immigrants

The news today from Japan is that the leak at the Fukushima Daichii nuclear power plant has been stopped but the crisis is far from over. Radiation levels remain high even outside the evacuation zone, contaminated fish are turning up, and the government seems to be insisting on business as usual, according to Aileen Mioko Smith. Aileen is executive director of Green Action Japan, and spent time studying the impact of the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, and she joins us via Skype to give us the latest on Japan's crisis. "Paul Ryan's roadmap, which I call the roadmap to ruin, is really an astonishing document that really doubles down on pretty much every single one of the negative economic decisions of the past thirty years that have gotten us into the mess we're in today," says Heather McGhee, Washington bureau director of Demos. Laura caught up with Heather at Frances Fox Piven and Cornel West's Fight Back Teach-In on April 5 to talk budget concerns. Keep an eye out for our in-depth interview with Frances and Cornel later this week! "We intend in this moment when diversity is increasing and prosperity is decreasing, to ensure that our country makes the right choice. There are indeed two choices. One choice is that you attack diversity and you distract people from the economy. Some folks have made that choice. The other is that you embrace diversity and you attack poverty," says Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP. Laura spoke with Ben at the We Are One rally in Newark, New Jersey and discussed the way conservative attacks on women, unions, immigrants, and more are all part of the same strategy, as well as the settlement of a lawsuit the NAACP filed against Wells Fargo. Distributed by Tubemogul.

"What they're not looking at is ultimately the extraordinary cost--both the human cost and the actual cost.." says Jeff Biggers, author of Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland. After the Massey mine explosion and BP oil spill last year, we now face a nuclear disaster in Japan. The question, then, is whether we take the opportunity to push for truly clean energy or hunker down and retreat to the old faithful sources that are slowly killing us. Jeff joins us via Skype to discuss the possibility for better energy policy post-Japan, the new coal mines opening up in Wyoming, and much more. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was 100 years ago this week, and while labor groups and historians commemorate the deaths of 146 workers from unsafe working conditions, around the country conservatives are trying to erase all those years of labor history. The latest, in Maine, is that a Republican governor wants to have a mural at the state labor department painted over; its depiction of Maine's labor history, including the first woman labor secretary Frances Perkins, has been deemed too "one-sided." What do we lose when we forget workers' history? Sarita Gupta of Jobs With Justice and Maine state representative Diane Russell join Laura to discuss the stories we need to remember. Distributed by Tubemogul.

We take a look at what happened to the movement that put Barack Obama in office; independent journalist Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films and Chip Berlet talk about the rise of the extreme right, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment and the proper progressive response; Jonathan "J.D." Meadows, who is featured in Rowley's film, talks about his involvement with the Council of Conservative Citizens and his fears for the economy; a video from New America Media and Youth Outlook looks at the murder of Oscar Grant and what has happened since his senseless death, what has changed, and what hasn't.