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GRITtv: Laura Dresser: Learning at the Protests in Wisconsin
"There's nothing like learning about how you change something outrageous," says Laura Dresser of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, who's been at the protests in Madison all week with her nine-year-old son. It's not just the kids who are learning from supporting their teachers' union this week against Scott Walker's cuts--Laura notes that she's learned that even when the votes appear to be there in the legislature, there can be ways to stop a vote.Laura joins our Laura Flanders in the WORT studio in Madison to discuss what she's learned this week--and what it appears that Scott Walker still hasn't learned.
Email this pageGRITtv Special from Madison, Wisconsin: February 21, 2011
Welcome to our first special one-hour episode from Madison, Wisconsin! Thanks to our friends at The Uptake , Free Speech TV , and WORT FM in Madison for making this collaboration happen."Unions realize that this is a threat to their very existence," says Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive , of Scott Walker's attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers. And some of the usual suspects are behind Walker's attack--from the Koch brothers to Republican ideologues. "These corporations want to get these people off the playing field," says John Nichols, of The Nation . Matt and John discuss the history behind this week's historic labor protests.If Scott Walker is allowed to gut public employees' right to collective bargaining, Sheila Cochran of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council points out, it will lower the floor for all Wisconsinites' wages and benefits. ; The unions in the state have long helped keep wages high and benefits, including health care, good for all of the state's workers, even as factories have closed and jobs gone overseas.The public sector remains the last bastion of union workers around the country, and Sheila and Diane Palmer of SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin discuss the impact the cuts will have on working families in Wisconsin and around the U.S."People understand this is a national struggle," says Mary Bottari of the situation in Wisconsin right now, and Mark Pocan, Wisconsin State Assemblyman from the 78th District, says "This has to be the spot where we stop it nationally."
GRITtv: Factory Farms, the Environment, and Communities
Swine flu, bird flu, cancer, parasites, E. Coli...what do they all have in common? Factory farms, says investigative reporter David Kirby. In his new book, Animal Factory, he exposes the deep problems with the factory farming system and how it hurts people and the environment. Kirby joins Laura in studio to talk about the book and what we can do to fix our food supply, and Rick Dove of the Waterkeeper Alliance, explains the effect the farms have had on his home in North Carolina.
GRITtv: Mar. 3 2010
Yesterday, we noted that the fangs seem to have been pulled out of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and financial reform seems to be quietly fading from the agenda. But our friends at the Roosevelt Institute are in the middle of a groundbreaking conference on market reform, and we asked a few of their guests to join us in studio. Lynn Parramore, editor of New Deal 2.0 for the Institute, Raj Date, chairman and executive director of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, and Lawrence White of NYU's Stern School of Business discuss where financial reform is headed and what will happen to us if it dies.
Speaking of regulation, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has an ongoing series, "Hard Times Profiteers," looking into schemes cropping up around the country. David Vlateck of the Federal Trade Commission explains.
Swine flu, bird flu, cancer, parasites, E. Coli...what do they all have in common? Factory farms, says investigative reporter David Kirby. In his new book, Animal Factory, he exposes the deep problems with the factory farming system and how it hurts people and the environment. Kirby joins Laura in studio to talk about the book and what we can do to fix our food supply, and Rick Dove of the Waterkeeper Alliance explains the effect the farms have had on his home in North Carolina.
The always lyrical Jay Smooth weighs in on what rappers think is profitable these days, and how not being lyrical is "the subprime mortgage of hip-hop," and our friends at Ramblin' Man Films look at the growing movement for student loan justice.
Finally, Laura has some thoughts about the secrets that really shape our society.
