Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's the week of June the first, twenty twenty five,
and this is what's on the People's News. Inspirational words
from Timothy Snyder and Martin Luther King Junior. May twenty
fifth is the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death. Stripping
medicaid from the disabled to benefit billionaires and the convicted felon.
(00:28):
Donald Trump, under the leadership of RFK Junior, measles is back,
criminal and corrupt administration starts allowing unoppressed, privileged white Afrikaaners
to come to the US as refugees. All that and
more on the People's News. I'm Steve Gallington. This is
(00:50):
the People's News, and the People's News starts now. We
start off the stition of the People's News with a
reading from Timothy Snyder's on Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the
Twentieth Century, which was published in twenty seventeen and something
(01:12):
I used as a guidebook to get me through the
first Donald Trump presidency. We're reading number fourteen of the
twenty lessons, which is entitled establish a private Life. Nastier
rulers will use what they know about you to push
you around, scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis.
Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of
(01:37):
the Internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges
in person for the same reason. Resolve any legal trouble.
Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try
not to have hooks. What the great political thinker Hannah
Arendt meant by totalitarianism was not an all powerful state,
(02:00):
but the erasure of the difference between private and public life.
We are free only in so far as we exercise
control over what people know about us, and in what
circumstances they come to know it. During the campaign of
twenty sixteen, we took a step toward totalitarianism without even
noticing it, by accepting as normal the violation of electronic privacy,
(02:24):
whether it is done by American or Russian intelligence agencies,
or for that matter, by any institution. The theft, discussion,
or publication of personal communications destroys a basic foundation of
our rights. If we have no control over who reads
what and when, we have no ability to act in
the present or plan for the future. Whoever can pierce
(02:47):
your privacy can humiliate you and disrupt your relationships at will.
No one except perhaps a tyrant has a private life
that can survive public exposure by hostile directive. The timed
email bombs of the twenty sixteen presidential campaign were also
a powerful form of disinformation. Words written in one situation
(03:09):
makes sense only in that context. The very act of
removing them from their historical moment and dropping them in
another is an act of falsification. What is worse, when
media followed the email bombs as if they were news,
they betrayed their own mission. Few journalists made an effort
to explain why people said or wrote the things they
(03:31):
did at the time. Meanwhile, in transmitting privacy violations as news,
the media allowed themselves to be distracted from the actual
events of the day. Rather than reporting the violation of
basic rights, our media generally preferred to mindlessly indulge in
the inherently salacious interest we have in other people's affairs.
(03:53):
Our appetite for the secret thought arrant is dangerously political.
Totalitarianism moves the difference between private and public not just
to make individuals unfree, but also to draw the whole
society away from normal politics and toward conspiracy theories. Rather
than defending facts or generating interpretations, we are seduced by
(04:16):
the notion of hidden realities and dark conspiracies that explain everything.
As we learn from these email bombs, this mechanism works
even when it is revealed it is of no interest.
The revelation of what was once confidential becomes the story itself.
It is striking that the news media are much worse
(04:37):
at this than, say, fashion or sports reporters. Fashion reporters
know that models are taking off their clothes in the
changing rooms, and sports reporters know that their athletes shower
in the locker room, but neither allow private matters to
supplant the public story that they are supposed to be covering.
When we take an active interest in the matters of
(04:57):
doubtful relevance at moments that are chose and by tyrants
and spooks, we participate in the demolition of our own
political order. To be sure, we might feel that we
are doing nothing more than going along with everyone else.
This is true, and it is what aren't described as
the devolution of society into a mob. We can try
(05:19):
to solve this problem individually by securing our own computers.
We can also try to solve it collectively by supporting,
for example, organizations that are concerned with human rights. That
was an excerpt of the book on Tyranny, Twenty Lessons
from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. It's fun drive
(05:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Eight We allowed the People's News.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
May twenty fifth, 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 honour, accompanied by gospel music and speeches by religious leaders.
(06:20):
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.
Not included in that was accountability for the officers that
(06:43):
served the community. In the past, we have seen the
botched Harding Street ray that ended in the death of
two innocent people, problems at the HPD crime lab that
ended with thousands of cases being thrown out because of
unsubstantiated evidence, and now there's a report showing that African
Americans are more prone to be stopped by the police
(07:03):
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
(07:23):
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.
(07:45):
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 Caleem reflected that
there is still a long way to go in police
(08:07):
reform in Houston.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
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
(08:33):
with racial profiling, and that is that African Americans are
stopped more frequently for simple things like registration out, and
then they're served more often than their counterparts of other ethnicities,
and then use of force is also much more slanted
(08:55):
towards African Americans. So we see that in the year
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 forty
(09:20):
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 are
(09:43):
bearing the brunt of those stops and which sometimes even
lead to death.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
An accountability though the City of Houston gave the Houston
Police Department arrayed so to speak with that on any accountability.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
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
a week we could speak. We had a press conference,
but then when we were going to speak, he left immediately,
(10:25):
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 and 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
(10:48):
three individuals going to speak on that, and he left
the room and did not even listen to the complaints
of the citizenry.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Does that say a lot for where we're at now
as far as the community, because you know, we go
back for 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
(11:20):
city's 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 (11:30):
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
(11:52):
you mentioned, the anniversary of George Floyd is upon us.
