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Laura Flanders is the host of "GRIT TV" the new, news and culture discussion program aired daily on Free Speech TV (Dish Network ch. 9415) and online at the popular blog site Firedoglake.com. Flanders also hosts RadioNation, on Air America Radio, the weekly radio program of the Nation Magazine. She is the author of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics Back from the Politiicans (The Penguin Press, 2007) and the New York Times bestseller BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004), an expose of women in George W. Bush's Cabinet. Flanders was founding director of the Women's Desk at the media watch group, FAIR and for more than ten years she produced and hosted CounterSpin, Fair's radio program. For more information and to contribute video to GRIT TV go to www.grittv.org.
(4 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 28, 2018 Amazon Gives to End Homelessness? That's Rich.
They call it Giving Tuesday, and we've just marked the seventh annual this week. It's supposed to kick off a season of charitable giving, but the way some corporate robber barons use it for public relations is enough to turn your stomach.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, November 11, 2018 WTF White Women?
2016 was bad. 2018 was worse. While 52 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and Mike Pence in 2016, in 2018, 76 percent of white women voted for Brian Kemp. So white women are either stupid or spoiled. I say spoiled.
SHARE Monday, November 5, 2018 Hate Speech at Homeland Security
Someone, most likely in broad daylight beneath half a dozen surveillance cameras, felt confident enough to write "KILL NIGGERS" in capital letters on what has got to be one of the most highly policed blocks in the world. Who? Will we ever know?
(9 comments) SHARE Saturday, October 27, 2018 Is Donald Trump Responsible for Violence? Yes.
Trump. Complicit in killing? Absolutely. This president's closer to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates than any other, and he's stayed that way, not only since the demonstration assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but over almost four years of a Saudi air war that's created what the UN calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
SHARE Tuesday, July 31, 2018 Ominous Silence on the Anniversary of the ADA
The Americans with Disabilities Act turned 28 this July. The ADA was signed into law on July 26th, 1990 by the first President Bush. It prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in all areas of public life.
SHARE Saturday, July 7, 2018 Jeff Sessions Sets Back the Clock
Pay no attention to what the media says about how undermined Jeff Sessions is. President Donald Trump may bait him publicly via tweet, but in private, at the Department of Justice, Sessions is a man on a mission to roll back civil rights. And that's just what he's doing.
(2 comments) SHARE Saturday, June 23, 2018 National Suicide Point?
Colonizers cut down fruit trees and olive groves and uprooted relationships to break apart autonomous social networks. Smash society and you create craven people. Craven, from the early English word meaning crushed, defeated, overwhelmed.
(2 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 5, 2018 Throwing Shade, Not Light, on Youth Voting
The seasonal downpour is especially important this year because, for the first time, 18-35-year-old "millennials" -- and their even younger counterparts, "generation z" -- will be America's single largest voting block with power to swing the result if they actually turn out to cast a ballot. The perennial question is, will they?
SHARE Friday, May 25, 2018 After Brexit, Blexit: Putting Your Money Where Your Life Is
Brexit's what the British public voted to do when they felt the European Union wasn't serving their best interests. Blexit's what some Black residents of the Twin Cities have decided to do to free themselves from the city's white dominated financial institutions.
(1 comments) SHARE Monday, May 21, 2018 Life or Death for the FCC
Reverse net neutrality? Open the floodgates to more media monopoly? Chairman Pai, a former staffer to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has in mind to accomplish all that and more. He leads the commission's Republican majority in lockstep, and they've already proposed radical reductions to Lifeline, the meager subsidy that helps low income people connect to doctors, nurses, and public assistance.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, May 8, 2018 What if Ida B. Wells Depended on Facebook?
From Paine to Wells, it has always been media at the margins -- not the center -- that has brought critical issues to a boil so that bigger, "recognized" media could inhale the steam. American democracy has not advanced thanks to the mainstream media, but rather thanks to reporters on a mission and with the means to tell the uncomfortable, unfamiliar, uncommon truth.
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, April 11, 2018 After Maria: Puerto Rican Self-Determination
What's in store for Puerto Rico's future? Some people are pushing to privatize everything from education to the power grid. In the massive gaps left by our official response, individuals, communities, and organizations are stepping in.
SHARE Wednesday, April 4, 2018 Monopoly Capitalism: At The Breaking Point?
Monopoly capitalism may be on its last legs! This week, economist Michael Hudson joins us to say his predictions on the Trump budget have come true and seem to suggest, more than ever, that capitalism is not only a disservice to the people, but it's also unsuccessful.
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, March 21, 2018 Healthcare Isn't Big Business Or Big Philanthropy! -- Ben Palmquist and Dr. Steffie Woolhandler
US healthcare is still in crisis. Over 30 million Americans remain uninsured, and even more are sickened by sky-high insurance costs. This January Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon announced that they were banding together to form a new healthcare... entity.
(7 comments) SHARE Sunday, March 19, 2017 Wake Up, Liberals -- Either We Hang Together or We Fall Apart
There's one thing people on the left need to get deadly serious about under the Trump administration, either we hang together or we hang apart. Donald Trump and his supporters are deadly serious about harassing, intimidating, villifying and removing all those they consider subversive. And their immigration program is just a start.
SHARE Saturday, May 14, 2016 Who Needs Panama When You Have the Home State of Joe Biden?
Never discount the deference in our media for those with money and influence, or the disdain they have for reporting that's done mostly elsewhere. But the most important part of the answer is: Americans don't need Fonseca. Plenty of US law firms manage offshore assets right here. They don't need to go to Panama because they can find those firms in the US.
(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 1, 2016 Lucy Parsons: The Anarchist and Intersectional Feminist Who Inspired May Day
Lucy Parsons was the only woman of color, and one of only two women delegates -- the other being Mother Jones -- among the 200 men at the founding convention of the IWW, the Militant Industrial Workers of the World. There, she was the only woman to give a speech. She called women the "slaves of slaves" and urged the IWW to fight for equality and charge underpaid women a lower rate for union fees.
SHARE Friday, April 8, 2016 The Primaries Are Over: Don't Give In To Panic And Mute
a successful candidate is one like Ellison, the guy who rallies people to believe that the future is about more than fear -- and change is possible, in their lives, in their families, in their country. And they can be a part of it. Bernie Sanders has rallied a lot people -- just that way -- most especially young voters. He's received 80-plus percent of the youth vote in several states.
SHARE Thursday, March 17, 2016 A Great National Sick-Out -- It's Past Time
After months of attempting to grab legislators' attention, the teachers called in sick, en masse earlier this year, causing almost all city schools to close, and while they withdrew their labor, they flooded the social media with images of just what they were so sick of: Broken toilet seats in the student's bathrooms, mushrooms on their classroom walls, leaking ceilings, moldy food.
SHARE Friday, March 4, 2016 Dark Money: What Might the Money Media Cover If They Weren't Covering Trump?
Is today's election auction normal or inevitable? Neither. A handful of Supreme Court decisions, decided by a single vote unloosed the cash-flow. It's happened mostly over the last 10 years. As the Brennan Center reported this January, just one justice shifting opinion could speedily restore common sense limits on big spending.