Latin Waves Media

Latin Waves’s Host Sylvia Richardson speaks with Brazilian physician, actor and trans-cultural psychiatrist about the structural indicators of health. The difference between healing and curing mental health. Dr. Pordeus has developed an actor’s method of healing mental illness….In this interview Sylvia and Victor explore the connections of poverty and illness. The power of art in healing reveals the daily rituals of modern society and the root causes of dys-ease.

​​​​​Robert Jensen, professor in the School of Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin College of Communication, is the author of Arguing for Our Lives: A User s Guide to Constructive Dialog, (City Lights Publishers, March 2013). The book explores issues with public discourse, trust in the leadership of elected officials and what Jensen calls an Age of Anxiety. It also offers strategies for addressing these crises. We live in a time when public discourse is more skewed than ever by the propaganda that big money can buy, with trust in the leadership of elected officials at an all-time low. The news has degenerated into sensationalist sound bites, and the idea of debate has become a polarized shouting match that precludes any meaningful discussion. It s also a time of anxiety, as we re faced with economic and ecological crises on a global scale, with stakes that seem higher than ever before. In times like these, it s essential that we be able to think and communicate clearly. Sylvia speaks to Dr Jensen about traditional struggles, internal domination and a way forward. Also Drop of Water by Dana Lyons

Senior Lecturer Nathalia Jaramillo is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of California Los Angeles. She has teaching experience in the United States, as well as in Latin American universities. Dr. Jaramillo’s scholarship is concerned with understanding the social, economic and political conditions that shape the schooling experiences of marginalized communities; on generating methodologies and practices that bridge the divide between educators and communities. We speak to her about her most recent book, Immigration and the Challenge of Education: A Social Drama Analysis in South Central Los Angeles. The interview focuses on the issue of forced migration and the socialization of education under Neoliberalism . Education’s complicit role in legitimizing the role of colonization, capitalism and imperialism, if un-intendedly complicit.

Derrick Jensen is an American author and environmental activist (and critic of mainstream environmentalism). Jensen has published several books questioning and critiquing modern civilization and its values, including The Culture of Make Believe and Endgame. He has also taught creative writing at Pelican Bay State Prison and Eastern Washington University. Latin Waves host Sylvia Richardson speaks with author Derrick Jensen on the’naturality’ of hierarchy and our culture of violation. Exploring alternative ways of being. Jensen turns the corrosive narrative of hierarchy (survival of the fittest) on its head and offers a new path of coexistence. ** Plus a short talk at the end by Noam Chomsky titled “Necessary Illusions”

​​​​​Latin Waves host Sylvia Richardson speaks with Robert Jensen on his book Plain Radical, Living, Loving and learning to leave the Planet Gracefully. It’s hard to have hope…What will you tell the generations that come after you’re gone? The young ask the old to hope….what will you tell them? Tell them at least what you say to yourself. Tell them we lived in a world face with many challenges and also amazing opportunities to create a new path grounded in local focus, fierce intelligence and deep connection with one another. Tell them the path is made by walking, by engaging with open hearted-ness and wide-awakeness that provide for a meaningful and radical engagement with the world.

​​​​​David Bacon explores the human side of globalization, exposing the many ways it uproots people driving them to migrate. He also speaks about how immigration policy makes the labor of those displaced people a crime in the United States. Illegal People explains why current immigration policy produces even more displacement, more migration, more immigration raids, and a more divided, polarized society.

*I am re-airing this show from a few months ago to honor activist radio legend and my good friend Charles Boylan who did this interview while in the late stages of his cancer, he passed away June 17th  and will always be in my heart , he never stopped trying to make a better world** Charles Boylan is a Canadian radio broadcaster and political activist. He is the former producer of Wake up with co-op and currently hosts the program Discussion, on CFRO 100.5FM; a community-run, co-cooperatively-owned, non-corporate radio station broadcasting from Vancouver, British Columbia. Boylan has also run for political office federally and provincially as a representative of the Marxist “Leninist Party of Canada and People’s Front respectively. We speak about the upcoming year 2017 which Charles coins the "The Year of Resistance", we speak about the struggles and challenges ahead and the hard work that needs to be done to realize the new horizon where ordinary people get together and  chart their own future taking back power from the monopoly interests, a bright future where the working class rises up with communities of interest to deal with the issues of our time, real action on the environmental, social and democratic crisis can be accomplished when we work together. A most importantly how to create an anti war government that respects human dignity with social love for our brothers and sisters.

