We Decide: America at the Crossroads
From the latest actions of the Trump administration to the efforts of labor movements across the country to attain fair pay and respectable working conditions, the Pacifica Network's new national program We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flanagan looks for patterns across the major news events of the week and unpacks them with our nation's foremost progressive thinkers. Priority is given to upcoming elections in all 50 states as the country fights to keep from slipping further into the clutches of authoritarianism.
This week's show includes:
WHO ELECTED ELON MUSK?
Between flooding hundreds of millions into American politics to throttling Ukraine’s access to Starlink and Starshield, the world’s richest man appears to be a law unto himself.
A Block: Guests-Laura Jedeed, a writer at FirewalledMedia.com and an Army veteran of two tours in the War in Afghanistan / David Levinthal, Washington DC correspondent and senior Editor at NOTUS / Egberto Willes, host of KPFT's Politics Done Right
B Block: How much do voters know about who's attempting to buy elections?
Guests: We Decide producer Bob Hennelly / Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, professor of law at Stetson University, fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and the author of Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians
We Decide: America at the Crossroads HOUR 2:
C Block: When did the US decide billionaires are more important than families?
Guests: Lawrence S. Pugliese, host of Troubadours and Raconteurs on Radio Free Brooklyn / Kristin Crowell, executive director of Families Over Billionaires
D Block: Moral Monday-Bishop Barber on mobilizing the real swing vote-the tens of millions of low wage and low wealth voters PLUS how the Teamsters are demanding Amazon abide by basic labor rights.
Guests: Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School / We Decide producer and WBAI general manager Bob Hennelly have a Q & A in front of the Supreme Court.
Barber notes that Speaker Mike Johnshon got the House gavel due to an aggregate margin of victory that was just 7,000 votes while tens of millions of voters sat out the 2024 election.
LABOR ON THE MOVE: For years, Amazon has been able to extract profits from workers who hustle that last mile to complete a delivery while not actually employing them so the multinational can avoid having to provide the basic health and safety protections every worker should have.
Legislation pending in the New York City Council would end that exploitative business model. In our first hour we heard Council Tiffany Caban, Teamster International President Sean O’Brien, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani making the case on how to get that done.
Last week, hundreds of Amazon workers and their supporters from other unions packed the steps of City Hall to show their support for the Delivery Protection Act, introduced by Council Member Tiffany Caban. The last-mile industry, which is on track to deliver 1 billion packages this year, is rife with safety issues, workers’ rights violations, and environmental impacts that are all ignored under the present system.
“Amazon is America’s most corrupt white-collar crime syndicate, wasting millions to rob warehouse workers of the right to collectively bargain while designing a nationwide subcontracting scheme to deny employment rights to its entire fleet of delivery drivers,” said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien. “New York City is a vital artery of Amazon’s global logistics operations, and it must be the first city to pass the Delivery Protection Act. Amazon’s unchecked exploitation of drivers and parcel delivery workers has got to end.”
