Author, activist and former California State Senator Tom Hayden talks in
depth with the author of No Logo and The
Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein,
about the state of the fourth branch of government: journalists. Both
Hayden and Klein became serious journalists in college, and it was
during that time that both experienced defining moments.
When Hayden interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr at the 1960 DNC in Los
Angeles, he asked questions while imagining the headline, “Tom Hayden
Interviews MLK,” but by the time he wrote the article he knew there were
more important things in the world than personal glory. Klein rebelled
against her feminist mother until Mark Lepine gunned down
fourteen women in what became known as the
Montreal Massacre. It was then she realized people were dying for
the beliefs her mother fought for, and that realization awakened the activist
within her. After both events, Hayden and Klein dedicated their lives to telling
the truth about the world, and doing everything in their power to not use subjects like
“they,” but use “we” instead. It is that distinction that defines their
journalism to this day.
A kind of “living history” project composed of short videotaped
conversations, This Brave Nation
brings together the most intelligent, passionate and creative voices of
one generation with the activists, journalists and artists of the next to
dialogue on loves, lives, politics and history. Each discussion will be produced as both a
five-minute video and a thirty-minute mini-documentary, which will be
collected in a DVD
box set. There will also be house
parties nationwide to screen the series on July 13, including a live event with
Nation editor
Katrina vanden Heuvel
and Brave New Films
founder
Robert Greenwald
.