Justice Radio 4/13/23: Are Prisons the Answer? Do We Need Another Revolution?

Producers/Hosts: Leo Hylton and Catherine Besteman
Production Coordinator: Daria Cullen
Other credits: TECHNICAL SUPPORT – Emma Reynolds | MUSIC – Samuel James
Justice Radio is a WMPG production

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

This week: Hosts Leo Hylton and Catherine Besteman continue the discussion with special guests, musician, columnist, and podcaster, Samuel James, and ACLU Policy Counsel, Michael Kebede, about Race, Rights, and the Untold History of the intentional efforts made to establish Maine as a white state.

Guest/s:
Samuel James, Musician and Podcaster
Michael Kebede, ACLU Policy Counsel

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.

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Around Town 4/13/23: Legislative Public Hearings Today

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

This week:
Taking a look at what’s happening in Augusta today, after this morning’s session the legislature will return to committee work this afternoon.  Several public hearings will be taking place at 1 and 2 pm, and if any of these interest you, you can watch from home or even sign up to speak at the public hearing via zoom.  More about that at the end, here’s what they’re taking up today…

FMI: Maine State Legislature

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.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 4/13/23: Understanding AI 3

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Today in our series on Artificial Intelligence, we’ll look at Machine Learning and at the difference between Supervised and Unsupervised learning. Unsupervised learning is the method that computers use to beat the greatest chess masters in the world, or to suggest the next movie you may want to watch online, or to read your chest X-ray, and a lot more.

An online introduction to the Elements of AI that requires no tech background.
Understanding the difference between Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning, a bit more techie but not much more.

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.

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Common Ground Radio 3/13/23: Black Earth Wisdom

Producers/Hosts: Holli Cederholm and Clare Boland
Editor: Clare Boland

Common Ground Radio is an hour-long discussion of local food and organic agriculture with people here in the state of Maine and beyond.

This month:

In the April 2023 episode of MOFGA’s Common Ground Radio, host Holli Cederholm discusses “Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists” with Leah Penniman, farm director/co-executive director of Soul Fire Farm and author of “Farming While Black,” and Rue Mapp, founder of Outdoor Afro and author of “Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors.” “Black Earth Wisdom” is a newly released book of essays and interviews that explores Black people’s spiritual and scientific connection to the land, waters, and climate. 

Topics this episode include:
– “Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists” by Leah Penniman.
– “Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land” by Leah Penniman.
– “Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors” by Rue Mapp.
– Contributions of Black people to environmental thought and agroecological practices.
– The importance of representation to access and inclusion.
– Why centering BIPOC voices is critical to environmentalism.

Guest/s:
Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol farmer, mother, soil nerd, author, and food justice activist who co-founded Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York, in 2010, with the mission to end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral connection to land. Penniman is part of a team that facilitates powerful food sovereignty programs — including farmer training for Black and Brown people, a subsidized farm food distribution program for communities living under food apartheid, and domestic and international organizing toward equity in the food system. In addition to “Black Earth Wisdom,” she is the author of “Farming While Black.”

Rue Mapp documents her personal experiences while pioneering and shifting a new visual representation of Black people in the outdoors. An outdoorswoman, she transformed her kitchen table blog into a national nature-inspired enterprise and movement, called Outdoor Afro: where Black people and nature meet. Mapp is the founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro, and she is also the author of “Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors,” which was published in 2022. Her words about nature and Black joy can also be found in conversation with other Black environmentalists in the newly released “Black Earth Wisdom.”

FMI Links:
“Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists” by Leah Penniman
“Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land” by Leah Penniman
“Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors” by Rue Mapp
Outdoor Afro
Soul Fire Farm

About the hosts:
Holli Cederholm has been involved in organic agriculture since 2005 when she first apprenticed on a small farm. She has worked on organic farms in Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Scotland and Italy and, in 2010, founded a small farm focused on celebrating open-pollinated and heirloom vegetables. As the former manager of a national nonprofit dedicated to organic seed growers, she authored a peer-reviewed handbook on GMO avoidance strategies for seed growers. Holli has also been a steward at Forest Farm, the iconic homestead of “The Good Life” authors Helen and Scott Nearing; a host of “The Farm Report” on Heritage Radio Network; and a long-time contributor for The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener, which she now edits in her role as content creator and editor at MOFGA.

