G20 Summit

What is happening in Toronto? What is happening to financial reform? And what is going to happen to the many people who won't get their unemployment benefits extended? Dean Baker, co-director for the Center on Economic Policy Research, clears some of the questions and claims that economic changes are a mixed bag. Perhaps these changes brought positive things such as greater transparency, but this hardly negates rampant inequality or a problematic lack of change in how Wall Street operates business. It seems that the government knows how to do things like keep the unemployment rate down, but the talk at the G20 Summit and the results here in the United States, suggests otherwise. Dean Baker is part of a Nation forum on inequality that will be posted Thursday - featuring Robert Reich, Orlando Patterson, Jeff Madrick, Dean Baker, Katherine Newmann and Matt Yglesias. It looks at the widening inequality gap in the recession and under President Obama, and at possible solutions. Media coverage of this week's G20 summit focused on "violent" protests and police crackdowns, and reporters Brandon Jourdan and Beka Economopoulos certainly found themselves in the middle of the conflict--Jourdan, as well as Jesse Freeston of The Real News network, were attacked outside of the summit.But amid the chaos, Jourdan and Economopoulos found a renewed bond between labor activists and environmentalists, all struggling for green jobs. They submitted this report for GRITtv. “Redemption is looking at ourselves, asking what we can do better instead of blaming our leaders,” says Walter Mosley, author and columnist for the Nation Magazine. “We can’t look to corporate media for our answers,” he continues, “we have to look to ourselves.” Expressing political redemption through semi-spiritual language, Walter Mosley joins us in the studio to discuss the late West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd’s varied career, quite possibly one of redemption. Byrd was known for shifting his politics in accordance with his country and his constituency; while he once filibustered the Civil Rights Act, he also vehemently spoke out against the Iraq war and executive power. Should he be credited for his progress and “redemption”, or should his constituents? Since their arrest last July by Iranian forces near the Iraq border, three Americans — Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd— have been at the center of a diplomatic struggle between Tehran and Washington.

Toronto police arrest over 600 in a crackdown outside G20 summit; Naomi Klein talks about how the real crime scene was inside the G20 summit; a journalist describes being beaten and arrested by Canadian police while covering G20 protest; one year after the coup, Honduras repression continues. "Democracy Now!" a daily independent newshour.

This episode includes stories on the G20 protests in Pittsburgh 2009, and the police actions against activists from a Chicago Independent TV correspondent. Also: Chicago protests the Iraq war on its eighth anniversary; and a profile of civil rights activist George Leighton. "Chicago Independent Television" is the monthly television series of the Chicago Independent Media Center.