Podcasts about national farm workers association

Cesar was a civil rights, Latino, farm worker, and labor leader; a religious and spiritual figure; a community servant and social entrepreneur; a crusader for nonviolent social change; and an environmentalist and consumer advocate. In 1968, Chavez gained attention as leader of a nationwide boycott of California table grapes in a drive to achieve labor contracts. He fasted for 25 days in 1968 to affirm his own personal commitment and that of the farm labor movement to non-violence. He fasted again for 25 days in 1972, and in 1988, at the age of 61, he endured a 36-day "Fast for Life" to highlight the harmful impact of pesticides on farm workers and their children. Cesar's life as a community organizer began in 1952 when he joined the Community Service Organization (CSO), a prominent Latino civil rights group. While with the CSO, Cesar coordinated voter registration drives and conducted campaigns against racial and economic discrimination primarily in urban areas. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Cesar served as CSO's national director. Cesar's dream, however, was to create an organization to protect and serve farm workers, whose poverty and disenfranchisement he had shared. In 1962, Cesar resigned from the CSO to found the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of America. For more than three decades Cesar led the first successful farm workers union in American history, achieving dignity, respect, fair wages, medical coverage, pension benefits, and humane living conditions, as well as countless other rights and protections for hundreds of thousands of farm workers. Against previously insurmountable odds, he led successful strikes and boycotts that resulted in the first industry-wide labor contracts in the history of American agriculture. His union's efforts brought about the passage of the groundbreaking 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act to protect farm workers. Today, it remains the only law in the nation that protects the farm workers' right to unionize. The significance and impact of Cesar's life transcends any one cause or struggle. He was a unique and humble leader, in addition to being a great humanitarian and communicator who influenced and inspired millions of Americans to seek social justice and civil rights for the poor and disenfranchised in our society. Cesar forged a diverse and extraordinary national coalition of students, middle class consumers, trade unionists, religious groups, and minorities. His motto in life – "Sí Se Puede!" (it can be done!) – embodies the uncommon and invaluable legacy he left for the world's benefit. Source: FreedomArchives.org; audio samples

Bay Native Circle 03-29-2023  This transcript was edited and proofed for accuracy, made with the help of the built-in transcription & dictation feature in Microsoft Word. If you find any errors in this transcription, please feel free to leave us a message in the comments. You can listen to the episode on this page, or go here https://archives.kpfa.org/data/20230329-Wed1900.mp3 to download.  00:00:00   00:00:45 Tony Gonzales  Anpetu Thayetu Waste Mitakuyapi – Good Evening Relatives & Welcome to Bay Native Circle here on KPFA & online at KPFA.org. This is Tony Gonzales your host Tonight, March 29th & this evening we will be speaking with Kenny Barrios of Tachi [Southern Valley Yokuts] Peoples of the San Joaquin Valley, south of Fresno out in Akron area. Kenny will talk to us about the floods & all the waters are feeding into the San Joaquin Valley into what was once Tulare. Lake Tulare had disappeared over the decades because of the damming of the four major rivers, in the Corcoran area. [Lake Tulare] is now reappearing, true to form, with all the water draining over the sidewalk canals, levees & waterways—now refilling Tulare Lake. So, Kenny will talk to us from his point of view & give us a little history of his people around that Lake [& their relocation]. [Kenny] will sing us a song of his people's ancient song of this Western Hemisphere my relatives, I hope you will appreciate.   We will [also] be speaking with Jean Roach. Many of, you know, over the years, she's a longtime friend & supporter of Leonard Peltier [the] political prisoner—now, going on 48 years for a crime he did not commit. Jean Roach was at that firefight, that historic day back on June 26th, 1975, when three men were shot & killed two FBI agents Joe Stuntz was also among those killed. & by the way, an investigation on his death has not been initiated, nor concluded by the Department of Justice.   Jean will talk to us about Leonard, Peltier, and all the various campaigns. Most importantly, [Jean will talk about] going to the United Nations, this April 17th through 28th, to attend the 22nd session of the Permanent Forum on indigenous history. So I'll be sharing some of that history of the international arena with Jean [&] the impact of indigenous peoples of the world, on the United Nations Arena goes back, a hundred years now—[since] nineteen twenty-three, my relatives [when we] went for the first time, [when] Chief Deskaheh of the Cayuga Nation of the Iroquois [Haudenosaunee] Confederacy appeared in Geneva & [addressed] the League of Nations to tell them about the environment, & pollution. He went with his Wampum to talk about honoring treaties & many of the issues that are still relevant…today, [such as] protecting sacred sites. But this is a milestone in international indigenous development & we will be attending that permanent forum—& Jean, & her delegate advocates will be among them. [Jean will] share a bit of history with us, my relatives.   But before we do that, I just wanted to express some concerns. Indian People all across the country [ha] gotten attention when President Joe Biden broke another campaign promise. & that is with the opening [of] northeastern Alaska for the Willow Project. & this Willow Project is to open up gas & oil drilling in that region. Formerly President Trump had opened up for leasing during his term & when President Biden came on board, he suspended it. But evidently [Biden is] backpedaling & now he's opened up that region much to the consternation of Indian Peoples on both sides of that slope. & I'm talking about the NPR or the Northern Petroleum region and how that could be a major concern to the kitchen and other traditional peoples. On the Western Slope with reference to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That is where the Caribou [are], 300,000 Caribou my relatives, in that Northern Region way up there. The porcupine caribou needs the protection of the traditional people & for us to help them in that protection.   So there's a lot to be said, so I will try & get a story for you on that perhaps next week or as soon as possible to see how you can help. That's the Conico drilling company in Alaska who will be doing some of that [drilling]. There is projected like six hundred million gallons of oil per year will be extracted from there. So, there's much concern on how they just might begin to overlap into sacred ground of the porcupine caribou—referred to as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the ANWR, my relatives; that drilling would be in that North Slope area. Now, we need to be considering how to hold President Biden accountable and what is to be done & will there be some any lawsuits where legal challenges are ahead? This is the concern that seemed to be popping up & we'll try & tell that story to my relatives.
 But also, I just wanted to say that Morning Star. Gali—she's our co-host here on Bay Native Circle, as we rotate during the month & has a show with us—she's now…the new vice-president… [for the] Pit River Tribe, where she's been the preservation officer for many years. Well, now she is the vice chairperson of Pit River Tribe up there in Northern California. So that is terrific. Will be hearing some good news from her & her tribe as we move forward.   All right, let's go into that interview with Kenny Barrios…of the Tachi Indian peoples & [talk about] the work that he's doing & bringing us the insights of the lake that once was Tulare Lake and is now once again. &…on the line I've invited the Kenny Barrios [who] lives out there in the central San Joaquin Valley & out there in the Corcoran area. Kennedy, I've invited you to talk to us here on Bay Native Circle…about the weather conditions in the San Joaquin Valley. & we've been hearing a lot about flooding of course & out on the West Coast, a lot of news & concern for the people there and in Pajaro. But in the central San Joaquin Valley, the weather conditions are such that people are in need as well. Can you introduce yourself & describe the people that you're working with please?     00:07:40 Kenny Barrios  So, my name is Kenny Barrios. I'm a Tachi Yokut Tribal Member from the Central Valley. We're the people of Tulare Lake. We're the Mud Duck People, so…you see we the people of Tulare Lake. Our Tribe originated around the lake.     00:07:52 Tony Gonzales  Tulare Lake was a big majestic freshwater lake. It was considered the largest west of the Mississippi, Kenny & over the decades, over the century that is. [With] the dams that have been built there on the Sierra Nevada's out in your area…with all this rain, a lot of water [had] nowhere else to go—but it seems like it's naturally flowing into what was Tulare Lake and is today. [Kenny] tell us about the conditions in your particular community.     00:08:30 Kenny Barrios  So, we'll go back to when it first started when we were getting all that rain. So, our sister Tribe—Tule River Tribe, took a big hit. A lot of flash floods throughout their tribe & they washed away the roadway & everything & then it started trickling down to the to the city. Yeah, our sister tribe, they took a really big hit [from the storm] They're good now, you know, they're back to working & everything. The conditions of the, the roadways & everything have been really bad, so [the Tule River Tribe] lost a lot of their back roads, [became] submerged underwater to back to its original place of Tulare Lake. The so where?   Where [my tribe is] right now, we're like 15 miles away from the water to where the water is starting right now. But eventually, when all the water is done, we should be at least 10 miles away. You know the lake gets pretty big. It is the largest freshwater lake, West of Mississippi. That's 75 miles long & 45 miles away. We went from the great the base of the Grapevine, all the way up to the town of Lemoore & went from Corcoran all the way to Kettleman City. It is a big fresh body, and there were stories of when they were taking the lake down. They had so many fish in there…fish hatcheries that were around here until the lake was gone.  00:10:16 Tony Gonzales  OK, can you tell us if you are in Corcoran proper or an outlining incorporated [area]?  00:10:30 Kenny Barrios  So, we are like 10 miles away from Corcoran & it's just a little bitty town. But the town is like, right on the edge of the shore of the Tulare. So once all the water comes, it passes right by Corcoran, & so Corcoran is taking a big hit of it right now. The Corcoran Prison is right next to it. They just showed another picture of the water, & they showed the I5 & it is big ready [to flood more] & there's a lot of snow.   Still in the mountain river, a lot of water is still coming down. We're not done raining yet, you know? So that's all these years that they were hiding the water, taking it away from the land & letting everybody in the valley suffer with no water. It's all coming back all at once & now it's going to be where you can't control it. You can't control what you thought you could control. It's coming back to Mother Nature, you know, mother nature's going to let you know who's really in charge. This is her land, that this is created around. This is indigenous peoples land, this land right here. [Our land] speaks, this land is alive, this land & that lake have been asleep. It wasn't gone, they tried to make it a memory, it is not a memory. It is alive & so itself again, just like that.     00:11:49 Tony Gonzales  Is it just your [personal] tribal community that you are working with? Is that the Tulare [River] Reservation you're working at or?     00:12:02 Kenny Barrios  No, I work. I work at Tachi Yokut tribe. So, Tachi Yokut Tribe, we are the sister tribe of the Tule River [Tribe]. So, like I said, we're the Mud Duck People, we're the people from Tulare Lake. So, there's five original tribes around the lake. There is the Tachi & the Nutunutu, Wo'lasi the Wowol and I think the Wo'noche (Wo'noche may be misspelled. If you know the proper spelling, please contact us) they were all they were all the five tribes that were around the lake.     00:12:31 Tony Gonzales  I understand though, when Tulare Lake was in its full development, you know, as a water body & that there are well over 30[to]50 Indigenous [tribes around the lake]. Your peoples…got relocated further east into the foothills?     00:12:56 Kenny Barrios  Yeah, so we had…over like 70,000 members in our tribe. So, when the first contact came, by the time a lot of it was done, we were down to like 200 tribal members & [then] we got down to like 40 Tribal Members. Then…that's when the government came in & started saving us & helping us out & gave us a piece of land to where they gave us 40 acres where we reside on today. That is our original village of Waiu [on Mussel Slough].      00:13:35 Tony Gonzales  Kenny, are you reaching out? Is there a state of emergency call or?     00:13:45 Kenny Barrios  Well…so where we are at…we're not in a state of emergency because we're not. We're like, if anything happens, we're going to be on the shoreline, we will not be in the middle of the water. We're not going to be in the way of the of the lake. So, us as indigenous people, we never put our villages where they will be in danger & this is the one of our original villages that we are on right now. So, we are in our original village of Waiu. So, if that water was to come back fully, if that lake was to fully return, we still would be safe because we're on our original village & our original villages were never put in in harm's way—because that's as native people, we know where to put our villages.   So our lake, we have stories about the lake. A long time ago, it was just our people. You know, our people, the stories are the animals created the world. So the story is that there was nothing but water. Well, Eagle & Raven were flying over & they seen a mud duck. So they went down & they saw the mud duck, had mud on his bill. So Eagle tells Mud Duck: “Hey Mud Duck! Where'd you get that mud at?” [Mud Duck] says: “I got it down at the bottom of the lake” & Eagle goes “Oh well, if you bring me one scoop of mud, I'll give you 1 fish.” [Mud Duck] said “Oh, yeah, I could do that.” And Raven said “If you bring me one scoop of mud I'll give you one fish too.” So…Mud Duck was bringing the mud up, Eagle was building his hills on the east side & Raven was building the hills on the West side. Well, Eagle said one day that he's going to go off & look for more help & he tells Duck & Raven to keep building on his side so when he gets he can get building. So, when [Eagle] came back he found out that…Raven just built his [own] side. So Eagle tells Duck “I'll give you two fish if you bring me two scoops of mud. So Duck said  “Yeah, I'll do that, I'll give you 2 scoops of mud and you bring me two fish.” So they kept doing that & kept doing that for a while until they were done. That's why Eagles hills on the east side are bigger than the hills on the West side, because the Eagle had made Duck give him more mud so he could build his [side] up to catch up to Rave—but he passed [Raven] up & made his house bigger. So we have stories about the lake. These are legit stories.     00:16:15 Tony Gonzales  Yes…Kenny, I wanted to ask you again [about] some of the incorporated towns…that are surrounded indeed by corporate farming like that whole area is. There towns that [are] threatened by water & floods—towns such as Allensworth for example—unincorporated [towns]. But they're surrounded by a corporation…the big company of Boswell. Can you share with us a little bit of history about who this rancher Baron is—Boswell—who feels he can also control water?     