Activism in 2016

We speak with four organizers who are currently involved in projects around racial, economic and environmental justice about what they are currently working on, what their goals are for the year ahead and how their issues are connected.

 

Listen here:

2016: Activism in the Year Ahead with Jimmy Betts, James Jones, Jennifer Bryant and John Duda by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

After the Crash by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Beyond Extreme Energy

The Democracy Collaborative

Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment

National Black Workers Center Project

One DC

Red Emmas

 

Guests:

Jimmy Betts is a traveling organizer and activist who is working with Beyond Extreme Energy with personal emphasis on racial, indigenous, and environmental justice.

 

 

 

 

 

Jennifer Bryant works at One DC. Her  work centers on Right to Income and involves the development of a DC Black Workers Center. Jennifer is co-host of Voices with Vision on WPFW 89.3FM and does Cuban solidarity work with the Venceremos Brigade. She holds a B.A. from Howard University and an M.A. from St. John’s University.

 

 

 

 

John Duda started working for the Democracy Collaborative as Communications Coordinator in 2011.  He holds a B.A. in lingustics from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master’s degree in Logic from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and a PhD in Intellectual History from Johns Hopkins University, where his dissertation examined the genealogy of the idea of “self-organization” in politics and the sciences.  He is also a founding collective member at Red Emma’s, a worker-owned cooperative bookstore and coffeehouse in Baltimore, and has worked extensively as a digital media activist supporting a variety of grassroots independent media projects.

 

 

James Jones is an Organizer with MORE (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment).  James heads off the MORE’s Decarcerate STL campaign, which is focused on ending mass incarceration in the St. Louis Metro Area. Decarcerate STL covers three focus areas of work; shutting down the St. Louis medium security detention center, consolidating the St. Louis county municipal courts, and putting an end to corporations profiting from the prison industrial complex.  James is also dedicated to researching solutions to the problems that limit the social and economic mobility of low-income communities.  His previous work experience includes federal policy analysis, community organizing, coalition building, and advocacy for residents of public housing.  James attended Jackson State University, where he earned a BA in English and a MA in Urban and Regional Planning from the School of Policy and Planning.

What Now for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela?

Venezuela has been a leading country of the resistance in Latin America to US Empire and, through the Bolivarian Revolution, has put in place reforms that have created greater democracy. Chavez called it ‘Twentyfirst Century Socialism.’ However, in the Dec. 6 Venezuelan elections, the right wing won 109 of the 164 seats in the National Assembly giving them the power to undo much of the progress that the Bolivarian Revolution made over the past 15 years. We speak with Keane Bhatt, who was in Venezuela during the elections about the state of the economy, the elections and the extent of US involvement in both of these. Then we speak with Jesus Rodriguez-Espinosa of the Venezuelan Consul in Chicago about the response to the elections and next steps for the revolution.

 

Listen here:

What Next for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela with Keane Bhatt and Jesus Rodriguez by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

US Backing the Destabilization of Venezuela, Jaisal Noor interviews Keane Bhatt for The Real News

Venezuela versus Haiti: A Tale of Two Elections by Keane Bhatt

Setting the Record Straight on Venezuela by Steve Ellner

Venezuelanalysis – series of articles on 2015 elections

Venezuela: A Revolution that will not Die by Eric Draitser

What Happens Now to the Struggle for Economic Justice between the Global North and the Global South by Harry Targ

TelesurTV.net

Venezuelan Embassy

 

Guests:

Keane Bhatt is the Community Development Associate at the Democracy Collaborative. He is an experienced activist and organizer, having worked both in the U.S. and in Latin America on a variety of campaigns and projects related to community development and social justice. His analysis and opinions have appeared in a range of outlets, including The Nation, NPR, St. Petersburg Times, the Providence Journal, CNN En Español, Pacifica Radio, and Truthout.

 

 

 

Jesus Rodriguez-Espinoza is a specialist in international relations, graduated from the Central University of Venezuela in 1996 with a specification in international economic law and an associate degree in Foreign Trade.

He has been a government officer since 1997, with expertise in the fields of science and technology, planning, and international trade. Before being appointed as Consul General he worked as Deputy Consul in Chicago since July 2005 and between 2000-2005 he taught international foreign trade in Venezuela while working as an advisor for the Ministry of Housing (MinHAVI) and for the National Agency for Cooperatives (SUNACOOP). He was officially appointed as Consul General of Venezuela in Chicago in October 2008.

Besides his academic background the Consul General has been involved in the birth and organization of the alternative media movement in Venezuela especially related with community media such as Radio Perola, Aporrea.org and the National Asociation of Alternative, Free and Community Media (ANMCLA) and with the Venezuelan Free Software Movement. He was born in 1969 and has been married for 12 years with Yullma Hernandez and they have two kids, Alba Lucia (11) and Jesus Alberto (2).

Since his arrival to Chicago, the Consul Rodriguez-Espinoza has participate in series of activities orientated to highlight the name of Venezuela and explain the process of democratic and pacific economic, political and social changes implemented by the people of Venezuela under the leadership of the President Hugo Chavez.

