Earthwise 5/20/23: The Green Man

Producer/Host: Anu Dudley

About the host:

Rev. Dr. Anu Dudley is an ordained Pagan minister and a retired history professor. She continues to teach classes, including the three-year ordination curriculum at the Temple of the Feminine Divine, and others such as History of the Goddess, Paganism 101, Ethical Magic, and Introduction to the Runes. Currently she is writing a book about how to cast the runes using their original Goddess meanings. She lives in the woods off-grid in a small homesteading community in Central Maine.

The Cosmic Curator 5/20/23: Welcome the Energy of the Divine Feminine

Good Morning People! This is your Cosmic Curator – Tom Yaroschuk – with a look at the stars for today, Saturday May 20th and the days ahead.
Well folks, yesterday at noon, the Sun and Moon came together at 4 degrees in the Fixed Earth sign of Taurus. In other words, a new moon cycle began.

About the Host:
Tom Yaroschuk is a Vedic Astrologer. His intention is to help people understand their karma and the issues they may confront to cultivate more fulfilling lives. Tom is writing a memoir of the spiritual lessons derived from his work in a Homeless Day Center in between a career as an award winning television and documentary producer.

Democracy Forum 5/19/23: Young Change Makers: Owning the Future

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine

The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Michael Fisher, Starr Gilmartin, Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Rick Lyles, Judith Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor, and Linda Washburn.

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
We’ll talk about how young people are engaging politically nationwide and here in Maine. What motivates them? What challenges do they face? What can the larger community do to support their efforts? Why is it important to the future of democracy?

Guest/s:
Cole Cochrane, Co-founder, Maine Youth Action
Mahnoor Hussain, Program Director, CIRCLE
Anna Siegel, founding member of Maine Youth Climate Justice and co founder of Maine Youth Action

To learn more about this topic:
The teen brain: Mysteries and misconceptions | Knowable, April 2023
24 Ways to Grow Voters Before 2024 | CIRCLE, April 2023
The Youth Vote in 2022 | CIRCLE, April 2023
LWVME Youth Voting Age Study Info Session, April, 2023
How the Youth Vote Is Being Suppressed – Long Story Short | The Daily Show – YouTube, March, 2023
Making our ‘civic deserts’ more fertile – Island Institute, April, 2023
GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell decries ease of ‘campus voting’ in private RNC pitch – The Washington Post, April, 2023

About the host:
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.

Justice Radio 5/18/23: From Our Perspective: Voices of the Directly Impacted

Host/s: Marion Anderson
Production Coordinator: Daria Cullen
Other credits: TECHNICAL SUPPORT – Lucas Brown | MUSIC – Samuel James
Justice Radio is a WMPG production

Justice Radio: Tackling the hard questions about our criminal legal system in Maine.

This week: Host Marion Anderson and special guest Representative Cherie Cruz of Rhode Island, as they talk about resiliency growing up in families and communities impacted by the criminal legal system, incarceration, and police violence.

Guest/s:
Rep. Cherie Cruz of Rhode Island

About the hosts:
The Justice Radio team includes:

Leo Hylton is currently incarcerated at Maine State Prison, yet is a recent Master’s graduate, a columnist with The Bollard, a restorative and transformative justice advocate and activist, a prison abolitionist, and a Visiting Instructor at Colby College’s Anthropology Department, co-teaching AY346 – Carcerality and Abolition.

Catherine Besteman is an abolitionist educator at Colby College. Her research and practice engage the public humanities to explore abolitionist possibilities in Maine. In addition to coordinating Freedom & Captivity, she has researched and published on security, militarism, displacement, and community-based activism with a focus on Somalia, post-apartheid South Africa, and the U.S. She has published nine books, contributed to the International Panel on Exiting Violence, and received recent fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations.

