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The Summer of Strikes in Los Angeles continues, with hotel workers picketing hotels from Santa Monica to downtown on July 4 weekend, plus Teamsters preparing to strike UPS and Actors in negotiations with the studios. Harold Meyerson reports.

Also: After affirmative action: what should progressives do to help people of color and other working class students attend college, and pay for it? John Nichols comments.

Plus: what does it mean to be a politically committed

writer? That’s the central question of Adam Shatz’s new book, “Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical imagination.” Adam is The Nation’s former literary editor and the US editor of the London Review of Books.  7-6-2023

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There are two big strikes in the works in L.A. right now: hotel workers and actors. 15,000 hotel workers are preparing to strike; and 200 people – including City Council and State Assembly members – were arrested during a UNITE HERE local 11 protest. Also, 160,000 actors are on the verge of joining the 11,500 writers already on strike. Harold Meyerson comments.

Next: Crossing the abortion borderland from Texas to New Mexico: Amy Littlefield describes the heroic work being done in both states to provide help to people seeking abortions, one year after the repeal of Roe, and reports on the new obstacles being raised by anti-abortion forces.

Plus: From the archives: Katha Pollitt learned to drive at age 51 – she wrote about that experience for The New Yorker; and in 2015, she was played by Patricia Clarkson opposite Ben Kingsley in the film version, Learning to Drive. This interview was first recorded in 2007.  6-29-2023

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How can Democrats win back at least some white working class swing voters? We have some striking new research about that. Katie Rader discusses the issues that are most likely to mobilize them.

Next: Doctors these days are caught between caught between the Hippocratic oath – “first, do no harm” – and “the realities of making a profit from people at their sickest and most vulnerable.” Eyal Press reports on the ways doctors are fighting back.

Plus: When Joe Biden announced the theme of his reelection campaign he said that the Democrats are the party of “freedom.” But the Republicans claim that they are the defenders of freedom. Who is right?  Eric Foner has the answer – he’s the author of “The Story of American Freedom.”  6-22-2023

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Cornel West is running for president – he can only help Trump win, argues Joan Walsh, National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation.

also: You might think Republicans would take a breather after banning abortion in the states they control, but no! Instead, they’ve set their sights on a new target: no-fault divorce. The Nation‘s Katha Pollitt reports.

Also: historian Brenda Stevenson talks about the Black family under slavery and after. Her book, a history of the enslaved family in America. is “What Sorrows Labour in My Parent’s Breast.”

And we have an episode of Your Minnesota Moment: the state joins National Popular Vote!  6-15-2023

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On Strike: An Actors strike looms as the Writers in LA and New York enter the sixth week of their strike. Meanwhile, 12,000 dock workers walked off the job in Southern California after contract talks deteriorated in recent days; they also shutdown operations in Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma.

Also, Biden’s achievements include infrastructure, economic recovery from the pandemic, investment in high-tech, investment in climate. . . how come other people, even the Democrats, have trouble remembering that? Harold Meyerson comments.

Next: Shasta County, California, north of San Francisco, is a pretty place, but right wing extremists have taken over the Board of Supervisors there. They’ve driven out public health workers and pushed to make the county what they call a “Second Amendment sanctuary.” They’re dubbing it a blueprint for the rest of the nation. The Nation’s Sasha Abramsky reports.

Plus: From the archives: Isabel Wilkerson on her unforgettable book about the Great Migration, “The Warmth of Other Suns” – recorded in 2010.  6-8-2023