Tag: United States

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Live from The Left Forum – Show #3

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First we address the pressing subject of the day (3-10-11), the western intervention in Libya with Ayman Mohyeldin of Al Jazeera and Ahmed Shawki of the International Socialist Review.  Then we turn back to the matter of Building a Powerful Left in the United States with social theorist Benjamin Barber of Demos,  Sociologist Saskia Sassen, Mark Brenner of Labor Notes, and cartoonist and author Ted Rall.

Guests: Ayman Mohyeldin, Ahmed Shawki, Benjamin Barber, Saskia Sassen, Mark Brenner, and Ted Rall

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Lila Garrett’s Commentary

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KPFK Radio’s Lila Garrett contributed this four minute commentary to Building a Powerful Left in the United States.

Lila Garrett is a lifelong progressive; a multi-Emmy Award winning writer, director, and producer of countless TV projects including All in the Family; and host of KPFK’s Connect the Dots.

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Iranian Solidarity with Wisconsin Public Sector Workers

Iranian Solidarity with Wisconsin Public Sector Workers
Februar 24, 2011

As a humanist organization and supporter of individual freedom in Iran, we stand in solidarity with Wisconsin public workers and support their collective bargaining rights.  We also support the workers’ rights to defend their human rights and the dignity of the workers in the United States in particular and in the Middle East and other parts of the world in general.

In the past few days, the Workers Committee of our organization has received numerous messages from the workers in Iran, expressing their support for the struggles of the union workers in Wisconsin and Ohio.

The collective bargaining right is a crucial tool in preserving the democratic rights of workers.  Losing this right can potentially result in unimaginable damage to the future of the middle class in the United States. For us Iranians, the arrest and imprisonment of Mansour Osanlo, the spokesperson of the Public Transport’s Union of Tehran and several other union workers, are prime examples of the consequences of not having strong union rights.  The heroic resistance put up by the Wisconsin union workers is no doubt being closely and apprehensively watched by the captors of Mansour Osanlo.

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Khod-Rahagaran is a cultural-political organization.  It is active in both education and promotion of social awareness via grassroots work.

Khod-Rahagaran also advocates exerting political influence through lobbying for the purpose of playing a role in shaping our own destiny. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. For more information please visit our site:

www.khodrahagaran.org/En-index.html

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Building a Powerful Left in the U.S: Show #4

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Today’s show branches off from the mainstream of the progressive left.

First, in an aesthetic manner, with comic Jimmy Dore.  Whatever one makes of the recent massive Rally to Restore Sanity brought  to you by Jon Stewart and Comrade Steven Colbert – which was criticized by rival comic Bill Maher as the “Million Meh March” since it seemed, ultimately, so non-commital – it certainly showed that political comedy has moved front and center in American political discourse.

I don’t think anyone will mistake Mr. Dore’s contribution to this series as non-commital; and he is representative of a powerful community of left, progressive comedians across the country.

Then Mark Ames of exiledonline.com and the author of “Going Postal” pulls no punches.  Mark Ames, in many respects, has picked up the mantel of Hunter S Thompson.  The left is often seen in the United States as having no backbone – this is not true of Mr. Ames.  We’ll hear his ideas on how he believes the left should speak, along with what he thinks they should be saying.

Then we hear from two revolutionaries.  In the weeks leading up to this series, talking to people about it, I was surprised how often people simply said, “we need a revolution.”  Considered off-the-charts in mainstream American political discourse, the idea is not forgotten by people in the general society.  We’ll hear from Sunsara Taylor and then Brian Becker, two people committed to bringing socialist revolution to the United States.  And, as you’ll see, their vision of a post-revolutionary society matches up with the wishes of many who would see themselves as more conventional, non-revolutionary progressives.

Up next is Vijay Prishad, a radical critic of U S foreign policy.  We’ll hear how he thinks a powerful left could be built and what it would mean to peoples around the world.

Then it’s Jay Walljasper and the notion of the commons.  Mr. Walljasper explains why he  feels a commitment to the commons should be one of the central organizing principles of a revitalized left.

Finally , Joseph Huff-Hannon of the Yes Men echoes Emma Goldman’s famous line “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution.”  The left has to reclaim exuberance, the joy of rebellion.

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Building a Powerful Left in the U.S: Show #3

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source: http://buildingapowerfulleft.org

This show is debuting on a day, February 2nd, 2011, when a historic uprising is taking place in Egypt and across North Africa, as people are rising up against autocratic regimes in the region – regimes, it is important to note, that have been supported by the dominant global superpower, the United States.

But what sparked these uprisings at this time?  In large part, it’s been the increase in economic insecurity that stemmed from a global economic crisis, itself sparked by the collapse of the housing market in the United States and the attendant financial crisis.  But even more fundamentally, the bubble that was the US housing market of the last decade was propping up an economic system in deep trouble – unable to deliver a standard of living for American households and many around the world, on the order of the prosperity that was established in the United States and elsewhere in the post-World War II economic boom.  In recent decades, the only way that even the appearance of such prosperity could be maintained was through the generation of bubbles like the US housing market.

From the late 1970s onward, the  economic regime promoted most memorably by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was the “TINA” model.  “TINA” stands for “There Is No Alternative” – but to organize the economy around so-called “free markets,” and clearly to the benefit of private capital and the wealthy. It is a model that around the world has been called the Washington Consensus, or Neoliberalism.  But now, in the United States and across the globe, this economic regime is in clear crisis, seemingly unable to deliver even the illusion of prosperity any more.

On today’s show, we hone in on the economic crisis.  In obvious ways, the fact of the crisis provides ample opportunity and opening for the revival of the Left here in the United States and across the world – and yet, this has not the case.  And in particular,  there seems to be a dearth of ideas being put forward by the Left as how to respond to the economic crisis.

Is this so? Is there really such a dearth?  Or is it that they simply aren’t getting a hearing in the mainstream media?

Today we’ll hear from economists Robert Brenner, L. Randall Ray, Richard Wolff, and Dean Baker.

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