The Climate Crisis Connects Us

We spoke with organizers of the New York Climate Convergence, a two day conference just before the People’s Climate March that will focus on discussion of the roots of the climate crisis, obstacles to addressing it and how to build a united movement to put real solutions in place while stopping false and harmful solutions. Jacqui Patterson works with frontline communities that are impacted by dirty energy sources such as coal burning power plants and the effects of climate change. She writes that climate change is a civil rights issue because people of color are disproportionately affected. Dr. Jill Stein is a long time environmental advocate who ran for President in 2012 as the Green Party candidate. She is a co-founder of the Global Climate Convergence which started in April of this year. The convergence brings advocates on a wide range of issues together to see that our work is connected and that climate change is the ticking clock which drives the urgency of our work.

Listen here:

The Climate Crisis Connects Us with Jacqui Patterson and Jill Stein by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles and websites:

NAACP Climate Justice Program

Climate Change is a Civil Rights Issue by Jacqui Patterson

Global Climate Convergence

Guests:

Jacqui Patterson is the Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Since 2007 Patterson has served as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United. Jacqui Patterson has worked as a researcher, program manager, coordinator, advocate and activist working on women‘s rights, violence against women, HIV&AIDS, racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice. Patterson served as a Senior Women’s Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid where she integrated a women’s rights lens for the issues of food rights, macroeconomics, and climate change as well as the intersection of violence against women and HIV&AIDS. Previously, she served as Assistant Vice-President of HIV/AIDS Programs for IMA World Health providing management and technical assistance to medical facilities and programs in 23 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Patterson served as the Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University. She was also a U.S. Peace Corps Jamaica volunteer. Patterson’s publications/Articles include: ”Jobs vs Health: An Unnecessary Dilemma”, “Climate Change is a Civil Rights Issue”, “Gulf Oil Drilling Disaster: Gendered Layers of Impact”, “Disasters, Climate Change Uproot Women of Color” and an upcoming book chapter, “Equity in Disasters: Civil and Human Rights Challenges in the Context of Emergency Events” in the book Building Community Resilience Post-Disaster. Patterson holds a master’s degree in social work from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves on the Gender Justice Working Group of the US Social Forum, the Advisory Committee for The Grandmothers’ Project, the Steering Committee of Interfaith Moral Action on Climate Change, as well as on the Board of Directors for the Institute of the Black World, Center for Story Based Strategies and the US Climate Action Network.

Dr. Jill Stein is a mother, physician, longtime teacher of internal medicine, and pioneering environmental-health advocate. She was the 2012 Green Party presidential nominee. Stein is the co-author of two widely-praised reports,  In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development, published in 2000, and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, published in 2009.  The first of these  has been translated into four languages and is used worldwide. The reports promote green local economies, sustainable agriculture, clean power, and freedom from toxic threats.

Her “Healthy People, Healthy Planet” teaching program reveals the links between human health, climate security, and green economic revitalization. This body of work has been presented at government, public health and medical conferences, and has been used to improve public policy. Dr. Stein began to advocate for the environment as a human health issue in 1998 when she realized that politicians were simply not acting to protect children from the toxic threats emerging from current science. She offered her services to parents, teachers, community groups and a native Americans group seeking to protect their communities from toxic exposure.

Dr. Stein has testified before numerous legislative panels as well as local and state governmental bodies. She played a key role in the effort to get the Massachusetts fish advisories updated to better protect women and children from mercury contamination, which can contribute to learning disabilities and attention deficits in children. She also helped lead the successful campaign to clean up the “Filthy Five” coal plants in Massachusetts, an effort that resulted in getting coal plant regulations signed into law that were the most protective around at that time. Her testimony on the effects of mercury and dioxin contamination from the burning of waste helped preserve the Massachusetts moratorium on new trash incinerator construction in the state.

Dr. Stein has appeared as an environmental health expert on the Today Show, 20/20, Fox News, and other programs. She was also a member of the national and Massachusetts boards of directors of the Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her efforts to protect public health have won her several awards including: Clean Water Action’s “Not in Anyone’s Backyard” Award, the Children’s Health Hero” Award, and the Toxic Action Center’s Citizen Award.

Having witnessed the ability of big money to stop health protective policies on Beacon Hill, Dr. Stein became an advocate for campaign finance reform, and worked to help pass the Clean Election Law. This law was approved by the voters by a 2-1 margin, but was later repealed by the Massachusetts Legislature on an unrecorded voice vote.

In 2002 ADD activists in the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party approached Dr. Stein and asked her to run for Governor of Massachusetts. Dr. Stein accepted, and began her first foray into electoral politics. She was widely credited with being the best informed and most credible candidate in the race. She has twice been elected to town meeting in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is the founder and past co-chair of a local recycling committee appointed by the Lexington Board of Selectmen.

