
there on the list of things you got to put
your topic at the public speaking, So he knew that
discrimination in policing was coming up and that there were
(05:54):
three individuals going to speak on that, and he left
the room and did not even listen. The complaints of
the citizenry.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Is that say a lot for where we're at now
as far as the community, because you know, we go
back five years with George Floyd and we were talking
about the same thing as far as police accountability. Then
the cases with the rape cases that came out, also
the the DNA, the crime lab situation, and the city's
(06:27):
paying a ton of money for all the mistakes that
HPD has made in the past, but still are given
them a raise.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Well, I don't want to punish police officers by paying
them less. I don't think that paying police officers less
is going to help or hurt. What I'm concerned with
is that, as a matter of fact, it might even help.
What I'm concerned with is that we attack these policies
that they have in customs of racial profiling. And as
(06:59):
you mentioned, the anniversary of George Floyd is upon us,
and for those viewers out there, many don't know he
is buried in Paarland, so as he was from Houston
original and so we have a great, big connection to
George Floyd, and I have a mirror of him on
my building, uh you know, in my law office and
(07:20):
art gallery. So we since George Floyd. While there was
much promise in George Floyd, we have now backpeddled and
we are brought perhaps no better off, maybe even worse
with the current administration than we were before George Floyd.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yeah, that's the situation that we're in now. It's a
scary situation with the repealing of a lot of the
a lot of the marriage that were brought up after
George Floyd. As far as the police accountability across the
country and police reformed things that make that would make
law enforce for more accountable, also making the better, better
(08:02):
police officers to the community. So we've we've backed up,
we've backed up from that to to a law and
order type of police in which we founded in the past.
It doesn't work.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Yes, as a matter of fact, many things have happened.
Two of the really big ones, and there are many,
but two of the really big ones are the Civil
Rights Division of the d o J. That is, the
government lawyers who go after police agencies and also litigate
other civil rights violations. Those those individuals are pretty much
(08:37):
all fired, and the only lawyers that were kept, like
in my cases, are the ones that fight against civil
rights and defend the United States against those But a furthermore,
the administration has decided, and it just started this week
and in the weeks before, to get rid of what
(08:58):
is called consent decrees, and that is where police agencies
have agreed with the government and wrote it down that
they will do reforms. And now the current federal administration
has decided just to abandon those and not hold these
police agencies to their agreements to end practices of discrimination
(09:24):
and other civil rights violations.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
So basically, we don't really have a civil rights department
in the federal government.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
We have a civil rights department to defend against the
people's suing of the government for civil rights violations. They
kept all of those lawyers.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Leading up to the anniversary of George Floyd's death, the
corrupt and criminal Republican Trump administration and his toadies at
the Justice Department moved Wednesday to cancel settlements with Minneapolis
and Louisville that called for an overhaul of their police departments.
Following the killings of George Floyd and Rihanna Taylor that
(10:01):
became a catalyst for national racial injustice protests. In the
summer of twenty twenty, it also announced it was retracting
the findings of the Justice Department investigations into six other
police departments that the Biden administration had accused of civil
rights violations. It's fun drive time at KPFT, call us
(10:23):
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Speaker 2 (10:32):
We love the People's News.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
The corrupt and criminal Republican Trump administration in order to
distract the American people away from the lawlessness of Donald
Trump and him taking bribes from anyone and everyone he
can and to pay for the billionaire tax cuts that
(10:54):
the Republicans are proposing. There are massive Medicaid cuts before
the Senate that will strip healthcare and independence from thousands
of disabled Texans. One accomplished longtime advocate is telling her
Medicaid story to Texas senators and urging others to join her.
John Mueller reports.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Nancy Kroter of Boston is one of seventy million covered
by Medicaid, but Croter is also someone who has told
her story for decades to score wins for the Texas
disability community and the attendants who care for them. This week,
as the US House passed the biggest budget cuts to
Medicaid in history and it now moves to the Senate,
(11:37):
Croda is again using her voice to tell senators what
Medicaid does for her and urging others to join her.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I've worked hard.
Speaker 6 (11:46):
I'm to the point where I own my own house,
I have services, and to lose.
Speaker 7 (11:54):
That would be to lose my livelihood and to be
desperately placed in an assisted living or something.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Kroder is sixty seven and has a progressive muscular disease
called spinal muscular atrophy. She's lived years beyond anyone's expectations,
she says, and owes it all up to her Medicaid
attendant care, which will be imperiled if the cuts become law.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
Involves so many programs for young, for old, for different
types of disabilities, and it's just a multi use tool.
And if you start losing pieces as that tool, that's
part of your independence that you're losing. And I don't
(12:47):
think it's felt as if that's a.
Speaker 7 (12:50):
Big deal by anybody in the upper echelon that thinks, well,
you know, you're okay, you're in a wheelchair.
Speaker 6 (13:00):
Medicaid does a lot more different things than just a wheelchair,
and our lawmakers don't even understand that.
Speaker 7 (13:10):
The sad part of this is.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
That we already have a wounded community because a lot
of medical facilities, adoptors and providers are going out of business,
don't want anything to do with make cake because they're
not getting decent reimbursement rates from the Medicaid mountain. And
(13:43):
for me personally, it would mean you know, devastation of course, but.
Speaker 7 (13:51):
The lowest thing.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
On the totem pole would have to be an institution
to go into, and that would just be the death.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Nail Croter found the power of speaking up in the
nineteen eighties. It was years before the Americans with Disabilities Act.
She got involved in the movement to make public transit
in Austin, Texas accessible not only for people with disabilities,
but also seniors and families with strollers for instance. It
was a victory and she found out the power of
(14:22):
her own voice. She's been awarded for her work ever
since and has continued speaking up across the state, sometimes
telling her story to policymakers or often being the only
disability perspective present at a meeting or serving on an
advisory board. Crowder was part of the push that got
the last legislature to boost community attendant pay for the
(14:43):
disabled and seniors in twenty twenty three. Last week, members
of Crowd's group Adaptive Texas were among three hundred wheelchairs
and their supporters in the US Capitol. Twenty seven of
them were arrested for bringing a House committee to a
halt to mand I think they not touch Medicaid. This week,
Crowd encouraged listeners to call their Texas senators to tell
(15:07):
their own stories and their families and friends stories on
how important medicaid is to them.
Speaker 6 (15:12):
It really fills you up with a sense of boldness
and strength and compassion because you've done what was right.
And you know, when people complain about things, I'm just
(15:34):
I look at them like, and what have you done that?
It not to be mean, but I've got to put
it back in their hands.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
To reach Texas Senators' offices, call the US Capital switchboard
at to zero two two two four three one two
one for the People's News. This is John Buller reporting.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
In twenty seventeen, constituent calls flipped one Senator John McCain,
who voted against party lines saving the Affordable Care Act.
So what can we do in the face of all
this lawlessness and corruption? Call the capital switchboard at two
o two two two four three one two one and
(16:23):
demand that your representatives save Medicaid. It's fun drive time
at KPFT. Call us and donate what you can seven
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Speaker 2 (16:40):
We love the People's news.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
May is mental health Awareness month, and that has been
highlighted by the criminal and corrupt Donald Trump's mental very
visible and obvious mental decline. Harris County Public Health encourages
everyone to prioritize their mental well being and others. HCPH
offers help through its Behavioral Health Services program, which includes
(17:06):
specialized support for mothers through Maternal Mental Health Services MMH.
Jamie chen is the Behavioral Health Program manager at Harris
County Public Health, spoke on mental health and the stigma associated.
Speaker 8 (17:21):
With it at Harris County Public Health. We understand that
Houstonian residents are going through a lot on many different levels,
and it's really important right now of all times the
prioritize their mental health. You know, prioritizing and mental health
really means loving yourself so much that you prioritize the
(17:42):
most important part of your body. Right, that tells everything
else what to do. You prioritize the health of your
mind and your emotions, and our emotions many times dictate
what we do and how we do things day to day.
Right in one of the largest and busious economies, we
have to take time to check in on ourselves because internally,
(18:04):
if we're not okay externally, we can be okay for
everybody else. So we understand that the Harris County Public
Health and we offer completely free mental health services to
all Harris County residents ages eight years and older.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
How do you get over that stigma, especially in the
minority community, that it's okay to get some type of help.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
So stigma is a big deal, right, as you said,
especially among us minorities. I think the biggest way to
get over that is conversations and starting the conversations with
some of our mental health program and we have a
lot of community groups that we do a lot of
community events and outreach that we do to educate the
public on different type of mental health conditions to show
(18:52):
that there's diversity in mental health. You know, there's not
just one thing. Everybody says that everybody has anxiety or depression,
and of course those conditions run rapid, but even within
those conditions, there are always spectrums, right, So we do
a lot of education in the community so that they
understand the feelings that they have and the things that
are going on with them mentally and emotionally, so that
(19:14):
it really just adds to a bigger conversation of mental health,
because you can't fight the stigma until you confront it.
