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Tune to Out-FM at 7pm 3/29/2016 on WBAI/NY 99.5FM or wbai.org,  for a report on the upcoming global day of actions against Pharmaceutical Greed organized by ACT UP and allied organizations. We'll also cover the parallel conference to the UN's International Conference on the Status of Women meetings happening now in NYC.

2001 Pfizer - Glaxo Protest
2001 Pfizer - Glaxo Protest

This year ACT UP is commemorating its’ 29th Anniversary by once again rallying for Affordable Medicines. In 1987 the then new group of 100 did civil disobedience on Wall Street to denounce Burroughs Welcome’s outrageous price on the only AIDS Drug. This year on Friday April 1st at 11:30am ACT up is targeting Pfizer’s NY headquarters to demand an end to price gouging, corporate tax inversion and deceptive information about research and development costs. Activists say Phizer’s greed spans decades of the AIDS epidemic with the company charging sky high costs for an antifungal drug called Fluconazole and now its new AIDS drug Triumeq. Activists on 6 continents on the same day will be organizing actions to protesting the greed of various drug companies.

In New York meet at: Bank of America 675 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10017 (corner of E 42nd St & 3rd Ave) Press the star key to repeat this message.

NGO Parallel Conference during the Commission on the Status of Women 2016

Several women, photos/names below,  spoke on the Panel Diverse Women Emporerment to increase inclusion in Development” Sponsored by Outright Action International and the Queer Organizations part of the NGO Parallel onference during the omission on the Status of Women 2016.

Latoya Nugent
Latoya Nugent

Latoya Nugent Works with J-FLAG – Jamaican Forum of the Lesbians All-Sexuals and Gays

Mikee Inton
Mikee Inton

Mikee Inton is the representative of the ILGA (Internat Lesbian & Gay Association Trans Secretariat and works with the Society of Trans Women of the Philippines

Maria Fontanelle is the media and advocacy officer for United and Strong, the sole LGBTQI advocacy group in St. Lucia (an Island in the Caribbean). The live stream is at: http://wbai.org/playernew.html The show is archived at wbai.org within 10 minutes of the end of the broadcast.

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WBAI To Air Special on Life and Work of Lorraine Hansberry

 

Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry

On Tuesday, February 23, 2016, at 7pm, Out-FM, the LGBT program on noncommercial Pacifica radio station WBAI, 99.5 FM, will present “The Life and Work of Lorraine Hansberry." The two-hour special will include excerpts from "Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words," a 1967 radio drama aired on WBAI and Los Angeles Pacifica station KPFK. The drama was the prototype for the play, "Young, Gifted and Black," and helped it gain the attention it needed to get booked on Broadway. In addition, biographer Margaret Wilkerson, Professor Emerita of African American Studies at the University of California/Berkeley, will discuss Hanberry's significance to the debates surrounding the Civil Rights Movement, and an often overlooked  part of her life: her lesbianism, her affiliation with the Daughters of Bilitis, an early lesbian rights organization, and her letters to the organization’s magazine. Wilkerson has discovered previously unpublished writings of Hansberry that deal with lesbian topics.

The 1967 drama was a personal and literary biography with performances of parts of Hansberry’s plays, letters, and other writings. “This amazing program wove her politics and her art together in an uplifting way,” said Nancy Kirton, one of the original Out-FM producers (who died in 2014). Sixty-one Broadway and Hollywood stars -- many of them internationally renowned -- took part in the production, which was narrated by actor Ossie Davis and actor-director Harold Scott. Actors range from Ruby Dee to Sidney Poitier, from Betty Davis to Paul Newman. Part of the work was rediscovered last year in the Pacifica Radio Archive and saved for posterity in pristine condition by digitization. The Los Angeles-based Archive contains thousands of hours of broadcasts from the 59-year-old non-profit social justice radio network, including the voices of  James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, and many others. “We’re lucky the Archive was able to save this recording, Kirton said. “The Archive has been diligently working to save these recordings from oblivion by digitizing them, since many will deteriorate if not digitized soon.” The recordings have since been digitally restored as a result of a gift from Lilly Tomlin and Jane Wagner.

Hansberry was a renowned African American playwright best known for her hit Broadway play and later Hollywood movie, “A Raisin in the Sun.” In 1959, at age 28, she was the youngest playwright and first Black person to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play of the Year, which propelled her into the media spotlight. Her work reflected the struggles for civil rights and Black liberation in the U.S. at the time.

Hansberry was also known for her later plays “Les Blancs,” “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” “The Drinking Gourd,” “The Movement,” and “What Use are Flowers?” According to Out-FM producer John Riley, “Lorraine Hansberry was able to project her strong leftist and feminist views through her work in a non-preachy way, using deep characterization and fascinating plots.”

Hansberry died in 1965 at the age of 35 of cancer. She was born on May 19, 1930, and would have been 85 on the day of the upcoming broadcast.

 

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