Friday, April 12, 2019

Democracy (Key Concept)

[Resources that explicitly address the concept of democracy, activists/movements that are examples of democracy-in-action, examples of injustice/undemocratic forces, institutions that seek to suppress democratic movements/actions and key concepts that are usually associated with the idea of democracy.]

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
Those truths are well established. They are read in every page which records the progression from a less arbitrary to a more arbitrary government, or the transition from a popular government to an aristocracy or a monarchy." — James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

Abu-Jamal, Mumia and Michael Parenti. "Created Unequal (Law, Money and Mumia Abu-Jamal)." Unwelcome Guests #6 (April 12, 2000) ["The first hour continues our lecture series with Michael Parenti. First, some real history on the Founding Fathers - how they created a Constitution designed to protect the rich while appearing to offer sufficient concessions to the poor to secure their support. Then "Justice for Sale", which explains how slanted the US legal process is against blacks and the poor. In the second hour, we focus on the case of longtime inmate of death row, political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. After the background to his arrest, we listen to some of his commentaries, and play a documentary from Bruderhof Radio."]

Adams, Lena, et al. "Generation Z and the Future of Democracy." Democracy Works (April 17, 2018) ["Over the past few months, the members of Generation Z have combined the tenets of traditional social movements with the power of social media to reimagine what it means to protest in a democracy. That energy was on display during the March for Our Lives events held around the world on March 24. We interviewed several students from State College, Pennsylvania who attended March for Our Lives events locally and in Washington, D.C. They speak passionately and articulately about what they believe in and how they’re working to carry forward the energy they’ve create"]

Appelbaum, Jacob and Laura Poitras. "Surveillance Teach-In." Praxis Films (April 20, 2012)

Armstrong, Sally, Paul Heinbecker and James Orbinski. "Five Freedoms: Freedom from Want." Ideas (April 11, 2019) ["Poverty has always been a defining issue in the quest to build a better world. Most political systems lay claim to the idea that they alone can create a better world. It's a kind of litmus test: if our political systems can't raise almost everyone out of relative poverty, then what exactly have we achieved? Why poverty exists at all in otherwise wealthy, prosperous democratic countries is a very incisive question, and it's not enough to just shrug and say our system is still better than any other alternative. And those alternatives? Dictatorships take us into the abyss. Right-wing libertarianism has little to offer as solutions to poverty. Soviet-style Communism didn't exactly work either, which leaves some version of western liberal democracy, either what we have now, or some variation that is still to emerge. So once we've got past that, and accepted that we've failed on the poverty file, how do we go about making things more equitable right now, making sure that wealth is distributed to those in need, and creating opportunity for the weak to become stronger?"]

Appelbaum, Jacob, William Binney, and Laura Poitras. "More Secrets on Growing State Surveillance: Exclusive with NSA Whistleblower, Targeted Hacker." Democracy Now (April 23, 2012)

Aron, Hadas. "Free Speech #56: The Populist Attacks on Academia." Think About It (May 21, 2019) ["Why do populist movements, which exist on both the left and the right, attack universities? Is there any justification for their suspicion of elites who tell us what's true, how to live our lives, and how to solve our problems? What's the relation between populism, academia, and the idea that everyone's opinion should matter, regardless of their education, birth and academic degrees? Hadas Aron is a political scientist who studies populist movements in various countries to understand the underlying problems and tensions that drive such movements. We talked about the attacks on academia, how best to understand them, and whether there are some issues that are non-negotiable even in the most robust and raucous political disputes."]

Assange, Julian. "The Banality of 'Don't Be Evil.'" The New York Times (June 1, 2013)

Auxier, Jonathan, et al. "Award Winning Authors on Borders, Real and Imagined." Ideas (December 12, 2018) ["Borders are everywhere. They're also a central topic in politics, media, and public conversation, as migrants and refugees continue to arrive on the figurative doorsteps of the nations that they hope will give them a chance at better lives. All around these dividing lines, there blooms debate and defensiveness, as well as the threat of desperation, separation, and violence."]

Baiocchi, Gianpaolo. "Brazil's Tenuous Relationship with Democracy." Democracy Works (March 4, 2019) ["To say Brazil has had a complicated history with democracy is an understatement. The country has bounced in and out of authoritarian regimes for hundreds of years, with democracy never having quite enough time to really take hold. Following the election of Jair Bolsonaro in October 2018, many are wondering whether the cycle is about to repeat itself again. Gianpaolo Baiocchi is a professor of individualized studies and sociology at NYU, where he also directs the Urban Democracy Lab. He's from Brazil and has written extensively about the country's politics and social movements. He joins us this week to talk about Bolsonaro's appeal, the use of misinformation on WhatsApp during the election, and why Bolsonaro is often called the "Trump of the tropics." We also discuss Brazil's history of activism under authoritarian governments and whether we'll see it return now."]

Baker, Stewart and Daniel Ellsberg. "Was Edward Snowden Justified?" Democracy Now (February 14, 2014) ["Former National Security Agency lawyer Stewart Baker and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg join us for a debate on Edward Snowden’s disclosure of the NSA’s massive spying apparatus in the United States and across the globe. Snowden’s leaks to The Guardian and other media outlets have generated a series of exposés on NSA surveillance activities — from its collection of American’s phone records, text messages and email, to its monitoring of the internal communications of individual heads of state. Partly as a consequence of the government’s response to Snowden’s leaks, the United States plunged 13 spots in an annual survey of press freedom by the independent organization, Reporters Without Borders. Snowden now lives in Russia and faces possible espionage charges if he returns to the United States. Baker, a former NSA general counsel and assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, is a partner at the law firm Steptoe & Johnson and author of “Skating on Stilts: Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism.” Ellsberg is a former Pentagon and RAND Corporation analyst and perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, prompting Henry Kissinger to call him “the most dangerous man in America.”"]

Barlow, Maude, Richard Grossman and Thomas Linzey. "When Lawmaking Becomes Rebellion (Water Privatization, Democracy School and the Corporate State)." Unwelcome Guests #307 (May 21, 2006) ["A new populist alliance of long time environmental activists and rural folk in central Pennsylvania has grown out of a struggle to ban toxic agribusiness operations that have targeted the area as the next profit opportunity. This movement is taking a new approach that is spreading across America via a project of public education and organization called democracy schools, that are teaching direct action lawmaking to challenge corporate supremacy and to create rights under law for people and the land."]


Barry, Liz. "VTaiwan: Public Participation Methods on the Cyberpunk Frontier of Democracy." Civicist (August 11, 2016)

Bauer, Shane. "A Hunger Strike Against Solitary Confinement: Shane Bauer on Inhuman Prisons from California to Iran." Democracy Now (July 12, 2013)

Bazelon, Emily and Jena Griswold. "'Can Democracy Survive the Pandemic': : Election Hangs in the Balance as Trump Attacks Mail-In Voting." Democracy Now (May 15, 2020) ["The coronavirus pandemic poses unprecedented challenges to the November presidential election, as President Trump and the GOP capitalize on the moment to attack voting rights. We speak with Emily Bazelon, staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, whose new cover story examines the bureaucratic and political challenges of mobilizing widespread vote-by-mail by November. We also speak with Jena Griswold, secretary of state of Colorado, which already has universal vote-by-mail and the second-highest voter turnout in the country."]