In 2003, Dr. Stein co-founded the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities, a non-profit organization that addresses a variety of issues that are important to the health and well-being of Massachusetts communities, including health care, local green economies, and grassroots democracy.

Dr. Stein represented the Green-Rainbow Party in two additional races – one for State Representative in 2004 and one for Secretary of State in 2006. In 2006 she won the votes of over 350,000 Massachusetts citizens – which represented the greatest vote total ever for a Green-Rainbow candidate. In 2008, she helped formulate a “Secure Green Future” ballot initiative that called upon legislators to accelerate efforts to move the Massachusetts economy to renewable energy and make development of green jobs a priority.

Dr. Stein was born in Chicago and raised in suburban Highland Park, Illinois. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1973, and from Harvard Medical School in 1979. Jill enjoys writing and performing music, and enjoys long walks with her Great Dane, Bandita. Dr. Stein lives in Lexington with her husband, Richard Rohrer, also a physician. She has two sons, Ben and Noah, who have graduated from college in the past few years.

Connecting the Climate Crisis, Wars, Surveillance and More

We spend the hour with Dr. Nafeez Ahmed who is a bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security scholar. He is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development. His newest book is “Zero Point,” a science fiction thriller that “explore[s] the self-defeating hubris of an all-powerful national security state in an era of converging environmental, energy and economic crises.” His novel predicted current events in the Middle East, particularly the recent US airstrikes in Iraq. We’ll explore the climate crisis, resource wars (particularly for energy), the growing surveillance state and more.

Listen Here:

Connecting Climate Change, Militarism, Surveillance and More with Dr. Nafeez Ahmed by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant Articles, Books and Websites:

Iraq blowback: Isis rise manufactured by insatiable oil addiction by Nafeez Ahmed

Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown by Nafeez Ahmed

Scientists vindicate ‘Limits to Growth’ – urge investment in ‘circular economy’ by Nafeez Ahmed

Exposed: Pentagon Funds New Data-Mining Tools to Track and Kill Activists, Part I by Nafeez Ahmed

Institute for Policy Research and Development

Guest:

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed – Through his books, films and journalism, Ahmed argues that a combination of political repression, failed economic models, young disenfranchised populations and escalating resource scarcity due to energy, food and water crises are contributing to what he calls a “new age of unrest.” Instability in far apart locations from Brazil to Ukraine to Thailand – as well as Syria, Egypt and beyond – are symptoms of an accelerating “global riot epidemic” due to the end of cheap oil and intensifying climate disasters.

In March 2014, Ahmed made global headlines with his exclusive Guardian report on a NASA-funded model of the risks of civilisational collapse which identified how widening economic inequalities and looming resource shortages due to ecological stress could precipitate a collapse of global industrial civilisation. In a further series of exclusives this summer, Ahmed exposed how the Pentagon and UK Ministry of Defence are funding social science and data-mining projects to develop tools to track political dissent and public opposition to fossil fuels. His exclusive reporting has also included revelations on the link between NSA mass surveillance, environmental crisis, and political activism; and how US-UK covert operations and foreign policies have empowered Gulf state-backed jihadists, fanning the flames of Middle East unrest from Iraq to Egypt to Syria.

A former lecturer in international politics at Sussex and Brunel universities, Ahmed is the bestselling, award-winning author of five books on international security issues, the latest of which is A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010) – the first peer-reviewed academic work to analyse the intersection of climate change, energy depletion, food crisis, economic turbulence, international terrorism, and state militarisation. Ahmed wrote, co-produced and presented the documentary feature film inspired by the book, The Crisis of Civilization.

Demilitarizing the Police for Safer Communities

We speak about the increasing militarization of police forces throughout the US. Armed with military equipment including assault rifles and tanks and trained by the military, the police force is treating our streets like a war zone and responding with excessive force to events, particularly when people of color are involved. Our guests, Carl Williams and Kade Crockford, from the Massachusetts American Civil Liberties Union have been studying this trend and the lack of transparency and accountability around it. We will talk about the problems and also what we can do in our communities to de-escalate the situation.

Listen here:

Demilitarizing the Police for Safer Communities with Carl Williams and Kade Crockford by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles and websites:

War Comes Home: The excessive militarization of American policing by ACLU MA

Our Homes are Not Battlefields: Reversing the Militarization and Federalization of Local Police in Massachusetts by Privacy SOS

Tell Dept. Of Justice ‘End Racist And Militaristic Policing’

Guests:

Carl Williams joined the ACLU of Massachusetts as staff attorney in September 2013. He was previously a criminal defense attorney with the Roxbury Defenders Unit of the Committee for Public Counsel Services. Carl is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island and the University of Wisconsin Law School.

