In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Robert Penner, a Milwaukee activist and contributor to Liberation News, to talk about the decisions by the US Supreme Court and Wisconsin Supreme Court to force Wisconsin to go ahead with in-person voting in today's primary elections, why the state's top elected leaders seem more interested in rigging the elections in favor of their political party than in protecting the electorate from the ongoing pandemic, how decades of racist policy have left Milwaukee one of the most segregated cities in America, and why the city's racialized populations are forced to bear the brunt of the effects of both voter disenfranchisement and the coronavirus.
In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Dr. Ron Daniels, Distinguished Lecturer Emeritus at York College, City University of New York and host of Vantage Point on WBAI, to talk about the situation with COVID-19 in the United States and whether skepticism of health institutions is affecting efforts to combat the virus.
In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Maurice Carney, co-founder and Executive Director of Friends of the Congo, to talk about reports that many African nations are likely to be devastated by the virus and measures taken to combat it, the threat the outbreak poses to the Democratic Republic of Congo both epidemiologically and economically, and how the intentional underdevelopment of the African continent leaves its people more vulnerable to the ravages of the virus.
Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by social and civic innovation expert Kendrick Jackson to talk about the new measures banning certain utility shutoffs just passed by a virtual meeting of the Washington, DC City Council, why the onus of social distancing seems to fall disproportionately on working-class Black people, why - though many state-level officials have acted to postpone in-person voting - the Democratic Party is largely complicit in the push to go ahead with elections amid the pandemic, and whether Trump's stake in a hydroxychloroquine manufacturer may be motivating his ongoing attempts to hype the drug at his daily Coronavirus briefings.
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