Bejan, Teresa. "On Free Speech, Tolerance and Civility." Mindscape #116 (September 28, 2020) ["How can, and should, we talk to each other, especially to people with whom we disagree? “Free speech” is rightfully entrenched as an important value in liberal democratic societies, but implementing it consistently and fairly is a tricky business. Political theorist Teresa Bejan comes to this question from a philosophical and historical perspective, managing to relate broad principles to modern hot-button issues. We talk about the importance of tolerating disreputable beliefs, the senses in which speech acts can be harmful, and how “civility” places demands on listeners as well as speakers."]

Benkler, Yochai, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts. Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. Oxford University Press, 2018. ["This book examines the shape, composition, and practices of the United States political media landscape. It explores the roots of the current epistemic crisis in political communication with a focus on the remarkable 2016 U.S. president election culminating in the victory of Donald Trump and the first year of his presidency. The authors present a detailed map of the American political media landscape based on the analysis of millions of stories and social media posts, revealing a highly polarized and asymmetric media ecosystem. Detailed case studies track the emergence and propagation of disinformation in the American public sphere that took advantage of structural weaknesses in the media institutions across the political spectrum. This book describes how the conservative faction led by Steve Bannon and funded by Robert Mercer was able to inject opposition research into the mainstream media agenda that left an unsubstantiated but indelible stain of corruption on the Clinton campaign. The authors also document how Fox News deflects negative coverage of President Trump and has promoted a series of exaggerated and fabricated counter narratives to defend the president against the damaging news coming out of the Mueller investigation. Based on an analysis of the actors that sought to influence political public discourse, this book argues that the current problems of media and democracy are not the result of Russian interference, behavioral microtargeting and algorithms on social media, political clickbait, hackers, sockpuppets, or trolls, but of asymmetric media structures decades in the making. The crisis is political, not technological."]

Bennett, W. Lance, Regina G. Lawrence and Steven Livingstone. "Press Politics in America: The Case of the Iraq War." Excerpt from When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina. University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Benton, Michael Dean. "A nation starts to mobilize: Something’s happening here." North of Center (October 12, 2011)

---. "Occupy: One Year Later." North of Center (September 17, 2012)

Biagetti, Samuel. "Myth of the Month 9: The US Constitution and the Origins of the Senate and Electoral College." Historiansplaining (September 2019) ["Why does our government work the way it does? Is it supposed to represents citizens, or states? We consider the origins of the U. S. Constitution, particularly the creation of the controversial bodies (Senate and Electoral College) that represent the public in skewed and disproportionate ways. We dispel the false notion that these bodies were created in order to protect small states, tracing instead the Framers' quest to tamp down the "excess of democracy" of the 1780s, wrest control over monetary policy away from the poor majority, and strike a careful balance between slave and non-slave states."]

Bogado, Aura, et al. "A special one-hour program on the South Central Farm in Los Angeles – lessons in human rights, immigrant rights, ecological sustainability, and activism. We’ll hear from farmers, organizers, local reporters, and more." Uprising Radio (June 16, 2006)

Boghosian, Heidi. "Spying on Democracy." Abandon All Despair Ye Who Enter Here (July 23, 2013)

Bremmer, Ian. "On the Failure of Globalism." Democracy Works (March 14, 2019) ["This episode is a discussion with Ian Bremmer, author of Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism. Ian is a political scientist and president of the Eurasia Group, a political risk advisory and consulting firm. In this episode, Ian talks with Future Hindsight host Mila Atmos about populism, authoritarianism, and some of the other trends we’ve heard about over the past few weeks. Think of it as a 30,000-foot view of what we’ve covered in individual countries like Hungary and Brazil."]

Calhoun, Craig and David Graeber. "The Democracy Project." The London School of Economics and Political Science (April 30, 2013)

Caliskan, Koray. "'A Great Moment for Democracy': Erdogan’s AK Party Suffers Major Defeat in Local Turkish Elections." Democracy Now (April 4, 2019)

Cantú, Aaron Miguel. "The Whitest News You Know: The False Promise of a Press for Everybody." The Baffler #43 (February 2019) 

Carrion, Maria. "General Strike Sweeps Europe as Millions Reject Austerity as Solution to Economic Crisis." Democracy Now (November 14, 2012)

Chomsky, Noam. "Direct Action, Occupy, and the Power of Social Movements." Black Rose Anarchist Federation (April 16, 2013)

---. "Nuclear Weapons, Climate Change & the Undermining of Democracy Threaten Future of Planet." Democracy Now (April 12, 2019) ["As President Trump pulls out of key nuclear agreements with Russia and moves to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Noam Chomsky looks at how the threat of nuclear war remains one of the most pressing issues facing mankind. In a speech at the Old South Church in Boston, Chomsky also discusses the threat of climate change and the undermining of democracy across the globe."]

---. "On the State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival." Needs No Introduction (April 21, 2011)

Citizenfour (USA/Germany/UK: Laura Poitras, 2014: 114 mins) ["Part real-life thriller, part sobering examination of 21st century civil liberties, Citizenfour transcends ideology to offer riveting, must-see cinema."]

Citton, Yves. "Mediarchy (Polity Press, 2019)." New Books in Communications (September 28, 2020) ["We think that we live in democracies: in fact, we live in mediarchies. Our political regimes are based less on nations or citizens than on audiences shaped by the media. We assume that our social and political destinies are shaped by the will of the people without realizing that ‘the people’ are always produced, both as individuals and as aggregates, by the media: we are all embedded in mediated publics, ‘intra-structured’ by the apparatuses of communication that govern our interactions. In his new book Mediarchy (Polity Press, 2019), Yves Citton maps out the new regime of experience, media and power that he designates by the term “mediarchy.” To understand mediarchy, we need to look both at the effects that the media have on us and also at the new forms of being and experience that they induce in us. We can never entirely escape from the effects of the mediarchies that operate through us but by becoming more aware of their conditioning, we can develop the new forms of political analysis and practice which are essential if we are to rise to the unprecedented challenges of our time. This comprehensive and far-reaching book will be essential reading for students and scholars in media and communications, politics and sociology, and it will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the multiple and complex ways that the media – from newspapers and TV to social media and the internet – shape our social, political and personal lives today."]

Clumpner, Graham. "U.S. Army Vets Join with Afghans for Peace to Lead Antiwar March at Chicago NATO Summit." Democracy Now (May 21, 2012)

Cole, David. "Free Speech #63: The ACLU's Defense of Liberty." Think About It (May 21, 2019) ["The ACLU defends your liberties - whether you're on the right, the left, and entirely off the political spectrum. The 100-year old organization has argued and won landmark decisions before the Supreme Court to defend individual rights. Is it right to put principle above all other consideration and offer legal aid to Neo-Nazis? Or are there factors beyond the ideals of the law that inform such actions?"]

Coleman, Gabriella. "Beacons of freedom: The changing face of Anonymous." Index on Censorship (December 3, 2012)

---. "Code is Speech: Legal Tinkering, Expertise, and Protest Among Free and Open Source Software Developers." Cultural Anthropology 24.3 (2009: 420-454)

---. "Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking." Law and Disorder Radio (February 18, 2013)

---. "The ethics of digital direct action: Denial-of-service attacks and similar tactics are becoming more widely used as protest tools." Al Jazeera (September 1, 2011)

---. "Geeks are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties." MIT Technology Review (February 4, 2013)

The Combahee River Collective. "Black Feminist Statement." Monthly Review (January 1, 2019)

Crespo, Glenn and Larry Hildes. "Inside the Army Spy Ring & Attempted Entrapment of Peace Activists, Iraq Vets, Anarchists." Democracy Now (February 25, 2014)

Crisis In Democracy: Renewing Trust in America. Aspen Institute, 2019. ["The Report of the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy."]

