PERSPECTIVES with Julie Rufo

PERSPECTIVES interviews, Table of Contents

• Ann Ginger on Civil Rights
• Kate Resucha and Karen Kenney, from Girls Inc., on raising young women
• Two Muslim neighbors, Dr. Hatifie and Sister Baldes
• Susan Galleymore about mothers in Middle East conflict areas, 2 shows
• Sureya Sayadi on Honor Killings
• Andrea Buffa on Media Reform
• Sanaz Meshkinpour on U.S.-Iran relations
• David Bacon on Immigration
• Sheryl Lane and Venesia Thompson of Urban Habitat
• Rafael Schiller-Laden of World Can't Wait
• Dr. Richard Walker on the Greening of the SF Bay Area. 2 shows
• Jacqueline Cabasso, on the dangers of nuclear energy and the resurgence of nuclear weapons, 2 shows
• Dr. Michael Parenti on the meaning of Imperialism and what we can do about it, 2 shows
• Barbara Lubin, Executive Director of the Middle East Children's Alliance
• the Renegade Rescuers about the SF Bay Oil Spill in 2007
• Elizabeth de la Vega on Outlaw Government, 2 shows
• Dahr Jamail on Iraq: What We Have Done, 2 shows
• Virender Goswami on Immigration Law Abuses
• James Soper on Electronic Voting Machines
• Antonia Juhasz on The BU$H Agenda, 2 shows
• May Day 2008, when Labor shutdown all West Coast ports to protest the invasion of Iraq
• Dr. Raj Patel on the worldwide food crisis
• Dr. Barry Schutz on Zimbabwe
• Matt Heberger on the water crisis
• MaryAnn Thomas of World Can't Wait, protesting military recruiting in Berkeley
• Daniel Lavelle on Venezuela
• Norman Solomon on the Warfare State and Political Possibilities, 2 shows
• Dr. Farid Younos on Afghanistan, 2 shows
• Betsy Rose on the importance of singing, 2 shows

Venesia Thompson recently relocated from Florida to join the staff of Urban Habitat as its new Associate Director. She holds a Masters degree in Political Science with a minor in Public Administration and a Certificate of Specialization in Community and Economic Development. Before joining the staff of Urban Habitat, Venesia was the Assistant Director of the Center for Urban Redevelopment and Education (CURE), an applied research and community outreach center based at Florida Atlantic University. As part of Urban Habitat, Venesia oversees the day-to-day operations of the organization to include financial management, staff development and management, strategic alliances, and program management.

Sheryl Lane, a Richmond native, is Urban Habitat's Coordinator of the Richmond Equitable Development Initiative (REDI). Sheryl spent the last two years working in local government as a community relations and policy analyst for the Office of Mayor Ron Gonzales in San Jose, CA. In addition, she worked in corporate communications for major Bay Area corporations. Sheryl holds a Bachelors degree in Psychology and Social Behavior and Sociology from University of California, Irvine and a Masters in Urban Policy and Management from New School University in New York City.

Venesia and Sheryl describe the work Urban Habitat does in Richmond to make sure that the Bay Area remains a place for all people, especially low-income and communities of color, to live and flourish.

Rafael Schiller-Laden, is a youth and student organizer with the organization, World Can't Wait! He became politically active in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when he became outraged at the Bush Administration's neglect and abuse of hurricane survivors. Since then, he has been mobilizing college and high school activism across the Bay Area, including anti-war protests, school walkouts and in-school teach-ins, reaching large student audiences (the "Mission of a Generation Speaking Tour"), and has recently been reaching out to tens of thousands with WCW's resistance at summer mega-concerts. Last summer he took WCW on its Red State Bus Tour across the Southern states and was involved in mobilizing against the notorious evangelical youth group "Battlecry" when it came to San Francisco to recruit teenagers into a militaristic, Christian Right movement. In the last few months Rafael was involved in an occupation of the FEMA building in Oakland on the 2nd anniversary of Katrina, and just recently. in confronting the College Republicans at SF State as they attempted to use the 6th anniversary of 9/11 to justify this endless war

In this interview, Rafael explains World Can't Wait's Call to Action. He describes the futility of ordinary protest and dares to hope and plan for driving out the Bush regime and completely repudiating its policies and practices, in order to save the best of American legal and political principles.

Dr. Walker is Professor of Geography and Chair of the California Studies Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

In the interview he talks about the Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area. Author of The Country in the City, he explains how the Bay Area escaped the fate of the East Coast in maintaining and enhancing it's balance of nature and urban development. From the book's jacket notes:

The Bay Area's civic landscape has been fought over acre by acre, an arduous process requiring popular mobilization, political will, and hard work. It's most cherished environments...have engendered some of the fiercest environmental battles in the country and have made the region a leader in green ideas and organizations.

In the second show of this two-part interview, Dr. Walker goes into more depth about organizations that continue this fight and the problems they battle threatening healthy open space, in the urban core regions like Hunter's Point in San Francisco, and in the Sacramento delta region.