00:16:49 Kenny Barrios  Well, sure, Boswell, he is a man that has the government in his pocket. He's no longer here, I heard he's no longer here, whatever. But his family, they are very, very powerful. They can make the government do things that we can't. So he's the reason why the dams are built, because it flooded his cotton fields one year, so he had then divert the water [so that his fields would no longer be prone to flooding]. He made decisions like that, he controlled the water, every piece of water that comes out of the ground. [The Boswell family] owns the most of it.  It's hard because us as people, we need the water, we need the water to live. But everybody wants us to stop using the water so the farmers can grow whatever & make money for themselves. You know they don't give anything back to any community. You know, like our community, for example, where we provide out everywhere you know, because we have our casino, we help out a lot of places & we hardly ever get [anything in return].   But so all the farmers around us, every farmer around us, they all fighting for water. Well, us as native people, we don't even have the water rights. They have a water board, but we aren't allowed on it because we are a government. We are not a individual owning a piece of land. They found a loophole to keep us out because if we were on [the board] we'd have more power [to] keep our water to ourselves.     00:18:18 Tony Gonzales  And the water? The Boswell family ultimately corralled included several major rivers in that area, the Kings River among them. What are the other rivers that I hear that there's four major rivers that are indeed a part of this flood now that is overcoming the land?     00:18:32 Kenny Barrios  Yeah it's the Kings River, it's the Tule River, it's the Deer Creek & Cross Creek. Well, the those ones come from Kaweah, Deer Creek. I think that comes from Kaweah & Cross Creek comes from Kaweah. So we got Lake Kaweah, we got Lake Success, we got—which I can't think of the name of it—but there's another one down South too. They all bring the water to the to Tulare Lake & that's what's happening right now. They cannot stop it & they're not going to stop it so. They actually, told Boswell that [they have] to let the water go into the lake.   So I like the fact that…they are having to do what we had to do, but we are not doing it to them…You know, they did it to themselves. They put themselves in a situation where they won't be able to help themselves or help anybody else. They've done so much damage to the Central Valley that it is all coming back to them & it's nobody's fault but their own. I feel bad for the ones that are in the path. That are going to be having stuff done to their homes and to themselves, but that's nature. That's the way Mother Nature works. She doesn't sugarcoat anything if she's going to destroy you, she's going to destroy you. If you're in her way, you're in her path. She going to make you move if you don't move, she's going right over you. That's what it is. That's the way life is. & we had to deal with the fact that we couldn't move around on our own land. We're limited to what we did. So now it's Creators way of telling you “this is what you're going to do, & you're not going to say nothing about it.” So yeah…we think the indigenous way & that's who wea are.     00:20:30 Tony Gonzales  It's full circle full circle with its corporate farming & now the push back because I understand that company is so powerful that they're able to maneuver where the flooding should be, where it keeps the open fields as dry as can they be, so it doesn't get flooded…trying to protect corporate interest.     00:20:50 Kenny Barrios  …who has that right to do these type of things to innocent people, you know? They should be held accountable for that. That is like they're destroying peoples homes & it's all because of greed because [they want] to make money at the end of the day.     00:21:19 Tony Gonzales  Well, I think the cities are going have to come to terms with that & try to deal with the corporation, which is almost like a government in itself. It's so vast & powerful as you described it. Indeed, the damage, you know, the rain, the flood has creates so much damage. If you're there because there's a lot of farm workers that will be out of work for at least six, seven maybe eight months. I don't know how many in your community are dependent on farm work, but that's going be a big concern & a big need. Are there any other issues that you foresee in the future, Kenny, that your people are preparing for?     00:21:54 Kenny Barrios  So for our future I'm foreseeing more water. You know, we want to see more water. We're fleeing everybody's prayers are working here because we're to see so far as it looks like it's going to be a good, good turn out with it…so I just wanted to finish off with…a song about that lake. You know, we have songs about it…It talks about when the big floods come, you know, & then the Lake Grove & the natives would have to gather their stuff & move away from the lake. Then when summer time comes, the lake would shrink to move away from the people & so that people would have to gather their stuff up & move back to the lake. So this song, this song about the lake, it's talking about how the natives thought that the lake didn't like them. The lake did not want them by it because every time they moved by it, the lake would push them away or every time they moved back to it'll move away from them. So this lake, we have a big connection to it. I've never seen this lake in my lifetime, you know, & I prayed for it, you know.           00:23:02 Tony Gonzales  Aho, an ancient song!     00:24:19 Tony Gonzales  Well thank you Kenny for reporting to us about the flooding that's going on in the Corcoran area & a little history on Tulare Lake that is beginning to reappear. It's still just a quarter…of the size it used to be as you described as 75 miles across. We'll try to get back with you as the rain continues to let us know the damage going on & also what concerns your people may have, that we can get it out on the airwaves like we are today. Thank you very much.     00:25:00 Kenny Barrios  Alright, well if you all need anything else now let me know I hope you have a good day, Aho!     00:25:10 Tony Gonzales  Aho, I want to thank Kenny Barrios for his insights, his song & telling us about the water & the flood from an Indian point of view & how they perceive it—really making full circle from how it was a big, massive 75 miles across [lake]. From what I understand…the largest the West of the Mississippi & surrounded by over 40 California Central San Joaquin Valley tribes, including the Yokuts, the Tachi, & & many more. So, I want to thank Kenny for bringing that to us…Now let's go into that interview with our good friend Jean Roach on behalf Of Leonard Peltier.   My relatives, now I've invited Jean Roach to talk to us. Jean Roach is with the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, & she's been working the on behalf of Leonard Peltier & for his freedom since 1975. Well, I must say, Jean Roach has been on the airwaves here on Bay Native Circle on KPFA several times, because of our concern for Leonard Peltier. She's launched many campaigns, both regional, national & international, & has been to many forms on behalf of Leonard Peltier.   Jean, you know we're right at the cusp if you will, of attention. Here giving these changes over the last couple of months, indeed from the walk to Washington, DC, from Minneapolis, the Democratic National Committee support for the release of Leonard Peltier, & that's representative of 70 million Democratic voters. Supposedly, there was a former FBI agent who stepped forward? A woman who's retired, who says that indeed it's a vendetta that the FBI has about Leonard Peltier & & now Jean, we're up to this moment.   The United Nations is preparing their annual United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues, & this is the 22nd session. It will begin on April the 17th, on through the 28th. Jean Roach, myself, yourself, Ruthann Buffalo, attorney for Leonard Peltier, former federal Judge Kevin Sharp, is among the delegation going this April to the UN in New York. Please, that was a broad introduction to what we're going to talk about, but if you can introduce yourself, Jean, tell us a little bit about some of the campaigns you've been involved in & the work that goes on at the UN…Jean Roach.     00:28:20 Jean Roach  Híŋhaŋni wašté good morning or good evening. My name is Jean, I'm a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. I'm a survivor of the 1975 Oglala firefight & I've been working on better freedom for yeah, many years since it happened. All along we've been saying that he was innocent. And there's been so much FBI corruption & interference things & just straight up continued genocide. You know, when is this going to stop? And when it represents the treatment of our native people by the United States government.   And you know, it's been a long time that 47 years, that he's been inside there. We can't imagine the psychological mental stress that he's feeling there…You know…not only that his body…he's a diabetic, he's not getting the right food. He's an elder, I mean, we can go on & on about his health & we see that as his number one priority, is trying to get him health care. [It is] along the same lines of Freedom & Justice. I Mean it's all part of a well-being, & I think that he represents the same thing our native people.   We're fighting for health care too. For him in a more way, because he has a aortic aneurysm that could explode at any time. Along with the diabetes, with the inadequate food, you know…it just continues on getting worse. You know, his eyes are being affected. So, you know, his health is really a big issue & people like the Bureau of Prisons, they ignore it. It's such a big monstrous system that they have no personality &…they don't treat you like human beings inside of the prison.   So Leonard's been suffering, not only physical, but mental anguish. You know, he has…people telling him lies. A lot of elder abuse is going on there, you know. And we at the board of the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, are very concerned.   You know we have attacks on our website we have other organizations that are trying to appear like they've been involved. I'll tell you what our board has years of activism on a grassroots level & [we have] educated women. I mean, I've put this to the board right here, you know. Our next move is going back to the United Nations & keep putting that pressure on. I personally feel that. International pressure is really [important]. Alongside our tribal nations, we have several, you know, we have all the northern tribes pretty much that have signed resolutions or support letters & efforts to get Leonard Peltier freedom—& we've been ignored, you know.   National Congress of American Indians, but [we have] several resolutions…we're just hitting the pavement & you know, we want everybody [to help]. I mean, Amnesty International just launched another international campaign. You know, we have so much support in the past & in the present, there's senators have signed on, we have church groups. I mean, what is it going to take for President Biden to do what the American public wants?   And, you know, we focus on a lot of stuff along with Leonard. You know it represents, you know, like a total…representation of how our tribes are being treated. Until they give justice to Peltier, they'll never come to the table in a good faith effort. As long as they let that atrocity of misinformation & manipulation continue to Peltier, you can't trust them.  I mean, it only takes common sense & I would advise the people worldwide the same every nation that has the issue of the United States government, we all need to actually combine our efforts & ask for some real [action]. We don't just want to get token answers, we want some reality recognition & respect of our human rights. That's all we are asking for & part of the human the basic human rights is being treated fairly & just because the color of our skin should not continue keeping us in prisons & in poverty.   So this is a big case & it's not only Peltier, but it's prisoners & Native Americans & indigenous people worldwide. When they [imprison] a man for 47 years because they changed the laws to fit…what they want. You know, they wanted the scapegoat for the agents that were killed, but they didn't tell the real story. You know, they attacked women & children in the camp, which they did at Wounded Knee. They did that & wounded in 1973 & 1890. I mean, they like to attack women & children & elders & never stopped in 1975.   Let's be real with the real story is so all I can say is that…people can help do stuff if they'd like to. [They can] write letters, they [can] ask other organizations to write resolutions. We have the website www.WhoIsLeonardPeltier.info. We have a board, we have a Facebook page, the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. All the women on our board are actually very educated on his plight & a lot of Native issues, you know: we have the MMIW; we're fighting for the Black Hills; we're fighting poverty & a racist city, also known as Rapid City, SD. We're fighting for housing. I mean, we're just focused on survival & that includes every one of those things we talked about. So health here is a forefront…So we continue on.     00:33:43 Tony Gonzales  Aho thank you, Jean Roach. You know for that layout & we also have a lot of young listeners that are, you know, tuning in & are becoming more & more familiar with Leonard felt here as we present this cases as frequently as often as we can here on KPFA. And there's a book out if people want to read the details on the case of Leonard Peltier—a book by Peter Matheson, & that is in the spirit of Crazy Horse. And it's a very detailed, because it also talks about what led to the shootout there, as Jean Roach just described—her being a part of their 1975 June at the Jumping Bull compound in South Dakota in 1975. What culminated there was a result of Wounded Knee '73, & the years that led up to that moment. And then after the 71 day [about 2 and a half months] siege at Wounded Knee of '73 from that period to 1975-1976, the reign of terror where so many over 60-70 men & women were killed murdered, assassinated, disappeared & still unaccounted for.  My relatives, the Department of Justice has not looked into the shooting of Joe Stuntz…who was killed there on June 26th of 75 along with the two FBI agents that were killed there on the Pine Ridge Reservation.   My relatives well, there's a lot that had happened since a trip to Russia—when it was the Soviet Union back in the 1980s. Bill Wahpepahi & Stephanie Autumn Peltier, had gone to Moscow & came back with millions of letters from the Russian people to the White House calling on for [Leonard's] freedom. And since then, all these other campaigns, notably if I may, Jean, here in the Bay Area in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors unanimously last year adopted a resolution calling for February 24 as day of solidarity with Leonard Peltier, & in that resolution they also called on President Biden to immediately release Leonard Peltier.   Last year or before Leonard Peltier was also struck with the COVID-19. So, there is a COVID-19 release there among the options that President Biden would have, along with the executive clemency or a compassionate release—all these avenues that are wide open for him, plus the support from the Democratic Committee as well. So, it's all there & he's the only person that can free Leonard Peltier so my relatives, you can go to the website, Jean Roach said: www.WhoIsLeonardPeltier.info or please call the White House. Call them today now & every day. At area code 202-456-1111 That's 202-456-1111 & leave a message with those options that he has to free Leonard Peltier. But to do it now immediately, this is really a matter of urgency & the attention that right now beckons for his freedoms throughout the world.   You know over the years have Jean, if I may go on the Nobel Peace Prize winners, at least 1015 of them have stopped. Forward that includes Rigoberta Menchu, two 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of Canterbury & & many more celebrities. Nationally known celebrities across the country it's all there, it & the campaigns that have been launched. So, it's prayers at this moment that we have for seeking Leonard Peltier's freedom as well my relatives.   