A long-time resident of Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, he has been an activist and organizer on issues of war, immigrants’ rights, LGBT rights, racial justice and Palestinian self-determination. Carl is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and has served on its Massachusetts board of directors. During the Occupy Boston movement he was part of its legal defense and support team, which provided nearly 24-hour support to the participants.

More recently, Carl was a Givelber Distinguished Lecturer on Public Interest Law at Northeastern University School of Law, where he taught a class on social justice movements and the law.

Kade Crockford is director of the Technology for Liberty Initiative at the ACLU of Massachusetts. She Tweets at @onekade.

The Nuclear Industry is the Problem

We examine the true costs of nuclear energy and whether it is truly necessary as we transition to a sustainable energy economy. Starting in the 1950’s there was a Uranium Rush in the US that dwarfed the Gold Rush and left behind more than ten thousand abandoned uranium mines that continue to pollute the air, land and water today and cause serious public health problems. This is the dirty beginning of nuclear energy. Klee Benally of Clean Up The Mines! speaks about the impacts of uranium mining and the national campaign to clean up the abandoned uranium mines. Leona Morgan of Diné No Nukes speaks about the impacts of these mines and her community’s work to stop mining and restore health. Then Tim Judson of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service will describe how the nuclear industry is prohibiting sustainable energy and positioning itself to be the solution to the climate crisis.

Listen here:

The Nuclear Industry is the Problem with Klee Benally, Leona Morgan and Tim Judson by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles and websites:

The Government is Propping Up the Nuclear Industry and We’re Paying for It by Leslie Macmillan

Fact Sheet: Why Nukes Can’t Save the Planet

Nuclear Energy is Dirty Energy by NIRS

Petition to comment to EPA on Nuclear Power

Diné No Nukes

MASE

Clean Up The Mines!

NIRS

Guests:

Leona Morgan is with Diné No Nukes and has served with the MASE Coalition (Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment), as well as WMAN (Western Mining Action Network)/CARD (Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping). 

Klee Benally is the coordinator of the national Clean Up The Mines! campaign. He works on a host of environmental issues and protection of sacred sites. He also runs Indigenous Action Media and Outta Your Backpack Media.

Tim Judson is the Acting Executive Director of NIRS. Appointed January 1, 2014; joined NIRS September 2013 as Associate Director. Chair of the Board of Citizens Awareness Network, a leader in successful campaign to close the Vermont Yankee reactor; co-founder of Alliance for a Green Economy in New York.

United States Empire Stretching Itself Too Thin

We speak about the expanding US Empire. The United States is the largest empire in the history of the world with over 1,000 bases and outposts around the world compared to the 37 bases of the British Empire at its peak. Despite our military being stretched thin and the military budget causing austerity to social programs and infrastructure at home, the US continues to expand. Our guests will be Coleen Rowley, retired FBI whistleblower who teaches constitutional law and ethics and who follows Empire closely, and David Swanson, author of several books on war and empire and co-coordinator of the movement to abolish war called World Beyond War.

Listen here:

US Empire Stretched Too Thin and How to End It with Coleen Rowley and David Swanson by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles, books and websites:

People Are Mobilizing to Finally Put an End to the Disastrous U.S. Empire by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Why People are Organizing to End US Empire by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Militarization of the Mothers: You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, from Mother’s Day for Peace by Coleen Rowley

Only One Good Way to Brake Before Going Over the Debt Cliff: Reduce Wasteful War Spending! by Coleen Rowley

Shifting Strategies of the US Empire by David Swanson (2012)

War is a Crime

World Beyond War

Guests:

Coleen Rowley grew up in a small town in northeast Iowa. She obtained a B.A. degree in French from Wartburg College, Waverly, Iowa and then attended the College of Law at the University of Iowa and graduated with honors in 1980 also passing the Iowa Bar Exam that summer.

In January of 1981, Rowley was appointed a Special Agent with the FBI and initially served in the Omaha, Nebraska and Jackson, Mississippi Divisions. In 1984 she was assigned to the New York Office and for over 6 years worked on Italian organized crime and Sicilian heroin drug investigations. During this time Rowley also served three separate temporary duty assignments in the Paris, France Embassy and Montreal Consulate.

In 1990 Rowley was transferred to Minneapolis where she assumed the duties of “Chief Division Counsel” which entailed oversight of the Freedom of Information, Forfeiture, Victim-Witness and Community Outreach Programs as well as providing regular legal and ethics training to FBI Agents of the Division and some outside police training.

In May of 2002 Rowley brought some of the pre 9-11 lapses to light and testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about some of the endemic problems facing the FBI and the intelligence community. Rowley’s memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller in connection with the Joint Intelligence Committee’s Inquiry led to a two year long Department of Justice Inspector General investigation. She was one of three whistleblowers chosen as persons of the year by TIME magazine.

