The Takeaway

The first amendment allows citizens of the United States freedom of speech and the right to peacefully assemble and protest. Georgia Senate Bill 171 threatens these constitutional rights by imposing permit requirements, encouraging increased policing, and criminalizing protests. Nora Benavidez, Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice & Civil Rights at Free Press, joins us to discuss the anti-protest legislation in Georgia as part of our series, Georgia 2022: At the Intersections. 

A growing number of state-level laws restricting abortion access have already had real effects on the health of women and raised alarms about the future of reproductive justice and women’s capacity for self-determination. These issues are central to a new play entitled “The Billboard.” We speak with Natalie Moore, reporter for WBEZ and author of The Billboard.

Last week, the Senate passed federal anti-lynching legislation, called the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, through unanimous consent. This comes after 100 years and 200 failed attempts in which anti-lynching measures were blocked by Congress. The Takeaway speaks with Paula Giddings, professor emerita of Africana studies at Smith College and author of Ida: A Sword Among Lions, a biography of Ida B. Wells, about the work that journalist and anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells did to bring awareness to racial terror lynchings during her lifetime.

Emilia Sykes was first elected to her Akron district in 2014 and became the first Black female lawmaker under the age of 30 to serve in the legislature. Her mother, Barbara Sykes, served in the Ohio House and ran for state auditor, and her father, Vernon Sykes, is a state senator. We spoke with Emilia Sykes about her path to leadership and the power of Black women's representation in politics and governance for the third installment of Women Leading Locally, a Women’s History Month special focused on highlighting women breaking barriers, holding office, and making change. 

Russia’s relentless destruction of Ukraine continued this week. According to Ukrainian officials, Russian airstrikes in the town of Mariupol hit a maternity hospital on Thursday where civilians were killed and more than a dozen were wounded. Mariia Sirychenko is originally from Mariupol but was living in Kyiv and working for a tech company at the start of the Russian invasion. She joined The Takeaway to detail her experience leaving Kyiv for the city of Lviv after the war began.

We talked to Councilmembers at-large Helen Gym and Kendra Brooks about their path to politics and the sisterhood they’ve formed through their work in Philadelphia.   

Recent CDC data showed an increase in pregnancy-related deaths during the first year of the pandemic, but for some reason Indigenous women were not included in the research. This is despite the fact that previous studies have shown that Indigenous women are at least twice as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as white women.  The Takeaway speaks with two experts to learn more about why Indigenous women are at higher risk for maternal deaths and what needs to be done to improve their health outcomes: Abigail Echo-Hawk, Executive Vice President at the Seattle Indian Health Board and the Director of the Urban Indian Health Institute and enrolled citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, and Caroline Davis, a research associate working with tribal nations and tribal organizations, and a member of the Navajo Nation.

On Wednesday, the House approved a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill that would fund the government through September, and includes nearly $14 billion in humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine. The bill did not contain aid to continue battling the pandemic. Still, it is one of the largest spending packages in American history. One part of the spending package is directed towards new cybersecurity protections for the United States, which the Senate passed last week. Although cyber attacks from Russia against Ukraine have been low-level so far in the conflict, there is rising concern that Russian-backed hackers could disrupt key infrastructure and resources in Ukraine such as electricity or fuel. Russia’s first big cyberattack against Ukraine happened in 2015, after Russia’s attempt to annex Crimea. It launched a blackout attack against Ukrainian electric companies using malware that resulted in blackouts for almost a quarter-million Ukrainians. And some lawmakers are worried about Russia turning its ire onto the U.S. Last May, a Russian hacker was responsible for a ransomware attack against the Colonial Pipeline that lead to widespread gas shortages along the East Coast – though Russian authorities said they arrested the hacker in January. To learn more about the threat of cyber attacks, we talked with Joseph Marks, writer of the Cybersecurity 202 newsletter for the Washington Post.

