Ask today and everyone will tell you the American Dream is individuals becoming super rich. But the more traditional definition was one of equal opportunity and justice for all. Americans shared a belief in the social contract and a sense

No matter how hard the Trump Administration tries to keep America ruled by moneyed white men, new Americans are successfully invigorating the democratic process. Often more dedicated to America’s principles than those of us who were born here and take

Remember your not-so-great high school days? Remember wanting to be respected while being consistently treated as less-than? According to author Eric David Dawson, “the system is set up to be destructive of everybody.” His new book, Putting Peace First: Seven

Nearly every inch of Africa used to be owned and controlled by the colonial powers: British, French, German, Portuguese, Belgian, Spain. Mussolini’s Italy finally went after its share with a one sided assault on Ethiopia in 1936. Is the long

Blood in the streets. Chaos at the convention. The establishment Democrats won and then they lost. From the vantage point of 50 years later, it may surprise some how less has changed and been learned than we might have thought.

America’s prisons are where we warehouse and punish bad people. But how much injustice behind the walls and razor wire is acceptable? Is using inmates as slaves OK? Is it a good idea to maintain a system that reinforces people’s

Much like the toxic combination of angry racist populism with the power of the financial elite here in America, the European Union has been a brake on this dangerous combination in England. Today the British Right’s push for the UK

America is shocked at the sight of 2500 migrant kids in cages. But behind high walls are over 50,000 American kids.This is invisible for a reason. According to Professor Cara Drinan, expert on juvenile sentencing and criminal justice reform, if

It may be out in the open now, and it is disconcerting to see and feel the blatant racism and hatred across America now. But maybe the ugly spirit of white supremacy may have been hidden from white people before 

We need a photo ID to buy liquor or fly on an airplane, so what’s the big deal about needing one to vote? Don’t we need to stop voter fraud? Actually voter ID is a solution in search of a

There’s a basic and universal human need to feel like we belong. In this ever more isolating world of sharply divided news media and working alone, the opportunities to make connections are reduced. So in this need for tribal belonging,

How did Bobby Kennedy change from the Red Scare helper of Joe McCarthy to the liberal icon? According to a new book,it was visiting desperately poor families in the Mississippi Delta in April of 1967. In her Delta Epiphany: Robert

Stormy Daniels and the Russia investigation grab all the headlines about Trump, but his flagrant violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution is the best chance to get him removed. “Emoluments?” Our first guest CommonDreams.org journalist Julia Conley explains

Immigrants under Trump are painted as the dangerous “Others.” Yet despite the successful campaign of fear, the reality is immigrants are more likely to be good hard working, law abiding citizens than Americans as a whole. Journalist Arnold “Skip”Isaacs, who

The pervasive myth of kids just needing “grit” and lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps is false and is doing real harm.Our guest today Linda Nathan spent fourteen years as founder and co-headmaster of Boston Arts Academy, Boston’s only

If you are a sixteen year old girl, standing up to the men of the Israeli military is highly risky. You may not have heard of Ahed Tamimi. She is being held in an Israeli jail for slapping an Israeli

Both parties in recent decades have bought into the idea that letting private business needs dictate the direction of public schools will help education. According to Noliwe Rooks, director of American Studies at Cornell University, de facto segregation in public

No side won, America lost. The so-called civil war (a civil war is a fight to take over the government; this was not) was America’s biggest failure, started by radical evangelicals on both sides. Lincoln was not the president of

It took a long time but Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions worked to end South African Apartheid. Now powerful forces are working in the US congress to penalize businesses and individuals who express support for BDS against the State of Israel.

Celebrated in 45 states, a lot of people don’t know about Juneteenth. It was the day in 1865 when formerly enslaved people learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. But what kind of freedom was it then and where is it today?

How much did the election of Trump turn French voters away from the right wing populist Marine LePen in the May 7th election? To what degree is her party, the National Front, still racist? What is the danger of normalizing

Tax breaks for capital gains are a form of class privilege. So says history of US capitalism professor Julia Ott. It’s better public relations for Southern senators than outright Jim Crow, but taxing capital gains less than ordinary income was

Imagine your very existence being seen as proof of guilt. The blatantly racist anti-immigrant policies Trump is known for did not originate with him. In fact, as our guest Avi Chomsky, professor of history and coordinator of Latin American, Latino,

We all focus on the top, the presidency and then congress. But more than you may think is at stake at the state level. Top corporations are focused where they can accomplish a lot for themselves relatively cheaply. A little

The Democratic nominee was the very antithesis of populism; with her hand out to big money interests seeming to ignore everyday people. So we got Trump. In an article written by internationally recognized historian Alfred McCoy has written about The

It was the beginning of a 50 year split among liberals. Those in power, President Johnson in particular, wanted to relegate Dr. Martin Luther King to his safe civil rights leader role. But boldly, Dr. King spoke out against imperialism

Direct action is successful when it creates a crisis for those in power. It baffles the powers that be because it is truly democratic, merely a movement of movements. So says L.A. Kauffman, organizer of many direct action events, and

“Just following orders” is no defense. In a democracy we assume that individuals in society will take personal responsibility and disobey immoral commands. But as many experiments have shown, people rarely question orders from authorities. Our guest on this show

Liberals were shocked by the outcome of the 2016 election. As they were in 1920 when Republicans put up Warren Harding, a big business Republican who campaigned and won on an America First message, stoking the public’s fear of immigrants

” They didn’t call it fascism. They painted it red, white, and blue, and called it Americanism.” That’s from a 1942 movie with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy called Keeper of the Flame, which imagines a full fledged homegrown American