In April 2003, following an unsuccessful and highly criticized attempt to warn the Director and other administration officials about the dangers of launching the invasion of Iraq, Rowley stepped down from her (GS-14) legal position to go back to being a (GS-13) FBI Special Agent. She retired from the FBI at the end of 2004 and now speaks publicly to various groups, ranging from school children to business/professional/civic groups, on two different topics: ethical decision-making and “civil liberties and effective investigation.”

In February 2005 and again in 2007, a majority of Minnesota congresspersons and senators nominated Rowley to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board but she was not selected. This Board was mandated by 2004 federal intelligence reform legislation implementing the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission but has never actually functioned.

Rowley authored a chapter in a 2004 book published by the Milton Eisenhower Foundation entitled, Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense: Restoring America’s Promise at Home and Abroad. and another chapter on civil liberties in the 2012 book Why Peace. She also ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress in Minnesota’s Second Congressional District in 2006.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is working to organize a movement to end war at WorldBeyondWar.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at davidswanson.org and warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.

New Initiatives to Really Address the Climate Crisis

We speak with Courtney White, author of “Grass, Soil, Hope” who has traveled the world and experimented on his own ranch to find ways to sequester carbon that are sustainable and also solve other problems related to the climate crisis, water management and food security. Though the evidence for these solutions is very strong, they are not widely known yet. And we speak with Dr. Sean Sweeeney, director and founder of the Global Labor Institute, about the new international coalition Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. This coalition of unions is turning the decades-long narrative of market-based extreme energy extraction on its head.

Listen here:

New Initiatives to Really Address the Climate Crisis with Courtney White and Sean Sweeney by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles and websites:

Book: Grass, Soil, Hope: A Journey through Carbon Country by Courtney White

Article: Grass, Soil, Hope by Courtney White

Quivira Coalition

Resist, Reclaim, Restructure: Unions and the Struggle for Energy Democracy by Sean Sweeney

Earth to Labor: Economic Growth is no Salvation by Sean Sweeney

Trade Unions for Energy Democracy

Guests:

Courtney White is a former archaeologist and Sierra Club activist who dropped out of the “conflict industry” in 1997 to co-found the Quivira Coalition, a non-profit dedicated to building bridges between ranchers, conservationists, public land managers, scientists, and others around the idea of land health (www.quiviracoalition.org). 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.

Sean Sweeney is the Director and founder of the Global Labor Institute, a program of the Cornell School of industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) based in New York City. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology and Industrial Relations from the University of Bath, England, in 1991. Dr. Sweeney has been involved in college-level trade union and worker education since 1987 as full time faculty with Hofstra University’s pioneering program with the United Auto Workers, District 65. He served as the Director of the Queens College Worker Education Extension Center from 1995-1999 before becoming Cornell’s Director of Labor Studies. In recent years Dr. Sweeney has deepened and broadened Cornell ILR’s work with the international labor community around economic alternatives, environmental sustainability, and climate protection.

In 2007 Sweeney and the Global Labor Institute team worked with the Steelworkers and other unions to organize the North American Labor Assembly on Climate Crisis, the first major conference on unions and climate change. Sweeney and GLI then worked with the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to build U.S. labor’s presence at the UN’s climate talks in Bali for COP 13, and he serves on the International Trade Union Confederation’s climate working group. Sweeney and the Cornell GLI team also convened the Global Trade Union Task Force on Development Alternatives in 2006. Sweeney c-authored the UN Environment Program’s 2008 report, Green Jobs: Towards Decent Work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World that was sponsored by the ITUC and the ILO. Most recently (September 2011), Sweeney co-authored a report that challenged the jobs claimed by the oil industry pertaining to the Keystone XL pipeline, titled Pipe Dreams: Jobs Gained, Jobs Lost in the Construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Sweeney has written for the Los Angeles Times and appeared on National Public Radio and is a frequent contributor to New Labor Forum

Creating a Cooperative Economy

As the failings of the capitalist economy become more evident, people recognize that there are alternatives. The cooperative economy though largely hidden is growing and is outperforming the capitalist economy when it comes to job and economic stability. The cooperative economy places capital in service of jobs instead of the other way around. To discuss this in more depth we spoke with Janelle Cornwell, lead author of a new book called Building Cooperative Power! Stories and Strategies from Worker Co-Operatives in the Connecticut River Valley, and Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo who has extensive experience studying and creating cooperatives.