In India, there is just one newspaper run entirely by women, Khabar Lahirya, and it covers the region of Uttar Pradesh. The women are also Dalit, or so-called “untouchables,” a category excluded from India’s caste system. This unique outlet is the subject of “Writing with Fire,” an independent Indian feature documentary. Over five years, the filmmakers followed a group of brave women journalists from marginalized communities as the newspaper transitioned from print to digital and as the reporters’ challenged the structures of tradition and power in their region in India. The film is nominated for best documentary feature at this year’s Academy Awards, and has won several other awards in the film festival circuit. We spoke with one of the directors of the documentary, Rintu Thomas.    

As we receive reports of traumatized and starving animals in the Ukrainian zoo during the Russian invasion, we consider our relationship with animals and our responsibility to animals in captivity, especially during wartime. John Kinder, Associate Professor of History at Oklahoma State University, joins us to talk about the history of zoos and how we allocate limited resources for zoo animals during wars, ultimately posing the question about the value of zoos.

A new report by the National Center for Health Statistics shows that pregnancy related deaths for mothers rose in the first year of the pandemic. Black women continue to be disproportionately affected. We talked with Monica McLemore, associate professor of family health care nursing at the University of California, San Francisco about the report and solutions to improve Black maternal and child health care. 

The National Butterfly Center, located along the U.S.-Mexico border, is owned and run by the nonprofit North American Butterfly Association. It’s a conservation project for wild butterflies located on 100-acres of botanical gardens in Mission, Texas. The center closed its doors indefinitely on February 1st due to fears of harassment from far-right conspiracy theorists and anti-immigration groups. In the last few years it has become the target of malicious lies, not unlike the debunked “Pizza-Gate” conspiracy from a few years back, falsely claiming that the center is engaging in human trafficking, exploitation of children, and smuggling immigrants across the border. At the end of January, the center closed for three days because of fear of being targeted by those attending a “We Stand America” border security rally in the neighboring border town of McAllen, Texas. One of the headline speakers was Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a former Trump administration official and QAnon supporter. The center has decided to close until it can assess the risks and plan for reopening safely. But this fight actually dates all the way back to 2017, when the center sued the Trump Administration for trying to build a portion of the border wall that would cut through the middle of National Butterfly Center’s land.We spoke with the Executive Director of the National Butterfly Center, Marianna Traviño-Wright, and to learn more about how the National Butterfly Center got wrapped up in all this, we spoke with Melissa del Bosque, Co-Founder of The Border Chronicle, and who has been covering the National Butterfly Center since 2017.

Once a taboo subject, the pandemic has forced many of us to confront death. It’s also put a spotlight on the people working in the death care industry and the many ways inequities in life are perpetuated in death.  We were joined by Joél Simone Anthony, also known as The Grave Woman, a licensed funeral director, embalmer, insurance agent and sacred grief practitioner and Alua Arthur, death doula and founder of Going with Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization.

Many world leaders, including President Biden, have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of violating international law with his invasion of Ukraine, and used that as a justification for the economic sanctions they’ve imposed on Russia.  Ingrid Wuerth, professor and associate dean at Vanderbilt Law School and incoming co-editor in chief of American Journal of International Law, joins The Takeaway to discuss accountability under international law.

Two million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded two weeks ago.  The UN's high commissioner for refugees has praised the response from Poland, Romania, and Hungary where Ukrainians have fled in search of safety from the relentless attacks. But he acknowledged the horror of what the people themselves are experiencing.  Many global humanitarian organizations in neighboring countries have tried to aid those still in Ukraine, but they’re struggling to employ the normal channels as ports are blocked and roads compromised by bombings.  The Kremlin offered to create so-called humanitarian corridors for civilians to safely leave Ukraine, but mainly allowed pathways leading to Russia and their ally Bela-roos. And as of today, both Ukrainian officials and the Red Cross have cited danger, including mines, along the only routes that led to other parts of Ukraine. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, more than four hundred civilians have been killed in Ukraine and over 800 injured since the Russian invasion began.  For more on this, The Takeaway spoke with  Adam Keehn, Director of Complex Emergencies at the global non-profit Americares.