The Indypendent News Hour on WBAI // 27 September '22

On this week's show: First Segment: Alexa Avilés, democratic socialist City Councilmember whose South Brooklyn district encompasses Red Hook, Sunset Park, Greenwood and parts of Windsor Terrace, Dyker Heights and Borough Park. We catch up with her on the latest from Puerto rico, the city’s response to the influx of migrants from border states and the latest disturbing news from the New York City Housing Authority which she oversees as the Chair of the City Council’s Committee on NYCHA. Second Segment: In our second segment, we talk about the life and legacy of Dr. Jeffrey Perry, who died over the weekend. Perry was an independent, working-class scholar whose work focused on the role of white supremacy as a retardant to progressive social change and on the centrality of struggle against white supremacy to progressive social change efforts. Perry wrote and spoke in particular on two of the most important thinkers on race and class in the twentieth century: Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen, both of whom we will hear more about shortly. Perry's friend of 50 years, Sean Ahern, joins us to commemorate Perry. Ahern is a retired public-school teacher and member of the NYC Coalition to Finally End Mayoral Control. Third Segment: Labor and culture. The 11th annual Worker Unite Film Festival begins on Friday, Oct. 7 at Cinema Village Theater. It will be WUFF’s first in-person festival since the pandemic. The festival comes at a time when we’re seeing an upsurge in labor organizing and strikes and labor unions are more popular in public opinion polls than any time in the past five decades. We are joined by WUFF Executive Director Andrew Tilson and two special guests, avant-garde jazz luminary William Hooker, whose 2021 film The Lost Generation: Outside the Mainstream will be a part of the festival and Sean Claffy, who directed Americonned, a film that examines "the long overdue uprising of American workers.”