This is What Food Justice Looks Like

Most people in the US buy their food in grocery stores with little knowledge of the human and environmental injustices that went into bringing it there or the fights to improve the quality of our food. Today we speak with Maru Mora-Villalpando, who works with Families United for Justice, about a campaign led by farm workers who pick berries in the U.S. and Mexico that is starting to have victories. And then we talk with long-time food advocate Carlos Martinez about Monsanto,  the consolidation of Big Ag and the fight for the right to healthy food.

Listen here:

Relevant Article and Websites:

There’s a Lingering Farm Labor Dispute Behind Your Summer Berries by Sarah McColl

No Other Way Than to Struggle: The Farmworker-Led Boycott of Driscoll’s Berries by Felimon Pineda with David Bacon

Sakuma Farmworkers Vote Yes for their Union

Families United for Justice

Boycott Sakuma Berries

Latino Advocacy 

Bayer’s Monsanto Acquisition to Face Politically Charged Scrutiny by Diane Bartz and Greg Roumeliotis

Guests:

Maru Mora-Villalpando is a principal with Latino Advocacy. She coordinates communication and is a spokesperson for Families United for Justice (Familias Unidas por la Justicia), which organizes the Driscoll’s Berry Boycott.

Carlos Martinez is a food justice advocate who worked on Prop 37, the first statewide bill to label Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in foods. As a participant of Occupy movements up and down California, he worked to bring food justice issues to the forefront. He works in collaboration with many food activist organizations and is now focusing on one of the ultimate food fights, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the global corporate takeover of our food system.

The End of Oil Opens the Door to Solutionary Rail

The science is clear that no new fossil fuel infrastructure can be built. We must keep existing fossil fuels in the ground and transition rapidly to renewable energy sources. The government is not taking up this action, so people around the world are taking it upon themselves to stop fossil fuel projects. One current effort is taking place in North Dakota. The Sacred Stone Camp was created by the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota Nations on April 1, 2016 to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which would carry Bakken oil through four states. All pipelines spill and the DAPL could contaminate the Missouri River, as well as the land and other aquifers. Construction of the pipeline is destroying sacred sites and wildlife habitat. Matt Remle will speak with us about resistance to the pipeline and what people can do to support the efforts.

At the same time, we must build alternatives to meet our needs for energy and transportation. Bill Moyer and Steve Chrismer have been working together on a project that they call Solutionary Rail. They envision rebuilding the rail system in the US to run on electricity, which can be created through renewable sources, to carry goods and passengers.

Listen here:

Relevant articles and websites:

Recalculating the Climate Math by Bill McKibben

Last Real Indians

Standing Rock Sioux

Sacred Stone Camp

Backbone Campaign

Solutionary Rail

Guests:

Matt Remle (Lakota) lives in Seattle, WA.  He works for the office of Indian Education in the Marysville/Tulalip school district.  He is a writer for Last Real Indians @ www.lastrealindians.com and runs an on-line Lakota language program at www.LRInspire.com.  He is a father of three and the author of Seattle’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day resolution.”

Steve Chrismer has worked in the rail industry for 35 years and has his PhD in Civil Engineering.  He is presently on the design team developing the Next Generation High Speed trainset that will operate on Amtrak’s Northeast corridor between Washington D.C. and Boston and will be capable of up to 186 mph and is Chairperson of the national High Speed Rail Committee and is part of the Solutionary Rail Team organized by Bill Moyer.

Bill Moyer is a fourth generation Washingtonian who lives with his wife and daughter in the woods of Vashon Island, WA in the Salish Sea (near Seattle).  He co-founded and Backbone Campaign and has served as executive director since 2004.   A leader in the theory and practice of artful activism, Backbone combines lessons of the performing arts with grand strategic principles from the Art of War to invigorate nonviolent social change movements.  Bill and his Backbone colleagues have designed and produced hundreds of creative protests and trained thousands of change agents. They have helped transform mundane demonstrations into cultural happenings with innovative tactics like spotlights to project messages onto buildings and introduced the world tokayaktivism during the sHellNo! campaign to stop Arctic drilling.

Bill presents on the application of grand strategy, creative tactics and campaign design in workshops around the country.  His moral and strategic commitment to always balance critique with proposal resulted in the Solutionary Rail project.  Now Bill humbly conducts the talented Solutionary Rail team.  He is extremely proud of this book on how America can transform a broken and dangerous railroad business model into a catalyst for social and environmental solutions and integral component of a just transition to sustainable society.

