Summary: <br> <p>Welcome, to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and <br> analysis from a Black Left perspective with host Glen Ford and his <br> co-host, Nellie Bailey. <br> <br></p><br> <p>– There is turmoil this presidential <br> primacy season, in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Dr. <br> Anthony Monteiro, the Dubois Scholar and veteran activist who helped put<br> together a national conference on the Black Radical Tradition, this <br> January, in Philadelphia, says the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump <br> campaigns reveal a crisis in the duopoly political system.</p><br> <p>- <br> Students, teachers, parents and community members in Detroit are gearing<br> up for a city-wide strike to defend the public schools, which have been<br> pushed to the brink of bankruptcy after 17 years of management by the <br> state. Among the leaders of the protests is Steven Conn, the elected <br> president of the Detroit teachers’ union, who was deprived of his seat <br> by the union’s national leadership. Conn says Michigan Governor Rick <br> Snyder and his appointed emergency financial managers are hell-bent on <br> destroying public education. Their current plan is to divide the Detroit<br> school system in two.<br> <br></p><br> <p>- A new study shows that Teach for <br> America, or TFA, which has been a leading force in the charterization of<br> the nation’s public schools, enjoys a special relationship with school <br> systems in Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans and New York. The lead <br> researcher for the study is Jameson Brewer. He says Teach for America <br> collects finders fees to provide school systems with novice teachers, <br> and protects them against lay-offs, while traditional teachers are <br> pushed out of the profession.</p><br> <p>- The Alliance for a Just Society <br> has released a new report titled “Jobs After Jail.” The problem is, <br> there AREN’T many employment opportunities for ex-offenders, partly <br> because former prison inmates are prohibited by law from working at <br> literally hundreds of jobs. Allyson Fredericksen was one of the authors <br> of the report.</p><br> <p>- As a lifelong activist, and a veteran journalist <br> and educator, Dr. Charles Simmons takes the long view. Simmons spoke <br> last week to a meeting on Black Men in Unions, at the Institute for <br> Labor and Community Studies, in Detroit.</p>
