Clearing the FOG with co-hosts Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese

The United States is in the midst of a mass uprising against police violence, but also a whole list of grievances such as the lack of jobs, health care, education and more. Sustained protests have been going on for two weeks defying curfews and severe repression by police. The national guard has been deployed to 23 states and President Trump threatened to deploy the military against people expressing their First Amendment rights. We speak with Danny Sjursen, a retired Major and spokesperson for About Face: Veterans Against the War, about how members of the military are responding to current events. Veterans have called for members of the national guard and military to refuse illegal orders and they are receiving an unprecedented number of responses. Danny also provides insight into the police community and why they are doubling down on repression. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

Texaco was the first oil company to drill in the Amazon. To maximize profits, and because they thought they could get away with it, they did not take any steps to protect local communities or the environment from their toxic waste. For a long time, they did get away with it. Then a group of lawyers and organizations worked with locals to sue Chevron, which bought Texaco, and won a $9.5 billion judgment. Chevron refuses to pay and instead has gone after the lawyer, Steven Donziger, in unprecedented ways with a vengeance. We speak with Donziger and Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

On May 9, the Sanctions Kill coalition based in the United States held the first in a series of webinars on the United States' illegal economic coercive measures imposed on 39 countries and one-third of the global population. This webinar featured representatives from six countries: Cuba, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua, Syria, Venezuela and Iran. Each of these targeted countries shares common struggles to maintain their sovereignty and provide basic necessities for their people while trying to build new forms of governance in the face of aggression and interference from the United States. It is rare to hear directly from government representatives from targeted countries in the United States and it is important for us to understand what is happening in a way the corporate media will not provide. The second webinar is on Sunday, May 31 at 1:00 pm Eastern. Register directly at https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_f5ntIQ8ORBC6u1cts7t7vQ. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

As we get close to two months of quarantine to stop the spread of COVID19 and the government has failed to put in place both public health infrastructure to effectively control the pandemic and economic support to see people through it financially, pressure is building to end it. In addition to the protests against the restrictions on movement and businesses, people are starting to question the rationale behind measures such as wearing masks, quarantining and vaccines. This is being fueled by a few people who are pushing unsubstantiated claims that are causing confusion. We speak with Dr. Andy Coates, a practicing physician in Albany, New York who also teaches evidence-based medicine, about what we know so far about the new SARS-CoV2 virus that is causing COVID19. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

In the face of the twin crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic collapse, people are organizing mutual aid networks to provide food, medicines and other basics to those in need. This is done in the spirit of solidarity, not charity, a non-hierarchical empowering approach versus a hierarchical exploitative approach. We speak with Eleanor Goldfield, an activist in Washington, DC who is active in her local mutual aid network and has written about it, about how they are organizing, the response from the community and government and how this fits into the bigger picture of resistance and building alternative systems to meet human needs. Some resources that Eleanor suggests are MutualAidDisasterRelief.org, ItsGoingDown.org and her website, ArtKillingApathy.com. For more, visit PopularResistance.org.

There is a growing movement of people refusing to pay their rent whether they are not able to or whether they can but they are acting in solidarity with those who can't. In this recession, tens of millions of people have lost their jobs. Support from the government is not reaching everyone who needs it. Thirty percent of people could not pay their rent in April. This is occurring in an environment where property owners are large corporations that seek profit even when it means people losing their homes during a pandemic. We speak with DC activist and co-host of By Any Means Necessary about the Cancel the Rent campaign, which calls on local government to put a moratorium on rent until the pandemic is over. Their long term goal seeks to transform the way housing is structured in the United States so it is treated as a basic human right. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

The wave of worker, student, and renter strikes is growing into a campaign for a general strike that begins on May 1 and continues at the first of each month from there. The government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic collapse, a purely neoliberal money grab, has revealed that the only way we are going to survive and maintain social programs is by fighting for them. We speak with Mark Dimondstein, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, about Congress' failure to provide necessary funding for the US Postal Service as revenue has fallen by 50%. The USPS faces the real possibility of going bankrupt and the administration is openly saying it will let it fail in order to privatize it. We also speak with Joe Henry, political director of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Iowa, about the Meatless Monday campaign for meatpackers and against factory farming. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

Over the last two years, there have been record numbers of worker strikes in the United States not seen since the depression. Since the recession and COVID-19 pandemic started this winter, there have been many wildcat strikes in response to workers having their pay cut and being required to work in hazardous conditions even though they are deemed essential. Now, as the government demonstrates its unwillingness to provide basic protection for the population even as it injects billions of dollars to big industries and banks, support for a general strike is here. We speak with Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson about the plans being made for the first general strike on May Day, what that will look like and how the campaign will be sustained over time. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

The economy has shut down considerably in the United States so that people can shelter in place and slow the spread of COVID-19, but not all workers are able to do so. Essential workers include those who work in the food industry, not only the producers but also grocery store workers. One group of workers that is in high demand is the personal shopper who will buy what people order and deliver it to their homes. Shipt Shoppers, who do this work, have had pay cuts and are not being provided with what they need to protect themselves and their customers from contracting COVID-19. We speak with Robin Pape, a gig worker who is helping to lead the fight back to demand that Shipt Shoppers are protected and compensated for the hazardous work they are doing. Their fight is representative of what many essential workers are facing during the pandemic. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

The United States government often criticizes other countries for controlling their media, but over the past thirty years, it is the US media that has become tightly controlled. We speak with Kathryn Foxhall with the Society of Professional journalists who explains how government agencies from the local to the national levels, educational and scientific institutions and police departments restrict access by media to officials and use minders to monitor what those officials say. Foxhall describes how this lack of access to information hinders ethical journalism, how it has impacted the stories we read and what people are doing to push back. This is particularly important during emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic because reporters are being denied access to health officials. For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.