Modern Colonialism in the Pacific Islands

We speak with Herman Wainggai, a former political prisoner, visiting scholar and a leader in West Papua’s self-determination struggle, John Miller of the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network and Arnie Saiki of the Moana Nui Action Alliance about the ongoing threats to self-determination and resistance to it in Asia Pacific. Colonialism is still present and just as destructive as ever. We discuss the fight for independence in West Papua. Few know that West Papua was given independence only to be invaded by Indonesia. They have been under military occupation for more than 50 years. We discuss why and the US’ hand in it. We also speak about the Moana Nui Action Alliance which brings the struggles of many Pacific Islanders together. With the TransPacific Partnership racing to the finish line and the military’s Asia pivot, collective resistance is critical.

 

Listen here:

Modern Colonialism in the Pacific Islands with Herman Wainggai, John Miller and Arnie Saiki by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles, websites and videos:

December 1 is More Than a Flag-raising Day by Herman Wainggai

Global Flag Raising for West Papua’s Freedom by Margaret Flowers

24 Pacific Island Countries and Occupied Territories Say No TPA, No TPP by Arnie Saiki

Petition to release records about US involvement in Indonesia

FreeWestPapua.org

Herman Wainggai’s Blog

ETAN.org

Moana Nui Action Alliance

StatehoodHawaii.org

VIDEO: West Papua – A Journey to Freedom

VIDEO: Moana Nui Statement

 

Guests:

Herman Wainggai was born in Yapen Island, into a tradition of orators, craftsmen, politicians, and musicians, and his activism is strongly influenced by the grace-filled virtues of justice, peace, and love. His passion for his nation’s political development was inspired by his father’s brother, Dr Thomas Wainggai, a formidable public servant and academic incarcerated for subversion after raising the flag of ‘West Melanesia’ in 1988. Sunday-visits to Abepura Prison with good food and clean clothes for his uncle were lessons in West Papua’s unique weave of politics, religion, and culture, and Herman was inconsolable when the government relocated Thomas to Cipinang Prison in Jakarta (where he died in 1996, poisoned by Indonesian Intelligence).

In 1989 the first generation of West Melanesia lecturers at Cenderawasih University were all incarcerated, so when Herman enrolled to study law, there was just one young lecturer mentoring the students in West Papua’s history and developing West Melanesia’s imaginary weave of indigenous culture and God’s laws as well as the modern regime of secular laws. His first venture into politics was to form the West Papua National Youth Awareness Team (WESTPANYAT) to develop, practice, and promote non-violent resistance. The Team began with seven students in a workshop developing legal argument and political debate around the New York Agreement (by which a Cold War coalition of allies gifted West Papua to Indonesia). By the time most of the lecturers were released, thousands of student-activists were raising awareness of Melanesian culture and identity throughout West Papua, as well as across Papua New Guinea, Bougainville, the Solomons, Fiji, Kanaki, and Vanuatu.

Herman also formed, with highland student-leader Benny Wenda, the West Papua National Students Solidarity (SONAMAPA) to generate reconciliation and unity between West Papuan leaders, and in December brought sixteen political organisations to a meeting in the bush on the PNG border to sign a unity agreement. Herman and Benny were both charged with subversion and incarcerated in Abepura Prison, but twelve months later the signatorees of the AWAWI Agreement formed the United West Papua National Front for Independence, and then the influential West Papua National Authority. The Papuan Intelligence Service organised Benny’s escape (after picking up Indonesian Intelligence plans to have him killed in prison), and he was secreted to London by international activists. Herman, meantime, was released, and invited by Hilda Lini to work at the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre in Suva (Fiji) for six months. That collaboration culminated in the Fiji-West Papua Foundation, but when Herman returned home, he was charged with subversion again and incarcerated for two years, until 2004.

In 2005 Herman organized himself, and forty-two other West Papuans, to circumnavigate their homeland in a traditional double-outrigger canoe (especially built for the journey) and cross the dangerous Torres Strait currents to the north coast of Australia. Torres Times photographer Damien Baker captured their landing on an isolated inlet at Mappoon in far-north Queensland, and the remarkable odyssey sparked media reports around the world. When Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone granted them asylum a couple of months later, Indonesian President Yudhoyono angrily recalled his Ambassador from Canberra. Prime Minister Howard’s efforts to reconstruct his government’s relationship with Indonesia culminated with the Lombok Treaty (2006), which outlawed independence activities in both countries. Herman meantime assisted a bevy of Australian NGOs settle his companions in Melbourne, including setting up the West Papua Christian Fellowship at St Hilary’s Anglican Church.

In 2009 Herman participated in an advanced study of non-violence run by The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tuft University in Massachusetts, and in 2010 commenced studying conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia. He believes that people’s dignity and their culture, as well as the laws of God and of the secular world are equally essential pillars of the West Papuan independence and self-determination project. Like other West Melanesia advocates, he also believes West Papua’s independence will mark an advance in deomcracy in Indonesia. To date he has organised two conferences at George Mason: The Washington Solution in 2010, and West Papuan Culture and Human Rights in 2012.