Listen here:

Creating A Cooperative Economy with Janelle Cornwell and Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles, books and websites:

International Co-operative Alliance (on Co-operative Identity, Values and Principles)

To order a copy of Building Cooperative Power! 
Phone: 413-992-7408
Email: levellerspress1@gmail.com
Or visit: Levellers Press, Independent Book Publisher, Home

Grassroots Economic Organizing

National Cooperative Business Association

US Federation of Worker Cooperatives

Valley Alliance of Worker Co-operatives

Valley Co-operative Business Association | Open For Co-operation

For a Thriving Regional Economy… | Neighboring Food Co-op Association

Guests:

Janelle Cornwell, PhD is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Worcester State University and a member of the Community Economies Collective (http://communityeconomies.org). She conducted research with worker co-operatives in Western New England between 2005 and 2011.  Janelle is co-author with Michael Johnson and Adam Trott of Building Co-operative Power: stories and strategies from worker co-operatives in the Connecticut River Valley (2014).

Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo has been a co-editor with Grassroots Economic Organizing, an online newsletter advocating alternative economic solutions, for more than 10 years. She was a founding member of the now disbanded Cooperative Incubator of D.C. organized in 2011 to help immigrant and impoverished communities and others to form worker cooperatives.  She also traveled to Mondragon, Spain to study the Mondragon Cooperative Complex in 2011.  She has nine years experience on cooperative boards, and was a founding board member of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives in 2004.  She trained from 2008-2009 in the Democracy at Work Institute peer advisor program which provides technical assistance to worker cooperatives.  In 2000, she co-founded an affordable housing co-op, the Ella Jo Baker Cooperative Community in Washington, DC.  She earned an MBA and Master of Science degree in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University in 2006 and 2003 respectively. She is now researching and thinking about how to incorporate spirituality in the work to organize cooperatives and other alternative economic projects.

What The EFM Is Going On In Michigan?

We take a look at the disturbing trends in Michigan. Emergency Financial Managers are being appointed by the governor to run cities and school boards, particularly in black majority communities, in a dictatorial fashion. As our guest Tom Stephens writes,”The Emergency Financial Manager regime imposed on Detroit is ‘an entirely new and unprecedented form of antidemocratic local government directly controlled by the corporate agents of ‘the 1%’ that is designed to steal everything: land, water, air, lives, and every right not associated with capital.” The first Emergency Financial Managers were appointed to run cities in 2000, but a significant change occurred in 2011 with the passage of Public Act 4, the Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act. This state law gave EFM’s unprecedented power to “exercise any power or authority of any officer, employee, department, board, commission or other similar entity of the local government whether elected or appointed.” Our guests will discuss how the EFM’s are dismantling cities to pave the way for privatization and gentrification and what people in those cities are doing to fight back.

Listen here:

What’s Going On In Michigan? with Claire McClinton, Rev. Ed Pinkney, Maureen Taylor and Tom Stephens by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles and websites:

The Scandal of Michigan’s Emergency Managers by Chris Savage

Flint Protest Exposes Emergency Manager Order to Silence Public by Claire McClinton

Fighting the Corporate Dictatorship in Michigan by The People’s Tribune

EMFing Democracy: Destroying Detroit In Order To “Save” It by Tom Stephens 

Tom Stephens Blog on Black Agenda Report

Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management

Michigan Welfare Rights Organization

People’s Water Brigade

Detroit Water Brigade

Guests:

Reverend Edward Pinkney lives in Benton Harbor, Michigan where he leads the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization. Reverend Pinkney is an outspoken activist who protests the policies of the Emergency Financial Manager, the privatization of public property in Benton Harbor, poverty and racism.

Claire McClinton is a  community activist with Stand Up for Democracy and Flint Democracy Defense League.

Maureen D. Taylor is a lifelong soldier in the war against the poor. She has served as Chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization since 1993, and was elected Treasurer of the National Welfare Rights Union in 1994.

She is a dedicated community activist who represents public assistance recipients at the Michigan Family Independence Agency (FIA) offices over case disputes. Along with other welfare rights members, she conducts local and state FIA policy trainings, and works with political leaders and corporations to draft policies and procedures that protect poor and low-income families. Over the past few months, Maureen and many other concerned citizens have been working to stop water, gas, and electricity shut-offs for thousands of low-income households in Detroit, and restore winter utilities for those already shut-off.

Maureen earned her Bachelor of Social Work at Marygrove College in 1983, where she was also the distinguished Valedictorian of her graduating class. In 1994, she earned her Master of Social Work degree from Wayne State University. Sh has received many distinguished awards for her community organizing and leadership, including the National Community Leader Award from the National Black Caucus in Washington DC.

Currently, Ms. Taylor is the Program Director for the Detroit NFI Community Self-Sufficiency Center. The CSSC is a program that works to assist chronically unemployed persons in the Detroit Central Empowerment Zone. She also serves as a Trustee to New Detroit, Inc, and is a member of several boards and community organizations.

Thomas Stephens is a lifelong resident of metro Detroit. A lawyer, he is one of the coordinators of the communications working group for Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management (D-REM). His primary experience for many years was complex civil litigation in both state and federal courts. He also has experience in the environmental justice movement. He worked as a policy analyst for the City of Detroit for 5 years. He blogs regularly on Black Agenda Report.

