For our newest episode, we’re featuring an interview of Periphery co-host Mike LaSusa, which was recorded earlier this month by the Latino Media Collective for WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, DC.
Latino Media Collective host Oscar Fernandez interviewed Mike about his recent article for Jacobin magazine, “Giuliani in Rio,” which lays out how former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has been crisscrossing the Americas, spreading the draconian “zero-tolerance” policing policies he pioneered in New York.
We want to give a special thank you to Oscar for hosting, and to the Latino Media Collective and WPFW for letting us share this interview with our audience. We also want to thank engineer Mike Nasella for helping the show run smoothly.
This episode is available on Libsyn and iTunes, or you can listen to it using the player below.
We talked with Dr. Brenner about the dynamic and complicated history of U.S.-Cuba relations and the new changes taking place since the historic December 17, 2014 announcement of plans to normalize relations. You can watch U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech here and Cuban President Raul Castro’s speech with English subtitles here.
The full results of the Univision/Fusion public opinion poll we mentioned in the episode can be found here. For more information on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s clandestine “democracy promotion” initiatives, we recommend these articles on the “Cuban Twitter” program, the Cuban hip-hop program and the activities Alan Gross was involved in before his arrest.
The episode is available on Libsyn and iTunes, or you can listen to it using the player below.
The song at the end of this episode is “Orishas” by 537 Cuba. For more Cuban music and videos that give a glimpse into life on the island, listen to this YouTube playlist we put together with a mix of everything from Trova to Cha-Cha-Cha to Guajira to Son to Yoruba to hip-hop to U.S. songs about Cuba and versions of Cuban songs played by American musicians. We tried to include a wide range of styles to reflect Cuba’s complex and fascinating musical history. Please comment with any suggestions of songs or videos we should add.
In our third episode, we interviewed Sanho Tree, a self-proclaimed “recovering historian” and director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), one of the leading progressive think tanks in Washington DC. Sanho has worked on drug policy issues for over a decade and is widely considered one of the most knowledgable experts in his field. We talked with Sanho about the history of drugs and the drug war, and some of the policy changes that have taken place on this front in recent years.
For more information on Bolivia’s “coca yes, cocaine no” policy, which we mention in this episode, see the article Angelika and I recently wrote for Security Assistance Monitor. Mike also wrote a blog post last year explaining why “Colombia is not a good model for conflict resolution (yet).”
Sanho’s recent publications and media appearances can be found on IPS’s website. We also recommend checking out Sanho’s 2011 article about why “Colombia is no model for Mexico’s drug war.” The figures we cited from the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy can be found at this link.
The song included at the end of the episode is “Legalize It” by Peter Tosh. You can also watch the video from the government-funded anti-drug ad we played during the episode here.
The episode is available on Libsyn and iTunes, or you can listen to it using the player below.
In our second episode, we interviewed Jose Magaña-Salgado, an immigration policy attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) in Washington DC. Previously, Jose worked as a staff attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), where he handled the national immigration portfolio in the areas of immigration reform, regulatory advocacy, as well as military, employment and housing issues at the intersection with immigration.
Originally from Mexico, Jose began his work as an immigration advocate on the grassroots level while attending Arizona State University. Jose was involved in the formation of the Arizona DREAM Act Coalition (ADAC), one of the largest DREAM Act advocacy groups in the US.
The ILRC is a national nonprofit resource center that provides legal trainings, educational materials and advocacy to advance immigrant rights.
In our first episode, we interviewed our former colleague Sarah Kinosian, an expert on Latin America security issues who recently published a seven-part series about violence, militarization and migration in Honduras.
Last December, Sarah Kinosian, lead researcher on Latin America for the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor program, went to Honduras with Lisa Haugaard of the Latin America Working Group to conduct on-the-ground research for the report, which was published last month.
Sarah Kinosian and Lisa Haugaard’s seven-part report, “Honduras: A Government Failing to Protect Its People,” is available for download from the Center for International Policy, or in installments on the Security Assistance Monitor and Latin American Working Group blogs. Sarah Kinosian, William D. Hartung and Lisa Haugaard also wrote a follow-up report for Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF): “Can the Violence in Honduras Be Stopped?”
Security Assistance Monitor has also created an Advocacy Guide: Applying the Leahy Law to U.S. Military and Police Aid to guide “human rights promoters and journalists [who] may be unaware of a powerful tool to curb impunity among military and police that receive U.S. assistance: the ‘Leahy Law.’” The guide is useful for learning what the Leahy Law says, how the United States applies it and what organizations can do to encourage U.S. action against security forces accused of violations, such as the Military Police (PMOP) in Honduras. (Una versión en Español también está disponible aquí: Aplicando la Ley Leahy a la Asistencia Militar y Policial de los EE.UU.)
Security Assistance Monitor is compiling a running list of human rights abuses allegedly committed by military police in Honduras. Security Assistance Monitor documents all publicly accessible information on U.S. security and defense assistance programs throughout the world, including arms sales, military and police aid, training programs, exercises, exchanges, bases and deployments.
For our newest episode, we’re featuring an interview of Periphery co-host Mike LaSusa, which was recorded earlier this month by the Latino Media Collective for WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, DC. 
Periphery 