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Amazon’s plans to smear a warehouse worker who was fired after organizing a protest over the lack of coronavirus protection for 5000 workers was racist and classist, illegal and “immoral” says New York’s Attorney General calling for a federal investigation of Chris Small’s termination. With Chris Smalls, terminated Amazon worker/organizer and Derrick Palmer, protesting Amazon warehouse worker

Chris Smalls a warehouse fulfillment center worker for Amazon, the third richest company in the world with a market cap that is nearing a trillion dollars was forced to organize a walk out, at the 5,000 employees warehouse when faced with the rising tide of COVID-19 there.  Well, what do you think Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, whose personal worth is estimated at $123.9 billion, making him the richest man in the world did in response to its frightened and vulnerable workers walkout, employees who are pay a mere $11 – $19 and hour was?  Bezos, himself and his top brass met with Amazon’s general counsel David Zapolsky to cook up a strategy to smear Chris Smalls, a memo leaked to Building Bridges revealed.With classic racist and classist characterizations Amazon contrived to defame and denigrate Chris Smalls, the courageous worker fighting for the very lives of his fellow workers against COVID-19.  And then, Bezos fired Smalls, who was demanding a temporarily shut down of the huge warehouse facility for cleaning, after reports of multiple employees testing positive for COVID-19, and then fighting for protective gear and hazard pay for the associates working through the pandemic and for the pay and full paid stick leave ALL workers deserve.

The COVID-19 pandemic is unfolding fast, with each day’s missives giving us new, and sometimes contradictory, information about the virus. Schools — public and private, pre-K through university — have been scrambling to figure out how to respond since the virus hit the U.S.  Meanwhile, all the evidence suggests that children—and poor children especially—will bear an incredible burden during the coronavirus pandemic and the attendant economic shocks. But that evidence has trouble breaking into a national conversation dominated by mortality rates and work-from-home strategies. The pandemic is acutely affecting the delivery of K–12 education.As of March 19, 2020, 44 states had closed 104,000 schools, affecting nearly 48 million students, turning millions of families into accidental home-schoolers.  The pandemic arises on the tail the nation’s public school system having been faced with a wave of protests, teacher strikes, and student walkouts exposing the outrageous inequality plaguing the public education system and where the budget numbers reveal how unfair funding programs dictate what our children are worth, depending on where they live, the color of their skin, and their families’ wealth.  School funding levels, according to the analysis of the Education Law Center and the Rutgers Graduate School of Education vary most dramatically along school-district lines, generally dictated by local property taxes, which renders the education of some wealthy children funded at double the rate of a poor kid’s. There are also stark disparities across state lines, with statehouses primarily managing education policy. Fifteen years after “No Child Left Behind” promised to “close the achievement gaps” in race and socioeconomic background, children in more than one-third of the states are not just stagnating, they’re sliding backward with what the ELC calls “regressive” funding.  Poor kids are priced out of educational equity.School budgets are moral documents, revealing not only how much society values education as a public good, but how we value the children of different communities. Today, with a reactionary administration seeking to privatize public education further, children living in extreme deprivation stand to lose the most. About four in 10 students attend schools in districts with poverty rates of upwards of 75 percent, which perpetuates the structural poverty that keeps families trapped in poor communities with impoverished schools. Now says Bader the likely outcome of this pandemic, like most others in history, will again uncover our most basic educational inequities.

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Tune in at 9 am Thursdays to Equal Rights and Justice hosted by Mimi Rosenberg
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In addition to being broadcast over WBAI,  99.5 FM in NYC and the tri-state area 7 – 8 pm EST Mondays, Building Bridges is syndicated to 50  broadcast and internet  radio stations in the US, Canada and the UK                            

Building Bridges National Edition is regularly broadcast over:

WADR, Janesville, WI
WPPM, Philadelphia, PA
KBOG, Bandon, OR
WESU – Middleton, CT
KYAQ. Newport, OR
KGRN Columbus, Ohio
KOPN, Columbia, MO
KWRK, Fairbanks, Alaska
WLSL, Dade City, FL
WMNB, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
WZBC, Boston, Mass.
WDRT, Viroqua, WI
KYRS, Spokane, WA
Liberty and Justice1640, Shirley Mass
KWTF,Sonoma County CA
KNSJ, San Diego, CA
KRFY, Sandpoint, ID
KMUD, Redway, CA
WXOJ-LP, Florence, MA
KPOV, Bend, Oregon
KONR Ankorage, Alaska
WAPJ, Torrington, CT.
WOOL, Great Falls, Vermont and New Hampshire
KKRN Bella Vista, CA
KGHI, Westport, WA
KSVR, Mount Vernon, WA
WAZU, Peoria, Illinois
KMEC, Ukiah, CA
KOWA, Olympia Washington .
WWUH, West Hartford, CT
WMNF HD FM Tampa, Florida
WPVM – MAIN-FM  Asheville, NC
WERU Blue Hill and Bangor, Maine
WGOT –  Gainesville, Florida.
WUOW – Oneonta, N.Y.
WVJW- Benwood, WV
KRFP, Moscow, ID
KSOW,Cottage Grove, Oregon
WKNH ,Keene, NH
CKDU, Halifax, N.S., Canada
WRPI, Troy, New York
WNRB, Wausau, WI
KQRP Salida, California
East Hill Radio, Snoqualmie, WA
KSKQ, Ashland, Oregon
KWMD, Kasiloff-Anchorage, Alaska
WPRR, Grand Rapids, Michigan
KROV, Oroville, CA

as well as internet stations:

                         Celebral Radio
Dirty Chai Radio
Workforce Rising
Chiampa Internet Radio
Global Community Radio 1, Geneva, N.Y.
WTF Radio, Bodega Bay CA
CPR Metro, NYC
Radio Free Radical
Radio Free Kansas
Radio Veronica, West Point, PA
Catalystradio.org,  U.K.
WXXE
Seattle Radical Radio
Radio for Peace International
Labourstart
AmericanFM.org
Grateful Dread Public Radio
Detour Network, Knoxville, TN
KDX Radio, Homeland, North American
Radio Ear Network, Sarasota, FL
TuneIn.com
Channel One Radio
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For  archived Building Bridges Programs go to
        our website:
                    www.buildingbridgesradio.org