The Takeaway

At Coosa High School in Rome, GA, five Black students and their parents are suing the Floyd County School District in a civil lawsuit in which they allege that the school district has continually shown indifference to racial discrimination. The school garnered national attention after a group of white students carried Confederate Flag memorabilia and shouted racial slurs at students of color. In response, a multiracial coalition of students moved to organize a Black Lives Matter demonstration. The principal of the school denied the request to demonstrate and only suspended the five Black students in the lawsuit.    We spoke with Andrea Young, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, about the Coosa High School lawsuit and what it means for the state of civil rights. Editor's Note: The Takeaway reached out to the Floyd County School District for comment on this story and has not yet heard back. If we do receive a response, we’ll post it here.

Just over one month ago, Politico published a leaked draft opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito, a nearly unprecedented breach of the high Court’s norms of non-disclosure until the moment an opinion is officially released. Now that it is June the Court is likely to release its official decision in the Mississippi case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The decision in this case could overturn the 1973  Roe v. Wade precedent which established that abortion rights were an extension of an implied Right to Privacy found in the 14th amendment. If Roe is overturned it is most likely that each individual sate would be left to decide legality and access to termination services within its own boundaites. . And according to the Guttmacher Institute, 26 states are certain or likely to ban or severely restrict the procedure.  Planned Parenthood estimates that 36 million women – more than half of all women of reproductive age in the United States – live in one of those states. The loss of rights is not consistent with the American narrative of ourselves. American exceptionalism. The shining city of the hill. Here, on this soil is where the arc of history is meant to bend toward justice, offering ever more access to liberty, equality, justice. But is the arc of American history always bending toward justice? We look back through history with Blair Kelley, is a Professor of history at North Carolina State University. She is also the author of “Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship.” And some legal experts and advocates worry that this Court decision could threaten other basic rights like access to contraception, same-sex marriage, and interracial marriage. We speak with Akhil Reed Amar, a Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, looking forward to what may happen next.

The aftermath of a mass shooting for families includes the unimaginable tasks of saying goodbye and grieving over their loved ones. But what if you couldn’t say goodbye? That is the case for Eli Torres, the father of 10-year-old Uvalde shooting victim Eliahna Cruz Torres. He is currently serving time in Kentucky at the McCreary United States Penitentiary due to a drug trafficking and conspiracy conviction. He was denied a compassionate release to attend his daughter’s memorial this past Thursday. We’ll speak with Kentucky State Representative Attica Scott about her efforts and letter to President Biden to intervene on behalf of Eliahna’s father.

Service dogs can help veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by providing calming support with everyday tasks. A law signed in August 2021 allowed the Department of Veteran Affairs to launch a new program in which veterans with PTSD help train service dogs for other veterans. We speak with Rick Yount, the Executive Director of Warrior Canine Connection, a nonprofit that teaches veterans how to train service dogs for other veterans, about how involving veterans in dog training can help them heal. 

Researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have developed a popular app for birders called eBird.  The app allows birders to track and and follow bird sightings, with some birders then traveling to locations of a recent sighting to hopefully catch a glimpse for themself. But the app also eBird also serves an important function for researchers.  As eBird recently logged its 1 billionth bird sighting, it is crowdsourcing massive amounts of data which provides valuable information for researchers who can then better understand the movement of bird populations and what they can tell us about climate change. We speak with Amanda Rodewald, professor and senior director for Center of Avian Population Studies at Cornell University, about eBird, and what birds can teach us about climate change. Additional reading: "A Once in-a Lifetime Bird" by Kevin Nguyen for The Verge.

A third-party investigation of the Southern Baptist Convention’s top governing body found that an influential group of leaders systematically ignored, belittled and intimidated survivors of sexual abuse for the past two decades while protecting the legal interests of churches accused of harboring abusers. Despite recent declines in membership, Southern Baptists are still the largest evangelical group in the United States, with more than 13 million members. How they respond to this moment is deeply consequential for America. We speak with Robert Downen, a reporter at The Houston Chronicle, and Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University and author of "Jesus and John Wayne," about the recent findings and the SBC's response. We also hear from two survivors of abuse in the SBC, Hannah-Kate Williams and Christa Brown, about their long fights for justice and accountability. 

If you ever dreamed of exploring Antarctica, you might consider applying for the highly sought after role of postmaster for the southernmost post office in the world. From November through March, post office employees live without running water or flushing toilets and are also expected to observe, count, and clean up after a colony of Gentoo penguins in Port Lockroy, Antarctica. We learn more about the challenges and rewards of living amongst penguins in Antarctica with Vicky Inglis, former postmaster and current field operation coordinator for the U.K. Antarctic Heritage Trust.

