For today's special Earth Day preview show, Thursday host Allen Ruff speaks with local activists Emily Park and Seth Jensen from 350 Wisconsin about the recent "Banking on Climate Chaos" report, which takes a close look at the financial institutions that fund, insure, and invest in fossil fuel industries globally.

They talk about the key findings of the report, financial greenwashing and the pitfalls of net-zero thinking, local opposition to Line 5, and the importance of centering justice in climate work.

Madison Earth Day celebrations are taking place Friday, April 22 @ 5PM on the UW–Madison Library Mall and Saturday, April 23, tentative time 10AM @ Dane County Farmer’s Market, Capitol Square. More information available here: https://350wisconsin.org/upcoming-events/

Emily Park is communications lead at 350 Wisconsin, where she is involved with the climate justice and divestment campaigns. She is also an organizer with 350.org's Fossil Free Federal Reserve campaign, which is focused on getting the US Federal Reserve System to end fossil fuel investment in the US.

Seth Jensen leads the Divestment & Defund team at 350 Wisconsin. Seth has participated in a number of campaigns for climate justice, including the White House sit-ins to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, the follow-up Pledge of Resistance, and related actions combating fossil fuel extraction. 

Cover photo: Screenshot from the Banking on Climate Crisis Fossil Fuel Finance Report, 2021

Meet the Big Banks Funding the Climate Crisis

Pat Diehl is a gardener and organizer at the Leopold Park Community
Garden in Madison. 

Originally from California, she shares fond memories of
picking beans with her family, learning to garden, and starting school
gardens in Oakland. She also speaks of her love for the restorative power of
gardening.

Pat Diehl (English): Rooted In Land, Preserving Through Generations

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Iva Sidash was a young photojournalist living in Lviv, Ukraine, near the border with Poland. Waking to find her country at war, she went to the train stations to see crowds of Ukrainians leaving the country to seek safety. 

There were families with the belongings they could carry, parents sending their children to safety while they planned to stay, fathers saying goodbye to children before they went to fight, mothers with babies and all varieties of departures and leave-taking.

Rather than leaving and since Lviv was relatively calm, Iva decided to stay and use her camera to document the transformation of her country at war. She photographed faces in the windows of the departing trains, she went to the Polish border to see people waiting in long lines for interminable hours to enter Poland and talked to them and photographed them, she talked to friends and neighbors about what was happening and indeed did document the disruption of life as Ukrainians had known it into something new, different and disquieting.

Eventually she went further afield and spent time in combat zones and cities that had been lost but recovered by Ukrainian forces, ruined cities and rural areas pockmarked by combat, all the while speaking with the people she found at those sites and documenting their reality with her camera. 

She shared her photos on Facebook and Instagram and people began to notice. She has thousands of followers on social media and has exhibited her work and won awards and acclaim.

She got a scholarship to study photography in New York and a Facebook friend in Wisconsin invited her to visit and exhibit her photography here. She’s on that visit now and will open her first solo exhibit at UW-Whitewater on Tuesday, September 26th which will be up until October 20th. That will be in the Student Center at Roberta’s Gallery. 

On Thursday, September 28th she will give a talk at the UW-Madison in Room 206 Ingraham Hall on Bascom Hill (1155 Observatory Drive) at 4:00 pm and present and talk about her photos.

Iva's War

WORT’s World View longtime collective members Marc Becker and Norman Stockwell spoke with independent journalist Amelia Rayno, who is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Rayno talks about her transformation from print journalist at the Minneapolis Star Tribune to independent journalist, following her curiosity about humans and their condition and writing about it all. 

Since late 2022 she’s been living in Argentina, teasing out the reality of the Argentine condition with herself in the midst of it. 

She has created an online documentary series, “Dark Legacy,” about the history of U.S. involvement in Argentina and our government's role in precipitating the country's current financial crisis.

Amelia Rayno on Argentina

Two Saturdays ago, Noble Knight Games, a Fitchburg game store, hosted an unusual tournament. 

The tournament pitted Star War fans against each other in a tabletop game. 

The winner gets a chance to compete in Adepticon - the world convention of table top games - in Schaumburg, Illinois later this spring.

Photo courtesy of Charlie Belawski and WORT News

Fitchburg Game Store Hosts Star Wars Tournament

An assortment of interviews and live music clips from Golden Fest in Queens NY, May 11, 2024, by WORT FM Madison WI "Global Revolutions" host Dan Talmo

Golden Fest Interviews

Easily buy this album here: 
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/make-way-for-mother-mallard-50-years-of-music-2

David Borden : RMI piano & Minimoog D
David Yearsley : Roland Juno 60 & Minimoog D
Blaise Bryski : Juno 106 & Moog Voyager

MOTHER MALLARD / DAVID BORDEN "TCSOC, pt 1" from "Make Way For Mother Mallard"

Last week a Wisconsin state legislature study committee held their first meeting to look at the University of Wisconsin school system. The committee will meet over the next few months before publishing their findings later this year.

Here to discuss the committee's work is Representative Alex Joers, a democrat from Middleton who is serving on the committee, and Professor Neil Kraus, who works at UW-River Falls and has written a book about neoliberalism in higher ed.

In their discussion of the new committee, they touch on the way students and staff have been excluded from serving on the committee, how the rhetorics of austerity persist despite a large state budget surplus, and how the findings of the committee are likely to be skewed under the current Republican leadership in the legislature.

Image courtesy of Brian Standing / WORT News Department

Rep. Alex Joers and Prof. Neil Kraus on the shortcomings of the new committee on higher education

Chali Pittman, News Director at WORT, joined Thursday 8 O'Clock Buzz host Tony Castañeda from the Republican National Convention for a recap of the Wednesday's events and speakers. The day's focus on foreign policy and immigration culminated with the appearance of Trump's VP pick Senator JD Vance (OH) who was, until recently, a vocal critic of Trump.

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler joins Chali and Tony for the second half of the show, sharing his perspective on the GOP's new "pro-labor" position, their softened language on abortion, and promise of mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants. 

WORT's live daily coverage from the GOP convention is made possible through a collaboration with Milwaukee's Riverwest Ratio WXRW-LP, WBAI in New York and Pacifica Radio. For more information, check out We Decide: Live Coverage of the 2024 Election.

Photo credit: Sara Gabler

Live From Milwaukee, It's the GOP Convention!

This project is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.

Photo by Liam Beran/Isthmus.

Democracy Day Special: Tracking Competition and Dialogue in Assembly District 51

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Meet the Big Banks Funding the Climate Crisis

WORT 89.9FM Madison

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