barbara ehrenreich
Democracy Now! Monday, August 8, 2011
Standard & Poor’s announced Friday it has downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time in history. The move by S&P, one of three leading credit rating agencies, came just days after Congress approved a $2.1 trillion deficit-reduction plan. Barbara Ehrenreich, who has just published the 10th anniversary edition of her book "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America." In the book, Ehrenreich tells the story of life in low-wage America and tries to earn a living working as a waitress, hotel maid, nursing home aide and Wal-Mart associate. Ten years later, she compares the current situation of low-income U.S. workers to "third-world levels of poverty." The Egyptian revolution can count a number of huge successes, most notably, ousting former president Hosni Mubarak from power and putting him on public trial. And while the press has opened up in a number of ways in the wake of the revolution, it is still very much an uphill battle. Journalists still face government repression, and state media still largely acts as a government mouthpiece. Democracy Now! correspondents Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have been looking at the issue of media reform in Egypt. They filed this video report from Cairo. Democracy Now!, a daily independent newshour.
Email this pageGRITtv: Bright-Sided: Barbara Ehrenreich on Positive Thinking
Barbara Ehrenreich may be best known for taking on the world of the modern low-wage worker in "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," but in her new book she looks at a cultural phenomenon with deep roots in American history: the cult of positive thinking. "Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America" is an in-depth look at the rarely-discussed downside of looking on the bright side. Ehrenreich notes that positive thinking functions as a form of social control and a way to blame the victim, something she first noticed during her own experience with breast cancer and then traced back to the country's foundation--and right up to the collapse of the economy.
GRITtv: Oct. 20, 2009
Barack Obama is in New York today to raise money from Wall Street investors for Democratic candidates. Meanwhile, not far away, Americans struggle to keep the homes they've worked hard to buy and maintain.
GRITtv: Where's the Revolution? Populist Rage on the Left and Right
A lot of media attention has been paid to the 9/12, tea party and town hall protests featuring an angry horde of mostly white citizens shouting about socialism and comparing President Obama to the Nazis - often in the same sentence. Our question is, where's the left-wing populist anger? Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, Joel Silberman, fellow at the New Organizing Institute, and author and journalist Barbara Ehrenreich join us to talk about the rage in the country and figure out how the left can harness it for progressive change. They compare the grassroots attendance at the National Equality March on October 11, estimated at 250,000, with the 9/12 protests stoked by Glenn Beck, and note the need for mass movements to push the Democratic Party to enact the changes it keeps promising--for all Americans.
GRITtv: October 13, 2009
Daniel Gross asked earlier this week why there wasn't more outrage in the country over the state of the economy, saying that if we haven't seen a revolution yet, we probably wouldn't. Yet popular protests have been happening across the country this summer and fall and show no signs of stopping. A lot of media attention has been paid to the 9/12, tea party and town hall protests. Our question: Where's the left-wing populist anger? Plus all the day's news.
Democracy Now!: Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009
President Obama has once again pledged to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and we talk with West Point graduate and Iraq war veteran Lieutenant Dan Choi, who’s facing discharge from the military for revealing he is gay, and with attorney and longtime gay rights activist Urvashi Vaid about the Obama administration’s stance toward gay rights. And author Barbara Ehrenreich documents what she says is the destructive power of the positive thinking movement in the United States, from breast cancer, to the workplace, to the economy, to politics as a whole. "Democracy Now!" is a daily independent newshour.
