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

"Are rights things to be granted by the powerful to the deserving few, contingent on their obedience, someone’s convenience, and adherence to the prevailing rules and conventions? Or..." Laura Flanders' commentary, The F-Word. Help us thrive and not just survive, by becoming a member https://Patreon.com/theLFShow   Laura Flanders and Friends Crew:  Laura Flanders-Executive Prod...

Don't remember the past? Does that mean you're condemned to repeat it? What does our country's past tell us about our present— and how can it help us imagine a better future? This week, two leading thinkers on the tricky challenges of democracy. What are the best tools— and even the best words we can use to create a better future? Music Featured: "Freedom" by David Morales and Janice Rob...

Laura interviewed Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and U.N. Special Envoy on Climate Change, at the Bellagio Women’s Leadership Forum. Robinson speaks on producing visionary women leaders and dismantling patriarchy, particularly as tools for achieving climate justice. One of the biggest tasks we face in building a just transition to a habitable planet is, according to Mary, a huge shift...

Fifty years ago at The Stonewall Inn, gay pride took the form of a riot, not a parade. Today, the question remains as relevant as ever: Just how do we define "love is love," and what are we willing to do to defend one another? This week, we speak with a group of LGBTQIA+ leaders who each have a different relationship to being out and proud. We've come a long way they say, but in the next...

'No matter the result of the elections, Barcelona's Ada Colau and Barcelona en Comú continue to put principles into practice.' Support theLFShow! Help us thrive and not just survive, by becoming a member .   Laura Flanders and Friends Crew:  Laura Flanders-Executive Producer, Writer;  Sabrina Artel-Supervising Producer; Jeremiah Cothren-Senior Producer; Veronica Delgado-Video Editor...

Someone turns 65 every 8 seconds in this country, and as our elderly population grows, so does the need to build an economy around our future selves. In this episode, three leaders in the age justice movement share their ideas about how we can age with dignity, power, and change our society to reflect just that. Then we visit the largest home care cooperative in the U.S. to take a look at age just...

400 years since the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown, many people agree reparations are due, but what would they look like? How about affordable property put into Black hands, in perpetuity? Could community land trusts be one way of making repairs? A lawyer, a policy advocate and an organizer with homeless New Yorkers explain what’s possible, and what’s being done. For research materia...

"Eighty years ago, this April, Spain fell under a thirty year dictatorship after right beat left in a brutal civil war. History feels acutely alive to me today and not just because for the first time in my life, I’m in Spain." The F-Word, Laura Flanders' commentary. Support theLFShow! Help us thrive and not just survive, by becoming a member.   Laura Flanders and Friends Crew: ...

This week, we’re happy to share with you a podcast we love and enjoy called ‘Building Local Power” produced by the Institute For Local Self-Reliance and hosted by ILSR staff members Chris Mitchell, Stacy Mitchell and John Farrell. The podcast offers new ideas for breaking the hold of corporate monopolies and expanding the power of communities to chart their own future. The following episode is tit...

Across the world, renters in cities are being pushed out of neighborhoods because landlords and homeowners can make more money temporarily renting out their spaces to tourists. In 2014 thousands of people took to the streets of BCN to protest Air Bnb. Four years later with Barcelona en Comú represented in City Council the city has successfully passed legislation to limit Air BnB and lay some groun...

Our city's economy – what is it for? New York's has been very good at piling up profits and building tall buildings. But all that private profit has come at a cost to public services and public trust. Could it be different? On this week's show, we talk about the new conversations that are happening between labor unions and community members. Between residents, workers, and employers about how ever...

"white nationalists have been targeting bookstores and libraries across the country for a while"....."It’s not the hate that’s new. It’s the apparent sense of entitlement. ....they’re out in plain sight, and not just in the media’s backwaters but in the nation’s capital...." The F-Word, Laura Flanders' commentary. Support the LFShow! You'll receive a copy of Laura Flanders' Izz...

This week, two artists who expand our ideas about beauty, risk, mobility, and inclusion. Wheelchair dancer and esteemed choreographer Alice Sheppard, and MacArthur Genius Award-winning action architect Elizabeth Streb. What difference does art make? Should art-making be a human right? What will it take to disable the limits society puts around “normal”?  Music Featured:  “How Do You Feel?” by Vane...

