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Leimert Park Rally to Save Tookie
GUESTS: Reverend James Lawson, Bonnie Williams, ex-gang member

Time is running out for Stanley “Tookie” Williams, the founder of the Crips Gang in Los Angeles, who feels he has redeemed himself through his internationally popular anti-violence books for children. He also created the Internet Project for Street Peace, which connects youth globally to help end violence.”Tookie” is scheduled to be executed next week on December 13th, for the murders of four people he says he did not commit. His only chance at life is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger will meet with Tookie’s lawyers and prosecutors in a closed-door clemency hearing today in Sacramento. If clemency is granted, Williams’ death sentence would be commuted to life in prison without parole. Outside the steps of the State capitol, anti-death penalty activists and Tookie supporters will hold a “People’s Clemency Hearing.” Last Saturday in Leimert Park, there was a “Rally to Stop the Execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams” and today we bring you the sounds of that rally, recorded for Uprising by Mansoor Sabbagh of Global Voices for Justice.

For more information visit www.tookie.com, and www.savetookie.org.

A Conversation with Legendary Historian Studs Terkel
GUEST: Studs Terkel, legendary oral historian and radio broadcaster, prize winning author of many books, including, “And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc-Jockey

Called the “working man’s interviewer,” legendary oral historian and radio broadcaster, Studs Terkel has a new book out. It’s called “And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc-Jockey.” Studs Terkel spent over 50 years as a radio broadcaster and wrote such books as: “Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression,” “The Good War: An Oral History of World War II” (for which he won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize), “Division Street: America,” and “Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times.” Recently Terkel underwent successful open-heart surgery. At 93 years-old he is one of the oldest people to undergo this form of surgery and doctors reported his recovery to be remarkable for someone of his advanced age. I spoke with Studs Terkel yesterday from the studios of WFMT in Chicago.

For more information, visit www.studsterkel.org.

Bush-Blair Memo Still Secret
GUEST: Afshin Rattansi, former producer with Al Jazeera

Recently Britain’s attorney general invoked the Official Secrets Act to block publication of a leaked memo that apparently shows disagreements between UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Bush over the Iraq war in April 2004. The memo came to light after a front-page story in London’s Daily Mirror said that Bush wanted to bomb the Qatar headquarters of Al-Jazeera, the Arabic television network that has long been criticized by the Bush administration. The five page memo – stamped `Top Secret’ – records a threat by Bush to unleash `military action’ against Al Jazeera. The TV network’s employees in Ramallah, Palestine protested the threat calling Bush a mafia leader and an enemy of civilization.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace. — John Lennon