Living in the USA

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The roots, the spirit, and the promise of Occupy Wall Street: TODD GITLIN explains the most dynamic phenomenon in left politics in more than forty years.  “We are the 99 per cent!”  Todd is professor journalism and sociology at Columbia; his new book is OCCUPY NATION.

Plus: the new documentary film “We Women Warriors” follows three native women who are caught in the crossfire of Colombia’s warfare and who use nonviolent resistance to defend their people’s survival.  Filmmaker NICOLE KARSIN explains — the film is screening on LA August 24-30 at DocuWeeks at the Laemmle NoHo7.  WATCH the trailer HERE.

Also: Boom and bust in the new old west: RUBÉN MARTÍNEZ fled to the desert to escape his urban addictions.  What he found there was a world of devastating poverty and outrageous wealth, sublime beauty and ecological ruin.   His brutally honest new book is DESERT AMERICA.  “No book that I’ve read in the last 20 years has inspired so much genuine hope for the future of the West” -Mike Davis.

The man who killed six at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin was a prominent white-supremacist: JOHN NICHOLS explains.

Also: Gore Vidal on politics:  our conversation in September 2000, which covered Ronald Reagan as actor and politician, JFK as failed president, Gene McCarthy as truth-teller, and the 2000 Shadow Convention in LA, which the LAPD shut down Gore Vidal’s speech — the full 70-minute tape is our featured premium in the KPFK Fund Drive today.

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Is poverty caused by bad choices made by women?  If poor women had better values,  would everything be better?  KATHA POLLITT comments – she’s a columnist for The Nation.
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Plus: LA prosecutors have been concealing evidence from defendants in criminal cases, evidence about misconduct by jail guards—that’s what the ACLU of Southern California says in a new lawsuit. MARK ROSENBAUM of the ACLU will explain – he says  “In Los Angeles County, we have a system of injustice for all criminal defendants.”

Also: What happens if Republican vote suppression tactics succeed in November, and Mitt Romney is elected because Democrats who are poor, young or minorities were prevented from voting?  What do we do then?  HAROLD MEYERSON has been thinking about that – he writes for The Washington Post op-ed page and The American Prospect.

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TOM FRANK asks the question: “Given the rigged, rotten nature of the higher-ed game, why would people play by the rules?”  The answer: lots don’t.  Tom wrote about fake degrees and phony college credentials — and their larger social and cultural significance — for his column in the August issue of Harper’s.

Plus: the fight for MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA — it’s not a battle between “populists” and “aesthetes”; it’s a takeover by the corporate mentality.  CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT explains — he’s art critic for the LA Times and he blogs at Culture Monster.

Also : PETER EDELMAN is one of my heroes — he resigned from the Clinton adminstration in protest against Clinton’s treatment of the poor in “the abolition of welfare as we know it.”   Today he talks about how we can end poverty in America now – and what’s stopping us. 
Peter’s new book is So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s Hard to End Poverty in America.

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SARAH VOWELL talks about the “orgy of imperialism” that led to the Americanization of Hawaii.  She has one of the great American voices—first on “This American Life,” then in a series of wonderful books that became best-sellers. She’s been a frequent guest of Jon Stewart’s and David Letterman’s.  Now her newest book is out in paperback – it’s called Unfamiliar Fishes.

Plus: Islamophobia and its Discontents:  LAILA LALAMI talks about living with anti-Muslim bias.  Laila teaches creative writing at UC Riverside; her novel is  Secret Son,  and she wrote the recent cover story for The Nation on Islamophobia.

Also: “Mr. Satan Goes to Wall Street“: it’s a new street-theater musical comedy by the award-winning guerrilla-theater company the Imagination Liberation Front. Mr. Satan will perform this summer, for the Occupy Wall Street troops in Zuccotti Park – and in the streets outside of the Republican and Democratic national conventions.  Benefit Wed. 8pm at Sacret Fools Theater in E. Hollywood; info HERE; contribute HERE (to “Imagination Liberation Front”).

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The United States has never understood Afghanstan – and probably never will.  That’s what RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN says – he’s a Washington Post reporter who has spent years covering the wars Afghanistan and Iran.  Now he has a new book out – Little America: The War within the War for Afghanistan.

And we will have our political update from HAROLD MEYERSON—he writes a column for the op-ed page of the Washington Post, and he’s editor-at-large of The American Prospect.

Also: The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame: from Gene Debs and Clarence Darrow to Bruce Springsteen and Michael Moore — PETER DREIER has a list.  He teaches politics at Occidental College, he writes for The Nation, the L.A. Times, and The American Prospect, and his new book about the 100 greatest Americans is out now from Nation Books.

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TERRY GROSS of NPR’s “Fresh Air” is heard by more than 4 million listeners on more than 400 stations.  She talks about what went wrong in her interviews with Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan, and Bill O’Reilly.  Her book, All I Did was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians and Artists, is out now in paperback.  (originally broadcast 2/2006)

Also: REBECCA SKLOOT talks about how racism, poverty and science came together in the case of  a poor black woman whose cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine.  Rebecca’s best-selling book is THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS.  (originally broadcast April, 2010)

And: Barack Obama’s mother, the amazing Ann Dunham: she married a black man – Barack Obama Sr. — when she was 18, then he left her after Barack Jr. was born; she got him into the best school in Honolulu, and then she left for Java and worked with poor women in the third world for more than a decade.  JANNY SCOTT of the NY Times tells that story – her book is A SINGULAR WOMAN–it’s out now in paperback.  (originally broadcast  July 2011)

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CHRIS HAYES of MSNBC and The Nation talks about the pervasive failure of our elites –which shows that it’s time to move beyond meritocracy, even though it triumphed with the election of Obama.  Our new goal, he says, should be equality.  His new book is Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy.

Also: how the market has taken over intimate life, from dating to marriage to childraising and even to death: Berkeley sociologist ARLIE HOCHSCHILD explains.  Her new book is The Outsourced Self.

Plus: GAIL COLLINS, the New York Times op-ed columnist, has been spending time in Texas, to see how the Lone Star state has hijacked our future.   She will report on her findings — alarming, and, of course, hilarious.  Her new book is As Texas Goes: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda.

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Growing up next door to a plutonium weapons factory: KRISTEN IVERSENtalks about her  “hauntingly beautiful memoir that is also a devastating investigation into the human costs of building and living with the atomic bomb” (Kai Bird).   The site is Rocky Flats, outside Denver; the book is Full Body Burden —  READ an excerpt in The Nation HERE.

Also:  HAROLD MEYERSON explains what happens if America loses its unions – a necessary question after Wisconsin.  Harold’s new piece for the Washington Post is HERE — and for The American Prospect HERE.

Plus:  LILLIAN HELLMAN was the most successful woman playwright in American history and a hero of the fight against HUAC – and also, ALICE KESSLER-HARRIS says, “A Difficult Woman” – that’s the title of her new bio on “the Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman.”   Alice is professor of American history at Columbia University and past president of the Organization of American Historians.

For the record: our shows on KPFK have been pre-empted for the fund drive.