John M. Miller co-founded East Timor and Indonesia Action Network and serves as its National Coordinator.He, along with ETAN, received the John Rumbiak Human Rights Defenders Award for 2009. On May 21, 2012, the 10th anniversary of the restoration of independence, Miller accepted on behalf of ETAN, the Order of Timor-Leste (Ordem Timor-Leste), the highest award of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. He co-publishes the monthly West Papua Report and currently serves as Treasurer of the War Resisters League.

Arnie Saiki is the Coordinator of the Moana Niu Action Alliance/Los Angeles and coordinated the Moana Nui conferences, a partnership between the International Forum on Globalization and Pua Mohala I Ka Po in 2011 and 2013 focusing on issues of Trade, Militarization, Indigeneity, Resources, and Globalization in the Pacific

He has been writing, producing online content and organizing conferences since 2007. Arnie received a “We the People” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his work on Hawai’i Statehood history and was the lead historical researcher for a federally-funded feature documentary, “State of Aloha.”

Since then he has been broadly focusing on Pacific Island regional economic and geo-political themes, specifically on the Trans Pacific Partnership, militarization and globalization issues.

He moderates a blog, Imipono.org and co-moderates several groups on Facebook, including Moana Nui, Free West Papua USA, and the TPP, TTIP, Globalization group.

Chris Hedges – The Wages of Rebellion

We speak with Chris Hedges about his newest book, “Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt.” Before turning his focus to resistance in the United States, Hedges spent twenty years as a foreign correspondent covering fifty countries. We discuss the lessons he learned from watching countries in turmoil, the dramatic political changes that occurred and how those lessons might be applied in the US.

 

Listen here:

Chris Hedges on The Wages of Rebellion by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles, books and websites:

Book: Wages of Rebellion

Hedges’ articles on TruthDig

Hedges’ program “Days of Revolt”

 

Guest:

Chris Hedges, whose column is published weekly on Truthdig, has written 11 books, including the New York Times best seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco. Some of his other books include “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” (2008) and the best selling “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2008). His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

Hedges previously spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. The Los Angeles Press Club honored Hedges’ original columns in Truthdig by naming the author the Online Journalist of the Year in 2009 and again in 2011. The LAPC also granted him the Best Online Column award in 2010 for his Truthdig essay “One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists”. In 2012 Hedges won the Southern California Journalism Award for the Online Journalist of the Year.

Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and The University of Toronto. He currently teaches prisoners at a maximum-security prison in New Jersey.

Hedges began his career reporting on the Falkland War from Argentina for National Public Radio. He went on to cover the war in El Salvador and Nicaragua for five years, first for The Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio and later The Dallas Morning News. Following six years in Latin America, he took time off to study Arabic and then went to Jerusalem and later Cairo. He spent seven years in the Middle East, most of them as the bureau chief there for The New York Times. He left the Middle East in 1995 for Sarajevo to cover the war in Bosnia and later reported the war in Kosovo. Afterward, he joined the Times’ investigative team and was based in Paris to cover al-Qaida. He left the Times after being issued a formal reprimand for denouncing the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.

In 2012, Hedges notably sued President Barack Obama after the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration appealed, and the decision was overturned. In 2014 the the Supreme Court denied to review Hedges v. Obama   . The act still allows for presidential authority for indefinite detention without habeas corpus.

Hedges holds a B.A. in English literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, Calif. Hedges speaks Arabic, French and Spanish and studied classics, including ancient Greek and Latin, at Harvard. In addition to writing a weekly original column for Truthdig, he has written for Harper’s Magazine, Le Monde, The New Statesman, The New York Review of Books, Adbusters, Granta, Foreign Affairs and other publications. In 2014, Chris Hedges was ordained as a minister at the Second Presbyterian Church. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey and is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong with whom he has two children. He also has two children from a previous marriage.

Extreme Capitalist Crisis and Autonomous Antidotes

The capitalist economic model is one of wealth extraction from communities to consolidate riches at the top. As an antidote, many communities are building alternatives to this model – models called economic democracy, the solidarity economy and ‘buen vivir’ (good living). We begin with Michael Johnson who is actively building the alternative economy in the Northeast to talk about what the alternative looks like and how communities are making it a reality. Johnson is currently on a book tour. Then we speak with Ellen Brown of the Public Banking Institute. Ellen has been following and writing about the fragility of the global financial system. Her most recent article concerns an extreme step being taken by central banks in the European Union of moving to a negative interest rate. This means that depositors would pay banks to hold their money. Ellen will describe who is the most impacted by this practice and who us most at risk in the next serious banking crisis.