And do you know that we're planning to go to the permanent forum—as I said earlier—on Indigenous issues. This year, the theme, vague as it may sound, there's some work methodically that is done within the theme, as I will read, it's called – Indigenous Peoples Human Heath, Planetary, Territorial Health & Climate Change: A Rights Based Approach. My relatives, that's the theme for these two weeks that will begin April the 17th through the 28th.   Jean Roach is helping to gather a team of advocates, young advocates that can be effective there at the United Nations & my relatives at this juncture, that 22nd session. This will be the first time that it's a physical engagement. [In] the past three years [the forum] has been by zoom & prior to that the sessions had involved 3000-4000 Indian Indigenous peoples from throughout the world. That's black Indians, white Indians, Red Indians of the Americas, Indians of Asia Indians of Oceana. This is the Big Gathering.   My relatives, the international Indian movement, if you will, has been launched & that began, of course, with the efforts of The American Indian Movement & NGOs at that time 1977, the International Indian Treaty Council, was among them. From that 1977 outcome was a Declaration of Independence of Indigenous nations. My relatives & they cut a plan out, made a plan into the future that would include involvement in the international arena, which is where we take all the issues that Indian peoples—& it's 400 million & plus at this point in terms of numbers according to the World Bank & other United Nations specialized bodies who have given counts of the Indian people throughout the world.   But we're coming together & we're organizing an international movement…& Leonard Peltier is very much a part of that & is well known, & which is why at this forum at the in New York beginning of April 17th it's expected 2000-3000 Indian peoples will come & it will give an opportunity to engage & talk about the issues that we have & for us. Jean Roach, myself, Ruth & Buffalo, Kevin Sharp, the attorney & a few others that we hope to bring on board, will advocate about Leonard Peltier so that they too can share their voice on the United Nations Forum on the floor, & depending on the items that are that are relevant to the subject matter of political prisoners, human rights defenders. And Leonard Peltier's case can be brought up.   This is what we ask. We'll be asking the indigenous peoples who are there that when they speak on the floor, they make a statement to try to think about Leonard Peltier, the number one international indigenous political prisoner…I must say, & that it's time for Leonard to come home. All of us, including myself & our organization AIM-West, are able to bring delegates. Of course, there's maximum of 10 delegates per organization that can be credentialed into the UN, but from there we kind of flare out, if you will, & engage as many NGO's, Indigenous peoples & including governments that are open to hear the case of Leonard Peltier. So, Jean Roach Tell us as we're preparing, there's a flight, there's lodging, there's travel while we're there & that all cost money & yourself, including myself & others where we're looking for ways to cut that expense. Can you tell us how you're faring, how you're coming along & what kind of support you might be able to need, how people can help you get to the Permanent Forum [On Indigenous Issues] in New York?     00:43:08 Jean Roach  Well, thanks. One of the things that I do have now is we have a donation button on our website. It's called www.whoIsLeonardPeltier.info & you can donate there directly to [help cover the] cost for the US United Nations trip. I also have a fundraiser on Facebook from my [Facebook profile], Jean Roach & I'm raising funds for the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. The easiest way would be just going straight to the donation button on the website. We don't have a GoFundMe, but that's all we have right now. But we're also looking for, you know, things to do while we're there, other activities and so. You know…we're going to have a side event if that all works out. And then outside the United Nations event. So yeah, there's some cost available with that. I mean, well, lodging. Growth is outrageous.     00:44:02 Tony Gonzales  No, no, thank you.     00:44:03 Jean Roach  So, appreciate. Yeah, we appreciate everything you could do. Thank you.     00:44:07 Tony Gonzales  Yes Jean & your appeal for help & support for Leonard Peltier, & getting you, & our delegation there to New York for the annual session 22nd session of the Forum. It would be terrific for listeners to see if they can provide some help. And you mentioned the side event—that's another word for a workshop there in UN jargon, my relatives. So, we've also requested for a side event that would include the case of Leonard Peltier & how people can help both in the international arena & at the local front, where the peoples come from, you know, in seeking help from coalitions & even the governments, they come as well.   So the side events or workshops [was] announced on April 7th & the deadline for NGO's or IPO's, you know like AIM-West & [other] Indigenous People's Organizations (IPO's), they had until April the 2nd to submit for a side event if they choose to do so. But that will be an important moment for us & hopefully our side event or workshop will be during the first week because, my relatives it's very difficult even for North American Indians, who are people who have most resources available & opportunities to access the UN system, particularly now because these sessions are held in New York now as opposed to Geneva, Switzerland, where they were in the years past. But it makes it very difficult for Indian peoples from Central America, South America, way out in, in the Pacific islands to gather the money to stay there the full 2 weeks & being in government dialogue as well, because those opportunities are there.   You know the moments & the minutes that you do have at the UN on the floor with officials & with governments are the most valuable & sought after moments. But you go there with the payload—the drop that is the information that you bring because you want change & those are the moments to do that. That is the international lobbying that goes on at that level.   And at this juncture, Jean, just before we ask you for closing words, just to give our listeners a little bit more history about indigenous people's involvement in the international & United Nations Arena, well 100 years ago when the United Nations. It was called the League of Nations. [In] 1923 chief of the of the Iroquois [Haudenosaunee] Confederacy was representative there in Geneva, Switzerland at that time, & that's Chief Deskaheh. So indeed, this month…100 years ago marks a milestone of Indian peoples coming to the United Nations for as Indian peoples that have not been representative among the General Assembly.   Unless of course we do say countries like Bolivia with Evo Morales as president in several years back as being the first indigenous person. Then there's been several others. I mean, we could say that the Mexico & all the other countries that as Latino as many of them…are indigenous people. This is a part of the consciousness, the awakening, the International Indian Movement, my relatives that we're moving forward making progress & that includes even at the national level.  if I can go further. Jean Roach, a case that where we refer to in the international arena a lot, goes to the Doctrine of Discovery or the Papal Bulls that the Vatican had issued out back in the 14th, 15th century that are still very much alive & active today. My relatives, I think we only have to go to the case of Johnson V Macintosh…1823 as well. And so, this marks 200 years of the Doctrine of Discovery…being active & used in the US Supreme Court.   Both 1823 Johnson V McIntosh & Fast forward 2005 Justice Ruth Ginsburg had reintroduced the case of Papal Bulls, or the Doctrine of Discovery in the case of Wisconsin V Oneida. Nathan, my relatives. And that was the taking of more or neither Nation's land & according to the Papal Bulls of that doctrine of discovery, very much alive. So, you know, yeah, we are. In very many milestones of history of Indian peoples, including Chief Deskaheh, as I said, Geneva, Switzerland, 1923 & the Johnson V McIntosh case 1823 & on to the present, this doctrine that has to be banished. That has to be acknowledged as invalid today because they are very much alive & in use in our Supreme Court. All right, Jean, so much good history & we're going to be a part of that going to the permanent forum this year, April the 17th to the 28th. Any closing words for Leonard Peltier, Jean Roach, please?     00:50:07 Jean Roach  Yes, everyone should try to write a letter to him. You know they don't allow postcards. You know, cheer him up. I mean, he needs some support. Also encourage your local governments & your local tribes, tribal nations—anybody can be part of this by writing a letter. We've gone international, so we have support all over the world, but we really need more [support] & if you get a chance, call the White House. [If] you aren't doing anything, just call them. Know that you're interested, & there's certain hours [you need to call] that we have that on our website.   So I'd Just like to encourage everybody to keep pushing & everything. It really does help, & as long as we can continue pushing for its freedom, hopefully soon it will come. We're just really hoping & praying.     00:50:57 Tony Gonzales  Thank you, Jean Roach & Jean we're broadcasting for Bay Native Circle for tonight here with KPFA. I believe April the 19th I will be hosting Bay Native Circle once again, after Morning Star Gali & my colleague Eddie Madrill [who] will have a show after her & then I will have it on April 19th. So, I'll see about us being able to broadcast live, if you will, from the United Nations there in New York at that time. Alright, Jean Roach, thank you very much for your dedication, your commitment & your courage, Jean—your courage to go forward.   00:51:46 Jean Roach  Thank you very much, thank you.  00:51:47 Tony Gonzales  Aho Jean Roach. What a woman, what a person [with] her dedication & commitment to seek the freedom of Leonard Peltier. Everything that that she does, with local, regional, national & international, my relatives, & now with her & colleagues going on to the UN Permanent Forum that begins April 17th. So, a big shout out there & hopefully we'll be able to succeed reaching out to include…various government officials & seek their support to send letters to President Biden for the Freedom of Leonard Peltier, the longest held indigenous political prisoner in the entire world, my relatives.   And as we're coming close to the [end of our show] my relatives. I just wanted to make a few announcements as Chumash Day is coming right up (note: this event has already occurred), that's right! The Chumash people are having Native American powwow, & that's going to be also an intertribal gathering that's April 1st & that will be from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM at Malibu Bluffs Park. OK, try to make that one, [it] is the 23rd annual, so there's a lot of experience there & a lot to see & do…& that will be at 2357 Live Civic Center way in Malibu Bluffs Park. Chumash Day Native American Powwow my relatives & see about going there.   Also, we've been hearing that the Apache Stronghold is holding up good & Dr. Wendsler [Noise] caravanned all the way to the court case [at] the 9th district [court of appeals] …to rehear the case of their sacred sites & protection of Oak Flats. So hopefully with Dr. [Wendsler] Noise expressing protecting that site under the First Amendment. Also, the Treaty agreements that the Apache peoples have with the US [are being addressed as well], & that includes shoring it up with international laws, including the declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That would ensure sacred sites & for the governments to honor them, & that includes the United States, which signed that declaration by President Obama in December—when was that, 2010? So, all these efforts are now before the 9th District Court once again to protect the Oak Flat & the advocacy of Dr. Wendsler Noise.   You know for that…Friday, March 31, [was] Cesar Chavez's birthday, & it will be honored here in California, as…it's a federal commemoration by President Barack Obama during his time. But several states have pushed on even further. That includes Arizona, California & Utah to make it a state holiday, my relatives. So, there's time…to share the legacy, the history of Cesar Estrada Chavez. Cesar Chavez, as many of you know, is the co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers Association of America. Also, Co-Founder, as many of you know, Dolores Huerta was born in Yuma, AZ.   In Santa Cruz on April the 1st my relatives, that's on Saturday Cesar Chavez will be very much remembered & appreciate. Barrios Unidos is organizing & gathering there, & Cesar Chavez day, April 1st at from 12:00 to 5:00 PM my relatives (note: this event has already occurred). So, if you're interested in going down to Santa Cruz, to be a part of body so neither they're on Soquel St…I'm going to make that one, & I hope you do too…  This has been Tony Gonzalez & you've been listening to Bay Major Circle & our producers, Jeanine Antoine. The opening music was L. Frank Manriquez mixed with Ross K'Dee, Robert Maribel & Rare Tribal Mob. Thank you goes out to Falcon Molina for helping engineer the show to Diane Williams for the opening prayer. We also thank our musical artists, our guests & you are listening to audience for your continued support, & we want to give a shout out to our brothers & sisters on the inside, especially those on death row. Thank you to Creator to the Indigenous Peoples whose lands we occupy, to ancestors & to those yet to come, blessings.     00:57:59   The post Bay Native Circle March 29 2023 Tony Interviews Jean Roach & Kenny Barrios appeared first on KPFA.

Throughout American history, progress has never come easily, as we've been reminded repeatedly over the last few years. It requires hard work, persistence, and passionate individuals banding together to support causes they believe in. Few people know that better than Dolores Huerta, the trailblazing civil rights and labor movement leader who helped farm workers find their voice and power by organizing a strike and boycott among California grape workers in the 1960s in response to horrific working and living conditions. Despite violent backlash, the workers' steadfast determination over the next five years resulted in health benefits, higher wages, and better, safer living and working conditions. Sixty years ago, along with Cesar Chavez, Huerta formed the National Farm Workers Association—which later became what is currently America's most enduring agricultural union, the United Farm Workers. As a direct result of her leadership in the American Labor Movement, countless people have been able to better support themselves and their families and have earned the treatment of respect and dignity they deserve. She has remained on the front lines of nearly every progressive social movement since. On this episode, Huerta shares with President Clinton her remarkable life story, the experiences she had as a young person that shaped her into a trailblazing activist, and how today—at 92 years old—she still has the motivation and commitment to make a positive difference on women's rights, immigrant rights, labor rights, voting rights, and civil rights through the Dolores Huerta Foundation. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dive in with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion's Rori Minor and her conversation with "I Rise Foundation" President and CEO, Alberto Esparza. Long time activist whose social work began when he joined the National Farm Workers Association as Cesar Chavez's body guard, Esparza takes a moment to reflect on his journey and work then, the movement led by the Mexican-American labor leader and civil rights activist and how that has led him to his most recent endeavors.

