Laura Flanders and Friends: Solutions-Focused Progressive Perspectives on Politics, News, and Culture

"Saket Soni is a brilliant labor organizer. He's also a talented storyteller. His first book, The Great Escape, A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America, tells the gripping, can't-put-it down tale of one of the largest human trafficking schemes in modern US history and how 500 Indian-born workers brought their corporate exploiters to account...." The F-Word is released bi-weekl...

“THE GREAT ESCAPE: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America” tells the story of one of the largest human trafficking schemes in modern American history and how the traffickers were finally held to account. Saket Soni was the co-founder of The New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice in the post-Katrina years. Today he’s the founder and director of Resilience Force, a proje...

Our monthly contributors via Patreon/ActBlue receive EARLY ACCESS to listen and download the full uncut conversations from our weekly LFShow.   Season 3, Episode 341-  “The Future is Disabled” with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha:  Writer, Disability/Transformative Justice Movement Worker; Author, The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs Description: “At the core of my wo...

What are the stories that will be driving news coverage in the coming year for communities of color and our network partners in the media that serve them? In this 2023 preview for our monthly Meet the BIPOC Press roundtable with URL Media, we consider issues involving the economy, community investment, reproductive justice, local government, environmental justice, LGBTQ+ rights, the aftermath of C...

Description:  In 2020, the authorities at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (better known as Angola, for the former plantation on which it stands) shut down a play in the middle of a performance.  What happened in that audience of incarcerated men that got guards so concerned? That’s the subject of “Angola Do You Hear Us? Voices From a Plantation Prison," (2023 Oscar Short-Listed) a new MTV documen...

The F-Word is released bi-weekly featuring timely commentaries by Laura Flanders and guests. Twenty-three minutes. That’s how long it takes for your brain to refocus after shifting from one task to the next. Check your email, glance at a text, and you’ll pay for what’s called a “switch effect.” “We’ve fallen for a mass delusion that our brains can multi-task. They can’t,” author Johann Hari found...

Are we too distracted to think? The answer is worse than you’d expect. In his latest book, New York Times bestselling author Johann Hari says we’re all the victims of attention theft and the consequences are catastrophic, for our personal lives and our democracy. Adults in the workplace focus on a task for 3 minutes on average, and that number is declining. “We've got so many crises we need to dea...

Historian Howard Zinn would have turned 100 in 2022. His monumental work, A People’s History of the United States, published in 1980, continues to have an impact today. For Zinn’s’ centennial we explore what made his model of history different with three guests who were influenced by his bottom-up approach: Anthony Arnove worked with Zinn throughout the latter part of his life, and wrote the intro...

Is the American Dream dead? When Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of one of the founders of Disney, received a message from a worker at Disney’s flagship theme park, she discovered that some employees were earning one two-thousandth of the earnings of CEO Bob Iger. She wrote to Iger, testified in Congress and ultimately made a film, “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales.” In one scene she ask...

Our Patreon supporters receive early access to listen and download the full uncut conversation from our weekly episodes.  Description:  In 2020, the authorities at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (better known as Angola, for the former plantation on which it stands) shut down a play in the middle of a performance.  What happened in that audience of incarcerated men that got guards so concerned? T...

“At the core of my work and life is the belief that disabled wisdom is the key to our survival and expansion,” shares Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, a writer, disability, and transformative justice movement worker. Laura speaks with Leah about her newly-released book of essays, The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs. The book, published by Arsenal Pulp Press, an inde...

Become a member! We are forward thinking, ad free, independent media thanks to you, our members! Become a member  at Patreon.com/theLFShow Description:  What if there was a way to trade time and share skills with your neighbors in a way that met a range of needs without involving cash? Since 2017, the Kola Nut Collaborative has operated Chicago’s only open platform, time and skills exchange, other...

Enjoy the full uncut conversation from our episode "Survival Guide for Humans Learned from Marine Mammals" featuring Alexis Pauline Gumbs , Poet, Independent Scholar & Activist and author of “Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals” published by AK Press as part of adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy Series. Episode Description:   Are you drowning? The start of the school year c...

