No nukes, Act Up, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock. What lessons from the history of Direct Action are relevant to the times of Trump? And what do we know about the role of protest in shifting power, or moving policy? Can street heat translate into organized movement over time? It certainly happened on the Right. The first months of the Trump Administration have seen major opposition mobilizations that continue, but after all the disruption, what comes next? We're joined by two guests today who are grappling with this very question. L.A. Kauffmann is a journalist, long time activist and author of the brilliantly timed, recently released book " Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism". Jesse Myerson is an organizer and writer, currently working with the New York Nurses Association. His writings have appeared in the Washington Post, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, The Nation and right here. 

 

L.A. Kauffmann:Pleasure to be here!

Laura Flanders:So let's start with the ingeniously brilliantly timed release of your book, " Direct Action", what does the term actually mean for people that don't know?

L.A. Kauffmann:Well, I define it very broadly. Like any term like this, it's debated extensively within movements and there are some people who want a very narrow definition where it's just stopping an injustice in its tracks, like using your body to block a bulldozer, but I define it as any of the pressure tactics that are outside the established channels of political participation and influence. So everything ranging from fairly mild tactics like rallies, to stronger things like sit-ins and blockades.

Laura Flanders:Now, your book catalogs dozens, decades of direct actions. I was part of a shockingly large number of them. But is this the exclusive purview of the Left?

L.A. Kauffmann:It's not. There are certainly examples of direct action movements on the Right. The most notorious would probably be Operation Rescue, which used direct action blockades to prevent women from accessing reproductive health services. But it's been a lot rarer, I think part of that is because there's a small d, democratic ethos that's kinda baked into the way that people do direct action and that's almost a prerequisite for people to take the level of personal risk that entails. You occasionally see movements that use these tactics on the Right, but it doesn't work very well in top-down organizing context which is more characteristic of Right.

Laura Flanders:You draw a line between the kind of extra, sort of democratic process actions of progressive organizations like the ones you catalog, like the Klan or militia movements of the Right.

L.A. Kauffmann:Yes. I mean, I think those, those movements have by-and-large been operating in kind of a cell fashion, and have not been looking to mobilize extensive grassroots support or have been failing spectacularly when they do.

Laura Flanders:Alright, so now we've got our terms clear, I'd love the both of you to weigh in a little bit on what you see as the relationship between this kind of direct action that you're talking about, and the kind of movement building that you've more often report on. Jesse, I mean you're a direct action fan, but you really write about movement organizing more than just mobilizing people into the streets, and I shouldn't use that word "just", we'll get to that.

Jesse Myerson:I think they're vital for reinforcing one another, that through direct action strikes, rallies, these sorts of things open political space and claim new political terrain, open up new ideas for consideration. But that in order to consecrate them and in order to advance them in a political sense, we need a sort of ongoing organizing effort that get people not just mobilized, but also ideologically coherent and ready to take action at a moments notice, and in relationship with one another. And with these two things balancing one another, each can increase the other and eventually lead to the realization of an actual program.

Laura Flanders:And so what do you see happening Right now in this sort of arena, L.A.?

L.A. Kauffmann:Well, I mean, there's obviously been an extraordinary flourishing of street protests since the day of the inauguration. What we've seen I think, has been the flourishing of a movement of movements, that we're not seeing a single organization, or a single issue in the forefront. Instead, what we're seeing is this vast, decentralized landscape of lots and lots of people and organizations in motion. It's pretty early now to say what organizational containers are going to be the most effective in channeling that energy going forward, but there are groups small and large, both popping up all over and existing groups that are dramatically increasing their numbers.

 

It was an American nuclear weapon test that caused a cloud over Nevada this March and it didn’t take a satellite to see the dust rising.

The March 14th test was the first in a new series. US weapons makers are making a new nuclear bomb —  a replacement for four bombs already in our nuclear arsenal.

The B61-12 is estimated to be ready for use in 2020.

The first in a three year series of tests began this march at Sandia National Labs, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lockheed Martin Corporation.