Trans-Atlantic Trade Agreement to Drive More Fracking in US

A sister trade agreement to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is being negotiated in secret with the European Union. It’s called the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership but is known as TAFTA. Last month, a leaked memo showed that negotiators are pushing for the US to produce more oil and gas through extreme measures such as fracking and export it to the EU. Already the US is making preparations. In Maryland, the Governor is pushing to build a liquefied methane gas terminal at Cove Point for export. A coalition of groups that includes environmentalists, Native Americans and other residents is fighting the terminal at Cove Point. We speak with Shilpa Joshi of Chesapeake Climate Action Network about the Cove Point terminal and with Mitch Jones of Food and Water watch about TAFTA.

Listen here:

Trans-Atlantic Trade Agreement to Drive More Fracking in US with Shilpa Joshi and Mitch Jones by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles and websites:

Regulatory Agency Hears Cove Point Pro and Con–But Is It Listening? by Anne Meador

Cove Point Fracked Gas Export Facility vs. Safety of 24,000 Residents by Karen Gibbs

Read The Secret Trade Memo Calling For More Fracking and Offshore Drilling by Zach Carter and Kate Sheppard

Groups Warn TAFTA Threatens Important Safeguards by Citizens Trade Campaign

Chesapeake Climate Action Network

Stop Gas Exports

Food and Water Watch

Guests:

Mitch Jones is the Director of the Common Resources Program at Food & Water Watch. He manages the organization’s campaigns on nutrient trading regimes, water markets and pricing, municipal water infrastructure funding, catch share fisheries management programs, and open ocean aquaculture. He was previously the Director of the Fish Program at Food & Water Watch. Mitch also worked as the Senior Legislative and Policy Analyst for Food & Water Watch’s Water Program. Prior to joining Food & Water Watch, he worked at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, focusing on issues related to food safety and renewable fuel policy. He has appeared on CNBC, Al Jazeera English, and various radio stations across America. He holds a B.A. in history and philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a M.A.L.A. from St. John’s College, Santa Fe. Mitch can be reached mjones(at)fwwatch(dot)org.

Shilpa Joshi is the Maryland Field Organizer with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. She works to empower and engage communities and students across Maryland in the fight for clean energy.

Whistleblowers Needed – New Tools and Support Announced

In this time of oligarchy and corruption, it is necessary for democracy that people who serve in the government step forward and tell the truth. However, the Obama administration through its attacks on whistleblowers and use of the Espionage Act more times than all other presidents combined has intimidated workers from speaking out. In the past two weeks, new tools and organizations were launched to assist and support whistleblowers. We speak with Matthew Hoh of ExposeFacts.org on the urgent need for whistleblowers and Sarah Harrison of the new Courage Foundation on her work to support Edward Snowden and the future Snowdens.

Listen here:

Whistleblowers Needed Now, New Groups Launched to Support Them with Matthew Hoh and Sarah Harrison by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles and websites:

Launch of Courage and Snowden Campaign in Berlin Press Release

Defending Our ‘Right to Know’ with Courage by Kevin Zeese

SecureDrop Allows Anonymous Whistleblowing by Trevor Timm and Rainey Reitman

ExposeFacts.org

Courage Foundation

Guests:

Matthew Hoh is the former director of the Afghanistan Study Group, Hoh is a former Marine and State Department official. In 2009 he resigned from his post with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of U.S. strategic policy and goals in Afghanistan (Washington Post, front page, “U.S. Official Resigns Over Afghan War,” October 27, 2009). Hoh discussed the launch of ExposeFacts.org when he appeared on Huffington Post Live and was interviewed on “Free Speech Zone with @AlyonaMink.”

Sarah Harrison  is a British journalist, legal researcher, and WikiLeaks section editor. She works with the WikiLeaks Legal Defense and is Julian Assange‘s closest adviser. Harrison accompanied National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden on a high-profile flight from Hong Kong to Moscow while he was sought by the United States government. She is Director of the new Courage Foundation.

The Rolling Rebellion For Real Democracy and Tar Sands in the US

Now that it has been proven that we live in a plutocracy, what are we going to do about it? PopularResistance.org is joining with the Backbone Campaign to launch the Rolling Rebellion for Real Democracy. The first step is a week of actions across the country from July 5 to 12.  Bill Moyer from Backbone Campaign joins us to speak about the campaign and what we hope to achieve. In the second half of the show, we speak with Jessica Lee of Peaceful Uprising who is an organizer of the permanent protest set up in PR Springs, UT to stop the land from being mined for tar sands.

