What's Been Done and What's Been Won

A special edition devoted to recent police violence. Maureen Taylor brings to the table the experience of 30 years in social work in Detroit.

Maureen Taylor and Bob Ostertag welcome special guests Rick and Michele Tingling-Clemmons from Washington DC.

Maureen Taylor and Bob Ostertag catch up on events since the close of Season 1, and discuss the special guests coming in Season 2.

Groups from around the country add their names and voices to Maureen's lawsuit against the billionaire president.  Meanwhile, yet more victories are won in the fight to make utilities affordable for the poor.

Maureen reports on the decision by both the Detroit city government and the Michigan state government to have NO WATER SHUTOFFS for the duration of the pandemic. A major victory for low income people, She then explains the difference between "assistance" and "affordability" – affordability meaning that low income people are are billed for the basic necessities of life on the basis of income, and the coming attempt to take the affordability model national. 

Maureen Taylor and two more black women in Detroit sue Donal Trump for violating the Voting Rights Act, through his repeated insistence that the only votes that should not be counted in Michigan are the votes from the overwhelmingly black precincts.

In this special edition which focuses for the first time on Bob Ostertag's home city of San Francisco, we meet Myrna Melgar, the first Latina EVER elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors without first being appointed to the seat. Myrna's family fled  El Salvador where her family had been torn apart by civil war, the same war on which Bob spent much of the 1980s working as an activist and journalist.

Maureen and Bob are joined by EB Jordan, speaking from her car as she drives around Detroit after dark trying to find an open store that has PPE that she can buy and offer to those waiting in line to vote on Election Day.  And this is after she spent the last few days organizing felons one at a time: explaining that they have the right to vote, and then helping them do so. If you need some insightful, fierce, optimistic final thoughts on the election from someone out in the street fully engaged in the struggle, look no farther.

Maureen tells the stories of some Detroit families facing water and utility shutoffs. Maureen describes how hard it is for poor people not to blame themselves for problems so much bigger than them, and why it is so hard for us to come to terms with the basics of what is happening in our country. Finally, Maureen takes on a a night time list to the Detroit zoo, and to the morgue. 

Maureen and Bob discuss the plot to kidnap and murder the governor of Michigan, who was the decisive actor in guaranteeing access to water for poor people in Detroit. The kidnappers were cheered on by the President and seemingly had the collaboration of a current sheriff. They the turn to new plans to disconnect gas and electricity for poor people in the midst of the pandemic.

Bob and Maureen discuss the political complexities of social media with guest Jon Leidecker of the notorious sound collage group Negativland. Along the way they touch on the automation of automobile production, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement of the 1960s and 70s, and Maureen's experience as a crash test driver for General Motors. 

Maureen tells the story of a nightmarish battle for access to fresh water for Detroit's poor that lasted more than a decade, and how the recent intervention of Governor Gretchen Whitmer turned the tables. Along the way Maureen recounts the rise of car manufacturing in Detroit, the creation of this country's first black middle class, how automation and globalization destroyed all that, and what it is actually like to try to raise a family with kids in a house that has no water.

Bob introduces Maureen Taylor, chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. They recount their meeting in the woods in upstate New York, and how Maureen designated Bob her Ambassador, charged with informing people around the world about poor peoples' struggles in Detroit. Maureen recounts stories of the Covid pandemic from Detroit.