The Takeaway

2022 has seen more anti-LGBTQ legislation proposed so far than any other year. According to LGBTQ advocacy group Freedom for All Americans, 39 states introduced more than 200 such bills since April. The legislation mainly targets trans youth, running the gamut from healthcare restrictions, exclusion from sports and even equating gender affirming parenting to child abuse.  For Carolyn Hays, that policy threatened her family when an investigator from the Department of Children and Families knocked on her door. In her new memoir, A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter, Hays writes: “...we quickly learned that in this southern state with Republican-appointed judges, we could lose custody. We could lose you.” We hear from Carolyn on how raising her daughter expanded her understanding of parenting, faith, science and gender. 

Hurricane Fiona has left devastation in Puerto Rico. Massive flooding has occurred in some areas, and 1.3 million people, in a country of 3.2 million, were without electricity on Monday.  As of Tuesday, the hurricane is responsible for at least two deaths and at least 1000 people have had to be rescued. We speak with Carlos Berrios Polanco, freelance journalist in Caguas, Puerto Rico, to hear the latest on the ground in Puerto Rico.

We continue our SHElection! midterm coverage in partnership with the Center for American Women and Politics, with a focus on some unique races this cycle - contests where both candidates are women. This time, we’re looking at the heated race for Governor of Arizona where either candidates Secretary of State Katie Hobbs or Trump-backed Republican Kari Lake will become the 5th woman governor of Arizona. We hear from Stacey Barchenger, a states politics reporter for the Arizona Republic and Gina Woodall, principal lecturer at the school of politics and global studies at Arizona State University. 

In "Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us," New Yorker staff writer Rachel Aviv ventures into what she calls "the psychic hinterlands" — the gap between an individual's clinical mental health diagnosis and their lived experience. She joined us to discuss Naomi, a young mother whose story bears a striking parallel to the inspiration behind Toni Morrison's "Beloved;" Laura, a Harvard student whose life couldn't be more different, and in other ways is a consistent through line; and Rachel herself, whose lifelong interactions with the field of psychiatry have caused her to question how a diagnosis can shape our experiences of the world, and of ourselves.

What if your child care provider had to close down? That’s the very real prospect facing child care providers as they lose employees to larger corporate companies that can afford to pay them more.  We talk to independent journalist Bryce Covert who reported on this in her piece, “I Can’t Compete: Child Care Providers are Losing Staff to McDonald’s and Target,” as well as Khulood Jamil, a child care provider and owner of Khulood’s Child Care in Pleasant Hill, California.

A financial trading company is trying to open up a new financial market to allow investors to bet on the outcomes of the upcoming midterm elections. But federal regulators have to approve it first, and in the past they've raised concerns that markets could influence the outcomes of the races themselves. What are the odds? We're joined by Koleman Strumpf, Professor and Burchfield Presidential Chair of Political Economy at Wake Forest University, to learn if this is a gamble the country is willing to take.

Only one HBCU made the grade in U.S. News and World Report's overall rankings of top colleges and universities this week. But with metrics like SAT scores and high school class standings, some college leaders and education officials question the validity of the lists, despite their direct impact on how schools are managed and perceived.  We hear from Dr. Helene Gayle, president at Spelman College, which was ranked 51st in national liberal arts colleges and landed the top spot on their list of HBCUs. She discusses how schools could be measured more equitably, including social mobility and student progress within college, and explains why such rankings are still useful for education administrators like herself. 

One of the Fall’s highly anticipated films is The Woman King starring Viola Davis. It’s the story of the Dahomey empire and their elite fighting force, the Agojie, made up entirely of women. We talk with director Gina Prince-Bythewood and producer Cathy Schulman about what it took to get this movie made, the inclusion of difficult subjects, and what it means to have a film that centers Black women.  

In the final episode of our School Principles series, we explore abolitionist education: a teaching approach centered on abolishing oppressive educational structures, while loving, protecting, remembering, and healing children of color and their communities. And we ask, what is the purpose of education? Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, Associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Illlinois Chicago, joins us to explore all these questions.   

In this Deep Dive, Melissa and Dorian take an in-depth look at water insecurity, access and cleanliness. They start off with Sera Young, associate professor anthropology and global health at northwestern University. Then Josina Morita, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District in Cook County about how the infrastructure bill will aid in improving water systems.  Jonathan Nez, president of the Navajo Nation and Bidtah Becker, Associate attorney with the Navajo tribal utility authority join for a discussion of water issues in Indian Country, with a specific focus on Navajo Nation. Reverend Roslyn Bouier, executive director of the Brightmoor Connection Client Choice Food Pantry explains how water shut offs affect the citizens of Brightmoor in Detroit, Michigan.  And finally Tom Mueller, research assistant professor of geography and environmental sustainability at the University of Oklahoma will discuss how water insecurity and plumbing poverty affects rural area.  Some music from this episode by: I Think Like Midnight (http://www.ithinklikemidnight.com/) & The Sometime Boys (https://www.thesometimeboys.com/)

Joining our hosts to discuss the racial and class inequalities infecting application of the Death Penalty is Samuel Spital, Director of Litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. They speak with Sabrina Butler Smith, the first woman exonerated from death row, about her experience of being wrongly convicted of murdering her infant and sent to death row in Mississippi. We also get a look from a victim’s perspective through a conversation with Jennifer Pinckney, Widow of Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was murdered by Dylan Roof. Finally, the hosts explore the processes and procedures of putting inmates to death with Lynden Harris, Director of Hidden Voices and Editor of "Right Here, Right Now: Life Stories from America’s Death Row" and Sister Helen Prejean, anti-death penalty activist, spiritual advisor to men and women on death row, and author of "Dead Man Walking," "The Death of Innocents," and "The River of Fire."  