Listen here:

The Rolling Rebellion for Real Democracy and Tar Sands in the US with Bill Moyer and Jessica Lee by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles and websites:

Fighting for a Legitimate Democracy, By and For the People by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Rolling Rebellion Website

Localize This! Action Camp

Permanent protest setup at proposed tar sands strip mine by Peaceful Uprising

Peaceful Uprising

Tar Sands Resist

Guests:

Bill Moyer  is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Backbone Campaign. Bill has been an activist for over 30 years and a percussionist for more. These intersecting paths in social movements and the arts generate a unique set of skills and insights that he employs in his movement building work. Bill’s Artful Activism takes him around the country providing trainings for activists and organizers, campaign design for organizations, and strategic advice and tactical support for actions. Through these travels Bill has met many talented people whose insights he weaves into his own analysis and attempts to share their lessons with others. Yet, his home community of Vashon Island, WA is the local laboratory and foundation for his and all of Backbone Campaign’s efforts, and where he shares a wooded sanctuary with his wife Esther and daughter Aziza.

Jessica Lee is a climate justice organizer in so-called Utah, working with
groups such at Peaceful Uprising and Utah Tar Sands Resistance on issues
of extreme extraction and environmental racism.

State of the Labor Movement – Can It Be Saved?

Unions in the US which were a driving force for social change in the early 20th century have been in decline for decades. Recently however union and non-union workers have been fighting for better working conditions and wages and the right to organize. Steve Early has been present for the past 40 years of labor’s struggles. His new book is titled “Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress.” He joins us to talk about the current state of labor. We also speak with Traven Leyshon of the Vermont AFL CIO, Vermont Workers Center and Vermont Progressive Party.

Listen here:

State of the US Labor Movement – Can It be Saved? with Steve Early and Traven Leyshon by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles and websites:

Save Our Unions Book Review

Why Passengers Cheered Vermont Bus Strike by Ellen David Friedman

SteveEarly.org

Guest:

Steve Early has been active as a labor journalist, lawyer, organizer, or union representative since 1972. For 27 years, Early was a Boston-based staff member of the Communications Workers of America. He finished his CWA career in 2007, after serving as administrative assistant to the vice-president of CWA District 1, which represents more than 160,000 workers in New York, New England, and New Jersey,

Early aided CWA organizing, bargaining, and/or major strikes involving NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, AT&T, Verizon, Southern New England Tel, SBC, Cingular, and Verizon Wireless. He also assisted CWA public sector organizing, plus mergers with other AFL-CIO affiliates and independent unions.

Early’s freelance journalism has appeared in The Nation, The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today, Toronto Globe & Mail, The Berkshire Eagle, The Progressive, CounterPunch, Beyond Chron, The Guardian, In These Times, Our Times, American Prospect, Mother Jones, Labor History, New Politics, New Labor Forum, Social Policy, Labor Notes, Labor Studies Journal, WorkingUSA, Labor Research Review, Monthly Review, Technology Review, Boston Review, Dollars and Sense, Socialism and Democracy, Democratic Left, The Guild Reporter, Jacobin, Tikkun, and Labor: Studies in Working Class History in The Americas.

He is the author of Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home(Monthly Review Press, 2009) and The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers’ Movement or Death Throes of the Old? (Haymarket Books, 2011). His new book, Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress, will be published by MRP in early 2014.

Alone or with co-authors, Early has also contributed chapters to eight edited collections. Among these is an often-cited essay, “Membership Based Organizing,” in A New Labor Movement For The New Century, edited by Gregory Mantsios (Monthly Review Press, 1998); “Globalization and De-Unionization in Telecommunications: Three Case Studies in Resistance” (co-authored with Larry Cohen) in Transnational Cooperation Among Labor Unions, edited by Michael Gordon and Lowell Turner (Cornell University Press, 2000); “The NYNEX Strike: A Case Study in Labor-Management Conflict Over Health Care Cost Shifting,” in Proceedings of NYU Annual National Conference on Labor (Little, Brown &Co., 1991); “Defending Workers’ Rights in the Global Economy: The CWA Experience” (co-authored with Larry Cohen) in Which Direction For Organized Labor? edited by Bruce Nissen (Wayne State University Press, 1999) and also reprinted in Le Syndicalisme Dans La Mondialisation, edited by Annie Fouquet, Udo Rehfeldt, and Serge Le Roux (Les Editions de L’Atelier, Paris, 2000); “Strike Lessons From The Last Twenty-Five Years” in The Encyclopedia of Strikes,” edited by Ben Day, Manny Ness, and Aaron Brenner ( M.E. Sharpe, Inc., April, 2009); “The Enduring Legacy & Contemporary Relevance of Labor Insurgency,” in Rebel Rank-and-File: Labor Militancy and Revolt From Below During the 1970s, edited by Cal Winslow, Aaron Brenner, and Bob Brenner (Verso, 2009), and “Back to the Future: Union Survival Strategies in Open Shop America,” (co-authored with Rand Wilson) in Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back, edited by Michael D. Yates, (Monthly Review Press, 2012).