And for those viewers out there, many don't know he
is buried Inland so uh 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
(12:13):
art gallery. So we since George Floyd. While there was
much promise in George Floyd, we have now backpeddled and
we are He's brought perhaps no better off, maybe even
worse with the current administration than we were before George Floyd.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
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 them a better, better
(12:55):
police officers to the community. So we've we've backed up,
we backed up from that to a law and order
type of police in which we found in the past
it doesn't work.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
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 DOJ, that is the government lawyers
who go after police agencies and also litigate other civil
rights violations. Those individuals are pretty much all fired and
(13:31):
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 is called
consent decrees, and that is where police agencies have agreed
(13:59):
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 and other
civil rights violations.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
So basically, we don't really have a civil rights department
in the federal government.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
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 (14:33):
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 Breonna Taylor
that became a catalyst for national racial injustice protests. In
(14:57):
the summer of twenty twenty, So 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. The corrupt and criminal Republican Trump administration in
order to distract the American people away from the lawlessness
(15:21):
of Donald Trump and him taking bribes from anyone and
everyone he can and to pay for the billionaire tax
cuts that the Republicans are proposing. There are massive Medicaid
cuts before the US Senate that will strip healthcare and
independence from thousands of disabled Texans. One accomplished, longtime advocate
(15:46):
is telling her Medicaid story to Texas senators and urging
others to join her. John Muller reports.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Nancy Kroter of Boston is one of seventy million covered
by Medicaid, but Kroter is also someone who has told
your 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,
(16:13):
Croder is again using her voice to tell senators what
Medicaid does for her and urging others to join her.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
I've worked hard.
Speaker 6 (16:23):
I'm to the point where I own my own house,
I have services, and to lose that would be to
lose my livelihood and to be desperately placed in an
assisted living or something.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Croda 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 (16:59):
Involved 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 of that tool, that's
part of your independence that you're losing. And I don't
(17:23):
think it's felt as if that's a big deal by
anybody in the upper echelon that thinks, well, you know,
you're okay, you're in a wheelchair, that Connecticut does a
lot more different things than just a wheelchair, and our
lawmakers don't even understand that. The sad part of this
(17:48):
is that we already have a wounded community because a
lot of medical facility adopters 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.
(18:17):
And for me personally, it would mean, you know, get
the station, of course, but the lowest thing on the
totem po would have to be an institution to go into,
and that would just be the death.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Nail Kroter 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
(18:58):
her own voice. He's been awarded for her work ever since,
and it 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
(19:19):
disabled and seniors in twenty twenty three. Last week, members
of Crowder'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 demanding they not touch Medicaid. This week, Crowder encouraged
(19:40):
listeners to call their Texas senators to tell their own
stories and their families and friends stories on how important
medicaid is to them.
Speaker 6 (19:48):
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
(20:10):
I look at him like, and what have you done?
Speaker 5 (20:12):
Done it?
Speaker 6 (20:15):
Not to be mean, but I've got to put it
back in their hands.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
To reach Texas Senators' offices, call the US Capitol Switchboard
at two zero two two two four three one two
one for the People's News. This is John Muller reporting.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
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 Capitol switchboard at two
o two two two four three one two one and
(20:59):
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 6 (21:16):
We love the People's News.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Measles is a highly contagious virus that causes fever, rash, cough,
and other complications. It was officially eradicated in the United
States in two thousand, but 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
(21:40):
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 and laboratory executive with a
decade of experience in molecular diagnostics. Most recently, he spearheaded
(22:01):
health track rx's response to the re emergence of measles
and the growing concern around avian influence bird flow. His
team has launched molecular testing protocols to ensure health providers
the ability to quickly identify outbreaks of many infectious diseases.
We spoke to him about the spread and where it started.
Speaker 6 (22:22):
Well.
Speaker 7 (22:23):
It was eradicated back in the year two thousand and
while we still had cases that popped up in the
US from mainly global travel people who had traveled to
countries where vaccines were not as readily 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 our vaccination rates
(22:46):
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 communities 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, like you usually can't get your
(23:08):
first dose to the vaccine until you're between twelve and
eighteen months years twelve and eighteen months old. But that
group is really at risk because they can't get the
vaccination until that time.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And so it's been springing. I know we have three
cases here in Houston, a lot of cases in West Texas.
Why do people hesitant about getting vaccinated right now? Because
it's been it's been proven that the vaccine works.
Speaker 7 (23:36):
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 there was a little
support back in those days. In fact, the paper was
published in a pretty reputable journal. It's since been pulled
(23:56):
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, the during the COVID pandemic when we had
forced vaccinations. I mean, as a country, we generally don't
(24:17):
like being 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
(24:38):
causing things like you know, autism or things like that.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah, of her, now I helped, you know, you know,
public officials say, well, it may cause autism or or
it may cause other illness. How we have we have
public officials saying this that kind of puts.
Speaker 7 (24:59):
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
(25:22):
effects from that could be a low grade fever, could
be diarrhea, 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,
(25:45):
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,
but go to a trusted you know, your trusted healthcare
provider and have those conversations bring up those concerns and
(26:07):
then hear from them with the data suggest about that vaccine.
In particular, you said.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
The naturalist movement as far as putting stuff in your body,
how popular is that.
Speaker 7 (26:19):
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
(26:43):
the United States, where I think the So I wouldn't
say the naturalist movement 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
(27:03):
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 spectrum disorder and now trying to
find a reason why that might have occurred.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
How scary is this the measles outbreak for general not
for the general population, but for yeah, for the you know,
for a city as large as Houston.
Speaker 7 (27:28):
And it's risky. I mean if it is one of
the most contagious US viruses known. Uh, 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.
(27:49):
Like I was talking about before, the 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 high grade fever of one hundred and five.
You've got to manage that fever or there are going
to be severe consequences for that child. After that, it
can develop into short term things like pneumonia, again not
(28:11):
as 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 in that younger population and that vulnerable population, it
is highly impactful. Also if there's a woman who is
(28:32):
pregnant and unvaccinated, it can 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,
and 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 five or six different restaurants, and the
(28:55):
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 they're showing symptoms, they
can spread this virusout even knowing they have it. So
that that's where the real danger comes into is those
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
right thing and stay home and try to get better.
(29:17):
There's a one to two week window when they get
the virus that they don't even know they have it.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
What do you know? What do you say to people
that that you know have gone You know 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 see it?
Seek the doctor or some people like to treat their
you know, I think it's a common cold.