The United States is entering its fourth month of an infant formula shortage, and disturbing new numbers released Friday show the situation hasn’t gotten any better. According to Datasembly, more than 70 percent of infant formula is out-of-stock across the country, affecting millions of families. That’s up from 43 percent just a few weeks ago—and in many states, the percentage is even higher. In February, Abbott Nutrition, the largest manufacturer of infant formula in the country, shut down one of its largest plants in Sturgis, Michigan and recalled its products due to contamination problems. And this exacerbated pandemic supply chain issues. The plant was shut down after four babies were reported having rare bacterial infections last fall. Two of the infants died. The babies had reportedly consumed formula from the Abbott plant, but after an investigation, the FDA found no conclusive evidence that the strains came from that plant. Last Wednesday, while testifying to a House of Representatives Oversight Panel, the head of the FDA Dr. Robert Califf, detailed the “egregiously unsanitary” conditions of Abbott Nutritions’ plant in Michigan. On Tuesday, Abbott announced that it will begin reopening its Michigan plant by June 4, with some formula expected to start rolling out by the end of June, although full production of the plant will take longer.  In the meantime, President Biden’s Operation Fly Formula has announced its fourth additional shipment of infant formula from overseas, in an effort to offer caregivers some relief during this continuing shortage. But for now, the desperate searching for infant nutrition continues for so many. We spoke to Sarah Cosley who lives in Dubuque, Iowa, and started a Facebook group called the Infant Formula Shortage Support Group to connect with other parents struggling to find baby formula.  We also speak with Carla Cevasco, an assistant professor of American Studies at Rutgers University - New Brunswick, and author of “Violent Appetites: Hunger in the Early Northeast,” about the history of infant formula and the reasons why some people cannot or choose not to breastfeed. 

June is the annual celebration of Black Music Month. We spoke with Ebro Darden, Apple Music’s global editorial head of Hip-Hop and R&B and host of The Ebro Show on Apple Music 1, about their efforts to highlight Black Music and Black music’s lasting and continuing impact on our collective, cultural landscape.  

On June 3, 'Fire Island' will be released on Hulu. The film is a queer rom-com that's loosely based on 'Pride and Prejudice' directed by Andrew Ahn, and written by and starring Joel Kim Booster, and also co-starring Bowen Yang. We speak with Andrew Ahn about bringing this love story to the screen.

The Women’s House of Detention was a prison that housed primarily poor, or Black, or queer people, and people living at multiple intersections of those identities. It stood in Greenwich Village, New York City from 1932 to 1974 and had an indelible impact on the modern and intersecting movements for queer liberation, Black liberation and abolition. We speak with Hugh Ryan, author of “The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison,” a new book about the prison and its place in the history and present of the movement for LGBTQ rights.

In light of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the role and effectiveness of armed police officers—sometimes referred to as SROs (or school resource officers)—on school campuses has again entered the national conversation. But research shows that having armed police officers in schools do not make schools safer, and in fact, can have deleterious effects. The presence of SROs in schools correlates with increased criminalization of school discipline incidents, and disproportionately affects students of color. We hear from Marc Schindler, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington D.C. about the what happens when you put SROs in schools.  Then, we speak with Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough, sheriff for Forsyth County in North Carolina, about why he thinks SROs are the answer to addressing school safety.    

The day after the horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, in which a white supremacist targeted Black residents in a majority-Black neighborhood, Kelly Diane Galloway decided to organize a vigil to bring her grieving community together. We speak with Kelly about how the residents of Buffalo are supporting each other and why creating joy is a form of resistance.

Lorgia Garcia-Pena was a respected and beloved professor at Harvard University.  There, she says, she and her predominantly Latinx students faced consistent scrutiny and surveillance from the Harvard campus police.  We talk with Lorgia Garcia-Pena, author of Community As Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color and Mellon Associate Professor of Race, Colonialism and Diaspora Studies at Tufts University, about her experiences at Harvard with campus police and later being denied tenure there.  We also explore how those events informed her latest book on building communities of rebellion.  

Twenty-seven years may seem like a long time between seasons of a television show, but for the Kids in the Hall, it’s like the five members of the legendary Canadian sketch comedy troupe never split up. This month, they are back with the series available on on Amazon Prime after nearly three decades off the air, and no surprise here, they’re still pretty weird. Bruce McCulloch, Canadian actor, writer and comedian, and one of the founding members of the group, tells us what's new with the Kids.