And so we're here at Here's County Public Health to
work actively with the community and thankfully talk about how
they feel and what they're going through. And that really
is the only way that we break the stigma.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
And also, you know, people also look at it as
that's not you know, it's not for it's only for
rich people, people that can afford afford to go and
get a psychiatrist. They look at they look at show
TV shows or entertainment, you know, and that aspect of
it being something that that that the affluid has to
(19:58):
do not not people of you. A lot of people
that don't have the money to do that, and you're
offering it for free.
Speaker 8 (20:05):
Right, we offer free services. It does not matter your
income level, does not matter your insurance coverage, whether you
have insurance or not, we're able to offer those mental
health therapy services. And therapy is for everybody. It's not
for just the affluence. It really is for everybody to
(20:25):
understand what's going on with their own line and their
own personalities and the things that they that they deal
with day to day. We all have struggles regardless of
our income level. So we're here to offer our services
to everybody, regardless you know, of your social economic status.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Talk about the you know, the situations that can happen
if you don't if you don't get help.
Speaker 8 (20:52):
So I think it's really important that people understand, especially
minority communities, we typically don't get help when we need
to get the help, and some of these mental health
conditions can exacerbate and make life living so much harder.
In our maternal mental health program, for example, we know
one in five mothers experience maternal mental health conditions each year,
(21:15):
such as postpartum depression and anxiety by polar psychosis, and
some of these conditions can have the ability to affect
moms up to three years. So you know, if you
don't get the help that you need when you need it,
these conditions don't necessarily go away. You know, that's a
lot of stigma in the community that they believe that
things just go away, and sometimes they don't. And sometimes
(21:36):
we need tools and interventions to help us with those
conditions and to help us get that to a normal
functioning so that we can really function at our high
at levels of ourselves.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
And I know men and women, you know, when they
can't get help, they dwell into other activities that be
in alcohol or drugs or stuff like that that you know,
that's as some of the downfalls of not getting help.
Speaker 8 (22:05):
And right right, not addressing mental health definitely can lead
you to other avenues of just poor coping skills in general.
And we assist with that. We assist with subscince use counseling,
We assess with substance use referrals, where the it be alcohol, drugs, opiates.
You know, no matter somebody's vice, we're always here to
(22:25):
give them the health they need and get them to
treatment services. That's that's our jobs. And so yes, not
addressing mental health definitely can lead you to pour outcomes
and situations if you don't address.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
It the treatment when you send people the treatment for
I think maybe drugs and alcohol and there was a
problem in Houston and trying to get treatment for free.
Is that something that you guys have offered for free
because I know, I know opioids and a lot of
other drugs. Say you know, they will send you somewhere,
(22:59):
but you gotta pay right.
Speaker 8 (23:02):
So we do have again a lot of depending on
eligibility when you get into specific programming, but in general
there are one hundred free routes to drug and alcohol treatment.
We work in collaboration with other community partners who are
able to get those participants to the programs that they
(23:22):
need free of cost. And so it's really a network
of agencies that work within Harris County even outside of
Harrison County in order to tap into those resources. But
we definitely can get people to that free treatment. It
really is just a connection to care, and that's what
Harris County Public Health offers. We offer connection to care
and resource navigation because the system of social services in
(23:46):
Houston alone is huge. There's a million social services right
and so we don't want to overwhelm people, but we
are here to let them know that we definitely have
the health and we have the resources, and we're here
to walk people through and hold their hands navigating that
whole process to really get them where they need to go.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
I didn't get into it. But also it brings about
spousal abuse or abuses in the family.
Speaker 8 (24:10):
Right and so our clinic counselors and our therapists we
work with when we work with the family, we work
with the whole family. We take the individual who's coming
into treatment services and we work with them individually, but
we also always open the conversation to work with their household,
to work with their partners, because we understand that domestic
violence and abuse situations really are repant in a lot
(24:33):
of toxic relationships that people involve themselves in, and a
lot of times people don't even have the education to
know that they are in unsafe situations. So that's another
thing that we're able to address through our mental health
services and our behavior health clinics. Just that relationship with
therapists who are able to work with clients in that
situation to get them to a safer place.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah, that's another thing trying to get women into it
if they're in an abusive relationship, trying to give them
to that next step. Either they're scared to leave or
they don't know they're being abused.
Speaker 8 (25:08):
Right, there's a I mean, there's a lot of factors
that go into abusive relationships. Women are scared to leave,
they're intimidated to leave a lot of times when you're
in relationships like that, they're in trauma bons and they
can't even see, you know, the other side of things
because they are so entrenched in the toxicity of the
(25:29):
day to day conflict. And all of that takes work.
It takes work with a therapist. It takes work with
a professional mental health professional who's able to guide women
and men to understand that they're in these abusive relationships
and they can change the dynamics of their lives and
they can ultimately, you know, work on their mental health,
build their self confidence, and step out of these relationships.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
How can people get in touch with you or you know,
and you know, especially they need it immediately? Is that
some thing that can happen or is it is it
a process.
Speaker 8 (26:04):
So dependent on the immediate need. Definitely, we have our
specialists who are able to work with residents dependent on
their needs. Some things we do have direct access to
to assist in. Some things are process so it kind
of just depends, but they can definitely reach out to
our program. Behavior Health Services is our program where you located,
(26:28):
So we have several clinic locations around town. If you
go to our website address Harris County Public Health, it
will show you we have a Humble clinic location. We
have a Pasadena clinic location. We also have a Sheldon
id location, so we have several locations around the Harris
County area that residents can access us. We also offer
(26:52):
virtual services so in the event that you're not within
the local area of a mental health clinic, you can
always access us first as well.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Are you're multi lingual also as far as far as languages.
Speaker 8 (27:05):
Yes, so we serve multiple language in house. We serve
English and Spanish, and we also have the ability to
service a multitude of languages Mandarin, Farsity. We have connections
to the multiple languages in our behavior health services to
provide people counseling services in the language of their choice.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
And the last question UH people with ask people with
immigration issues are do you ask for that or is
that something that they have to worry about.
Speaker 8 (27:37):
No, something that they do not have to worry about
with us. We do not ask anybody's immigration status. As
long as they have a Harris County residency, they have
a Harris County address. That's the only thing that they
need to access our services where we're not necessarily concerned
with their residency status to access services.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
That was Jamie Chen, the Behavioral Health Program Manager, Parris
County Public Health. For more information, visit the HCPH Behavioral
Health Services website, or you can request services by calling
eight three to two nine two seven one three three five.
You already pay attention to your physical health and you
(28:17):
eat right, pay attention to your mental health as well. Hi,
this is Steve Gallington, producer and host of The People's News.
The People's News is people powered news. We are free
to report the unvarnished and unspun truth and challenge the
status quo of corporate propaganda and social media advertising disguised
(28:39):
as real news. Shiny new one hour episodes of The
People's News drop each Sunday on The People's News podcast.
Thanks for listening. Measles is a highly contagious virus that
causes fever, rash, cough, and other complications. It was officially
eradicated in the United States States in two thousand, but
(29:02):
because of people not getting their children vaccinated for measles,
it has come back and is causing death around Texas
and other states. Measles has caused three deaths in the
Houston area and people are asking why and how to
stop the spread. Doctor j Reddy is the Chief Science
Officer at health track RX. He is a longtime healthcare
(29:25):
and laboratory executive with a decade of experience in molecular diagnostics.
Most recently, he has spearheaded health track rx's response to
the re emergence of measles and the growing concern around
avian influence bird flu. His team has launched molecular testing
protocols to ensure health providers the ability to quickly identify
(29:48):
outbreaks of many infectious diseases. We spoke to him about
the spread and where it started.
Speaker 9 (29:55):
Well, it was eradicated back in the year two thousand
and why we still had cases that popped up in
the US from mainly global travel people who had traveled
the countries where you know, vaccines were not as rarely
available as they were here, it would get to the
United States, but it wouldn't spread. What we've seen since
that time is really vaccine hesitancy across the board, where
(30:17):
our vaccination rates have fallen below the threshold of ninety
five percent in a lot of areas. And once you
fall below that threshold, the hard immunity that we had
in the community is gone. And so when that happens,
you're able to get community spread now measles for people
who are in the unvaccinated population. And you know, a
lot of kids can't get vaccinated till a certain age,
(30:39):
like you usually can't get your first dose of the
vaccine until you're between twelve and eighteen months year twelve
and eighteen months old. But that group is really at
risk because they can't get the vaccination until that time.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
And so it's been spreading. I know we have three
cases here in Houston, a lot of cases in West Texas.
Why people hesitant about getting vaccinated right now because it's
it's been proven that the vaccine works.
Speaker 9 (31:08):
And I think it started back in the two thousands
or early two thousands with kind of the naturalist movement
where putting anything outside of your body could potentially harm
your body. And you know, there was a little support
back in those days. In fact, the paper was published
in a pretty reputable journal. It has since been pulled
(31:29):
about the potential dangers to vaccination, and so even though
that's largely been debunked, it does create a lot of
questions for parents in particular, who might be worried if
a vaccine is going to harm their kids. At the
same time, during the COVID pandemic, when we had forced vaccinations,
I mean, as a country, we generally don't like being
(31:51):
told what we have to do or not have to do.
