On the U.S.-Mexico border, where San Diego ends and Tijuana begins right next to the Pacific Ocean, there’s a place called Friendship Park. It opened over 50 years ago and was meant to be a symbol of the binational community that stretches across the border. Friendship Park eventually became an unlikely place for poignant cross-border reunions.
But since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Friendship Park has been shut down. And there’s a good chance it might not reopen. We get into its history and future today. Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: San Diego Union-Tribune border reporter Kate Morrissey
Kansas voters protect abortion rights. Remembering a legendary sportscaster. An about face on veterans' health care. CBS News Correspondent Steve Kathan has today's World News Roundup.
The hosts start with a brief discussion of Leanna Louie, a law-and-order Democrat running for District 4 Supervisor in SF. What might she represent for the future of Asian-American politics?
Then Jay and Tammy are joined by investigative journalist Ali Fowle to discuss Myanmar. The country’s military regime recently killed four prisoners, including well known pro-democracy activists Phyo Zeya Thaw and Ko Jimmy. These judicial executions, the first since the 1980s, shocked even those inside Myanmar, where extrajudicial murders and widespread arrests have been commonplace since the February 2021 military coup.
Ali describes her experience reporting from Myanmar in the decade leading up to the coup, the culture of fear and violence used to suppress last year’s popular uprising, and what the resistance movement looks like today. We ask why the coup in Myanmar has not broken through internationally in the way Russia’s assault on Ukraine has, and what message the recent executions are meant to send.
Be sure to watch the short documentary Ali produced last year with Al Jazeera (warning: graphic content), and give a listen to Phyo Zeya Thaw’s music.
The visit of America’s speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has Chinese tempers flaring. We ask what the trip suggests about American policy and what it means for Taiwan. Crowdfunding is making a real difference in the war in Ukraine—but its effects vary between the two sides. And a close listen to a young pianist’s prizewinning Rachmaninoff-concerto performance.
Abercrombie’s best-selling product right now isn’t a cologne, a polo shirt, or cargo shorts: It’s a $100 wedding dress. You’ve probably heard Nancy Pelosi is visiting Taiwan, but it’s also the home of the most important company in the world. And Boatsetter just raised $38M so you can Airbnb a boat — because Airbnb’s blindspot is the starboard bow.
$ANF $ABNB $TSM
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Utilizing a breadth of archival sources from activists, artists, and policymakers, Charlie Jeffries' Teenage Dreams: Girlhood Sexualities in the U.S. Culture Wars (Rutgers UP, 2022) examines the race- and class-inflected battles over adolescent women’s sexual and reproductive lives in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century United States. Charlie Jeffries finds that most adults in this period hesitated to advocate for adolescent sexual and reproductive rights, revealing a new culture war altogether--one between adults of various political stripes in the cultural mainstream who prioritized the desire to delay girlhood sexual experience at all costs, and adults who remained culturally underground in their support for teenagers’ access to frank sexual information, and who would dare to advocate for this in public. The book tells the story of how the latter group of adults fought alongside teenagers themselves, who constituted a large and increasingly visible part of this activism. The history of the debates over teenage sexual behavior reveals unexpected alliances in American political battles, and sheds new light on the resurgence of the right in the US in recent years.
Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.
We'll tell you about the highest-ranking American official to visit Taiwan in 25 years and why China is retaliating.
Also, a major milestone for veterans' healthcare and a new sign the U.S. jobs market might be cooling.
Plus, where you could see a solar storm, why it may be a good time to book a flight, and who's getting bigger raises: people who stay with the same company or switch jobs?