 

Listen here:

Capitalism in Crisis and Alternative Antidotes with Michael Johnson and Ellen Brown by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

Building Cooperative Power

Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives

Grassroots Economic Organizing

SolidarityNYC

Hang Onto Your Wallets: Negative Interest, the War on Cash, and the Ten Trillion Dollar Bail-in by Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown

Public Banking Institute

 

Guests:

Michael Johnson born in the panhandle of Texas in 1942…Entered a Kansas monastery in ’63, left in ’66…became an ‘outside agitator’ at Columbia University in April of ’68…worked with the desegregation unit of the Austin public school system ’76-’80…co-founded the Ganas intentional community in Staten Island, NY in ’80 and still there…has been active in the co-operative and solidarity economic movements since 2007 through the Valley Alliance of Worker Co-operatives (VAWC), Grassroots Economic Organizing Collective (GEO), and SolidarityNYC…regular blogger, writer, and editor at GEO…currently working on two future books, Owning our Power and Building Transformative Cultures of Empowerment and Cooperation…michaelj.geo@gmail.com

 

 

Ellen Brown is the founder of the Public Banking Institute and the author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. She developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In the best-selling Web of Debt, she turned those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She showed how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back.

In The Public Bank Solution, the 2013 sequel, she traces the evolution of two banking models that have competed historically, public and private; and explores contemporary public banking systems globally.

Brown developed an interest in the developing world and its problems while living abroad for eleven years in Kenya, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. She returned to practicing law when she was asked to join the legal team of a popular Tijuana healer with an innovative cancer therapy, who was targeted by the chemotherapy industry in the 1990s. That experience produced her book Forbidden Medicine, which traces the suppression of natural health treatments to the same corrupting influences  that have captured the money system. She also co-authored the bestselling Nature’s Pharmacy, which has sold 285,000 copies.

Ellen ran for California State Treasurer in 2014 with the endorsement of the Green Party garnering a record number of votes for a Green Party candidate. Her blog and articles are at http://EllenBrown.com. The Public Banking Institute is at http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.

Solving the Climate Crisis is in Our Hands

At the end of November, national leaders will meet in Paris, France for the United Nation’s COP 21 to try to put together a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Treaty which expires in 2020. With atmospheric CO2 levels continuing to rise, this may be too little too late. And there is concern that the Paris Treaty will be non-binding and will be threatened by binding treaties such as the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) which will drive more fossil fuel extraction and prevent actions to address the climate crisis. It is up to our communities to take action now and we speak with two people who are doing that. Courtney White who has published a new book, “Two Percent Solutions for the Planet: 50 Low-Cost, Low-Tech, Nature-Based Practices for Combatting Hunger, Drought and Climate Change” speaks about ways that communities can work together now to lower carbon footprints and sequester carbon. Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, youth director of the Earth Guardians, works locally and globally fighting pollution and fossil fuel extraction. He is helping to organize a global youth climate strike on November 30.

 

Listen here:

Solving the Climate Crisis is in Our Hands with Courtney White and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

Two Percent Solutions for the Planet (Summary)

Two Percent Solutions for the Planet (Book)

A West that Works

Quivara Coalition

Earth Guardians

Climate Strike

 

Guests:

Courtney White is a former archaeologist and Sierra Club activist, Courtney dropped out of the `conflict industry’ in 1997 to co-found The Quivira Coalition. Today, his work with Quivira concentrates on building economic and ecological resilience on working landscapes, with a special emphasis on carbon ranching and the new agrarian movement. Courtney’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Farming, Acres Magazine, Rangelands, and the Natural Resources Journal. His essay “The Working Wilderness: a Call for a Land Health Movement” was published by Wendell Berry in 2005, in his collection of essays titled The Way of Ignorance. In 2008, Island Press published Courtney’s first book Revolution on the Range: the Rise of a New Ranch in the American West. In 2010, Courtney was awarded the Michael Currier Award for Environmental Service by the New Mexico Community Foundation.

 

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (his first name pronounced ‘Shoe-Tez-Caht’) is a 15-year-old indigenous environmental activist, hip-hop artist and public speaker from Boulder, Colorado. He has spoken at over 100 events around the world.  He is also the youth director of Earth Guardians, an International youth based environmental non-profit organization that is committed to protecting the water, air, earth, and atmosphere. At the early age of six, Xiuhtezcatl began speaking to crowds at conferences and demonstrations from the Rio+20 United Nations Summit in Rio de Janeiro to the United Nations in New York. Locally he has worked on successful campaigns to get pesticides out of parks, regulate coal ash and help achieve bans and moratoria on fracking in Colorado cities. He has traveled across the nation and to many parts of the world educating his generation about the state of the planet they are inheriting and inspiring them into action to protect their future. His work has been featured on PBS, Showtime, National Geographic, Rolling Stones, Upworthy and HBO. In 2013, Xiuhtezcatl received the 2013 United States Community Service Award from President Obama, and was the youngest of 24 national change-makers chosen to serve on the President’s youth council.  He is the 2015 recipient of the Peace First Prize and the Nickelodeon Halo Award. Bill Mckibben of 350.org calls Xiuhtezcatl “an impressive spokesman for a viewpoint the world needs to hear.”

