GRIT tv

Laura Flanders interviews Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United and an outspoken advocate for labor rights.

Linda Condon, R.N. speaks about her experience working in the healthcare industry.

"You can't sustain a democracy in an oligarchic state. The writers on Athenian democracy understood that 2000 years ago," says Chris Hedges, whose new book The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress explores the problems of a crumbling empire, inside and out. Chris joins Laura in studio for a conversation about the death of Bin Laden and the continuing concern over terrorism, the end of empathy in the U.S., and what avenues are left for progressives to fight back. "The elites are not going to help us," he warns, "We're going to have to help ourselves." We first met the steelworkers from Metropolis, Illinois in Madison, Wisconsin early this spring, where workers from all over the country gathered to defend the right to collectively bargain. Until their lockout in June of last summer, these workers ran Honeywell's uranium conversion plant, the only one of its kind in the country, and they depended on their collectively bargaining rights to defend the health and safety of themselves and their small community. A few weeks back, United Steelworkers Local 7-669 came to Morris New Jersey to exercise another right--their rights as shareholders of the very company that has locked them out. Our own Danya Abt traveled there to get the story with cinematographer Zac Halberd. Finally, three years ago today GRITtv first went on air, and on our birthday Laura says goodbye, for now, and introduces you to the next chapter for our organization--a new weekly program on public broadcasting stations. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Three years ago today, on May 12, 2008, the first episode of GRITtv hit the air. Given life by Free Speech TV, the project we imagined was a daily forum for changemakers that would welcome new voices and celebrate diversity. Three years later, you can find all that work permanently archived at our website. Just check it out. Effective today, though, we're suspending daily production to retool. Come this fall, with your help, you'll see a new project: a one-hour weekly program, right here, and also on PBS stations from coast to coast. You can contribute to that effort online, right now. Watch the full program at http://grittv.org Distributed by Tubemogul.