They sought a better life from the Jim Crow South and freedom, but what they found was something else. It may not be bricks and mortar prison, but black citizens have been intentionally limited to specific areas on the map

From the Dadaists through Abbie Hoffman to today, the art of transforming everyday life into theater, challenging and befuddling unjust authority, has unique power to make real change. The unique new book is Tactical Performance: The Theory and Practice of

Girls of color make up 16% of female high school students, yet they make up more than a third of all girls with a school-related arrest. They are systematically pushed out of the education system, and that helps no one.

Of course the North beat the South but Southern Values also won. Northern collusion with slavery, annexing Cuba, the 1% vs the 99%, and the wisdom of Phineas T. Barnum are all entertainingly discussed in Ecstatic Nation: Confidence Crisis and

Our founders knew how essential education is to have a functioning democracy. Teachers today face challenges more than one might imagine: balancing community demands with needs of individual students. In their new book, Dilemmas of Educational Ethics, authors Meira Levinson

Adam Hochschild has written best selling books about a Belgian King’s holocaust in the Congo and another about the brave British women who fought against the insanity of the first world war. His new book is Spain in Our Hearts:

Hundreds of thousands of people in France and elsewhere in Europe gather nightly. It is huge, but you probably have never heard of it. The blackout has been intentional. It’s more than a protest, it’s a serious movement. As Sorbonne

And not just for Palestinians. With the ascent of the nationalistic right, even Jewish Israelis are feeling the sting of government assaults on democracy. Allan Brownfeld, editor of the magazine of The American Council for Judaism, explains how democracy is

To research for his new book, Thomas Frank specifically went to pro-Bill Clinton sources. Yet what he found left a profoundly negative impression of his presidency and what it did to the Democratic Party. Author of 2004’s What’s The Matter

Q: When is a donation not a donation? A: When it’s an investment. It is a rare super wealthy philanthropist who gives without need of great public recognition? From feudal times, it has been in the interests of the baronial

A teenager kills another with his knife and is tried and sentenced as an adult. Is this the best we can do? Is justice served? In her new book: Boy with a Knife, activist, author and professor Jean Trounstine explores

American exceptionalism is a reality in terms of locking up almost 5 times as many citizens as all other advanced industrialized democracies. Over the last 40 years, the incarceration rate has skyrocketed by nearly 400 percent. How did we get

They’ve been the big boys ruling their neighborhood for half a century. They really don’t want to give it up, but with their war in Yemen hurting their standing (and America’s) and the dropping price of oil, they are being

Tremendous wealth is being sheltered from taxation. The rules for the rest of us apparently don’t apply to the super rich of the world. But think about how that now-hidden wealth might help millions throughout the world. This is the

America Aflame is a major new interpretation of the civil war era. In this interview with author David Goldfield, light is shed into important dark corners, such as the tragic role played by evangelicalsm on both sides, why a post-war

It’s not just the rapacious, perhaps truly pathological greed of the super rich. The Supreme Court has actively participated in the devastation of the formerly-large middle class. According to law professor Michel Gilman, the US Supreme Court has taken a

“Our mother was not a spy, and her execution was wrongful… The government cannot return our mother to her loving family. But it can admit this miscarriage of justice…exonerate our mother” These words from guest on this show Robert Meeropol

Politics is theater and yet the mainstream media is missing the real drama. It’s not on the Republican side: the genuinely close race is for the Democratic nomination. On this podcast, Robert Borosage, founder and president of Institute for America’s

Gregory Foster is a decorated Vietnam vet who teaches at National Defense University. He is dedicated to an efficient and effective defense of our country and argues what we most need to achieve that end is a demilitarization of the

How significant a change in policy toward Latin America does Obama’s trip to Havana mean? As Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy research explains, while the opening to Cuba is beneficial, it seems the American tradition

Between 1945 and the Reagan era, Americans understood that work benefited all and when productivity when up, all stakeholders shared in the rewards. Of course that all changed. But in his new book “Shaping the Future of Work: What Future

He’s a mirror of our culture, the question is: will America look in the mirror? Guest on this show is Erin Aubry Kaplan, author of the new book “I (heart) Obama,” and a long time writer about the black experience

http://media.blubrry.com/keeping_democracy_alive/dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48358971/Brexit.mp3The European Union was supposed to mean a continent of nations united by democratic ideals. Instead power and decision making has become more concentrated and centralized. First it was Greece, then Spain threatening to pull out of the EU, now

Throughout American history there have been times, rare moments in which the political establishment’s movers and shakers quiver as their best laid plans have gone awry. Their too-often successful efforts to keep citizens believing that we are powerless are on

The 2016 New Hampshire Presidential Primary is history. No one predicted a 22 point blowout for Bernie Sanders. The establishment of both parties was flattened by the results. What the heck happened? Media talent trainer and consultant John Kosinski puts

The myth of the rugged individualist settling the west is just that: a myth. The work needed to tame the wild and vast open spaces was not done with a lasso. The white people who populated the massive west needed

He’s a leading contender, surging in the polls but the Democratic Party is wielding a real war on Bernie Sanders. According to Princeton history professor Matt Karp, it’s without precedent. Bernie Sanders is clearly carrying on FDR and LBJ Democratic

When Americans hear the word socialism, they feel frightened. Bernie Sanders has looked to the nations of Scandinavia for models, while Hillary Clinton runs away from that. What is reality? On this show, Ann Jones (author of Kabul in Winter

Of course our democratic system of government comes from Italy. So do chocolate, cigars, and hammocks. Instead of simple brute force, the Italian style of empire building relied on commerce and culture. Guest Christopher Kelly (Italian by marriage) talks about

Work hard, do well at school, play by the rules and you’ll do OK. That does not seem to apply to the more than 2 million young Americans whose parents may have fallen through the large cracks in our broken