An Hour with Ajamu Baraka

We speak with Ajamu Baraka about his work for decades as a human rights defender, about his current run for Vice President on the Green Party ticket and his activism at the Sacred Stone Camp in North Dakota recently in solidarity with the fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Listen here:

Relevant articles and websites:

Green Party Candidates Face Arrest: An Interview with Green Party VP Candidate Ajamu Baraka by Dennis J. Bernstein

Ajamu Baraka 

Jill2016.com

Guest:

A human rights defender whose experience spans four decades of domestic and international education and activism, Ajamu Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles.

Baraka is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S. for more than 25 years. As such, he has provided human rights trainings for grassroots activists across the country, has given briefings on human rights to the U.S. Congress, and has appeared before and provided statements to various United Nations agencies, including the UN Human Rights Commission (precursor to the current UN Human Rights Council).

As a co-convener with Jaribu Hill of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights, Baraka played an instrumental role in developing the series of bi-annual Southern Human Rights Organizers’ conferences (SHROC) that began in 1996. These gatherings represented some of the first post-Cold War human rights training opportunities for grassroots activists in the country.

Baraka played an important role in bringing a human rights perspective to the preparatory meetings for the World Conference on Racism (WCAR) that took place in Geneva and in Santiago, Chile, as part of the Latin American Preparatory process, as well as the actual conference that he attended as a delegate in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.

Ajamu Baraka was the Founding Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network (USHRN) from July 2004 until June 2011. The USHRN was the first domestic human rights formation in the United States explicitly committed to the application of international human rights standards to the U.S. Under Baraka, the Network grew from a core membership of 60 organizations to more than 300 U.S.-based member organizations and 1,500 individual members who worked on the full spectrum of human rights concerns in the U.S. During Baraka’s tenure, the Network initiated the Katrina Campaign on Internal Displacement, after Baraka was the first to formally identify the victims of Hurricane Katrina as internally displaced people (IDP).

Also while at the Network, Baraka ensured that the Network spearheaded efforts to raise human rights abuses taking place in the U.S. with United Nations human rights processes and structures, including the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Human Rights Council, through its Universal Periodic Review process. By coordinating the production of non-governmental reports on human rights and organizing activist delegations to UN sites in Geneva and New York, the Network gave voice to victims of human rights abuses and provided opportunities for activists to engage in direct advocacy. These efforts resulted in specific criticisms of the U.S. human rights record and recommendations for corrective actions.

Prior to leading the USHRN, Baraka served in various leadership capacities with Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). As AIUSA’s Southern Regional Director, he played a key role in developing the organization’s 1998 campaign to expose human rights violations in the U.S. Baraka also directed Amnesty’s National Program to Abolish the Death Penalty, during which time he was involved in most of the major death penalty cases in the U.S.

In 1998, Baraka was one of 300 human rights defenders from around the world who were brought together at the first International Summit of Human Rights Defenders commemorating the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2001, Baraka received the “Abolitionist of the Year” award from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The following year, Baraka received the “Human Rights Guardian” award from the National Center for Human Rights Education.

Baraka has also served on the boards of various national and international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International(USA), the Center for Constitutional Rights, Africa Action, and the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights.

Baraka has taught political science at various universities and has been a guest lecturer at academic institutions in the U.S. and abroad. A commentator on a number of criminal justice and international human rights issues, Baraka has appeared on and been covered in a wide-range of print, broadcast, and digital media outlets such as CNN, BBC, the Tavis Smiley Show, Telemundo, ABC’s World News Tonight, Black Commentator, Russia Today, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. He is also a contributing writer for various publications including Black Commentator, Commondreams, Pambazaka, and Dissident Voice.

He is currently an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C., and editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report.

As Obamacare Crumbles, What Next For Health Care?

As predicted, major insurance companies are complaining that they are not making enough money and so they are pulling out of the health insurance exchanges. What does this mean for health professionals and patients? How do we solve the ongoing health care crisis in the United States? We speak with Sam Jordan about his fight to force Care First Blue Cross to live up to its public obligations and Dr. Steffie Woolhandler about the current state of healthcare in the United States and what impact proposed solutions would have.

