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“David Baker (of Anniston, Alabama) drove us around the community. And he explained that this person, this resident, passed away such and such year and this is one of the...our relatives passed away, passed away he passed away. So, it was so heartbreaking. Very, very sad experience,” said Professor Ryoichi Terada, of Tokyo’s Meiji University.

2023 marked 20 years since the Monsanto Chemical Company settled with residents of Anniston, Alabama. 20,000 people in this town northeast of Birmingham blamed chemicals called PCBs, produced a local factory, for medical problems ranging from cancer to birth defects. Twenty years later, Anniston still bears the scars, and this isn’t the only alleged example of industrial chemicals killing Alabama neighborhoods, with the apparent endorsement of government.

Please find Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the PMJA award for best short documentary, titled “Bad Chemistry.” The APR team spent ten months, with no budget, producing this program.

Please click here to listen to the program...
https://www.apr.org/news/2023-11-17/bad-chemistry-an-apr-news-special

The impact of Monsanto’s PBCs in Anniston didn’t harm one generation, but many. APR news worked with twenty-four-year-old Taylor Phillips to tell the story of how these chemicals killed members of her family in Anniston, going back to her great grandfather in 1930. Her account leads off “Bad Chemistry.” And, that’s just where we begin.

PCBs aren’t the only chemicals produced by Monsanto blamed for making Alabamians sick. The company was also one of the two biggest manufacturers of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. The Veterans Administration says 117,000 Alabama veterans were exposed to the herbicide during the conflict. APR reported on efforts by the VA to extend health benefits to former servicemen and women to help with illnesses made worse by Agent Orange.

The APR news team first reported in 2015 on the effects of arsenic, mercury, and lead from coal ash on the health of residents of Uniontown, Alabama. A landfill in this low-income community near Selma is the dumping site for coal ash, which is leftover pollution from power plants. 8 years later, residents still blame medical problems on the coal ash. While this goes, communities along the Gulf coast are hoping to head off similar problems there.

The Bluestone Coke plant in Birmingham has been closed for five years. Still, critics say the factory is still violating Federal pollution laws and poisoning residents living nearby. APR listeners heard from African Americans who can’t even bathe in the morning because of soot from Bluestone collecting in their homes. The environmental group, Cahaba Riverkeeper, is fighting a “David versus Goliath” battle against the owners of the coke plant, who have stopped paying court ordered fines.

Finally, APR met Professor Ryoichi Terada, and another researcher from Japan, who are studying the long-term impact of PCBs on Anniston, following a similar man-made disaster in their country. Our listeners saw the lingering impact of PCB contamination through the eyes of these visitors.

Respectfully submitted.

“In 1944, the D-Day invasion took place during World War two. That same year PCBs were officially declared toxic. But nobody told my great grandfather. Monsanto salesmen were warned to stay clear of the chemicals. That information didn’t filter down to any of the black men working maintenance jobs at the plant. The company didn’t even provide protective gear,” said Taylor Phillips, of Anniston, Alabama.

Please find Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the PMJA Award for Best Use of Sound, titled “Monsanto, Anniston, and Taylor.” The APR news team spent ten months, with no budget, on this project.

Please click here to listen to the feature...
https://www.apr.org/news/2023-08-30/monsanto-anniston-and-taylor

2023 marked two decades since the Monsanto Chemical Company settled with residents of Anniston, Alabama. 20,000 people in this mostly African American town blamed chemicals called PCBs, produced at a local factory, for medical problems ranging from cancer to birth defects. Twenty years later, Anniston still bears the scars.

Please find Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the PMJA Award for Best Use of Sound, titled “Bad Chemistry: Monsanto, Anniston, and Taylor.” The APR team spent eight months, with no budget, producing this program.

The impact of Monsanto’s PCBs in Anniston didn’t harm one generation, but many. APR news worked with twenty-four-year-old Taylor Phillips to tell her story of how these chemicals killed members of her family in Anniston, going back to her great grandfather in 1930. This feature began as an academic paper by Phillips at Rice University. She’s now entering medical school at the University of Pennsylvania.
 
The APR news team used archival sound ranging from Louis Armstrong, to the fireside chats of FDR, to the D-Day Invasion, to the lunar landing of Apollo 11, to NPR’s All Things Considered to illustrate the passage of time during Phillips’ presentation.

Respectfully submitted.

Pensacola Opera Ticket Giveaway - Die Fledermause

Real Estate donations for Alabama Public Radio.

