The Takeaway

In late March, New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s administration began carrying out highly publicized sweeps of homeless encampments. The mayor has said he’s focused on getting people off the streets and into shelters, but even under the best of circumstances there are many barriers associated with making a shelter-based strategy effective for all who are affected by homelessness. Brendan Cheney, the Director of Policy and Communications for the New York Housing Conference, and Joel Berg the CEO of Hunger Free America join The Takeaway to discuss Adams’ approach to homelessness.  

At the beginning of April, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report stating that global greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise… putting the world at risk for more climate-change related issues, unless immediate action is taken.  Extreme weather events are likely to force millions from their homes - creating climate refugees across the world and right here in the United States. In advance of these perils, some are trying a new process known as “managed retreat," or planned relocation of communities impacted by climate change. We talk with A.R. Siders, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware and climate change adaptation expert on what managed retreat is and how it has been implemented across the US.  We also talk with Hilton Kelley in Port Arthur, Texas about climate-related issues in his community. Kelley is also the founder and director of the Community in Power and Development Association.

 Over the past year, Atlanta’s median home prices have increased nearly 24  percent and according to the real estate brokerage firm Redfin -- Atlanta home purchases have been particularly targeted by investors- which means flipping and reselling for even higher prices. A report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta says the median annual income in Atlanta has increased by roughly one thousand dollars since 2020, meanwhile the median home price has gone up by more than 100,000 dollars.  As housing prices rise, the city’s racial demographics are also shifting.  White residents coming to Atlanta have vastly outnumbered the arrival of new Black residents, a reversal of trends from previous decades, when Black residents made up the majority of Atlanta's population.  For our ongoing series, Georgia at the Intersections, we’re talking about what this all means for Atlanta residents and Georgia politics. We spoke with Jim Burress, a WABE reporter who's been covering Atlanta’s housing market for nearly 14 years and Bambie Hayes-Brown, CEO of Georgia Advancing Communities Together, an organization representing non-profit housing and community development groups in Georgia.      

Last week President Biden used the word "genocide" for the first time to characterize Russia's actions in Ukraine. But do Russia's atrocities in Ukraine rise to the legal definition of genocide? We speak with Gissou Nia, director of the Strategic Litigation Project for the Atlantic Council, to explore the international framework of what constitutes genocide, and consider whether Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine rise to that level yet.          

A poll conducted by ABC News in January found that only 20% of Americans feel confident in our country’s election systems.  And that skepticism exists for those who identify with both parties.  We look to Georgia, one of the highly contested states in 2020 to see how skepticism is playing a part in who’s running, and efforts to tighten voting laws and restrictions. Gabriel Sterling, Chief Operating Officer and Interim Deputy Secretary in the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State joins us to discuss the road ahead to the midterm elections.

We host a politics roundtable talking about the lead up to midterm elections this November and the ongoing “culture war” between Republicans and Democrats.  We speak with Christina Greer, Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University, co-host of podcast FAQ NYC, and author of the book "Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration and the Pursuit of the American Dream." And Ron Christie, former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Republican strategist.

At the start of the month, the Biden administration announced that on May 23, they will be ending Title 42, the Trump-era public health rule that has been used to expel migrants out of the United States since the start of the pandemic. Since it was first implemented, immigration advocates have been pushing for an end to the policy, which blocks most migrants from seeking asylum. And even establishment Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have called on the Biden administration to terminate Title 42. But more conservative Democrats like Arizona Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly have partnered with Republicans to create legislation that would keep Title 42 in place. The Takeaway hears from advocates Abraham Paulos, Deputy Director of Communications and Policy of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Policy Counsel at the American Immigration Council, about how their organizations are reacting to the end of Title 42. And we also speak with Camilo Montoya-Galvez, immigration reporter for CBS News, about the politics of ending Title 42.