Listen here:

Relevant articles and websites:

Chase Brexton Union Vote to be Certified Next Week, Unless Health System Objects by Scott Dance

Care First is ordered to spend $56 million on community health needs by D.C. regulators by Mike DeBonis

Shameful Racial Disparities in Health and Health Care by Lyndonna Marrast, Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch “Epi-Pen is my ‘baby'” by Damien Garde

Aetna warned it would drop out of Obamacare exchanges if its merger was blocked by Carolyn Y. Johnson

Physicians for a National Health Program

Healthcare Now DC

Guest:

Samuel Jordan is a lawyer, a human rights advocate, former chair of the DC Statehood Party and Executive Director of Health Care Now DC where he has led and continues to lead struggles to increase access to health care for residents in and around Washington, DC. Contact him at Samuel.jordan@msn.com.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, FACP – internal medicine, New York/Boston is a practicing primary care physician, professor in the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, adjunct clinical professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she co-directed the general internal medicine fellowship program and practiced primary care internal medicine at Cambridge Hospital.

Dr. Woolhandler earned her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University; her medical degree from Louisiana State University; and her master’s degree from the University of California. She worked in 1990-1991 as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation health policy fellow at the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Congress.

Dr. Woolhandler is a frequent speaker and has written extensively on health policy, administrative overhead and the uninsured. She has authored more than 150 journal articles, reviews, chapters, and books on health policy. A co-founder and board member of Physicians for a National Health Program, Dr. Woolhandler co-edits PNHP’s newsletter and is a principal author of PNHP articles published in the JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine in conjunction with Dr. David Himmelstein.

Time to Open the Presidential Debates

As we enter the final months of the presidential campaigns, voters are looking towards the debates. The first one will be in New York on September 26. However, unless we mobilize to change the process for presidential debates, voters will not get to hear the views of all candidates who are on the ballot in enough states to win the election. We’ll talk about the presidential debate commission, which is really a private corporation, the ways that debates are restricted by the Democrats and Republicans and what we can do to create greater democracy.

Listen  here:

Relevant articles and websites:

League Refuses to Help Perpetrate a Fraud by Nancy Neumann

TV Networks Should Open Up the Presidential Debates by Jeff Cohen

Petition to Open the Debates

Campaign to Open the Debates

Jeff Cohen Blog

Roots Action

Fair.org

FairDebates.com

Fair Debates Action Page

Guests:

Jeff Cohen is a media critic and lecturer, is founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, where he is an associate professor of journalism. His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. He has been a TV commentator at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, and was senior producer of MSNBC’s Phil Donahue primetime show until it was terminated three weeks before the Iraq invasion. Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986, and cofounded the online activist group RootsAction.org in 2011. His columns on media issues have been published online at such websites as HuffingtonPost, CommonDreams and Alternet—and in dozens of dailies, including USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Atlanta Constitution, and Miami Herald.

Jo Vaccarino is a Clinical thermographer, health freedom advocate, Fair Debates Taskforce Developer.  Advocate for Fair Debates, election reform and ending corruption in our government and the election process.  She is on the team of Downsize DC and Zero Aggression Project as well as the Gary Johnson 2012 and 2016 campaigns.

Presidential Conventions are Over. What Now?

The final national presidential nominating convention is over for this election season. To discuss the upcoming elections and what they mean, we are joined by Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report and Eugene Puryear, an activist based in Washington, DC. What will it take to build the political power necessary for transformation to a more just and peaceful society?

Listen here:

Relevant articles and websites:

Hillary Stuffs Entire U.S. Ruling Class into her Big Nasty Tent by Glen Ford

Black Agenda Report

By Any Means Necessary

Guests:

Glen Ford is the son of famed disc jockey Rudy “The Deuce” Rutherford, the first Black man to host a non-gospel television show in the Deep South – Columbus, Georgia, 1958 – Glen was reading newswire copy on-the-air at age eleven. Glen’s first full-time broadcast news job was at James Brown’s Augusta, Georgia radio station WRDW, in 1970 – where ‘The Godfather of Soul” shortened Glen’s surname to “Ford.”

