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Too big to fail? Nationalize

Can G20 avert the crisis?

Leo V. Panitch is the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto. Panitch is also the author of "Global Capitalism and American Empire" and his most recent release "American Empire and the Political Economy of International Finance".

Obama should save banks not bankers

Thomas Ferguson is a political scientist and author who studies and writes on politics and economics, often within an historical perspective. He is a Political Science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is also a a contributing editor of The Nation. He is also the author of several books, the recent of which is Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political System

BBC Radio 3 - World Routes

Lucy Duran travels to Azerbaijan in search of the art music of virtuosic Mugham performers.

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Lucy’s passion for travel and music started early on - she spent the first two decades of her life living pretty much out of a suitcase while the family lived in Chile, the USA, England and Greece. Schooling was a little irregular, but music was a constant, and was eclectic and exciting - at home she listened to anything from Bach to Andean music and flamenco.

James Thindwa

Bill Moyers Journal profiles a community organizer in Chicago — James Thindwa of Jobs with Justice:

I'm a community organizer because I believe that people need a voice. They need to have institutions that speak for them — institutions through which their own concerns, their grievances, their interests, can be represented. Your average person is getting up every day to go to work and to care for a family — doesn't have a lobbyist in Washington. They don't have a lobbyist in the city council. They don't have a lobbyist at the state legislature.

James Thindwa heads Chicago Jobs with Justice — one of over 40 coalitions nationwide dedicated to worker's issues like the living wage and the right to organize. The Chicago group made headlines recently as it took on the case of Republic Windows and Doors, a potent symbol of the economic downturn's drastic effect on working Americans.

Republic Windows and Doors

Workers at the Chicago company staged a sit-in in December 2008, when the company suddenly announced it was closing up shop and leaving town. By law, Republic's unionized employees were entitled to 60 days notice and some parting benefits. Instead, the owners gave them three days notice and cut off their health insurance. When Republic declared itself insolvent the organizers turned their attention to the company's bank — Bank of America — which had just received 25 billion dollars in federal bailout money. After five days in the spotlight, Bank of America came up with a cash loan to pay the workers what they were owed. But the story doesn't end there. In late February 2009 the CHICAGO SUN-TIMES announced that a new green-oriented windows maker would be taking over Republic's assets and that they planned to re-open the plant with labor from Republic's former staff.

Wal-Mart

Thindwa's Jobs with Justice was also in the forefront of a living wage battle against Wal-Mart. When the corporation announced plans to open a store in Chicago, Jobs for Justice and other groups decided to forestall Wal-Mart's well-known low wage-floor with a local living wage law, putting the starting salary at $10 per hour — the salary being paid at another big box store in Chicago, COSTCO. The campaign went on for three years until 2006 when the city council passed the living wage ordinance. Victory was brief. Chicago's six-term Mayor Democrat Richard M. Daley lobbied enough council members to change their vote to enable a mayoral veto. Wal-Mart did arrive in Chicago but not initially as a Supercenter which would compete with local grocers.

However, Chicago's Wal-Mart wars are not over. In March 2009, a city alderman announced a plan to allow Wal-Mart to build a second store in Chicago. In the meantime, Citigroup downgraded Wal-Mart's rating because of worries that unionization might cut into Wal-Mart's profits.

Biography

James Thindwa was born and raised in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia. His family took part in Rhodesia's fight against British colonial rule. There he learned the power of organized labor and organized protest. "Unions to us, growing up, performed more functions than just negotiating for better wages for workers. They really were seen in society as a legitimate vehicle for transforming society." Thindwa won a scholarship to Kentucky's Berea College and went on to a masters degree at Miami University of Ohio. As a student he protested against the Ku Klux Klan and apartheid in South Africa. He moved to Chicago, where he advocated for senior citizens before joining Jobs with Justice.

Find out more about Living Wage and the Employee Free Choice Act

Jobs with Justice was founded in 1987 under the operating principle that workers' rights struggles as part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice. Jobs with Justice sees community involvement and coalitions as crucial to union progress. Campaigns range from corporate accountability to health care to bargaining rights.

William Greider on the Geithner Plan

Bill Moyers Journal

William Greider wants Americans to start shaking things up. His new book, COME HOME AMERICA: THE RISE AND FALL (AND REDEEMING PROMISE) OF OUR COUNTRY, doesn't mince words from the very first sentence: "I have some hard things to say about our country." And he does.

After outlining many of the systemic problems he feels the United States faces, Greider lays out the case for a fundamental restructuring of America's economy and society. He compares the moment — a decline in American power exarcerbated by the financial collapse — to World War II, not literally, but as a moment of economic transformation. "Just as World War II presented a chance to thoroughly reorder American life," he writes, "this generation of Americans has the opportunity — the obligation — to envision a country very different from the one we have known for more than half a century."

The Financial Bailout

Greider worries the Obama administration won't seize the chance for change without pressure from citizens. Referring to the stimulus package and Secretary Geithner's new bailout proposal, Greider tells Bill Moyers on THE JOURNAL, that President Obama "does seem absolutely committed to restoration of the old order."

Greider further criticizes the Obama administration's bank bailout plan in a recent article for THE NATION, likening it to a game of Monopoly just for Wall Street:

It's very much like the regular Monopoly game that kids play--only better--because this one uses real money, provided courtesy of the taxpayers. The best thing about Obama's game is nobody loses. Usually, the winner in Monopoly is the one who winds up with the most money. In the Obama version, the losers get any losses back from the government at the end of the game.

Greider doesn't believe change is going to originate in Washington or that the Obama administration will make the right changes alone. In the final chapter of his book, Greider lays out the case that real democratic change must start with people organizing themselves and forcing change up from the grassroots.

He tells Bill Moyers on THE JOURNAL, "I think that's what I hope for now: that people of every stripe will stand up and say, 'We love you Mr. President, but you don't have it right yet. And we're gonna bang on your door until you get it right'."

Biography

Now THE NATION's national affairs correspondent, William Greider has been a political journalist for more than 35 years. A former ROLLING STONE and WASHINGTON POST editor, he is the author of the national bestsellers ONE WORLD, READY OR NOT, SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE, WHO WILL TELL THE PEOPLE, THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM and, most recently, COME HOME AMERICA.

A New Way Forward

Chalmers Johnson:

Democracy & Empire

The essence of civilization is the social contract, the commitment to beneficial relationships between all members of the community.

When that concept overrides, or is overridden by limited special interests, society suffers and civilization becomes less civil.

The rights of the individual and the preservation of Society must be continuously balanced to assure mutual benefit.

Social Uplift Foundation

Edging toward Equity

Cornell Department of City and Regional Planning

Manuel Pastor, Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies and Director of the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community, University of California, Santa Cruz

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Recent years have seen the emergence of a movement for "regional equity" - that is, an attempt to change the metropolitan practices that some contend contribute to concentrated poverty, economic stagnation, and other social ills. The number of adherents seems to be growing rapidly, as reflected in a burst of academic research, the development of new policy intermediaries, and the roll-out of new strategies by social justice and community-based organizations. However, much of the nascent theory and practice is being challenged by a range of critics, including those who see the regional stress as de-emphasizing the power of local organizing and development, those who worry that the regionalism tent is too big to truly yield a social justice focus, and those who wonder how such a region-based approach can scale up to national change. Dr. Pastor will explore both the emerging debates and possible coalitions to see whether this emerging regional equity perspective could really add up to a shift in politics and paradigms.

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