Critchley, Spencer. "Patriots of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next." New Books in Politics and Polemics (October 19, 2020) ["America is in a Cold Civil War, between people who see each other as threats to the country — but themselves as patriots. How can that be? They are patriots of two nations. In Patriots of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next (McDavid Media), national media commentator and presidential campaigns veteran Spencer Critchley shows why our current hyper-partisan division has been inevitable since the founding of the United States, as has the election of Donald Trump or someone like him. That's because America is actually two nations occupying the same territory. The two nations have different worldviews: cultures, values, and ways of understanding reality itself. One nation — the dominant one — is descended from the Enlightenment, and the establishment of reason as the ultimate source of authority. But the other is nation is descended from the Counter-Enlightenment, and it has never stopped believing in the primacy of faith, tradition, culture, ties to the land, and ethnic identity. Because the Enlightenment worldview is so dominant, the Counter-Enlightenment largely has been forgotten by history. But as Critchley reveals, in many ways it's more active now than ever — and the failure of many of us to understand it is a crucial source of our division. Uniting the two nations will require that they finally do see and understand their different realities. This book shows how we might still be able to make that happen — and why we must, if democracy is to survive. Spencer Critchley is a writer, producer, and communications consultant with experience in journalism, film, digital media, public relations, advertising, and music. He is the Managing Partner of communications consulting agency Boots Road Group."]

Cromwell, David and David Edwards. "Snowden, Surveillance, and the Secret State." Media Lens (June 28, 2013)

Dash, Anil, et al. "Tech's Moral Void." Ideas (March 14, 2019) ["Lawyers and doctors have a code of ethics. Teachers have them. Even journalists have them. So why not the tech sector, the people who create and design our very modes of communication? Coders and designers make products that allow to us communicate with each other, across cities and nations and borders. How we speak and how many we reach determines what we buy and sell, affects our health and economy, and — as we've come to realize — influences our democracy. Contributor Tina Pittaway explores whether the time has come for tech to reckon with its moral void."]

Deaton, Angus. "On How the Flaws in Capitalism are Fatal for America’s Working Class." Keen On (March 13, 2020) ["Over the last two hundred years, nothing has divided us more than our free-market economic system. Is it the source of every social injustice, from exploitation to alienation to inequality, or is it essential to our freedom and democracy? This debate is as relevant today in 2020 as it was in 1920 or 1820."]

The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776)

Digital Disconnect (USA: Jeremy Earp and Robert McChesney, 2018: 63 mins) ["Tracing the Internet’s history as a publicly-funded government project in the 1960s, to its full-scale commercialisation today, Digital Disconnect shows how the Internet’s so-called “democratising potential” has been radically compromised by the logic of capitalism, and the unaccountable power of a handful of telecom and tech monopolies. Based on the acclaimed book by media scholar Robert McChesney, the film examines the ongoing attack on the concept of net neutrality by telecom monopolies such as Comcast and Verizon, explores how internet giants like Facebook and Google have amassed huge profits by surreptitiously collecting our personal data and selling it to advertisers, and shows how these monopolies have routinely colluded with the national security state to advance covert mass surveillance programs. We also see how the rise of social media as a leading information source is working to isolate people into ideological information bubbles and elevate propaganda at the expense of real journalism. But while most debates about the Internet focus on issues like the personal impact of Internet-addiction or the rampant data-mining practices of companies like Facebook, Digital Disconnectdigs deeper to show how capitalism itself turns the Internet against democracy. The result is an indispensable resource for helping viewers make sense of a technological revolution that has radically transformed virtually aspect of human communication."]

Drake, Thomas. "Snowden saw what I saw: Surveillance criminally subverting the constitution." The Guardian (June 12, 2013)

Edwards, Lydia and Fred Wiseman. "Documenting Democracy: Fred Wiseman’s City Hall." Open Source (November 19, 2020) ["What Fred Wiseman found in Boston City Hall is not what he was looking for. The master of documentary film is famous for his almost innocent camera eye that unlocks visual drama in big institutions — the New York Public Library, the Paris Opera, or in his early days: Bridgewater State Mental Hospital in 1960s Massachusetts. So why not finally get inside the modern brick and concrete fortress of official life in his hometown, and see what’s going on in the faces, the meeting rooms, the tone of voice in local affairs. What he found was simpler than all that. It was the un-Trump in the un-Washington. An almost astonishing civility, good humor, what looks like good faith in the hundreds of negotiations every day that keep a community going, and growing."]

 Fields, Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields. Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in America. Verso, 2012. ["Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed. That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions."]

Finnegan, William. "Leasing the Rain." The New Yorker (April 8, 2002) ["The world is running out of fresh water, and the fight to control it has begun."]

Foster, John Bellamy and Hannah Holleman. "The Financial Power Elite." Monthly Review (May 1, 2010)

France, David and Peter Staley. "How To Survive a Plague: As ACT UP Turns 25, New Film Chronicles History of AIDS Activism in U.S." Democracy Now (March 23, 2012)

Giridharadas, Anand. "Purple Episode 3: Let's Not Discount Reality." On the Media (November 25, 2019) ["One of the reasons so many Americans have lost trust and faith is democratic institutions is simple misunderstanding about how the system is designed to work. Another, however, is familiarity with how the system does work— which isn’t exactly of, by and for the People. Anand Giridharadas is author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. He says the founders also didn’t plan on politicians constantly trash-talking government itself and that a decline in trust in government is the result of a concerted, private sector propaganda war waged over the last four decades."]

Gooding-Williams, Robert. "Membership, Citizenship and Democracy." Public Books (September 24, 2019)

Gorbis, Marina and Douglas Rushkoff. "At PDF 2016." Team Human #7 (September 27, 2016) ["...recorded live on the floor of the 2016 Personal Democracy Forum, where we caught up with Marina Gorbis, executive director to the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Marina joins Team Human to help us see how a utilitarian value set has been embedded into our society and its technologies. Together Marina and Douglas discuss those ambiguous and even anomalous qualities of being human, while looking to a future that embraces humanity as something greater than mere data points. This episode also features Rushkoff’s closing talk at the Personal Democracy Forum."]

Gordon, Paul. "Billionaires Score Big Win With McCutcheon Decision." TruthOut (April 10, 2014)

Graeber, David and Astra Taylor. "Democracy May Not Exist, But We Will Miss It When It's Gone." At the Bookshop (December 16, 2019) ["In her latest book, Astra Taylor – ‘a rare public intellectual, utterly committed to asking humanity’s most profound questions yet entirely devoid of pretensions’ (Naomi Klein) – argues that democracy is not just in crisis, but that real democracy, inclusive and egalitarian, has never existed. Democracy May Not Exist but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone (Verso) aims to re-examine what we mean by democracy, what we want from it, and understand why it is so hard to realize."]

