In celebration of Martin Luther King Day, Ethics Forward talks to the great Hannah L. Drake, poet, spoken word artist, novelist, blogger, and cultural strategist for Ideas xLab. We talk about how to build a politics and a society grounded in the mutual recognition of one another's humanity; how poetry helps navigate the divisive politics of today and the legacy of 400 years of white supremacy in America.

Audio recordings of Ms. Drake's poems are from her YouTube channel.

Cover photos is from hannahldrake.com.

Embedded music is "Sage" by Prismic, on soundcloud.com/prismicofficial.

We are taught that we live in a free market economy, but it is rarely acknowledged or understood how the government is a huge player in our economy. The government even determines what kind of technology we are going to have, via spending on defense, NASA, etc.

In the age of climate change, we can no longer afford to waste this money on the instruments of death and destruction. We need to redirect it to technologies that we actually need, like solar power, wind power, state-of-the-art electrical grids, and mass transit.

But we will only do that if we understand that the government and Big Money wants to keep us frightened, so that we will keep spending on "defense".

Businesses and federal officials are concerned and even upset when China throws its weight around during trade negotiations. But the untold story is how the media wants us to believe that the economy is all about international trade by multinational corporations.

Hart talks about what our priorities should be: Functional democracy and local control of local economies that don't give over all of our resources to huge corporations.

Epigenetics: how does the environment affect you genes? What's the future of nuclear energy? What animals are the most likely killers? And check out the Holiday Asteroid!

Thanks to Dee Yan Key for his song 'Cosmopolitan-Margarita-Bellini'.

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." --Lewis Carroll

Utopia is sometimes thought to be an unattainable ideal. But here, Utopia means a better world than what we have now.

Most of us don't like the way Oligarchs rule our world and tell us how it's going to be. But if we want that to change, we have to propose a better alternative than what we have now.

We continue discussing the Congressional version of the Green New Deal. What does the GND call for? What are the obstacles in the way? What will opponent not like about the GND?

The Green New Deal calls for stronger labor rights. We call for a just transition that will empower workers currently in fossil fuel industries. The Great Transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy will not and cannot be done on the backs of hard working Americans in dirty fuel industries.

Why are we having a government shutdown? What are the economic and cultural issues that are causing this to happen? And how does that relate to the Green New Deal?

Why are (some) Americans so concerned about immigration?

The Climate Report 067 | Green New Deal Part 18 by FORward Radio

We continue to look at the desired end results of the Green New Deal, to be accomplished within a 10 year time frame, including...

making “green” technology, industry, expertise, products and services a major export of the United States, with the aim of becoming the undisputed international leader in helping other countries transition to completely greenhouse gas neutral economies and bringing about a global Green New Deal.

We're looking at the Congressional version of the Green New Deal...

It includes the following EXCITING provisions... (really, ... exciting!!)

Dramatically expand existing renewable power sources and deploy new production capacity with the goal of meeting 100% of national power demand through renewable sources;

building a national, energy-efficient, “smart” grid;

upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety;

eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural and other industries, including by investing in local-scale agriculture in communities across the country;