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GRITtv: Danny Glover: World's Workers Fighting Back
"If these actions are allowed to stand in these places, there's going to be an assault on public workers around this nation. They are the testing ground to see how people are going to respond to this. And people are responding gloriously, whether it was Indianapolis, whether it was in Madison, they came out. Even those workers who may have been exempt from this takeover, even those workers came out," says actor and humanitarian Danny Glover. Danny Glover has a long history of activism and hasn't slowed down. Just recently, he flew back to Haiti with exiled former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and stopped in Indiana to lend his voice to the struggle of workers there to retain their right to organize. Glover stopped in New York to speak to the memorial gathering for the Triangle Shirtwaist workers, and he took some time to chat with Laura about the struggles of people around the world right now.
Email this pageGRITtv: Kabzuag Vaj & Monica Adams: Beyond the Labor Fight in Wisconsin
Communities of color, Monica Adams notes, "were already organizing, we already knew about the wrath of Walker, we knew how he was over Milwaukee, we knew that he'd have targeted attacks." It was only natural, then, for Monica and her colleague at Freedom Inc., Kabzuag Vaj, to be at the center of the organizing against Scott Walker's cuts. Monica and Kabzuag discuss the issues beyond just attacks on unions, Walker's SB 1070 clone bill that attacks immigrants, and much more. "We have to be thinking about the people who don't get mentioned by name, because those are going to be the ones who get impacted the most," Monica notes.
GRITtv: The F Word: Philanthro-Feudalism is the Future!
China's new economic plan is a relic of the past. It focuses on raising standards of living. How quaint! When China's leaders unveiled their latest five-year plan recently, they revealed that their focus is on lowering inequality, investing in railroads, and highways and hospitals, and expanding domestic demand through income subsidies. Fancy that! http://www.grittv.org Distributed by Tubemogul.
GRITtv: The F Word: Why Tax When You Can Freeze?
Corporate profits are up, especially in finance, and yet hiring and wages aren't. No matter how much productivity spikes, wages stay stagnant. They haven't budged. That means workers doing more work for less pay. So what's a Democratic administration to do? Freeze federal workers' wages! That's what. Distributed by Tubemogul.
GRITtv: The F Word: Better Uses for Bankers' Billions
What could be done with $20 billion? A whole lot of Wall Street bankers are about to find out. $20 billion's what the New York Comptroller's office says the Street's bonuses bounced back to in 2009 -- up 17 percent from the year of the crash. According to the latest data the average bonus was $123,850 at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase, all of which taxpayers bailed out. Their bonuses this year were almost a third bigger than last year. It gives a whole new meaning to "failing up" as six million Americans -- or one in fifty -- face life with food stamps as their only income (for more on that, see yesterday's GRITtv) and a national average of six applicants show up for every job. It boggles the mind to think of how that $20 billion could be spent. Our friends at Mother Jones aren't boggled; they've put together a nifty list of suggestions for alternative spending. Want a bonus for the country, not the country-club? 1. You could pay the salaries of more than 390,000 public school teachers across the country. 2. You could close nearly all of California's gaping budget hole. 3. You could almost cover unemployment-fund shortfalls, now nearing $25 billion, in 25 different states. 4. You could more than double the amount of Pell Grant funding given to students from low-income backgrounds who might not attend college otherwise. 5. You could increase the budget of the Small Business Administration by more than 35 times. Thanks to Mother Jones for the list. I'll add a sixth--you could fund all the independent media in the country just about for ever.... Fancy making your own suggestions? Send them here: Laura@grittv.org. The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.
GRITtv: Appreciating the New Times Square
From our friends at Street Films, we have this look at the changes to Times Square, helping to make it a more pleasant, usable space for pedestrians and people.
GRITtv: Whose Health Do We Care About?
With the astounding vote on the health care reform bill in the House this weekend, progressives were forced to consider what kind of compromises were worth making for health care. When certain people are excluded from health care simply because of who they are, how "public" would even a public option be? Tammy Johnson of ColorLines asks these questions and more in this commentary.
