The Fight for Georgia: Stacey Abrams

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All eyes are on Georgia now, as the campaigns for both senate seats are underway to determine which party will control the US Senate. For Democrats, the starting point for winning in Georgia is the historic work of Stacey Abrams. When she ran for governor of Georgia in 2018 as the first African American and the first woman candidate, she got more votes than any Democrat in Georgia history, including Obama and Hillary Clinton. But because of Republican vote suppression she was not elected. Nevertheless she paved the way for Biden to win the state—a historic victory. We spoke with her in April 2019, about how she built the coalition that now hopes to win two senate seats in January.  11-25-20

Bobby Seale Chicago 7 panel

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Bobby Seale discusses the Trial of the Chicago 7/8 with filmmaker Jeremy Kagan (“Conspiracy: Trial of the Chicago 8”); defendant Lee Weiner; Stuart Ball, attorney, defense team assistant to Lennie Weinglass;Corinna Fales, unindicted coconspirator; Michael Lembeck, actor (Abbie Hoffman in Jeremy Kagan’s documentary); Carl Lumbly, actor (Bobby Seale in Jeremy Kagan’s documentary), and author Jon Wiener (“Conspiracy in the Streets.”)  Moderator: John McAuliff, Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee.  11/20/2020

Covid-19 vaccines: Why does Big Pharma get to keep all the profits? Gregg Gonsalves, plus J. Hoberman on ‘The Chicago 7’

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Monday we had good news on a Covid vaccine from Moderna, created with a billion dollars of taxpayer funding. Gregg Gonsalves takes up the question, Why does Big Pharma get to keep all the profits? Also: Why Mitch McConnell is a bigger threat to Americans than the virus.
Plus: The legendary film critic for the late, lamented Village Voice, J. Hoberman, talks about Aaron Sorkin’s new film, playing now on Netflix, The Trial of the Chicago 7. He asks the question, “is it great courtroom drama—or boomer porn?”  11-18-2020

Mike Davis on Trump Voters; Gregg Gonsalves on Vaccine Profits; Ella Taylor on ‘The Crown’

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Mike Davis on Trump voters: Latinos in south Texas and white workers in the rust belt—and Biden’s big mistake: allowing Trump to claim “the economy” as his issue, instead of connecting jobs to controlling the pandemic.
Also: Monday we had good news on a covid vacine from Moderna, created with a billion dollars of taxpayer funding. Gregg Gonsalves takes up the question, Why does Moderna get to keep all the profits?
And Ella Taylor talks about this season’s guilty pleasure on TV: “The Crown” – in season four, Margaret Thatcher fights the queen, and Prince Charles marries a woman he doesn’t love: Princess Diana. 11/20/2020

Mike Davis: Biden’s Big Mistake; Black Lives Matter-Victories at the Polls: Jody Armour

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Mike Davis on the Trump voters: Latinos in south Texas and white workers in the rust belt—and Biden’s big mistake: allowing Trump to claim “the economy” as his issue, instead of connecting jobs to controlling the pandemic.
Also: Black Lives Matter had massive victories in the elections in America’s biggest county—LA, with 10 million people. They elected a progressive D.A. and passed an initiative to re-imagine public safety by moving 10 per cent of the county’s $5 billion unrestricted budget to alternatives to incarceration, to community services, and barring the county from using the money on prisons, jails ,or law enforcement agencies. Jody Armour explains—his new book is N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law. 11-12-2020

Trump’s Tactics Will Fail: Harold Meyerson; BLM Victories in LA: Jody Armour; “Collective”: Ella Taylor

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Harold Meyerson argues that none of Trump’s tactics to hold on to the White House will succeed—the lawsuits are ridiculous, the proposals for Republican state legislatures to send their own Trump electors to Washington won’t work. But the fact that Trump got more votes than any Republican in history gives him a lot of power over the party.
Also: the huge victories Black Lives Matter won at the polls in L.A. County: Jody Armour explains, starting with electing a progressive District Attorney, George Gascon. Jody’s new book is N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law.
And our TV critic Ella Taylor recommends “Collective,” a terrific documentary about corruption in Romania.  11-12-2020

Biden’s Successes—and Trump’s: John Nichols and Joan Walsh

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John Nichols says Joe Biden seems to be headed for a historic win. On Wednesday afternoon he already had more than 70 million votes—the largest number of votes for a president in American history. He’s also above 50 per cent, something no Democrat has done in our lifetimes, except for Barack Obama. So this is likely to be a big victory, except for one thing: The Electoral College. That’s where it’s close, and that’s our problem.
Joan Walsh looks at Trump’s support, and finds it shocking that he did about as well as last time, despite everything that he’s done in the last four years, culminating in the disaster of the pandemic response and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. She concludes that too much of our country consists of racists who prefer white supremacy to equality.  11-4-20

What Biden can do on Day One without the Senate: Harold Meyerson; Trump voters: Joan Walsh; ‘Queen’s Gambit’: Ella Taylor

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Harold Meyerson considers the consequences of failing to win control of the Senate–and points to dozens of far-reaching executive actions Biden could take without Senate approval.
Plus: Joan Walsh of The Nation says, ‘It shouldn’t have been so close.”
and TV critic Ella Taylor reviews “The Queen’ Gambit,” the terrific series on Netflix about the protofeminist female chess champion in Cold War America.  11-5-20