KQED's Forum

Sam Liccardo is in his final year as San Jose’s mayor and he has passed a first-in-the-country ordinance on an issue he cares fervently about – gun control. The ordinance, which requires gun owners to carry liability insurance, comes a year after nine people were killed in a mass shooting at a Valley Transportation Authority rail yard in San Jose. Mayor Liccardo joins Forum to talk about the new ordinance and other issues important to San Jose residents such as how the city is addressing its homeless and housing crises, a new spike in traffic fatalities, a proposal to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections and San Jose’s status as tofu capital of America. And we’ll take your questions for the mayor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“We are all weird about money,” writes Paco de Leon in her new book, “Finance for the People.” Getting a grip on your finances often means learning how to deal with an unequal system, she writes. And, according to her, having money means having power — and that means it’s vital for all people to understand how to save, pay off loans and invest. This all begins with asserting your worth — something people of marginalized communities are systematically disincentivized from doing, in part because they’ve long been hurt by wage and revenue gaps. De Leon is the founder of The Hell Yeah Group, a financial firm designed to assist creatives with their finances, and is a creative herself. She joins us to talk about all things financial, and to hear from you: What’s affected your ability to get the money you deserve? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The city of Santa Rosa is saying farewell to its bard. Santa Rosa Press Democrat columnist Gaye Lebaron has retired after a 65-year career at the paper and an estimated 8,500 columns. “Few newspaper columnists have ever been so closely associated with one city for so long,” writes the Press Democrat’s editorial board, “Herb Caen and San Francisco, Mike Royko and Chicago, Gaye LeBaron and Santa Rosa.” In addition to writing a daily newspaper column for more than 40 years Lebaron has also written several books about Santa Rosa and Sonoma County history. She joins us to talk about the county’s past and present and what it means to spend more than six decades writing about the place she lives and loves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jay Dee, J Dilla, Dilla — Detroit-born hip-hop producer James Dewitt Yancey went by many names, but his rhythmic brilliance was always the same, whether he was producing for artists like The Pharcyde, Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest or his own group Slum Village, to name a few. Today, 16 years after his untimely death at age 32 from a rare blood disease, the impact of his industry-changing sound is still heard throughout music. That impact, and the story behind it, is the subject of the new book “Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm” by Dan Charnas. Equal parts biography, musicology and cultural history, Charnas tells the story of Yancey’s genius, and how he took music’s rhythm standards of “straight time” and “swing time” and created a whole new standard: Dilla Time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, set to kick off on Friday, have been called “the most complex Games ever” by the Wall Street Journal. The Los Angeles Times dubs them “the feel guilty Games.” The event is opening amid intense Covid-19 restrictions and concerns over Chinese human rights violations, like the persecution of the Uyghur Muslims and jailing of activists. Those have prompted President Biden to boycott the Games, though U.S. athletes are still competing. The head of the International Olympic Committee said last month that the Games “must be beyond all political disputes.” But as Georgetown University professor Victor Cha points out, the Olympics have always been political. He joins us to talk about the history of bans and boycotts surrounding the Games, and how China and the US are navigating this year’s event.Guests:Victor Cha , Vice Dean and Professor of Government, Georgetown University, former Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. Author of "Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Early on in the award-winning documentary "Writing with Fire," a reporter named Meera Devi sits patiently before a police officer, demanding to know why he hasn't acted on a local villager's multiple reports of rape. Similar scenes follow, as Devi and her colleagues, journalists with India's only all-female, Dalit-run news network,  seek to hold officials to account for caste and gender-based violence, corruption and other abuses. We talk to the directors of "Writing with Fire," now shortlisted for an Academy Award, about the growing influence of the newspaper Khabar Lahariya and the women who run it.Guests:Sushmit Ghosh, producer and director, "Writing With Fire"Rintu Thomas, producer and director, "Writing with Fire" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Kitchen Sisters, the audio project of Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, has been collecting stories from “the B-side of history” since 1979. These stories dive into worlds hidden from the headlines, immersing listeners into the music, sounds and atmospheres of American culture, populated by famous and underrecognized figures alike. The Library of Congress announced in January that it will acquire the archive of the Kitchen Sisters, comprising photos, journals and more than 7,000 hours of audio. We’ll play some of the audio from the Kitchen Sisters’ most iconic episodes, set in the Bay Area and beyond, and we want to hear from you: What’s one story from your family that shouldn’t be lost to history? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Tennessee school board last week voted to remove the Pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel Maus from an 8th grade course on the Holocaust. And that’s just one of many examples of recent bans instituted by parents, activists, school boards and lawmakers. According to the American Library Association, it has seen an “unprecedented” number of book bans in the last year. But unlike previous waves of book bannings, this latest wave has a different tone and tenor; bans are often targeted at books that center on the experience of diverse characters or are written by authors of color. Politicians like Texas Governor Greg Abbott are also using bans as campaign platforms to galvanize right wing voters. And while many bans are advocated by conservatives, there are also efforts by parents, like those in a Burbank, California school district, to remove books like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Of Mice and Men” from the curriculum because of the racist depictions in those books. We’ll look at why book banning is spreading across the country and what might be done to reverse the trend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three years after placing a moratorium on executions in California, Governor Gavin Newsom announced the closure of death row at San Quentin on Monday. More than 500 inmates will merge with the general prison population at other maximum security facilities over the next two years, but will maintain their current sentences. California hasn’t performed an execution since 2006. While critics of capital punishment cheered the move, one advocate for crime victims said Newsom was “pouring more salt on the wounds of victims” We’ll talk with San Francisco Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan about the changes at San Quentin and the future of the death penalty in California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Early results of an ongoing clinical trial found that cash aid to low-income mothers increases brain activity in babies – a finding that could help shape social policy. Called "Baby's First Years," it's the first study in the U.S. to look at the impact of poverty reduction on early childhood development. "We don't need brain science to tell us that no child should live in poverty, " asserts Dr. Kimberly Noble, one of the neuroscientists who led the study. But while many have assumed other factors, not poverty, impact childhood development, "evidence here suggests that reducing poverty may in and of itself affect child development." We'll discuss the study and what it could mean for public policy, like President Biden’s proposed child tax credit, going forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices