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The Laura Flanders Show — Society & Culture
The Laura Flanders Show

Award winning host, author and journalist Laura Flanders interviews forward-thinking people from the world of politics, business, culture and social movements. The show explores actionable models for creating a better world by reporting on the people and movements driving systemic change. We spotlight the solutions of tomorrow, today. The show airs on PBS stations in over 80% of the US market, and airs on 40+ community radio stations, and is available on YouTube and as a podcast. Online subscribers receive lots of video and audio web exclusives. Recent specials include “Indigenous People’s Power”, “James Baldwin: Lessons for the US”, “Building Public Trust for Public Health”, “Countering the Coup From the Grassroots Up”. Recent special guests include Representative Karen Bass, environmental activist Jane Fonda, economist Robert Reich, author/activist Naomi Klein, agrarian reformer Shirley Sherrod, novelist Arundhati Roy, economist Michael Hudson and ’Next System” theorist Gar Alperovitz.

Latest Episodes:

Taking on the Sheriff with Art and Activism: Patrisse Cullors & Kai Lumumba Barrow May 20, 2015

Show notes

How is the Black Lives Matter movement reshaping models of social movement leadership? We continue our ongoing conversation on Black Lives Matter with another of the movements cofounders, Patrisse Cullors. Patrisse is an artist, organizer and freedom fighter. She is also the founder and executive director of Dignity and Power Now, based in Los Angeles. Among her projects are the Coalition to End Sheriff Violence, and she recently directed a theatrical piece titled POWER: From the Mouths of the Occupied, based on community stories of police violence. Also in this episode, artist and revolutionary Kai Lumumba Barrow discusses her new "visual opera," set to premiere in New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and Laura explores the links between police violence in the US and internationally.

Boycott From Within: Ronnie Barkan and Haidar Eid May 12, 2015

Show notes

The two state solution has been declared dead too many times to count. But have we turned a corner? In the last Israeli elections, Prime Minister Netanyahu raised alarm about Palestinian citizens voting, and declared his opposition to a two state solution. This week's episode airs 67 years after the founding of the state of Israel, known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or tragedy. To mark the occasion, we speak to both Israeli and Palestinian activists.

Ronnie Barkan is an Israeli activist, a conscientious objector and co-founder of Boycott from Within - a group of conscientious Israelis who support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. He represented the Popular Struggle Coordination Committees at the European Parliament in Brussels, where he challenged EU institutional complicity in Israeli violations. Then we go to Gaza for an exclusive conversation with Dr. Haidar Eid, a Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza's al-Aqsa University. Dr. Eid is a leader in the Palestinian movement for one democratic state, and a member of the steering committee of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. All this, and Laura discusses Gaza's missing millions.

#Blackgirlsmatter: Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and a new #homecare documentary, Care May 05, 2015

Show notes

In 2014, a 12 year old Georgia girl faced expulsion and criminal charges after writing on a locker room wall of her Middle School. A Detroit honors student was suspended for her entire senior year for bringing a pocket knife to a football game. In 2013, an 8 year-old girl was arrested for acting out. A 12 year old girl was threatened with expulsion unless she changed her hairstyle. Those are just some of the stories told in a shocking report released this year by the African American Policy Forum whose director joins us to talk about Black girls and the school to prison pipeline. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is a Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School, and is a leading authority on the overlapping contours of racial and gender bias. She is the Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality - a term she coined - at Columbia Law School. Also in this episode: We go from the fate of our future generations to the fate of our parents and grandparents, with excerpts from CARE, a new documentary about the crisis of elder care, and those trying to do something about it. All this, and Laura discusses who's missing from all the talk about incarceration.

Walidah Imarisha & adrienne maree brown & Mumia Abu-Jamal: Decolonizing the Mind Apr 30, 2015

Show notes

Many people know of Mumia Abu-Jamal as a journalist and political prisoner. But did you know he’s also a Star Trek fan? That’s one of the many revelations in the new book Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, a collection of visionary fiction from Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown. Adrienne Maree Brown is a writer, organizational healer, facilitator, pleasure activist, and Science Fiction scholar, among many other roles. Walidah Imarisha is an educator, writer, organizer, filmmaker, spoken word artist, prison abolitionist and activist. In addition to editing Octavia’s Brood, she has written two books of poetry, Scars/Stars and the upcoming Angels with Dirty Faces: Dreaming Beyond Bars. They explain that for them, social change and science fiction are the same thing. Also in this episode: journalist and US political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal calls in via Prison Radio to read his essay for Octavia's Brood about what the film Star Wars has to say about US empire. Also, Laura discusses the Age of Acquiescence.