Back in 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs." More than 50 years later, it's clear that what was a war on drugs in principle turned into an assault on marginalized communities in practice. That’s a tone very different than what we heard from President Biden earlier this year during the State of the Union address. At his address, the Biden said, "There is so much we can do: increase funding for prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and recovery. Get rid of outdated rules that stop doctors from prescribing treatments. And stop the flow of illicit drugs by working with state and local law enforcement to go after traffickers. If you’re suffering from addiction, know you are not alone. I believe in recovery, and I celebrate the 23 million Americans in recovery." And it’s not just President Biden. Even conservative politicians like like Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton have advocated for treatment rather than punishment to address opiod addiction – a  a drug epidemic where white Americans largely have been the public face. To be clear opioid use is a crisis. In 2019 over 70 percent of overdose deaths in the US involved an opioid. And according to research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, overdose deaths between 2009 and 2019 actually hit Black communities the hardest.Even as this crisis is being discussed in ways that are different from previous drug epidemics, there is still a lot of stigma for those seeking recovery from opioid use disorder, also known as OUD. This month the Department of Justice sent an important message with hopes of addressing that stigma. The DOJ issued guidance explaining that people who are recovering from opioid use disorder are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act, known as the ADA. This includes anyone taking prescription medications as part of their treatment. We speak with Ryan Hampton, an advocate and author of the book “UNSETTLED: How the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy Failed the Victims of the American Overdose Crisis.” Ryan is also a person in recovery from opioid addiction. We also speak with Kassandra Frederique, executive director at Drug Policy Alliance, a non-profit that works to end the war on drugs.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration extended the national COVID-19 public health emergency for another 90 days. The move will prolong the period in which insurance and Medicaid is required to cover Covid-19 tests, and extend other pandemic related benefits. It comes at a moment when cases continue to rise in some parts of the country, but hospitalizations and deaths remain down. We speak with New York Times science and global health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli about how the Biden administration and local leaders are handling the current stage of the pandemic.

April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate we’re going to chat with a series of young poets about their love for poetry. In this installment we’ll speak with Kevin Gu, the 2021 National Student Poet representing the Northeast region of the United States for The National Student Poets Program.

On February 13, 2020, Olivia Warren, staff attorney at the Center for the Death Penalty Litigation and former law clerk of the newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, brought national attention to the federal judiciary when she testified before the House Judiciary Committee. In her testimony,  she gave a deeply personal recount of the sexual harassment she says she faced while serving as a law clerk for the late LA-based, Appellate Judge Stephen Reinhardt. In her testimony, Warren alleged that Judge Reinhardt persistently sexually harassed her and that the system meant to protect people like her did just the opposite. Aliza Shatzman is a family law attorney and former law clerk in Washington D.C. and similarly to Warren's experience, she claims she too was a victim of gender discrimination and retaliation while clerking for a judge in D.C. Superior Court from 2019 to 2020.  In a written Statement for the Record submitted to the House Committee on the Judiciary, she recalled her painful experience of harassment at the hands of a D.C. federal judge, including “[her] attempts to report the mistreatment, how the system failed [her] when she tried to report, and [her] efforts to seek justice for herself and accountability for the misbehaving former judge.” When she filed her complaint against the judge to the D.C. Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure, she found out that there were very few legal protections from harassment and retaliation for law clerks who reported judges' misbehavior. Currently, judges are excluded from anti-discrimination laws, and in July 2021, Congress proposed a bill that would fix this: the Judiciary Accountability Act (JAA). The law would empower judiciary employees who experience abuse, harassment, and retaliation to sue judges under Title VII, along with a number of other measures that create more accountability for judges. For Shatzman, this is just the base level of change needed. She believes the federal judiciary needs meaningful structural change to occur within a system that does little to protect law clerks and other court employees from harassment. We spoke to her about how pervasive this issue is and the legislative efforts being taken to hold judges more accountable.  Editor's note: We reached out to the D.C. Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure for comment on this story and have not yet heard back. Any comments will be updated and made available ASAP.

Last month, a federal judge in Richmond, Virginia ruled that the use of a geofence warrant to make an arrest in a robbery case was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourth Amendment. Civil liberties advocates have raised concerns about geofence warrants for a long time because they give police data for anyone whose phone was in a given area during a specific timeframe. The Takeaway speaks with Jennifer Granick, surveillance and cybersecurity counsel with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, about what this latest ruling means for the use of geofence warrants going forward.

On Monday, A New York jury found R&B singer R. Kelly guilty on all 9 counts against him which included racketeering and sex trafficking charges. We speak with dream hampton, showrunner and executive producer of the docu-series “Surviving R. Kelly” about what this conviction means to her and Kelly’s numerous victims.    Correction: At 9:05 minutes in the interview, the guest says that Stephen Henderson produced BET's awards shows. She meant to refer to Stephen Hill, the former president of programming for BET Networks.