Greenwald, Glenn. " U.S. filmmaker repeatedly detained at border: Laura Poitras makes award-winning controversial films, and is targeted by the U.S. government as a result." Salon (April 8, 2012)

Greenwald, Glenn and Laura Poitras. "Q&A on Snowden, the Surveillance State & Press Freedom." Democracy Now (April 11, 2014)

Gusterson, Hugh and Elaine Scarry. "Are We Numb to Nukes?" Radio Open Source (April 10, 2014) ["We’re thinking our way through a plausible nuclear emergency with Elaine Scarry who reminds you – we’ve got a weapons monarchy in this democracy. Two decades after the fall of the Berlin wall and a nuclear football still accompanies the president at all times, nuclear missile silos still dot the great plains, and hundreds of nukes remain constantly on alert. How can we call it a democracy, the rule of the people, when there’s one man’s finger on the trigger that could destroy us all?"]

Hanna, Thomas and Nomi Prins. "Revolution at the Federal Reserve and Public Banking." The Laura Flanders Show (January 23, 2019) ["As the World Economic Forum takes place in Davos, Switzerland, we talk about the way central banks steer world development and for whom. Former Goldman Sachs managing director Nomi Prins, author of "Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World," and public ownership researcher, Thomas Hanna, author of “Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States,” and Research Director at The Democracy Collaborative, believe that banking, and development, could be very different."]

Hansen, Randall, Lama Mourad and Joseph Wong. "In Search of Global Freedom." Ideas (December 10, 2018) ["What does it mean to be free? All societies place restrictions on what citizens can do, but some restrictions (speed limits) may be more important than others (limiting the right to vote.) But one-size freedom doesn't really fit all: "democracy" has many faces, and ideas of freedom are shaped by culture."]

Harris, David A. "The Attack on Elected District Attorneys." Criminal Injustice (September 7, 2019) ["As reform-minded elected prosecutors gain power across the U.S., they’re increasingly coming under fire from their federal counterparts — most recently, an anti-democratic tirade by U.S. Attorney Bill Barr, who attacked progressive district attorneys for doing what voters elected them to do."]

---. "Progressive Prosecutors Slapped Again." Criminal Injustice (September 24, 2019) ["A crime summit held recently in St. Louis was a virtual who's-who of high ranking city and state government officials. Conspicuously absent from the gathering were the progressive, African American district attorneys of St. Louis and Kansas City, who were excluded despite having been elected to the top law enforcement post in Missouri's two largest cities. We look at the latest in a trend of anti-democratic attacks on reformist elected prosecutors."]

Hein, Marjorie. "Priests of Our Democracy, The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge." Law and Disorder Radio (February 25, 2013)

Hook, Jennifer van. "It's Good to Be Counted." Democracy Works #9 (May 8, 2018) ["The next census is still a few years away in 2020, but the U.S. Census Bureau is already hard at work on preparing to count the more than 325 million people in the United States. The census is one of the few democratic norms that’s required by the Constitution, and the data collected has wide-ranging uses. The normally routine process has been disrupted this year by Trump administration, which is pushing for the reintroduction of a question about citizenship. As you may have heard, there’s a debate going on about whether this question is appropriate, and whether the resource-strapped Census Bureau will have time to implement it before 2020."]

Horton, Scott. "A Setback For Obama’s War On Whistleblowers." Law and Disorder Radio (August 15, 2011)

---. "Secret Federal FISA Court Advocate of National Security State." Law and Disorder Radio (July 15, 2013)

Howard, Ted and Marjorie Kelly.  "The Making of a Democratic Economy." Building Bridges (October 1, 2019) ["The Making of a Democratic Economy with Ted Howard, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, and Marjorie Kelly, author of The Divine Right of Capital, and Owning our Future have teamed up to co-author The Making of a Democratic Economy, a clarion call for a movement ready to get serious about transforming our economic system. The authors illuminate the principles of a democratic economy through the stories of on-the-ground community wealth builders and their unlikely accomplices in the halls of institutional power. Their book is a must read for everyone concerned with how we win the fight for an economy that’s equitable, not extractive."]

Immerwahr, Daniel. "Empire State of Mind." On the Media (April 5, 2019) ["Recently, a member of the Trump administration called Puerto Rico “that country,” obscuring once more the relationship between the island colony and the American mainland. In a special hour this week, On the Media examines the history of US imperialism — and why the familiar US map hides the true story of our country. Brooke spends the hour with Northwestern University historian Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States."]



---. "'How to Hide an Empire': Daniel Immerwahr on the History of the Greater United States." Democracy Now (March 5, 2019) ["“How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.” That’s the title of a new book examining a part of the U.S. that is often overlooked: the nation’s overseas territories from Puerto Rico to Guam, former territories like the Philippines, and its hundreds of military bases scattered across the globe. We speak with the book’s author, Daniel Immerwahr, who writes, “At various times, the inhabitants of the U.S. Empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured and experimented on. What they haven’t been, by and large, is seen.” Immerwahr is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University."]

Jalata, Asafa. "Gadaa (Oromo Democracy): An Example of Classical African Civilization." The Journal of Pan African Studies 5.1 (March 2012)

Jones, William P. and Gary Younge. "50 Years Later, the Untold History of the March on Washington & MLK’s Most Famous Speech." Democracy Now (August 21, 2013)

Kahle, Trish. "Teaching in an Uprising: Readings on Race and Democracy." Black Perspectives (June 2, 2020)

Kaye, Harvey, et al. "The Fight for the Four Freedoms (FDR vs Libertarianism)." Best of the Left #1247 (February 5, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the history of FDR's "Four Freedoms" and "Economic Bill of Rights" that laid the groundwork for the fight for economic freedom for all that continues to this day."]

Khan, Abe. "Is Colin Kaepernick a Good Democrat?" Democracy Works (March 14, 2018) ["No matter how much of a sports fan you are, you probably remember seeing Colin Kaepernick kneeling during National Anthem. President Trump took the debate to a whole new level when he said that anyone who does not respect the National Anthem and the flag should be fired. Kaepernick and those who followed him are the most recent example of athletes using their sports as a means to protest, but history is filled with others who have come before them."]

Kitchell, Mark. "Fierce Green Fire Documentary Explores Environmental Movement’s Global Rise." Democracy Now (April 22, 2014)

Kloppenberg, James. "Things Fall Apart: The Origins and Future of American Democracy." Ideas (May 10, 2019) ["Does America’s early experiment with self-rule offer lessons for the U.S. today?"]

Krajeski, Jenna. "What the Kurds are Fighting For: The Idea of Rojava is at Stake." What Next (October 16, 2019) ["When the U.S. abandoned its Kurdish allies, it not only left the Kurds vulnerable to devastating attacks from Turkey, but it also abandoned Rojava, the Kurdish autonomous region that lies in the northeast of Syria. Right now, the Kurds are fighting to preserve what they can of this unique political arrangement, but it might already be too late. And, maybe, it was always destined to fall."]