Speaker 7 (29:44):
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 has these symptoms, they should go to a doctor
(30:06):
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
be vulnerable. 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 another one
(30:26):
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 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 than a normal virus.
(30:49):
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 2 (31:01):
Is that vaccination just a one time thing or do
you get it every year like a flu shot?
Speaker 7 (31:08):
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
(31:29):
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 (31:40):
That was doctor j Ready, 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 eassels from spreading. HHD urges anyone who
(32:03):
develops symptoms of measles to contact their healthcare 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
(32:24):
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. 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
(32:46):
unvarnished and unspun truth and challenge the status quo of
corporate propaganda and social media advertising disguised 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.
(33:07):
Here's another reading from Timothy Snyder's on Tyranny. Twenty lessons
from the Twentieth Century, which was published in twenty seventeen
and something I used as a guidebook to get me
through the first Donald Trump presidency. Today we're reading number
fifteen of the twenty lessons. Contribute to good causes. Be
(33:28):
active in organizations political or not that express your own
view of life. Pick a charity or two, and set
up auto pay. Then you will have made a free
choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.
It is gratifying to know that, whatever the course of events,
you are helping others to do good. Many of us
(33:50):
can afford to support some part of the vast network
of charities that one of our former presidents called a
thousand points of light. Those points of light are best
seen like stars at dusk against the darkening sky. When
Americans think of freedom, we usually imagine a contest between
the lone individual and a powerful government. We tend to
(34:12):
conclude that the individual should be empowered and the government
kept at bay. This is all well and good, but
one element of freedom is the choice of associates, and
one defense of freedom is the activity of groups to
sustain their members. This is why we should engage in
activities that are of interest to us, our friends, and
(34:32):
our families. These need not be expressly political. Laclav Hovel,
the Czech dissonent thinker, gave the example of brewing good beer.
Insofar as we take pride in these activities and come
to know others who do so as well, we are
creating civil society. Sharing as an undertaking teaches us that
(34:54):
we can trust people beyond a narrow circle of friends
and families, and helps us to recognize authorities from whom
we can learn. The capacity for trust and learning can
make life seem less chaotic and mysterious, and democratic politics
more plausible and attractive. The anti communist distance of Eastern Europe,
(35:16):
facing a situation more extreme than ours, recognize the seemingly
non political activity of civil society as an expression and
a safeguard of freedom. They were right. In the twentieth century,
all the major enemies of freedom were hostile to non
governmental organizations, charities and the like. Communists required all such
(35:38):
groups to be officially registered and transformed them into institutions
of control. Fascists created what they called corporatist systems, in
which every human activity had its proper place subordinated to
a party state. Today's authoritarians in India, Turkey, and Russia
are also highly allergic to the idea of free associations
(36:01):
and non governmental organizations. That was an excerpt of the
book on Tyranny Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by
Timothy Snyder. As the criminal and corrupt Trump administration continues
its policies of deporting immigrants and US citizens to foreign
(36:23):
gulags without due process, openly defying the orders of the judiciary,
including the Supreme Court convicted felon. Donald Trump is making
good on his campaign promise to bring in the right refugees,
which means the white refugees that he feels are being oppressed. White,
(36:48):
privileged and unoppressed South African Africaners have been arriving from
South Africa where they've been given a fast track to citizenship.
As refugees 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
(37:10):
of genocide or being oppressed in any way. This has
been debunked by many human 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
(37:33):
of Houston, a South African scholar specializing in African history
with a focus on racial formation, racial politics, and religious expression.
Speaker 8 (37:44):
Just recently this week, we had about forty nine South Africans,
white South Africans land at Delis Airport in Washington, DC.
They are classified as and identify as Africanas, which are
the descendants of, generally speaking, of people who settled in
(38:08):
South Africa. 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,
(38:32):
but 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 theeing Guni people. So
(38:55):
we're talking about people who might identify death ideologically and
politically as white, but also have this longer history that
links them to African populations. But this group of people
(39:16):
in particular have 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
(39:39):
the from the South African government, who had policies in
place that supported white South Africans irrespective of their education
or their professional standing. So under apartheid, white South Africa
(40:01):
were always there was 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 after the end of apartheid,
(40:24):
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 through line that we're talking
(40:45):
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 of land by white South
(41:09):
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 over seventy percent of
(41:29):
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
(41:50):
is beyond just black South Africans, 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,
(42:13):
whether through companies or 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,
(42:36):
South Africa has been known for this draconian segregationist policies
in the form of apartheid, 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
(42:58):
that the South African popular 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 2 (43:15):
When you say, when you say that the white africanus
is a history of of white Africanas has been point
blank racists for the most part against blacks and other
minority groups.
Speaker 8 (43:29):
In 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 apartheid system is was a was a set of
(43:51):
policies and a way of life and around the kind
of racial hierarchy, with white benefiting the motion 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 or
(44:17):
cheap labor and it was state sponsored and to position.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
White South Africans.