If you have yet to get swept up in the wave of cryptocurrency investments, you are not alone. While it may seem that bitcoins and ethereum are making millionaires out of early-adopters, there is much to understand about the individual risks of buying digital currencies and the potential dangers cryptocurrency poses to our economic system as well as the environment. We speak with John Beccia, co-founder and CEO of FS Vector, and Hilary J. Allen, author of “Driverless Finance,” about fintech, cryptocurrency, and the importance of regulation.

Gordon Plaza – a subdivision in New Orleans’ Desire neighborhood, was established in the late 1970s and was supposed to be an opportunity for New Orleans’ emerging Black middle class to buy into the American dream. But the dream that was Gordon Plaza quickly dissolved into a nightmare for the residents of this community when they discovered the very foundation of their community was toxic. In the early 1900s, the land that Gordon Plaza now occupies was low lying, swampy, and largely vacant,  New Orleans used this area as a dumping ground for the city’s waste. It was called the Agriculture Street Landfill. For decades, residents in nearby neighborhoods complained about the site and eventually it was closed. But then in 1965, the city temporarily reopened the Agriculture Street Landfill as a dumping ground for debris from Hurricane Betsy. Most of the new residents who first bought in Gordon Plaza in the 1980s did not know their homes sat on a toxic site. But within a decade, debris and residue became visible as sealed oiled drums literally popped out of the ground in family’s yards. Under intense pressure from environmental activists and distressed residents, the  Environmental Protection Agency began to test Gordon Plaza’s soil and found 140 toxic and hazardous materials, more than 40 of which were known to cause cancer. In 1994 the EPA declared the area a superfund, or hazardous waste site. In the mid-1990s, the EPA financed a $20 million remediation project to remove contaminated soil from some areas of the property and replace it with new soil, but now that residents in the area knoe the land they owned was a former landfill and dumpsite, they are seeking more than just new dirt for their backyards. They want a way to relocate, and residents are still fighting with the City of New Orleans for the funds to do so.  In 2016, the City amended its master plan and included a portion about Gordon Plaza residents. It provided a five year timeline to “Identify and apply for Federal, State, and other funding or resources to relocate consenting residents of the Gordon Plaza Subdivision that was built on the Agriculture Street Landfill.” That five year timeline ended in 2021. Residents have estimated that it will now cost $35 million to relocate the 54 families on still living on Gordon Plaza. On January 6, 2022, the New Orleans City Council earmarked $35 million in the capitol Budget to help relocate residents. But that money is not guaranteed.  According to a 2019 report from the Louisiana Tumor Registry, Gordon Plaza’s census tract has the second highest cancer rate in the state, although the report also says it’s hard to prove links between cancer and certain exposures. We spoke with Wilma Subra, technical advisor to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, and President of Subra Company, an environmental consulting firm. Subra has been working as an environmental consultant for residents on the site since the late 1980s. We also spoke with two residents, Jesse Perkins and Marilyn Amar, who currently live in Gordon Plaza. They bought their houses without knowing about the dangerous toxins they might be exposed to on their own properties. You can learn more about residents' advocacy at GordonPlaza.com. Statement from the City of New Orleans from John F. Lawson II, Deputy Press Secretary: The City of New Orleans is working closely with the Environmental Protection Agency to identify additional resources to redevelop the existing Agriculture Street Landfill and properties near the site, such as those in Gordon Plaza, into a sustainable solar farm that would increase the City’s power resilience and minimize greenhouse gas emissions.To date, EPA has provided technical assistance to the City in funding the science and engineering work for a project Feasibility Study through its Superfund Program. The Feasibility Study estimates building the solar farm will cost approximately $10 million. At present, $2 million in bond funding has been allocated to developing the solar farm project. The $35 million earmark by the New Orleans City Council is not actually tied to the City's project.The most critical element of moving this project forward is property appraisal and acquisition. To that end, the City plans to re-release a Request for Proposal for a third party firm to assist with determining property acquisition costs within the undeveloped property and within Gordon Plaza this month.The Cantrell Administration remains committed to bringing this project to a thoughtful resolution.