So when you find those two together, we have now
kind of a mistrust in the science. We have a
mistrust in you know, government pushing down mandates, and I
think you combine those two together, we we have a
portion of the population that's hesitant to get those vaccines
and and might perceive them as dangerous and causing things
(32:12):
like you know, autism or things like that.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Yeah, of her help, you know, you know, public officials say, well, uh,
it may call it autism or or it may cause
other illness. How do you we have we have public
officials saying this that kind of puts.
Speaker 9 (32:32):
Down in parents absolutely and I think what we're getting,
what we're getting kind of dangerous, is we lump all
vaccines together, right, and and we we when every vaccine
is different for a different purpose and for different people.
And the MMR vaccine has been around for decades, right,
and it's been pretty well known the kind of side
(32:56):
effects from that could be a low grade fever, could
be diary, a really minor thing, minor things in comparison
to what a measles virus can can give into a human.
But then we also kind of lump that same thing
and of what happened with COVID where we quickly developed
a vaccine. Uh, and you know, you know, so we
we now because we have hesitancy about the COVID vaccine,
(33:18):
now we apply that hesitancy to everything else that's been
that's come before it. And I think we're we're getting
to a point where, you know, conversations really just need
to be opened up and people need to have the confidence.
It's good to have questions. It's okay to have questions
that go to a trusted you know, your trusted healthcare
provider and have those conversations bring up those concerns and
(33:40):
then hear from them with the data suggest about that
vaccine in particular, you said.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
The naturalist movement as far as putting stuff in your body,
how popular is that.
Speaker 9 (33:53):
I wouldn't say it's that popular. And in fact, if
you look at it, our global vaccination rates for measles
are still above ninety percent in most areas, so it's
not like the majority of the people aren't aren't getting this.
But every time you wouldle away a percentage or two points,
you know, below the ninety five percent, that's when we
start having the issue of measles being spread endemically in
(34:16):
the United States, where I think the So I wouldn't
say the natural smooth is a huge concern, but politics
on both sides of the the we politicize this point
very frequently. But on both sides of the equation, people
are hesitant to get vaccines for for particular reasons. But
(34:36):
I would say on the on the that that kind
of started back in the early thousands, where you know,
people were looking at you know, kids who had had
developmental problems or or sectrum disorder and now trying to
find a reason why that might have occurred.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
How scary is this the measles outbreak for general, not
for the general population, but for yeah, for you know,
for a city a large as Houston.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
I mean it's risky.
Speaker 9 (35:03):
I mean it is one of the most contagious viruses known.
If one person walks into a mall, they can spread
that easily to twenty people at one time. And that's
where the danger comes from, is this unvaccinated population, particularly
to the kids. Like I was talking about before, the
(35:24):
kids can't get vaccinated to a certain age. And so
if you look at like the first symptom that they're
going to feel, usually a week or two after they
contract the virus, you're talking about a high grade fever
of one hundred and five. You've got to manage that
fever or there are gonna be severe consequences for that child.
After that, it can develop into short term things like pneumonia,
(35:44):
again not a very dangerous condition for a kid to have.
Long term, it can cause brain swelling, which can lead
to deafness, it can lead to convulsions, and ultimately could
lead to death. And so when we look at these things,
particularly that younger population and that vulnerable population, it is
highly impactful. Also, if there's a woman who is pregnant
(36:06):
and unvaccinated, it can leadings lead things to pre term birth,
which also is going to have complication for the children.
So I would say in a big area like Houston,
I mean, you see it all over the news. The
issue is where we're seeing a lot of the tracking
of people who have gotten this virus. Some of them
are going to concerts, some are going to sporting events.
They're going to you know, five or six different restaurants,
(36:28):
And the real issue is they're not feeling symptoms of
measles until a week or two after they get it.
But in that entire time period before they're showing symptoms,
they can spread this virus without even knowing they have it.
So that's what the real danger comes into is most
people with one hundred and five degree temperature are not
going to go to a concert, are not going to
go to a game, and they're going to do the
(36:49):
right thing and stay home and try to get better.
There's a one to two week window when they get
the virus that they don't even know they have it.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
What do you know, what do you say to people
that you know have gone you know, uh, they do
feel the symptoms, and what are some of the symptoms
that they see a fever, what are some of the
other symptoms? So what do they do after they they
see it? Seek the doctor or some people like to
treat their you know, I think it's a common cold.
Speaker 9 (37:18):
Yeah, So it usually starts to present itself as a
high grade fever, and then what you'll see is sometimes
white spots in your mouth, or you'll start seeing dots
on your that start from kind of the hairline and
move down and end up going from spots to kind
of coming together and forming a full rash. For anyone
who they has these symptoms, they should go to a
(37:39):
doctor and get tested because one of the crucial things
is management and support of therapy, making sure the symptoms
don't get worse, making sure the fever's under control, making
sure you're also not spreading this to other people who
might vulnerable. That that that's key. So when you're talking
about call a doctor, find out before you go go
into that doctor that they have a test, because that's
(38:00):
another one of the problems. Some people are having to
go to three or four different doctors to find out
where they can get a measles test done. Not everyone
offers that. And then making sure that you know you're
you're paying attention to your own health and getting the
support of therapy that you need to prevent long term
consequences of measles. This will present with a higher temperature
(38:22):
than a normal virus. You will have more severe reactions
than a normal respiratory virus. So making sure you get
tested soon is going to impact the outcomes positively.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
Is that vaccination just a one time thing or do
you get it every year like a flu shot?
Speaker 9 (38:42):
It's actually twy you get you get one dose, you
get two doses, one usually between the ages of twelve
and eighteen months, and you get your second dose right
around the age of three and a half four years old.
When you get one dose, you're generally pretty well protected
from measles, but the second dose kind of reinforces that
for the rest of your life. So if people have
(39:04):
had their first two doses as a kid, you buy
a larger good and don't need to get another vaccine
after that.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
That was doctor j Reddy, who is the Chief Science
Officer at health Track RX. He's a longtime healthcare and
laboratory executive with a decade of experience in molecular diagnostics.
The Houston Health Department is actively investigating the cases and
is working to identify anyone who may have been exposed.
To help prevent measles from spreading, HHD urges anyone who
(39:38):
develops symptoms of measles to contact their health care provider
before visiting a medical facility to prevent potential exposure to others.
So you need to travel to any of the domestic
areas where measles has occurred. Early vaccination is available and
recommended for people as young as six months old and
(39:58):
with a second dose available in as little as twenty
eight days after the first dose. You can call the
Health Department for more details at eight three two three
nine three four two two zero. It's fun drive time
at KPFT. Call us and donate what you can seven
one three five two six five seven three eight seven
(40:21):
one three five two six five seven three eight.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
We allow the People's News.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
As the criminal and corrupt Trump administration continues its policies
of deporting immigrants and US citizens to foreign gulags without
due process, openly defying the orders of the judiciary, including
the Supreme Court. Convicted felon Donald Trump is making good
(40:48):
on his campaign promise to bring in the right refugees
which means the white refugees that he feels are being
a press White privileged and unoppressed South African Africaners have
been arriving from South Africa where they've been given a
(41:09):
fast track to citizenship as refugees. They were given a
chartered flight to the US and will get free housing,
food and other needs. It is simply not true that
the white Afrikaaners are victims of genocide or being oppressed
in any way. This has been debunked by many human
(41:31):
rights organizations and the South African government. Even the extreme
white wing in South Africa has spoke against these refugees
going to the US. Doctor Tascheppo Mesingo Cherrii is an
associate professor at the University of Houston, a South African
scholar specializing in African history with a focus on racial formation,
(41:55):
racial politics, and religious expression.
Speaker 10 (41:58):
Just recently this week, we had about forty nine South Africans,
white South Africans land at Dallas Airport in Washington, d C.
They're classified as and identify as Africanas, which are the
descendants of generally speaking, of people who settled in South Africa.
(42:23):
And the reason I say generally speaking, and this might
be of interest to sort of thinking more in a
more nuanced way about who's coming and under what circumstances.
Africanas have a history actually of being of interracial descent,
So these are they're classified as white South Africans, but
(42:46):
many Africanas in their generations back have a multi ethnic heritage,
which includes the Khoisan, who would be the indigenous people
of South Africa who were there when the Dutch settlers came,
and of course seeing Guni people. So we're talking about
(43:10):
people who might identify definitely ideologically and politically as white,
but also have this longer history that links them to
African populations. But this group of people in particular have
(43:34):
really struggled post nineteen ninety four when apartheid was abolished.
And this is a group of Africanists who really didn't
find their sort of economic and political footing post ninety four,
and had generations before benefited from the from the South
(43:56):
African government, who had policies and place that supported white
South Africans irrespective of their education or their professional standing.
So under apartheid, white South Africans were always there was
(44:16):
always an attempt to elevate them above any of the
other racial groups. So they were given subsidies for domestic help.