Enjoy the full uncut conversation from our episode 'Meet the BIPOC Press Roundtable:  Abbott Elementary Teaches Us All ' featuring co-hosts from URL Media S. Mitra Kalita & Sara Lomax-Reese ; and guests Joyce M. Abbott , Educator & Climate Manager Philadelphia School District ducator & Abbott Elementary Namesake; Sheryl Lee Ralph , Leading Actor for ABC Comedy Series ‘ Abbott Elementary’ & Activis...

Become a member this week and your donation will be matched up to $5,000 for our year end fundraiser!  We are forward thinking, lad free, independent media, thanks to you, our members!  Become a member by donating at LauraFlanders.org Show Description : Historian Howard Zinn would have turned 100 in 2022. His monumental work, A People’s History of the United States, published in 1980, continues to...

Many questions remain about the recent attack on North Carolina’s electrical grid, which left tens of thousands of citizens unsettled, frightened and without power or heat for days. Officials say it was a “malicious” and “intentional” attack, but who is responsible  for this destruction of vital infrastructure, and what was their motive? In a growing climate of fear and political intimidation, man...

 In 2020, the authorities at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (better known as Angola, for the former plantation on which it stands) shut down a play in the middle of a performance.  What happened in that audience of incarcerated men that got guards so concerned? That’s the subject of “Angola Do You Hear Us? Voices From a Plantation Prison," a new MTV documentary directed and edited by Cinque Nort...

"What makes the obsession with polling so problematic is that it ignores the way that polls, even when they're right, are bad for our politics. Polls shrink our options, over-determine policy, and distract us from real life."   The F-Word is released bi-weekly featuring timely commentaries by Laura Flanders and guests. Flex your media muscles, become a monthly sustaining member for $3, $5, $12 at...

(full episode notes are at https://Patreon.com/theLFShow)  When it came to the midterms, mainstream white pundits got a lot wrong that local, Black, Brown and BIPOC media got right, and they're still missing many important stories. That's the message from this roundtable of journalists we call Meet the BIPOC Press, a monthly feature of the Laura Flanders Show.  What do the money media’s hits and m...

Pilgrims, Indians, the myth of the grateful colonized person — it’s been at the core of a persistent but false Thanksgiving narrative that has distorted the true relationship between Indigenous Peoples and white colonizers dating back to Plymouth Rock. As many of us observe Thanksgiving and Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the new federal holiday, Judith LeBlanc, executive director of the Native Organizer...

"Win, lose or draw, the allure of the “white working class voter” never dulls for big D Democrats." The F-Word is released bi-weekly featuring timely commentaries by Laura Flanders and guests. Flex your media muscles, become a monthly sustaining member for $3, $5, $12 at https://Patreon.com/theLFShow  Independent Media! Advertising free!   Laura Flanders and Friends Crew:  Laura Flanders...

Were grassroots activists able to defend democracy in 2022? For this post-election roundtable, Laura convenes organizers to discuss some of the critical takeaways from this year’s election. What have grassroots activists on the frontlines of our democracy learned from this significant midterm election when so many of their issues have been weaponized — from criminal justice, the Native vote, women...

Episode Description (Full Episode Notes)- Can a predominantly white state legislature overturn the votes of a predominantly Black city? Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s District Attorney was elected in 2017 on a reform agenda and has been targeted by a GOP backlash ever since. This October, on the last day of business before the 2022 midterms, Republican State Rep. Martina White filed articles for im...

Full Episode Notes are available HERE Sarah Jones, Tony Award-winning performer and comedian, is making a different kind of documentary. She calls it an ‘unorthodoc’ about sex, power, race, and our economy and how you even talk about such things in today's polarized and commercial media world. "Sell/Buy/Date” expands on Jones' acclaimed 2016 off-Broadway solo production of the same name. She plays...

You can catch my interview with award-winning reporter Soledad OBrien about how she recommends reporting on liars, through subscribing to this free podcast of the Laura Flanders Show, or catch the program on hundreds of PBS stations. Go to LauraFlanders.org for more information.   The F-Word is released bi-weekly featuring timely commentaries by Laura Flanders and guests. Flex your media muscles,...