Amy Wilentz: Back from Haiti — KPFK Wed. 2/10

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AMY WILENTZ has returned from a week in Haiti. “the problem is this,” she writes: “will people care about Haiti the way they did about New Orleans?  for the next three or four years, until the job gets done?”   She’ll talk about lessons from the streets in the art of survival. Amy is the award-winning author of The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier.
READ Amy’s “Haiti and the Art of Survival: Lessons from the Streets”  HERE

Plus: The DANIEL ELLSBERG documentary “The Most Dangerous Man in America” has been nominated for an Academy Award! The film opens Friday at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills, and we’ll be featuring passes to the show as add-ons to our fund drive premiums.
WATCH the trailer to “The Most Dangerous Man” HERE.

Also: we remember HOWARD ZINN, who died on Jan. 27. His People’s History of the US has sold more than two million copies – and he’s been an inspiration to activists since the 1960s. We’ll play some of our interviews with Howard, and feature the DVD of his Voices of a People’s History as a fund drive premium.
WATCH Howard Zinn’s interview with Bill Moyers HERE

Obama’s Deficit Disaster: KPFK Wed. 1/27

(Guest-hosted by Alan Minsky while I was on jury duty–thank you Alan!)  Our president gives his first State of the Union speech tonight at 600pm, and apparently Obama will call for an across-the-board three-year spending freeze to placate Republicans who say the deficit is a big problem.  Question: Do ordinary people really care about the deficit?  And don’t we need a much bigger deficit right now? JOHN NICHOLS will comment: he’s Washington correspondent for The Nation and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.

Plus: The Supremes’ Blow to Democracy: last week the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it was okay for corporations to spend unlimited money to overwhelm elections.  ERWIN CHEMERINSKY will comment: he says the same 5-4 majority that said corporations must have “free speech” has drastically limited free speech for others.  Erwin is founding dean of the UCI law school.

Also: The Culture of Fear: BARRY GLASSNER explains why Americans are afraid of the wrong things: Terrorists, Criminals, Drugs, Minorities, Teen Moms, Killer Kids, Mutant Microbes, Plane Crashes, Road Rage, & Vaccines.  “The Culture of Fear will amaze you, make you upset, and give you a new resolve to do what’s best for this country.”—Michael Moore.  Barry teaches sociology at USC, and was featured in Bowling for Columbine.

Obama Loses Massachusetts: KPFK Wed. 1/20

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 It’s the first anniversary of Obama’s taking the oath of office, and the day after Obama lost the contest to replace Ted Kennedy with a Democrat.  Losing that 40th vote in the Senate is a disaster for the healthcare bill, the Democrats, the White House, and a lot of the American people.  Obama’s errors are no secret: helping the banks instead of providing jobs for ordinary people, and failing to fight for — and explain — a  healthcare reform bill (now opposed by a majority).

Is it all over now?  Will Obama follow Bill Clinton’s example, and focus on doing a few things the Republicans don’t object to?  We’ll have historical perspective from ERIC FONER, political commentary from JOHN NICHOLS, and  strategic analysis from HAROLD MEYERSON.

Prop. 8 On Trial: KFPK Wed. 1/13

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 The constitutional challenge to Prop. 8, Calfiornia’s initiative banning gay marriage, went to trial on Monday in San Francisco.   STEPHEN ROHDE will comment, he’s a constitutional lawyer, lecturer, writer and political activist. and Chair the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

Also: FDR provides the model of a liberal activist president against which Obama is being measured – historian ALAN BRINKLEY will talk about what FDR did—about the banks, unemployment, social security, and racial justice–and how he did it.  His new book is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Plus: Palestinian life in Gaza – now, and in 1956, when Israelis killed 275 people in two forgotten massacres. JOE SACCO, the pioneering comics journalist, will tell that story—and explain why it matters now.  His new book is Footnotes in Gaza. He will be reading and signing next Tues., Jan. 19, 730pm, at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Av.
READ Patrick Cockburn’s review  in the New York Times HERE
SEE Joe Sacco’s drawings from Footnotes in Gaza HERE.

Nixon and the Vietnam Moratorium: Nation 1/12

In 1969, as the anti-war movement was reaching a peak, Richard Nixon’s White House staff debated what they could do to “show the little bastards” what kind of man they were up against. They were concerned about what would be the biggest antiwar demonstration in US history on Nov. 15, 1969, when half a million people came to Washington D.C. to demand that an end to the war in Vietnam.

Now, newly released documents from the Nixon Library provide fascinating details about the debate within the White House staff two months earlier about how the president should respond.

. . . continued at TheNation.com

How the Healthcare Bill Will Hurt L.A.: Nation 1/11

Los Angeles County has more uninsured people than anyplace else in the country – three million, many of them immigrants, and many of those undocumented. If the Senate version of health bill passes, with its ban on federal coverage of non-citizens, a million people in California will be denied health insurance–the great majority of them in L.A.

That would be a disaster for Los Angeles.

. . . continued at TheNation.com.

Student Protests Push Cal. Gov. to Act: Nation 1/7

Student protests against tuition increases at the 10-campus University of California system pushed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to announce on Tuesday an initiative to guarantee that the state spends more on universities than it does on prisons.

The central role of student protests is not just my theory; it’s the explanation offered by the governor’s own chief of staff. “Those protests on the U.C. campuses were the tipping point” for the governor, Susan Kennedy said in an interview with the New York Times.

. . . continued at TheNation.com.