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Most of us cringe involuntarily when contemplating the trillions of tax dollars that are being poured into failing financial institutions. We’re all suffering, whether with job insecurity or actual unemployment, homelessness or just making our mortgage payment or rent for the month — Why should the wealthiest people, responsible for creating the economic mess, have their firms saved, their jobs secured, and their bonuses intact? A new CBS poll found that three-quarters of all Americans think the rich ought to be more heavily taxed. The result reflects a new wave of national consciousness coinciding with a realization that for far too long, too few people have benefited too disproportionately at the expense of the rest of us. The realization has manifested in various ways, most recently street action. As the April 15th deadline to file taxes approaches next week, a seemingly spontaneous movement across the country is organizing actions that it calls “Tea Parties,” named after the 1773 Boston Tea Party incident when American colonialists dumped British tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of “taxation without representation.” Today’s “tea-parties” primarily target what conservatives see as a socialist government response to the failing economy. But people on the other side of the political spectrum are also organizing. “A New Way Forward” is the name of a new campaign that is organizing protests around the nation including here in Los Angeles, to denounce the corporate bailouts in the context of out-of-control capitalism. Their focus is on corporations, their CEOs, and America’s wealthy.

GUESTS: Joe Costello, A New Way Forward, Yasha Levine, editor and writer for ExiledOnline.com

For more information, visit www.anewwayforward.org.

Read Yasha Levine’s article about the Tea Party movement here: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/129656/the_rick_santelli_%27tea_party%27_controversy:_article_kicks_up_a_media_dust_storm/