Mary Grant, Public Water for All campaign director at Food and Water Watch, joins us to discuss California water futures beginning to be traded this week. That means investors can now bet on future water availability in the state, and potentially make big bucks as reservoirs dry up. It’s being touted as a way to eliminate some uncertainty and to make prices predictable and transparent, but of course, all many of us can see is the prospect of hedge funds betting on droughts and making more money on suffering.
Delvone Michael, senior political strategist at the Working Families Party, joins us to take a look at state and local efforts to reform prosecutorial policies. On Monday, Marilyn Mosby, state's attorney for Baltimore, Maryland, announced the launch of "a sentencing review unit in Baltimore to address both mass incarceration and racial inequities in the justice system," the Washington Post reported. "Of the 2,500 people serving life sentences in Maryland, 79 percent are Black, Mosby said, though African Americans make up only 30 percent of the state population. In Baltimore, of the 815 prisoners sentenced to life, 94 percent are Black. Also, Monday, the newly elected district attorney of Los Angeles, George Gascón, announced at his swearing-in that he, too, is launching a sentencing review unit. Gascón said he conservatively estimates that 20,000 prisoners will immediately qualify for resentencing. He said he believes some were given drastically long sentences, others are older and unlikely to re-offend, and others should be released because of COVID-19 concerns." What are some other opportunities that can create change when we focus on the State Attorney and Attorney General races?
Kristine Hendrix, mother, activist and president of the University City Board of Education, joins us to discuss projected US President-elect Joe Biden nominating Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) to head the Department of Housing and Tom Vilsack to run the Department of Agriculture. We will also be talking about whether talk of defunding the police and Medicare for all helped or hurt Democrats in the 2020 elections.
Antone Barnes, founder and CEO of Brand Architects; and Karleigh Webb, journalist, videographer, anti-imperialist and labor and trans rights organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation in Connecticut, join us to discuss Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year winners for 2020, who are LeBron James, Breanna Stewart, Patrick Mahomes, Naomi Osaka and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif Steward. They have been deemed activists, but are they all playing huge, meaningful parts in the movement for Black lives, or should there have been others that made it to the top spots?
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