On the Rock's Politica

This week, the On the Rocks crew talks local economics after reports of City Hall clashing with a business.

As part of M the Media Project’s special feature this week, ‘Gun Violence in America’ co-hosts Bruce Chester and Scott M. Graves discuss what they think is behind the violence in the United States, the mass shootings and other gun violence that is gripping our nation. 

You’ll find a wide spectrum of perspectives in this week’s episode. Be sure to check out the articles, poetry and videos from contributors for this special feature of June 2, 2022.

Mick Carlon's article 'The Murder of Children'

Joshua Michael Stewart's poem 'Squeeze'

Scott M. Graves Essay 'Isolation'

What does it mean to value life in the modern-day U.S.?  Isn't there a disconnect when an individual says we must make abortion illegal for the 'Sanctity of Life' while insisting that gun control, social programs and other community-driven initiatives that would support life are 'Un-American' or not within the intent of our Constitution?

Filtered through the current news of an impending decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the racially motivated mass shooting on May 14, 2022, Bruce and Scott seek to find the meaning and the perspective offered by the time in which we're living.

This week, the gang (Scott M. Graves, Bruce Chester, and Cameron McLeod) start a conversation that has been split into three smaller segments. We begin with re-development beginning in the Chair City of Gardner, MA. 

Maybe the three of us should have invited a woman or two to our episode this week for On The Rocks Politica.  

Regardless, we forged ahead with a deeply impassioned conversation regarding the impending decision of the US Supreme Court to rescind Roe v. Wade and the implications of such a monumental reversal of federal protection. 

Our conversation lead to a broader discussion of abortion, its history in the United States, the changing perspective on abortion by different groups of citizens and our personal perspectives on abortion, women's rights and our role as men in supporting women's issues. 

So many of our challenges  faced when building our communities are made complex by their multi-disciplinary nature.  This does not excuse the need for a rigorous approach to solutions that benefit the widest spectrum of people.

Today's podcast deals with just such a challenge.  What's local is suddenly made very relevant to those of you throughout the globe, as we're talking about one community’s on-going struggle over what to do with its human waste.

This podcast is an audio companion to M the Media Project's first in a series of articles dealing with one city's sludge landfill expansion.

Click here to read the article

Host Scott M. Graves interviews Ivan Ussach, Executive Director of the Millers River Watershed Council and Alan Rousseau, a life-long citizen of the city of Gardner (MA) and founding member of the grassroots organization Gardner Clean Air.

Click to learn more about landfill alternatives for your community.

Click to read or view host Scott M. Graves Essay, 'My Life with a Sludge Landfill'

On Monday, May 2, 2022 Politico broke the story that a draft decision written by Chief Justice Samuel Alito (George W. Bush appointment to the court) intends to rescind the 1973 decision Roe vs. Wade which gave all women in the United the States the right to seek an abortion.  

We discuss some of our concerns with such a decision including: 

It is in and of itself, an unprecedented event that a decision is disclosed months prior to being published. 

Conservative appointees by the Bush and Trump administrations promised in their hearings that they would work within a framework that Roe v Wade is the law as a fundamental basis. Clearly, they were lying to the congressional committees overseeing their appointment.  Can we have any truth in a country where Supreme Court appointees can lie to get their way? What happened to conservative disdain for ‘activist judges?

We’re worried for the consequences this decision has as a start. We know that culturally conservative groups have been aligned by design with large business interests to form the contemporary Republican party.  Where does this go from here?  Are we headed for a world where culture wars are won by the right as first step of appeasement, then rollbacks continue as they have or accelerate from the last 40 years to create the ultimate corporate welfare state? 

Co-host Scott M. Graves reminds us of the parallels to 1857’s Dred Scott decision Let’s offer an overview.

The Dred Scott decision, formally Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford ruled that a slave who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war.

In plain English, the decision’s core argument was that a black person in the US could not be considered a fully human being and one with all rights of US citizenship because in the US, white people were not willing to see them as such.  

This decision accelerated what was already by 1857 spiraling out of control following earlier compromises including the Compromise of 1850, the events of Bloody Kansas following the Kansas/Nebraska Act and the Fugitive Slave Law, among others all leading to the election of 1860 and the secession of South Carolina in 1861. 

The Alito draft and the decision contained therein is similar in that it really appears to have the capacity to create a tipping point where citizens must earnestly fight to reverse the rollbacks of limiting specific groups of citizens of their rights. 

We start with news breaking today that our local Heywood Hospital is in talks with UMASS Memorial Health System to merge, a story broke by Worcester Business Journal and we offer our media minute on the premiere of our series on Gardner’s Sludge Landfill Expansion.

In Part II of our episode of On The Rocks Politica co-host Scott M. Graves came prepared with a battery of initiatives he is supportive of that have recently been presented by the Biden administration this week to get co-host and candidate for State rep. Bruce Chester's take.

In Part II we focus on exploring the corruption of Jared Kushner and former  members of the Trump administration.

In Part I we began with the late Eric Boelhert(Rest In Peace to this fine journalist of our time) recently wrote that a paltry 28% of Americans know the country has been gaining jobs in the last year, 7 million jobs in fact, while an astounding 37% think the country has lost jobs.

Are mainstream media outlets the 'leftist' bastion our conservative friends would have us believe?  We explore what's behind these statistics.

The administration is making a major push to better serve our rural citizens with a number of economic and environmental initiatives focused on rural development

We also discussed the latest candidate to take the helm of the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) while making the announcement that the administration has presented legislation to tackle the issue of 'ghost guns' making their way into the marketplace sans serial numbers or other identifying characteristics.

We hope you enjoy the show. And if you do, please consider subscribing to M the Media Project.

In today's On The Rocks Politica co-host Scott M. Graves came prepared with a battery of initiatives he is supportive of that have recently been presented by the Biden administration this week to get co-host and candidate for State rep. Bruce Chester's take.

The late Eric Boelhert(Rest In Peace to this fine journalist of our time) recently wrote that a paltry 28% of Americans know the country has been gaining jobs in the last year, 7 million jobs in fact, while an astounding 37% think the country has lost jobs.

Are mainstream media outlets the 'leftist' bastion our conservative friends would have us believe?  We explore what's behind these statistics.

The administration is making a major push to better serve our rural citizens with a number of economic and environmental initiatives focused on rural development

We also discussed the latest candidate to take the helm of the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) while making the announcement that the administration has presented legislation to tackle the issue of 'ghost guns' making their way into the marketplace sans serial numbers or other identifying characteristics.

In next weeks Part II we'll explore the corruption of Jared Kushner and former  members of the Trump administration.

We hope you enjoy the show. And if you do, please consider subscribing to M the Media Project.