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This week on Uprising:

* The Virginia Tech Shootings: A Media and Race Analysis
* Empire Notes on Imus and the Politics of Racial Backlash
* Laura Carlsen: Moratorium on Free Trade Agreements?
* Black Agenda Report on White Supremacy
* Rachel Carson’s Courage for the Earth, 100 years after her birth

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The Virginia Tech Shootings: A Media and Race Analysis

GUEST: Tamara K. Nopper, an Asian American graduate student in sociology at Temple University, where she teaches classes on ethnicity, race, and Asian American studies. She is also a writer and anti-war activist volunteering with the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO)

This Friday April 20th was the 8th anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. Today we examine another campus massacre that took place on Monday April 16th. Twenty three year old English student Cho Seung-Hui opened fire on a campus dormitory at Virginia Tech University, killing 32 faculty and students before taking his own life. It was the worst campus shooting in U.S. history. Because of the shooter’s ethnic heritage, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry fears racial backlash against Koreans and the ministry has expressed its concern and condolences in the aftermath of the tragedy. Some cultural critics are particularly concerned about how media analysis of the event might affect this potential prejudice. Will the media highlight or downplay Cho’s ethnicity? How will current “model minority” stereotypes play into the analysis? How does the incident’s proximity to the 8th anniversary of the Columbine incident frame this shooting?

Q. So there has been a lot of talk in the media about a possible racial backlash against Asian Americans and you recently wrote a commentary called “What May Come: Asian Americans and the Virginia Tech Shootings.” What are your thoughts on a possible backlash?

Read Tamara Nopper’s commentary, “What May Come: Asian Americans and the Virginia Tech Shootings” at: http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content
&task=view&id=184&Itemid=43

Empire Notes on Imus and the Politics of Racial Backlash

GUEST: Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade

Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is on Imus and the Politics of Racial Backlash.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

Moratorium on Free Trade Agreements?

GUEST: Laura Carlsen, Director of the International Relations Center Americas Program and a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus. She is based in Mexico

On April 1, four new free trade agreements (FTAs) were put on the table for the US Congress to ratify. These FTAs would establish bilateral trade between the United States and the four nations of Peru, Panama, Columbia, and South Korea, separately. Congress now has until June 30th to decide on each proposal’s passage as per the presidential power of “fast track authority.” However, with a Congress dominated by Democrats who have run under anti-free trade platforms as well as high national disapproval ratings for FTAs, the passage of those FTAs is questionable. FTAs have come under massive criticism for their negative impact on foreign economies, workers’ rights in foreign countries, and for their inability to improve standards of living both at home and abroad. More generally, FTAs are criticized for exacerbating the problem of unequal income distribution in participating countries. In early April a South Korean cab driver set himself on fire to protest the US-Korea FTA.

Read Laura Carlsen’s article, “Moratorium on Free Trade Agreements,” at http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4135.

Black Agenda Report on White Supremacy

GUEST: Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report

This week’s commentary is on White Supremacy. Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Rachel Carson’s Courage for the Earth

GUEST: John Elder, teaches English and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, contributer to Courage for the Earth

This year’s Earth Day, April 22nd, is the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson, the person who is credited with launching the modern environmental movement as we know it in the United States. Carson’s book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962, was the impetus for many mainstream Americans, thinking seriously for the first time about the negative impact of human behavior on the planet. Rachel Carson was a writer, scientist and ecologist from Pennsylvania who studied marine biology and worked for the US Department of Fisheries. Her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, was first published in 1941 and was just republished earlier this month. Among Carson’s main campaigns, was the prolific use of synthetic chemical pesticides. She warned the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. And in her seminal 1962 book, Silent Spring, she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world. Carson died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer. Now, to celebrate her 100th birthday, Houghton Mifflin is releasing an anthology called “Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson,” edited by Peter Matthiessen, with contributors that include Linda Lear, Al Gore and John Elder.

Rachel Carson addressed the National Women’s Press Club on December 4th 1962. Special thanks to the Pacifica Radio Archives.

Sonali Subversive Thought for the Day

“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery – not over nature but of ourselves” — Rachel Carson