New York, NY – On this special holiday edition of Stuck Nation Radio we’re talking to economist Richard Wolff, social justice advocate Rev. Dr. William Barber and labor historian Joe Wilson.
July 4th is carried on the books as American Independence Day, which commemorates this day in 1776 when a group of white men signed the Declaration of Independence of the 13 colonies from Great Britain. They proclaimed to the world and to posterity that they held as “self-evident, that all men were created equal and that they were endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them were Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Of course, the nation they would bring into being was one that was built on slavery, the violent seizing of this land from the Indigenous People who first inhabited it, and where women — with the notable exception of New Jersey for a just few years— were NOT permitted to vote. In the 250 years since, we were taught in school that America was a noble experiment working toward a more perfect union where slavery was ended, women won the right to vote and so-called majority rule prevailed. Yet, through institutions like the electoral college, the filibuster and the unfettered flow of corporate money into our politics, the forces of self-interested minority rule, linked to capital, endure to the detriment of the broader public interest. Of course, we saw how this all played out so painfully during our ongoing pandemic that has killed more than one million Americans and sickened many millions more.
Segment A: Economist Richard Wolff, whose program Economic Update is heard here on WBAI and other Pacifica stations. He is the author of the “Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Itself from Pandemics or Itself.” How our corporate tax system punishes working people while letting idle capital off the hook and how our structural scarcity undermined our public health response to COVID.
Segment B: Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. He discusses the economic realities of this nation in which 140 million people struggle week to week to make ends meet including more than half of its children. He describes how a brand based multi-racial coalition of these Americans can transform our politics and end once and for all the grip of minority rule that endures almost 250 years since the Declaration of Independence plus labor historian Joe Wilson, discusses the linkage between racial justice and labor rights in the United States.
