The Takeaway

Amazon is contesting the recent historic union win at their Staten Island warehouse. The National Labor Relations Board decided on May 2nd to give Amazon a hearing to present evidence for their claims of preferential treatment by the NLRB in Brooklyn. Amazon also claims the Amazon Labor Union intimidated warehouse workers into voting for the union and bribed them with weed. The director of the NLRB branch where the case will be heard has said he’s seen evidence that “could” overturn the election results. The hearing is set for May 23. Lauren Kaori Gurley, senior staff writer for Motherboard, joins us to discuss the battle between Amazon and The NLRB. 

On February 13th, Christina Yuna Lee was stabbed to death in her own apartment in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York City. A college graduate and creative, digital producer Christina was just 35-years-old when a man she did not know followed her to her home, pushed his way into her apartment, and took her life with stunning brutality.  This unthinkable violence against Christina came just weeks after the shocking killing of Michelle Go. Just 40 years old, Michelle was waiting on the platform in the Times Square subway station when a man pushed her in front of an oncoming train.  The deadly crimes against these two Asian-American women occurred in New York, but the reverberations were felt across the nation. After Michelle’s death, Russell Jeung, a co-founder of  STOP AAPI HATE, spoke with FOX 2 in San Francisco and said, "I think in our community a lot of people are one degree of separation from knowing someone who has been attacked or assaulted." From March 2020 to December 2021, the advocacy coalition Stop AAPI Hate received nearly 11,000 reports of hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islanders. It’s no wonder that many in Asian-American communities are feeling the grief and fear of living just “one degree of separation” from violence. In her Nation article, "Sex, Death, and Empire: The Roots of Violence Against Asian Women," Panthea Lee, an ethnographer, activist, and writer, interrogates a long history of sexualized and gendered violence against Asian women. She finds the roots of contemporary anti-Asian hate are far deeper than Covid-era rhetoric. And when Panthea found a 38-second video from the summer of 2020 in her own iPhone, she discovered she was less than one degree removed from Christina Yuna Lee, whose startling murder in February rocked New York’s Chinatown. 

Global film audiences have generally heard of Bollywood and come to associate that as the dominant Indian film industry. But in recent years, Tollywood, another film industry from a part of India where the Telugu language is spoken, has been making a huge mark in and outside of India. The film “RRR,” which came out at the end of March, has grossed over $130 million worldwide, making it the third highest grossing Indian film of all time. According to film critic Siddhant Adlakha, part of the appeal of Tollywood is that its films are even flashier than Bollywood’s, and audiences share celebratory communal experiences seeing them in theaters. The Takeaway speaks with Adlakha about what the success of "RRR" signals for the future of Tollywood.

The acquittal of 4 police officers who brutally beat Rodney King in 1992 triggered the destruction of Korean-owned businesses and violence directed toward Korean Americans living in South Central Los Angeles. Claire Jean Kim, professor of political science and Asian-American studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World, joins us to discuss the racial tensions that already existed between Black and Korean Americans and how structural racism pits Asians and Black Americans against each other.

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

Much like the unrest that was triggered by the police killings of George Floyd in 2020, the Rodney King verdict was an inflection point in the relationship between communities and police. The not guilty verdict was preceded by a long history of police brutality in Los Angeles’ Black and Latino communities that were already suffering from heightened levels of gang-related violence; political, social, and economic inequality; and a heightened vulnerability from systemic issues underlying urban life, still prevalent in America’s cities today. But, one thing the media missed was an event that took place right before: the Watts truce of 1992. On April 28, 1992, Black and Latino gangs across L.A. saw what was happening around them and decided to finalize a peace treaty. That treaty was strongest in L.A.’s predominantly Black Watts projects amongst four gangs: the Grape Street and PJ Watts Crips, and Bounty Hunter and Hacienda Village Bloods.  Aqeela Sherrills was a former Grape Street Crip who helped broker the peace deal between the groups. Today, he is a community violence activist and public safety advocate. Sherrills is co-founder of the Community Based Public Safety Collective and the President and Board Chair of the Newark Community Street Team. He joined the show to discuss the 30th anniversary of the Watts truce and L.A. rebellion, and he explained how these events hold valuable lessons on redefining public safety. 

