The nursing home industry is currently pushing for immunity from lawsuits as coronavirus cases continue to rise. While the push is meant to prevent nursing homes and their employees from getting sued, there are concerns over how this would allow facilities to avoid liability when it comes to abuse or neglect. To discuss, we FEATURE Bobbie Sackman. Sackman is a leading expert on issues facing the elderly and a well-known advocate for the importance of providing community-based senior services to diverse populations. Since 1989 she has been Director of Public Policy for Council of Senior Centers & Services of NYC (CSCS), and has been a leading force in ensuring this professional organization fulfills its mission to assist over 400 senior centers, transportation providers, meals programs and other service providers in delivering quality programs and services to more than 300,000 older New Yorkers. Media includes: The New York Times, New York Daily News, CBS, NPR.

Congress is currently in talks about passing another COVID-19 relief bill. To discuss, we FEATURE Amaya Smith. Smith is vice president for marketing and communications at the National Partnership for Women & Families. In that role she oversees strategic messaging as well as digital and earned communications around issues important to women and families. These issues include reproductive justice, women’s health care and workplace fairness. Smith works to ensure that stakeholders and the public understand that women’s health and reproductive freedom is inextricably entwined with economic justice. Media includes: The Washington Post, Politico, Fox News.

President Trump has ordered meat packing plants to stay open, following statements by Tyson's Food chairman John Tyson that grocery Groceries stores may be facing meat shortages soon due to factories closing because of the pandemic. To discuss, we FEATURE Denise O'Brien. O'Brien is a farmer and community organizer from Atlantic, Iowa. She is the former Director of the Women Food and Agriculture Network. She has farmed with her husband, Larry Harris, for thirty one years in the southwest corner of Iowa. Larry is a fourth generation farmer and has lived on and farmed this land all of his life. On the farm, she maintains sixteen acres of fruit and vegetable production. She is also a poultry producer who raises turkeys and chickens using organic practices. Media includes: Iowa Farmer Today, Des Moines Register, NPR.

As COVID-19 continues to spread globally, there is concern that it will hit Africa especially hard. To discuss, we FEATURE Solomé Lemma. Lemma is the Executive Director of Thousand Currents, a grantmaker that supports grassroots movements focused on food, climate, and economic justice in the Global South and shifting philanthropy towards justice and equity. She is the co-founder of Africans in the Diaspora (AiD), an initiative she led for four years before its merger with Thousand Currents. Previously, she served as Global Fund for Children’s Senior Program Officer for Africa, managing a portfolio of over 100 grassroots organizations in about 25 countries. Media includes: The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, BBC, NPR.

COVID-19 has changed how many people live their lives, including ways to worship when places of worship are closed. While many places of worship have respected social distancing mandates, there are few who are resistant including a Louisiana pastor who held a service despite the pandemic. To discuss, we FEATURE Renita J. Weems. Weems is a nationally renowned theologian whose scholarly insights into biblical text and the role of spirituality in everyday lives have made her a popular author and speaker. Weems is founder of Something Within a monthly e-newsletter and blog that explores issues of faith in the context of the challenges women face on a daily basis. Media includes: Ebony Magazine, Essence Magazine, The Washington Post, BBC.

Media outlets across the nation have been hit hard by COVID-19, with numbers of outlets having to close. This comes on top of newsrooms employment dropping by 51% between 2008 and 2019, according to a Pew Research Center study. To discuss, we FEATURE Cristina Azocar. Azocar is the chair of the Journalism Department and an associate professor of journalism at San Francisco State University. Prior to becoming chair she directed the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism for more than 10 years. She teaches classes on the intersection of race and journalistic practice. Azocar has conducted numerous presentations, workshops, talks and panels on the intersection of diversity and journalistic practice and has published in academic and professional journals. She is a past president of the Native American Journalists Association. Extensive media experience.

Last year FBI-connected researchers warned that America's anti-vaccination movement may pose a threat should a pandemic happen. The researchers warned of the spread of misinformation by these groups and, today, we see anti-vaxxers participating in protests against stay-at-home orders meant to curb the spread of the virus. To discuss, we FEATURE Elena Conis. Conis is the author of Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization (University of Chicago Press). She is also a professor in the Graduate School of Journalism and the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society at the University of California, Berkeley, where she directs the joint graduate program in Journalism and Public Health. A former journalist, award-winning columnist, and historian, Conis studies how culture, values, politics, and media have shaped modern American medicine, public health, and environmentalism over time, and how scientific ideas about health and medicine are communicated to and received by the public in the present. Media includes: Time, Bloomberg, NPR.

