Katherine S. Newman became the Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs of the University of California in January of 2023.  She was simultaneously appointed as the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at U. C. Berkeley. Dr. Newman is the author of fifteen books on topics ranging from technical education and apprenticeship, to the sociological study of the working poor in America’s urban centers, middle class economic insecurity under the brunt of recession, and school violence on a mass scale.  She has written extensively on the consequences of globalization for youth, on the impact of regressive taxation on the poor, and on the history of American political opinion on the role of government intervention.

Her latest, co-authored with Elizabeth S. Jacobs, a senior fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services and Population at the Urban Institute, is MOVING THE NEEDLE: WHAT TIGHT LABOR MARKETS DO FOR THE POOR, published this month by the University of California Press. We spoke with Dr. Newman on April 24, 2023.

We end this edition of Forthright Radio with audio from the last floor speech that Montana’s first transwoman elected to Montana’s State Legislature, Zooey Zephyr, before she was censured by the necessary 2/3 vote of House on April 26, 2023. Her offense? Calling out that the gender affirming health care they were outlawing would result in deaths, and used the phrase, “blood on their hands.”

Articles pertinent to this edition of Forthright Radio:

Poverty Is the 4th Leading Cause of Death in the US, Research Shows https://truthout.org/articles/poverty-is-the-4th-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us-research-shows/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=0f21dc5882-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_3_20_2023_13_41_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-0f21dc5882-651106009&mc_cid=0f21dc5882&mc_eid=f9703b4752

Study: Racism Plays Bigger Role in Black-White Infant Mortality Gap Than Wealth https://truthout.org/articles/racism-not-economics-plays-bigger-role-in-black-white-infant-mortality-gap/

Living on the edge: how the ‘benefits cliff’ holds women back https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/09/benefits-cliff-housing-vouchers-cost-of-living

Oregon grocery store worker, 91, retires after raising more than $80,000 online https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/27/oregon-winco-betty-grocery-store-worker-retire

Post-WW2 Anti-Fascist Educational Film | Don’t Be a Sucker | 1947 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K6-cEAJZlE

Gianforte’s son one of many lobbying governor against trans bills https://montanafreepress.org/2023/04/26/montana-governor-gianforte-lobbied-by-son-to-veto-trans-bills/

A Transgender Lawmaker Is Exiled as Montana G.O.P. Flexes New Power https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/us/montana-trans-legislature-zephyr.html