Interview

A short interview with Ben Berry of AirShip Technologies Group. Produced by Frank Woods.

With the ever increasing numbers of incarcerated, we need to discuss how we want the criminal justice system to work.Part of that discussion needs to be around one of the least accountable aspects of the system - the District Attorneys. Daniel Lewkow, campaign manager for the Oregon ACLU's:  "They Report to You" campaign, talks about the DA's power and how we can make them accountable. DAs have a lot of power without a lot of oversight. We can change that.

Guest Anais Tuepker talks about the proposed Portland Just Energy Transition initiative petition for the City of Portland. Noting that environmental groups and communities of color have not in the past worked together, she says that this has been written by a collaboration between them.

Host David Delk talks with Tom Sincic, President of Health Care for All Oregon. Tom details the problem of present for-profit health care insurance model and how it does not serve the interests and needs of people. A single payer system would have quite different results. Single payer means better care, less wasted time, better care, all for less money.

Tom describes efforts at both the state and federals levels to create single payer health care. In Oregon, HCAO is working toward a ballot measure creating a Oregon Single Payer System for the 2020 ballot.

We talk with Nakisha Nathan, Environmental Justice organizer with the Oregon Sierra Club. Just transitions and deep democracy are two aspects of environmental justice and we talk about their interrelationship.

Guest Greg Burrill, peace activist, entrepreneur and educator, talks about the Portland Public Schools and the financing of K-12 education in general in Oregon. Oregon is experiencing a funding crisis due to passage of Measures 5 and 50. Greg talks about what those measures did and continue to do, and how they took us from having a school system which was a national model to one characterized by underfunding and under-achievement.

Host Rose Sheehan interviews the Martin Luther King Day of Compassion and Action Coalition Founders, Brad Wagenknecht and Jennifer Swift, on the mission of the coalition; how to join; and the weekend series of events, talks, and service projects that are planned for Napa County following the devastation left by the firestorms. All with a focus on inclusion and diversity and in celebration of the legacy that Martin Luther King left with us.