The Food and Drug Administration is supposed to put safety standards in place and investigate and respond to outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. But a recent investigation from Politico titled “The FDA’s Food Failure,” revealed significant structural leadership issues and found that the food arm of the agency – the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition – has repeatedly failed to create regulations or respond in a timely manner to a wide range of food safety, health, and nutrition issues. We speak with the reporter who worked on that investigation, Helena Bottemiller Evich, Senior food and agricultural reporter for Politico. Here's a comment from the FDA from an FDA spokesperson:  The FDA has accomplished a tremendous amount in the last 10 years to make the American food supply as safe as it’s ever been. At the FDA we are harnessing new technology, data management, and strategies to improve our ability to identify and interdict unsafe food products to build a New Era of Smarter Food Safety. By advancing our scientific capabilities to detect pathogens and other contaminants, we are now detecting more outbreaks and we are making real progress on reducing toxic elements in the food supply. On April 27, 2022 we issued draft guidance to industry to help reduce the levels of lead in juices—which is good for everyone, but in particular young children, and as part of our Closer to Zero action plan, we expect to issue additional guidance on lead action levels for foods commonly eaten by babies and young children later this year.  

April is National Poetry Month and The Takeaway is talking with young poets across the country. Alyssa Gaines is Urban Word’s 2022 National Youth Poet Laureate Midwest Regional Finalist. She joined the program to talk about her work and shared one of her poems

On Tuesday, President Biden exercised his presidential clemency powers for the first time in his presidency, issuing 3 pardons and 75 commutations, all of whom were convicted of drug offenses or other non-violent crimes. Still, there are 18,000 petitions for clemency still pending. We speak with Austin Sarat, professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, to explore the history of how presidents have used clemency powers in the past, why the process serves so few, and if President Biden might meet his campaign promise of criminal justice reform by using the powers of clemency going forward.  

For a new piece in The Atlantic, that was also the center of the latest episode of the podcast The Experiment, reporter Jessica Bruder takes a look at how abortion activists nationwide are preparing for a world in which Roe v. Wade is overturned. The work being done by this underground network includes online forums to raise awareness about pharmaceutically induced abortions. Bruder also draws parallels between the work done by activists in the pre-Roe era to provide safe abortions to people in need. The Takeaway speaks with her about what this work means as the country awaits a Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

On April 6, Data Science Day, Dr. Alondra Nelson, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, delivered a keynote address about the importance of data collection and measurement in addressing equity of government policies and programs. Dr. Nelson joins us to discuss her role on the Equitable Data Working Group and how data can protect civil rights and civil liberties.

Melissa Lucio has been on death row for 14 years for the death of her two year old daughter. She was due to be executed on Wednesday, April 27th.  After appeals from advocates, Texas lawmakers, and even five of the jurors on her original trial, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a stay on her execution on Monday, April 25th.  We speak with Jolie McCullough, reporter for The Texas Tribune covering criminal justice and policy about Lucio’s case and what the court’s decisions means looking ahead.  Then, we look at the politics of motherhood and what constitutes a “good” and “bad” mother with Jane Aiken, Dean and Professor of Law at Wake Forest University and author of the article “Motherhood as Misogyny.”

According to Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, author of Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity, taxing menstrual products is discriminatory and unconstitutional. The good news is that the movement to get rid of what has been called the “tampon tax” has been successful in some states. There are still states, however, that continue to tax half of its population. Jennifer Weiss-Wolf joins us to discuss period equity and the injustice of the tampon tax.

Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that will end Disney World’s special tax status starting in June 2023. The move was a direct response to Disney’s belated opposition to the recently passed Florida law restricting the ability of teachers to discuss sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Disney has been criticized by many on the right and the left over its handling of what opponents have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” We speak with Carlos Ball, law professor at Rutgers University, and Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, about how what’s happening with Disney connects to other recent examples of corporations weighing in on LGBTQ issues.

Alongside the delicious food, the new cookbook “Gullah Geechee Home Cooking,” tells the story of the Gullah Geechee through the history of Edisto Island and author of the book, Emily Meggett's family. The recipes that she shares have been passed down through generations. The cookbook will be available on April 26, and in it you’ll find fresh seafood recipes that are an homage to the Sea Islands on the Atlantic Coast – recipes like deviled crab and Miss Emily’s famous Stuffed Fish with Parsley Rice and Roe. There are recipes that might remind you of other Southern cooking you may have tried, like red rice, corn fritters, and okra gumbo. And there are plenty of pie recipes and one for a glorious Pineapple upside-down cake. We speak with the author new cookbook “Gullah Geechee Home Cooking,” Emily Meggett, also known as “the matriarch of Edisto Island.” And co-author of the cookbook Kayla Stewart, who is also a food and travel reporter.