So they had domestic laborers in their homes as well
as gardeners and were given subsidies around their homes. So,
(44:37):
after the end of apartheid, this position a group of
people who had been largely dependent on the government to
fend for themselves to a larger degree. But what's at
stake right now in terms of our political the political
(44:57):
through line that we're talking about is that President Donald
Trump has stated that white South Africans are facing a
genocide in South Africa, and much of his claims are
connected to a series of laws that question the ownership
(45:19):
of land by white South Africans over many generations that
was often taken away from black South Africans as apartheid expanded.
And so the idea here is if you look at
the vast inequality in South Africa currently, where you have
(45:42):
over seventy percent of the land in the hands of
white owners. In particular, what we're talking about here are
white farmers. The Africans have a history on a heritage
of tending to the land. Then you have, you know,
thirty percent of the land doled out to the rest
of South Africans, and this is beyond just black South Africans,
(46:07):
but they are a plethora of other ethnic groups that
call South Africa their homes. So the reclamation project of
the land, especially land where there's documentation that that land
was taken from black South Africans, whether through companies or
(46:31):
organizations or individuals themselves, is what the South African government
has had in play and has been questioning and also
trying to figure out ways to create more economic equality
and equity in the country. Interestingly enough, South Africa has
(46:53):
been known for this draconian segregationist policies in the form
of a part tide, but after nineteen ninety four it
actually has become even more unequal in terms of the
economics of the country itself. So this is something that
(47:13):
the South African population has been reckoning with for quite
some time, and there has been an economic fallout for
many Africanists who are not professionally well positioned.
Speaker 4 (47:30):
When you say, when you say that to the white
africanus is a history of white Africanas has been point
blank racists for the most part against blacks and other
minority groups.
Speaker 10 (47:44):
Am my curricula, absolutely, and I think that's a very
important thing just to parse out and probably something that
I am part take for granted in the history of
South Africa. But South Africa and the apartheid system and
the Apartheide system is was a was a set of
(48:06):
policies and a way of life and around the kind
of racial hierarchy with white benefiting the most and being
at the top, and Blacks of course with the least
benefits being at the bottom. And the notion the idea
was for the white population to have access to free
(48:32):
or cheap labor and it was state sponsored and to position.
Speaker 9 (48:40):
White South Africans.
Speaker 10 (48:43):
To really benefit economically from the resources on South African land.
And so it was a very it was very draconian
because the measures that they took to ensure that has
happened ranged, you know, vastly. Like so I mentioned the
(49:06):
sort of on a micro level, how Africanus benefited from
being you know, being classified as white despite their multinational heritage,
but also because the Afrikanis themselves were the ones that
pushed for this particular ideology to be institutionalized and politicized,
(49:31):
so that when they were multiple strands of British descendants
that made their home South Africa as part of a
white settler community, but the Afrikaanas formed the National Party.
The National Party was the party that took over in
nineteen forty eight and created the idea of apartheid. Apartheid
(49:54):
was only able to be instituted into that country not
only through politics and the policies overall, but also through
you know, a series of ideologies that even had a
theological impulse. So where you have a country that is
(50:16):
organized by race, but where people are open to and
accepting of the idea that blacks were meant to work
on behalf of white by turning to a kind of
calvinistic theology that supported these ideas. Well, it's a distorted
(50:40):
calvinistic theology that supported these ideas, and so you have
a very you had a very segregated society, and it
was also very brutal in the sense that as people
pushed back against some of these some of the policies
(51:01):
that were the infrastructure for South Africa apartheid, whether that
was the Group Areas Act where black people had to
live in one section of town. People who are classified
as multiracial, who are called colored, had to live in
another section of towns, Indians and another section of town,
so on and so forth along the same kind of
(51:24):
racial lines, and that black people cannot be in any
white areas after nine pm without the permission of white people,
or if they were or unless they were working and
living in a white home as part of domestic help.
Those are only I'm scratching at the surface of how
(51:45):
apartheid functions functions Historically Americans, especially late eighties onward, we
have a history and a connection to South as of
course that spans went well beyond the nineteen eighties, but
for many of us, we would remember the nineteen eighties
(52:08):
as a moment where we saw on American college campuses
students pushing for divestment from a prithide and divestment from
companies that supported apartheid, as well as a pushback and
an attempt to isolate South Africa and its various sort
(52:30):
of configurations. And that was led in large parts by HBCUs.
Although there is this kind of way in which historians
turned very quickly to pwis and white liberals who pushed
for divestment, but you have this long standing history of
(52:53):
historically black colleges and universities who were aware of what
was happening in South Africa who were organizing against the partheid.
And then these politics found their way beyond these campuses.
And I think campuses are only one site of opposition
(53:17):
that African Americans in large parts created against the partheid.
You have a whole host of civil rights leaders who
are well aware of what was happening in South Africa,
who were in contact with a lot of black South
African leaders, and who were working in solidarity against the partheid.
(53:37):
This sort of reminiscent form of what was happening here
in the US under not just under this during the
civil Rights movement, but we can look at Jim crow Era.
There's this kind of strange historical kind of similarities that
(53:58):
black South Africans in Africa and Americans have shared for decades.
You could even see actually HBCU students who traveled to
South Africa in the late nineteen and the late eighteen
hundreds as a form of kind of cultural artistic exchange.
(54:19):
But I mentioned all this because there's this long history
of a clear opposition to apartheid, and by default a
clear opposition to this notion of Africana nationalism which was
embedded in our understanding of who we were opposing. When
(54:41):
we're talking about the anti apartheid regime, we weren't necessarily
directly opposing Africanas, but we were directly opposing Africana nationalism.
And so what's happening now is a group of people
who have come through to America are part of the
descendants of who we would call the Africana nationalists. They're
(55:03):
part of Africa Forum. They want to maintain the history
of the kind of Africana ideology. They feel very much
undercut by the changes that try to create economic equality
for black South Africans. So the idea of this white
(55:26):
genocide is not a new idea in the sense that
it has been paraded around for the last couple of decades,
but it has been largely dismissed because there is no
genocide happening in South Africa. Quite frankly, if you look
at the UN and their definition of who should be
eligible for refugee status, South Africa never ever in the
(55:51):
last several decades was considered eligible for that. Indeed, South
Africa has a history of crime that the government is
attempting to work through. There are all kinds of issues,
but those issues hit against all South Africans. There is
nothing definitive about it being racialized. Now, white South Africans,
(56:17):
especially Africans who own farms, have been in more isolated areas.
So the more you've removed from an urban terrain, the
more sort of volatile they have been to you know,
incidents of crime. So those things that they are documenting
(56:41):
as evidence of genocide are in they're not. There is
actually no statistical evidence to that effect.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
That was the Chepeucherry, a South African scholar specializing in
African history with a focus on racial formation, racial politics,
and religious expression. The People's News is a production of
Steve Gallington and Richard Hannah and is protected by copyright laws.
All the information broadcast on air and online, as well
(57:11):
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these copyright and other state and federal intellectual property laws. Therefore,
you may not use our content in any prohibited way,
including reproducing, publishing, transmitting, selling, rewriting, broadcasting, or posting on
(57:33):
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Prohibited use also includes publication of our material in printed
or electronic brochures, newsletters or flyers, as well as all
website or email distribution. To obtain permission to use copyrighted material,
email Steve Gallington at Steve at gallington dot com. Thank you,
It's the week of May twenty fifth, twenty twenty five,
and this is what's on the People's News today. May
twenty fifth is the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death,
stripping medicaid from the disabled to benefit billionaires and the
convicted felon Donald Trump. Under the leadership of RFK, Junior
(00:25):
Measles is back Mental Health Month in Houston. All that
and more on the People's News. I'm Steve Gallington. This
is the People's News, and the People's News starts now.
(00:46):
It's fun drive time at KPFT. Call us and donate
what you can seven one three, five, two six, five,
seven three eight seven one three five, two six, five,
seven three eight.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
We love the People's New.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
May twenty twenty five was the fifth anniversary of George
Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police. Houston remembered
by having a four day memorial and festival remembering Floyd.
On Sunday, a balloon release was held in his honor,
(01:21):
accompanied by gospel music and speeches by religious leaders. Also
on this day, the criminal and corrupt Republican Trump administration
is rolling back civil rights involving police and reform. The
Houston police department received good news this week with the
city approving pay raises and other benefits for its force.
(01:44):
Not included in that was accountability for the officers that
served the community. In the past, we have seen the
botched Harding Street raid that ended in the death of
two innocent people, problems at the HPDE crime lab that
ended with thousands of cases being thrown out because of
unsubstantiated evidence, and now there's a report showing that African
(02:06):
Americans are more prone to be stopped by the police
and detained. The Houston Police Department conducted nearly three hundred
and forty thousand traffic stops in twenty twenty three, over
one third of which were non safety traffic stops for
vehicle violations like broken tail lights, dark tinted windows, or
expired registrations. Black drivers comprised about thirty eight percent of
(02:29):
those non safety traffic stops, despite the fact that black
residents make up only twenty two percent of the city's population.
These disparities are also reflected in rates of arrests, searches,
and use of force during such stops. Black drivers suffered
the most physical force, comprising fifty two percent of total incidents.
