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Accountability in the Flint Water Crisis
Top Michigan officials – including former governor Rick Snyder – were indicted on charges that ranged from willful neglect of duty and involuntary manslaughter to obstruction of justice after a new investigation into the Flint water crisis.
It’s a crisis that combined a city’s fiscal distress with politics and ignorance of environmental factors to create disaster: lead poisoning, and a deadly outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease.
I took a deep dive into the history and the details of the Flint water crisis with ProPublica journalist Anna Clark, author of the book The Poisoned City.
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Biden / Trump
Two camps emerged outside the state Capitol on November 7, 2020 — the date the presidential race was called for Joe Biden & Kamala Harris. -
Jenny Holzer’s Vote
An installation from artist Jenny Holzer outside the Majestic Theatre in Madison.
October 12, 2020. -
“We Been Not Breathin’”: Doulas Demand Change
Black babies in Wisconsin die at a higher rate than any other state.
And nationally, Black mothers die in childbirth at a rate that’s three times greater than that of white mothers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most of those deaths are preventable.
Those racial inequities for women and children are why hundreds marched in downtown Madison on Saturday. Protestors marched from the Wisconsin State Capitol to Meriter Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital, where organizers described their own experiences, and demanded change.
The march, titled “We Been Not Breathin’,” was the eighth day of continuous Black Lives Matter protests in Madison in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
Read on wortfm.org. This report received a gold award in the Milwaukee Press Club’s 2020 Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism Awards.
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An Exploration of Neon in Three Parts
My obsession with glass crept back in a three-part show about the magical world of neon signs.
I spoke with Luis de Miranda, a philosopher and author of Being and Neonness, a cultural history of neon published by MIT Press.
I spoke with Tom Zickuhr, a commercial neon signmaker in Madison. His neon signs light up businesses all across the city. We spoke at his east-side studio.
And I spoke with Meryl Pataky, an Oakland-based sculptor and artist, and curator of She Bends– a national exhibition of work by women neon benders.
Listen to the show on wortfm.org.