Early serves on the editorial advisory committees for four labor-related publications–Labor Notes, New Labor Forum, WorkingUSA and Social Policy. He is also a board member of United For a Fair Economy. He is a member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild (Freelancers Unit), an affiliate of the TNG/CWA.

Early has been a longtime backer of Jobs with Justice, the Association for Union Democracy and Teamsters for a Democratic Union. In 1992, while on loan from CWA, he was part of the Teamster headquarters transition team for newly-elected IBT President Ron Carey and other union reformers who won office in the union’s first direct election of national leaders.

Early is a graduate of Middlebury College and Catholic University Law School. He was admitted to the Vermont bar and state and federal courts in Vermont in 1976. In the 1970s, Early worked for the United Mine Workers and wrote for The UMW Journal, when it received a National Magazine Award in 1975.

Traven Leyshon is the former Secretary-Treasurer of the VT AFL-CIO, president of small central labor council, founding member of Vermont Workers Center, and formerly on leadership team of Vermont Progressive Party.

New Economy Movement Empowers Communities

This month, economic democracy conferences were held in both Jackson, MS and Baltimore, MD. The conferences focused on the structural causes of poverty, the failures of the current economic system and new systems that can be put in place to build wealth in communities. Th Baltimore conference, which we helped to organize, focused on building cooperatives, complementary currencies and alternative finance, participatory budgeting, land trusts, renewable energy and food security. Our guest Dorcas Gilmore attended both conferences and the other guest Lasana Mack is working on new systems in African-American communities of Washington, DC.

Listen here:

The New Economy Movement is Empowering Communities with Lasana Mack and Dorcas Gilmore by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud

Relevant articles and websites:

Jackson Rising – New Economies Conference

Jackson Rising: Black Millionaires Won’t Lift Us Up, But Cooperation & the Solidarity Economy Might by Bruce A. Dixon

Jackson Rises to Face New Challenges by Editors of Solidarity-US.org

Building Our New Economy Together

ItsOurEconomy.us

Guests:

Lasana Mack is the founder and Executive Director of APPEAL, Inc., which launched in Washington, DC in 2013, with a mission that targets people of African descent for economic empowerment and educational enrichment. In this position, he manages APPEAL’s conducting of workshops in financial literacy and historical & cultural literacy; its think tank that analyzes and addresses socio-economic issues; and its efforts to develop a credit union and on-line bank to facilitate economic empowerment for communities of people of African descent.

From 2005 to 2012, Mr. Mack served as City Treasurer of the District of Columbia (Washington, DC), a position that entailed managing billions of dollars, many employees and contracted professionals, and numerous business functions for the city. These functions included funds management, banking operations, and bond issuances to finance infrastructure development in the city. He has served in several other financial management positions over the course of his professional career. In addition, Mr. Mack has been a community activist and organizer for over 20 years, working with various community-based organizations. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree from Howard University (Washington, DC) and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY), majoring in Finance.

Dorcas Gilmore is Assistant General Counsel in the NAACP Legal Department where she represents the NAACP National Office and assists its over 1200 branches and units nationwide.  In this role, she advances the NAACP’s racial justice advocacy mission on issues of economic justice and provides corporate counsel.  Also, Ms. Gilmore serves as the Director of Community Economic Development in the NAACP Economic Department where she oversees efforts to promote the creation and growth of small businesses, individual wealth building primarily through matched savings accounts, and community asset building.

Ms. Gilmore has over 8 years of experience in the community economic development field.   As a Skadden Fellow and Staff Attorney at the Community Law Center, Inc., she created the Youth Entrepreneurship Initiative providing a range of business and nonprofit legal services to youth-led organizations.  Also, she directed the Small Business Legal Services Program & Youth Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Equitable Development Project.  Ms. Gilmore has represented community organizations, social ventures, and coalitions seeking to promote racial and economic equity in their local communities and looks forward to leveraging these experiences and relationships to strengthen the economic fabrics of communities of color.

Ms. Gilmore earned her law degree from the University of Maryland School of Law. The 2004 Gilbert & Jaylee Mead Public Interest Scholar, Ms. Gilmore  received numerous awards recognizing her commitment to service and the public interest, including the NAACP LDF’s Earl Warren Scholarship.  Ms. Gilmore graduated magna cum laude from Rollins College with an Honors Bachelor of Arts.

Ms. Gilmore is a member of the Governing Committee of the ABA Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law and a founding member of its Young Lawyers Network.  She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Women’s Law Center of Maryland.  Ms. Gilmore is the author of several articles and book chapters on law and leadership, youth entrepreneurship legal services, and community lawyering.