The Old Mole Variety Hour for June 22, 2015

Bill Resnick talks with Nick Caleb about the Portland Climate Action Plan that is set for a City Council hearing this coming Wednesday. Caleb is the Climate Law Fellow at Our Children's Trust and teaches at Concordia College. He's devoted a much time working with climate action groups in Eugene, Oregon on Eugene's Climate Action Plan, which is far more ambitious than Portland's. Portland's timid draft plan shows no effort to join the cities seeking to become a model showing the way to the rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that climate scientists demonstrate is needed to preserve the climate system on which depend agricultural production and the survival of higher apes including humans.

On May 27th, a coalition of rural community groups on the U.S.-Mexico border held a joint day of action. Border residents held teach-ins, vigils, marches, and took direct action to protest border militarization. Sophie Smith from the community group People Helping People talks with Jan Haaken about these recent actions calling for the demilitarization of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Left & the Law: "The charges against a prison tailor accused of helping two convicted murders escape from a maximum security facility in upstate New York have cast a spotlight on relationships between inmates and correctional staff."Jan and Mike also put a spot-light on those relationships, talking about how this issue is being taken up by the press and what guards are taught about how to relate to prisoners.