Speaker 8 (44:28):
To really benefit economically from the resources on on South
African land, and so it was a very it was
very draconian because the measures that they took to ensure
that this happened ranged, you know, vastly. Like so I
(44:50):
mentioned the sort of on a on a micro level,
how African has benefited from being, you know, being being
classified as white despite their multinational heritage, but also because
the Africanis themselves were the ones that pushed for this
(45:11):
particular ideology to be institutionalized and politicized, so that when
there were multiple strands of British descendants that made their
home South Africa as part of a white settler community,
but the Afrikaanis formed the National Party. The National Party
(45:32):
was the party that took over in nineteen forty eight
and created the idea of apartheid. Apartheid was only able
to be instituted into that country not only through politics
and the policies overall, but also through you know, a
(45:52):
series of ideologies that even had a theological impulse, So
where you have a kind of tree that is organized
by race, but where people are open to and accepting
of the idea that blacks were meant to work on
(46:14):
behalf of white by turning to a kind of calvinistic
theology that supported these ideas. Well, it's a distorted calvinistic
theology that supported these ideas, and so you have a
very you had a very segregated society, and it was
(46:36):
also very brutal in the sense that as people pushed
back against some of these some of the policies that
were the infrastructure for South Africa apartheid, whether that was
the group areas at where black people had to live
in one section of town, people who are classified as
(46:57):
multiracial who are called colored had to live in another
section of town, Indians in another section of town, so
on and so forth along the same kind of racial lines,
and that black people cannot be in any white areas
after nine pm without the permission of white people, or
(47:20):
if they were or unless they were working and living
in a white home as part of domestic health. Those
are only I'm scratching at the surface of how apartheid
functions functions. Historically, Americans, especially late eighties onward, we have
(47:41):
a history and a connection to South Africa. Of course
that spans one well beyond the nineteen eighties, but for
many of us, we would remember the nineteen eighties as
a moment where we saw on American college campuses students
pushing for divest from a parteide and divestment from companies
(48:05):
that supported apartheid, as well as a pushback and an
attempt to isolate South Africa and its various sort of configurations,
and that was led in large parts by HBCUs. Although
there is this kind of way in which historians turned
(48:28):
very quickly to pwis and white liberals who push for divestment,
but you have this long standing history of historically black
colleges and universities who were aware of what was happening
in South Africa, who were organizing against the partheid. And
(48:49):
then these politics found their way beyond these campuses. And
I think campuses are only one site of opposition that
African Americans in large parts created against the partheid. You
have a whole host of civil rights leaders who are
(49:09):
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. This
sort of reminiscent form of what was happening here in
the US under not just under this during the civil
(49:30):
rights movement. But we can look at Jim crow Era.
There's this kind of strange historical kind of similarities that
Black South Africans and African Americans have shared for decades.
You could even see actually HBCU students who traveled to
(49:52):
South Africa in the late nineteen and the late eighteen
hundreds as a form of kind of of cultural artistic exchange.
But I mentioned all this because there's this long history
of a clear opposition to apartheid and by default a
(50:13):
clear opposition to this notion of Africana nationalism, which was
embedded in our understanding of who we were opposing when
we're talking about the anti apartheid regime. We weren't necessarily
directly opposing Africanas, but we were directly opposing Africana nationalism.
(50:35):
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
part of Afro Forum. They want to maintain the history
of the kind of Africana ideology. They feel very much
(50:58):
under under a cut by the changes that try to
create economic equality for black South Africans. So the idea
of this white 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
(51:20):
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 last several decades was considered eligible for that. Indeed,
(51:40):
South Africa has a history of violent 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.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Now.
Speaker 8 (51:58):
White South Africans, especially Africanas 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
(52:21):
that they are documenting as evidence of genocide are in
they're not. There is actually no statistical evidence to that effect.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
That was the Chepeucherry, a South African scholar specializing in
African history with a focus on racial formation, racial politics,
and religious expression. Texas farmers and ranchers benefit from federal
conservation funds that are targeted to be cut by the
criminal and corrupt Trump administration. As we hear more from
(52:55):
Freeda Ross and Texas News Service.
Speaker 5 (52:58):
A recent National Wildlife Federation poll shows Texas farmers and
renters benefit from voluntary conservation programs from the US Department
of Agriculture, and many would like to see the programs expand.
Respondents say the funding helps improve their bottom line and
protect soil and water. The Federations of EVA Glaciers says
(53:20):
Texas producers use the programs in various ways.
Speaker 9 (53:24):
Prescribed greasing and brush management and range planting were very
popular practices. There's been the Working Lands for Wildlife program
that has helped with the monarch butterfly declines through voluntary
measures that farmers ranchers are doing with the help of
this funding.
Speaker 5 (53:42):
She says. Only five percent of the more than five
hundred farmers and renters polled disagree with increasing long term
funding from the USDA. Almost seventy percent of producers say
designating funds specifically to help farmers adopt climate smart agricultural
practice this is a good use of federal money. Gleiser
(54:03):
says the Wildlife Federation has also created a mapping tool
that shows how much federal funding each state has received
and outlines how farmers and ranchers are using it.
Speaker 9 (54:14):
That could be a range of different practices, practices like
cover crops or freething management. Or it could be a
conservation easement. It could be putting in a buffer strip.
Speaker 5 (54:25):
More than eight in ten producer support passage of the
Farm Bill. The legislation is supposed to be renewed every
five years, but the last version was passed in twenty eighteen.
I'm frieda Ross Texas news service. Find our trust indicators
at Publicnewsservice dot org.
Speaker 1 (54:46):
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 5 (54:58):
We love that people.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
There is a school of thought out there that says
to defeat corruption, criminality, and cruelty, we also need to
become corrupt, criminal, and cruel To my very core, I
do not believe that to be the case, so I
(55:20):
look for inspiration from others. Let's take a listen to
what Martin Luther King said about fighting a illegal and
corrupt and criminal enemy. One of the things I constantly
returned to during dark times in my personal and public
life is a collection of sermons written by Martin Luther
(55:42):
King Junior, called Strength to Love, and specifically a sermon
on loving your enemies. I'm reading an excerpt from that sermon.
To our most bitter opponents, we say, we shall match
your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering.
(56:03):
We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do
to us what you will, and we shall continue to
love you. We cannot, in all good conscious obey your
unjust laws, because non cooperation with evil is as much
a moral obligation as cooperation with good. Throw us in jail,
(56:24):
and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators
of violence into our community at the midnight hour and
beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall
still love you. But be ye assured that we will
wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day
we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We
(56:47):
shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we
shall win you in the process, and our victory will
be a double victory. Love is the most durable power
in the world. The People's News is a production of
Steve Gallington and Richard Hannah, and is protected by copyright laws.
(57:08):
All the information broadcast on air and online, as well
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,
(57:32):
or posting on the Internet without the expressed written permission
of The People's News. 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
(57:53):
at gallington dot com. Thank you.
