The third episode in the Building Local Power, The New Class series finds us talking to North Carolina State Rep Dante Pittman, recently elected to represent his hometown of Wilson, NC and the surrounding Wilson County. From municipal fiber broadband to m

The second episode in the Building Local Power, The New Class series finds us talking to Baltimore City Councilman Zac Blanchard, who recently won a tight race to unseat his District 11's incumbent. Blanchard, a Marine vet and father of two young children

This episode is the first in our new season of Building Local Power, The New Class, where we are talking to interesting changemakers among the state and local politicians newly elected in November 2024. Our first guest is Tristan Rader, representing Distr

The inspiration for this season of Building Local Power is ILSR'sPower Play report, written by ILSR senior editor and researcher Susan Holmberg. Sue joins us today for a wide-ranging and candid conversation about the report and its main finding: that mon

AI technology and large language models are growing in popularity. Also growing is the technology's detrimental effect on the environment. Each query into ChatGPT, to use one example, requires billions of calculations. Multiply that by millions of users,

ILSR co-executive directors Stacy Mitchell and John Farrell join Reggie Rucker to discuss the year in ILSR and the issues we care about. What did the media get wrong about the economy in the lead-up to the election? How can voter frustration turn into pos

AI technology and large language models are growing in popularity. Also growing is the technology's detrimental effect on the environment. Each query into ChatGPT, to use one example, requires billions of calculations. Multiply that by millions of users,

In March, 2020, Amazon warehouse worker Chris Smalls led a walkout protesting a lack of Covid-19 safety measures at the JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island. He was fired two hours later. In the following days, a leaked memo revealed that the Amazon c-suite (i

For many years, Reverend Ryan Brown has been a picker at Amazon's RDU1 warehouse outside of Raleigh, NC. In 2020, he was asked to work in a part of the warehouse he knew was a dangerous COVID hot spot. He refused, calling his decision to do so a "Rosa Par

The first bookstore Danny Caine fell in love with was a suburban Cleveland outpost of a mega-chain. Since then, he has not only fallen in love with independent bookstores and other local businesses but has also become a widely known advocate against Amazo