Glen Ford  worked as a newsperson at four more local stations: in Columbus, Georgia, Atlanta, Baltimore – where he created his first radio syndication, a half-hour weekly news magazine called “Black World Report” – and Washington, DC. In 1974, Ford joined the Mutual Black Network (88 stations), where he served as Capitol Hill, State Department and White House correspondent, and Washington Bureau Chief, while also producing a daily radio commentary. In 1977, Ford co-launched, produced and hosted “America’s Black Forum” (ABF), the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television.

ABF made Black broadcast history. For the next four years, the program generated national and international headlines nearly every week. Never before – and never since – had a Black news entity commanded the weekly attention of the news services (AP, UPI, Reuters, Agence France-Presse – even Tass, the Soviet news agency) and the broadcast networks.

While still host and co-owner of ABF, Ford in 1979 created “Black Agenda Reports,” which provided five programs each day on Black Women, History, Business, Sports and Entertainment to 66 radio stations. The syndication produced more short-form programming than the two existing Black radio networks, combined.

Ford also produced the McDonald’s-sponsored radio series “Black History Through Music,” aired on 50 stations, nationwide.

In 1987, Ford launched “Rap It Up,” the first nationally syndicated Hip Hop music show, broadcast on 65 radio stations. During its six years of operations, “Rap It Up” allowed Ford to play an important role in the maturation of a new African American musical genre. He organized three national rap music conventions, and wrote the Hip Hop column for Jack The Rapper’s Black radio trade magazine.

Ford co-founded BlackCommentator.com (BC) in 2002. The weekly journal quickly became the most influential Black political site on the Net. In October, 2006, Ford and the entire writing team left BC to launch BlackAgendaReport.com (BAR).

In addition to his broadcast and Internet experience, Glen Ford was national political columnist for Encore American & Worldwide News magazine; founded The Black Commentator and Africana Policies magazines; authored The Big Lie: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion (IOJ, 1985); voiced over 1000 radio commercials (half of which he also produced) and scores of television commercials; and served as reporter and editor for three newspapers (two daily, one weekly).

Ford was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ); executive board member of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists (NATWJ); media specialist for the National Minority Purchasing Council; and has spoken at scores of colleges and universities.

Eugene Puryear is a Washington, D.C.-based activist. As a high school student in Charlottesville, Va, Eugene organized a walkout when the war in Iraq began in 2003, and helped to organize a number of the large-scale demonstrations that took place against the continuing U.S. war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a key leader In the struggle to free the Jena Six in 2007, was a founder of the Jobs Not Jails coalition, DC Ferguson Movement and Stop Police Terror Project in Washington D.C., and is the author of the book Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America. Puryear is the host of “By Any Means Necessary on Radio Sputnik.

We’re In The Midst Of A Political Realignment

Decades of lesser evil voting and the failed policies that have been the result are creating a political realignment in the United States. Such a realignment has been going on in other countries recently such as Spain, Venezuela, Greece and Iceland. The two major parties in the US, the Democrats and Republicans, are shrinking and more people are joining third parties or switching to be unaffiliated. We’ll discuss this political realignment and what it means with Darcy Richardson and Ashley Smith.

Listen here: 

Relevant articles and websites:

Donald Trump Frees Us to Vote as We Wish by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Will the Democrats Put Out the Bern? by Ashley Smith

The Sanders Campaign and the Left by Ashley Smith and Lance Selfa

International Socialist Organization

Uncovered Politics

Guests:

Darcy Richardson is the author of more than a dozen books covering American political history.  Richardson’s books on American history and politics — one of which earned an Outstanding Academic Title (OAT) from scholarly Choice magazine in 2005 — were cited in Newsweek’s “What You Need to Read” section in July 2010. His most recent book, Bernie: A Lifelong Crusade Against Wall Street & Wealth, was published by Sevierville Publishing in December 2015.

Long active in third-party politics, Richardson has rubbed shoulders with some of the best-known political figures of the past three decades.  In addition to managing one of the late Minnesota Senator Eugene J. McCarthy’s campaigns and serving as a senior advisor in another, Richardson ran for Pennsylvania Auditor General in 1980 and for the U.S. Senate eight years later on the Philadelphia-based Consumer Party ticket.  In 2012, he offered himself as a protest candidate in several Democratic presidential primaries, briefly challenging Wall Street’s increasingly corrupt influence on the Democratic Party and the nation’s body politic.