​​​​​The interview examines how Neo-liberal reforms (in the manner of De-regulation, austerity measures, common sense policies, privatization, etc.) are woven through and shape contemporary racial inequality in Canadian society. Using recent controversies in drinking water contamination and solid waste and sewage pollution, Where the Waters Divide illustrates in concrete ways how cherished notions of liberalism and common sense reform ” Neo-liberalism ” also constitute a particular form of racial oppression and white privilege. Michael Mascarenhas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellow. He has published in the following books: Environmental Conflict and Democracy in Canada (2009), Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology (2008), and in the Institute of Development Studies Bulletin (2012). His work has been featured in the New York Times, Scientist in the Field column and on Scienceline, a web project of NYUs Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.

​​​​​David E. Kirkland is a trans-disciplinary scholar of English and urban education, who explores the intersections among urban youth culture, language and literacy, urban teacher preparation, and digital media. He analyzes culture, language, and texts, and has expertise in critical literary, ethnographic, and sociolinguistic research methods. He has received many awards for his work, including the 2008 AERA Division G Outstanding Dissertation Award and was a 2009-10 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and is a former fellow of NCTE’s Cultivating New Voices. Dr. Kirkland has published widely. His most recent articles include: ” Black Skin, White Masks’: Normalizing Whiteness and the Trouble with the Achievement Gap” in urban contexts: Politics, Pluralism, and Possibilities” (English Education), and “We real cool: Examining Black males and literacy” (Reading Research Quarterly). He is currently completing his fourth book, A Search Past Silence, to be published through Teacher College Press s Language and Literacy Series. Dr. Kirkland believes that, in their language and literacies, youth take on new meanings beginning with a voice and verb, where words when spoken or written have the power to transform the world inside-out

​​​​​Latin Waves host Sylvia Richardson speak with immigrant rights activist Dr. Aviva Chomsky about her latest book Undocumented How Immigration Became Illegal. Dr. Chomsky speaks of how “illegality” and “undocumentedness” are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to what ends. Blending history with human drama, She makes visible the legal, social, economic, and historical context and injustice that it perpetuates. Music, Sweet Little Lies’ by Michael Franti

​​​​​A professor at Carleton University, Marcelo Saavedra is an Indigenous Bolivian leader and founder of the Bolivia Action Solidarity Network. He speaks to Latin Waves about the need to protect indigenous languages as these languages change how we view the world. He challenges the western notion of rights and how the paradigm shift that’s taking place must have women front and center. “If we can harness that wisdom that is embedded in our ancestral cultures, we can get rid of capitalism, patriarchy , Globalization and colonialism. And Women are a central central piece in this puzzle”

Sylvia Richardson and author Derrick Jensen make visible the unspoken hierarchical structures of power and violence. Why in a capitalist, patriarchal system violence against women, people of colour and against nature is the norm not the exception.

Stuart Richardson co-host of Latin Waves interviews co-founder of Democracy Watch Duff Conacher who is an internationally recognized leader in the area of democratic reform and government accountability, and is Director of GoodOrg.ca Consulting. They speak about big money in politics with a focus on the BC Elections and the Federal Canadian government, how Canada is lacking in safeguards to protect Canadians form the influence of big money on our democracy. Also some advise on how to move forward in Canada and elsewhere  as this problem seems universal.

Latin Waves host Sylvia Richardson speaks with Aymara Elder and Professor of Indigenous Studies Marcelo Saavedra-Vargas about solving contemporary issues facing humanity using the wisdom and spirituality of our ancestors. How remembering the stories of the land about living and coexisting well is to explore different perspectives and understandings about the passage of humans through this planet. * Music Green and Blue by Dana Lyons

​​​​​We speak to Dr Darren Lund, Dr. Lund is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary, where his research examines social justice activism in schools and communities. Since the 1980s Darren has published over 230 articles, poems, books, and book chapters; his most recent books are co-edited with Dr. Paul Carr: He speaks about his most recent book The Great White North? Exploring Whiteness, Privilege and Identity in Education. Dr Lund has a frank discussion about the challenges of teaching privilege to students who can t even recognize their own privilege, he speaks about the need to problematize the classroom taking take students out of their comfort zones.