(02:51):
Black drivers made up fifty five percent of all searches
conducted by the police during traffic stops, and black drivers
comprised forty nine percent of all arrests arriving from non
safety traffic stops. On this anniversary of George Floyd's death
at the hands of the police, Randall calem reflected that
there is still a long way to go in police
(03:13):
reform in Houston.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Recent statistics of twenty twenty three and in twenty twenty
four show that racial profiling and traffic stops it alive
and well in the city of Houston. Despite the Houston
Police Department are now becoming the highest paid police force
in all of Texas, they still have a big problem
(03:39):
with racial profiling, and that is that African Americans are
stopped more frequently for simple things like registration out and
then they're deserved more often than their counterparts of other ethnicities,
and then use of force is all so much more
(04:01):
slanted towards African Americans. So we see that in the
years since George Floyd in Houston, very little has been
done to prevent racial profiling in traffic stops. And it's
not a small matter. As a matter of fact, in
twenty twenty three, the Houston Police did three hundred and
(04:26):
forty thousand these stops, and over a third of those
were for you know what I call non safety issues
such as a broken lens on a tail light, not
even the light out, just a broken lens, registration out
and things like that. And we see when it comes
to those extremely extremely minor things, it's the African Americans
(04:50):
are bearing the brunt of those stops and which sometimes
even lead to death.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Accountability though the City of Houston gave the Houston Police
Department arrayed, so to speak, without any accountability.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yes, there were, of course there was. As a matter
of fact, I went to city Hall with other activists
throughout the community on Tuesday and Mayor Whitmeyer left before
our week we could speak. We had a press conference,
but then when we were going to speak, he left immediately,
(05:32):
as he has done on other issues which we bring forward.
So apparently he doesn't even want to be listened. He
doesn't even want to listen to what the public is
saying about discrimination in policing. I mean, it was right
there on the list of things you got to put
your topic at the public speaking, So he knew that
discrimination in policing was coming up and that there were
(05:54):
three individuals going to speak on that, and he left
the room and did not even listen. The complaints of
the citizenry.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
Is that say a lot for where we're at now
as far as the community, because you know, we go
back five years with George Floyd and we were talking
about the same thing as far as police accountability. Then
the cases with the rape cases that came out, also
the the DNA, the crime lab situation, and the city's
(06:27):
paying a ton of money for all the mistakes that
HPD has made in the past, but still are given
them a raise.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Well, I don't want to punish police officers by paying
them less. I don't think that paying police officers less
is going to help or hurt. What I'm concerned with
is that, as a matter of fact, it might even help.
What I'm concerned with is that we attack these policies
that they have in customs of racial profiling. And as
(06:59):
you mentioned, the anniversary of George Floyd is upon us,
and for those viewers out there, many don't know he
is buried in Paarland, so as he was from Houston
original and so we have a great, big connection to
George Floyd, and I have a mirror of him on
my building, uh you know, in my law office and
(07:20):
art gallery. So we since George Floyd. While there was
much promise in George Floyd, we have now backpeddled and
we are brought perhaps no better off, maybe even worse
with the current administration than we were before George Floyd.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yeah, that's the situation that we're in now. It's a
scary situation with the repealing of a lot of the
a lot of the marriage that were brought up after
George Floyd. As far as the police accountability across the
country and police reformed things that make that would make
law enforce for more accountable, also making the better, better
(08:02):
police officers to the community. So we've we've backed up,
we've backed up from that to to a law and
order type of police in which we founded in the past.
It doesn't work.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Yes, as a matter of fact, many things have happened.
Two of the really big ones, and there are many,
but two of the really big ones are the Civil
Rights Division of the d o J. That is, the
government lawyers who go after police agencies and also litigate
other civil rights violations. Those those individuals are pretty much
(08:37):
all fired, and the only lawyers that were kept, like
in my cases, are the ones that fight against civil
rights and defend the United States against those But a furthermore,
the administration has decided, and it just started this week
and in the weeks before, to get rid of what
(08:58):
is called consent decrees, and that is where police agencies
have agreed with the government and wrote it down that
they will do reforms. And now the current federal administration
has decided just to abandon those and not hold these
police agencies to their agreements to end practices of discrimination
(09:24):
and other civil rights violations.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
So basically, we don't really have a civil rights department
in the federal government.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
We have a civil rights department to defend against the
people's suing of the government for civil rights violations. They
kept all of those lawyers.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Leading up to the anniversary of George Floyd's death, the
corrupt and criminal Republican Trump administration and his toadies at
the Justice Department moved Wednesday to cancel settlements with Minneapolis
and Louisville that called for an overhaul of their police departments.
Following the killings of George Floyd and Rihanna Taylor that
(10:01):
became a catalyst for national racial injustice protests. In the
summer of twenty twenty, it also announced it was retracting
the findings of the Justice Department investigations into six other
police departments that the Biden administration had accused of civil
rights violations. It's fun drive time at KPFT, call us
(10:23):
and donate what you can seven one, three, five, two, six, five,
seven three eight seven one three five two six, five,
seven three eight.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
We love the People's News.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
The corrupt and criminal Republican Trump administration in order to
distract the American people away from the lawlessness of Donald
Trump and him taking bribes from anyone and everyone he
can and to pay for the billionaire tax cuts that
(10:54):
the Republicans are proposing. There are massive Medicaid cuts before
the Senate that will strip healthcare and independence from thousands
of disabled Texans. One accomplished longtime advocate is telling her
Medicaid story to Texas senators and urging others to join her.
John Mueller reports.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Nancy Kroter of Boston is one of seventy million covered
by Medicaid, but Croter is also someone who has told
her story for decades to score wins for the Texas
disability community and the attendants who care for them. This week,
as the US House passed the biggest budget cuts to
Medicaid in history and it now moves to the Senate,
(11:37):
Croda is again using her voice to tell senators what
Medicaid does for her and urging others to join her.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I've worked hard.
Speaker 6 (11:46):
I'm to the point where I own my own house,
I have services, and to lose.
Speaker 7 (11:54):
That would be to lose my livelihood and to be
desperately placed in an assisted living or something.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Kroder is sixty seven and has a progressive muscular disease
called spinal muscular atrophy. She's lived years beyond anyone's expectations,
she says, and owes it all up to her Medicaid
attendant care, which will be imperiled if the cuts become law.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
Involves so many programs for young, for old, for different
types of disabilities, and it's just a multi use tool.
And if you start losing pieces as that tool, that's
part of your independence that you're losing. And I don't
(12:47):
think it's felt as if that's a.
Speaker 7 (12:50):
Big deal by anybody in the upper echelon that thinks, well,
you know, you're okay, you're in a wheelchair.
Speaker 6 (13:00):
Medicaid does a lot more different things than just a wheelchair,
and our lawmakers don't even understand that.
Speaker 7 (13:10):
The sad part of this is.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
That we already have a wounded community because a lot
of medical facilities, adoptors and providers are going out of business,
don't want anything to do with make cake because they're
not getting decent reimbursement rates from the Medicaid mountain. And
(13:43):
for me personally, it would mean you know, devastation of course, but.
Speaker 7 (13:51):
The lowest thing.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
On the totem pole would have to be an institution
to go into, and that would just be the death.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Nail Croter found the power of speaking up in the
nineteen eighties. It was years before the Americans with Disabilities Act.
She got involved in the movement to make public transit
in Austin, Texas accessible not only for people with disabilities,
but also seniors and families with strollers for instance. It
was a victory and she found out the power of
(14:22):
her own voice. She's been awarded for her work ever
since and has continued speaking up across the state, sometimes
telling her story to policymakers or often being the only
disability perspective present at a meeting or serving on an
advisory board. Crowder was part of the push that got
the last legislature to boost community attendant pay for the
(14:43):
disabled and seniors in twenty twenty three. Last week, members
of Crowd's group Adaptive Texas were among three hundred wheelchairs
and their supporters in the US Capitol. Twenty seven of
them were arrested for bringing a House committee to a
halt to mand I think they not touch Medicaid. This week,
Crowd encouraged listeners to call their Texas senators to tell
(15:07):
their own stories and their families and friends stories on
how important medicaid is to them.
Speaker 6 (15:12):
It really fills you up with a sense of boldness
and strength and compassion because you've done what was right.
And you know, when people complain about things, I'm just
(15:34):
I look at them like, and what have you done that?
It not to be mean, but I've got to put
it back in their hands.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
To reach Texas Senators' offices, call the US Capital switchboard
at to zero two two two four three one two
one for the People's News. This is John Buller reporting.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
In twenty seventeen, constituent calls flipped one Senator John McCain,
who voted against party lines saving the Affordable Care Act.
So what can we do in the face of all
this lawlessness and corruption? Call the capital switchboard at two
o two two two four three one two one and
(16:23):
demand that your representatives save Medicaid. It's fun drive time
at KPFT. Call us and donate what you can seven
one three, five, two six, five, seven three eight, seven
one three five two six, five, seven three eight.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
We love the People's news.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
May is mental health Awareness month, and that has been
highlighted by the criminal and corrupt Donald Trump's mental very
visible and obvious mental decline. Harris County Public Health encourages
everyone to prioritize their mental well being and others. HCPH
offers help through its Behavioral Health Services program, which includes
(17:06):
specialized support for mothers through Maternal Mental Health Services MMH.