A resident of Jacksonville, Richardson has been quoted in major publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and has written numerous articles for a wide range of publications.  He has also been a guest on several nationally-syndicated radio talk shows, ranging from the progressive “Thom Hartmann Show” to Joseph Farah’s conservative “WorldNetDaily Radioactive” program.

Darcy can be reached via email at darcy@uncoveredpolitics.com

Ashley Smith is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review (ISR) and on the Steering Committee of the International Socialist Organization. He has written on various subjects for the ISR as well as Socialist Worker, New Politics, ZNet, and Jacobin. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.

FBI Stings of Muslims Worsen Bigotry and Security

A study from 2014 showed that 99% of domestic terrorist plots in the US are aided in some way by the FBI; only 4 out of 400 were not FBI stings. And human rights groups found that the way the sting operations are conducted violate human rights. Sue Udry of Defending Dissent will speak about the ways these sting operations have been used to fuel hatred against Muslims. And to discuss the shooting and mass murder in Orlando, FL, Janaid Ahmad of Just International and Peace for Life speaks about the rise of homophobia and violence within Muslim communities because of Western influence and support for extremist sects such as the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia.

Listen here:

Relevant articles and websites:

Living in the Shadow of Counterterrorism series from Rewire

FBI Steps Up Use of Stings in ISIS Cases by Eric Lichtblau

Inventing Terrorists: The Lawfare of Preemptive Prosecution from Project Salam and the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms

Targeted and Entrapped: Manufacturing the ‘Homegrown Threat’ in the United States by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice

Bill of Rights Defense Committee/Defending Dissent Foundation

Just International

Peace for Life

Center for Global Dialogue

Guests:

Sue Udry is Executive Director of the Defending Dissent Foundation.

Sue won her high school’s “Best Citizen” award in 1978 and has been working to earn that title ever since. She played a leadership role in her campus peace group, and after grad school she began knocking on doors in neighborhoods around the country as a canvasser for SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, now Peace Action.  She has been the Executive Director of the Defending Dissent Foundation since 2008. Prior to joining DDF, she served as the executive director of the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights and as an organizer for the Coalition for New Priorities and the Day Care Action Council of Illinois. She was the legislative coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of over 1,600 groups opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She currently serves on the board of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms and the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, as well as the Advisory Board of the Charity and Security Network. She is a co-founder of the Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition and treasurer of the D.C. chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

Over a quarter of a century working for peace and social justice in Washington, DC, Illinois and Indiana, has taught Sue that the right to dissent is crucial to expanding democracy, promoting justice, and enlarging the global human rights perspective.

Janaid S. Ahmad is based in Lahore, Pakistan where he is the director of the Center for Global Dialogue. He has a Juris Doctor (law) degree from the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA. He is currently a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and is also a faculty member of the Faculty of Law and Policy, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan. He served as president of the US-based National Muslim Law Students Association (NMLSA), and is on the board of the Muslim Peace Fellowship. He is a board member of Muslim Men against Domestic Abuse (MMADA). He served on the Executive Board of the Domestic Violence Resource Project. In the US, he worked with the National Interfaith Committee on Social Justice, and Amnesty International. In Pakistan, he worked with such groups as Educate Pakistan and AMAL Human Development Network. He continues to maintain an association with Positive Muslims, the Cape Town-based organization working on issues related to Muslims, HIV/AIDS and gender justice, a group with which he worked while he was in South Africa. His research interests include Islam in the public sphere, interfaith relations, globalization, and civil society, and has lectured and written extensively on these topics. He is currently working on a collaborative project with the International Islamic University – Islamabad (IIU-I) on globalization, Muslim societies and Islamic revivalism. Mr. Ahmed has been a long time human rights activist.

The TPP is What Plutocracy Looks Like

As President Obama completes his final term in office, his administration is working closely with Big Business and Big Finance to sneak the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) through Congress during the lame duck session after the November election. The TPP is an international agreement that was negotiated in secret with the help of hundreds of corporate advisers. If ratified, it will rig the political system even more to benefit multinational corporations at the expense of our sovereignty and our ability to protect our communities and the planet. Bill Waren of Friends of the Earth will join us to discuss the close ties between the financial industry and the office of the US Trade Representative and why it is critical that we stop the TPP. Gillian Locascio  of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition will speak with us about how people are organizing to stop the TPP.