“There is some sense of, oh my god, like all of this that's going on,” said Deanna Fowler of Alabama Forward.


Fowler is referring to the U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering deep red Alabama to redraw its Congressional map to better represent African Americans. She was left uneasy that the same Justices who overturned Roe V. Wade thought Alabama was being unfair to blacks. It doesn’t help that new GOP court challenges are already underway to flip the map back to the conservatives.

Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the RTDNA Murrow Award for Best Series, titled…a U.S. House seat, if you can keep it.”

Please click here to listen to the program...

"...a U.S. House seat, if you can keep it." An APR News series

The APR news team spent nine months investigating critical issues in Alabama’s new Congressional District 2. Rural healthcare was just one.

“It was a freak accident. My five-year-old daughter was rolling down the hill and her arm snapped in half,” said Caila Savage said of rural healthcare in District 2. “I think about an hour, maybe two hours, we had to wait on the ambulance.”

Minority business owners in District 2 are looking for support from their new member of Congress. The Democratic candidate is promising money, the Republican wants fewer regulations.

“A lot of people don’t see us making it,” said D’Angelo Harrison who works at his family’s minority owned seafood restaurant in Monroeville in District 2. “But you know we don’t let these people you know tell us what we cannot do. We just keep our head up and we keep going.”

Then, there’s the issue facing Alabama’s only black U.S. House member, Terri Sewell.

“I think that it's a matter of, I definitely think I can say this as a black voter like I think that it is a matter of, we trust you more,” that how one of Sewell’s staffers describes the typical phone call from outside the district from an African American.

If a black voter needs help in Alabama, and they live in a U.S. House District with a white Republican, they typically call Sewell. She’s just one house member out of seven in the state, but the de facto representative of one third of Alabama’s population that’s black.

Alabama’s new District 2 was created by the U.S. Supreme Court case Allen versus Milligan. That may sound like a one-of-a-kind event from this part of the state, but it’s not. APR finishes out our investigation by looking back at the 1960 SCOTUS case Gomillion versus Lightfoot. Fred Gray, the attorney to Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, argued the Tuskegee case that codified the constitutional rights of black voters years before the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Respectfully submitted.

“There is some sense of, oh my god, like all of this that's going on,” said Deanna Fowler of Alabama Forward.

Fowler is referring to the U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering deep red Alabama to redraw its Congressional map to better represent African Americans. She was left uneasy that the same Justices who overturned Roe V. Wade thought Alabama was being unfair to blacks. It doesn’t help that new GOP court challenges are already underway to flip the map back to the conservatives.

Please find enclosed Alabama Public Radio’s entry for the PMJA Award for Best Documentary, titled…a U.S. House seat, if you can keep it.”

Please click here to listen to the program...

"...a U.S. House seat, if you can keep it."

The APR news team spent nine months investigating critical issues in Alabama’s new Congressional District 2. Rural healthcare was just one.

“It was a freak accident. My five-year-old daughter was rolling down the hill and her arm snapped in half,” said Caila Savage said of rural healthcare in District 2. “I think about an hour, maybe two hours, we had to wait on the ambulance.”

Minority business owners in District 2 are looking for support from their new member of Congress. The Democratic candidate is promising money, the Republican wants fewer regulations.

“A lot of people don’t see us making it,” said D’Angelo Harrison who works at his family’s minority owned seafood restaurant in Monroeville in District 2. “But you know we don’t let these people you know tell us what we cannot do. We just keep our head up and we keep going.”

Then, there’s the issue facing Alabama’s only black U.S. House member, Terri Sewell.

“I think that it's a matter of, I definitely think I can say this as a black voter like I think that it is a matter of, we trust you more,” that how one of Sewell’s staffers describes the typical phone call from outside the district from an African American.

If a black voter needs help in Alabama, and they live in a U.S. House District with a white Republican, they typically call Sewell. She’s just one house member out of seven in the state, but the de facto representative of one third of Alabama’s population that’s black.

Alabama’s new District 2 was created by the U.S. Supreme Court case Allen versus Milligan. That may sound like a one-of-a-kind event from this part of the state, but it’s not. APR finishes out our investigation by looking back at the 1960 SCOTUS case Gomillion versus Lightfoot. Fred Gray, the attorney to Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, argued the Tuskegee case that codified the constitutional rights of black voters years before the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Respectfully submitted.