Martin O’Malley’s Dirty Energy Legacy

While Martin O’Malley was governor of Maryland, he pushed two energy projects that threaten the health of local Marylanders. First we hear from Lili Sheeline of Lusby who lives in the neighborhood of Cove Point where Dominion Resources is building a new gas refinery, power plant and export terminal. It is the first gas export terminal to be built on the East coast and the first in the world to be placed in a densely-populated community. Learn more about it, why O’Malley was given the “Golden Pillow” award for his role and how the community is fighting back. Then we hear from Amanda Maminski of Curtis Bay where Energy Answers is trying to build a large trash incinerator. O’Malley tried to sneak it through as a ‘clean energy solution’ but the community didn’t fall for that and they are working to build a solar farm there instead.

 

Listen here:

Martin O’Malleys Dirty Energy Legacy in Maryland with Lili Sheeline and Amanda Maminski by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

Shrouded in Secrecy and Lies, Dominion Builds Dangerous Gas Facility in Cove Point Neighborhood by Margaret Flowers

WeAreCovePoint.org

CalvertCitizens.org

DumpDominion.org

City Cancels Deal with Trash-Burning Power Plant by Timothy Wheeler and Yvonne Wenger

Video: Amanda Maminski Calls Upon the Maryland Department of the Environment to Enforce the Law

StoptheIncinerator.com

 

Guests:

Lili Sheeline is a resident of both Takoma Park and Port Republic, MD. She has a masters from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science. Currently she sells real estate. And she is an active member of Calvert Citizens for a Healthy Community and We Are Cove Point.

 

Amanda Maminski is a Curtis Bay resident with two children who attend Curtis Bay Elementary (a local school less than a mile from the proposed trash burning incinerator). She is running for Baltimore City Council on the Green Party ticket.

Flood The System: Fall Actions To Fight Corporate Power

This fall, with international treaties like the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) and Paris climate treaty looming, mass actions are taking place to demand an end to the fossil fuel and the rapid transition to clean sustainable energy, trade that doesn’t drive a race to the bottom in worker rights and environmental protection and a health care system that includes everyone. As a wave of protests is unfolding in the capital of Vermont, we speak with Jane Palmer, a landowner who is trying to stop a fracked gas pipeline from being built on her land. These actions are part of Rising Tide North America’s campaign, Flood the System. We talk about the mass mobilization being planned in Washington, DC November 14 to 18 to protest treaties like the TPP and the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. And we talk with Anand Saha, a medical student and organizer with Students for a National Health Program which held a national days of actions on October first called #TenOne.

 

Listen here:

Flood The System: Fall Actions to Fight Corporate Power with Jane Palmer and Anand Saha by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

Rising Tide North America

Rising Tide Vermont

350 Vermont

The Rise of Vermont’s Fracked Gas Battle by Keith Brunner

National Call to Action to Stop Global Corporate Domination

Spread the Word: TPP is Toxic Political Poison that Politicians Should Avoid by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Students for a National Health Program

Physicians for a National Health Program

Get Your Insurance Company Out of My Health Care by Anand Saha

 

Guests:

Jane Palmer is a farmer in Monkton, Vermont who has been engaged in the fight to stop a fracked gas pipeline from being built on her land and just 150 feet from her home since early 2013. She has participated in direct action numerous times focused on Vermont Gas, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Gaz Metro out of Quebec which is owned by Enbridge.

 

 

 

 

Anand Saha is a second year medical student at East Tennessee State University Quillen College of Medicine. Saha founded the school’s chapter of Students for a National Health Program (SNaHP) and he is on the board of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Family Farms and Food Safety at Risk

October 16 was World Food Day. Decades of consolidation of agriculture into large industrial farms and the drive for ever greater profits is destroying family farms, the environment and climate, our health and food safety. About industrial agriculture, Vandana Shiva writes, ““For the planet and people, the costs have been tragically high. 75 per cent of the earth’s biodiversity, soils, water have been destroyed, the climate has been destabilised, farmers have been uprooted, and instead of nourishing us, industrial food has become the biggest cause of disease and ill health.” We speak with Jim Goodman, an organic dairy farmer who started Family Farm Defenders, about the what smaller farms are doing to protect their futures and the integrity of the food system. Then we speak with Diana Reeves, founder and executive director of GMO Free USA, about the growing movement to label foods that contain GMOs and her work to build sustainable and healthy food systems.

 

Listen here:

Family Farms and Food Safety at Risk with Jim Goodman and Diana Reeves by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

 Wisconsin’s Dairyland Disaster by Joel Greeno

From Anger to Activism: Diana Reeves of GMO Free USA by Carol Grieve

GMO Free USA Finds GMOs and Weedkillers in Kellogg’s Froot Loops by the Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire

‘Big Agri’ Doesn’t Serve Us: Reflections on World Food Day by Vandana Shiva

 Family Farm Defenders

 GMO Free USA

 

Guests:

Jim Goodman is an organic dairy farmer and farm activist from Wonewoc WI. The Irish famine of the mid 1800’s, the failed British farm policy and mono-culture farming that caused it brought Jim’s great grandfather to Wisconsin. Continuing failed farm policy in the US has compelled Jim to advocate for a farmer controlled, consumer oriented food system.

