“The simple truth is that we cannot govern our own affairs when our national, state, and local debates are bought and sold by billionaires, who use thirty second commercials to shout down anyone who disagrees. Democracy demands a rich, robust discourse about ideas, not a spending spree that demeans those ideas, diminishes honest debate and turns off voters to the political process.” – Bernie Sanders from the foreword Dollarocracy …

Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Elections Complex is Destroying America. We’ll spend the hour with media reform activists, journalists, scholars, and authors, Robert McChesney and John Nichols. …

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Nikki Giovanni is a world-renowned poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. She has spent decades writing, lecturing, and speaking out. She is one of the US’s most widely read poets and prides herself on being “a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English.”

Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Lincoln Heights, an all-black suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. …

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“Words are like quilts. You have to put a bunch together to make something warm and comforting or patch together something that will prick and scratch the spirit.” – Nikki Giovanni. …

Acclaimed poet and civil rights activist Nikki Giovanni “Chases Utopia” in her new collection of poems. We’ll spend the hour with her discussing poetry, relationships, food, and of course, hear her poems in her own voice. …

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Southern California has its own unique racial makeup, not just in urban areas, but in the suburbs. While most suburbs in the rest of the US are dominated by whites, here in the greater Los Angeles area, immigrant communities can dominate. The most striking case in point is the San Gabriel Valley which is home to two major groups: Asian Americans and Latinos.

A new …

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“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” – bell hooks …

Two academics and authors, two communities of color. We’ll spend the hour with Arizona State University’s Wendy Cheng, and Pomona College’s Gilda Ochoa on Asian Americans and Latinos in Southern California. …

Arun Gupta, Independent Journalist and regular contributor to the Guardian, In These Times, The Progressive, and Truthout, and co-founder of the Occupied Wall Street Journal and the Indypendent. He’s also a graduate of New York’s French Culinary Institute, and a chef

Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar spoke with Arun Gupta on January 14, 2014 about the transformation of American society and economy.

Watch a video of the interview here: http://youtu.be/wauWmgRGlsQ

Bipasha Shom recorded this interview.

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When the Occupy Wall Street movement hit the nation in September 2011, many envisioned it as the beginning of a new revolutionary chapter in US history. Others dismissed it as nothing more than aimless leftist political theater that would fade away fast. But it was neither of those things – while the encampments did indeed fade away, the ideas sparked during the heyday of the …

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