Jamie chen is the Behavioral Health Program manager at Harris
County Public Health, spoke on mental health and the stigma associated.
Speaker 8 (17:21):
With it at Harris County Public Health. We understand that
Houstonian residents are going through a lot on many different levels,
and it's really important right now of all times the
prioritize their mental health. You know, prioritizing and mental health
really means loving yourself so much that you prioritize the
(17:42):
most important part of your body. Right, that tells everything
else what to do. You prioritize the health of your
mind and your emotions, and our emotions many times dictate
what we do and how we do things day to day.
Right in one of the largest and busious economies, we
have to take time to check in on ourselves because internally,
(18:04):
if we're not okay externally, we can be okay for
everybody else. So we understand that the Harris County Public
Health and we offer completely free mental health services to
all Harris County residents ages eight years and older.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
How do you get over that stigma, especially in the
minority community, that it's okay to get some type of help.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
So stigma is a big deal, right, as you said,
especially among us minorities. I think the biggest way to
get over that is conversations and starting the conversations with
some of our mental health program and we have a
lot of community groups that we do a lot of
community events and outreach that we do to educate the
public on different type of mental health conditions to show
(18:52):
that there's diversity in mental health. You know, there's not
just one thing. Everybody says that everybody has anxiety or depression,
and of course those conditions run rapid, but even within
those conditions, there are always spectrums, right, So we do
a lot of education in the community so that they
understand the feelings that they have and the things that
are going on with them mentally and emotionally, so that
(19:14):
it really just adds to a bigger conversation of mental health,
because you can't fight the stigma until you confront it.
And so we're here at Here's County Public Health to
work actively with the community and thankfully talk about how
they feel and what they're going through. And that really
is the only way that we break the stigma.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
And also, you know, people also look at it as
that's not you know, it's not for it's only for
rich people, people that can afford afford to go and
get a psychiatrist. They look at they look at show
TV shows or entertainment, you know, and that aspect of
it being something that that that the affluid has to
(19:58):
do not not people of you. A lot of people
that don't have the money to do that, and you're
offering it for free.
Speaker 8 (20:05):
Right, we offer free services. It does not matter your
income level, does not matter your insurance coverage, whether you
have insurance or not, we're able to offer those mental
health therapy services. And therapy is for everybody. It's not
for just the affluence. It really is for everybody to
(20:25):
understand what's going on with their own line and their
own personalities and the things that they that they deal
with day to day. We all have struggles regardless of
our income level. So we're here to offer our services
to everybody, regardless you know, of your social economic status.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Talk about the you know, the situations that can happen
if you don't if you don't get help.
Speaker 8 (20:52):
So I think it's really important that people understand, especially
minority communities, we typically don't get help when we need
to get the help, and some of these mental health
conditions can exacerbate and make life living so much harder.
In our maternal mental health program, for example, we know
one in five mothers experience maternal mental health conditions each year,
(21:15):
such as postpartum depression and anxiety by polar psychosis, and
some of these conditions can have the ability to affect
moms up to three years. So you know, if you
don't get the help that you need when you need it,
these conditions don't necessarily go away. You know, that's a
lot of stigma in the community that they believe that
things just go away, and sometimes they don't. And sometimes
(21:36):
we need tools and interventions to help us with those
conditions and to help us get that to a normal
functioning so that we can really function at our high
at levels of ourselves.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
And I know men and women, you know, when they
can't get help, they dwell into other activities that be
in alcohol or drugs or stuff like that that you know,
that's as some of the downfalls of not getting help.
Speaker 8 (22:05):
And right right, not addressing mental health definitely can lead
you to other avenues of just poor coping skills in general.
And we assist with that. We assist with subscince use counseling,
We assess with substance use referrals, where the it be alcohol, drugs, opiates.
You know, no matter somebody's vice, we're always here to
(22:25):
give them the health they need and get them to
treatment services. That's that's our jobs. And so yes, not
addressing mental health definitely can lead you to pour outcomes
and situations if you don't address.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
It the treatment when you send people the treatment for
I think maybe drugs and alcohol and there was a
problem in Houston and trying to get treatment for free.
Is that something that you guys have offered for free
because I know, I know opioids and a lot of
other drugs. Say you know, they will send you somewhere,
(22:59):
but you gotta pay right.
Speaker 8 (23:02):
So we do have again a lot of depending on
eligibility when you get into specific programming, but in general
there are one hundred free routes to drug and alcohol treatment.
We work in collaboration with other community partners who are
able to get those participants to the programs that they
(23:22):
need free of cost. And so it's really a network
of agencies that work within Harris County even outside of
Harrison County in order to tap into those resources. But
we definitely can get people to that free treatment. It
really is just a connection to care, and that's what
Harris County Public Health offers. We offer connection to care
and resource navigation because the system of social services in
(23:46):
Houston alone is huge. There's a million social services right
and so we don't want to overwhelm people, but we
are here to let them know that we definitely have
the health and we have the resources, and we're here
to walk people through and hold their hands navigating that
whole process to really get them where they need to go.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
I didn't get into it. But also it brings about
spousal abuse or abuses in the family.
Speaker 8 (24:10):
Right and so our clinic counselors and our therapists we
work with when we work with the family, we work
with the whole family. We take the individual who's coming
into treatment services and we work with them individually, but
we also always open the conversation to work with their household,
to work with their partners, because we understand that domestic
violence and abuse situations really are repant in a lot
(24:33):
of toxic relationships that people involve themselves in, and a
lot of times people don't even have the education to
know that they are in unsafe situations. So that's another
thing that we're able to address through our mental health
services and our behavior health clinics. Just that relationship with
therapists who are able to work with clients in that
situation to get them to a safer place.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah, that's another thing trying to get women into it
if they're in an abusive relationship, trying to give them
to that next step. Either they're scared to leave or
they don't know they're being abused.
Speaker 8 (25:08):
Right, there's a I mean, there's a lot of factors
that go into abusive relationships. Women are scared to leave,
they're intimidated to leave a lot of times when you're
in relationships like that, they're in trauma bons and they
can't even see, you know, the other side of things
because they are so entrenched in the toxicity of the
(25:29):
day to day conflict. And all of that takes work.
It takes work with a therapist. It takes work with
a professional mental health professional who's able to guide women
and men to understand that they're in these abusive relationships
and they can change the dynamics of their lives and
they can ultimately, you know, work on their mental health,
build their self confidence, and step out of these relationships.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
How can people get in touch with you or you know,
and you know, especially they need it immediately? Is that
some thing that can happen or is it is it
a process.
Speaker 8 (26:04):
So dependent on the immediate need. Definitely, we have our
specialists who are able to work with residents dependent on
their needs. Some things we do have direct access to
to assist in. Some things are process so it kind
of just depends, but they can definitely reach out to
our program. Behavior Health Services is our program where you located,
(26:28):
So we have several clinic locations around town. If you
go to our website address Harris County Public Health, it
will show you we have a Humble clinic location. We
have a Pasadena clinic location. We also have a Sheldon
id location, so we have several locations around the Harris
County area that residents can access us. We also offer
(26:52):
virtual services so in the event that you're not within
the local area of a mental health clinic, you can
always access us first as well.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
Are you're multi lingual also as far as far as languages.
Speaker 8 (27:05):
Yes, so we serve multiple language in house. We serve
English and Spanish, and we also have the ability to
service a multitude of languages Mandarin, Farsity. We have connections
to the multiple languages in our behavior health services to
provide people counseling services in the language of their choice.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
And the last question UH people with ask people with
immigration issues are do you ask for that or is
that something that they have to worry about.
Speaker 8 (27:37):
No, something that they do not have to worry about
with us. We do not ask anybody's immigration status. As
long as they have a Harris County residency, they have
a Harris County address. That's the only thing that they
need to access our services where we're not necessarily concerned
with their residency status to access services.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
That was Jamie Chen, the Behavioral Health Program Manager, Parris
County Public Health. For more information, visit the HCPH Behavioral
Health Services website, or you can request services by calling
eight three to two nine two seven one three three five.
You already pay attention to your physical health and you
(28:17):
eat right, pay attention to your mental health as well. Hi,
this is Steve Gallington, producer and host of The People's News.
The People's News is people powered news. We are free
to report the unvarnished and unspun truth and challenge the
status quo of corporate propaganda and social media advertising disguised
(28:39):
as real news. Shiny new one hour episodes of The
People's News drop each Sunday on The People's News podcast.
Thanks for listening. Measles is a highly contagious virus that
causes fever, rash, cough, and other complications. It was officially
eradicated in the United States States in two thousand, but
(29:02):
because of people not getting their children vaccinated for measles,
it has come back and is causing death around Texas
and other states. Measles has caused three deaths in the
Houston area and people are asking why and how to
stop the spread. Doctor j Reddy is the Chief Science
Officer at health track RX. He is a longtime healthcare
(29:25):
and laboratory executive with a decade of experience in molecular diagnostics.