 

 

 

 

 

Diana Reeves, a Connecticut mom-turned-activist, founded GMO Free USA in response to a failed initiative to label genetically engineered foods in her home state in May 2012. Diana was a CPA on the fast track at a major accounting firm when her firstborn son was diagnosed with cancer at the age of two. She walked away from her career to take care of him and became a stay at home mom. Her son died before he turned five and she has since raised three children. After Diana’s family developed autoimmune disease and other health problems, she began to learn about the connections between these illnesses and genetically engineered foods. Her family’s health-related challenges, her lack of tolerance for putting children at risk and her anger with untested and unlabeled GMOs have instigated her passion to bring positive change to our broken food system.

Diana is the recipient of the Healthy Child Healthy World 2013 Mom on a Mission Award. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the GMO Free Global Coalition and Co-chair of the GMO Action Alliance.

Fourteen Years Into the Invasion of Afghanistan

October 7 marked the 14th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. The week started off in a tragic way with the US bombing of a Doctors Without Borders (Medecins sans Frontieres, MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. It was the only hospital of its kind serving Northeastern Afghanistan and treated hundreds of patients every week. The Senate held a hearing last week to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. We will discuss the hospital bombing and why this may be a violation of international law and we will speak with Kathy Kelly, who travels frequently to Afghanistan, about her impressions of the US’ military presence there. We also discuss Columbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day and its impacts on US ‘War Culture’.

 

Listen here:

Columbus, War Culture and Fourteen Years in Afghanistan with Kathy Kelly by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

The Radically Changing Story of the US Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to Justification by Glenn Greenwald

Why Bombing the Kunduz Hospital was Probably a War Crime by Nick Turse

Release the Kunduz Bombing Tapes by David Swanson

Afghanistan: #Enough Even War Has Rules by Dr. Joanne Liu

Top American Commander Says US Should Keep More than 1,000 Troops in Afghanistan post 2016 by Deb Riechmann

The Obscenity of Our War by Kathy Kelly

Voices for Creative Nonviolence

 

Guest:

Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, (www.vcnv.org) a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare.

During each of fourteen trips to Afghanistan since 2010, Kathy Kelly has lived alongside ordinary Afghan people in a working class neighborhood in Kabul. She and other Voices activists have been guests of the Afghan Peace Volunteers. They share in common a belief that “where you stand determines what you see.”

Kelly and her companions insist that the U.S. has not been waging a “humanitarian war” in Afghanistan and that the U.S. should pay reparations for the suffering caused in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Kelly has also joined with activists in various regions of the country to protest drone warfare by holding demonstrations outside of U.S. military bases in Nevada, upstate New York, and, most recently, Missouri.

From January to April 2015, Kathy was imprisoned in Lexington, KY after a federal judge convicted her for attempting to deliver a loaf of bread and a letter about drone warfare to the commander of Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

From 1996 – 2003, Voices activists formed 70 delegations that openly defied economic sanctions by bringing medicines to children and families in Iraq. Kathy and her companions lived in Baghdad throughout the 2003 “Shock and Awe” bombing. They have also lived alongside people during warfare in Gaza, Lebanon, Bosnia and Nicaragua.

She was sentenced to one year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites (1988-89) and spent three months in prison, in 2004, for crossing the line at Fort Benning’s military training school. As a war tax refuser, she has refused payment of all forms of federal income tax since 1980.

The Erosion Of Tort Law and Why That Matters

We talk with attorney and consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who, along with a team of lawyers and museum experts, recently opened The American Museum of Tort Law in his home town of Winsted, CT. The  first museum of law in the country, focuses on tort law which governs claims made in courts by victims harmed by wrongful actions of corporations or others. Tort law operates of, by and for the people by giving people the power to right injustices and operates because of citizen participation: citizens bring the lawsuit, not the government; and  the outcome of the lawsuit often depends on a verdict reached by a group of ordinary citizens, sitting as jurors, who determine the facts to and apply the law.However, for many reasons, Tort law is under attack. In addition to the new museum, we discuss current issues with Nader, among them whether people will be able to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other corporate rigged trade deals.

 

Listen here:

Ralph Nader on the Erosion of Our Legal Protections Against Corporate Power by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites here:

Tort Law: The Muscle of Justice by Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader’s website

Center for the Study of Responsive Law

American Museum of Tort Law

Flush the TPP

 

TPP DC Mobilization Call to Action 

 

Guest:

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author.

He was born in Winsted, Connecticut on February 27, 1934.

In 1955 Ralph Nader received an AB magna cum laude from Princeton University, and in 1958 he received a LLB with distinction from Harvard University.

His career began as a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut in 1959 and from 1961-63 he lectured on history and government at the University of Hartford.

In 1965-66 he received the Nieman Fellows award and was named one of ten Outstanding Young Men of Year by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1967. Between 1967-68 he returned to Princeton as a lecturer, and he continues to speak at colleges and universities across the United States.

