Latitude Adjustment

Perhaps one of the least represented perspectives we’ve covered on this show is that of the forests that feed and shelter us, provide our medicines, replenish our soil, sustain our wildlife, color our landscapes, and which address the most basic of all human needs, the need to breathe.

Originally from Chile, Nicolas Salazar Sutil currently resides in the UK where he’s a professor at the University of Leeds. Nicolas founded Forest Guardians in 2019 in response to wildfire emergencies happening around the world. With a focus in communication, education, and advocacy, Forrest Guardians designs and delivers online courses focused on ecological apprenticeships, indigenous forest schooling, and traditional ecological knowledge, and in partnership with Earth Law Centre they consult on the legal rights of forests. That’s right, the trees have rights too, and given that we wouldn’t be able to breathe without them, that’s a very good thing.

There’s also a time sensitive matter that we would like to bring to your attention. Nicolas’ organization is about to commence with “Guardians of the Forest”, an online course lead by practitioners from 30 different nations who will focus on traditional forest knowledge to understand the spiritual, ecological, cultural, and legal aspects of forest guardianship. The deadline is Monday, May 3rd, 2021. Look here for more information about the Guardians of the Forest course, and about Nicolas’ other work with Forest Guardians.

In October of last year a brutal killing at the hands of Nigerian police was captured on video. It quickly went viral across the country, across, Africa, and then around the world. The police involved in the killing belonged to Nigeria’s SARS unit, short for “Special Anti Robbery Squad”. The notorious SARS unit has long been known for acts of extortion, abuse, sexual harassment and violence, torture, and murder, and as the #EndSARS hashtag started to trend on social media, young Nigerians poured out onto the streets to protest and to voice their outrage against SARS and against the corrupt and oppressive system that it has come to exemplify.

The #EndSARS movement started to gain more international attention as members of the massive Nigerian diaspora organized protests and raised supports, and as parallels between the demands of Nigeria’s youth and the demands of #BlackLivesMatter became more prominent.

Our guest today, Rinu Oduala. A 22 year-old woman in Lagos, Nigeria, Rinu played a key role in the viral #EndSARS campaign, helping to mobilize both Nigerian youth and international support. This episode should be a valuable source of information not just for those following Nigeria and Africa, but for those who wish to see systemic change against police brutality and impunity, and government complicity, around the world.

This episode also marks our first selection for Black History Month. Look for more episodes in February and be sure to check the post for this episode on the website for links to relevant shows from our archive.

While it might seem like an obscure topic due to scant coverage in the Western press, a quick review of the facts makes it clear that we ignore Algeria at our peril. First of all, it’s Africa’s biggest country by land mass, and home to a population larger than Canada’s. It’s also home to Africa’s largest company, state owned oil giant Sonatrach, a major exporter of fuel to Western Europe. We dive deeper into the nuances and into the layered intrigues that define Algeria’s history, and what’s been happening since popular protests removed longtime ruler Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power almost exactly one year ago.

We speak with Mehdi Kaci, an Algerian American activist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mehdi recently returned to Algeria to see how things have unfolded since the ouster of Bouteflika.

Adrien Lawyer is the founder and director of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, an organization that “provides support, community, and connection to transgender, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, and gender variant people and their families through advocacy, education, and direct services.”

For this conversation I wanted to avoid the trap of playing it safe by asking easy questions and settling for easy answers, and instead just let my confusion and my preconceptions hang out there and see what came back at me.

Whether you identify as transgender, or as someone who is questioning, or as an ally, or as someone who is confused, skeptical, or ambivalent on the subject of transgender identity and rights, I think you’re going to find this exchange helpful.

The Kafala or “sponsorship” system is used throughout the Gulf countries (as well as in Jordan and Lebanon) to monitor and organize migrant laborers, from recruitment abroad to their management upon arrival, and particularly in the construction and domestic work sectors.

Under the Kafala system a migrant worker’s presence in a host country is linked entirely to their employer, with the effect that it’s not only difficult or impossible to switch jobs, but all elements of their daily lives from access to their passports, their freedom of movement, their living conditions, their ability to leave the country, and their basic dignities are all controlled by their employer. And there is often little to no regulation put in place to protect workers against exploitation and abuse. And abuse has been rampant for decades. From sexual harassment and rape of domestic workers to squalid living conditions and work without pay for construction workers and manual laborers.

This dirty secret is often hidden inside of people’s homes or in isolated camps, so access to covering and exposing it is extremely difficult. Which is why the work of our guest Vani Saraswathi and Migrant-Rights.org is so critical.