Populist Dialogues

Leslie Gregory is President and founder of Right2Health and she joins us today to talk about how racism is a causative factor in poor health outcomes for African-Americans.. It is so important that the CDC should recognize it as such and declare it. But it refuses. How do we change the CDC opinion? Leslie feels it is time to stop asking if racism is a factor and to declare that it is so.

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.

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.