Krajeski, Jenna and Rapareen abd Elhameed Hasn. "The Rojava Revolution in Peril." On the Media (October 18, 2019) ["Rojava: it’s the three cantons at the top of Syria that comprise what’s more commonly referred to as “Kurdish Syria.” Each canton is governed independently but according to a shared social contract based on principles of local democracy, feminism and ecology. It’s a land that, until recently at least, had about two million people, mostly Kurdish but with ethnic and religious diversity. And its political experiment was mainly functioning — until the abrupt retreat of the United States from northern Syria. Now Rojava is being pummeled by the invading Turks — martyred to the impulses of an unmoored American president. And so it has been reported: a ruinous betrayal of an ally that has made unimaginable sacrifices in the Ameican wars against Sadaam Hussein and ISIS. But lost in that narrative is another story: the equally unimaginable sacrifice of an equitable model of governance in a region where other models have stifled freedom for centuries. First, Bob speaks with Jenna Krajeski, a journalist with the Fuller Project for International Reporting who has reported on the Kurds. Then, he speaks with Rapareen abd Elhameed Hasn, a 27-year-old activist and co-president of her local health authority in Rojava, about what it's been like on the ground."]

Kriner, Doug. "Checking the President's Power." Democracy Works (March 20, 2018) ["From Watergate to Benghazi to Robert Mueller, U.S. history is full of congressional hearings. You’ve no doubt heard about them in the news, but do you know what those House and Senate committees actually do and what their role is in a democracy?"]

Kruzynski, Anna and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. "Maple Spring: Nearly 1,000 Arrested as Mass Quebec Student Strike Passes 100th Day." Democracy Now (May 25, 2012)

Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democrat Politics. 2nd ed. Verso, 2001.

Leary, John Patrick. "'Meritocracy' Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means." On the Media (March 15, 2019) ["This week, fifty people were charged by federal prosecutors in a college admissions scandal. As the public dug into the details of how wealthy parents made payments to help their students get into elite (and not so elite) universities around the country, some of the discussion centered around "the myth of meritocracy" in the United States. The trouble is, the myth of "meritocracy" goes much deeper than this story. The word was actually coined as satire in 1958 by the British sociologist Michael Young, who was criticizing the role that the UK's elite education system had in shaping the hierarchy of British society. This week, Bob speaks with John Patrick Leary about the satirical origins of the word and what it has come to mean in the US. He says there are actually two myths: "the myth that there is such a thing, and the myth that the United States is committed to that imaginary thing." Leary is a professor of English at Wayne State University and author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism."]

Liu, Eric. "Purple Episode 1: Is Democracy Up for Grabs?" On the Media (November 23, 2019) ["Democracy is in trouble. Not necessarily because of our current political mayhem, or even because of the accumulated sins and failures of American society, but because vast swaths of the public are giving up on the system that has governed us for 243 years. Here are some alarming data points: One, in 2018 only 33% of the general population expressed trust for government. Two, among 1400 adults asked about the importance of democracy, only 39% of younger participants said “absolutely important.” Three, in a 2018 Democracy Fund survey of 5000 Americans, 24% of respondents expressed support for “a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections,” and either a “strong leader” and 18% for “army rule. The more complicated question is what as a society we are to do about it? In this mini-series we’ll be talking that over, but we’ll begin with the actual state of public sentiment and public participation. Eric Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Citizen University and Co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. He and Bob discuss potential solutions for taking on widespread disaffection."]

Ludlow, Peter. "Jailed Journalist Barrett Brown Faces 105 Years For Reporting on Hacked Private Intelligence Firms." Democracy Now (July 11, 2013)

Mador, Chase. "The Over-Policing of America: Police Overkill Has Entered the DNA of Social Policy." TomDispatch (December 8, 2013)

Mander, Jerry. "Privatization of Consciousness." Monthly Review (October 1, 2012)

Mayer, Jane. "FOX News White House." The New Yorker (March 11, 2019) ["As Murdoch’s relations with the White House have warmed, so has Fox’s coverage of Trump. During the Obama years, Fox’s attacks on the President could be seen as reflecting the adversarial role traditionally played by the press. With Trump’s election, the network’s hosts went from questioning power to defending it. Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law School professor who co-directs the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, says, “Fox’s most important role since the election has been to keep Trump supporters in line.” The network has provided a non-stop counternarrative in which the only collusion is between Hillary Clinton and Russia; Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is perpetrating a “coup” by the “deep state”; Trump and his associates aren’t corrupt, but America’s law-enforcement officials and courts are; illegal immigration isn’t at a fifteen-year low, it’s “an invasion”; and news organizations that offer different perspectives are “enemies of the American people.” Benkler’s assessment is based on an analysis of millions of American news stories that he and two co-authors, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts, undertook for their 2018 book, “Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation and Radicalization in American Politics.” Benkler told me that he and his co-authors had expected to find “symmetric polarization” in the left-leaning and the right-leaning media outlets. Instead, they discovered that the two poles of America’s media ecosystem function very differently. “It’s not the right versus the left,” Benkler says. “It’s the right versus the rest.”"]

McChesney, Robert W. "Journalism, Democracy, and ... Class Struggle." Monthly Review (November 1, 2000)

---. "Rejuvenating American Journalism: Some Tentative Policy Proposals." (Presentation to Workshop on Journalism, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, D.C.: March 10, 2010)

McChesney, Robert W. and John Nichols. "The Bull Market: Political Advertising." Monthly Review (April 1, 2012)

Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. "'No NATO, No War': U.S. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan Return War Medals at NATO Summit." Democracy Now (May 21, 2012)

Miller, James. "A Brief History of 'People Power.'" Democracy Works (February 11, 2019) ["In his book Can Democracy Work? A Short History of a Radical Idea from Ancient Athens to Our World, James Miller encapsulates 2500 years of democracy history into about 250 pages — making the case that "people power" will always need to be at the heart of any successful democracy. James is a professor of politics and liberal studies at the New School for Social Research. in New York City. He is the author of Examined Lives: From Socrates to NietzscheFlowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947–1977, and Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. He was recommended to us by Astra Taylor, and you'll hear some similarities between how James and Astra view democracy and our role within it."]

Mitchell, Jerry and Dawn Porter. "Spies of Mississippi: New Film on the State-Sponsored Campaign to Defeat the Civil Rights Movement." Democracy Now (February 25, 2014)

Morris, Errol. "Anatomy of a Photograph: Authoritarianism in America." The Atlantic (August 22, 2020)

---. "The Unknown Known: Errol Morris’ New Doc Tackles Unrepentant Iraq War Architect Donald Rumsfeld." Democracy Now (March 27, 2014)

Moskowitz, P.E. and Carolyn Rouse.  "The Mythical Bygone Glory Days of 'Free Speech.'" Citations Needed #88 (September 25, 2019) ["We are often warned by conservatives, liberals and even some on the Left that we live in a time where “free speech” is under threat from far-left forces. “Political correctness” and “snowflakes” have shut down free inquiry, specifically on college campuses, and led to a crisis threatening the very foundation of our democracy. But the origins of the label “free speech” — as it’s currently practiced — paint a much messier picture. Rather than appealing to the Vietnam-era Berkeley protest glory days, what one sees when examining the history of the concept is a temporary tactic used by the Left in the mid-to-late 1960s that has, since that late 1980s, become a far-right wedge designed to open up space for racism, eugenics, genocide denial, trans and homophobia and anti-feminist backlash. Defense of the right to keep open this space as an appeal to a universal value hides a well-funded, coordinated far-right attempt to maintain a conservative, largely male and cishet version of political correctness. On this episode, we discuss where the contemporary concept of “free speech” comes from, what its uses and misuses have been and how a rose-tinted time of pristine, perfectly free" speech never really existed. We are joined by journalist and author P.E. Moskowitz and Chair of Princeton University's Department of Anthropology Carolyn Rouse."]

