Economist Richard Wolff speaks about his new project to build a movement for Worker Self Directed Enterprises called Democracy at Work. And Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy speaks about Julian Assange’s request for asylum from the Ecuadorian government.
Article about this show:
The Foundation of a New Democratic Economy is Worker Self-Directed Enterprises
Show #25 with economist Richard Wolff of DemocracyatWork.info & Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud
Guests:
Richard Wolff – Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He has a new book to be released Sept 1 “Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism” and he launched a new website Democracyatwork.info.
Democracy at Work is a project, begun in 2010, that aims to build a social movement. The movement’s goal is transition to a new society whose productive enterprises (offices, factories, and stores) will mostly be WSDE’s, a true economic democracy. The WSDEs would partner equally with similarly organized residential communities they interact with at the local, regional, and national levels (and hopefully international as well). That partnership would form the basis of genuine participatory democracy.
Utilizing media, from short video clips that go viral to our already well-established weekly and increasingly syndicated “Economic Update” radio program (WBAI, 99.5 FM, New York) and from podcasts to articles to blogs, this interactive website reaches and engages a fast growing audience.
Robert Naiman – is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy. Mr. Naiman edits the Just Foreign Policy daily news summary and writes on U.S. foreign policy at Huffington Post. He is president of the board of Truthout. Naiman has worked as a policy analyst and researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
Naiman delivered a letter to Ecuadorean Embassy urging Ecuador to grant asylum for Julian Assange on June 25th.
Naiman said today: “As Americans who appealed to Ecuador to grant Julian Assange’s request for political asylum from the threat of U.S. persecution, we are delighted with the decision by Ecuador to grant Assange asylum. But there are three questions the media should be asking.
“The UK is now saying that it does not respect diplomatic asylum and has threatened to raid Ecuador’s embassy, which would be a grave breach of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The UK threat to violate international law is particularly extreme when one considers that these three basic questions have never been answered: 1) why Sweden won’t agree to question Assange in the UK; 2) why Sweden won’t promise not to extradite Assange to the United States if he voluntarily goes to Sweden; 3) why the UK won’t promise to oppose an extradition request from the U.S. to Sweden if Assange voluntarily goes to Sweden.”