Most recently, he has spearheaded health track rx's response to
the re emergence of measles and the growing concern around
avian influence bird flu. His team has launched molecular testing
protocols to ensure health providers the ability to quickly identify
(29:48):
outbreaks of many infectious diseases. We spoke to him about
the spread and where it started.
Speaker 9 (29:55):
Well, it was eradicated back in the year two thousand
and why we still had cases that popped up in
the US from mainly global travel people who had traveled
the countries where you know, vaccines were not as rarely
available as they were here, it would get to the
United States, but it wouldn't spread. What we've seen since
that time is really vaccine hesitancy across the board, where
(30:17):
our vaccination rates have fallen below the threshold of ninety
five percent in a lot of areas. And once you
fall below that threshold, the hard immunity that we had
in the community is gone. And so when that happens,
you're able to get community spread now measles for people
who are in the unvaccinated population. And you know, a
lot of kids can't get vaccinated till a certain age,
(30:39):
like you usually can't get your first dose of the
vaccine until you're between twelve and eighteen months year twelve
and eighteen months old. But that group is really at
risk because they can't get the vaccination until that time.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
And so it's been spreading. I know we have three
cases here in Houston, a lot of cases in West Texas.
Why people hesitant about getting vaccinated right now because it's
it's been proven that the vaccine works.
Speaker 9 (31:08):
And I think it started back in the two thousands
or early two thousands with kind of the naturalist movement
where putting anything outside of your body could potentially harm
your body. And you know, there was a little support
back in those days. In fact, the paper was published
in a pretty reputable journal. It has since been pulled
(31:29):
about the potential dangers to vaccination, and so even though
that's largely been debunked, it does create a lot of
questions for parents in particular, who might be worried if
a vaccine is going to harm their kids. At the
same time, during the COVID pandemic, when we had forced vaccinations,
I mean, as a country, we generally don't like being
(31:51):
told what we have to do or not have to do.
So when you find those two together, we have now
kind of a mistrust in the science. We have a
mistrust in you know, government pushing down mandates, and I
think you combine those two together, we we have a
portion of the population that's hesitant to get those vaccines
and and might perceive them as dangerous and causing things
(32:12):
like you know, autism or things like that.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Yeah, of her help, you know, you know, public officials say, well, uh,
it may call it autism or or it may cause
other illness. How do you we have we have public
officials saying this that kind of puts.
Speaker 9 (32:32):
Down in parents absolutely and I think what we're getting,
what we're getting kind of dangerous, is we lump all
vaccines together, right, and and we we when every vaccine
is different for a different purpose and for different people.
And the MMR vaccine has been around for decades, right,
and it's been pretty well known the kind of side
(32:56):
effects from that could be a low grade fever, could
be diary, a really minor thing, minor things in comparison
to what a measles virus can can give into a human.
But then we also kind of lump that same thing
and of what happened with COVID where we quickly developed
a vaccine. Uh, and you know, you know, so we
we now because we have hesitancy about the COVID vaccine,
(33:18):
now we apply that hesitancy to everything else that's been
that's come before it. And I think we're we're getting
to a point where, you know, conversations really just need
to be opened up and people need to have the confidence.
It's good to have questions. It's okay to have questions
that go to a trusted you know, your trusted healthcare
provider and have those conversations bring up those concerns and
(33:40):
then hear from them with the data suggest about that
vaccine in particular, you said.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
The naturalist movement as far as putting stuff in your body,
how popular is that.
Speaker 9 (33:53):
I wouldn't say it's that popular. And in fact, if
you look at it, our global vaccination rates for measles
are still above ninety percent in most areas, so it's
not like the majority of the people aren't aren't getting this.
But every time you wouldle away a percentage or two points,
you know, below the ninety five percent, that's when we
start having the issue of measles being spread endemically in
(34:16):
the United States, where I think the So I wouldn't
say the natural smooth is a huge concern, but politics
on both sides of the the we politicize this point
very frequently. But on both sides of the equation, people
are hesitant to get vaccines for for particular reasons. But
(34:36):
I would say on the on the that that kind
of started back in the early thousands, where you know,
people were looking at you know, kids who had had
developmental problems or or sectrum disorder and now trying to
find a reason why that might have occurred.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
How scary is this the measles outbreak for general, not
for the general population, but for yeah, for you know,
for a city a large as Houston.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
I mean it's risky.
Speaker 9 (35:03):
I mean it is one of the most contagious viruses known.
If one person walks into a mall, they can spread
that easily to twenty people at one time. And that's
where the danger comes from, is this unvaccinated population, particularly
to the kids. Like I was talking about before, the
(35:24):
kids can't get vaccinated to a certain age. And so
if you look at like the first symptom that they're
going to feel, usually a week or two after they
contract the virus, you're talking about a high grade fever
of one hundred and five. You've got to manage that
fever or there are gonna be severe consequences for that child.
After that, it can develop into short term things like pneumonia,
(35:44):
again not a very dangerous condition for a kid to have.
Long term, it can cause brain swelling, which can lead
to deafness, it can lead to convulsions, and ultimately could
lead to death. And so when we look at these things,
particularly that younger population and that vulnerable population, it is
highly impactful. Also, if there's a woman who is pregnant
(36:06):
and unvaccinated, it can leadings lead things to pre term birth,
which also is going to have complication for the children.
So I would say in a big area like Houston,
I mean, you see it all over the news. The
issue is where we're seeing a lot of the tracking
of people who have gotten this virus. Some of them
are going to concerts, some are going to sporting events.
They're going to you know, five or six different restaurants,
(36:28):
And the real issue is they're not feeling symptoms of
measles until a week or two after they get it.
But in that entire time period before they're showing symptoms,
they can spread this virus without even knowing they have it.
So that's what the real danger comes into is most
people with one hundred and five degree temperature are not
going to go to a concert, are not going to
go to a game, and they're going to do the
(36:49):
right thing and stay home and try to get better.
There's a one to two week window when they get
the virus that they don't even know they have it.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
What do you know, what do you say to people
that you know have gone you know, uh, they do
feel the symptoms, and what are some of the symptoms
that they see a fever, what are some of the
other symptoms? So what do they do after they they
see it? Seek the doctor or some people like to
treat their you know, I think it's a common cold.
Speaker 9 (37:18):
Yeah, So it usually starts to present itself as a
high grade fever, and then what you'll see is sometimes
white spots in your mouth, or you'll start seeing dots
on your that start from kind of the hairline and
move down and end up going from spots to kind
of coming together and forming a full rash. For anyone
who they has these symptoms, they should go to a
(37:39):
doctor and get tested because one of the crucial things
is management and support of therapy, making sure the symptoms
don't get worse, making sure the fever's under control, making
sure you're also not spreading this to other people who
might vulnerable. That that that's key. So when you're talking
about call a doctor, find out before you go go
into that doctor that they have a test, because that's
(38:00):
another one of the problems. Some people are having to
go to three or four different doctors to find out
where they can get a measles test done. Not everyone
offers that. And then making sure that you know you're
you're paying attention to your own health and getting the
support of therapy that you need to prevent long term
consequences of measles. This will present with a higher temperature
(38:22):
than a normal virus. You will have more severe reactions
than a normal respiratory virus. So making sure you get
tested soon is going to impact the outcomes positively.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
Is that vaccination just a one time thing or do
you get it every year like a flu shot?
Speaker 9 (38:42):
It's actually twy you get you get one dose, you
get two doses, one usually between the ages of twelve
and eighteen months, and you get your second dose right
around the age of three and a half four years old.
When you get one dose, you're generally pretty well protected
from measles, but the second dose kind of reinforces that
for the rest of your life. So if people have
(39:04):
had their first two doses as a kid, you buy
a larger good and don't need to get another vaccine
after that.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
That was doctor j Reddy, who is the Chief Science
Officer at health Track RX. He's a longtime healthcare and
laboratory executive with a decade of experience in molecular diagnostics.
The Houston Health Department is actively investigating the cases and
is working to identify anyone who may have been exposed.
To help prevent measles from spreading, HHD urges anyone who
(39:38):
develops symptoms of measles to contact their health care provider
before visiting a medical facility to prevent potential exposure to others.
So you need to travel to any of the domestic
areas where measles has occurred. Early vaccination is available and
recommended for people as young as six months old and
(39:58):
with a second dose available in as little as twenty
eight days after the first dose. You can call the
Health Department for more details at eight three two three
nine three four two two zero. It's fun drive time
at KPFT. Call us and donate what you can seven
one three five two six five seven three eight seven
(40:21):
one three five two six five seven three eight.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
We allow the People's News.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
As the criminal and corrupt Trump administration continues its policies
of deporting immigrants and US citizens to foreign gulags without
due process, openly defying the orders of the judiciary, including
the Supreme Court. Convicted felon Donald Trump is making good
(40:48):
on his campaign promise to bring in the right refugees
which means the white refugees that he feels are being
a press White privileged and unoppressed South African Africaners have
been arriving from South Africa where they've been given a
(41:09):
fast track to citizenship as refugees. They were given a
chartered flight to the US and will get free housing,
food and other needs. It is simply not true that
the white Afrikaaners are victims of genocide or being oppressed
in any way. This has been debunked by many human
(41:31):
rights organizations and the South African government. Even the extreme
white wing in South Africa has spoke against these refugees
going to the US. Doctor Tascheppo Mesingo Cherrii is an
associate professor at the University of Houston, a South African
scholar specializing in African history with a focus on racial formation,
(41:55):
racial politics, and religious expression.