This week, Adaku Utah and J Bob Alotta speak to the urgency of centering healing in a world that doesn't care about our survival. They discuss the intellectual distance many activists feel from the prospect of healing, and challenge the racist and classist logic at play in mainstream determinations of what bodies are worthy of care. Together, they make a powerful case that care is a central component of broader liberation struggles.

Laura Flanders: All right, let's talk about healing. I have to say, when this was first proposed to me that we discuss healing, I was like, healing? That's a classic kind of white, leftist, even queer response that healing is some kind of individual solution. Isn't it?

Adaku Utah: So, it is an individual solution, and it's also collective. We know that our movements, moving towards justice does not only rely on one person, or couple of people, that it actually requires all of us. And our systems come from a long legacy of violence that has impacts on our physical, emotional and spiritual selves. From what we're seeing in gentrification, to the education system, to the high and increasing rates of depression and suicidality within our communities.

So, there's an impact. And we can't intellectualize change. Who we are is what we've been practice and what we have learned to do. And so, healing really facilitates a strategy for us to be embodied practitioners of justice and liberation, and it also acknowledges that harm has been done, and that harm, in order for us to fully live into lives that are reflective of the kind of justice that we seek, that some things have to be healed. The trauma has to be met and tended to, so that we can be a reflection of love and justice. Yeah.

Our environmental and human needs are desperate and urgent. We need to transform our economy, our politics, our policies and our priorities to reflect that reality. That means reversing the flow of our tax dollars, away from war and militarism, and towards funding human and environmental needs, and demanding support for that reversal from all our political leaders at the local, state and national levels.

We and the movements we are part of face multiple crises. Military and climate wars are destroying lives and environments, threatening the planet and creating enormous flows of desperate refugees. Violent racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia and other hatreds are rising, encouraged by the most powerful voices in Washington DC.

A movement is not a flash of light, it's a flame, a torch passed from one generation to the next, so wrote the poet Maya del Valle. They're words treasured and lived by our next guest, Angela Glover Blackwell. Throughout a career in philanthropy, research and advocacy, Blackwell's been dedicated to using public policy to change communities and lives. Under President Obama, she served on the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans. She started Policy Link in 1999, something she calls a research and action institute. It works with policy makers especially in the areas of health, housing, transportation, education and infrastructure. In 2013, with Policy Link, she collaborated with the Center for American Progress to write and release All In Nation, an America That Works For All.

Angela Blackwell:Thank you, happy to be here.

Laura Flanders:Just reading that introduction, the Obama Administration already feels like a very long time ago.

Angela Blackwell:Yeah, a planet in a distant place.

Laura Flanders:Can you compare what you were working on then with what you feel you're working on now?

Angela Blackwell:It is hard to compare. Under the Obama Administration, we were struggling and fighting to try to make progress but we had a partnership with the White House, lots of people who were in it. There were initiatives that we had been fighting to get for years that were finally beginning to take hold. Now, everything is closed off. If it's not closed off, I find that I and my colleagues are afraid to even touch it because we don't think anything good is going to come out of it. The contrast is just completely stark. We move from an administration that was trying to overcome decades of neglect in local communities and struggling with inadequate resources to partner with people in local communities who felt they had wisdom about what needed to happen to now, an administration that is at odds with everything that we believe in. Shutting down, taking away the safety net, it is awful.

Laura Flanders:Is all lost?

Angela Blackwell:All is never lost. All is never lost. You started off talking about our moment. This is our moment. It is going to be our moment. The good news is that we actually had found each other across the spectrum of those who were working for social change and inclusion before this administration came in. We are having to step back from the things that kept us from being completely united because we were nuancing this or we had a priority that was slightly more important. We now see that we have to get behind those who are being attacked at the moment. We have to get behind a few common ideas and so, it is our moment but we're going to have to struggle to make this moment about progress and not just resistance. We've got to be in a resistance mode but if all we do is resist for a number of years, we will have slipped far back.

