Lynn Feinerman is the producer of Women Rising Radio, which she describes this way:
Women Rising Radio project had its first broadcast in 2003, profiling visionary
women in leadership across the globe for all the critical issues of today, including
human rights, democracy and civil society, ecology and sustainability, and all the freedoms. Based in California, we’ve been syndicated on over 200 radio stations in the USA, and in Canada, Ireland, South Africa, the Netherlands and Australia. We’re broadcast-podcasted with Progressive Radio Network 24/7 online, and you can find us on Spotify and Substack. We feature women whose work takes our breath away!
Among Women Rising Radio’s most recent podcasts is one titled “What’s Empathy Got to Do with It?”, countering Elon Musk’s disparagement of empathy. The podcast begins with an epigraph by Hannah Arendt: “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” The episode then delves into conversations with guests Jean Shinoda Bolen, a psychiatrist, analyst and feminist activist; Norma Torres, a California congresswoman; and Nadia Mahmoud Giol, a Palestinian Israeli citizen and practitioner of nonviolent communication facilitating dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. Congresswoman Torres spoke about encountering very young immigrant children about to go before a judge alone, terrified and unable to understand what was happening. She spoke, too, about her sponsorship of the Fairness to Freedom Act, an attempt to ensure that every immigrant facing deportation has access to legal representation. “Empathy is not weakness, it’s the foundation of justice,” Torres said.
Marci Shore is Chair in European Intellectual History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She is the author, most recently, of The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution.
Empathy as Resistance