Caitlyn Barker has worked in education and organic agriculture on and off for the last 17 years. She has worked on an organic vegetable farm, served on the Maine Farm to School network, worked in early childhood education and taught elementary school. She currently serves as the community engagement coordinator for MOFGA.

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Talk of the Towns 4/12/23: Local Community Concerns and Opportunities

Producer/Hosts: Ron Beard and Liz Graves
Theme music for Talk of the Towns Theme music for Talk of the Towns is a medley from Coronach, on a Balnain House Highland Music recording.

Talk of the Towns: Local Community concerns and opportunities

This month:
Advocacy and Non-violent Direct Action: A conversation with George Lakey and Sue Inches.
How do we make change in the face of policies that seem wrong, either because they harm people or the earth? Some situations call for building relationships with policy makers and using the art of persuasion. But if persuasion doesn’t work, a backup plan might include non-violent direct action, confronting those in power and stirring the public as a result of media attention. Our conversation with two activists and authors help us understand these choices and how they fit into today’s landscape of change.

Topics include:
What is the connection between advocacy and non-violent direct action, with one or two examples and lessons learned along the way?
In your writing, you have both illuminated the need for vision that leads to strategy that leads to the hard slog of change… talk more about the importance of vision and strategy in any campaign for change.
You have also written about the importance of community, as a grounding force, as a source of support… say more about the ways in which you see “community building” as part of your work.
How do you understand our present moment and what has brought us here? Are there some key events or trends in our history that help us understand where we have come to?
Each of you have been energized by engagement with young people, in your classrooms and in your campaigns. Are there attributes of the rising generation that are particularly inspiring?

Guest/s:

George Lakey author of Dancing with History: A life for peace and justice, Seven Stories Press, 2022. See also: www.georgelakeyfilm.com
Sue Inches, author of Advocating for the Environment, North Atlantic Books, 2021. See also sueinches.com

About the hosts:

Ron Beard is producer and host of Talk of the Towns, which first aired on WERU in 1993 as part of his community building work as an Extension professor with University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Sea Grant. He took all the journalism courses he could fit in while an undergraduate student in wildlife management and served as an intern with Maine Public Television nightly newscast in the early 1970s. Ron is an adjunct faculty member at College of the Atlantic, teaching courses on community development. Ron served on the Bar Harbor Town Council for six years and is currently board chair for the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, where he has lived since 1975. Look for him on the Allagash River in June, and whenever he can get away, in the highlands of Scotland where he was fortunate to spend two sabbaticals.

Liz Graves joined Talk of the Towns as co-producer and co-host in July 2022, having long admired public affairs programming on WERU and dreamed of getting involved in community radio. She works as the Town Clerk for the Town of Bar Harbor, and is a former editor of the Mount Desert Islander weekly newspaper. Liz grew up in California and came to Maine as a schooner sailor.

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Outside the Box 4/11/23: “Fed Up”

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.

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BoatTalk 4/11/23: New Boats, Old Boats, and more…

Producers/Hosts: Jon Johansen and Alan Sprague
Engineers: John Greenman, Amy Browne

BoatTalk is the call-in show for people contemplating things naval

This month:
Fixing old boats, books to read, old boatbuilders and small boats, lithium batteries, and more.

Guest/s:
Art Paine – writer, historian, sailor, boat builder, and story teller

About the hosts:

Alan Sprague is a retired boat carpenter and a volunteer at WERU for over thirty years. He and the late Mike Joyce started Boattalk in 2003 and Alan carries on.

Jon Johansen is the editor and roving reporter for the Maine Coastal News. He is Chairman of the Board of the Penobscot Marine Museum, President of Maine Built Boats, President of Maine Lobster Boat Racing, and Director of the International Maritime Library in his spare time.

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