Healthy Options 11/4/20: Current Scientific Thinking about Covid-19 & Health Strategies

Host/Producer: Rhonda Feiman
Co-producer: Petra Hall
Technical assistance: Joel Mann & Amy Browne

Current scientific thinking about Covid-19 and a review of basic strategies to keep us (ourselves, our families, and our communities) healthy during these challenging times.

-What is the proper way to wash your hands.
-What is the proper way to wear a mask?
-What should we look for before we return to a healthcare practitioner’s office? What questions should you ask about procedures and how the visit will be conducted?
-What are the ethical considerations In terms of how we as a society keep each other healthy?
-How do we reconcile ideas of our personal freedom, and our responsibilities as good citizens working towards the good of the community- and what does that mean in respect to ethical behavior?
-What is “herd immunity” and why is it so dangerous, & not a good idea, to “just let nature take it’s course”?
-What is the difference between COVID-19 and influenza?

Guest: Dr. Miriam Wahrman is a microbiologist, professor and researcher, and author of the book, “The Hand Book: Surviving in a Germ-Filled World”.

Previous programs with Dr. Miriam Wahrman can be found at these links:

Healthy Options with Dr. Miriam Wahrman 3/4/20

Healthy Options 3/4/20: Interview with Dr. Miryam Wahrman, author of “The Hand Book: Surviving in the Germ-Filled World”

Healthy Options with Dr. Miriam Wahrman 2/6/19
About the host:
Rhonda Feiman is a nationally-certified, licensed acupuncturist practicing in Belfast, Maine since 1993. She primarily practices Toyohari Japanese acupuncture, using gentle and powerful non-insertion needle techniques, and also utilizes Chinese acupuncture and herbology. In addition, Rhonda is a practitioner of Qi Gong and an instructor of Tai Chi Chuan in the Yang Family tradition.

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Maine Currents 11/3/20: Mark Potok on Hate Groups in the US

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

We’re continuing our series on hate groups this month, with a talk by Mark Potok sponsored by the Maine Jewish Film Festival, the Jewish Community Alliance, the Maine Jewish Museum and the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine. He spoke about hate groups in the US and the current political climate on October 7th, 2020.

An excerpt from Mark Potok’s bio: “Mark Potok is an internationally renowned expert on the American radical right who for 20 years helped lead the legendary Southern Poverty Law Center in exposing hate groups, right-wing terrorism, and the rapidly increasing infiltration of extremist ideas into the political mainstream. In that role, Potok faced numerous death threats from white supremacists and constant vilification by leaders of the far-right media — a remarkable measure of just how effective his work was. Potok has been described in one book on social justice activists as having ‘a reputation as the preeminent editorial commentator who follows the American radical right’ In 2018, a year after leaving SPLC, he joined the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right as a Senior Fellow.

As the director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project and, later, Senior Fellow at the SPLC and Editor in Chief of its award-winning Intelligence Report investigative magazine, Potok was a key spokesman for the SPLC, a civil rights organization based in Alabama. He has testified before the U.S. Senate, the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights, the Helsinki Commission, and in other key venues. An acclaimed and dynamic speaker, he has given scores of keynote talks in university, government and other settings throughout the United States and Europe. They include such prestigious forums as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.”

Potok was featured in the award-winning 2018 film “Alt-Right: Age of Rage”

Barbara Merson, Executive Director of the Maine Jewish Film Festival was the moderator

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 and Maine Currents, she 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 the First Place 2017 Radio News Award from the Maine Association of Broadcasters.

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RadioActive 10/29/20: First Nations Impacted by Hydropower, Penobscot Nation & Herring Pond Wampanoag Speak Out Against CMP Corridor

Producer/Host: Meredith DeFrancesco

First Nations Impacted by Hydropower, Penobscot Nation and Herring Pond Wampanoag Speak Out Against CMP Corridor

a) Less then three months before a referendum question would have been on the ballot aiming to reverse state agency approval of the so called New England Clean Energy Connect, or CMP Corridor, Central Maine Power’s parent company, Avangrid, succeeded in blocking it the courts. This election day, however, opponents are collecting signatures again on a re-worded citizen’s initiative aimed toward bringing it to voters the following election cycle.

While those who promote and profit from hydro power tout it as a clean energy, the facts bear out differently in terms of environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions and methyl mercury contamination, and on the health and rights of the Indigenous People whose communities are effected by dam construction and subsequent flooding. The proposed CMP corridor, a 145 mile transmission line slated to bring electricity from Hydro Quebec through Maine to Massachussetts, has received stiff opposition from local Maine communities and the Penobscot Nation.

b) On Wednesday, October 28th, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, Sierra Club Maine and the Appalachian Mountain Club filed a lawsuit challenging the Army Corps of Engineers for an inadequate environmental assessment of the project and for refusing to require a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). A groundswell of the public in the state, as well as Congressman Jared Golden and the Penobscot Nation all requested an EIS be performed, but the Corp declined this past summer.

A document obtained by the groups in the suit, under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that the Army Corps and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have identified major issues with the CMP corridor, including the company’s claims about the proposal’s impact on the climate.

c) Members of First Nations in Canada have been campaigning heavily these past months through in person tours and other means to express their opposition to transmission corridor projects in the Northeast United States that would increase the impacts of hydro power development on their communities.
Today we hear from an educational web event organized by Northeast Megadam Resistance Alliance and Sierra Club Maine and a press conference aiming to bring the voices of First Nations people to the Conference of Northeastern Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers last month.

Guests:
Meg Sheean from Northeast Megadam Reststamce Alliance
Amy Norman, Nunatsiavummiuk Inuit, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador Land Protector
Penobscot Nation Chief Kirk Francis
Herring Pond Wampanoag Chairwoman Melissa Ferretti

Today’s program was co-produced by WERU FM/RadioActive and Sunlight Media Collective.

Sunlight Media Collective, who documents and presents issues affecting Indigenous people from Wabanaki perspectives, highlighting the intersection between environmental justice and Tribal sovereignty.

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