Mounk, Yascha. "The People vs. Democracy." Ideas (December 13, 2018)
["Authoritarian populists have won elections across a large swath of western liberal democracies. Populist leaders have formed government through free and (mostly) fair elections by riding a wave of popular disaffection with the status quo. But once in power, these governments have gone on to dismantle the very institutions and conventions that help keep liberal democratic principles in place. So how are we to confront this paradox wherein liberal democracy serves a growing and undemocratic illiberalism? How do we strike a balance between the rights of individuals and the popular will? And if we can't figure this out, are the best days of the liberal democratic tradition long gone?"]

My Country, My Country (USA: Laura Poitras, 2006: 89 mins) ["My Country, My Country documents the United States’ invasion of Iraq from an insider’s perspective, as told by Iraqi citizens themselves, and by the efforts of a devoted father and Sunni Muslim political candidate. Filmmaker Laura Poitras also spends time on the ground following the United States military ‘Civil Affairs’ team during the 2005 elections in Iraq. As the US government attempts to “bring democracy” to the country, Baghdad native Dr. Riyadh is faced with making the difficult decision of supporting the popular boycott of the elections, or fighting for a democracy that seems ever more unlikely with each passing day. With intimate footage of Dr. Riyadh’s interactions with the public and candid interviews featuring the opinions of every-day citizens, My Country, My Country provides a rare look inside the struggle in Iraq in the context of an ongoing brutal occupation."]

Nightingale, Elsa. "A Critical Analysis of the Relationship between Democracy and Corruption." E-International Relations Students (December 20, 2015)

Nyhan, Brendan. "Purple Episode 2: Low Information, High Misinformation Voters." On the Media (November 24, 2019) ["The Pizzagate pedophile conspiracy, crisis actors at Sandy Hook, the flat Earthers...and on and on. Absolute nonsense peddled by the cynical and the naive, and eagerly lapped up by the gullible. Misinformation is a problem that Brendan Nyhan, professor of government at Dartmouth College, has studied for years. In this interview, Brendan and Bob discuss new research on how Americans form their political beliefs and how civic institutions may begin to win back their trust."]

Olsen, Scott. "U.S. Vet Who Nearly Lost Life at Occupy Protest, Brings Antiwar Message to NATO Summit." Democracy Now (May 21, 2012)

Parenti, Michael. "Executive Power and Democratic Needs." Unwelcome Guests #5 (April 5, 2000)

The Program (USA: Laura Poitras, 2012: 8 mins and 21 secs) ["The Program is a short film focusing on William Binney—a former highly placed intelligence official with the United States National Security Agency, turned whistleblower after revelations that a system he created for foreign intelligence gathering was turned inward for domestic spying at the behest of the Bush administration in 2001. For this, Binney resigned in October of that year and later began speaking publicly. He is among a group of NSA whistle-blowers, including Thomas A. Drake, who have each risked everything—their livelihoods, freedom, and personal relationships—to warn everyone about the dangers of the current era of mass surveillance."]

Rana, Aziz. "Two Faces of American Freedom." The Dig (July 26, 2019) ["The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin. However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life."]

Ransby, Barbara. Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century. University of California Press, 2018.

Rizzo, John and Scott Horton. "A Debate on Torture: Legal Architect of CIA Secret Prisons, Rendition vs. Human Rights Attorney." Democracy Now (March 28, 2014)

Robinson, Jennifer. "Julian Assange’s Attorney Decries Espionage Charges as 'Grave Threat to Press Freedom.'" Democracy Now (May 24, 2019) ["In an unprecedented move, the Justice Department has indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on 17 charges of violating the Espionage Act for his role in publishing U.S. classified military and diplomatic documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents were leaked by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The Espionage Act of 1917 has never been used to prosecute a journalist or media outlet. The new charges come just over a month after British police forcibly removed Assange from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he took asylum in 2012. Initially the Trump administration indicted Assange on a single count of helping Manning hack a government computer, but Assange faces up to 170 additional years in prison under the new charges—10 years for each count of violating the Espionage Act. We speak with Jennifer Robinson, an attorney for Julian Assange. “It is a grave threat to press freedom and should be cause for concern for journalists and publishers everywhere,” Robinson says." Part two: "Daniel Ellsberg: Espionage Charges Against Assange Are Most Significant Attack on Press in Decades." Part three: "Jeremy Scahill: New Indictment of Assange Is Part of a Broader War on Journalism & Whistleblowers." Part four: "Assange Is Indicted for Exposing War Crimes While Trump Considers Pardons for War Criminals."]

Roos, Jerome. "Stéphane Hessel, 'Father of Indignados', dies aged 95." ROAR (February 28, 2013) ["French resistance hero, co-drafter of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and author of pamphlet that helped inspire a global youth uprising, dies."]

Rosenfeld, Seth. "Subversives: How the FBI Fought the 1960s Student Movement and Aided Reagan’s Rise to Power." Democracy Now (August 23, 2012)

Roy, Arundhati. "Capitalism: A Ghost Story" We Are Many (March 26, 2014 at The New School in NYC) ["From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product. Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation."]

Rusbridger, Alan. "Spilling the NSA’s Secrets: Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger on the Inside Story of Snowden Leaks." Democracy Now (September 23, 2013)

Sanders, Bernie. "Supreme Court Undermines Democracy by Allowing Billionaires to 'Buy Elections.'" Democracy Now (April 3, 2014)

Schaeffer, Jan. "Purple Episode 4: Media to the Rescue?" On the Media (November 26, 2019) ["A 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, showed only 23 percent of eighth graders in the United States attained “proficient” status in civics. A 2011 Newsweek survey found that 70 percent of Americans didn’t even know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. And only 26% of those surveyed in 2017 by the University of Pennsylvania could name all three branches of government. And no wonder: with STEM curriculum and standardized testing squeezing the school day, civics has become the snow leopard of the social studies curriculum. So if the knowledge vacuum is otherwise filled by misinformation and disinformation, and the result is a loss of faith and trust in democracy itself, who is left to intervene? Jan Schaffer — ombudsman for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, Pulitzer Prize–winning former journalist and founder of The Institute for Interactive Journalism — talks to Bob about what responsibility the media have to become educators, and maybe even re-assurers, of last resort."]

Scott, Peter Dale. "The Processes and Logic of The Deep State (The American Deep State by Peter Dale Scott)." Unwelcome Guests #719 (August 8, 2015) ["Unusually, just a single speaker this week: one two hour interview with the doyen of deep political research, Canadian Professor Peter Dale Scott. He provides not only a lot of details of the evolution of the post WW2 deep state in the USA, but also sketches out its guiding principles, some of the deeper patterns which allow one to understand the superficially confusing and contradictory actions of the US deep state."]

Sensoy, Özlem and Robin DiAngelo. Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education. Teachers College Press, 2017.

Serwer, Adam. "Democracy for Me -- But Not for Thee." On the Media (August 9, 2019) ["As revealed last week by presidential historian Tim Naftali, that snippet had for years been withheld by the National Archives — apparently to protect Reagan’s privacy, who presumably was unaware the conversation was being recorded. To Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic, [Ronald] Reagan’s remark was not only racist and condescending, but emblematic of a certain just-between-you-and-me white supremacism that persists to this day at the highest levels of government and continues to contaminate American democracy. In this segment, Bob and Adam discuss the history of excluding black and brown Americans from our system of self-governance, from the founding to the Reconstruction to the present."]

