Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

By Burt CohenSociety & CultureNewsPolitics
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Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen episodes

  • David Beats Goliath: Water Over Gold
    The most dangerous thing to be in Central America is a water defender. The transnational mining interests frighten regional governments with massive lawsuits if they don’t get their way. And they have killed. But as the new book The Water Defenders tells the story, despite the bullying, sometimes the people most affected can actually take on the corporate imposed definition of progress and save their vital water supply. Focusing on El Salvador, on this show, co-author Robin Broad says we must look to how it is extracted not just the retail gold for jewelry and electronics.  For example, cyanide is unseen but is essential to the process. There’s no reason not to re-use gold. And the narrative points out that moving beyond the likely allies can make all the difference. A replicable lesson.
    1 hr
  • The Intent of the Drug War: Repress Black People
    Remember Nixon’s “law and order?” It was a clever way to get whites to buy into racist repression. On this show author historian Alfred McCoy (who revealed government heroin distribution to GIs in Vietnam) says the continuing “war on drugs” is really just fifty years of reinforcing racism. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have relied on boosting fear of the “Black male predator” for their own re-election. Mass incarceration ingeniously relocates about a third of African American males to rural prisons, reconstituting the electorate, so that the Black vote is outweighed by right wing whites. The legacy of Jim Crow laws lives on. Find out how.
    1 hr
  • Afghanistan: We’re Outta There, Now What?
    President Biden is doing what presidents rarely do: seeing reality and making a change. At no small political risk. Are we abandoning the women to Taliban brutality? Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute, former assistant to President Reagan writes in The American Conservative and antiwar.com that Biden is courageously doing the right thing by ending the ill defined war. He explains Afghanistan is not one country, but is ethnically based, like Pashtuns and others. And it was anything but conservative to try to social engineer a foreign culture. Though a religious country, even the Taliban are divided, and young Afghanis see another face of America.
    1 hr
  • Fourth of July 2021: Are We Keeping a Republic?
    While there are major challenges, there is much to celebrate. We are the only country with the same form of government since our founding in 1787. But in light of Trumpism, religious nationalists, and January 6th, how strong is our democracy? On this show historian Alan C.Brownfeld shares his analysis and optimism. Demographics are changing for the better and those who fight for white male Protestant domination and control are in a losing battle, and we are a better country for it. Brownfeld believes the separation of church and state remains strong. The term “United States” remains more aspirational than accomplished reality. But there is reason to celebrate the Fourth.
    1 hr
  • Berta Caceres Trial Will Test Biden’s Central America Policy
    When VP Kamala Harris went to Central America, Honduras was not on the list of stops. She has reason to not want to appear with their right wing president. He is supported by the powerful global extractive industries, but there’s a rising feminist demand for justice in the trial for the murder of activist Berta Caceres. As guest Laura Carlsen, director of Global Solidarity for Just Associates explains, international forces are used to US support for what they call “development,” while land defenders insist on self determination by the people who actually live in the areas to be “developed.” Biden has a rare opportunity to make real changes in US policy, enabling people to stay home, or the same old same old.
    59 min
  • Split Among Right Wing Evangelicals
    There are signs of serious splits emerging in the very conservative Southern Baptist Convention, which  is the largest Protestant denomination in America. Fifteen thousand of them just completed their annual gathering to elect a new president. The least hard liner emerged. With about 80 million evangelicals in America, what does this mean for our political and cultural future? On this show guest is New Yorker magazine contributing writer Eliza Griswold who covers religion. The Christian white religious nationalism  on display January 6th is rooted in this culture which is determined to wield great influence over American politics, a culture which believes in “complementarianism,” meaning subjugation of women. Though founded in 1845 to support slavery, Griswold notes that in the SBC, the Falwell Right is dying, and that the young members are more justice minded. What does this mean for America’s democracy? Listen in.
    1 hr
  • Critical Race Theory: Scopes Trial Redux?
    In the Scopes Trial of 1925, William Jennings Bryan spoke against teaching evolution, saying “I have all the information I need to live and die by.” Today’s intense fight against teaching Critical Race Theory is more of the same. To many Americans who have been economically hurt, disoriented, and confused by the rush of change, the familiar simplicity is both a safe retreat and a weapon to be used against condescending experts. On this show historian Chuck Holden looks at the many examples in our history of rejecting education and knowledge in a serious turn away from democracy. And Trump gave permission for Americans to be incurious and to mock the educated.  The opposition to teaching CRT is about pushing back against a scary new world. Democrats don’t need to educate them, we need to listen.
    1 hr
  • Trans Medicine: Brave New World?
    Like many professionals, doctors and medical providers are uncomfortable with plowing new ground. But that’s what trans medicine is, and there is growing need for best treatment practices. There is very little research or precedent but the needs of trans medicine are real. In their new book TransMedicine The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender, author stef shuster delves into the murky waters that lie before us. Unlike other medical issues, it’s not about curing any disease and any doctors are intimidated by their patients’ call for treatment.  What norms and biases come in? What about the familiar but false binary models? And with so many parents of trans kids greatly uncomfortable, what can help determine appropriate treatment?  Doctors, so used to being the unquestioned authority, find themselves in uncertain norm shattering territory.
    1 hr
  • Rural Teacher Elected President in Peru While the Right Claims Fraud.
    It’s a rich country full of poor people. With his teaching pencil as a symbol, from the countryside Pedro Castillo is the winner of the very tight but certified free and fair June 6th presidential election. The candidate of the wealthy far right Keiko Fujimori claims fraud. Her father, former president Alberto Fujimori, is accused of crimes against humanity. As with so many other right wingers, Fujimori waged a campaign of fear, calling Castillo a communist. But Castillo is actually a humble teacher from neglected rural Peru, a non-doctrinaire leftist with an accomplished team of policy experts ready to go to work. Why should the majority be so poor and lack access to basic needs in a country so rich with wealth and resources? Our guest Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK just returned from Peru and explains the importance of this election.
    1 hr
  • Manchin: Ego Rules Over Patriotism
    Michael Winship writes: “Despite Joe Biden and Kamala Harris being in the White House, we remain in existential peril.” A big step toward tyranny is Senator Joe Manchin who announced he will not support an end to the filibuster which has to end if democracy is going to survive. Former senior writer for Moyers and Company, Winship argues by putting his fear about re-election first, he is enabling: the continued rule of corporate money, a new version of Jim Crow laws, blocking a revamp of criminal justice and law enforcement, and gun safety laws. In the choice he makes, Manchin will either be known as the man who defended democracy in its darkest hour or the Democrat who helped the Right subvert our democracy.
    1 hr

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