ST 6 20 14 Full Show

On our weekly roundtable:  Thursday was Juneteenth, the day that those enslaved in Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation, two and a half years after it was issued.  It is now the only day in the US that emancipation from slavery is in any way, though tentatively, marked.

The impact and aftermath of Freedom Summer: this year marks 50 years since mainly white students from the North descended on a violent and segregated Mississippi.  They went to Mississippi, heeding the call of SNCC, CORE and other civil rights organizations to join them in giving a death blow to segregation and Jim Crow laws.

They faced the terror that Mississippi’s Black population had faced since being dragged to the shores of the US.  That terror included jailing, beatings, threats and death. What can their history and their sacrifice contribute to movements of today?

Within the history and impact of the civil rights movement and era, how and why can today’s shift to the right in Congress, in the Supreme Court be explained?  Is overt racism on the rise in populations in the US and Europe? Is there anything in today’s globalized world that can be seen outside the lens of race and economic justice?  What can be done?

In addition to promising targeted military strikes, and with US Special Ops on the ground perhaps collaborating with Special Ops from Iran, there is now overt discussion in the Obama administration of regime change in Iraq.  The region and the US grapples with how to handle the collaboration between a popular anti-government movement and ISIS fighters.

Panelists are Jackie Goldberg, Tom Hayden and Dr. Gerald Horne.

Sojourner Truth Friday, June 20th