There is a caravan of 5,000 Central American migrants heading north through Mexico. President Trump has threatened to stop aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and claimed the caravan was made up of criminals and terrorists which is strongly disputed by caravan leaders. To discuss, we FEATURE Lourdes Guadalupe Martinez. Martinez 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) in San Francisco. Media includes: Univision, Telemundo, NBC Bay Area, KQED News.

Government officials claim that voter restrictions have been put in place to avoid voter fraud, but voting rights activists point out the number of people kept from voting far surpasses the number of voter fraud cases. To discuss, we FEATURE Brenda Wright. Wright is the Vice President of Legal Strategies at Demos.  She has led many progressive legal and policy initiatives on voting rights, campaign finance reform, redistricting, election administration and other democracy and electoral reform issues and is a nationally known expert in these areas. She has argued two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court:  Randall v. Sorrell (campaign finance) and Young v. Fordice (voting rights). Extensive media experience. w

The midterm elections are next week! To discuss, we FEATURE C. Nicole Mason. Mason is the Executive Director of the Center for Research and Policy in the Public Interest (CR2PI) and an Ascend Fellow at the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC.  For the last 15 years, Nicole’s work has focused on issues related economic security and poverty; women’s issues and entitlement reforms; policy formation and political participation among women, communities of color and youth; and racial equity. Media includes: CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The Huffington Post, Essence Magazine, Politico, RealClear Politics, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month and, to discuss, we FEATURE Emily Ladau. Ladau works for Concepts, Inc. supporting key U.S. Department of Labor Office of Disability Employment Policy initiatives. She is also the Editor in Chief of the Rooted in Rights Blog, a platform focused on disability rights issues. Ladau also maintains a website, Words I Wheel By, through which she focuses primarily on dismantling discrimination and exploring disability representation in mainstream media. She is a passionate disability rights activist and digital communications expert whose career began at the age of 10, when she appeared on several episodes of Sesame Street to educate children about her life with a physical disability. Media includes: The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Salon, Vice, The Washington Post, NPR.

The U.N., North Korea, and South Korea have agreed to remove weapons between the border of the two countries (known as the demilitarized zone) in an effort to improve the relationship between the two countries. To discuss, we FEATURE Christine Ahn. Ahn is the founder and international coordinator of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War, reunite families, and ensure women’s leadership in peacebuilding. In 2015, on the 70th anniversary of Korea’s division by Cold War powers, she led 30 international women peacemakers across the De-Militarized Zone, the world’s most fortified border, from North Korea to South Korea. Media includes: Al Jazeera, Anderson Cooper’s 360, BBC, Democracy Now!, NBC Today Show, NPR, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation.

The Trump administration recently revealed plans more narrowly define gender based on genitalia and blood work. This would remove recognition of transgender people and lead to further marginalization. To discuss, we FEATURE Danielle Joy Healey. Healey is a lawyer at Fish & Richardson and is a transgender civil rights advocate. She is active in LGBT cases in federal courts and agencies and lobbying Texas state legislature on transgender issues. She is the only "out" transgender partner at a big firm in Texas. Media includes: Outsmart Magazine, Houstonia Magazine, Houston Chronicle, Houston Business Journal.

The Brazilian presidential runoff is on October 28 and the race is between far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro and Worker's Party candidate Fernando Haddad. To discuss, we FEATURE Heloisa Pait. Pait  teaches sociology at the São Paulo State University Julio de Mesquita Filho, where she investigates the role of new means of communication in democratic life. In her doctoral dissertation at the New School for Social Research she analyzed how soap opera writers and viewers attempted to make mass communication a meaningful activity. She has written on the reception of international news, on media use by Brazilian youth, and on the disruptive role of the internet in the Brazilian political environment. Extensive media experience.