Land and food has been used as a weapon to keep people of color in second class status, in this episode Laura looks at the ways it can be used as a tool for liberation. Laura speaks with Jalal Sabur & Raymond Figueroa, who are using fresh food to rebalance the scale and dig up the school to prison pipeline. Jalal Sabur is the co-founder of the Freedom Food Alliance, a collective of farmers, political prisoners, and organizers in upstate New York, and Raymond Figueroa, Jr. works with the Friends of Brook Farm, an alternatives-to-incarceration program that works with young people affected by the prison system. Also in this episode, fisherman Bren Smith is modeling a future for fishing after fish - with Kelp Farming. All that and a few words from Laura on giving thanks and food power.
The “surveillance-industrial complex” has profound, but poorly understood impacts on our political, structural, economic, and cultural lives, says Hamid Khan, director of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, board member of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Political Research Associates, and Youth Justice Coalition. Also in this episode, we meet the students that forced Columbia University to divest from private prisons. And Laura on US government spying on Black Lives Matter movement activists.
Can one of the founders of the craft website Etsy.com - valued in the billions of dollars - lead a change in the way we do business? Etsy.com is the world’s largest certified socially responsible business, and they have now launched Etsy.org, a business education program for businesspeople who want to make a better world. Laura speaks with Matthew Stinchcomb, the Vice President of Values and Impact for Etsy.com, and the founder of Etsy.org; and Donna Schaper, Senior Minister for Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village and author of several books, including the upcoming The Time Famine, as well as a collaborator on Etsy.org. Also in this episode: The WORX Printing Cooperative gives a short history of unjust trade, and Laura discusses New Economy Week.
Like all men held at Guantanamo Bay, Mohammed el Gharani, who was imprisoned at the age of 14, is barred from entering the USA. But American artist Laurie Anderson found a way to bring him to the states, via telepresence. Laura talks with Anderson about presence, absence and the questions raised in Anderson’s latest attention-getting performance, Habeas Corpus. We also hear from el Gharani, who was held at Guantanamo from 2002 until his release in 2009, about prison-camp solidarity, the prisoner who is his hero, and his thoughts on slavery and the Middle Passage - then and now. All that and an F Word from Laura on a long, 40 second delay.
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