BRIEF BUT SPECTACULAR - Swanee Hunt

"Why women need a seat at the table to make peace last" PBS NewsHour 2/22/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In the years after Rwanda's genocide, how did women come to make up a large portion of the nation's parliament?  Author and activist Swanee Hunt says their women's movement that grew out of necessity.  Hunt, a former ambassador and founding director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard's Kennedy School, gives her Brief but Spectacular take on women waging peace.

MEMORIAM - Hugh Masekela, Died at 78

"Remembering Hugh Masekela, master musician who fought for South African freedom" PBS NewsHour 1/23/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Over the course of his six-decade career, Hugh Masekela's jazz and anti-apartheid activism made him a beloved international figure.  In exile, he used his music as a form of activism to call for Nelson Mandela's release from prison and freedom in South Africa.  Masekela died Tuesday in Johannesburg at 78 years old.

AGENTS FOR CHANGE - India's Vendors

"Empowering India’s street vendors as entrepreneurs" PBS NewsHour 4/6/2016

Bet that today's Republican conservatives would like to have MORE 'informal sector' workers.  After all, they enact policies that essentially do that in the US.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In India, home to the world's fastest growing economy, most workers, from street vendors to rickshaw drivers, aren't on the books, making them vulnerable to harassment by corrupt officials and policemen.  Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro profiles one group trying to protect vendors and improve their lives and businesses.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour):  The big malls may have arrived, but in India, food, clothing and virtually everything else is still bought mostly from street vendors.

They, along with construction laborers, domestics, rickshaw drivers and rickshaw pullers, in fact, most workers in India’s economy, are, quite literally, off the books, says Indiana University’s Sumit Ganguly.

SUMIT GANGULY, Indiana University:  Ninety percent of the work force in India is in the so-called informal sector.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  That could be a technical term that means a very hard life.  They live from day to day.  That is, if there’s work on any given day, they are paid at the end of it, less than $2 for most of them.

SUMIT GANGULY:  These are people who have no Social Security provisions, who have no health care provisions, who can be hired and fired at will.  And yet, according to a recent Credit Suisse study, it’s close to — they contribute close to 50 percent of India’s gross national product.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  Not only are they underappreciated, but they fall easy prey to corrupt officials.

The market outside of Delhi’s main mosque has been here for more than 200 years.  The vendors complain that they’re subject to regular harassment from police demanding bribes or from municipal authorities who conduct regular raids to evict them.

IMRAN KHAN, Street Vendor (through interpreter):  They kicked us out from here in 2014, citing security reasons.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  Across India’s cities, vendors like Imran Khan carry tales of harassment, sometimes along with their own video, of stalls dismantled and merchandise confiscated.

IMRAN KHAN (through interpreter):  Then finally, we went to NASVI, to Arbind, and he said, you have only one option, straight to court.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  Social activist Arbind Singh founded NASVI, the National Association of Street Vendors.