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This week on Uprising:

* Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the “Homeland”
* Mumia Abu Jamal on September 11th Attacks
* Republicans Wage War on Voter ID Laws Across States
* Black Agenda Report on Obama and Wall Street
* Frances Moore Lappé Urges Activists to Change Mental Frames, Develop an “Ecomind”

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Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the “Homeland”

As Americans are asked to reflect on the 9/11 attacks during the tenth anniversary, we take a look today at what the attacks unleashed here at home, in particular, the government’s enthusiastic decimation of constitutional rights in the name of protecting Americans from terrorism. Documenting the steady growth of the domestic “surveillance state” is the aim of a joint project between the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and Truthout.org. Under the title “Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the ‘Homeland,'” the two organizations have launched a website to document the proliferation of domestic spying programs in the US. The activities of Americans are now watched by around 800,000 individuals at the local and state levels, who may file reports to federal agencies on citizens without any warning or explanation. US residents carry out the most mundane, personal activities at risk of being recorded in one way or another by taps on phones, emails, and faxes. The infamous illegal wiretapping program started under President Bush, code-name Echelon, is explored by Truthout’s Jason Leopold, who also details the lesser known satellite spying program, Tempest. Tempest allows data to be collected by satellites that can capture images from half a mile away, from computer monitors to the ATM screen at the bank. Most recently, the Associated Press uncovered a collaboration between the New York Police Department and the CIA to monitor “ethnic communities.” The ACLU of Massachusetts and Truthout, “[h]ope their series on surveillance will help stimulate debate about whether we are on the right track in the” war against terrorism.”

GUEST: Nancy Murray, Director of Education at ACLU Massachusetts

Find out more about the project, Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the Homeland at www.surveillanceinthehomeland.org. Also, for more info, visit www.privacysos.org.

Mumia Abu Jamal on September 11th Attacks

Mumia Abu Jamal is a political prisoner and award winning journalist. Today’s commentary is about the September 11th anniversary.

Visit www.prisonradio.org for more information.

Republicans Wage War on Voter ID Laws Across States

Proposed changes to voting laws in Florida have drawn a lawsuit by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The suit, filed this past week, requests that Florida’s voting laws are reviewed by the Federal government under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The controversial changes to the way Floridians may vote include decreasing the early voting period and restricting voter registration drives. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund believes people of color will be disproportionately disenfranchised. States across the nation are considering similar laws that will make voting more difficult, in one way or another. Those states include Maine, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin. In this month’s issue of Rolling Stone, journalist Ari Berman concludes the changes, “[t]aken together, … could significantly dampen the Democratic turn-out next year — perhaps enough to shift the outcome in favor of the GOP.” New laws include shortening early voting periods and prohibiting voters with a felony conviction in their past from ever voting. Berman found that come 2012, restrictive ID requirements at the polls may present the biggest barrier for the largest number of voters. Conservatives have argued for years that voter fraud is rampant, although numerous studies show fraud to be at negligible levels. Among the most egregious new ID standards passed is one Berman found in Texas, where a “concealed weapons permit is considered acceptable ID but a student ID is not.”

GUEST: Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation magazine and an Investigative Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute. He has written extensively about American politics, foreign policy and the intersection of money and politics. You’ll find his article, The GOP War on Voting in this month’s Rolling Stone. His book is called Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics

Read Ari Berman’s article here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gop-war-on-voting-20110830

Black Agenda Report on Obama and Wall Street

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of the Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on President Obama and his relationship with Wall Street.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Frances Moore Lappé Urges Activists to Change Mental Frames, Develop an “Ecomind”

With the increased intensity of hurricanes this season – a predicted outcome of global warming, the future of our planet looks grim. For those of us who embrace environmental justice, driving hybrid cars, recycling as fervently as possible, shopping for locally produced foods, or even working actively through political organizations, times are discouraging. We’re past the tipping point on global warming we’re told, and now is the time to not only stop fossil-fuel consumption, but also adapt to our changing climate. But Frances Moore Lappé, acclaimed author of the best-selling Diet for a Small Planet, says in her latest book EcoMind, “central to our ability to solve a problem is how we perceive the challenge, how we frame it— that “seeing” determines our capacity for doing, and certainly for effective doing.” The award-winning thinker and philosopher takes on the seven most common frames for viewing the world that she says “trap” us into being less effective activists. Among the “thought traps” are using phrases like “economic growth and consumerism is bad for the planet,” that “the earth is running out of resources,” that “human beings are selfish and greedy and we have to overcome our human nature to save the planet,” etc. Frances Moore Lappé challenges the frames and language we use to offer positive solutions that can help us develop what she calls an “EcoMind.”

GUEST: Frances Moore Lappé is the author of EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want (Nation Books, 2011) and 17 other books including the best-selling Diet for a Small Planet which sold 3 million copies. She is the co-founder of three national organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty and environmental crises, as well as solutions now emerging worldwide through what she calls Living Democracy. With her daughter Anna Lappé, she co-directs the Small Planet Institute based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“It will take big, creative imaginations for us to evolve to the next step. Imagination is not fed by fear but by beauty… Greater than our knowledge of a thing, is a sense of wonder. And, out of that wonder, curiosity, and from that curiosity, a seed of creation.” — Susan Osborn, singer/songwriter (quoted by Frances Moore Lappe in Ecomind)