Speaker 10 (41:58):
Just recently this week, we had about forty nine South Africans,
white South Africans land at Dallas Airport in Washington, d C.
They're classified as and identify as Africanas, which are the
descendants of generally speaking, of people who settled in South Africa.
(42:23):
And the reason I say generally speaking, and this might
be of interest to sort of thinking more in a
more nuanced way about who's coming and under what circumstances.
Africanas have a history actually of being of interracial descent,
So these are they're classified as white South Africans, but
(42:46):
many Africanas in their generations back have a multi ethnic heritage,
which includes the Khoisan, who would be the indigenous people
of South Africa who were there when the Dutch settlers came,
and of course seeing Guni people. So we're talking about
(43:10):
people who might identify definitely ideologically and politically as white,
but also have this longer history that links them to
African populations. But this group of people in particular have
(43:34):
really struggled post nineteen ninety four when apartheid was abolished.
And this is a group of Africanists who really didn't
find their sort of economic and political footing post ninety four,
and had generations before benefited from the from the South
(43:56):
African government, who had policies and place that supported white
South Africans irrespective of their education or their professional standing.
So under apartheid, white South Africans were always there was
(44:16):
always an attempt to elevate them above any of the
other racial groups. So they were given subsidies for domestic help.
So they had domestic laborers in their homes as well
as gardeners and were given subsidies around their homes. So,
(44:37):
after the end of apartheid, this position a group of
people who had been largely dependent on the government to
fend for themselves to a larger degree. But what's at
stake right now in terms of our political the political
(44:57):
through line that we're talking about is that President Donald
Trump has stated that white South Africans are facing a
genocide in South Africa, and much of his claims are
connected to a series of laws that question the ownership
(45:19):
of land by white South Africans over many generations that
was often taken away from black South Africans as apartheid expanded.
And so the idea here is if you look at
the vast inequality in South Africa currently, where you have
(45:42):
over seventy percent of the land in the hands of
white owners. In particular, what we're talking about here are
white farmers. The Africans have a history on a heritage
of tending to the land. Then you have, you know,
thirty percent of the land doled out to the rest
of South Africans, and this is beyond just black South Africans,
(46:07):
but they are a plethora of other ethnic groups that
call South Africa their homes. So the reclamation project of
the land, especially land where there's documentation that that land
was taken from black South Africans, whether through companies or
(46:31):
organizations or individuals themselves, is what the South African government
has had in play and has been questioning and also
trying to figure out ways to create more economic equality
and equity in the country. Interestingly enough, South Africa has
(46:53):
been known for this draconian segregationist policies in the form
of a part tide, but after nineteen ninety four it
actually has become even more unequal in terms of the
economics of the country itself. So this is something that
(47:13):
the South African population has been reckoning with for quite
some time, and there has been an economic fallout for
many Africanists who are not professionally well positioned.
Speaker 4 (47:30):
When you say, when you say that to the white
africanus is a history of white Africanas has been point
blank racists for the most part against blacks and other
minority groups.
Speaker 10 (47:44):
Am my curricula, absolutely, and I think that's a very
important thing just to parse out and probably something that
I am part take for granted in the history of
South Africa. But South Africa and the apartheid system and
the Apartheide system is was a was a set of
(48:06):
policies and a way of life and around the kind
of racial hierarchy with white benefiting the most and being
at the top, and Blacks of course with the least
benefits being at the bottom. And the notion the idea
was for the white population to have access to free
(48:32):
or cheap labor and it was state sponsored and to position.
Speaker 9 (48:40):
White South Africans.
Speaker 10 (48:43):
To really benefit economically from the resources on South African land.
And so it was a very it was very draconian
because the measures that they took to ensure that has
happened ranged, you know, vastly. Like so I mentioned the
(49:06):
sort of on a micro level, how Africanus benefited from
being you know, being classified as white despite their multinational heritage,
but also because the Afrikanis themselves were the ones that
pushed for this particular ideology to be institutionalized and politicized,
(49:31):
so that when they were multiple strands of British descendants
that made their home South Africa as part of a
white settler community, but the Afrikaanas formed the National Party.
The National Party was the party that took over in
nineteen forty eight and created the idea of apartheid. Apartheid
(49:54):
was only able to be instituted into that country not
only through politics and the policies overall, but also through
you know, a series of ideologies that even had a
theological impulse. So where you have a country that is
(50:16):
organized by race, but where people are open to and
accepting of the idea that blacks were meant to work
on behalf of white by turning to a kind of
calvinistic theology that supported these ideas. Well, it's a distorted
(50:40):
calvinistic theology that supported these ideas, and so you have
a very you had a very segregated society, and it
was also very brutal in the sense that as people
pushed back against some of these some of the policies
(51:01):
that were the infrastructure for South Africa apartheid, whether that
was the Group Areas Act where black people had to
live in one section of town. People who are classified
as multiracial, who are called colored, had to live in
another section of towns, Indians and another section of town,
so on and so forth along the same kind of
(51:24):
racial lines, and that black people cannot be in any
white areas after nine pm without the permission of white people,
or if they were or unless they were working and
living in a white home as part of domestic help.
Those are only I'm scratching at the surface of how
(51:45):
apartheid functions functions Historically Americans, especially late eighties onward, we
have a history and a connection to South as of
course that spans went well beyond the nineteen eighties, but
for many of us, we would remember the nineteen eighties
(52:08):
as a moment where we saw on American college campuses
students pushing for divestment from a prithide and divestment from
companies that supported apartheid, as well as a pushback and
an attempt to isolate South Africa and its various sort
(52:30):
of configurations. And that was led in large parts by HBCUs.
Although there is this kind of way in which historians
turned very quickly to pwis and white liberals who pushed
for divestment, but you have this long standing history of
(52:53):
historically black colleges and universities who were aware of what
was happening in South Africa who were organizing against the partheid.
And then these politics found their way beyond these campuses.
And I think campuses are only one site of opposition
(53:17):
that African Americans in large parts created against the partheid.
You have a whole host of civil rights leaders who
are well aware of what was happening in South Africa,
who were in contact with a lot of black South
African leaders, and who were working in solidarity against the partheid.
(53:37):
This sort of reminiscent form of what was happening here
in the US under not just under this during the
civil Rights movement, but we can look at Jim crow Era.
There's this kind of strange historical kind of similarities that
(53:58):
black South Africans in Africa and Americans have shared for decades.
You could even see actually HBCU students who traveled to
South Africa in the late nineteen and the late eighteen
hundreds as a form of kind of cultural artistic exchange.
(54:19):
But I mentioned all this because there's this long history
of a clear opposition to apartheid, and by default a
clear opposition to this notion of Africana nationalism which was
embedded in our understanding of who we were opposing. When
(54:41):
we're talking about the anti apartheid regime, we weren't necessarily
directly opposing Africanas, but we were directly opposing Africana nationalism.
And so what's happening now is a group of people
who have come through to America are part of the
descendants of who we would call the Africana nationalists. They're
(55:03):
part of Africa Forum. They want to maintain the history
of the kind of Africana ideology. They feel very much
undercut by the changes that try to create economic equality
for black South Africans. So the idea of this white
(55:26):
genocide is not a new idea in the sense that
it has been paraded around for the last couple of decades,
but it has been largely dismissed because there is no
genocide happening in South Africa. Quite frankly, if you look
at the UN and their definition of who should be
eligible for refugee status, South Africa never ever in the
(55:51):
last several decades was considered eligible for that. Indeed, South
Africa has a history of crime that the government is
attempting to work through. There are all kinds of issues,
but those issues hit against all South Africans. There is
nothing definitive about it being racialized. Now, white South Africans,
(56:17):
especially Africans who own farms, have been in more isolated areas.
So the more you've removed from an urban terrain, the
more sort of volatile they have been to you know,
incidents of crime. So those things that they are documenting
(56:41):
as evidence of genocide are in they're not. There is
actually no statistical evidence to that effect.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
That was the Chepeucherry, a South African scholar specializing in
African history with a focus on racial formation, racial politics,
and religious expression. The People's News is a production of
Steve Gallington and Richard Hannah and is protected by copyright laws.
All the information broadcast on air and online, as well
(57:11):
as published in both print and or online, including articles,
audio clips, illustrations, graphics, photographs, and videos, are protected by
these copyright and other state and federal intellectual property laws. Therefore,
you may not use our content in any prohibited way,
including reproducing, publishing, transmitting, selling, rewriting, broadcasting, or posting on
(57:33):
the Internet without the expressed written permission of the People's News.
Prohibited use also includes publication of our material in printed
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website or email distribution. To obtain permission to use copyrighted material,
email Steve Gallington at Steve at gallington dot com. Thank you,
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