Shattuck, John. "Viktor Orbán’s 'velvet repression' in Hungary." Democracy Works (February 18, 2019) ["This episode begins a four-part series examining the state of democracy around the world. First up is Hungary, a country that’s often referred to in a group of countries in central and Eastern Europe that are seeing authoritarian leaders rise to power. You might have heard of Viktor Orbán or know that the country is in some way associated with George Soros, but beyond that, it’s not a place many of us spend a lot of time thinking about. We could not have found a better guest to help us make sense of what’s happening there. John Shattuck is the former President and Rector of Central European University, which Hungary’s Prime Minister recently forced out of the country. He is currently Professor of Practice in Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In this episode, John discusses Viktor Orbán’s rise to power, how he is waging war on democratic institutions, and what people in Hungary are doing to fight back."]

Shorrock, Tim. "Digital Blackwater: How the NSA Gives Private Contractors Control of the Surveillance State." Democracy Now (June 11, 2013)

Smith, Tommie. "From Sharecropper to Olympic Protester." Democracy Works #7 (April 24, 2018) ["As you’ll hear, Tommie didn’t grow up in a political family and didn’t see himself as an activist when he enrolled at San Jose State University. That changed when he met Dr. Harry Edwards and became involved with Olympic Project for Human Rights, where he found his voice and used it to speak out against racial segregation in sports and elsewhere.Tommie Smith is a true living legend. He won a gold medal in the men’s 200 meter event at the 1968 Olympics, setting a world record in the process. When he took the medal stand in Mexico City that day, he made history again by raising a black-gloved fist during the National Anthem. When Tommie and teammate John Carlos raised their fists on the podium in Mexico City, many interpreted the gesture as a symbol of the Black Power movement. However, as Tommie says, the action was not necessarily about one cause or movement. Rather, it was a symbol of a broader struggle for power and equality."]

Snyder, Timothy. "'American Abyss': Fascism Historian Tim Snyder on Trump’s Coup Attempt, Impeachment & What’s Next." Democracy Now (January 13, 2021) ["As the House votes to impeach President Trump, the FBI warns there could be a repeat of the violent insurrection he encouraged on January 6, with Trump loyalists planning to hold armed protests nationwide ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration. We speak with Timothy Snyder, a historian of fascism, who says the riot at the U.S. Capitol was “completely and utterly predictable” given President Trump’s record of stoking extremism and undermining democratic institutions. “The American republic is hanging by a thread because the president of the United States has sought to use violence to stay in power and essentially to overthrow our constitutional system,” says Snyder."]

Staal, Jonas. "Propaganda (Art) Struggle." October #94 (October 2018) ["To oppose the various propagandas discussed above, we will need infrastructures and narratives that mobilize the imagination to construct a different world. To achieve this, we will need an emancipatory propaganda and an emancipatory propaganda art. There is no prior reality to which we should strive to return; there will only be the realities that we will author collectively ourselves."]

Stangler, Cole. "Yellow Vests and the 'Grand Debate' in France." Democracy Works (February 25, 2019) ["The yellow vest movement, named for the safety vests that all drivers are required to carry in their cars, began in late 2018 over rising gas prices. The movement succeeded in having the gas tax repealed, but the protestors still took to the streets around the country every weekend. Why? Like a lot of social movements, it’s complicated. Cole has been on the ground covering the movement and joins to discuss its origins, the reaction from President Emmanuel Macron, and where things might go from here."]

Stiglitz, Joseph. "The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future." Democracy Now (June 6, 2012)

Stockton, Halle. "Fake news, clickbait, and the future of local journalism." Democracy Works #3 (March 27, 2018)

Stoller, Matt. "Monopoly vs. Democracy." Open Source (October 24, 2019) ["It’s new for most Americans that we’re embarrassed by our democracy. We don’t know where it went wrong, or whether it’ll survive. Matt Stoller explains it this way: we’ve come to do politics the way we do commerce, online and at the mall. Sellers are remote; critical choices are made for us. Our stuff comes from Walmart; our books, groceries, and now everything else from Amazon. Our lines on politics, news, opinion, and gossip come through Facebook. Our lives are designed and run to concentrate power and profit in the hands of a few faraway monopolists. No wonder we’re in a panic! Matt Stoller is here to tell you the fault, dear people, is not in our stars or even our selves but in these overnight monopolies that might just as well own us."]

Stryker, Deena. "Iceland's On-Going Revolution." Daily Kos (August 1, 2011)

Taibbi, Matt. "Who Goes to Jail? Matt Taibbi on American Injustice Gap from Wall Street to Main Street." Democracy Now (April 15, 2014)

Taub. Ben. "Guantanamo's Darkest Secret." The New Yorker  (April 15, 2019) ["The U.S. military prison’s leadership considered Mohamedou Salahi to be its highest-value detainee. But his guard suspected otherwise."]

Taylor, Astra. "It Would Feel Like Having a Future: On What Democracy Might Be." This is Hell (February 16, 2019) ["Filmmaker Astra Taylor explores the big questions around democracy in the 21st century - as the framework of the 20th century liberal order collapses, a public raised on the precarious edges of capitalism is looking for new answers to the old dilemma of which people get what power."]

---. "Who, the People?: The central truths of democracy are not always self-evident." The Baffler #43 (February 2019)

Taylor, Astra, et al. "What is Democracy?" Against the Grain (October 15, 2019) ["Democracy is one of the most contradictory terms in political discourse today. On the one hand, it evokes rule by the people. On of the other, it’s used relentlessly by elites to mask where power truly resides in our society. Is it still a word worth fighting for? That’s one of the questions posed by radical filmmaker Astra Taylor in her latest documentary “What is Democracy?”"]

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. "Black Feminism and Combahee River Collective." Monthly Review (January 1, 2019)

Tsang, Diane. "Daniel Ellsberg on Whistleblowing." Whistleblower Protection (April 20, 2018)

Volokh, Eugene. "Free Speech #52: What We Mean by 'The First Amendment.'" Think About It (May 19, 2019) ["What do we mean when we say "The First Amendment"? It's obvious: we mean the most robust protection of speech rights, religious liberty, freedom of the press, and freedom of association in the world today. Correct, says Eugene Volokh, absolutely correct. But it could change! Listen to this illuminating conversation with a leading expert on freedom of speech and constitutional law at UCLA. Volokh clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and runs the Volokh Conspiracy, a legal blog."]

Wall, Richard. "Who's Afraid of Noam Chomsky." Lew Rockwell (August 17, 2014) ["Professor Noam Chomsky is a fierce critic of US wars and foreign policy, and a brilliant analyst of the propaganda and psychological mechanisms through which the liberal-bureaucratic establishment achieves public consent and endorsement of the aggressive actions of the state. For this he is intensely admired in some quarters, and detested and reviled in others. Between the extremes of the uncritical campus adulation and the vicious ad hominem abuse to which he is sometimes subjected, there are genuine critiques to be made and refreshing doses of the unvarnished truth to be found in his voluminous output over the years."]

