economic justice
GRITtv: April 19, 2011
"We need to stay loudly and clearly that there is an alternative. The debate underway is suffocatingly narrow," says Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, of the way the conversation about jobs and the economy has become a conversation about spending and deficits. Meanwhile, she notes, outside of the Beltway, independent media and independent activists like US Uncut are fighting hard to change the conversation. Katrina joins Laura in studio to talk about what's needed to shift the conversation back to things that matter: jobs, good government, and putting the taxes where they belong. "There is a hunger out there for some kind of serious approach to the big issues of the day, and you have to be creative about it— that’s our job," says former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert of today's media landscape. Bob joined us in his first in-depth interview since leaving the New York Times in March of this year. After 20 years of working the at the Times' op-ed desk, Bob left for greener pastures--and a longer word-count. Bob is now working on a new book that will tackle, in depth, some of the issues that he covered in his nearly 20 years of working the "beat of left-out people". Bob joins us today to talk about his career as a journalist, why he left the Times, media, race, and more. Is there a journalism school somewhere that that teaches up-and-comers to put stories into little boxes? Laura has some thoughts on the connections that aren't being made in the news. Distributed by Tubemogul.
Email this pageDemocracy Now!: Mon., Jan. 18, 2010
Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King. He was born Jan. 15, 1929, and was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil-rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War. We play his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which he delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, “I Have Been to the Mountain Top,” that he gave on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. "Democracy Now!" is a daily independent newshour.
Keynote: John Perkins: Exploiting 3rd-World Countries
John Perkins is an economist and author. His best known book is "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" (2004), an insider's account of the exploitation or neo-colonization of Third World countries by what Perkins describes as a cabal of corporations, banks and the U.S. government. "The Secret History of the American Empire" makes further claims about the negative impact of global corporations on the economies and ecologies of poor countries and suggestions for making corporations behave more like good citizens.
