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

Laura Flanders weekly commentary the 'fword'. This week, Surveillance. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention and if you are, well the feds know about it.   Write to Laura, she'd love to hear from you Laura@LauraFlanders.com Note to our podcast subscribers, weekly the F-Word will be coming to you in addition to the weekly show.  And we will be launching a weekly mini-sode soon.  Pleas...

Going beyond the headlines of the Ferguson story. We'll talk with one of the directors of the documentary Whose Streets?. As the news cameras left Ferguson, Missouri, after the police killing of Michael Brown, Sabaah Folayan and her team stayed on to document what happens to people subjected to police violence as a matter of routine. And an F Word from me on surveillance. If you're not outraged, y...

From taking power to making power. This week on The Laura Flanders Show, a special report from Athens, Greece where many are asking if progressives in government can change much at all if people don’t first change society. In 2015, anti-austerity Greeks were disappointed by the progressive left Syriza government, which they'd voted into office after the financial crisis, but the other things they...

Harvey on Harvey. Marxist geographer David Harvey weighs in on natural and not so natural disasters and how we might organize our cities better to avoid them. And Thanu Yakupitiyage from _ 350. org explains _why climate justice requires that we make movements which will reverse our policies on refugees.  Music featured: "New York Minute" by Nickodemus feat. The Real Live Show, Sadat X, I...

This week dreams and defiance. Award winning playwright and essayist Wallace Shawn, discusses his new book Night Thoughts, meditations and speculative dreams for a better world. And Ed Whitfield, from The Fund for Democratic Communities in Greensboro, NC, on cooperatives, consumer politics and impeachments. And the fword, where are the monuments to the motley crew? Music featured: “Heart Seed” by...

Anti-Trump is not enough! This week, Laura Flanders show comes to you from Berlin. In the lead up to the German elections, the German left is saying that opposing Trump is simply not enough. But the left has work to do too, as we'll see. Then, two guests join us in Cape Town, South Africa to discuss new governance from the left.  Music featured:  "Histoire De Molly" by Ballaké Sissoko &a...

Revisit:  We’re living in a time of economic babble, where politicians and economists throw out words like “reform,” “privatize,” and “austerity” to prop up corrupt capitalist opportunists. So says our guest this week, economist Michael Hudson, author of J is for Junk Economics. Plus, a report from Diverse Filmmaker’s Alliance on the Yemeni bodega workers who went on strike in New York to protest...

This week we revisit a show from the archives, Adaku Utah, founder of healing collective Harriet's Apothecary, and J Bob Alotta, executive director of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, which supports grassroots LGBTQ efforts across the globe. Utah and Alotta discuss what healing and healing justice would look like for communities under attack and in particular, for trans women of color a...

Laura speaks with Aaron Tanaka, founder and director of the Center for Economic Democracy (CED) about his longtime advocacy and visionary work for the next system of solidarity economics. To change the circumstances of injustice, we have to build our communities’ governance power to take control of their economic resources -- so says Tanaka. Tanaka and the CED are one of the many organizations beh...

Can music make a movement? This week, legendary music producer Danny Goldberg takes us back to a time when "All You Need is Love" was not meant to be ironic, and we talk about his new book, In Search of the Lost Chord about the hippie summer of 1967. Then, from today's movement music scene, Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman celebrate the release of their new album, Intrinsic and perform fo...

Throw out what you think you know about economics. This week, self-described “renegade economist” Kate Raworth of Oxford University, explains how to think like a reality based economist, and two eco-feminists, one from South Africa, the other Mauritius, share a chat under a tree, about Marx, feminism and life on the planet. All that and a few words from me on Venezuela and the President's obsessio...

No is not enough', says Naomi Klein, so if no isn't sufficient, what might be? This week, ​Laura talks with author/activist Gar Alperovitz, co-chair of the Next System Project (a framework for imagining 'the next system' of governance, democracy, and security). From the gloom of today he sees the principles of a Pluralist Commonwealth emerging. Then a video from Local Futures, counts down the many...

