Listen to interview here: https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-june-24-2020/
0:08 – A video went viral Tuesday of Kentucky voters pounding on the door of a polling place, demanding to be allowed to vote, after the entire city of Louisville, 600,000 people, was allocated just a single voting location. If the primaries are a mess for voting rights, what will happen in November? Ari Berman is senior reporter for Mother Jones covering voting rights and the author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.
0:34 – What policies should states implement to formulate an antiracist Covid-19 policy response? We speak to Cortney Sanders, a policy analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, about the new report she co-authored on three principles of equitable policy in response to Covid-19. These interventions would include state-funded rental assistance, expanding paid leave policies for workers, reforming criminal and legal fines and fees, expanding Earned Income Tax Credits and reforming tax policy — which is not race neutral, Sanders notes.
1:08 – The LA County Sheriff’s Department shot and killed 18-year-old Andres Guardado last Thursday in Gardena, CA. The sheriff’s department doesn’t wear body cameras, and it has blocked results of the autopsy from being released to the public. The teenager’s family is demanding answers, and justice. Melina Abdullah (@DocMellyMel), chair of Pan-African Studies at Cal State-LA and co-founder of the LA chapter of Black Lives Matter, joins us.
1:18 – Scores of Oakland residents called into a city council meeting Tuesday night demanding that the city defund the police. Ultimately, five city council members, Lynette Gibson McElhaney, Larry Reid, Loren Taylor, Noel Gallo and Rebecca Kaplan, forced a vote on a budget amendment for the city that was hidden from the public and contained negligible cuts to the police, over the objections of councilmember Nikki Fortunato Bas and community members. Bas had proposed a substantial cut of $25 million from the Oakland Police Department, a 10 percent cut. The public expected the vote would take place one week later, on June 30th, and responded in outrage, vowing in public comment to unseat the five members of city council who rammed through the amendment vote. We air a report from Chris Lee (@chrislee_xyz) and speak with liz suk, political director of Oakland Rising.
1:34 – Across California, anti-racist movements are toppling statues of racist, anti-indigenous and anti-black figures in history, including Catholic saint Junipero Serra. We discuss the dangerous “fairy-tale myth” of California missions and Serra’s murderous history with Deborah Miranda. Miranda is an enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of the Greater Monterey Bay Area, and is also of Santa Ynez Chumash heritage. She’s the author of four poetry collections and the book Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir and a professor of English at Washington and Lee University.