moveon
GRITtv: MoveOn & Moby: Why 30,000 People are Fasting
This is a moral issue; the budget is a moral document. We can take care of the deficit and rebuild our infrastructure and strengthen our safety net by reducing military spending and eliminating corporate subsidies and tax loopholes for the rich. Or we can sink further into debt and amoral individualism by demonizing and starving the poor. Which side are you on? Those are the words of GRITtv guest Mark Bittman in the New York Times recently, explaining the fast he had joined to protest austerity measures that overwhelmingly target the hungry. Now over 30,000 people have joined the fast, including pop star and GRITtv guest Moby, and MoveOn created this video in which fasters explain why they've made their choice.
Email this pageGRITtv: Paul Rogat Loeb: Soul of a Citizen
Social justice movements take more than clicking a link on an online petition, says Paul Rogat Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Trying Times. Making change requires getting out in the streets, going door-to-door, and talking to other people face to face. Loeb came to see us in studio to talk about the new edition of his book, about Barack Obama, Glenn Beck, cross-movement alliances and how the Left can reach out to the tea party crowd.
GRITtv: Homestretch for Healthcare Reform
After nearly a year's worth of fighting over health care reform, Congress is finally perceived to be in the final stretch. Of course, that means more fighting, more grandstanding from legislators on all sides, and last-ditch efforts to include a public option or keep alive the hope of single payer. Joining us to discuss what happens if the bill passes--and the consequences should it fail--are Dr. Anne Davis of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, Enzo Pastore, health care policy specialist with the Progressive States Network, and Chris Meyer, Executive Vice President, External Affairs with Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports.
GRITtv: The F Word: Lessons Not Learned
A year ago I was freezing on the Mall with a few million others, watching the inauguration of a new President. Today I'm sweltering in my unnaturally hot office, fearing the inauguration of a new movement. A year ago, the mall was packed with grassroots democratic voters; young people, people of color, and activated independents whose massive discouragement with the political status quo had driven them to dig down, dismiss the conventional nay-sayers and work hard for change and for Obama. On inauguration day, this program, live in Washington, raised the question to voters. "If we are the ones we can believe in, and change is not simply about someone else, namely a president, what will progressives inaugurate?" A year on it looks as if it's not progressives who've spent the year inaugurating. If the Democrat's loss in Massachusetts is anything to go by, it's the anti-Obama Right who've spent the year creating a movement: some of it racist, some corporate, and some plain desperate … From war, to health care, to the Employee Free Choice Act, Democrats in the Obama administration have walked away from every proposition that stood a chance of igniting their grassroots base. Those now calling Coakley smug, know whereof they speak. Smugness is epidemic. -- Laura Flanders
GRITtv: Got Docs? presents: MoveOn: The Movie
In this week's Got Docs? we take a look at Alex Jordanov and Scott Stevenson's MoveOn: The Movie to find out how a grassroots campaign turned into a national phenomenon.