Listen here:

Relevant articles and websites:

The Wall Street revolving door and the US Trade Representative by Bill Waren

Money Merry-Go-Round: Emails show how Wall Street Execs and Alums Crafted Trade Bill by Kathy Kiely

Official Report on the TPP: Almost No Measurable Value by Stan Sorscher

Friends of the Earth

Washington Fair Trade

FlushtheTPP.org

Stop the TPP contingent in the March for a Clean Energy Revolution

No Lame Duck Uprising

Guests:

Bill Waren is a trade policy analyst for Friends of the Earth. He works to protect the environment from the negative impact of international trade and investment agreements. Bill contributes to the policy discussion about trade and environment issues as they arise in community forums, the U.S. congressional debate, the federal agency process, international negotiations, and litigation before international trade and investment tribunals. Prior to joining Friends of the Earth, Bill worked at the Forum on Democracy & Trade and its sister organization, the Harrison Institute for Public Law at Georgetown University. Earlier in his career, Bill served as federal affairs counsel for the National Conference of State Legislatures and as a staffer for the Illinois General Assembly.  A native of rural, downstate Illinois, Bill is a graduate of the University of Illinois and Duke Law School.

Gillian Locascio is the director for the Washington Fair Trade Coalition, a group of 66 labor, faith, environmental, student, public health, social justice organizations, fair trade businesses and cooperatives in Washington State that are committed to creating a fair, balanced, and sustainable global trading system. Prior to joining the coalition, she worked extensively in the United States and Latin America as a community health and human rights advocate, where she watched both CAFTA and the Panama Free Trade agreement go into effect.

Corean Peace Delegation Works for End to Korean War

Three members of the Corean Alliance for Independent Reunification and Democracy (CAIRD) are in the United States on a peace expedition. They speak with us about the brutal history of the US’ involvement in Korea and their work to end the Korean War, bring reunification and build democracy. Their work builds on decades of work by Korean activists. Under the current leader, this work is being made even more challenging by the application of a National Security Law. We also discuss the impact of trade agreements on Korean farmers and workers.

Listen here:

Relevant articles and websites:

Written answers to the questions that were asked on the program: Answers for questions on Corea

Gwangju Democracy Protest, And Massacre US Was Complicit In by Kevin Zeese

North Korea and the United States; Will the Real Aggressor Please Stand Down? by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

The Erosion of Democracy in South Korea: The Dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) and the Incarceration of Rep. Lee Seok-ki by Hyun Lee

CAIRD Facebook page

Escalating the Resistance to Fossil Fuels

May has been a month of escalated resistance to fossil fuel industries and a call for a rapid transition to clean renewable sources of energy. The month began with Break Free: two weeks of direct action targeting coal, oil and gas around the world. That was followed by a week of action called the Rubber Stamp Rebellion protesting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for its approval of new fossil fuel infrastructure without adequate consideration of the impacts new projects will have on the health and safety of communities, harm to the environment or worsening of the climate crisis. We speak with three advocates who are working to stop dangerous fossil fuel projects.

Listen here:

Relevant articles and websites:

Spectra-Funded Group Lobbied for FERC Commissioner’s Reappointment, Then FERC Approved Spectra’s Gas Pipeline by Steve Horn

Seven Arrested in Rubber Stamp Rebellion at FERC by Beyond Extreme Energy

Safe Energy Rights Group

Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy

Beyond Extreme Energy

We Are Cove Point

Guests:

Courtney Williams is vice president of Safe Energy Rights Group. She brings her scientific expertise to issues involving the health impacts of energy infrastructure. Courtney holds a B.S. in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics from Yale University and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Princeton University. She completed her post-doctoral training in biological engineering at MIT before transitioning into industry. She is currently a cancer researcher at a biopharmaceutical company. Courtney brings over a decade of experience researching cancer and the molecular mechanisms of disease to parse the emerging data on the health and environmental impacts of shale gas development. She has worked closely with local governments to educate them on the public health issues surrounding natural gas infrastructure.

Courtney is a resident of Peekskill New York in the Hudson Valley where she is directly affected by the AIM pipeline project which passes by her house and the school her children attend. She is a member of Resist Aim.