On this week's 51%, Albany OB GYN Dr. Katherine Cartwright offers her guidance for those struggling with infertility, and we speak with Albany Medical Center's Dr. Erica Nicasio about her work monitoring high-risk pregnancies. Guests: Dr. Katherine Cartwright, Albany Obstetrics & Gynecology; Dr. Erica Nicasio, Albany Medical Center; Natalie Rudd, learning and engagement manager at the National Women's Hall of Fame 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's produced by Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is “Lolita” by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue. Follow Along You're listening to 51%, a WAMC production dedicated to women's issues and experiences. Thanks for tuning in, I'm Jesse King.  We've got another roundup of health-related conversations for you today. Last week, we took an in-depth look at endometriosis, a disease that, in addition to causing a lot of pain, can also contribute to issues like infertility. But as our first guest today will tell us, there's actually a lot of reasons why someone may have trouble getting pregnant. It's an issue that can feel very personal and heartbreaking, so to dispel some myths right up front: infertility doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with your body, and it's actually more common than you might think. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly one in five American, heterosexual women up to age 49 (with no prior births) will have trouble conceiving after their first year of trying. So if you think you might fall in that group, hopefully today's episode has some basic information to get you thinking and put you at ease. Dr. Katherine Cartwright is an OB GYN with Albany Obstetrics & Gynecology. She got her medical degree from Nova Southeastern University and completed her residency at SUNY's University at Buffalo. Dr. Cartwright says she provides comprehensive women's health care for patients at various stages in their lives, but as part of that, she provides an awful lot of guidance to women (and couples) struggling to conceive. The way that we medically define infertility is 12 months of inability to conceive, despite regular intercourse and regular cycles. Within 12 months, somewhere between 80-90 percent of couples will be able to achieve a pregnancy on their own. So once they've reached a year, that's when we have a medical diagnosis of infertility. It's a little bit different in patients with different risk factors. So patients who are a little bit older, patients over 35, we use more of a six-month cut off. That has a little bit less to do with a difference in them suddenly being infertile after six months, and more to do with known declining fertility with age and wanting to get those people into medical care and into a workup [sooner]. When we have a patient that's concerned about infertility, there's a wide range of things that we really need to talk to them about. Their medical history is one of the most important things, and then talking to their partner and having a patient come in and be evaluated with their partner – or at least have good information about their partner – is really important. This is really a two-person issue, if there is a concern about ability to conceive, and about a third of infertility issues actually are male-factor issues. So I think it often is looked at as a solely female problem if someone's not conceiving, and it's something that we have to talk about very early on and make sure that we are looking at all angles. The basic workup is looking at the very basic building blocks of “How do we make a baby here?” And are all of those parts here? So, is this person making eggs? And are they releasing an egg every month? That's obviously something that's necessary. Is there sperm, and is the sperm normal? Is it present? And then the third thing that we really need to look at is, are they able to meet? So is there a structural thing that's preventing the egg from meeting with the sperm, and those are things we call “tubal factors,” where the actual fallopian tube where they're supposed to meet could be impacted by a variety of different disease processes that could inhibit the ability for an otherwise normal egg and sperm to meet. And that's really where the workup is focused. So we look at all three of those different things in a different way. Usually, we do blood testing, and just talk about a patient's medical history and cycles to see if it sounds like ovulation could potentially be an issue. We generally will get a semen analysis, so that is actual testing of the semen in the sperm from the male partner. And there are tests that we can do, either with dye or with saline that we put through the uterus to actually watch the tubes and see that they are open and able to have a sperm and an egg pass through them. Once you identify with what the issue is, is it usually an easy fix? So, it really depends what the causes are. One of the difficult things with infertility is the number one cause of infertility is “unexplained infertility” – that's an actual, medical diagnosis. And that is where most infertility workups land us, is with what we call “unexplained infertility.” So we do this whole workup, we do lab work, and we say everything looks normal. You know, it's always sort of a double-edged sword of good and bad, because for a patient, there's nothing wrong with you – but we don't have an answer as to why this is happening. [With] unexplained infertility, there are things we just sort of empirically do, which means we're just trying things, helping to time intercourse a little bit better. Sometimes we monitor their cycles and actually help make sure that they ovulate by giving them medications and monitoring their cycles. And even patients with unexplained infertility have relatively high rates of eventually being able to conceive. And sometimes we don't find an answer. But for a patient, what they really want is to have a baby, and so lots of times fertility doctors may say, “We don't have a good answer as to why this hasn't happened, but here are all of the options and things that we can try.” And that's everything from IUI, which is insemination, to IVF, which a lot of people are kind of familiar tangentially with IVF and how that works. And so sometimes patients ultimately go on to have these more invasive infertility interventions and treatments without ever having a definitive answer as to why they weren't able to get pregnant on their own. Do you have any thoughts on IVF or IUI? Like, is there one that I guess is easier? It depends, it depends on the patient. And I think there's different factors to consider. There are people who just don't want to go the route of creating embryos and re-implanting them – that's what IVF is. So IVF is where they actually take eggs out of someone's ovary, they fertilize them with sperm, they grow them, make sure that they're growing, and then they essentially put them back in the uterus to grow. And so it's definitely a lot of technology that's used. And that's medically amazing that we have [that], but for some people, it's just too much, and they don't want to do it. For other people, anything they could possibly do is something that they want to pursue. Financially, I think it's a concern for patients. Historically, many infertility treatments have not been well covered by insurance. In New York state, companies now are required to offer some fertility coverage. I don't know all of the details in it, it really depends on the size of the company, and there are some exemptions to that, but we do have better coverage than we used to. So hopefully, there's less of a financial constraint for people that are trying to use these services to grow a family. Would I be able to ask you about miscarriages? Yeah, yeah. So early pregnancy loss, or miscarriage, is very common. It's something that, you know, the numbers are mixed, because we know that there are very early pregnancies that are just not clinically recognized, meaning sperm meets the egg, it starts to implant, and the pregnancy fails before a patient even knows that she's pregnant, let alone is actually seen and has labs or an ultrasound or something done. Numbers vary anywhere between 25-30 percent in most documented research on this. So that means there's a quarter to a third of a chance, with every successful fertilized egg that is implanting or trying to implant in the uterus, that that could not result in a successful pregnancy with a baby at the end. Early on in pregnancy, it's something people worry about a lot. And, you know, we usually will bring them in for initial visits to meet with a doctor and evaluate in early pregnancy, somewhere around eight weeks or so. But in patients who are feeling well, they have a positive pregnancy test, they haven't had pain or bleeding, and they're feeling well, there's no real reason to rule out an early pregnancy loss unless they're having symptoms in most cases. So symptoms of an early pregnancy loss would be things like bleeding, or painful cramping. Those are really the two things that people present with most often. There can be cases of both pain and bleeding that don't result in miscarriage, and it can be a really scary time for patients, because if it's really early, we can't see a pregnancy on ultrasound, we don't have a really good way to confirm that things are moving forward normally, and so there's, unfortunately, a multiple-week period often of just waiting and seeing what will happen for patients. So that can be certainly anxiety-provoking for them. Reasons for miscarriage vary, and similar to infertility, we often just don't have a good answer as to why a miscarriage has happened. A single miscarriage with rates anywhere from 25-30 percent often is just kind of bad luck. Most of those miscarriages have to do with what we would consider a non-viable embryo, an embryo that, as it was dividing, had some kind of chromosomal abnormality that's not compatible with life. And so that's sort of the body's way of not continuing a pregnancy that would not be able to be successful. In patients who have had recurrent pregnancy loss, so multiple miscarriages, the workup becomes a little bit different, and there are other things that we need to look into. This is not infertility, necessarily, in that they haven't been able to get pregnant – that's what people think of as infertility – but recurrent pregnancy loss, where someone has been unable to have a baby, is still a form of infertility, and is something that needs to be to be looked at. What do you see as the future of treatment and research for infertility? It is a much newer field than I think people realize. The first baby ever born from IVF, I believe, is 40 or 41 now. And so if you think of that in the grand scheme of medical science, and what we know, it's really a very, very young field. I think continuing to find treatments and ways to predict fertility is one of the things that I hope we get better and better at. We have patients come in all the time that say, “I would love to have my fertility tested,” and it's just not something that you can do. We can't say, “Here's a test, this means for sure that you are fertile and you will not have any issues with infertility.” Continuing to look at what are some of the factors, especially in this unexplained infertility area where there are huge numbers of patients that have unexplained infertility, I think really focusing on ultimately, can we find a cause for that? What exactly is that cause? And how can we address that in the future is probably one of the biggest things that we need to do. If someone is struggling with their fertility, what advice do you have for them? It's always a good idea, before someone even starts to try to conceive, to have a conversation with their provider, whether they see a physician or a midwife, or whoever it is that they see for reproductive health care. Having a conversation, from the beginning, is a way to probably alleviate a lot of the unknowns and the anxieties related around conceiving, and how it will work if there's a problem. So that initial conversation we have with patients a lot, it's called a “preconception visit.” And we talked to them about things that potentially could influence their fertility: Do they have regular cycles? Do they have a history of infections, or pelvic infections? Do they have a history of endometriosis? Looking at the age of patients is something that we always think about in a preconception visit. If I have a patient who's coming to me and is 42, and just got married, and says, “I would like to try to conceive in this next year,” that's a patient that I often will immediately get some baseline labs on and actually recommend that they see a fertility specialist. Over 40 is a specific population of patients who have declining fertility at a rate that we really want to make sure that we're not wasting any time if they have decided that this is something that's important to them, and they want to move forward. These are not patients who I would wait 12 months or even six months to wait and see what happens. We often do what's called “concurrent management,” where they will actively be seeing an infertility specialist to start a workup while they're trying to start to conceive, because we really don't want to have delays in something that we know, biologically, does have some limitations. So looking at age, looking at all those risk factors, family history is something that we talk about a lot. And then other risk factors that could make a pregnancy more dangerous if they were to be pregnant. So something that would be a high-risk factor for a patient in a future pregnancy is important for us to talk about before they're pregnant. Do they have a cardiac condition? Is it well managed? Do we need to optimize their medical health and talk about medications that are safe in pregnancy, prior to them even conceiving? So that that's really where that conversation should start. If a patient has a concern that they are not pregnant as fast as they think they should, to me, that is enough to start a workup. So by definition, 12 months under 35, and six months over 35 is the definition of infertility, if you haven't been able to conceive. But if I have a patient who walks in and says, “I only get my period every three months,” it's not realistic to wait 12 months, because they haven't really had 12 months of chances if they're not ovulating every month, or they're not having regular cycles. Or if a patient says, “I conceived all of my other kids within one to two cycles, and it's been eight months so I'm really concerned,” that's a patient that I would also really start and initiate a workup. So I think the patient's concerns are important, and that's important to bring to any physician that you talk to, because that often is enough to at least start an initial workup for a patient. As Dr. Cartwright pointed out, conception is just the start — there's plenty to navigate going forward, and issues to look out for. Our next guest is a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Albany Medical Center. Dr. Erica Nicasio earned her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, and completed her residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She specializes in the diagnosis and management of fetal anomalies, preterm delivery, hypertensive disease and diabetes in pregnancy, multiple gestation, and more. What kinds of issues do you see people coming in for? Some of the more common things that we see are things that are becoming a lot more common for women just in general and in health care, in the population. We see a lot of women that have things like hypertensive diseases, so high blood pressure. The other really common medical issue that a lot of women have or developed during pregnancy is diabetes. So we take care of women both that have either Type I or Type II diabetes prior to pregnancy, to help them with insulin control and their pregnancy management, because it can change what happens with their blood