From Local to Global: Esteban Kelly and Stacy Mitchell Apr 14, 2015

Show notes

This week is US tax week, a good time to ask what will it take before we have a mass movement in the US offering economic alternatives. We explore this question with two guests who are in the trenches of the new economy movement. Stacy Mitchell is co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and directs its Community-Scaled Economy Initiative. She is the author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses. Esteban Kelly is the Co-Executive Director of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and a member of AORTA: The Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance, a worker-owned cooperative devoted to strengthening movements for social justice and a solidarity economy. Also in this episode: it's five years since BP caused the largest environmental disaster in US history, and we show scenes from the devastation on the US Gulf Coast, and from private gatherings of oil company executives. Also in this episode, Laura talks about corporate crime, taxes, and the cost of doing business, big business's way.

Learning Politics and Cooperation from Theater: Kathleen Chalfant Apr 07, 2015

Show notes

Where do art and social justice meet? From early roles in films like Bob Roberts and Five Corners to her award winning roles in plays including Wit and Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, to her current starring role in the award-winning Showtime series The Affair, Kathleen Chalfant is one of the most acclaimed actresses in the US. She has also been an outspoken advocate on issues like Middle East peace and incarceration. This episode also looks at Stanley Cohen, a radical lawyer who has represented Hamas and other official US enemies. Cohen is going to jail in a case seen as payback from the US government for his unpopular cases.

The Education Uprising You Want to Know About: Jesse Hagopian Mar 31, 2015

Show notes

Jesse Hagopian is part of a movement challenging the regime of high stakes testing in U.S. schools. Global Warming, war, poverty, violence against women, disease... None of these problems can be solved by A B C or D thinking, he writes in a new book, so why do we continue to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into just that sort of test? Jesse Hagopian teaches history and is the Black Student Union adviser at Garfield High School in Seattle which made history when teachers, parents and students there chose to boycott the standard test in 2013. He's also editor of the new book More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing. This episode also looks at ground zero in the school reform movement with a short film about the privatization of schools in New Orleans.

Building Movements Without Shedding Differences: Alicia Garza Mar 24, 2015

Show notes

Alicia Garza is the co-creator of Black Lives Matter, and also Special Projects Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She helped start "Black Lives Matter" as a call to action for Black people after the killing of 17 year old Trayvon Martin. Women are at the heart of this movement. Specifically young Black women - many of them calling themselves queer. We talk about what this movement wants and where it's going. From there, we look at other systemic issues facing Black communities in the US, through Even The Walls, a short documentary about the members of a public-housing neighborhood in Seattle grappling with the forces of gentrification.

What WIll It Take To End the War on Drugs? Johann Hari on #GRITtv | The Laura Flanders Show Mar 10, 2015

Show notes

With marijuana legalization passing around the US, are we finally entering the last days of the War on Drugs? Johann Hari had an early start as an op-ed columnist for The Independent at 23. Since then, he has written for the New York Times, the LA Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, Slate, the New Republic and The Nation among others. His new book, Chasing The Scream, is a bracing look inside the War on Drugs. This episode also looks at what resisting the war on drugs looks like at the grassroots, with a profile of Reverend Kenneth Glasgow and his organization T.O.P.S. - The Ordinary People Society. T.O.P.S. is an extraordinary criminal justice reform organization run by former prisoners in Dothan, Alabama.

Capitalism, Imperialism, Feminism: Monique Wilson & Agnes Pareyio | #GRITtv Mar 03, 2015

Show notes

In celebration of International Women's Day, GRITtv featuring leaders of the global women's movement, Agnes Pareyio and Monique Wilson plus a look at women of color's fight for rights with Standing on My Sister's Shoulders and Hillary Clinton's White Feminism with Laura's F-Word.

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