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This week on Uprising:

* The First 100 Days: Obama’s Progressive Mandate
* Black Agenda Report on the Profiling of Black Colleges
* On May Day, a Call for Labor, Economic, and Immigration Justice
* Empire Notes on Prosecuting Torture
* Afghanistan Peace and Development Conference Reportback

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Did Obama Make Good Use of his Progressive Mandate in His First 100 Days?

This past Wednesday marked President Obama’s 100th day in office, which he commemorated by issuing a sort of report card for his own administration. Saying he was “confident of the future, but not content with the present,” the 44th US president can count among his domestic accomplishments, signing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, expanding publicly funded health insurance for children, lifting the ban on stem cell research, holding health care reform forums across the nation, and passing a massive economic stimulus package. Where foreign policy is concerned the President has moved to soften the tone of White House interaction with the Muslim world, close the detention center at Guantanamo, denounce torture practices, ramp down the war in Iraq, expand the war in Afghanistan, and call for an end to nuclear weapons. So far, Obama has signed a total of 19 executive orders and 12 laws, many of them reversing decisions by the Bush Administration. The concept of judging a president by his first 100 days in office harkens back to FDR’s term during which he signed many pieces of legislation intended to dramatically respond to the Great Depression. Given the popular and progressive mandate with which Obama was elected, how has he fared in these first 100 days and what can be expected for the next 100?

GUEST: Norman Solomon, Syndicated Columnist of “Media and Politics,” and author of “War Made Easy”

Black Agenda Report on the Profiling of Black Colleges

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on Black Colleges Being Profiled.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

This May Day Immigrants Call for Labor, Economic, and Immigration Justice

While May Day traditionally has its roots in radical American labor history, over the past several years,the first day of this month has increasingly become the day marked by immigrant labor in the US to rally for justice. May Day in Los Angeles, where this program us recorded, has its own brief and dramatic history – in 2006 hundreds of thousands of people marched and called for a one-day work stoppage; in 2007, a peaceful gathering of thousands of immigrant families resulted in a violent police crackdown and ultimately a $13 million settlement in favor of the protesters. This year organizers of various groups and coalitions called several marches converging on City Hall in downtown LA. Despite the overwhelming focus on economic woes, 2009 could be the year of much-awaited immigration reform, based on recent announcements by President Obama. ICE raids, deportations and detention centers continue to be the norm, and the DREAM Act which many hope will realize the educational dreams of immigrant children, is still awaiting approval. In Los Angeles and across the United States, hundreds of demonstrations and rallies took place to demand an immediate end to the ICE raids, the forced separation of families, and some sort of path to legalization for the millions of undocumented workers.

GUEST: Rebecca Ronquillo, an Organizer with the the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), a part of MIWON, the Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network

For more information about MIWON, visit www.miwon.org, or call 213-949-7985.

Empire Notes on Prosecuting Torture

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

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

Visit www.empirenotes.org for more information.

Afghanistan Peace and Development Conference Reportback

On Tuesday April 28th, an intimate gathering of prominent Afghan Americans and progressive analysts met at a conference in Queens College, New York, to come to consensus on how best to achieve peace in Afghanistan. Organized by the Afghanistan Peace Association, the conference raised the various challenges facing Afghanistan including widespread poverty, ineffective government, and a growing insurgency. The US/NATO war in Afghanistan is a center piece of President Obama’s foreign policy. But Afghanistan has seen a dramatic escalation in violence over the past several years, and is set to receive a boost in US troops this summer. With rampant corruption in the central government, bloody suicide bombings by the Taliban, and civilian killings by US and NATO forces, the Central Asian country is headed toward a path of seemingly intractable disaster. I attended the conference as a speaker through my work with the Afghan Women’s Mission, and was joined by progressives such as Christian Parenti, Sameer Dossani, Ann Jones, Fahim Vorgetts, and Fariba Nawa. I had the chance to speak with several of them while I was there..

GUESTS: Dr. Dawer Nadi, one of the organizers of the conference, and one of the founders of the Afghanistan Peace Association, Fahima Vorgetts, board member of Women for Afghan Women1 and director of the Afghan Women’s Fund.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” — Jeanette Rankin