It's the week of June the first, twenty twenty five,
and this is what's on the People's News. Inspirational words
from Timothy Snyder and Martin Luther King Junior. May twenty
fifth is the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death. Stripping
medicaid from the disabled to benefit billionaires and the convicted felon.
(00:28):
Donald Trump, under the leadership of RFK Junior, measles is back,
criminal and corrupt administration starts allowing unoppressed, privileged white Afrikaaners
to come to the US as refugees. All that and
more on the People's News. I'm Steve Gallington. This is
(00:50):
the People's News, and the People's News starts now. We
start off the stition of the People's News with a
reading from Timothy Snyder's on Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the
Twentieth Century, which was published in twenty seventeen and something
(01:12):
I used as a guidebook to get me through the
first Donald Trump presidency. We're reading number fourteen of the
twenty lessons, which is entitled establish a private Life. Nastier
rulers will use what they know about you to push
you around, scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis.
Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of
(01:37):
the Internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges
in person for the same reason. Resolve any legal trouble.
Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try
not to have hooks. What the great political thinker Hannah
Arendt meant by totalitarianism was not an all powerful state,
(02:00):
but the erasure of the difference between private and public life.
We are free only in so far as we exercise
control over what people know about us, and in what
circumstances they come to know it. During the campaign of
twenty sixteen, we took a step toward totalitarianism without even
noticing it, by accepting as normal the violation of electronic privacy,
(02:24):
whether it is done by American or Russian intelligence agencies,
or for that matter, by any institution. The theft, discussion,
or publication of personal communications destroys a basic foundation of
our rights. If we have no control over who reads
what and when, we have no ability to act in
the present or plan for the future. Whoever can pierce
(02:47):
your privacy can humiliate you and disrupt your relationships at will.
No one except perhaps a tyrant has a private life
that can survive public exposure by hostile directive. The timed
email bombs of the twenty sixteen presidential campaign were also
a powerful form of disinformation. Words written in one situation
(03:09):
makes sense only in that context. The very act of
removing them from their historical moment and dropping them in
another is an act of falsification. What is worse, when
media followed the email bombs as if they were news,
they betrayed their own mission. Few journalists made an effort
to explain why people said or wrote the things they
(03:31):
did at the time. Meanwhile, in transmitting privacy violations as news,
the media allowed themselves to be distracted from the actual
events of the day. Rather than reporting the violation of
basic rights, our media generally preferred to mindlessly indulge in
the inherently salacious interest we have in other people's affairs.
(03:53):
Our appetite for the secret thought arrant is dangerously political.
Totalitarianism moves the difference between private and public not just
to make individuals unfree, but also to draw the whole
society away from normal politics and toward conspiracy theories. Rather
than defending facts or generating interpretations, we are seduced by
(04:16):
the notion of hidden realities and dark conspiracies that explain everything.
As we learn from these email bombs, this mechanism works
even when it is revealed it is of no interest.
The revelation of what was once confidential becomes the story itself.
It is striking that the news media are much worse
(04:37):
at this than, say, fashion or sports reporters. Fashion reporters
know that models are taking off their clothes in the
changing rooms, and sports reporters know that their athletes shower
in the locker room, but neither allow private matters to
supplant the public story that they are supposed to be covering.
When we take an active interest in the matters of
(04:57):
doubtful relevance at moments that are chose and by tyrants
and spooks, we participate in the demolition of our own
political order. To be sure, we might feel that we
are doing nothing more than going along with everyone else.
This is true, and it is what aren't described as
the devolution of society into a mob. We can try
(05:19):
to solve this problem individually by securing our own computers.
We can also try to solve it collectively by supporting,
for example, organizations that are concerned with human rights. That
was an excerpt of the book on Tyranny, Twenty Lessons
from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. It's fun drive
(05:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Eight We allowed the People's News.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
May twenty fifth, 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 honour, accompanied by gospel music and speeches by religious leaders.
(06:20):
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.
Not included in that was accountability for the officers that
(06:43):
served the community. In the past, we have seen the
botched Harding Street ray that ended in the death of
two innocent people, problems at the HPD crime lab that
ended with thousands of cases being thrown out because of
unsubstantiated evidence, and now there's a report showing that African
Americans are more prone to be stopped by the police
(07:03):
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
(07:23):
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.
(07:45):
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 Caleem reflected that
there is still a long way to go in police
(08:07):
reform in Houston.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
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
(08:33):
with racial profiling, and that is that African Americans are
stopped more frequently for simple things like registration out, and
then they're served more often than their counterparts of other ethnicities,
and then use of force is also much more slanted
(08:55):
towards African Americans. So we see that in the year
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 forty
(09:20):
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 are
(09:43):
bearing the brunt of those stops and which sometimes even
lead to death.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
An accountability though the City of Houston gave the Houston
Police Department arrayed so to speak with that on any accountability.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
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
a week we could speak. We had a press conference,
but then when we were going to speak, he left immediately,
(10:25):
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 and 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
(10:48):
three individuals going to speak on that, and he left
the room and did not even listen to the complaints
of the citizenry.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Does that say a lot for where we're at now
as far as the community, because you know, we go
back for 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
(11:20):
city's 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 (11:30):
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
(11:52):
you mentioned, the anniversary of George Floyd is upon us.