sugars during pregnancy. And then also gestational diabetes, which is a specific form of the disease that develops because of the pregnancy, and can change as the pregnancy progresses. So those are some of the more common things that we deal with from a mom side. We also have complex pregnancies from the baby side, so we deal with those sorts of issues such as women that have had preterm labor, for example, going into labor early and delivering a baby. Or fetal anomalies, so a baby that developed some sort of congenital abnormality or a developmental abnormality that we can diagnose by ultrasound and sort of managing what we do with that going forward. At what point do people usually identify the fact that they might have a high-risk pregnancy? I'm guessing there's gonna be some people who are going into it knowing that they're going to have a high-risk pregnancy, but are there some identifying factors that they should watch out for? Absolutely. So that definitely varies, and there's a whole spectrum of high-risk pregnancies. And I think it is hard for women to know what that actually means, and what is defined as a high-risk pregnancy. For example, women that have had complicated medical problems may know that they have a complex medical history, and that makes them high-risk just because of their diseases that they bring to a pregnancy. So someone who has diabetes, someone who has had cancer before and chemotherapy, someone who has lupus, for example. Those sorts of conditions just become a little bit more complicated, or maybe more complex, in a pregnancy. And then as the pregnancies progress, sometimes we have women that develop high-risk issues and then get transferred to us, or have a consultation with us, so that we can discuss how to best manage those pregnancies and those risks that develop. Some examples would be if we do some genetic screening, that's something we offer for women in their first trimester, so early in pregnancy, to look for abnormal chromosomes in the baby. Every woman is offered that screening, if they want to know if they have a high-risk for a baby that has a chromosome abnormality. The most common thing that we see is something like Down syndrome, which would be an extra chromosome 21. So if we do that screening, and that comes back high-risk in their first trimester, often they'll come to us for further testing and discussion of sort of what to do about those findings. Similarly, as the pregnancy progresses, sometimes when we do their anatomic screening, which is an ultrasound, where we look at all of the parts of the baby like heart, lungs, belly, all of the different congenital development of the baby to make sure that everything has formed correctly, sometimes we find abnormalities on those ultrasounds, and often women that have those diagnoses get sent to a specialist like a maternal fetal medicine doctor to have higher level ultrasounds, detailed evaluation, and then again, discussion about how that might affect their baby in utero. How does multiple gestation complicate a pregnancy? What should people expect if they're planning to have twins or triplets? That's a good question. So that's definitely one of those high-risk pregnancy issues that get sent to us as well. So multiples have become much more commonplace because of infertility treatment and older women getting pregnant. And oftentimes, we get to diagnose that – so we get to tell a woman who's had a pregnancy test at home that's positive and comes to an ultrasound and, surprise, we see two babies in there. That can be very exciting. We also have to talk to them about the complications that are increased in those multiple gestations. Pretty much as an overarching rule, most of the complications that we see in pregnancy, like high blood pressure diseases, early labor, gestational diabetes, those sorts of things, are just more commonly seen in a twin pregnancy compared to a singleton pregnancy. You're twice as likely to have a genetic abnormality, for example, because of the additional fetus being there. So these pregnancies are definitely more high-risk than a typical single gestation, so we watch them much more closely than the typical, uncomplicated single baby. And then interestingly, there's different types of multiple gestations, including how the twins formed and how they live inside the uterus. So they can be in their own sac and have their own placentas – completely separate pregnancies, like two babies in there, doing their own thing. And that's generally the lowest risk type of twins. Or they can be sharing placenta, or they can even be sharing gestational sacs, so they're living in the same fluid-filled sac, and those become much more complicated as well. We have to monitor to make sure that they're each getting the nutrients and blood flow and oxygenation that they need to develop appropriately, and if they don't, it can be much more complicated. I've read that you've also done research on things like preeclampsia, fetal growth restriction and fetal testing and maternal obesity. Could you tell me a little bit about your research there? Absolutely. So I was looking at preeclampsia, which is basically a high blood pressure disease that develops during pregnancy. Usually after 20 weeks of pregnancy, so it can happen sort of any time. Women develop high blood pressure as well as protein in their urine, and then it can also affect their kidney function, their liver function and their blood counts, like their platelets. And the biggest risk is, you know, a neurologic risk woman can eventually have if not controlled. It can develop neurologic complications like strokes, and seizures, and really scary things that would be dangerous to pregnancy. So we often end up delivering babies on the earlier side, to protect mom's health, because of the risk of the severity of the disease to mom. And in other countries, they see a lot more eclampsia, which is actually the seizures that can develop. And unfortunately, though we see it relatively commonly, especially at a center where we have high-risk doctors, and we get referrals for it, we still don't exactly know even why it happens. So that's sort of what interests me, is sort of trying to help to understand why some women develop preeclampsia and other women don't. We know that there are risk factors from a health perspective – like having high blood pressure, or lupus, or things that affect your kidneys, for example, put you at risk for preeclampsia. But then otherwise, you know, healthy first-time moms [develop issues] – first pregnancies are actually more likely to get preeclampsia than women that have had multiple pregnancies before. And we don't exactly understand the reason for which women will develop this disease and which women will develop even more severe disease, but we think that it has to do with the placenta and how the placenta forms and invades into the uterus and communicates with the blood vessels in mom. That's sort of what I was looking at, was taking women that have preeclampsia and comparing them with women who don't, and looking at their placenta after they deliver, to see if there was a protein that was expressed differently from one pregnancy to the other. But to be honest, you know, people have been researching this topic for many, many years, and we still have lots of question marks. So it's a very, very complicated disease process that, if we were able to figure out the mechanism of why it happens, then we will be able to treat it better. But unfortunately, right now, the only solution is to deliver the baby early to help remove the placenta. And commonly, the disease actually gets much better after delivery. So this is of course, aside from the usual things people experience with pregnancy, the ways the body changes. I once had a nurse who told me her vision temporarily deteriorated during her pregnancy – is that a thing? What other things might women experience that we just don't talk as much about, or know as much about? There are a ton of changes just due to having a pregnancy in general. And so women's bodies are going through so many different changes, and then the changes change, as the pregnancy progresses. Pregnancy's 10 months long, and so it's definitely a journey. The big things that we see are, you know, some physiologic changes, meaning changes that just happened because of the pregnancy: increased blood volume, so you actually have more blood flowing through your body during pregnancy than you do normally, to feed the pregnancy, and then also in preparation for delivery, when the body loses blood. Many women get anemic during pregnancy. And many women can be anemic before pregnancy, but the way the blood is concentrated, actually causes some anemia. So some low blood counts, we monitor for that, for example. Your respiratory system changes, both the way that you're getting oxygen to your body and then also as the uterus grows, it can affect how you breathe, because the uterus gets big enough to affect the diaphragm and its ability to go up and down. And so many women will describe shortness of breath during pregnancy. Another really common one is reflux, acid reflux. A lot of people are prone to that baseline, but in pregnancy, the sphincter that closes your esophagus to your stomach off so that the acid in your stomach doesn't go back up into your esophagus and chest and cause that acid feeling gets looser, because of the hormones of pregnancy. And so a lot of women have issues with reflux getting worse during pregnancy. And then as the uterus grows, it also causes compression of all of your abdominal contents as the uterus kind of fills up the belly and makes that reflux worse. So we see a lot of that as well. Is the way that we're having babies changing at all in the U.S.? That's a good question. In terms of delivery type, our cesarean rates probably have increased over the years, but so has our high-risk pregnancy [rate], and high-risk pregnancies put you at risk for having a cesarean delivery. So I think a little bit of that has probably played into it. I think there's a lot of social pressures that come with the idea women have as to how their delivery should go. And with social media and Pinterest and things like this, people get the idea that it should be one thing for everybody, or that, you know, having a “natural birth” is the only way to successfully have a baby. But there's a lot of ways that babies come into this world. One of the things is, you never know how it's gonna go. And I think people have an idea that they should have a birth plan, and have everything set up and be ready. And having done this for long enough now, what we really know is that generally nothing goes according to plan. And so having a little bit of flexibility and being ready for whatever comes your way during the labor processes is usually a good way to go into it. Before we go, we're celebrating Women's History Month by taking some time each week to recognize prominent women in history. Last week Natalie Rudd joined us from the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, and she's back with us to share some more of the “women of the hall.” Dolores Huerta Dolores was born in New Mexico, however, she spent most of her life in Stockton, California. Her primary inspiration was her mother: she owned a 70-room hotel where she would often welcome low-wage workers and oftentimes waive the fee for them. She was an active participant in her community and really encouraged cultural diversity, which was really common in Stockton, which was a heavily agricultural-based community. So they had an agricultural community that was made up of Mexican, Filipino, American Japanese, and Chinese working families. Dolores found for inspiration as an organizer while serving in the leadership for the Stockton community service organization, or CSO. During this time, she set up voter registrations, and pressed local government for barrio improvements. And then in 1955, she was introduced to the CSO director, Cesar Chavez, and the two soon discovered that they had this shared vision of organizing farmworkers. Together, they launched the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. The two were partners in lobbying and really unionizing farm workers in America, and she really came to prominence when she helped organize the 1965 Delano strike of 5,000 grape workers. The strike lasted for five years, and drew national attention for its nonviolent resistance. During this time, during the national boycott of the California table grapes, she was in New York and she came in contact with Gloria Steinem, who was doing a huge part of the burgeoning feminist movement. And she realized that they have a lot in common, so she was advocating for farm workers while also advocating for women and how they are discriminated within the farm working movement. At the age of 58, she suffered a life-threatening assault while protesting against the policies of then-presidential candidate George Bush. A police officer with the baton ended up breaking for her ribs and shattering her spleen. And then during her really intensive recovery period, she took a leave of absence from the union and focused on women's rights. During this time she traveled the country on behalf of the feminist majority's “Feminization of Power,” which is a campaign that resulted in a significant increase in the number of women representatives at the local, state, and federal levels. So she began her career working with agricultural farm workers and has worked continuously for union rights as well as lobbying to get women into government. Even now, today, at 89 years old, she continues to work tirelessly to help leaders advocate for the working poor, women, and children. She founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, where she travels across the country engaging in campaigns, all that supports equality defending civil rights, and she often speak to students and organizations about issues of social justice and public policy. Nellie Bly Nellie was a pioneer in investigative journalism in the late 1800s. She was one of the first reporters who truly went behind the scenes to get the real story. She had herself committed to a mental institution in an effort to expose the abuse that occurred there, and the results of this story were reforms that were actually made to living and care conditions at Blackwell's Island Mental Institute in New York City. When this story broke, she became like an overnight sensation, she became an extremely popular reporter. She ultimately ended up shining a light on everything from the improper treatment of prisoners in New York City jails, to the poor working conditions in factories, to corruption politics – she wrote about it all. She ended up gaining a ton of fame in 1899 when she traveled around the world in 72 days, which drew inspiration from the fiction novel Around the World in 80 Days, which is written by Jules Verne. She married a successful businessman, Robert Seaman. And then after he died in 1904, Nellie took control of his company and put into practice all of the workplace reforms that she had envisioned while working as a journalist, such as health care, and adding fitness centers into his company. She ended up unfortunately dying of pneumonia at a very young age of 57, but she had done so much in her lifetime. She really ushered in this whole new era of investigative journalism in such a short life, she really accomplished a lot. And that's like the quick version. I could spend hours talking about Nellie Bly. The small stories about her travels and her journals are really, really incredible. Natalie Rudd is the learning and engagement manager at the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. The Hall will be inducting its next class, including Indra Nooyi, Mia Hamm, Octavia Butler, Michelle Obama, and more, this September. 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's produced by Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is "Lolita" by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue.

