Hey, this is Ray, welcome to Bats of the People.

On this episode we have me, Clint and Sam, Brittany has some tech difficulties and it's

not in this episode, but we love Brittany and she's sort of always on every episode, right?

And then I'm joined by Stephanie Woodles-O-Wax, the host of the new podcast last day, and Ithaca's

Mayor, Svante Marek, to talk about America's opioid crisis.

I remember very distinctly when my brother told me he was shooting heroin, I thought, oh,

he's going to die, you know, and I think that's a misperception.

And I think part of that is steeped in the reality of how we have dealt with treatment

in this country.

The lessons we get about listening, and always remember that we are all learners.

So on the last episode we talked about sugar and the 1619 Project and shout out to James

who emailed us who reminded us about the link between the Haitian Revolution and sugar.

We talked about the Haitian Revolution before as the only successful slave of all in the

Western hemisphere that it was a French colony, but what James pushed us to remember is

that sugar was its main expo, and that Haiti produced so much sugar that it dominated the

world market and made its most profitable colony in the hemisphere.

And that the plantations were brutal as all plantations were.

It didn't provide us with the sheer number of people enslaved on the island of Haiti.

So in the Haitian Revolution happened, it disrupted sugar production in Haiti.

And it was a success of the Haitian Revolution that frustrated colonizers so much that it

forced them to look for different places to produce sugar.

And they looked to Louisiana.

...