West, Cornel. "Maintaining Hope in the Time of Struggle and Darkness that is the Age of Trump." The Chauncey DeVega Show #258 (October 31, 2019) ["Cornel West is one of the United States’ and the world’s leading public intellectuals and truth-tellers. He is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and holds the title of Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He has also taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris. Cornel West is the author of several bestselling books including Race Matters, Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. He is also a frequent guest on CNN, C-Span and Democracy Now. Cornel West explains why hope must be kept alive in times of darkness and struggle, the power of the Black Freedom Struggle and blues sensibility to sustain and improve American democracy, and why neoliberal gangster capitalism’s assault on our humanity must be resisted. He also reflects on his support of Bernie Sanders and why Dave Chappelle is an example of the artist as truth-teller and essential provocateur."]

West, Stephen. "Dewey and Lippman on DemocracyPhilosophize This #130 (May 23, 2019)

---. "John Rawls - A Theory of Justice." Philosophize This! (January 2, 2020) ["But another way to think about the answer to this question is to say that every, great philosopher in their own way...QUESTIONED the fundamental assumptions that were present in the thinking of their time. THAT is a hallmark of a great philosopher...because when seeking solutions to philosophical problems...casting aside the cultural or linguistic assumptions of a particular snapshot in time...very often leads philosophers of the next generation to understand how those assumptions have been limiting our ways of thinking about things.The philosopher we're going to talk about today falls into this category...and he's going to question an assumption that seemed to others as radical as it was dangerous. His name was John Rawls...and this was the assumption that he questioned: Can human beings ACTUALLY LIVE and flourish for any extended period of time in liberal democratic societies?The political paradigm of the Enlightenment...liberal democratic societies. A government BY the many. Democracy. Liberal in the sense that there is a STRONG focus on rational discourse, the acceptance of outside ideas... the legitimacy of political ideas being decided by having conversations between competing ideas, let the best ideas rise to the top and direct the future of society for the time being, and if those prevailing ideas don't happen to be the ones you believe in, you're supposed to ACCEPT those ideas as part of the greater political process and work to defend your positions better the NEXT time we're having a conversation."]
 
---. "Jürgen Habermas – The Public Sphere." Philosophize This! #143 (May 1, 2020) ["When transnational corporations with very specific ends they’re trying to achieve OWN major media outlets. When there is so much power in controlling people’s values…Habermas thinks the economic/governmental system COLONIZES the lifeworld. Where we used to sit around the dinner table and have discussions to determine our thoughts about the world…we now turn on a screen and are SOLD ways to think about things. The further we got from the origins of the public sphere in those coffee houses back in France …the further we got away from communicative rationality. We got so far away from it we could barely SEE it anymore…to the point where brilliant thinkers like Adorno and Horkheimer wrote an entire book about rationality and didn’t even consider its existence! But for any chains we were supposedly wrapped in by the Enlightenment, Habermas thought the key to get us out of them was built into the Enlightenment all along. We just lost sight of it. The emancipatory potential of reason…reason’s ability to direct us AWAY from treating people as a means to an end…the type of reason GROUNDED in communication…GROUNDED in the pursuit of genuinely trying to understand the other person’s perspective and then working towards agreement…the type of reason that can allow us to make our decisions about things not by buying into an endless sales pitch, but by talking to our fellow citizens in the lifeworld comparing our individual perspecitives… True democracy, to Habermas, is when the lifeworld controls the system. Not the system controlling the lifeworld."]

Wissot, Lauren. "'Watching The Battle of Chile Helped Me to Have the Courage to Trust my Intuition…': Petra Costa on Her Oscar-nominated Doc The Edge of Democracy." Filmmaker (February 5, 2020)

Worstall, Tim. "Bernie's Democratic Socialism Isn't Socialism, It's Social Democracy." Forbes (May 17, 2016)

Wu, Timothy. "The Oppression of the Supermajority." The New York Times (March 5, 2019)

Yates, Michael. "The Great Inequality." Monthly Review (March 1, 2012)

Zha, Carl, et al. "Hong Kong Protests (Where Colonialism meets Neoliberalism)." Best of the Left #1314 (October 25, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the complicated range of forces driving the protests in Hong Kong that span the ideological spectrum."]

Ziblatt, Daniel. "How Democracies Die author Daniel Ziblatt on the ‘grinding work’ of democracy." Democracy Works (April 10, 2018) ["Daniel Ziblatt has done a lot of interviews since the release of How Democracies Die, the bestselling book he co-wrote with Steven Levitsky. But we asked him a question he’d never gotten before — about a line toward the end of the book when he refers to democracy as “grinding work.” The idea that democracy isn’t easy is a central theme of this podcast. As How Democracies Die illustrates, it’s much easier to succumb to the power of an autocratic leader than it is to stand up and protect the institutions that serve as the guardrails of democracy. Ziblatt, a professor of government at Harvard, talks about how the book came about and the impact it’s had since it was released earlier this year."]

Ziegler, Mary. "After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate." The Legal History Podcast #1 (May 25, 2019) ["Siobhan talks with Mary Ziegler, Stearns Weaver Miller Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law, about her book, After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate. Ziegler’s work uses the landmark American abortion rights case, Roe vs. Wade to explore litigation as a vessel for social change and the role the court plays in democracy. In addition to traditional archival research, Ziegler recorded over one hundred oral histories of people in the pro-life and pro-choice camps, allowing her to move beyond caricatures and delve more precisely into the catalysts for these individuals' points of view."]

Zoller, Matt. "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy." World in Time (November 22, 2019) ["'There are many arguments for what is at the root cause of our current social dysfunction,' journalist Matt Stoller writes at the beginning of his book Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. 'Various explanations include the prevalence of racism, automation, the rise of China, inadequate education or training, the spread of the internet, Donald Trump, the collapse of political norms, or globalization. Many of these explanations have merit. But there’s another much simpler explanation of what is going on. Our systems are operating the way that they were designed to. In the 1970s, we decided as a society that it would be a good idea to allow private financiers and monopolists to organize our world. As a result, what is around us is a matrix of monopolies, controlling our lives and manipulating our communities and our politics. This is not just happenstance. It was created. The constructs shaping our world were formed as ideas, put into law, and now they are our economic and social reality. Our reality is formed not just of monopolized supply chains and brands, but an entire language that precludes us from even noticing, from discussing the concentrated power all around us.'"]




What is Democracy? (Trailer) from NFB/marketing on Vimeo.

Michael Benton -- I wish I had grown up next to or personally knowing Cornel West. I have never met him, yet he has irrevocably altered the way I think and act in this world, always in the most positive of ways. He is a total package: critical thinker, spiritual leader, default positivity, radical love, powerful rhetorician, cross-cultural theorist/historian and political activist. Check out this discussion he has with Joe Rogan - the conversation flows so easy and together they talk about a wide range of the most important and interesting issues of our culture/society.

You have to be able to find a firm grounding to think through the bullshit because it can contaminate us with despair (or nihilism).

I find it helpful to identify positive thinkers/activists that operate for me as a guide through the morass. Critical thinking is truly important, but just as important is retaining a sense of positivity/possibility. I don't mean we should seek out hollow hallmark fantasies or self-help banal happiness. What I mean is the need to cultivate a radical love for the world & its beings in order to be able to deal with the knowledge of what is wrong with the world and to build the fortitude to do something about it (in whatever way we are capable of doing that).




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