In his career as consumer advocate he founded many organizations including the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), the Center for Auto Safety, Public Citizen, Clean Water Action Project, the Disability Rights Center, the Pension Rights Center, the Project for Corporate Responsibility and The Multinational Monitor (a monthly magazine).

The Essential Nader

A short biography of Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader entry in the Encyclopedia of the Consumer Movement

The Encyclopedia of the Consumer Movement is a publication of the Consumer Federation of America

The Urgent Need For A Guaranteed Basic Income

We speak with Ethel Long-Scott of the Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAP) about the crises of poverty and un/under-employment that are not expected to improve under the current system due to technology and robotics and the need for new solutions such as an unconditional basic income. Then Steve Shafarman, a life member of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), discusses the history of basic income and how it works to immediately end poverty and guarantee that all people can meet their basic needs and live with dignity.

 

Listen here:

The Urgent Need for a Guaranteed Basic Income with Ethel Long-Scott and Steve Shafarman by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

Articles by Ethel Long-Scott

Women’s Economic Agenda Project

Basic Income Action

Basic Income Earth Network

 

Guests:

Ethel Long-Scott is Executive Director of the Women’s Economic Agenda Project, headquartered in downtown Oakland. For 40 years, in jobs that ranged from grassroots community organizer to non-profit CEO, she has pushed, poked, prodded and worked cooperatively with the political, economic and civic establishments on a mission to increase social and economic justice. She works tirelessly with labor and community groups to create visionary opportunities for creative social change where none seemed to exist. She believes in building broad social movements to create social change. She is one of the first recipients of Essence Magazine’s “Street Warrior.

 

 

Steven Shafarman is program director of Basic Income Action, a new national organization that’s working to provide economic security for all Americans. He has been writing about these ideas since the mid 1980s, and is a life member of the BIEN, the Basic Income Earth Network. His forthcoming book is The Basic Income Imperative: for peace, justice, liberty, and personal dignity.

Margaret Flowers, Candidate for US Senate

This week on Clearing The FOG Radio Margaret Flowers will be interviewed by Kevin Zeese about her plans to run for US Senate in Maryland. Flowers is normally a co-host on the show but this week she will change roles and be interviewed by her co-host. Flowers and Zeese not only co-host Clearing The FOG but also co-direct Popular Resistance and are partners in life. So, you can expect an in-depth conversation about why she is running for Senate, how she plans to win as a third party candidate and what she will do when she is elected.

 

Listen here:

Margaret Flowers, Candidate for US Senate by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

FlowersforSenate.org

Flowers for Senate Facebook Page

Video: Interview with Bill Moyers 2010

Video: Interview with Bill Moyers 2013

Guest:

Margaret Flowers, MD is a mother of three and pediatrician who since leaving practice in 2007 has worked tirelessly for social, economic and environmental justice. She is most widely known for her work to create an improved Medicare for all national health system. Flowers views running for office as a next important step in her advocacy work on a broad range of issues that impact people in Maryland and across the country.

Research shows that the current political system is a plutocracy in which the interests of the wealthy are overwhelmingly represented by the two wealth-dominated parties, the Democrats and Republicans. Urgent racial, economic and environmental issues including racially-biased police violence, the expanding wealth divide and the ticking of the climate clock compel us to build an alternative political party that represents the interests and necessities of all of the people, particularly those who are most oppressed, and puts the planet before profit. Flowers is seeking the nomination for US Senate of the Maryland Green Party which has ballot access in 2016.

Flowers earned a BS in Biology from Georgetown University and moved to Baltimore in 1986 for medical school. After graduation from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1990 and completion of pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 1994, Flowers worked first as a hospitalist in Carroll County where she was director of the pediatric program and then in private practice in Reisterstown and Sparks, Maryland. She left practice in 2007 to advocate full-time for a single payer health care system at both the state and national levels. In this work she saw the connection between health and a range of issues among them jobs, housing, education, racism, poverty, the corrupt finance system, environmental degradation and energy as well as how all these issues were prevented from making progress because of a corrupt and dysfunctional political system.

Flowers has testified before the Maryland state legislature and Congress to advocate for a Medicare for All health system. Flowers served as co-chair of the Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program and as Congressional Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program. During the 2009-2010 national health reform process she organized briefings, lobby days and testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in June, 2009 and before the National Commission for Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in June, 2010. She is currently an advisor to the board of PNHP. She was co-founder of the Mobilization for Health Care Reform. Flowers serves on the coordinating committee of the Health Care is a Human Right Campaign-Maryland.

Flowers views the struggle for health care as part of a broader social, racial, economic and environmental justice movement. She joined Kevin Zeese in March, 2011 as co-director of ItsOurEconomy.us in order to educate, organize and mobilize around social and economic justice issues and democratization of the economy to reduce the wealth divide. She is co-editor of PopularResistance.org which grew from the Occupation of Washington, DC on Freedom Plaza (October2011) and continues to report on and help organize events around the country. She co-hosts Clearing the FOG radio which airs on We Act Radio, 1480 AM in Washington, DC. She has appeared on Bill Moyers’ Journal, Democracy Now and Fox Business News as well as many local and international outlets and in documentaries. Her writing is published in TruthOut, TruthDig, Alternet , Counterpunch and other online outlets. Her twitter is @MFlowers8.

