wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

From Bronxdale to Washington

Sonia Sotomayor grew up in a South Bronx public housing project. But what exactly was housing project life like in the 1950's? Nicholas Dagen Bloom, associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology and author of Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century, and Yvette Williams a longtime Bronxdale Houses resident explain.

Did you grow up in NYC public housing around the same time as Sonia Sotomayor? Comment below!

Photos of the Bronxdale Houses

• Comments [41]
• Email
• Save

Today's Take From El Diario

Rossana Rosado, publisher and CEO of El Diario New York, talks about Sonia Sotomayor's nomination and the state of the NYC mayoral race.

• Comments [13]
• Email
• Save

Sotomayor's Legal History

Patricia Williams, professor of law at Columbia University, who writes the Diary of a Mad Law Professor column for The Nation magazine, discusses President Obama's Supreme Court justice pick Sonia Sotomayor's history of legal opinions.

• Comments [15]
• Email
• Save

Hip Hop Justice

Paul Butler, former federal prosecutor, professor of Law at George Washington University, and author of Let’s Get Free: A Hip Hop Theory of Justice talks about how to fix a broken criminal justice system.

• Comments [19]
• Email
• Save

Squatting, Then and Now

As former squats in the East Village make the transition to coops, making homes from abandoned housing is again an issue. Andrew Reicher executive director of Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, Frank Morales an Episcopal priest involved in East Village/Lower East Side squatting and homelessness activism since the late '70s, and Rob Robinson, a leader of the Housing Campaign of Picture the Homeless, discuss the return of squatting.

• Comments [45]
• Email
• Save

Young Journalists

Veralyn Williams, freelance TV and radio producer, reporter, editor and former Radio Rookies participant, Giovanni Mato, editor-in-chief of Word on the Street, a publication of the Youth Power Project at Make the Road NY, and Jennifer Nedbalsky, co-founder and organizer of the NYC Grassroots Media Coalition, preview the NYC Grassroots Media Conference on Saturday and share their views on the future of journalism.

• Comments [4]
• Email
• Save

Building A Better Language

Linguist Arika Okrent, author of In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language, discusses the utopian underpinnings of invented languages.

Read the List of Invented Languages

• Comments [17]
• Email
• Save