Stories From Summer 2011
Politics and Watchdog Reporting America’s war on drugs: 40 years, a trillion dollars, and debatable results
Originally aired on Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared drug users public enemy number one. Young, white, middle-class kids were openly using recreational drugs, and long-held stigmas about drug use were shrinking, especially in the Bay Area. Public perception typically connected drugs with protest culture and the social rebellion of the ’60s and ’70s. To then-president Richard Nixon, and many others, it was a sign of society coming apart at the seams.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: We must wage total war on what I have called public enemy number one: the problem of dangerous drugs.
So Nixon began a grand campaign to strike back. He wanted nothing less than a full-scale “war on drugs” that would be waged against the dealers and users of drugs at home, as well as the cultivators and suppliers abroad. It would be carried out through aggressive policing and military intervention. And it would set a trend for decades to come.
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High unemployment, toxic environment – one solution
Originally aired on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011
After Congress reached an agreement on the debt ceiling two weeks ago, President Obama said he and his cabinet are turning their attention back to creating jobs.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: They are redoubling their efforts to focus on what matters most to the American people. That is, how are we going to put people back to work? How are we going to raise the wages? Increase their security? How are they going to recover fully as families, as communities from the worst recession we’ve had since the Great Depression?
But this rhetoric isn’t new – throughout the recession, politicians have been promising more jobs – including in Oakland where the unemployment rate is 16.3%. That’s nearly double the national average.
Well, in Oakland, politicians actually put money where their mouths are – the city has received more than $140 million in stimulus money over the past three years for workforce development and energy efficiency. Part of that money went to the Cypress Mandela Training Center in West Oakland. Their mandate? To launch a Green Jobs Training Corps.
RON DELLUMS: Simply stated this is a program that embraces a very fundamental idea. Fight pollution and fight poverty simultaneously.
Former Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums kicked off the program three years ago. He said the goal of the Green Jobs Corps is to help Oakland’s low-income youth get jobs improving their environment.
Now that the threat of a double-dip recession is looming, KALW’s Callie Shanafelt went to see if these programs are meeting this main goal.
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Drug felons take fight for food stamps to the capitol
Originally aired on Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
You may have heard by now that California’s prisons are overcrowded. Last May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California must decrease its prison population by over 30,000 inmates in the next two years. Lawmakers are debating exactly how to go about doing this, but it’s clear by now that if any prisoners are released on early parole, many will be non-violent drug offenders. But re-entry resources like job training, affordable housing, and healthcare, are already in short supply for people leaving prison.
One potential resource is outright banned. In California, people with prior drug-related offenses are banned from receiving food stamps. Some say this makes it even more difficult for ex-offenders to reintegrate into society. KALW’s Nicole Jones has more.
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Who needs a guitar to be a rock star?
Originally aired on Thursday, July 28th, 2011
When it comes to making it big at anything, you’ve got to do some hard work. Behind every rock star, there are thousands of hours of practice, touring and rocking out. Of course, to rock out, you don’t actually need to know how to play an instrument – at least not at the San Francisco Regional Air Guitar Championships. There, rock gods are judged on their stage presence, technical merit, and something called “airness.”
To find out what that is, just take a listen to this story from KALW’s Christopher Connelly, who was there to witness it all firsthand.
And a note to our listeners – the following story contains mature subject matter.
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If you can hear me now, you might be in trouble
Originally aired on Thursday, July 21st, 2011
California is one of many states that bans talking or texting on a handheld device while driving. It’s a national problem. In 2009, more than 5,000 people were killed on U.S. roads and about 450,000 were injured due because of so-called “distracted” driving.
But when it comes to cell phone use in general, there could be greater danger – many people believe cell phones cause cancer.
Over the last year, a group of researchers at the World Health Organization took a look at dozens of studies exploring that link. They concluded that cell phones are ”possibly carcinogenic.”
The WHO has labeled more than 250 things as “possibly carcinogenic,” including gasoline fumes, some kind of pickled vegetables, and coffee.
If you’re confused, well, the WHO is probably confused, too. Of the six studies they looked at, the results were all over the place. The biggest and longest study the group looked at is called Interphone. It took 10 years of data from 10 countries in Europe, as well as Canada, Israel and Japan. And the conclusions it came to are completely inconsistent.
For heavy cell phone users – that means people who talked on a cell phone at least 30 minutes a day for 10 years – it found an increased incidence of brain tumors. But that rate didn’t hold for people who spent less than half-an-hour talking on their cell phones each day. In fact, the research might even suggest that the least chatty cell phone users were less likely to end up with brain tumors than people who spent their time on land lines.
And there’s more: a Swedish study found more brain tumors in all cell phone users compared with people who never used cell phones. But there’s a Danish study that found cell phone users developed brain tumors at the the national average. So, “possibly carcinogenic.” Which leaves us wondering: What do we need to know about cell phones and the radiation they emit?
That’s the question we asked KALW’s Christopher Connelly to take on in a segment we call “Brain Vitamin.”
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Art center gives voice to the Bay Area’s developmentally disabled
Originally aired on Wednesday, July 13th, 2011
Art can be extraordinary. It can convey beauty … imagination … and wonder. For some artists, it can literally communicate what their words cannot.
In Oakland, artists with developmental disabilities find a place to express themselves at the Creative Growth Art Center. But budget cuts to county and state social service programs are making it harder for them to pursue their artistic visions.
KALW’s Nicole Jones reports.
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Zombies protest proposed Oakland library closures
Originally aired on Monday, June 20th, 2011
$58 million dollars – that’s how deep in the red Oakland’s city budget is this year. Mayor Jean Quan has been proposing several budget solutions – the most extreme being an “all cuts” budget. This would give the green light to slash many of the city’s public services, including libraries. It would leave four branches for the nearly 400,000 Oakland residents who live in the city. Librarians and their supporters say this would hurt low-income neighborhoods the most – and it would risk the future of a generation of young readers.
On Friday, 16 people were arrested in a protest in downtown Oakland, condemning cuts to the libraries. Demonstrators chanted about cutting the police department, rather than the libraries, as well as “books not banks,” saying financiers are getting rich while public services are being gutted across the nation.
Today, Save Oakland Libraries is hosting an all day “read in” in front of City Hall. Tomorrow evening, June 21, the Oakland City Council will present budget recommendations.
While the city council will make final budget decisions due in July, librarians are taking the battle beyond the bookshelves and into the streets with some very creative tactics. KALW’S Nicole Jones has more.
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Violence prevention graduates take their lessons to the streets
Originally aired on Thursday, June 9th, 2011
Shrinking school budgets and cuts to classes and staff are serious problems that will need answering, but it’s gradution season, and that’s cause for putting those problems aside for now and celebrating. So, congrats to all the graduates! Teens are preparing their caps and gowns, 20-somethings are waiting to be handed their Bachelor’s degrees. But there’s one group of college grads that is celebrating a different kind of academic achievement.
This isn’t your standard liberal arts college course where theory dominates the learning. And these aren’t your typical, college-aged students. They’re police officers, probation officers, street outreach workers and counselors – ripe in their professions, and hungry for more knowledge on how to make their communities safer.
Last week, this first class of 15 students graduated from the new Violence Prevention Initiative Certificate Program at the College of Alameda. It’s the first certificate program of its kind in California, where the learning starts in the classroom and continues on streets of neighborhoods most plagued by violence.
KALW’s Nicole Jones visited with the students on their graduation day and brought back this report.
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