Medea Benjamin, Peace and Justice SHero

We speak with Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK women for peace and tireless activist for justice and peace about US foreign policy and taboo topics like American Empire, Saudi Arabia, AIPAC, the soft regime change tools of US agencies like the CIA, State Department and US AID and the corporate duopoly. In particular, Benjamin talks about her travels and work in Iran, Yemen, Bahrain, Cuba and more. We discuss the Iran Nuclear Agreement and what people can do to support that. And we talk about the presidential elections. Tune in for views you won’t hear in commercial media.

 

Listen here:

Medea Benjamin: Peace & Justice SHero Discusses US Foreign Policy by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

Who’s the Real Troublemaker in the Middle East? by Medea Benjamin 

CODEPINK Action to support the Iran Nuclear Deal

CODEPINK

 

Guest:

Medea Benjamin is the author of eight books. Her latest book is  Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, and she has been campaigning to stop the use of killer drones. Her direct questioning of President Obama during his 2013 foreign policy address, as well as her recent trips to Pakistan and Yemen, helped shine a light on the innocent people killed by US drone strikes.

Benjamin has been an advocate for social justice for more than 30 years. Described as “one of America’s most committed — and most effective — fighters for human rights” by New York Newsday, and “one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement” by the Los Angeles Times, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide. In 2010 she received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the 2012 Peace Prize by the US Peace Memorial. She is a former economist and nutritionist with the United Nations and World Health Organization.

Since the September 11, 2001 tragedy,  Medea has been working to promote a U.S. foreign policy that would respect human rights and gain us allies instead of contributing to violence and undermining our international reputation.  In 2000, she was a Green Party candidate for the California Senate.  During the 1990s, Medea focused her efforts on tackling the problem of unfair trade as promoted by the World Trade Organization. Widely credited as the woman who brought Nike to its knees and helped place the issue of sweatshops on the national agenda, Medea was a key player in the campaign that won a $20 million settlement from 27 US clothing retailers for the use of sweatshop labor in Saipan. She also pushed Starbucks and other companies to start carrying fair trade coffee.

Her work for justice in Israel/Palestine includes taking numerous delegations to Gaza after the 2008 Israeli invasion, organizing the Gaza Freedom March in 2010, participating in the Freedom Flotillas and opposing the policies of the Israel lobby group AIPAC. In 2011 she was in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian uprising and In 2012 she was part of a human rights delegation to Bahrain in support of democracy activists; she was tear-gassed, arrested and deported by the Bahraini government.

Medea has also been on the forefront of the anti-drone movement. She recently published Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. She also organized the first-ever international drone summit and lead delegations to Pakistan and Yemen to meet with drone strike victims and family members of Guantanamo Bay Prisoners.

Her articles appear regularly in outlets such as The Huffington Post, CommonDreams, Alternet and OpEd News. Medea can be reached at:medea@codepink.org or @medeabenjamin.

Saving Our Public Schools and Students

We talk with two teachers who are protecting our children’s right to have an education. In the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, parents are on a hunger strike in their desperate attempt to save the last public high school. Dyett High School is the last school in their area that accepts all students regardless of ability and the city is trying to shut it down. The parents have another vision of a school that teaches cutting edge technology for sustainability. In Washington State, kindergarten teacher, Susan DuFresne, is a power house fighting to protect her students from the cruelty of standardized testing that robs them of their education and labels them at successes or failures when they are just getting started. Seattle, where Susan teaches, is investing $210 million to expand a youth prison. The city is basing occupancy on fourth grade reading scores. Rather than investing in better education, it is choosing to lock students up.

 

Listen here:

Saving Our Public Schools and Students with Dr. Monique Redeaux-Smith and Susan DuFresne by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

 

Relevant articles and websites:

Sit-in At Chicago Mayor’s Office Over School Closing by Mike Klonsky

Demonstrators Arrested in Sit-In to Save Dyett High School by Chicagoist

Eleven Parents Launch Hunger Strike by Empathy Educates

Chicago Organizers lead Hunger Strike to Save Dyett High School by The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools

My Statement of Professional Conscience by Susan DuFresne

A Teacher Living on the Edge by Susan DuFresne

The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools

Teachers for Justice

Click here here to take action

BadAssTeachers.org

United Opt Out

Educating the Gates Foundation

 

Guests:

Dr. Monique Redeaux-Smith is a longtime Bronzeville resident and homeowner, parent, mother, member of Teachers for Social Justice and veteran educator.

 

 

 

 

 

Susan DuFresne is a kindergarten teacher and activist in the Seattle area. She teaches both general education and special education. Susan has worked in high poverty schools and continues to organize direct actions for social justice. This summer she and her husband Shawn organized the Opt Out Bus Free Books for Kids West Coast Tour – which informed parents about the Opt Out Movement, Common Core, and the racism of high stakes testing  – while giving books to children in need. You can follow Susan on Twitter at @GetUpStandUp2.