On this week's 51%, Albany OB GYN Dr. Katherine Cartwright offers her guidance for those struggling with infertility, and we speak with Albany Medical Center's Dr. Erica Nicasio about her work monitoring high-risk pregnancies. Guests: Dr. Katherine Cartwright, Albany Obstetrics & Gynecology; Dr. Erica Nicasio, Albany Medical Center; Natalie Rudd, learning and engagement manager at the National Women's Hall of Fame 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's produced by Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is “Lolita” by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue. Follow Along You're listening to 51%, a WAMC production dedicated to women's issues and experiences. Thanks for tuning in, I'm Jesse King.  We've got another roundup of health-related conversations for you today. Last week, we took an in-depth look at endometriosis, a disease that, in addition to causing a lot of pain, can also contribute to issues like infertility. But as our first guest today will tell us, there's actually a lot of reasons why someone may have trouble getting pregnant. It's an issue that can feel very personal and heartbreaking, so to dispel some myths right up front: infertility doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with your body, and it's actually more common than you might think. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly one in five American, heterosexual women up to age 49 (with no prior births) will have trouble conceiving after their first year of trying. So if you think you might fall in that group, hopefully today's episode has some basic information to get you thinking and put you at ease. Dr. Katherine Cartwright is an OB GYN with Albany Obstetrics & Gynecology. She got her medical degree from Nova Southeastern University and completed her residency at SUNY's University at Buffalo. Dr. Cartwright says she provides comprehensive women's health care for patients at various stages in their lives, but as part of that, she provides an awful lot of guidance to women (and couples) struggling to conceive. The way that we medically define infertility is 12 months of inability to conceive, despite regular intercourse and regular cycles. Within 12 months, somewhere between 80-90 percent of couples will be able to achieve a pregnancy on their own. So once they've reached a year, that's when we have a medical diagnosis of infertility. It's a little bit different in patients with different risk factors. So patients who are a little bit older, patients over 35, we use more of a six-month cut off. That has a little bit less to do with a difference in them suddenly being infertile after six months, and more to do with known declining fertility with age and wanting to get those people into medical care and into a workup [sooner]. When we have a patient that's concerned about infertility, there's a wide range of things that we really need to talk to them about. Their medical history is one of the most important things, and then talking to their partner and having a patient come in and be evaluated with their partner – or at least have good information about their partner – is really important. This is really a two-person issue, if there is a concern about ability to conceive, and about a third of infertility issues actually are male-factor issues. So I think it often is looked at as a solely female problem if someone's not conceiving, and it's something that we have to talk about very early on and make sure that we are looking at all angles. The basic workup is looking at the very basic building blocks of “How do we make a baby here?” And are all of those parts here? So, is this person making eggs? And are they releasing an egg every month? That's obviously something that's necessary. Is there sperm, and is the sperm normal? Is it present? And then the third thing that we really need to look at is, are they able to meet? So is there a structural thing that's preventing the egg from meeting with the sperm, and those are things we call “tubal factors,” where the actual fallopian tube where they're supposed to meet could be impacted by a variety of different disease processes that could inhibit the ability for an otherwise normal egg and sperm to meet. And that's really where the workup is focused. So we look at all three of those different things in a different way. Usually, we do blood testing, and just talk about a patient's medical history and cycles to see if it sounds like ovulation could potentially be an issue. We generally will get a semen analysis, so that is actual testing of the semen in the sperm from the male partner. And there are tests that we can do, either with dye or with saline that we put through the uterus to actually watch the tubes and see that they are open and able to have a sperm and an egg pass through them. Once you identify with what the issue is, is it usually an easy fix? So, it really depends what the causes are. One of the difficult things with infertility is the number one cause of infertility is “unexplained infertility” – that's an actual, medical diagnosis. And that is where most infertility workups land us, is with what we call “unexplained infertility.” So we do this whole workup, we do lab work, and we say everything looks normal. You know, it's always sort of a double-edged sword of good and bad, because for a patient, there's nothing wrong with you – but we don't have an answer as to why this is happening. [With] unexplained infertility, there are things we just sort of empirically do, which means we're just trying things, helping to time intercourse a little bit better. Sometimes we monitor their cycles and actually help make sure that they ovulate by giving them medications and monitoring their cycles. And even patients with unexplained infertility have relatively high rates of eventually being able to conceive. And sometimes we don't find an answer. But for a patient, what they really want is to have a baby, and so lots of times fertility doctors may say, “We don't have a good answer as to why this hasn't happened, but here are all of the options and things that we can try.” And that's everything from IUI, which is insemination, to IVF, which a lot of people are kind of familiar tangentially with IVF and how that works. And so sometimes patients ultimately go on to have these more invasive infertility interventions and treatments without ever having a definitive answer as to why they weren't able to get pregnant on their own. Do you have any thoughts on IVF or IUI? Like, is there one that I guess is easier? It depends, it depends on the patient. And I think there's different factors to consider. There are people who just don't want to go the route of creating embryos and re-implanting them – that's what IVF is. So IVF is where they actually take eggs out of someone's ovary, they fertilize them with sperm, they grow them, make sure that they're growing, and then they essentially put them back in the uterus to grow. And so it's definitely a lot of technology that's used. And that's medically amazing that we have [that], but for some people, it's just too much, and they don't want to do it. For other people, anything they could possibly do is something that they want to pursue. Financially, I think it's a concern for patients. Historically, many infertility treatments have not been well covered by insurance. In New York state, companies now are required to offer some fertility coverage. I don't know all of the details in it, it really depends on the size of the company, and there are some exemptions to that, but we do have better coverage than we used to. So hopefully, there's less of a financial constraint for people that are trying to use these services to grow a family. Would I be able to ask you about miscarriages? Yeah, yeah. So early pregnancy loss, or miscarriage, is very common. It's something that, you know, the numbers are mixed, because we know that there are very early pregnancies that are just not clinically recognized, meaning sperm meets the egg, it starts to implant, and the pregnancy fails before a patient even knows that she's pregnant, let alone is actually seen and has labs or an ultrasound or something done. Numbers vary anywhere between 25-30 percent in most documented research on this. So that means there's a quarter to a third of a chance, with every successful fertilized egg that is implanting or trying to implant in the uterus, that that could not result in a successful pregnancy with a baby at the end. Early on in pregnancy, it's something people worry about a lot. And, you know, we usually will bring them in for initial visits to meet with a doctor and evaluate in early pregnancy, somewhere around eight weeks or so. But in patients who are feeling well, they have a positive pregnancy test, they haven't had pain or bleeding, and they're feeling well, there's no real reason to rule out an early pregnancy loss unless they're having symptoms in most cases. So symptoms of an early pregnancy loss would be things like bleeding, or painful cramping. Those are really the two things that people present with most often. There can be cases of both pain and bleeding that don't result in miscarriage, and it can be a really scary time for patients, because if it's really early, we can't see a pregnancy on ultrasound, we don't have a really good way to confirm that things are moving forward normally, and so there's, unfortunately, a multiple-week period often of just waiting and seeing what will happen for patients. So that can be certainly anxiety-provoking for them. Reasons for miscarriage vary, and similar to infertility, we often just don't have a good answer as to why a miscarriage has happened. A single miscarriage with rates anywhere from 25-30 percent often is just kind of bad luck. Most of those miscarriages have to do with what we would consider a non-viable embryo, an embryo that, as it was dividing, had some kind of chromosomal abnormality that's not compatible with life. And so that's sort of the body's way of not continuing a pregnancy that would not be able to be successful. In patients who have had recurrent pregnancy loss, so multiple miscarriages, the workup becomes a little bit different, and there are other things that we need to look into. This is not infertility, necessarily, in that they haven't been able to get pregnant – that's what people think of as infertility – but recurrent pregnancy loss, where someone has been unable to have a baby, is still a form of infertility, and is something that needs to be to be looked at. What do you see as the future of treatment and research for infertility? It is a much newer field than I think people realize. The first baby ever born from IVF, I believe, is 40 or 41 now. And so if you think of that in the grand scheme of medical science, and what we know, it's really a very, very young field. I think continuing to find treatments and ways to predict fertility is one of the things that I hope we get better and better at. We have patients come in all the time that say, “I would love to have my fertility tested,” and it's just not something that you can do. We can't say, “Here's a test, this means for sure that you are fertile and you will not have any issues with infertility.” Continuing to look at what are some of the factors, especially in this unexplained infertility area where there are huge numbers of patients that have unexplained infertility, I think really focusing on ultimately, can we find a cause for that? What exactly is that cause? And how can we address that in the future is probably one of the biggest things that we need to do. If someone is struggling with their fertility, what advice do you have for them? It's always a good idea, before someone even starts to try to conceive, to have a conversation with their provider, whether they see a physician or a midwife, or whoever it is that they see for reproductive health care. Having a conversation, from the beginning, is a way to probably alleviate a lot of the unknowns and the anxieties related around conceiving, and how it will work if there's a problem. So that initial conversation we have with patients a lot, it's called a “preconception visit.” And we talked to them about things that potentially could influence their fertility: Do they have regular cycles? Do they have a history of infections, or pelvic infections? Do they have a history of endometriosis? Looking at the age of patients is something that we always think about in a preconception visit. If I have a patient who's coming to me and is 42, and just got married, and says, “I would like to try to conceive in this next year,” that's a patient that I often will immediately get some baseline labs on and actually recommend that they see a fertility specialist. Over 40 is a specific population of patients who have declining fertility at a rate that we really want to make sure that we're not wasting any time if they have decided that this is something that's important to them, and they want to move forward. These are not patients who I would wait 12 months or even six months to wait and see what happens. We often do what's called “concurrent management,” where they will actively be seeing an infertility specialist to start a workup while they're trying to start to conceive, because we really don't want to have delays in something that we know, biologically, does have some limitations. So looking at age, looking at all those risk factors, family history is something that we talk about a lot. And then other risk factors that could make a pregnancy more dangerous if they were to be pregnant. So something that would be a high-risk factor for a patient in a future pregnancy is important for us to talk about before they're pregnant. Do they have a cardiac condition? Is it well managed? Do we need to optimize their medical health and talk about medications that are safe in pregnancy, prior to them even conceiving? So that that's really where that conversation should start. If a patient has a concern that they are not pregnant as fast as they think they should, to me, that is enough to start a workup. So by definition, 12 months under 35, and six months over 35 is the definition of infertility, if you haven't been able to conceive. But if I have a patient who walks in and says, “I only get my period every three months,” it's not realistic to wait 12 months, because they haven't really had 12 months of chances if they're not ovulating every month, or they're not having regular cycles. Or if a patient says, “I conceived all of my other kids within one to two cycles, and it's been eight months so I'm really concerned,” that's a patient that I would also really start and initiate a workup. So I think the patient's concerns are important, and that's important to bring to any physician that you talk to, because that often is enough to at least start an initial workup for a patient. As Dr. Cartwright pointed out, conception is just the start — there's plenty to navigate going forward, and issues to look out for. Our next guest is a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Albany Medical Center. Dr. Erica Nicasio earned her medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, and completed her residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She specializes in the diagnosis and management of fetal anomalies, preterm delivery, hypertensive disease and diabetes in pregnancy, multiple gestation, and more. What kinds of issues do you see people coming in for? Some of the more common things that we see are things that are becoming a lot more common for women just in general and in health care, in the population. We see a lot of women that have things like hypertensive diseases, so high blood pressure. The other really common medical issue that a lot of women have or developed during pregnancy is diabetes. So we take care of women both that have either Type I or Type II diabetes prior to pregnancy, to help them with insulin control and their pregnancy management, because it can change what happens with their blood sugars during pregnancy. And then also gestational diabetes, which is a specific form of the disease that develops because of the pregnancy, and can change as the pregnancy progresses. So those are some of the more common things that we deal with from a mom side. We also have complex pregnancies from the baby side, so we deal with those sorts of issues such as women that have had preterm labor, for example, going into labor early and delivering a baby. Or fetal anomalies, so a baby that developed some sort of congenital abnormality or a developmental abnormality that we can diagnose by ultrasound and sort of managing what we do with that going forward. At what point do people usually identify the fact that they might have a high-risk pregnancy? I'm guessing there's gonna be some people who are going into it knowing that they're going to have a high-risk pregnancy, but are there some identifying factors that they should watch out for? Absolutely. So that definitely varies, and there's a whole spectrum of high-risk pregnancies. And I think it is hard for women to know what that actually means, and what is defined as a high-risk pregnancy. For example, women that have had complicated medical problems may know that they have a complex medical history, and that makes them high-risk just because of their diseases that they bring to a pregnancy. So someone who has diabetes, someone who has had cancer before and chemotherapy, someone who has lupus, for example. Those sorts of conditions just become a little bit more complicated, or maybe more complex, in a pregnancy. And then as the pregnancies progress, sometimes we have women that develop high-risk issues and then get transferred to us, or have a consultation with us, so that we can discuss how to best manage those pregnancies and those risks that develop. Some examples would be if we do some genetic screening, that's something we offer for women in their first trimester, so early in pregnancy, to look for abnormal chromosomes in the baby. Every woman is offered that screening, if they want to know if they have a high-risk for a baby that has a chromosome abnormality. The most common thing that we see is something like Down syndrome, which would be an extra chromosome 21. So if we do that screening, and that comes back high-risk in their first trimester, often they'll come to us for further testing and discussion of sort of what to do about those findings. Similarly, as the pregnancy progresses, sometimes when we do their anatomic screening, which is an ultrasound, where we look at all of the parts of the baby like heart, lungs, belly, all of the different congenital development of the baby to make sure that everything has formed correctly, sometimes we find abnormalities on those ultrasounds, and