“They frankly own the place,” Dick Durbin said back in April referring to the power that banks hold over policy decisions in Washington. If they own the place, presumably they can make the rules. But as Goldman Sachs brings in record profits and prepares to dole out handsome bonuses to employees and executives, many are lauding the company’s willingness to take risks. So is Goldman Sachs, dubbed by many ‘Government Sachs,’ a risk taker or a coup maker? And what will it take to confront what may be the most powerful lobby in American history?
In the United States, the gap between rich and poor has grown exponentially in recent years. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the number of Americans who do not earn enough to feed themselves and their families. It is likely that some 50 to 60 million Americans, or one in five, are hungry. How is it possible in the land of plenty? And what does the recession reveal about America’s social safety net?
The US media have reported on the withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi cities. But 130,000 troops remain in Iraq and many argue that the occupation will continue only under a different guise. Have things really changed? Or has the occupation simply been rebranded?
What can the progressive movement learn from the LGBT community? On the 40th anniversary of Stonewall there has been a good deal of reflection and soul searching on the role of the struggle for gay rights within the larger civil rights movement. Yesterday when Barack Obama met with gay couples in the White House he said, “It’s not for me to tell you to be patient any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African-Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half-century ago. We’ve been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration.” That could be applied to a number of issues, not only those affecting the LGBT community.
Opposition to union organizing within the workplace has become more intense and punitive in recent years making it incredibly difficult and risky for workers to unionize. As unemployment continues to rise and workers struggle for a bit of parity, will the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) pass? Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell’s Labor Education Research in a new report, No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing, details the hurdles that workers face in trying to form unions and why EFCA would help. Bronfenbrenner, Mark Winston Griffith, Director of the Drum Major Institute, Pat Purcell, Director of Special Projects at the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1500, and Bob Master, Political Director of Communications Workers of America on whether the recession will strengthen unions.
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould have traveled to and from Afghanistan for the past 30 years. They were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter Afghanistan behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, “Afghanistan Between Three World,” for PBS. For twenty years they have continued to follow events in Afghanistan and write about it’s history and US involvement. They are out with a new book, Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story.
Rethink Afghanistan is both a documentary project and a full-on campaign to widen the discussion about Afghanistan amongst policymakers and the American public. The filmmakers hope to reach members of Congress and change the course of action towards this poorly understood country. Thanks to Brave New Films for this video
California’s Supreme Court, in a decision yesterday, upheld Prop 8 and a ban on same sex marriage. At the same time, a host of states (Iowa, Vermont, and Maine) have legalized gay marriage in recent months. What’s next for the LGBT movement? And should efforts to expand civil rights focus on the states or the Federal level?
Media Consultant Joel Silberman, author and activist Jewelle Gomez, New York State Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, and The Nation’s Richard Kim on California’s ruling and the future of the gay rights movement.
Then Eric Massa who represents New York’s 29th District on the battle for single payer healthcare. The advice he was given when he decided to run was, don’t do it. As a freshman congressman he’s been advised not to take a stand. But he’s bucked that trend too.
Finally, does torture save and protect American lives ,as former VP Dick Cheney argues? Not according to Matthew Alexander, a 14-year senior military interrogator who conducted more than 300 interrogations in Iraq in the pursuit of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In an exclusive interview with Brave New Films Alexander says that Cheney’s torture policy was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of American servicemen and women.
Officially, Memorial Day is a day of observance for US war dead. But US victims are a small minority of the dead in the US war on Iraq and Afghanistan. Close to five thousand US names appear on the official US death rolls so far, but the number for Iraqis and Afghans is many times that. Forty-six civilians died in car bomb and gun-attacks in Iraq as recently as May 20th and the death toll from US attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to mount. An official Afghan government inquiry found that 140 civilians, including 93 children, died in the US air attack of May 4th. Other sources have put the death toll even higher.
Derived from the website Iraq Body Count, GRITtv lists here — in memoriam – only deaths recorded in 2009.
, and Kristele Younes, an Advocate at 
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