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This week on Uprising:

* General Election Begins: Who is the Real McCain?
* Black Agenda Report on the Presidential Election
* New Orleans Guest Workers on Hunger Strike For Labor Rights
* Empire Notes on Democracy in Pakistan
* Immigration Activists March for Migrants from Mexico to Arizona

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Who is the Real McCain

GUESTS: Paul Waldman, co-author with David Brock of Free Ride: John McCain And the Media, Cliff Schechter, author of The Real McCain

With Special Guest Co-host Maria Armoudian, host of The Insighters, heard Thursday at 4 pm on KPFK

Last Tuesday Illinois Senator Barack Obama claimed the Democratic Party nomination for President, making history as the nation’s first black presidential candidate for a major party. The final elections in one of the longest Democratic primary races in history, yielded a win for Barack Obama in Montana and Hillary Clinton in South Dakota. Clinton has said she is open to an invitation to join Obama as running mate.

Meanwhile, a new voter opinion survey shows Obama pulling ahead of McCain in the Presidential race, 47-44%. The Gallup/USA Today poll results are a reversal of last month’s findings which saw McCain beating Obama 47-45%. The presumptive Republican nominee gave a speech in New Orleans that centered on an apparent co-optation of Obama’s message of “change.” He plans to argue that his opponent offers the wrong kind of change, while he, McCain, offers the “right” kind.

Cliff Schecter is Knight-Ridder columnist, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, and a frequent guest on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and many other national media outlets that cover politics.

Paul Waldman is the author or coauthor of three books on politics and media, including The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories That Shape the Political World. His last book was Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success. He is also a columnist for The American Prospect.

Black Agenda Report on the Presidential Election

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

This week’s commentary is about this year’s Presidential Elections. Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

New Orleans Guest Workers on Hunger Strike For Labor Rights

GUEST: Sameer Dossani, Director of 50 Years Is Enough Network, Organizer with New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice

As the 3-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches in August, guest workers from the Gulf Coast continue a weeks-long hunger strike. For the past three weeks, members of the Indian Workers Congress have demonstrated in front of the White House and Indian Embassy to denounce labor conditions they describe as modern-day slavery. In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, corporations who were awarded contracts to rebuild the Gulf Coast, sought guest workers from around the globe. Indian workers on hunger strike recall being recruited to work for Signal International on the promises of permanent residency, green cards, and family relocation. In exchange, the recruiter asked for a one-time cash payment of $20,000. When more than 500 Indian welders and pipe fitters accepted, they found themselves on H-2B guest worker visas. On the job conditions included the constant threat of deportation and poor food and lodging services for which the workers had to pay. Faced with broken promises and poor labor conditions, Indian workers have organized in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi to demand a U.S. State Department investigation into the abuses.

For more information visit www.neworleansworkerjustice.org.

Empire Notes on Democracy in Pakistan

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 Democracy in Pakistan.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

Immigration Activists March for Migrants from Mexico to Arizona

GUEST: Hamid Khan, Executive Director, and Joyti Chand, Lead Advocate, with the LA-based South Asian Network

As we head into the summer, triple digit temperatures along the Arizona-Mexico border are expected to result in untold numbers of migrants deaths from heat exposure. Every year, and particularly during the summer months, at minimum, dozens of migrants from Mexico and Central America die while crossing into the US. Border Patrol agents claim that there has been a dramatic drop in deaths and in the numbers of people crossing overall, citing greater enforcement along the border, workplace raids in the US and a receding US economy. But immigrant advocates counter that recent crackdowns have simply driven people deeper into more treacherous territory. To draw attention to those who die in the desert, hundreds of activists and organizers, for the fifth year in a row, walked for 75 miles from Sasabe, Sonora in Mexico on May 26th and ended in Tucson, Arizona this past Sunday June 1st.

For more information visit www.derechoshumanosaz.net.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“Borders are scratched across the hearts of men, by strangers with a calm, judicial pen, and when the borders bleed we watch with dread the lines of ink along the map turn red.” — critic, author, and journalist Marya Mannes