Part One: The Food Supply
Trump’s order to keep meat plants open mistakes meat shortage for a food shortage
Trump’s recent executive order to keep meat plants open is premised on a lie: that a meat shortage is a food shortage.
https://theconversation.com/trumps-order-to-keep-meat-plants-open-mistakes-meat-shortage-for-a-food-shortage-137688
We talk with Professor Andrea Freeman, who teaches Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, and Race and Law at the University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law.
We discuss the fact that a food shortage does not exist, because it is not the same as a meat shortage. We talk about the effect of meat consumption on health, and how only meat was deemed to be worthy of invoking the Production order during the pandemic, above other, more pressing shortages. What will be the effect of this on the move to grow more local food, safety and health of workers in the meat business, due to relaxation and elimination of safety measures to protect the workers in this industry.
Guest Information
Andrea Freeman is the author of “Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice.” She writes and researches at the intersection of critical race theory and food policy, health, and consumer credit. Much of her work explores her pioneering theory of food oppression, which examines how facially neutral food-related law and policy, influenced by corporate interests, disproportionately harm marginalized communities. She also studies the effects of racism by credit card companies against consumers.
Professor Freeman serves on the Litigation Committee of the ACLU Hawai’i chapter. She teaches Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, Race and Law, Food Law and Policy, and Comparative Social Justice and Constitutional Law. In Spring 2017, she visited at UC Berkeley School of Law. In Summer 2018, she was the Distinguished Scholar of Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School. In 2018-19, she visited at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She has been awarded the 2020-21 Fulbright King’s College London US Scholar Award.
Part Two: A Conversation with John Nichols
Fighting fascism at home and abroad begins with the consolidation of progressive politics.
We discuss with John Nichols, the author of “The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party,” what the party must do to not only win the next election, but use the power thus gained to change the direction of the United States. Democrats, during the era of Franklin Roosevelt, were a large and powerful party, due to the fact that they actually represented a large swath of the American people, and were willing to stick to their principles. The party was inclusive and visionary. Nichols believes that the party needs to return to that viewpoint, and NOT compromise its progressive principles. What does ‘winning’ produce, if you compromise your principles. A lively and engaging discussion.
Guest Information
John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, writes about politics for The Nation as its national-affairs correspondent. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books, and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress. Nichols also hosts Next Left, The Nation’s podcast featuring interviews with rising progressive politicians who explain how they plan to change our country for the better.
Nichols is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in TheNew York Times, Chicago Tribune, and dozens of other newspapers.
Nichols is a frequent guest on radio and television programs as a commentator on politics and media issues. He was featured in Robert Greenwald’s documentary Outfoxed, and in Joan Sekler’s Unprecedented, Matt Kohn’s Call It Democracy, and Robert Pappas’s Orwell Rolls in His Grave. The keynote speaker at the 2004 Congress of the International Federation of Journalists in Athens, Nichols has been a featured presenter at conventions, conferences, and public forums on media issues sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Consumers International, the Future of Music Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Newspaper Guild [CWA], and dozens of other organizations.
Nichols is the author of Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America (Nation Books) as well as The Genius of Impeachment (New Press); a critically acclaimed analysis of the Florida recount fight of 2000, Jews for Buchanan (New Press); and a best-selling biography of former vice president Dick Cheney, Dick: The Man Who is President (New Press), which was also published in French and Arabic. He edited Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire (Nation Books), of which historian Howard Zinn said: “At exactly the time when we need it most, John Nichols gives us a special gift—a collection of writings, speeches, poems, and songs from throughout American history—that reminds us that our revulsion to war and empire has a long and noble tradition in this country.”
With Robert W. McChesney, Nichols has co-authored the books It’s the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories), Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (The New Press), The Death and Life of American Journalism (Nation Books), Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street (Nation Books), and their latest, People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy (Nation Books, March 2016). McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, a media-reform network, which organized the 2003 and 2005 National Conferences on Media Reform.
Of Nichols, author Gore Vidal says: “Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols’s sword is the sharpest.” (Photo by Robin Holland / Bill Moyers Journal)
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611483/the-fight-for-the-soul-of-the-democratic-party-by-john-nichols/
