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This week on Uprising:

* BP Oil Spill Could Be Worse Than “Exxon-Valdez”
* Matt Taibbi on Goldman Sachs Under Fire From Congress, SEC
* Black Agenda Report on the Need for a Constitutional Amendment
* Oklahoma Passes Misogynist Abortion Measures

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BP Oil Spill Could Be Worse Than “Exxon-Valdez”

A massive oil spill emanating from an exploding rig in the Gulf of Mexico is threatening to kill marine life and endanger the Gulf Coast. Eleven workers went missing and are now presumed dead when the …

We’ll go to Afghanistan to speak with Malalai Joya, the intrepid activist who was just named by Time Magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people of 2010. And, we’ll hear from Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Plus, a report back from the weekend’s May Day march.

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New legislation, spearheaded by Democratic Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Chris Van Hollen, was introduced on Thursday to curb the effects of the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizen’s United ruling earlier this year. The ruling allows corporations, nonprofits, unions, and other groups to spend unlimited funds on election campaigns. The bill is called the DISCLOSE Act, which stands for “Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections.” It includes a number of proposals that would limit spending by corporations, and require more funding transparency. Only two Republicans, Representatives Mike Castle (Delaware) and Walter Jones (North Carolina) co-endorsed the House bill. This marks a sharp turn from the bipartisanship that led to the passage of the McCain-Feingold Act 8 years ago. Twenty one Republican supporters for that Act …

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The state of Oklahoma passed two new draconian abortion laws on Tuesday. The first requires women to have an ultrasound in clear sight and listen to a detailed description of their fetus before undergoing an abortion. The second protects doctors from being sued for withholding information about birth defects evident in the womb from women. Both laws have been vetoed twice. Oklahoma governor Brad Henry vetoed a law containing both provisions in 2008, but it was overridden before being declared unconstitutional by an Oklahoma County judge on the technical grounds that it dealt with multiple subjects. The laws were then passed separately and vetoed once more this month by Governor Henry, who said that the ultrasound law provided for unconstitutional intrusions into a woman’s privacy and violated a doctor’s right …

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A plan to build an offshore wind farm in the Nantucket Sound has received a boost this week when the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, announced approval of the project. The proposal called Cape Wind, which has been stalled for nine years, would be the first utilities-scale offshore wind farm in the United States, potentially providing as much as 75 percent of the electricity demand for the surrounding area. Nantucket Sound is a triangular shaped area in the Atlantic Ocean between Nantucket, Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard off the Massachusetts coast. Cape Wind faced opposition right from the beginning from a group calling itself the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound which includes several Chambers of Commerce in the area, fishing groups, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and billionaire oil …

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Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is about a Constitutional Amendment .

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

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Coxey’s Army Marches on Washington

Back in the day on April 30th, 1894, Ohio populist Jacob Coxey arrived to Washington D.C. with five hundred unemployed workers. The assembled ‘industrial army’ planned to march on the nation’s capital in response to the economic difficulties brought on by the Great Panic of 1893. As the nation was facing its worst downturn at the time, Coxey’s idea for the demonstration began with one hundred men in Ohio. Hundreds more would join and sympathize with the march as it made its trek towards Washington D.C. through Pennsylvania. The populist decried federal inaction in the face of hardships and proposed many solutions similar to those that would be enacted decades later under the New Deal. Coxey argued that people could be back on the job …

“Give us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for- because unless we stand for something we shall fall for anything.” — Peter Marshall

We’ll examine the merits of new legislation that is about to be introduced in the House in response to the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United Vs F.E.C. decision in January. And, we’ll cover the recent Oklahoma law forcing women to view ultrasounds of their wombs before getting abortions. Plus, Cape Wind, the nation’s first large-scale off-shore wind-farm project gets federal approval after 9 years of controversy. And this week’s Black Agenda Report.

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A massive oil spill emanating from an exploding rig in the Gulf of Mexico is threatening to kill marine life and endanger the Gulf Coast. Eleven workers went missing and are now presumed dead when the Deepwater Horizon rig burst into flames on April 20th and sank two days later. The rig is owned by Transocean and was operated by UK-based oil giant BP, who is now responsible for the financial costs of clean-up. The oil spill has spread so far that it is about 600 miles in circumference, an area bigger than the state of West Virginia. The rate of the spill was understood to be about 1000 barrels a day but as of yesterday afternoon, it is estimated that the rate is actually 5 times greater. After …