 

Two months into the first Trump term, top Democrats and the money media seem obsessed with the administration’s putative ties to Vladimir Putin.

And here was I, thinking the White House ties to mad misogynists and the KKK were going to be their problem!

Two Trump staffers have already been dropped for having conversations with Russians, rather than being utterly unqualified — and Jeff Sessions was under scrutiny for lying in his confirmation hearing. Perjury’s bad, but being a pathological racist, redbaiter, xenophobe and opponent of the Voting Rights Act should have been more than enough to disqualify anyone from becoming Attorney General.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s compared alleged Russian hacking to 9–11 and Pearl Harbor, even though, as he himself told NBC the other day, there’s no actual evidence. He wants Congress to go looking for it. That’ll set a good precedent.

Slashing social safety nets, cutting people’s programs, shrinking life chances and everyone’s chance of enjoying clean water… My incoming emails have begun to read like a horror movie script, with non stop terror and round the clock slashing.

The reason: Democrats and their pals are up alarmed about the administration’s budget.  Sure enough it’s scary. The GOP White House wants to strip $54 billion from spending on all things human and ecological while they increase already massive military spending.

The president’s plan would boost spending on so-called defense to well over 60 cents of every discretionary dollar. It’s largest budget share in decades. That’s even as Donald Trump himself admits that years of multi trillion dollar spending have left the Middle East "far worse than it was 16, 17 years ago” and none of us any safer.

Let’s not forget, that when it comes right down to it, the US already spends more than the next eight countries combined. That’s China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the UK, India, Germany and Japan - combined.  The US military is in 150 countries. Just how many countries are there?

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.

Laura Flanders:Okay. We're going to start. The intro is about the book. The book is a wonderful thing. We're really glad to be here talking about it. I'm really excited to have you back on the program, Michael. It's great to see you.

Michael:It's good to be back.

Laura Flanders:This book was 10 years in the making. In that period, have you seen any new, exciting, or terrifying obfuscations, lies, and ways of talking about the economy?

Michael:Fortunately, things got worse and worse since 2008. As a result, I greatly expanded it, made it a completely different book. Also, it made the whole focus on the vocabulary because economics has turned into an Orwellian vocabulary where words mean exactly the opposite of what they used to mean.

Laura Flanders:Give us an example.

It’s exciting. At last, US women are getting in on the act. Celebrating International Working Women’s Day -- after all, it was an event in the US that helped give it its start.

It was 1909, in the crowded Great Hall at New York’s Cooper Union; a big union boss was talking about talks. Things were moving slowly when a 16-year-old girl shouted out from the back: “WALK OUT.”

More than 30,000 shirtwaist factory workers walked off their jobs after that. The biggest worker walk out in New YOrk history up to taht point. The leaders were mostly young, immigrant women like that 16-year-old -- Clara Lemlich. Seven hundred women were arrested, many more beaten and spat on for being “On strike against God.”

They struck for 11 weeks.  And inspired the European socialists who later resolved to mark International Working Women’s Day.

Appreciation’s nice. But it doesn’t in itself save lives. In 1911, two years later,  a fire broke out in New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory  - a fire of exactly the sort the 09 strikers had been fearing. It killed 146 workers, again women and girls, mostly immigrants, several of whom leapt from upper floor windows to escape .

All these years on, more people remember the fire, and name the the dead.

But what fewer people remember are the demands these women and girls made...not just for wage increases, but for the ability to have a say in the conditions of their workplace— workplaces that should not  kill them. Those are the rights that will be taken from American workers if the GOP Trump agenda goes ahead.

Imagine, a century ago, if the rest of New York had stood with the women of the factories. Imagine if instead of 20,000, it had been 2 million workers marching. Or if it were to be today.

Celebration’s nice. Listening is even better. And it’s never to too late to get to started.  

As the need for strong movement infrastructure goes, so does the urgency for us to understand -- in very clear terms -- the language we use to describe this moment, and our politics. Laura is joined this week by celebrated academic, organizer, and advocate Professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, who is perhaps best known for coining the term intersectionality.