A Public Affair Patty Peltekos, Carousel Bayrd, Ali Muldrow, Allen Ruff, & Esty Dinur

Last Thursday, U.S. District Judge William Conley said it was unlikely he would rule to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline on the Bad River reservation. This is despite recent erosion on the river bank that has raised concerns of exposure and eruption of the pipeline. Conley claimed that the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa didn’t sufficiently prove the erosion was an emergency.

A history of Line 5 can be found on the Sierra Club website.

Joining us to talk about the pipeline and efforts to shut it down are Communities United by Water’s Barbara With, Midwest Environmental Advocates’ Rob Lee, and Sierra Club’s Elizabeth Ward.

Barbara With is the co-founder of Wisconsin Citizens Media Coop and Communities United by Water. She lives in Lake Superior on Madeline Island and has been reporting on water issues since 2011. She was part of Harvest Education Learning Project (HELP) Camp to protect Northern Wisconsin from an open mine, participated the effort in Standing Rock to protect the water from Dakota Access Pipeline, and was arrested on Enbridge Line 3 in the summer of 2021. Barbara is currently working to stop a devastating rupture of Enbridge Line 5 running through the Bad River Reservation.

Rob Lee is a staff attorney at Midwest Environmental Advocates, a non-profit environmental law center in Madison, Wisconsin, where he works on a variety of issues including oil pipeline regulation, wetland and waterway permitting, and protecting the Great Lakes.

Elizabeth Ward is the Director of the Wisconsin branch of the Sierra Club which works to prevent a climate catastrophe and protect Wisconsin’s lands, water, and wildlife.

Photo by Salomé Guruli on Unsplash

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Twenty states and the federal Bureau of Prisons currently detain over 6,000 people, mostly men previously convicted of sex offenses, in prison-like “civil commitment” facilities beyond the terms of their criminal sentence. They’re held – often indefinitely – “treatment” facilities after completing their criminal sentences, in a practice likened to “double jeopardy” or repeat punishment for the same crime.











Joining us to discuss this system will be the activist researcher, writer and editor Emma Peyton Williams.  She is the author of a new overview report for the Prison Policy Initiative on civil commitment facilities. Emma’s survey research was conducted with Inside Illinois Civil Commitment.

 



Emma Peyton Williams is an activist, researcher, and educator. Emma’s work focuses on the intersection of social services and the criminal punishment system.

Photo by Andy Li on Unsplash

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About 16 million people in the US own one or more AR-15s according to The Washington Post and Ipsos. That is one in 20 people who own the semi-automatic weapon. A new reporting series by The Washington Post title AMERICAN ICON explores how the AR-15 became America’s favorite gun.

Joining us on today’s program is Alex Horton, National security reporter focused on the U.S. military, who coauthored “The gun that divides a nation” and “Flannel, muddy girl camo and man cards. See the ads used to sell the AR-15.”

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On Saturday, June 3rd gun owners can give new life to guns they no longer want. Former Pastor Jeff Wild is spending his retirement dismantling firearms and transforming them into garden tools. He joins us on A Public Affair to talk about this work. Also joining us is Dan Elsass, a member of the First United Method Church in Madison and is helping organized the Guns 2 Gardens event.

Unloaded guns can be surrendered on  Saturday June 3rd from 8:30am to 12:30pm at the First United Method Church Parking Lot (203 Wisconsin Avenue, Madison). A second event will be held the following Saturday, June 10th from 9am to 12pm at Midvale Community Lutheran Church (4329 Tokay Blvd., Madison)

More information about the FUMC event can be found here. The flyer for both dates can be found here. 



 Jeff Wild is a retired pastor of Madison’s Advent Lutheran Church. He leads the Guns 2 Gardens movement in Madison. 

Dan Elsass is a former city administrator, UW-Extension instructor, and Verona Area School Board member. He is a member of the Gun Violence Reduction team. In 2022 they began a campaign to lobby state and federal lawmakers to enact stricter gun controls.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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Sometimes it’s just nice to hear someone say the climate is in a death spiral. Dark comedy can give us the resolve to face the realities of climate change.  Today’s guest, Aaron Sachs is the author of a new book that urges us to laugh our way towards solutions.

Stay Cool: Why Dark Comedy Matters in the Fight Against Climate Change gives historical context for the use of dark humor and offers environmentalists a way to use humor to boost moral and engagement.

Examples cited in Stay Cool and referenced on todays show include:



* Chris Rock’s 2016 Oscars Monologue: https://youtu.be/kqhVNZgZGqQ

* The Yes Men Impersonate Shell: https://youtu.be/nkqO-qOHFT8

* Weathergirl Goes Rogue: https://youtu.be/TmfcJP_0eMc



Aaron Sachs is Professor of History and American Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism and Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition. With John Demos, he co-edited Artful History: A Practical Anthology.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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We start the show with co-founders of Myco Rising Aaron Cutler and Kacy Zander. They are attempting to clean up pollution in and around Starkweather Creek by using mycelium, the root-like structure of a fungus. Their project involves community members growing mushrooms at home and then returning the mycelium after harvesting. To learn more you can email mycorisingteam@gmail.com or find them @mycorisingup on Instagram.

Then, we speak with co-founder of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area, John Steinbach. In response to Joe Biden visiting Hiroshima for the G7 Summit, Steinbach wrote for the Institute for Public Accuracy that “the public is shockingly oblivious to the threat of global nuclear war.” He joins A Public Affair to tell us why. 

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