And for those viewers out there, many don't know he
is buried Inland so uh 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
(12:13):
art gallery. So we since George Floyd. While there was
much promise in George Floyd, we have now backpeddled and
we are He's brought perhaps no better off, maybe even
worse with the current administration than we were before George Floyd.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
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 them a better, better
(12:55):
police officers to the community. So we've we've backed up,
we backed up from that to a law and order
type of police in which we found in the past
it doesn't work.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
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 DOJ, that is the government lawyers
who go after police agencies and also litigate other civil
rights violations. Those individuals are pretty much all fired and
(13:31):
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 is called
consent decrees, and that is where police agencies have agreed
(13:59):
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 and other
civil rights violations.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
So basically, we don't really have a civil rights department
in the federal government.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
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 (14:33):
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 Breonna Taylor
that became a catalyst for national racial injustice protests. In
(14:57):
the summer of twenty twenty, So 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. The corrupt and criminal Republican Trump administration in
order to distract the American people away from the lawlessness
(15:21):
of Donald Trump and him taking bribes from anyone and
everyone he can and to pay for the billionaire tax
cuts that the Republicans are proposing. There are massive Medicaid
cuts before the US Senate that will strip healthcare and
independence from thousands of disabled Texans. One accomplished, longtime advocate
(15:46):
is telling her Medicaid story to Texas senators and urging
others to join her. John Muller reports.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Nancy Kroter of Boston is one of seventy million covered
by Medicaid, but Kroter is also someone who has told
your 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,
(16:13):
Croder is again using her voice to tell senators what
Medicaid does for her and urging others to join her.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
I've worked hard.
Speaker 6 (16:23):
I'm to the point where I own my own house,
I have services, and to lose that would be to
lose my livelihood and to be desperately placed in an
assisted living or something.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Croda 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 (16:59):
Involved 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 of that tool, that's
part of your independence that you're losing. And I don't
(17:23):
think it's felt as if that's a big deal by
anybody in the upper echelon that thinks, well, you know,
you're okay, you're in a wheelchair, that Connecticut does a
lot more different things than just a wheelchair, and our
lawmakers don't even understand that. The sad part of this
(17:48):
is that we already have a wounded community because a
lot of medical facility adopters 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.
(18:17):
And for me personally, it would mean, you know, get
the station, of course, but the lowest thing on the
totem po would have to be an institution to go into,
and that would just be the death.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Nail Kroter 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
(18:58):
her own voice. He's been awarded for her work ever since,
and it 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
(19:19):
disabled and seniors in twenty twenty three. Last week, members
of Crowder'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 demanding they not touch Medicaid. This week, Crowder encouraged
(19:40):
listeners to call their Texas senators to tell their own
stories and their families and friends stories on how important
medicaid is to them.
Speaker 6 (19:48):
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
(20:10):
I look at him like, and what have you done?
Speaker 5 (20:12):
Done it?
Speaker 6 (20:15):
Not to be mean, but I've got to put it
back in their hands.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
To reach Texas Senators' offices, call the US Capitol Switchboard
at two zero two two two four three one two
one for the People's News. This is John Muller reporting.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
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 Capitol switchboard at two
o two two two four three one two one and
(20:59):
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 6 (21:16):
We love the People's News.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Measles is a highly contagious virus that causes fever, rash, cough,
and other complications. It was officially eradicated in the United
States in two thousand, but 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
(21:40):
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 and laboratory executive with a
decade of experience in molecular diagnostics. Most recently, he spearheaded
(22:01):
health track rx's response to the re emergence of measles
and the growing concern around avian influence bird flow. His
team has launched molecular testing protocols to ensure health providers
the ability to quickly identify outbreaks of many infectious diseases.
We spoke to him about the spread and where it started.
Speaker 6 (22:22):
Well.
Speaker 7 (22:23):
It was eradicated back in the year two thousand and
while we still had cases that popped up in the
US from mainly global travel people who had traveled to
countries where vaccines were not as readily 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 our vaccination rates
(22:46):
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 communities 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, like you usually can't get your
(23:08):
first dose to the vaccine until you're between twelve and
eighteen months years twelve and eighteen months old. But that
group is really at risk because they can't get the
vaccination until that time.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
And so it's been springing. I know we have three
cases here in Houston, a lot of cases in West Texas.
Why do people hesitant about getting vaccinated right now? Because
it's been it's been proven that the vaccine works.
Speaker 7 (23:36):
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 there was a little
support back in those days. In fact, the paper was
published in a pretty reputable journal. It's since been pulled
(23:56):
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, the during the COVID pandemic when we had
forced vaccinations. I mean, as a country, we generally don't
(24:17):
like being 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
(24:38):
causing things like you know, autism or things like that.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah, of her, now I helped, you know, you know,
public officials say, well, it may cause autism or or
it may cause other illness. How we have we have
public officials saying this that kind of puts.
Speaker 7 (24:59):
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
(25:22):
effects from that could be a low grade fever, could
be diarrhea, 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,
(25:45):
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,
but go to a trusted you know, your trusted healthcare
provider and have those conversations bring up those concerns and
(26:07):
then hear from them with the data suggest about that vaccine.
In particular, you said.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
The naturalist movement as far as putting stuff in your body,
how popular is that.
Speaker 7 (26:19):
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
(26:43):
the United States, where I think the So I wouldn't
say the naturalist movement 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
(27:03):
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 spectrum disorder and now trying to
find a reason why that might have occurred.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
How scary is this the measles outbreak for general not
for the general population, but for yeah, for the you know,
for a city as large as Houston.
Speaker 7 (27:28):
And it's risky. I mean if it is one of
the most contagious US viruses known. Uh, 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.
(27:49):
Like I was talking about before, the 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 high grade fever of one hundred and five.
You've got to manage that fever or there are going
to be severe consequences for that child. After that, it
can develop into short term things like pneumonia, again not
(28:11):
as 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 in that younger population and that vulnerable population, it
is highly impactful. Also if there's a woman who is
(28:32):
pregnant and unvaccinated, it can 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,
and 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 five or six different restaurants, and the
(28:55):
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 they're showing symptoms, they
can spread this virusout even knowing they have it. So
that that's where the real danger comes into is those
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
right thing and stay home and try to get better.
(29:17):
There's a one to two week window when they get
the virus that they don't even know they have it.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
What do you know? What do you say to people
that that you know have gone You know 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 see it?
Seek the doctor or some people like to treat their
you know, I think it's a common cold.