The GOP's anti-Obamacare push is defeated for now. But what if the debate over healthcare was as much about human and community health as it is about partisan politics? This week on the LF Show, health crusaders Loretta Ross and Lynn Paltrow explain why reproductive justice requires racial and class equity and Laura celebrates Oregon's new Reproductive Health Equity Act which moves everyone forwar...

Although cities across the country have announced themselves as sanctuaries, the queer and trans communities who defined this movement have been routinely failed by those same cities' adherence to regressive policing tactics. This week, Jennicet Gutiérrez, of La Familia Trans Queer Liberation Movement, and Hamid Khan, of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, join Laura to take measure of the contradicti...

Organizing in a Trump and Amazon World -- new concentrations of power are bringing forth new models of resistance. This week on the show, Cathy Albisa and Sabino Milian discuss the targeting of activists in immigration sweeps. Those ICE raids aren't that random they say. And as Amazon gets ever bigger, what happens to the workers behind your mouse-click? We’ll hear how low-wage warehouse workers a...

The lines between politics and branding have been blurred, not just in recent years, but in a gradual effort by corporations to commodify media and politics. So says our guest this week, Naomi Klein, joining Laura to discuss her most recent book No Is Not Enough. How will the movements of resistance and creation challenge a “reality tv politics?,” and where is it already happening? Klein sets out...

Money media keep telling us that Trump voters are sticking by him, but are they? And what do so-called swing voters really want? Working America, the community organizing affiliate of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., took to the streets of Ohio to find out. Matt Morrison, the deputy director of Working America, shares the findings of the Front Porch Focus Group, and we hear from some of the canvassers who knock...

A May Day Special Report from the Laura Flanders Show features the mass mobilization of the people on International Worker's Day 2017!  May Day urges us to dream bigger, to set aside conservative notions of what is feasible and focus instead on what is just.  This episode follows organizers as they present their visions of a better world - and what they're doing to build it. They raise the questio...

This week, from the promises of Syriza in Greece to the demands of Brexit in the U.K: how two landmark events in Europe help to forecast the direction of its left. Helena Sheehan is the author of new book, "The Syriza Wave," chronicling what she calls the failure of Greece's radical left to deliver on its campaign. She's joined by Natalie, co founder of Matters of the Earth and organizer...

If, in the twenty-first century, credit is the new capital , what are the implications for our finances, but also our relationships?  This week, Laura talks with Ivan Ascher, author of a new book on The Portfolio Society, and debt activist Pam Brown, about the implications of a society based on risk rather than labor. And we hear from Mandy Cabot, CEO of Dansko shoes who chose her workers over a c...

A new world based on community and collaboration is closer than you think. We can steward resources together, in fact, millions of people are doing just that. And not just in the history books. This week, from Kingston, NY, author and activist David Bollier, Co Founder of the Commons Strategy Group, explains what it means to Think Like A Commoner. Then, two activists engaged in Commons projects ri...

Systematic problems don't limit themselves to just the countries we know and hear about; racism, occupation, profiteering, these are global problems and the solutions, too, must look to the world. In our first interview of this week, Cazembe Jackson, a transman and anti-racist socialist organizer from Atlanta, speaks to how the American South is typically erased from activist conversations -- desp...

How can we collaborate across skills, communities, and history to build new spaces? On this week's show, we talk to Pamela Shifman and Iris Bowen, two of the minds behind the Women's Building project, which is transforming a former New York women's prison into a space for activism, community, and reclamation. Plus, an interview with Yoav Litvin, author of 2Create, a book which documents the possib...

A May Day Special Report from the Laura Flanders Show features the mass mobilization of the people on International Worker's Day! Before May Day 2017, we talk to organizers about what they imagine will come from this year's day of springtime resistance. People are rising up to call for transformative justice, and they are working towards it in new and creative ways. May Day urges us to dream bigge...

On this week's episode, a question of how we can use direct action to create and sustain long-range, inclusive and effective movements with guests L.A. Kauffman and Jesse Myerson and later in the show Looking for leadership towards a just transition? Community building tactics for survival resilience and peace?  Don’t look up, Look Down for expertise, say two organizers and they’re upbeat! Esteban...