National Radio Project

Is your children’s schoolyard routinely sprayed with pesticides? How safe your children are might depend on where you live. Today we hear about how and why one pesticide has been banned for household use, but affects the health of farmworkers and their children. Children’s health is especially fragile–so why aren’t we protecting them?

Nomi Prins, journalist and a former managing director of Goldman Sachs, discusses her book All the Presidents’ Bankers, the hidden alliances that drive American power. Prins retraces the relationship between American financiers and presidents stretching more than a century. From family friends, trusted confidants to the present day; how the relationship has deteriorated and presidents have lost control of the economy.

Special thanks to Pirate TV for the original recording from June 17, 2014.

Featuring:   

Nomi Prins , journalist and author of All the Presidents’ Bankers, the hidden alliances that drive American power.

The Zapatistas are a group in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico working to bring democracy to their country and their local communities. 20 years after their founding, the group’s influences has spread far beyond Mexico’s border through music and art. On this edition of Making Contact producer Alejandro Rosas explores how Zapatismo has influenced those in the U.S. –including himself.

Special thanks to Claire Schoen and the University of California Berkeley, School of Journalism.

Featuring:

• Hector Flores, Las Cafeteras member
• Margaret Chowning, University of California at Berkeley professor of Mexican history
• Emory Douglas, former Black Panther Party Minister of Culture

The official Day to Commemorate Agent Orange victims is August 10^th and marks the start of the US military’s decade of massive chemical warfare in Vietnam in 1961.

Combat, chemicals, and corporations.  We’ll look at the legacy of Agent Orange,  a toxic defoliant.

Featuring:
Ngo Thanh Nhan, co-coordinator Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign; Fred Wilcox scholar and author: Waiting for An Army To Die and Scorched Earth; Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange featured in the KQED segments