Part One:
UNDERSTANDING THE MOMENT
We speak with Reggie Harris, a veteran of the civil rights movement. Reggie is a musician and storyteller, as well as an activist. He also leads pilgrimages into the American south, immersing people into the land and the people.
We discuss his lifetime of experiences with race, racism and racial justice. And of course, we listen to some moving stories.
“Many times the weight of the world crashes in… we feel broken and betrayed.
We start to lose our sense of hope.
But though our history remains, it’s our actions we must change…
if we hope to heal our planet we must stand… in the shelter of each other.”
Visit the living legacy project http://www.uulivinglegacy.org
Part Two:
TRUMP’S GOONS v. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
We join Salon.com columnist Robert Hennelly on a frightening journey through the terrorizing tactics of Donald Trump’s henchmen. Breaking in Hennelly’s New Jersey is a news report about an assassination attempt on a sitting federal judge. Judge Salas’s 20-year-old son was killed and her husband severely wounded in the attack. The would-be assassin was an extreme right-wing activist and Fox News guest who had complained about some of Judge Salas’s rulings against his financial interests (and against the interests of Trump chronies Mike Flynn, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort).
At the same time, federal government agents are patrolling the streets of Portland, Oregon in unmarked vehicles, rounding up and arresting Oregonians who were exercising their First Amendment right to protest and to petition their government. The federal agents – from the Dept of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, and the US Marshals Service – were not only uninvited into Oregon; in fact, they have been asked to leave by the Mayor of Portland and the Governor of Oregon. They have not left.
The federal terror squads showed no identification; they had no warrant and no probable cause. Yet they have been rounding up random protesters from Black Lives Matter and their ally groups, refusing to give the arrestees any grounds for their abduction, shoving them into unidentified vehicles and taking them away.
As if targeting judges and federal goon squads in the streets were not enough, Ken shared another frightening wrinkle to the current war by the Trump administration on the American people. Homeland Security’s ICE has begun a pilot program in Chicago, whereby ICE hand-picks private citizens for training with the federal agents, to learn firearms management and how to detain suspected undocumented people.
The pilot program seems to be an effort to recruit the private vigilantes who have been promoting white nationalism (remember Charlottesville?) and merge them with the official federal ICE roundups and deportation sweeps. If the pilot program is allowed to go forward, it will blur the line between private vigilante groups and the more aggressive members of official law enforcement agencies – the exact opposite direction from the goals of many Americans in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd.
Finally, we talk about the eviction and foreclosure crisis which is looming in the very near future. As the COVID-related moritoria on evictions expire around the country, more Americans will be left without work, without income, without health care, and now without homes as well.
As the evictions begin, the consequences are unimaginable. The economic situation will, no doubt, decay tremendously between now and the end of 2020. But where will the newly homeless people go? Will their inability to “isolate at home” result in a super-spreading of COVID-19 and another spike in the pandemic?
