Everything Explained WAMC

What do San Francisco, Chicago, and Albany, NY have in common? They’re sanctuary cities - among hundreds of other U.S. cities, states, and counties that have declared their support for immigrant populations, often by limiting their cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement - otherwise known as ICE.

Safe havens to some, crime-infested danger zones to others - sanctuary cities have become the topic of heated partisan debate. Particularly since President Donald Trump took office, promising to strip them of funding.

“We will end the sanctuary cities that have resulted in so many needless deaths.” “We block the funding. No more funding.”



But the meaning of “sanctuary” is much more complex than leaders on both sides of the idle would have you believe.

This week, we break down complexities of sanctuary cities with WAMC Programming Intern - Anne Seefeldt.



The concept of sanctuary has been around since ancient times, but was popularized in the U.S. in the 1980s - when many churches sheltered Central American refugees from deportation.

Today, the designation “sanctuary” is not so simple. The term is widely misunderstood, and for good reason. It means different things in different places, and actually represents a complex interplay of local and federal law.

There is actually no concrete definition of what a sanctuary is. But Ayers names four of the most common elements of sanctuary jurisdictions. 

What can sanctuary mean?

Local jails not honoring detainer requests - in other words, holding people for extra time in jail at ICE’s written request.
Local police not asking about people’s immigration status or sharing their knowledge about non-citizens with federal officials.
Not allowing federal agents into local government buildings
Not deputizing local police to work directly alongside ICE

But it’s important to remember that these are not the only things that define sanctuary city. A jurisdiction can be called a sanctuary by doing much more, or much less for immigrant populations.

 

Additional Links:

Know your rights: https://www.nilc.org/get-involved/community-education-resources/know-your-rights/

Sanctuary Cities Explainer authored by Andrew Ayers: https://www.albanylaw.edu/centers/government-law-center/Immigration/Documents/Sanctuary%20Jurisdictions.pdf

List of counties with 287(g) ICE partnership agreements: https://www.ice.gov/287g

Lawsuits in which honoring ICE detainer requests without warrants was ruled to be illegal: https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/immig_detainer_legal_update-20180724.pdf

Information from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center: https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/rise_of_sanctuary-lg-20180201.pdf

Transcript from Albany Symposium on Sanctuary Cities moderated by Andrew Ayers: http://www.albanylawreview.org/Articles/vol81_2/679%20Sanctuary%20Cities%20Symposium%20Transcript%20FINAL.pdf

 
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
The concept of sanctuary has been around since ancient times, but was popularized in the U.S. in the 1980s,  when many churches sheltered Central American refugees from deportation.

Today, the designation “sanctuary” is not so simple. The term is widely misunderstood, and for good reason. It means different things in different places, and actually represents a complex interplay of local and federal law.  

It’s the kind of issue you need a lawyer to understand.

Today, we speak with a law expert based in Albany, New York

AYERS: My name is Andy Ayers, I’m director of the Government Law Center and an assistant professor of law at Albany Law School.

And later, we’ll speak with Mayor Narkewicz and Police Chief Jody Kasper of Northampton, Massachusetts.

But Professor Ayers will start us off.

SEEFELDT: So, on a very fundamental level, what are sanctuary cities?

AYERS: There is no agreed on definition of sanctuary cities. There is nothing in the law that defines tha

President Donald Trump’s promise of a border wall has divided many on both sides of the issue. This summer, the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy brought about the removal of thousands of migrant children from their parents to child detention centers across the United States. The move sent shockwaves throughout the country, but for many, it’s deja vu.





This isn’t the first time U.S. immigration policy has been criticized for infringing on human rights in the name of national security. Many feel the separation of families at the border echoes of Japanese-American Internment during World War II. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The measure called for the relocation of more than 100,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry from their homes to fenced-in centers known as internment camps.  But what exactly happened during Japanese Internment? What are the parallels with Trump’s immigration crackdown? And what can history teach us this time around?

Today, we speak with expert Judith Dollenmayer, an administrator at Vassar College. But she’s also worked closely on the issue as...
Credits:
Everything Explained is produced by WAMC Northeast Public Radio with assistance from Ashleigh Kinsey, and our intern Anne Seefeldt. Also, we’d like to give a special thanks to Judith Dollenmayer. I’m your host Patrick Garrett. As always we want to remind you to subscribe and leave a review because it helps us to make more podcasts like this one.

You can subscribe here on Apple Podcasts, here on Stitcher, and here on the Google Play store.
Informational Links:
https://nypost.com/2018/06/19/george-takei-trump-border-policy-worse-than-japanese-internment-camps/ 

Net Neutrality is a mess of divisive, confusing, and controversial opinion. And the clutter has only worsened over the last few months. After the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal of the Obama-era rules in December of 2017, chat forums, comment sections, and news articles about the repeal sprang up in every corner of the exact place that Net Neutrality was attempting to regulate – the Internet. Now, the beginning of the repeal process will start on April 23rd.





Opponents of  Net Neutrality rules say the regulations hinder the ability to provide so-called “fast lanes” on the internet. Those fast lanes would give preference to certain industries and professions that require the fastest speeds possible to deliver the best possible service. Examples often given include emergency workers such as police, firefighters, and medical personnel.

Advocates for Net Neutrality rules argue that the fast lanes would give ISPs – Internet Service Providers – the ability to deny service to those who would or could oppose their business interests or ideas.