As governments close down their cities, states, or countries, transparency from the government becomes more important than ever as many people are restless and worried. To discuss, we FEATURE Miranda Spivack. Spivack has written extensively about state/local/federal government secrecy. Before becoming an independent journalist whose work is published by revealnews.org and The New York Times, she spent nearly 20 years at The Washington Post as an editor and reporter, tussling often with local officials to obtain essential documents that they preferred to conceal. While covering politics and government, she wrote about the high cost to taxpayers of out-of-court settlements; major zoning abuses; and favoritism by planning officials. Media includes: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday.

A California judge has ruled that, by keeping children detained at the border, the Trump administration has violated the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement, which requires children detained at the border to be released within 20 days. To discuss, we FEATURE Lourdes Guadalupe Martinez. Martinez Lourdes is an immigrant originally from Mexico City, a home that she left at the age of 13 to move to Texas with her family. Today, she is the Political Director of Mujeres Unidas y Activas, or MUA, a grassroots organization of Latina immigrant women in the San Francisco Bay Area with a double mission of promoting personal transformation and building community power for social and economic justice. MUA’s focus issue areas are Immigrant Rights; Domestic Worker Rights; and Violence Against Women. Before joining MUA, Lourdes was an immigration attorney, working as an immigration legal educator with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC). Media includes: Univision, Telemundo, NBC Bay Area, KQED News.

The Supreme Court has decided not to hear a case involving Second Amendment rights. The dismissal of the case, which looked at a New York City law that would regulate where gun owners could carry their handguns, is currently a win for supporters of gun regulation. To discuss, we FEATURE Kristin Goss. Goss focuses on why people do (or don't) participate in political life and how their engagement affects public policymaking. Her current research projects focus on the role of philanthropic billionaires in policy debates and on the evolution of gun-related advocacy over the past decade. Goss is also the co-author (with Philip J. Cook) of The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2014) and author of Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America (Princeton University Press, 2006, 2009), which examines the strategic and political barriers to mass mobilization for stricter firearms regulation. Media includes: Raleigh News & Observer, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Newark Star Ledger.

The Supreme Court will be making a decision on DACA soon. To discuss, we FEATURE Pamela Chomba, who is a Dreamer and activist. Born in Peru, Pamela came to the United States with her family members when she was 11 years old in 2001. Pamela has a 13-year-old brother who is a U.S. citizen, while Pamela and her siblings are DACA recipients. Some of her family member remain in limbo, with no pathway to citizenship, and vulnerable to deportation. Chomba is now the Director of State Immigration Campaigns at FWD.us where she works with Congressional advocacy and elevates grassroot-driven organizations to fight for legislation that would protect Dreamers like her. Media includes: ThinkProgress, Bustle, CUNY TV.

The Chinese public are currently debating a story involving a 14-year old girl and her guardian who is over three decades her senior. The debate is over whether the girl is a victim of rape or a willing sexual partner, and has begun a push to raise China's age of consent from 14. To discuss, we FEATURE Sylvia Yu (Friedman). Yu is a Hong Kong-based Executive Producer of Film and TV, writer/journalist, and advisor to philanthropists. She is an expert on 'comfort women' or Japanese military sex slavery before and during WWII. She specializes in human trafficking reporting. Media includes: Financial Express, The Globe & Mail, National Observer, Time Out, CNN, CBC.

May 1st is International Worker's Day, which works to improve working conditions and wages for workforces. To discuss, we FEATURE Judy Gearhart. Gearhart is the Executive Director of the Internaional Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) since March 2011. She is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School for International and Public Affairs, teaching the course Human Rights and Development Policy since 2002. Previously, Gearhart coordinated legal research and training programs for workers and trade unions at Social Accountability International, led field research and evaluations for UNICEF and the ILO’s International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor in Honduras, and worked for women’s rights and democratization with human rights NGOs in Mexico and Washington, DC. Media includes: The Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Nation.