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This week on Uprising:

* Evangelicals Gather At Values Voter Summit
* Black Agenda Report on Community Organizing
* Bush’s Last Ditch Effort to Gut Endangered Species Act
* Mumia Abu Jamal: Reflections on the Conventions
* What We Have Lost Since 9-11-01

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Evangelicals Gather At Values Voter Summit

Over the weekend social conservatives from the religious right have gathered in Washington D.C. for the “Values Voter Summit.” The event, sponsored by the Family Research Council Action and the Alliance Defense Fund, is expecting 2,000 participants. According to the FRC’s website, this third annual summit is a call to action for transforming the nation’s political landscape on issues such as same-sex marriage, radical Islam, and judicial activism. The summit, which is energized by the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, features speakers such as Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Sean Hannity, and Rudy Guiliani. However, as the Values Voter Summit is underway, three prominent tax attorneys and former Internal Revenue Service officials have filed a complaint with their former agency alleging that the sponsoring organization, the Alliance Defense Fund, is in breach of tax law. They contend that the ADF plan to ask pastors to endorse or oppose candidates from the pulpit later this month is a federal tax law violation.

GUEST: Sarah Posner, investigative journalist, expert on conservative evangelicals, writes for the American Prospect website about news of the religious right, and author of “God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters”

Black Agenda Report on Community Organizing

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

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Bush’s Last Ditch Effort to Gut Endangered Species Act

One of the many hallmarks of the Bush Administration these past 8 years has been a targeting of the Endangered Species Act, in the service of industrial corporations. Now, in a last-ditch effort to gut the act, before it’s own tenure expires, the Bush White House has proposed drastic changes to weaken the ESA. Passed in 1973, the ESA is the most wide-ranging of the dozens of environmental laws approved in the 1970s. It was designed to protect living species in critical danger of extinction as a result of “economic growth and development untendered by adequate concern and conservation.” A coalition of conservation groups in California are suing the government to restore safeguards for a variety of Sierra wildlife that are under threat because of monitoring requirements that were removed last year. Meanwhile, a recent study reports that nearly 40 percent of freshwater fish species in North America are in danger of extinction because of pollution and dams. Researchers found that 700 individual fish populations are threatened – nearly double the amount from 20 years ago. 457 species are already feared to be extinct.

GUEST: Jamie Rappaport-Clark, Executive Vice President of Defenders of Wildlife

Mumia Abu Jamal: Reflections on the Conventions

Mumia Abu Jamal is an award winning journalist and political prisoner. Today’s commentary is about the Democratic National Convention.

Listen to Mumia’s audio commentaries at www.prisonradio.org.

What We Have Lost Since 9-11-01

The streets of St. Paul last week showcased an era of repression whose starting point can be identified as September 11th 2001. Hundreds of protesters, bystanders, and journalists outside the Republican National Convention were hauled away to jails under the pretext of “domestic terrorism” and many of them now face felony charges. When the twin towers and the Pentagon were hit by hijacked planes seven years ago, the Bush administration, helped by Congress, furthered the erosion of civil liberties we take for granted in the name of national security. In just seven years, this nation’s laws have changed dramatically to allow warrantless wiretapping, spying on law-abiding Americans and residents, censorship in the press and academia, crackdowns on immigrant communities, and much much more. Additionally, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 lets the president define the terms “torture” and “enemy combatant,” denying basic freedoms and habeas corpus to individuals despite Geneva Convention requirements. To commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, human rights lawyer and National Lawyers’ Guild president Marjorie Cohn speaks with us about what we’ve lost in 7 years.

GUEST: Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the author of “Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law”

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.” — Dorothy Thompson