Linda Reik is a biochemist, a mother and a resident of Sullivan County in New York. She is on the board of directors of the Sullivan Alliance for Sustainable Development and she is a member of Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy. Linda has been involved in the work to stop pipelines and gas infrastructure mainly in PA, NY and NJ and she participated in the Rubber Stamp Rebellion in Washington, DC.

Steve Norris is a father, grandfather and great grandfather  who lives in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. He’s a retired teacher, builder, farmer, and a full time activist working to end climate change and promote environmental, social and economic justice.  His primary focus recently has been on changing the priorities of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as the country transitions to renewable energy, and  upon challenging Duke Energy, a fossil fuel monster which is the largest emitter of green house gases in the country.lives He is a co-founder of Beyond Extreme Energy.

Talking about a Political Revolution and the Sanders Campaign

We discuss the current election environment in the context of the movement: how the movement has impacted the campaigns and the political parties and what a political revolution means.  Our guests discuss their ideas for continuing the momentum beyond this election season and for having an impact on whomever is elected.

Listen here:

Relevant articles and websites:

Why Bernie Sanders Should Stay in the Race – And How He Can Win by Patrick Walker and Kevin Zeese

Political Revolution will continue Long After the Sanders Campaign by Ethan Corey

Revolt Against Plutocracy

The Sane Progressive

The People’s Revolution

Guests:

Patrick Walker is a veteran anti-fracking and Occupy Scranton, PA activist, currently a co-founding member of Revolt Against Plutocracy (RAP) and co-creator of RAP’s Bernie or Bust pledge, which spawned the nationwide Bernie or Bust movement. He is delighted to announce that by the time of his Clearing the FOG interview, the pledge will almost certainly have garnered its 100,000 th signature.

Patrick considers the anti-fracking movement his ideal, if belated, way to break into political activism, since the undemocratic conquest of Pennsylvania, his native state, by the fracking industry was based on precisely the rampant corruption of politicians by corporate money now vitiating U.S. (and global) politics. His whirlwind years as a PA anti-fracking activist (2010-12) included his family’s central role in the 2010 PA Homeland Security scandal, a successful protest he organized against former U.S. Homeland Security chief turned fracking shill Tom Ridge, a brief stint as Harrisburg spokesperson for Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, and his wife’s appearance in film maker Josh Fox’s anti-fracking movie Gasland 2.

Patrick’s focus on the underlying problem of political corruption naturally interested him in the Occupy movement, where he unsuccessfully tried to spread his conviction that Occupy should adopt the Green Party as its political arm. Believing no useful transformation of U.S. politics will come unless voters show zero tolerance for candidates corrupted by corporate money, Patrick, along with Victor Tiffany, eagerly seized on Bernie Sanders’ insurgent candidacy to create Revolt Against Plutocracy, strategic hub of the Bernie or Bust movement. He’s excited that Bernie or Bust recently partnered with Popular Resistance, hoping to create the potent fusion between movement activism and insurgent electoral politics he sought to create with Occupy.

A University of Scranton graduate, with bachelor’s degrees in English lit and philosophy, Patrick now resides in the Buffalo, NY area with his wife, daughter, and three Sheltie dogs. His activist writings haveappeared in OpEdNews, Nation of Change, CounterPunch, and Dissident Voice.

Debbie Lusignan is a vlogger at The Sane Progressive. She launched this project  in 2015 to put out an alternative narrative to the corporate media lies and manipulations of the American people.

JackRabbit Pollack is a founding member of Interoccupy.net – a communications working group of Occupy Wall Street that continues to operate in limited capacity. In 2012 he participated in the grassroots disaster relief to hurricane Sandy known as Occupy Sandy. He has provided logistical support for groups fighting for racial justice such as SURJ, Ferguson Action, and Movement for Black Lives.

In April of 2015 he began work as one of the core members of People for Bernie with whom he worked through July.

Along with partner Shana East, Jackrabbit started The People’s Revolution, but put the project on hold to begin Illinois for Bernie with Ms. East. Illinois for Bernie is a grassroots group autonomously supporting Bernie Sanders’ primary run for the presidency.

Most recently, Jackrabbit and Ms. East have returned to organizing as the People’s Revolution to convene a gathering in Philadelphia the weekend before the DNC called the People’s Convention – an attempt to organize the insurgent energy surrounding the presidential election into a cohesive force for progressive change.