often women that have those diagnoses get sent to a specialist like a maternal fetal medicine doctor to have higher level ultrasounds, detailed evaluation, and then again, discussion about how that might affect their baby in utero. How does multiple gestation complicate a pregnancy? What should people expect if they're planning to have twins or triplets? That's a good question. So that's definitely one of those high-risk pregnancy issues that get sent to us as well. So multiples have become much more commonplace because of infertility treatment and older women getting pregnant. And oftentimes, we get to diagnose that – so we get to tell a woman who's had a pregnancy test at home that's positive and comes to an ultrasound and, surprise, we see two babies in there. That can be very exciting. We also have to talk to them about the complications that are increased in those multiple gestations. Pretty much as an overarching rule, most of the complications that we see in pregnancy, like high blood pressure diseases, early labor, gestational diabetes, those sorts of things, are just more commonly seen in a twin pregnancy compared to a singleton pregnancy. You're twice as likely to have a genetic abnormality, for example, because of the additional fetus being there. So these pregnancies are definitely more high-risk than a typical single gestation, so we watch them much more closely than the typical, uncomplicated single baby. And then interestingly, there's different types of multiple gestations, including how the twins formed and how they live inside the uterus. So they can be in their own sac and have their own placentas – completely separate pregnancies, like two babies in there, doing their own thing. And that's generally the lowest risk type of twins. Or they can be sharing placenta, or they can even be sharing gestational sacs, so they're living in the same fluid-filled sac, and those become much more complicated as well. We have to monitor to make sure that they're each getting the nutrients and blood flow and oxygenation that they need to develop appropriately, and if they don't, it can be much more complicated. I've read that you've also done research on things like preeclampsia, fetal growth restriction and fetal testing and maternal obesity. Could you tell me a little bit about your research there? Absolutely. So I was looking at preeclampsia, which is basically a high blood pressure disease that develops during pregnancy. Usually after 20 weeks of pregnancy, so it can happen sort of any time. Women develop high blood pressure as well as protein in their urine, and then it can also affect their kidney function, their liver function and their blood counts, like their platelets. And the biggest risk is, you know, a neurologic risk woman can eventually have if not controlled. It can develop neurologic complications like strokes, and seizures, and really scary things that would be dangerous to pregnancy. So we often end up delivering babies on the earlier side, to protect mom's health, because of the risk of the severity of the disease to mom. And in other countries, they see a lot more eclampsia, which is actually the seizures that can develop. And unfortunately, though we see it relatively commonly, especially at a center where we have high-risk doctors, and we get referrals for it, we still don't exactly know even why it happens. So that's sort of what interests me, is sort of trying to help to understand why some women develop preeclampsia and other women don't. We know that there are risk factors from a health perspective – like having high blood pressure, or lupus, or things that affect your kidneys, for example, put you at risk for preeclampsia. But then otherwise, you know, healthy first-time moms [develop issues] – first pregnancies are actually more likely to get preeclampsia than women that have had multiple pregnancies before. And we don't exactly understand the reason for which women will develop this disease and which women will develop even more severe disease, but we think that it has to do with the placenta and how the placenta forms and invades into the uterus and communicates with the blood vessels in mom. That's sort of what I was looking at, was taking women that have preeclampsia and comparing them with women who don't, and looking at their placenta after they deliver, to see if there was a protein that was expressed differently from one pregnancy to the other. But to be honest, you know, people have been researching this topic for many, many years, and we still have lots of question marks. So it's a very, very complicated disease process that, if we were able to figure out the mechanism of why it happens, then we will be able to treat it better. But unfortunately, right now, the only solution is to deliver the baby early to help remove the placenta. And commonly, the disease actually gets much better after delivery. So this is of course, aside from the usual things people experience with pregnancy, the ways the body changes. I once had a nurse who told me her vision temporarily deteriorated during her pregnancy – is that a thing? What other things might women experience that we just don't talk as much about, or know as much about? There are a ton of changes just due to having a pregnancy in general. And so women's bodies are going through so many different changes, and then the changes change, as the pregnancy progresses. Pregnancy's 10 months long, and so it's definitely a journey. The big things that we see are, you know, some physiologic changes, meaning changes that just happened because of the pregnancy: increased blood volume, so you actually have more blood flowing through your body during pregnancy than you do normally, to feed the pregnancy, and then also in preparation for delivery, when the body loses blood. Many women get anemic during pregnancy. And many women can be anemic before pregnancy, but the way the blood is concentrated, actually causes some anemia. So some low blood counts, we monitor for that, for example. Your respiratory system changes, both the way that you're getting oxygen to your body and then also as the uterus grows, it can affect how you breathe, because the uterus gets big enough to affect the diaphragm and its ability to go up and down. And so many women will describe shortness of breath during pregnancy. Another really common one is reflux, acid reflux. A lot of people are prone to that baseline, but in pregnancy, the sphincter that closes your esophagus to your stomach off so that the acid in your stomach doesn't go back up into your esophagus and chest and cause that acid feeling gets looser, because of the hormones of pregnancy. And so a lot of women have issues with reflux getting worse during pregnancy. And then as the uterus grows, it also causes compression of all of your abdominal contents as the uterus kind of fills up the belly and makes that reflux worse. So we see a lot of that as well. Is the way that we're having babies changing at all in the U.S.? That's a good question. In terms of delivery type, our cesarean rates probably have increased over the years, but so has our high-risk pregnancy [rate], and high-risk pregnancies put you at risk for having a cesarean delivery. So I think a little bit of that has probably played into it. I think there's a lot of social pressures that come with the idea women have as to how their delivery should go. And with social media and Pinterest and things like this, people get the idea that it should be one thing for everybody, or that, you know, having a “natural birth” is the only way to successfully have a baby. But there's a lot of ways that babies come into this world. One of the things is, you never know how it's gonna go. And I think people have an idea that they should have a birth plan, and have everything set up and be ready. And having done this for long enough now, what we really know is that generally nothing goes according to plan. And so having a little bit of flexibility and being ready for whatever comes your way during the labor processes is usually a good way to go into it. Before we go, we're celebrating Women's History Month by taking some time each week to recognize prominent women in history. Last week Natalie Rudd joined us from the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, and she's back with us to share some more of the “women of the hall.” Dolores Huerta Dolores was born in New Mexico, however, she spent most of her life in Stockton, California. Her primary inspiration was her mother: she owned a 70-room hotel where she would often welcome low-wage workers and oftentimes waive the fee for them. She was an active participant in her community and really encouraged cultural diversity, which was really common in Stockton, which was a heavily agricultural-based community. So they had an agricultural community that was made up of Mexican, Filipino, American Japanese, and Chinese working families. Dolores found for inspiration as an organizer while serving in the leadership for the Stockton community service organization, or CSO. During this time, she set up voter registrations, and pressed local government for barrio improvements. And then in 1955, she was introduced to the CSO director, Cesar Chavez, and the two soon discovered that they had this shared vision of organizing farmworkers. Together, they launched the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. The two were partners in lobbying and really unionizing farm workers in America, and she really came to prominence when she helped organize the 1965 Delano strike of 5,000 grape workers. The strike lasted for five years, and drew national attention for its nonviolent resistance. During this time, during the national boycott of the California table grapes, she was in New York and she came in contact with Gloria Steinem, who was doing a huge part of the burgeoning feminist movement. And she realized that they have a lot in common, so she was advocating for farm workers while also advocating for women and how they are discriminated within the farm working movement. At the age of 58, she suffered a life-threatening assault while protesting against the policies of then-presidential candidate George Bush. A police officer with the baton ended up breaking for her ribs and shattering her spleen. And then during her really intensive recovery period, she took a leave of absence from the union and focused on women's rights. During this time she traveled the country on behalf of the feminist majority's “Feminization of Power,” which is a campaign that resulted in a significant increase in the number of women representatives at the local, state, and federal levels. So she began her career working with agricultural farm workers and has worked continuously for union rights as well as lobbying to get women into government. Even now, today, at 89 years old, she continues to work tirelessly to help leaders advocate for the working poor, women, and children. She founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation, where she travels across the country engaging in campaigns, all that supports equality defending civil rights, and she often speak to students and organizations about issues of social justice and public policy. Nellie Bly Nellie was a pioneer in investigative journalism in the late 1800s. She was one of the first reporters who truly went behind the scenes to get the real story. She had herself committed to a mental institution in an effort to expose the abuse that occurred there, and the results of this story were reforms that were actually made to living and care conditions at Blackwell's Island Mental Institute in New York City. When this story broke, she became like an overnight sensation, she became an extremely popular reporter. She ultimately ended up shining a light on everything from the improper treatment of prisoners in New York City jails, to the poor working conditions in factories, to corruption politics – she wrote about it all. She ended up gaining a ton of fame in 1899 when she traveled around the world in 72 days, which drew inspiration from the fiction novel Around the World in 80 Days, which is written by Jules Verne. She married a successful businessman, Robert Seaman. And then after he died in 1904, Nellie took control of his company and put into practice all of the workplace reforms that she had envisioned while working as a journalist, such as health care, and adding fitness centers into his company. She ended up unfortunately dying of pneumonia at a very young age of 57, but she had done so much in her lifetime. She really ushered in this whole new era of investigative journalism in such a short life, she really accomplished a lot. And that's like the quick version. I could spend hours talking about Nellie Bly. The small stories about her travels and her journals are really, really incredible. Natalie Rudd is the learning and engagement manager at the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. The Hall will be inducting its next class, including Indra Nooyi, Mia Hamm, Octavia Butler, Michelle Obama, and more, this September. 51% is a national production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. It's produced by Jesse King. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock, and our theme is "Lolita" by the Albany-based artist Girl Blue.

Please visit us at http://www.patreon.com/TheCharacterNetwork (www.Patreon.com/TheCharacterNetwork) to help support TCN and help us keep providing these unique and extremely effective research based Bully and Violence Prevention and Character Education Programs to schools around the world, and help more kids who desperately need special intervention. Go to http://www.thecharacternetwork.org/ (www.TheCharacterNetwork.org) to learn more and get involved. Thank you! Public use in schools requires a site license, please visit The Character Network to find out how your school can get these life changing program as a part of the TCN METHOD for school violence and bully prevention. Go HERE for a Free Copy of Jim Lord's Life Changing Breakthrough Novel, Mr. Delaney's Mirror, A Reflection of Your Futurehttps://characternetwork.krtra.com/t/E6KcJXqk8olF (https://bit.ly/GetDelaneysMirrorHere)************** A HERO is someone who does something special to HELP OTHERS. Every hero STARTS as a CHILD, and every Child can CHOOSE to become a Hero... Just like THIS one!Growing up in Arizona in the early 1930s was difficult for Cesar Chavez and his parents. Because of the Great Depression, his father lost the family business and soon had no work or money. In 1937, his family had to move to California to find work. During those young years, he began to see how unfair people could be to each other, but he also learned many things from his mother. She believed that violence and selfishness were wrong, and she taught these lessons to all of her children. As Cesar grew older, he went to work picking grapes in vineyards, along with many, many others. He began to see how unfairly the workers were treated, and how they weren t paid enough for their work. The owners of the companies were taking great advantage of the workers. So in addition to working hard everyday, Cesar started organizing workers to demand pay raises and better working conditions. They did not want to get something for nothing, they just wanted to be paid fairly for their work, and treated with the respect they and their families deserved. Later, he began to HELP others all over the country. He formed an organization called the National Farm Workers Association, which today is called United Farm Workers. But he went further, much further. Cesar also began to work hard to change laws about what chemicals could be used on crops and which ones could not, because some were just too dangerous. In 1994, after Cesar Chavez had died, the President of the United States presented the Medal of Freedom, to his wife, Helen. Yes, that little boy named Cesar, who saw how unfairly workers in the fields were treated, grew up to HELP millions of people, and for that, he became a very great HERO. That's what I know about the beginning of This Hero, and I know that YOU Can Be a Hero TOO!Dear Parents, After years of development, trial, and revision, we are so excited to now share with you the most effective version yet of our Proactive Bully Prevention Program that has proven to "change the culture" at hundreds of campuses across America in profound ways. Research has shown the TCN Method™ to be the single most effective school based Violence and Bully Prevention Intervention of its entire genre. We have hundreds of testimonials from educators describing the results they have gotten, and you can view many of these at http://www.thecharacternetwork.org/Testimonials (www.TheCharacterNetwork.org/Testimonials) This program, The Beginning of a Famous Hero™ is used in conjunction with a companion program called Bully Alert!™ in schools played over the intercom during morning announcements twice or more each school week, and backed up by a common culture which reinforces the principles taught, at every turn, and incorporates the phrases of the academic language during any teachable moment. These two sets of stories work together to convey a common academic language which says, “A bully is a person... Support this podcast

Did you know that today is Caesar Chavez Day? Cesar Chavez Day is always celebrated on his birthday, March 31st. President Barack Obama declared Cesar Chavez Day a national holiday in 2014.Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. Chavez employed nonviolent means to bring attention to the plight of farm workers. He led marches, called for boycotts and went on several hunger strikes?

1968 California Grape Strike, reported by Nanette Rainone by Pacifica Radio Archives 1968 CALIFORNIA GRAPE STRIKE, reported by Nanette Rainone. Dolores Huerta, Vice President of the National Farm Workers Union, along with three farm laborers, discuss the strike. BROADCAST: WBAI, 8 Dec. 1968. (ca. 45 min.) BB3904 Pacifica Radio Archives. Licence link http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ (Public Access America. In cooperation with this licence agreement would inform listeners that this audio was edited in that the Pacifica announcement was split from the original audio and placed at the beginning of this episode. Pacifica Radio Did not create or endorse this episode but does allow for rebroadcast as long as it not for monitary gains.) On September 8, 1965, Filipino American grape workers, members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, walked out on strike against Delano-area table and wine grape growers protesting years of poor pay and conditions. The Filipinos asked Cesar Chavez, who led a mostly Latino farm workers union, the National Farm Workers Association, to join their strike.