MacKenzie Kelley is a formerly incarcerated woman in long term recovery. She is a teachers assistant for inside-out courses through MIT. MacKenzie works at the Maine Prisoner Reentry Center as a reentry specialist, peer support and recovery coach. She is the program director for Reentry Sisters, a program designed to assist women reentering the community from prison.

Zoe Brokos (she/her) is the executive director of the Church of Safe Injection, a comprehensive harm reduction program that operates in Southern and Central Maine. Zoe is a person who uses drugs, a mom, a wife, and has led harm reduction programs in Maine for 15 years. She is part of the Maine Drug Policy Coalition, sits on the board of Decriminalize Maine and joined Justice Radio to promote compassionate conversations and drug user-led advocacy efforts that focus on evidence-based, public health responses to the housing and overdose crises in Maine.

Marion Anderson: Before joining The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls in January of 2022, Marion worked as a harm reductionist, housing navigator, certified intentional peer support specialist, CCAR recovery coach, and a re-entry coach for a diverse range of non-profit organizations.

Charlotte Warren is a former State Representative. She served on the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee for eight years – six as the house chair. Warren previously served on the Judiciary Committee and as the house chair of Maine’s Mental Health Working Group and the house chair of the Commission to Examine Reestablishing Parole. Previous to her time in the legislature, Charlotte served as Mayor of the city of Hallowell.

Linda Small is the founder and executive director of Reentry Sisters, a reentry support organization specializing in a gender-responsive and trauma-informed approach for women, serving Maine and beyond. She is a Project Coordinator for the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition. Linda serves on the Maine Prison Education Partnership board at UMA and the New England Commission for the Future of Higher Education in Prison through The Educational Justice Institute at MIT.

Around Town 5/18/23: Downeast Community Partners’ “Top to Bottom” drive

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

Sharon Catus from Downeast Community Partners joins us this week to talk about their upcoming “Top to Bottom” drive on Friday the 26th.

More information is availlable at www.downeastcommunitypartners.org/events/event.php?Top-to-Bottom-Drive-At-a-Location-near-You-64 by emailing [email protected], or calling 207 610 5910.

About the host:
Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 5/18/23: Understanding AI 7

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

 

About the host:
Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon’s words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station’s sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage.

Relationship Rewind 5/16/23: Breaking Down Breaking Bad

Host: Alli Williamson (she, hers) Youth Educator and Advocate at NextStep Domestic Violence Project. NextStep 24/7 Helpline: 1(800) 315-5579
Music credit: Brandon Nelson (he, him) local musician donated theme music for the show.

Relationship Rewind: Rewinding relationships in popular media and breaking down behaviors based in power, control, and abuse.

This episode:

– Discussing unhealthy behaviors in relationships shown in Gilmore Girls.
– Discussing how media normalizes these behaviors.
– Discussing the impacts of these messages about relationships on young people.

Guest/s:
Olivia (she, her pronouns) a local college student and host of a podcast called Sisters and the Stars which focuses on film analysis.

About the host:
Alli Williamson (she, her) is the youth educator and advocate for NextStep Domestic Violence Project based in Hancock and Washington County, ME. She teaches young people from Kindergarten to College about what power and control looks like in friendships and relationships, what resources are available to support those experiencing this, and how we can work to make our schools and communities safer and more equal spaces where abuse may be less likely to happen.

Outside the Box 5/16/23: “Sacred Bodies”

Producer/Host: Larry Dansinger

About the host:
Larry Dansinger (no pronouns) of Bangor came to Maine in 1974 and has been here ever since. Some of Larry’s activities since then: Done community organizing on numerous issues through INVERT and then Resources for Organizing and Social Change (ROSC), committed civil disobedience several times, grown a garden yearly since 1977, joined various food cooperatives and two men’s groups, refused to pay federal income taxes for war, lived on a community land trust for 23 years, and met a wonderful partner whom Larry has loved for over 40 years. Larry has produced Outside the Box features on WERU since 2007 and continues to look for unique ways of seeing almost any problem or situation.