Oak Flat, Trump's Environmental Policy, Arming Teachers, Solving a 50-Year Cold Case, Mayor of Ramallah
Lauren Redniss is known for her work in visual nonfiction and in 2016, she received the coveted MacArthur "Genius" Grant. Her writing spans biography, cultural history, and natural history, and her new book is no exception. Titled, Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West, the book looks at the fight over Oak Flat, located within Arizona's Tonto National Forest and held sacred by the San Carlos Apache Tribe. The land is being sought out by a multi-national mining company as the site for a new copper mine.
Annette McGivney covers the American Southwest and recently published a piece in The Guardian titled, “Revealed: Trump officials rush to mine desert haven native tribes consider holy” about the ongoing fight for Oak Flat. She’ll give us an update on the many last-minute environmental protection rollbacks that the Trump administration is seeking in its final days, including their recent attempts to sell energy leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, curbing EPA air and water pollution controls, and rolling back the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.
VICE audio producer Jen Kinney joins us to talk about her 3-part audio series for VICE News Reports, Armed, based on two years of reporting on what is means to be safe in school and who gets to decide. Kinney embedded at schools in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania to look at the culture around arming teachers.
In 1969, Harvard graduate student Jane Britton was found murdered in her apartment. Decades later, author Becky Cooper decided to investigate what happened to Britton. She joins us to discuss her new book on the case, We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence.
Director David Osit joins us to discuss his new documentary, “Mayor,” which follows the Mayor of Ramallah in the West Bank. The film will be available via Film Forum starting December 2.
This episode is guest-hosted by Ilya Marritz.