Speaker 7 (29:44):
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 has these symptoms, they should go to a doctor
(30:06):
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
be vulnerable. 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 another one
(30:26):
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 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 than a normal virus.
(30:49):
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 2 (31:01):
Is that vaccination just a one time thing or do
you get it every year like a flu shot?
Speaker 7 (31:08):
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
(31:29):
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 (31:40):
That was doctor j Ready, 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 eassels from spreading. HHD urges anyone who
(32:03):
develops symptoms of measles to contact their healthcare 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
(32:24):
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. 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
(32:46):
unvarnished and unspun truth and challenge the status quo of
corporate propaganda and social media advertising disguised 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.
(33:07):
Here's another reading from Timothy Snyder's on Tyranny. Twenty lessons
from the Twentieth Century, which was published in twenty seventeen
and something I used as a guidebook to get me
through the first Donald Trump presidency. Today we're reading number
fifteen of the twenty lessons. Contribute to good causes. Be
(33:28):
active in organizations political or not that express your own
view of life. Pick a charity or two, and set
up auto pay. Then you will have made a free
choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.
It is gratifying to know that, whatever the course of events,
you are helping others to do good. Many of us
(33:50):
can afford to support some part of the vast network
of charities that one of our former presidents called a
thousand points of light. Those points of light are best
seen like stars at dusk against the darkening sky. When
Americans think of freedom, we usually imagine a contest between
the lone individual and a powerful government. We tend to
(34:12):
conclude that the individual should be empowered and the government
kept at bay. This is all well and good, but
one element of freedom is the choice of associates, and
one defense of freedom is the activity of groups to
sustain their members. This is why we should engage in
activities that are of interest to us, our friends, and
(34:32):
our families. These need not be expressly political. Laclav Hovel,
the Czech dissonent thinker, gave the example of brewing good beer.
Insofar as we take pride in these activities and come
to know others who do so as well, we are
creating civil society. Sharing as an undertaking teaches us that
(34:54):
we can trust people beyond a narrow circle of friends
and families, and helps us to recognize authorities from whom
we can learn. The capacity for trust and learning can
make life seem less chaotic and mysterious, and democratic politics
more plausible and attractive. The anti communist distance of Eastern Europe,
(35:16):
facing a situation more extreme than ours, recognize the seemingly
non political activity of civil society as an expression and
a safeguard of freedom. They were right. In the twentieth century,
all the major enemies of freedom were hostile to non
governmental organizations, charities and the like. Communists required all such
(35:38):
groups to be officially registered and transformed them into institutions
of control. Fascists created what they called corporatist systems, in
which every human activity had its proper place subordinated to
a party state. Today's authoritarians in India, Turkey, and Russia
are also highly allergic to the idea of free associations
(36:01):
and non governmental organizations. That was an excerpt of the
book on Tyranny Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by
Timothy Snyder. As the criminal and corrupt Trump administration continues
its policies of deporting immigrants and US citizens to foreign
(36:23):
gulags without due process, openly defying the orders of the judiciary,
including the Supreme Court convicted felon. Donald Trump is making
good on his campaign promise to bring in the right refugees,
which means the white refugees that he feels are being oppressed. White,
(36:48):
privileged and unoppressed South African Africaners have been arriving from
South Africa where they've been given a fast track to citizenship.
As refugees 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
(37:10):
of genocide or being oppressed in any way. This has
been debunked by many human 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
(37:33):
of Houston, a South African scholar specializing in African history
with a focus on racial formation, racial politics, and religious expression.
Speaker 8 (37:44):
Just recently this week, we had about forty nine South Africans,
white South Africans land at Delis Airport in Washington, DC.
They are classified as and identify as Africanas, which are
the descendants of, generally speaking, of people who settled in
(38:08):
South Africa. 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,
(38:32):
but 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 theeing Guni people. So
(38:55):
we're talking about people who might identify death ideologically and
politically as white, but also have this longer history that
links them to African populations. But this group of people
(39:16):
in particular have 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
(39:39):
the from the South African government, who had policies in
place that supported white South Africans irrespective of their education
or their professional standing. So under apartheid, white South Africa
(40:01):
were always there was 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 after the end of apartheid,
(40:24):
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 through line that we're talking
(40:45):
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 of land by white South
(41:09):
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 over seventy percent of
(41:29):
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
(41:50):
is beyond just black South Africans, 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,
(42:13):
whether through companies or 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,
(42:36):
South Africa has been known for this draconian segregationist policies
in the form of apartheid, 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
(42:58):
that the South African popular 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 2 (43:15):
When you say, when you say that the white africanus
is a history of of white Africanas has been point
blank racists for the most part against blacks and other
minority groups.
Speaker 8 (43:29):
In 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 apartheid system is was a was a set of
(43:51):
policies and a way of life and around the kind
of racial hierarchy, with white benefiting the motion 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 or
(44:17):
cheap labor and it was state sponsored and to position.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
White South Africans.