Art organizations and sponsorship dollars have gone hand in hand for decades. But with backlash and protests over donors ethics, should cultural institutions begin looking into new funding streams? We look at the role of private dollars vs. public good in cultural art institutions. PLUS, A AUDIO EXCLUSIVE: The conversation continues with guest Jonathan H. Marks We discuss his new book “Perils of P...

"The Attorney General’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee and his standoff with the House may be important. Something, sometime, may come of it. But let’s consider the opportunity cost of all that one-note coverage." The F-Word, Laura Flanders' commentary.
Support the LFShow! You'll receive a copy of Laura Flanders' Izzy Award acceptance speech on independent journalism and...

Recently, a fire at Highlander Center gained national attention for the historic movement institution. Donations, messages of love, and some knee-jerk panic poured in for the co-directors, well known to the Laura Flanders Show. Co-directors Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson and Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele join us from Chattanooga to discuss the fire at their home, as well as arsons across the country and w...

Search for school cheating stories today and you’ll find a slew of articles and news reports on parents charged in the recent college admissions scandal. But skip back to 2015 and the eyes of the education world were on Georgia, where the state’s longest-running criminal case involved teachers and administrators, predominantly Black, accused and convicted in a RICO case of changing student test re...

For our Patreon Community , you’ll find more in depth information on this week's show, including research materials and additional links to explore. Read Nate Powell’s About Face connecting paramilitary influence on civilian consumer style as we shrug off the encroaching normalization of fascism. And more on Mohammad Saba’aneh’s book, White & Black: Political Cartoons from Palestine, which dra...

"These days, establishment journalists spend inordinate amounts of time, bemoaning their own welfare and the state of their beleaguered industry. but it’s rarely been journalism fed and watered by the establishment that’s asked anything uncomfortable and McKee called for us to have uncomfortable conversations." The F-Word, Laura Flanders' commentary. Support the LFShow!   Laura Flan...

Segregation in Education is as bad as ever, and no end appears to be sight. So what approaches might make a difference. What if Segregation, per se, wasn’t the problem? This week, educators speak out, and we visit an Afrocentric school in Brooklyn, where mindfulness and race are not a detail. Music Feature: “Plain Folks” by Alexis P. Suter and T.U.B.A., released on HipBone Records. Guests: -Rafiq...

It’s time to start looking at conflict in a new and different way -- and women are at the forefront. A look into a new PBS film series with an all-female directors that is focusing attention on what we can learn from women who risked their lives for peace --  and changed history in the process.  Guests: Julia Bacha, a Peabody and Guggenheim award-winning filmmaker, and director of “Naila and the U...

Trump’s hardline policies have all sorts of people asking how our immigration rules got to be so open to abuse - and what alternatives are out there? Is there any country that treats migrants right? And if so, what could we learn from them? Joining Laura to unpack these issues are Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Senior Editor at The Nation magazine and author of “The Cosmopolites”, a book that focuses o...

The fight for legalization of marijuana has never been easy and it's still not, as evidenced by the recent collapse of a month's long effort in New Jersey and the battle still raging in New York. A key issue in both is how to ensure that legalizing of cannabis doesn't just make for another privatized corporate monopoly. But instead repairs the harm that's been done by the war on drugs. Music in th...

"A collusion crisis. Barr says Mueller says he found no proof of a Russia/Trump Campaign conspiracy to undermine US democracy. Oh no! How are cable companies going to keep their ratings up with an audience that’s collusion-hooked?" The F-Word, Laura Flanders' commentary. Support the LFShow!   Laura Flanders and Friends Crew:  Laura Flanders-Executive Producer, Writer;  Sab...

Just days before the anniversary of activist Marielle Franco's assassination in Brazil, prosecutors there charged two former police officers with her murder. Those arrests may provide a partial answer to the question of who killed her but many other questions, including who ordered her killing and why, remain unanswered. This week, we talk with Yifat Susskind of MADRE and K.K Verdade of ELAS about...