On today's Deep Dive, Melissa and Dorian take an in-depth look at sex work and how it's been criminalized in the United States, starting off with journalist and former sex worker Melissa Gira Grant, who discusses the history of criminalizing sex work in the U.S. Then Cecilia Gentili, principal consultant and founder of Trans Equity Consulting, and LaLa B. Holston-Zannell, trans justice campaign manager in the National Advocacy Department at the ACLU, explain the idea of sex work as work and why some advocates are calling for full decriminalization. Yasmin Vafa, executive director of Rights 4 Girls, discusses concerns that sex work increases opportunities for sex trafficking, particularly the trafficking of children.   RJ Thompson, managing director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center, helps break down some of the stigma surrounding sex work as well as how and why male sex workers are often left out of conversations around sex work. And finally Elexus Jionde, author, content creator and founder of Intelexual Media, explores how technology, digital communication and the “realites” of the virtual world will continue to shape the future of sex work. Some of the music on this podcast was made by Touque (https://davidaaron4.bandcamp.com/album/soho-sessions), Hannis Brown (https://www.hannisbrown.com/), James Perry, and j. cowit (https://jcowit.bandcamp.com/)

Joining our hosts to discuss the history of U.S. Health Insurance and how it compares to other countries is Julia Lynch, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jamila Michener, associate professor in the department of Government at Cornell University about the connections between health inequities and our insurance system. We also take a look at the creation of the Affordable Care Act with one of its architects Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel who currently serves as Vice Provost of Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter Suderman, features editor at Reason, joins us to discuss the current state of healthcare and health insurance and how both parties could make changes to their approaches on both. Finally, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal discusses expanding health insurance for Americans with her Medicare for All Plan and how it will restore dignity to every American through adequate health insurance coverage.   

After the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act and even Loving v. Virginia, one major issue around the racial justice movement remained unaddressed: fair housing. On April 11, 1968 President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Fair Housing Act into law.  Because of this, April is National Fair Housing Month. All month, advocates, organizers, and communities commemorate this landmark piece of Civil Rights legislation which outlawed discrimination in housing. On this episode of The Takeaway, Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren take a Deep Dive into the history and current state of fair housing in America, 54 years after the passage of the National Fair Housing Act.  Guests: Lisa Rice, President and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance Jim McCarthy, President/CEO of Miami Valley Fair Housing Center Michael Allen, Attorney and Partner at Relman Colfax Ava Deakin, lead plaintiff in Deakin v. Old Town Triangle Association Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia

“We live in the United States, the richest country in the history of the world. And we have 140 million people who are poor or one health care crisis, one job loss, one storm, one tornado away from economic ruin.” - Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Co-Chair of the Poor People's Campaign Even before the excruciating weight of the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty rates rose for the first time in five years. In 2020, there were 3.3 million more people living in poverty than in 2019. Poverty rates rose among white and Hispanic Americans, and for the 1 in 5 Black Americans already living in poverty, there wasn’t much room for the rate to go up. All were poorer in 2020 than the year before. A package of pandemic-era policies stemmed rising poverty in 2021; however, many of those temporary measures have expired as consumer prices continue to rise, leaving many American families and workers economically vulnerable. According to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, the monthly child poverty rate increased from 12.1 percent in December 2021 to 17 percent in January 2022, the highest it's been since the end of 2020. Black and Latinx children experienced the largest increases in poverty rates. This 4.9 percent increase accounts for the nearly 3.7 million more children living in poverty after the Child Tax Credit ended. The monthly Child Tax Credit payments "buffered family finances amidst the continuing pandemic, increased families’ abilities to meet their basic needs, reduced child poverty and food insufficiency, and had no discernable negative effects on parental employment." "I think one of the core themes of my work–across multiple sectors and fields–has been a focus on poverty. And the fact that poverty is not an ordained or natural system or condition, but a system of policy choices," says Dorian Warren, co-host of our Deep Dives, co-president of Community Change, and co-chair of the Economic Security Project.  The experience of poverty is even more widespread than the official definition tells us. Yet, the perception of poverty remains contentious for many Americans. Research shows that Americans overwhelmingly identify themselves as 'middle-class,' even when they’re not. Groups like Confronting Poverty have developed tools like the poverty risk calculator to help people better understand economic hardship and risk. Awareness is just one facet of the ongoing fight against poverty. The anti-poverty and low wage workers movement is leading “a national call for moral revival.”  On June 18, 2022 the Poor People’s Campaign led a mass demonstration in Washington, D.C. Thousands of people from all over the country attended. Ahead of the march, we spoke with the Poor People's Campaign co-chairs Bishop William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Director of Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary. Dorian was there as well, both as an organizer and observer, covering the march for The Takeaway. In this Deep Dive, Dorian joins The Takeaway in critical conversation around today's anti-poverty and labor movement and the voices defining what economic, racial, and social justice can and should look like.