Speaker 8 (44:28):
To really benefit economically from the resources on on South
African land, and so it was a very it was
very draconian because the measures that they took to ensure
that this happened ranged, you know, vastly. Like so I
(44:50):
mentioned the sort of on a on a micro level,
how African has benefited from being, you know, being being
classified as white despite their multinational heritage, but also because
the Africanis themselves were the ones that pushed for this
(45:11):
particular ideology to be institutionalized and politicized, so that when
there were multiple strands of British descendants that made their
home South Africa as part of a white settler community,
but the Afrikaanis formed the National Party. The National Party
(45:32):
was the party that took over in nineteen forty eight
and created the idea of apartheid. Apartheid was only able
to be instituted into that country not only through politics
and the policies overall, but also through you know, a
(45:52):
series of ideologies that even had a theological impulse, So
where you have a kind of tree that is organized
by race, but where people are open to and accepting
of the idea that blacks were meant to work on
(46:14):
behalf of white by turning to a kind of calvinistic
theology that supported these ideas. Well, it's a distorted calvinistic
theology that supported these ideas, and so you have a
very you had a very segregated society, and it was
(46:36):
also very brutal in the sense that as people pushed
back against some of these some of the policies that
were the infrastructure for South Africa apartheid, whether that was
the group areas at where black people had to live
in one section of town, people who are classified as
(46:57):
multiracial who are called colored had to live in another
section of town, Indians in another section of town, so
on and so forth along the same kind of racial lines,
and that black people cannot be in any white areas
after nine pm without the permission of white people, or
(47:20):
if they were or unless they were working and living
in a white home as part of domestic health. Those
are only I'm scratching at the surface of how apartheid
functions functions. Historically, Americans, especially late eighties onward, we have
(47:41):
a history and a connection to South Africa. Of course
that spans one well beyond the nineteen eighties, but for
many of us, we would remember the nineteen eighties as
a moment where we saw on American college campuses students
pushing for divest from a parteide and divestment from companies
(48:05):
that supported apartheid, as well as a pushback and an
attempt to isolate South Africa and its various sort of configurations,
and that was led in large parts by HBCUs. Although
there is this kind of way in which historians turned
(48:28):
very quickly to pwis and white liberals who push for divestment,
but you have this long standing history of historically black
colleges and universities who were aware of what was happening
in South Africa, who were organizing against the partheid. And
(48:49):
then these politics found their way beyond these campuses. And
I think campuses are only one site of opposition that
African Americans in large parts created against the partheid. You
have a whole host of civil rights leaders who are
(49:09):
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. This
sort of reminiscent form of what was happening here in
the US under not just under this during the civil
(49:30):
rights movement. But we can look at Jim crow Era.
There's this kind of strange historical kind of similarities that
Black South Africans and African Americans have shared for decades.
You could even see actually HBCU students who traveled to
(49:52):
South Africa in the late nineteen and the late eighteen
hundreds as a form of kind of of cultural artistic exchange.
But I mentioned all this because there's this long history
of a clear opposition to apartheid and by default a
(50:13):
clear opposition to this notion of Africana nationalism, which was
embedded in our understanding of who we were opposing when
we're talking about the anti apartheid regime. We weren't necessarily
directly opposing Africanas, but we were directly opposing Africana nationalism.
(50:35):
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
part of Afro Forum. They want to maintain the history
of the kind of Africana ideology. They feel very much
(50:58):
under under a cut by the changes that try to
create economic equality for black South Africans. So the idea
of this white 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
(51:20):
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 last several decades was considered eligible for that. Indeed,
(51:40):
South Africa has a history of violent 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.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Now.
Speaker 8 (51:58):
White South Africans, especially Africanas 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
(52:21):
that they are documenting as evidence of genocide are in
they're not. There is actually no statistical evidence to that effect.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
That was the Chepeucherry, a South African scholar specializing in
African history with a focus on racial formation, racial politics,
and religious expression. Texas farmers and ranchers benefit from federal
conservation funds that are targeted to be cut by the
criminal and corrupt Trump administration. As we hear more from
(52:55):
Freeda Ross and Texas News Service.
Speaker 5 (52:58):
A recent National Wildlife Federation poll shows Texas farmers and
renters benefit from voluntary conservation programs from the US Department
of Agriculture, and many would like to see the programs expand.
Respondents say the funding helps improve their bottom line and
protect soil and water. The Federations of EVA Glaciers says
(53:20):
Texas producers use the programs in various ways.
Speaker 9 (53:24):
Prescribed greasing and brush management and range planting were very
popular practices. There's been the Working Lands for Wildlife program
that has helped with the monarch butterfly declines through voluntary
measures that farmers ranchers are doing with the help of
this funding.
Speaker 5 (53:42):
She says. Only five percent of the more than five
hundred farmers and renters polled disagree with increasing long term
funding from the USDA. Almost seventy percent of producers say
designating funds specifically to help farmers adopt climate smart agricultural
practice this is a good use of federal money. Gleiser
(54:03):
says the Wildlife Federation has also created a mapping tool
that shows how much federal funding each state has received
and outlines how farmers and ranchers are using it.
Speaker 9 (54:14):
That could be a range of different practices, practices like
cover crops or freething management. Or it could be a
conservation easement. It could be putting in a buffer strip.
Speaker 5 (54:25):
More than eight in ten producer support passage of the
Farm Bill. The legislation is supposed to be renewed every
five years, but the last version was passed in twenty eighteen.
I'm frieda Ross Texas news service. Find our trust indicators
at Publicnewsservice dot org.
Speaker 1 (54:46):
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 5 (54:58):
We love that people.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
There is a school of thought out there that says
to defeat corruption, criminality, and cruelty, we also need to
become corrupt, criminal, and cruel To my very core, I
do not believe that to be the case, so I
(55:20):
look for inspiration from others. Let's take a listen to
what Martin Luther King said about fighting a illegal and
corrupt and criminal enemy. One of the things I constantly
returned to during dark times in my personal and public
life is a collection of sermons written by Martin Luther
(55:42):
King Junior, called Strength to Love, and specifically a sermon
on loving your enemies. I'm reading an excerpt from that sermon.
To our most bitter opponents, we say, we shall match
your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering.
(56:03):
We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do
to us what you will, and we shall continue to
love you. We cannot, in all good conscious obey your
unjust laws, because non cooperation with evil is as much
a moral obligation as cooperation with good. Throw us in jail,
(56:24):
and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators
of violence into our community at the midnight hour and
beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall
still love you. But be ye assured that we will
wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day
we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We
(56:47):
shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we
shall win you in the process, and our victory will
be a double victory. Love is the most durable power
in the world. The People's News is a production of
Steve Gallington and Richard Hannah, and is protected by copyright laws.
(57:08):
All the information broadcast on air and online, as well
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,
(57:32):
or posting on the Internet without the expressed written permission
of The People's News. 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
(57:53):
at gallington dot com. Thank you.
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