But, it all goes much deeper than that. For help breaking down the topic of Net Neutrality, we go to Stan Horaczek, Technology Editor at Popular Science.
Credits:
Everything Explained is produced by WAMC Northeast Public Radio with assistance from Kristin Gilbert, Ashleigh Kinsey, Ian Pickus, and Jim Levulis. Also we’d like to give a special thanks to Stan Horaczek. I’m your host Patrick Garrett. As always we want to remind you to subscribe and leave a review because like everyone else in the “pod-realm” will tell you, it helps us to make more podcasts like this one.

You can subscribe here on iTunes, here on Stitcher, and here on the Google Play store.

Additional Links:
What Is Net Neutrality? | American Civil Liberties Union
Am I The Only Techie Against Net Neutrality? - Forbes
Ajit Pai says net neutrality was the top threat to broadband deployment
What you need to know about the FCC's 2015 net neutrality regulation

What is Cambridge Analytica? The recent word that 50 million Facebook users had their personal information collected during the 2016 presidential campaign by a data analytics firm has brought new and intense scrutiny on Facebook and social media.

Posting privately to your friends, liking and disliking posts and pages may seem harmless enough, but that seemingly benign information can be mined, studied, analyzed, and transformed into political campaign ammunition. Everything Explained’s Brian Shields spoke with Prof. James Hendler, the Director for Data Exploration and applications at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy about the data giant.




Credits:
Everything Explained is produced by WAMC Northeast Public Radio with assistance from Kristin Gilbert, Ashleigh Kinsey, Ian Pickus, and Brian Shields. I’m your host Patrick Garrett. As always we want to remind you to subscribe and leave a review because like everyone else in the “pod-realm” will tell you, it helps us to make more podcasts like this one. As always we want to remind you to subscribe and leave a review because like everyone else in the “pod-realm” will tell you, it helps us to make more podcasts like this one.

You can subscribe here on iTunes, here on Stitcher, and here on the Google Play store.

Electoral districts ebb and flow. The ever-changing population in different areas across the country creates the challenge of drawing the districts as close to accurately representative as possible. When drawing, the lines can get a little blurry, communities can become divided, and the way the edges of the districts are formed can determine the outcome of an election. At least, this is what legal teams across the country are trying to prove. The process of making the districts is called Gerrymandering. And today, we have an expert on the pod, to help us breakdown the fundamentals of the practice.



Ruth Greenwood, a senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, litigates a variety of redistricting cases. Along with co-counsel, she represents the plaintiffs in two high-profile partisan gerrymandering cases (Gill v. Whitford and LWVNC v. Rucho). On a federal level, not every state has to deal with this issue, some smaller states, like Vermont for example, only have one U.S. Rep. seat for the entire state. Which makes the issues more centered around medium to larger sized states, like Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, California, and New York. So Ruth, to start off the conversation on an broad note, what is gerrymandering?

Credits:

Everything Explained is produced by WAMC Northeast Public Radio with assistance from Kristin Gilbert and Ashleigh Kinsey. Also we’d like to give a special thanks to Ruth Greenwood. I’m your host Patrick Garrett. As always we want to remind you to subscribe and leave a review because like everyone else in the “pod-realm” will tell you, it helps us to make more podcasts like this one.

If you live in New York state, you’ve seen the signs. Vote to elect. Vote to re-elect. Vote YES. Vote NO on the Constitutional Convention. But what is … the Constitutional Convention?





Election Day is Tuesday, November 7th and on the ballot is a question that may raise even more questions for voters. Whether to hold a state constitutional convention. Also known as the Con Con, Section 2 of Article XIX (19) of the New York state Constitution requires that every 20 years the ballot question be proposed to voters. The state constitution, similar to the U.S. Constitution, establishes the structure of government for the state and details the basic rights of New York citizens. New York has held nine Con Cons, the most recent being in 1967 which ended with the proposed changes being rejected by voters without a single county voting in favor.

This year, voters will decide whether New York will hold a Constitutional Convention in 2019. A Siena College Poll from October found that 44 percent of New Yorkers say they will vote in favor of a Con Con. But, 39 percent said they would vote “no.”

Today Dr. Thomas Keck joins us to talk Con Con and the issues that makes this question so divisive. Keck is the Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics and Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University‘s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. We spoke with Dr. Keck about the impending vote on the New York state ballot that could lead to changes to the state’s constitution.
Credits:
Everything Explained is produced by WAMC Northeast Public Radio with assistance from Kristin Gilbert, Ashleigh Kinsey, Liz Hill, and Jim Levulis. Also we'd like to give a special thanks to Dr. Thomas Keck. I’m your host Patrick Garrett. As always we want to remind you to subscribe and leave a review because like everyone else in the “pod-realm” will tell you, it helps us to make more podcasts like this one.

You can subscribe here on iTunes, here on Stitcher, and here on the Google Play store.

Additional Links:

New York Is About to Vote on a Constitutional Convention: Here’s Why You Should Care

Opponents Of A Constitutional Convention In NY Outspend Supporters 

Prop 3 On NY’s November Ballot Spurs Rare Show Of Unity 

Debunking Some Myths About NY's Ballot Questions

NYS Bar Association Decides To Back Constitutional Convention

Cuomo Has Reservations About A Constitutional Convention

Vox Pop: NY Ballot Questions 10/31/17