Cesar Chavez founded a labor union. Launched a movement. And inspired a generation. Two Decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino figure in U.S. history.” So reads the inside flap ofMiriam Pawel's new biography The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (Bloomsbury Press, 2014). However, while many are acquainted with the iconography of Chavez as the leader of the Farmworker Movement that took on California's powerful grape industry during the mid-to-late 1960s, much less is known about Chavez himself and his personal and organizational background prior to the formation of the National Farm Workers Association (the precursor to the United Farm Workers or UFW) or the internal dynamics and struggles between Chavez and his top brass. With great detail and empathy, Pawel provides a complex portrait of Chavez as a visionary and tireless organizer whose humility, strategic brilliance, and improbable success was matched only by his own arrogance, tactical blunders, and embarrassing defeats. We hope you enjoy listening to our fascinating conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Cesar Chavez founded a labor union. Launched a movement. And inspired a generation. Two Decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino figure in U.S. history.” So reads the inside flap ofMiriam Pawel’s new biography The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (Bloomsbury Press, 2014). However, while many are acquainted with the iconography of Chavez as the leader of the Farmworker Movement that took on California’s powerful grape industry during the mid-to-late 1960s, much less is known about Chavez himself and his personal and organizational background prior to the formation of the National Farm Workers Association (the precursor to the United Farm Workers or UFW) or the internal dynamics and struggles between Chavez and his top brass. With great detail and empathy, Pawel provides a complex portrait of Chavez as a visionary and tireless organizer whose humility, strategic brilliance, and improbable success was matched only by his own arrogance, tactical blunders, and embarrassing defeats. We hope you enjoy listening to our fascinating conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cesar Chavez founded a labor union. Launched a movement. And inspired a generation. Two Decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino figure in U.S. history.” So reads the inside flap ofMiriam Pawel’s new biography The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (Bloomsbury Press, 2014). However, while many are acquainted with the iconography of Chavez as the leader of the Farmworker Movement that took on California’s powerful grape industry during the mid-to-late 1960s, much less is known about Chavez himself and his personal and organizational background prior to the formation of the National Farm Workers Association (the precursor to the United Farm Workers or UFW) or the internal dynamics and struggles between Chavez and his top brass. With great detail and empathy, Pawel provides a complex portrait of Chavez as a visionary and tireless organizer whose humility, strategic brilliance, and improbable success was matched only by his own arrogance, tactical blunders, and embarrassing defeats. We hope you enjoy listening to our fascinating conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cesar Chavez founded a labor union. Launched a movement. And inspired a generation. Two Decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino figure in U.S. history.” So reads the inside flap ofMiriam Pawel’s new biography The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (Bloomsbury Press, 2014). However, while many are acquainted with the iconography of Chavez as the leader of the Farmworker Movement that took on California’s powerful grape industry during the mid-to-late 1960s, much less is known about Chavez himself and his personal and organizational background prior to the formation of the National Farm Workers Association (the precursor to the United Farm Workers or UFW) or the internal dynamics and struggles between Chavez and his top brass. With great detail and empathy, Pawel provides a complex portrait of Chavez as a visionary and tireless organizer whose humility, strategic brilliance, and improbable success was matched only by his own arrogance, tactical blunders, and embarrassing defeats. We hope you enjoy listening to our fascinating conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cesar Chavez founded a labor union. Launched a movement. And inspired a generation. Two Decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino figure in U.S. history.” So reads the inside flap ofMiriam Pawel’s new biography The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (Bloomsbury Press, 2014). However, while many are acquainted with the iconography of Chavez as the leader of the Farmworker Movement that took on California’s powerful grape industry during the mid-to-late 1960s, much less is known about Chavez himself and his personal and organizational background prior to the formation of the National Farm Workers Association (the precursor to the United Farm Workers or UFW) or the internal dynamics and struggles between Chavez and his top brass. With great detail and empathy, Pawel provides a complex portrait of Chavez as a visionary and tireless organizer whose humility, strategic brilliance, and improbable success was matched only by his own arrogance, tactical blunders, and embarrassing defeats. We hope you enjoy listening to our fascinating conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cesar Chavez founded a labor union. Launched a movement. And inspired a generation. Two Decades after his death, Chavez remains the most significant Latino figure in U.S. history.” So reads the inside flap ofMiriam Pawel’s new biography The Crusades of Cesar Chavez (Bloomsbury Press, 2014). However, while many are acquainted with the iconography of Chavez as the leader of the Farmworker Movement that took on California’s powerful grape industry during the mid-to-late 1960s, much less is known about Chavez himself and his personal and organizational background prior to the formation of the National Farm Workers Association (the precursor to the United Farm Workers or UFW) or the internal dynamics and struggles between Chavez and his top brass. With great detail and empathy, Pawel provides a complex portrait of Chavez as a visionary and tireless organizer whose humility, strategic brilliance, and improbable success was matched only by his own arrogance, tactical blunders, and embarrassing defeats. We hope you enjoy listening to our fascinating conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cesar Chavez, Co-founder of The National Farm Workers Association   “Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.”   Let’s do the definition of disrespect. This time from the Urban Dictionary: a user called “this means“ defined it as: “the act of putting someone down, trying to make them feel low, treating someone in a horrible manner, showing a person they mean less than nothing to you, a hurtful act that is both rude and ignorant towards another person’s feelings.” Nicely done I think. That sums it up well.  Most of us belong to multiple cultures. Race, gender, religion, and myriad of other things that we each identify with makes us who believe we are. Embracing each of these makes us the complete person have become. If we are comfortable with who we are, there is no need to put someone else down who is different in their thinking and experiences. But are you truly comfortable with who you are? Feeling the need to put others down could be an indication that you really aren’t happy or comfortable with your own identity. Most of us can look back in history and find incidents that involve injustices perpetrated by by one cultural group on our own. This begs the question of what we personally decide to do with this information. One of my close friend is Scottish in ancestry, while mine is mostly English. There have been times in history when the English really lowered the boom and controlled the Scots. There are many stories of torture and other acts of brutality perpetrated on them in order to maintain that control with terror. In Europe there were centuries of conflict between Catholic and Protestant monarchs who actively persecuted each other with completely innocent people being tortured and abused on both sides, just because they had a different belief. With these two examples is it right for my Scottish friend to hate me, or for me to hate every Catholic I see? Of course not. There is one overriding reason for me to accept and be accepted by these two groups. I didn’t do anything of this sort to my Scottish friend, and the Catholics have never done anything to me personally. Each of us are individuals who rise and fall on our own acts, not on those of our forebears.  When we meet others, we should completely ignore what their grandfather may have done, and let them show who they are, and what they have become on their watch. We can only pay for our own sins, and can only succeed by the effort we have each put forth to make our own lives and those around us better.  There are so many wonderful people we are missing the opportunity to be friends with because of the limitations we place on those with whom we will associate. Please don’t make a snap judgments based on stereotypes. It all comes down to this: Don’t be a hater. Just don’t do it.   Cesar Chavez in Wikipedia   Cesar Chavez Foundation   United Farm Workers   ---------------------------------------- Giada De Laurentiis, Celebrity Chef   “Pasta doesn’t make you fat. How much pasta you eat makes you fat.”   Volume. In this application, Dictionary.com says, a mass or quantity, especially a large quantity, of something. Most things that are good in moderation are not so good when you go extreme with the volume. Music with too much volume can damage your eardrums, and too much of a good food can make you fat, in this case, pasta. For the record, pasta rocks. My wife, Dee is quite the cook, and she does Italian well. Her simple spaghetti with her home made sauce is totally excellent, and when she ups the ante with chicken parmesan, it is simply out of this world. I really do battle with volume when something that good to eat is available. As a result, I am not as svelte as I used to be. The concept is self control. According to Joyce Meyer, “I have learned that I really do have discipline, self-control, and patience. But they were given to me as a seed, and it's up to me to choose to develop them.” Learning to control your appetite for food, drink and other things is pretty hard to do if you really weren’t taught to do so. A lack of discipline is this area moves a little closer to the beasts, who act on instinct and impulse, and lack the human level of reason and self control. That is the major dividing line between a savage and a civilized human being.  Taking this a step further, there are many humans who have completely thrown off the shackles of self control, and have become anti social, even psychopathic. This type of human animal thinks of themselves first and foremost, with no room to spare a thought for anyone else. If they want something, obtaining it is the number one priority, and anyone who gets in the way is likely to get hurt. A quote from Joseph P. Bradley: “Brutes are governed by their appetites and impulses. Savages are but little removed in this respect from brutes. Brutish men and coarse natures are mostly led by their impulses, appetites and passions. The true nobility of our nature is evinced by self-control, which restrains, governs and subdues the impulses, appetites, passions and desires.” I don’t know of many people who would like to be known as a brute. Sure, many are macho and ACT like they don’t care what others think, but the very act of being macho shows that a person is attempting to hide from others what they know to be true about themselves. They feel inadequate, and are desperately trying to keep others from finding out.  Macho persons are not dangerous like the psychopath, but are merely clumsy at being brutes and acting like they don’t care. If you can, help the macho person gain confidence, and avoid the true brutes altogether. Your life may depend on it.   Giada De Laurentiis Main Site   Giada De Laurentiis on Facebook   Giada De Laurentiis on Twitter   -----------------------------------------------------   SUBSCRIBE!  iTunes  Stitcher  Tunein     CHECK US OUT ON   Facebook  Twitter  Tumblr  

Co-founded in 1962 by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, the National Farm Workers Association would eventually become the United Farm Workers (UFW), the landmark labor union dedicated to achieving better wages and working conditions for rural California agricultural workers. In To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Lauren Araiza uses the UFW as a lens through which to examine the factors that contribute to the viability of cross-racial coalitions in achieving civil and economic rights. Specifically, Araiza looks at the UFW’s alliances with “five organizations that represented a wide spectrum of black activism”, namely the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Black Panther Party. In this interview, the author discusses, among other things, her deliberate departure from the black/white and North/South binary paradigms that dominate the discourse on race in the United States, instead examining the intersecting interests of organizations representing African Americans and Latinos. Listen here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Co-founded in 1962 by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, the National Farm Workers Association would eventually become the United Farm Workers (UFW), the landmark labor union dedicated to achieving better wages and working conditions for rural California agricultural workers. In To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Lauren Araiza uses the UFW as a lens through which to examine the factors that contribute to the viability of cross-racial coalitions in achieving civil and economic rights. Specifically, Araiza looks at the UFW’s alliances with “five organizations that represented a wide spectrum of black activism”, namely the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Black Panther Party. In this interview, the author discusses, among other things, her deliberate departure from the black/white and North/South binary paradigms that dominate the discourse on race in the United States, instead examining the intersecting interests of organizations representing African Americans and Latinos. Listen here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Co-founded in 1962 by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, the National Farm Workers Association would eventually become the United Farm Workers (UFW), the landmark labor union dedicated to achieving better wages and working conditions for rural California agricultural workers. In To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Lauren Araiza uses the UFW as a lens through which to examine the factors that contribute to the viability of cross-racial coalitions in achieving civil and economic rights. Specifically, Araiza looks at the UFW's alliances with “five organizations that represented a wide spectrum of black activism”, namely the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Black Panther Party. In this interview, the author discusses, among other things, her deliberate departure from the black/white and North/South binary paradigms that dominate the discourse on race in the United States, instead examining the intersecting interests of organizations representing African Americans and Latinos. Listen here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Co-founded in 1962 by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, the National Farm Workers Association would eventually become the United Farm Workers (UFW), the landmark labor union dedicated to achieving better wages and working conditions for rural California agricultural workers. In To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Lauren Araiza uses the UFW as a lens through which to examine the factors that contribute to the viability of cross-racial coalitions in achieving civil and economic rights. Specifically, Araiza looks at the UFW’s alliances with “five organizations that represented a wide spectrum of black activism”, namely the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Black Panther Party. In this interview, the author discusses, among other things, her deliberate departure from the black/white and North/South binary paradigms that dominate the discourse on race in the United States, instead examining the intersecting interests of organizations representing African Americans and Latinos. Listen here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Co-founded in 1962 by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, the National Farm Workers Association would eventually become the United Farm Workers (UFW), the landmark labor union dedicated to achieving better wages and working conditions for rural California agricultural workers. In To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), Lauren Araiza uses the UFW as a lens through which to examine the factors that contribute to the viability of cross-racial coalitions in achieving civil and economic rights. Specifically, Araiza looks at the UFW’s alliances with “five organizations that represented a wide spectrum of black activism”, namely the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Black Panther Party. In this interview, the author discusses, among other things, her deliberate departure from the black/white and North/South binary paradigms that dominate the discourse on race in the United States, instead examining the intersecting interests of organizations representing African Americans and Latinos. Listen here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices