By now you may have seen Peter Dreier’s feature for The Nation, "The Fifty Most Influential Progressives of the Twentieth Century." We’ll be taking your suggestions in the weeks to come, featuring your lists and ideas at TheNation.com and in the magazine. Dreier’s list is the beginning of the conversation. Click here to contribute your ideas and tell us who we missed.
Also this week …
EVENT: The Nation and One Nation Working Together
For all the buzz around the dueling Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rallies, progressives have a major event coming up even sooner – next Saturday. October 2nd is the big "One Nation Working Together" rally in Washington, D.C., a march organized by the AFL-CIO and the NAACP, and uniting labor and racial justice with environmental, women’s, peace and anti-poverty advocates. Organizers have laid out a set of concrete policy goals from the march; you can find out all the details here. The Nation will have coverage online starting next Friday and throughout the weekend, then the week after we’ll present slideshows, interviews on The Nation on GRIT TV and more.
UPCOMING: Our Election Coverage
The Nation is covering both the issues and the key races in election 2010 over the weeks to come. This week we’re featuring the Russ Feingold race and profiling Florida Rep. Alan Grayson ("The Counter-Puncher") and we’ve been running field dispatches online and in print from all over the country. Next week is a special package: is this the year of the (conservative) woman, with essays from Betsy Reed, Jessica Valenti and Rebecca Traister. Starting next month we’re rolling out a comprehensive map that charts all our election coverage, and through a variety of slideshows, GRIT TV commentaries and articles we’re working to present the voices and views of Election 2010. The best way to track coverage is to bookmark our homepage, and to follow us on Twitter.
INTERVIEW: Kumi Naidoo Comes to The Nation
Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International and author of Boiling Point: Can Citizen Action Save the World?, paid a visit to The Nation’s offices on September 23. After telling us that reading The Nation helped him “keep his sanity” during a few years living in the US, he talked to us about Greenpeace’s work, his new book and the global environmental movement, and answered questions from Nation staffers and from Christian Parenti, a frequent contributor to The Nation on environmental issues. An edited version of his remarks and the Q&A session can be found here; we’ll have video next week.
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VIDEO: Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater’s Secret Relationships with Big Business
In his recent piece for The Nation, "Blackwater’s Black Ops," Jeremy Scahill reveals how private security firm Blackwater (now known as Xe) has provided security and intelligence services to a range of powerful multinational corporations over the past several years. Blackwater has also provided intelligence and training to foreign governments, including those of Jordan, Canada and the Netherlands. In this conversation with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Scahill explains that the documents he has obtained link Blackwater to the shady intelligence services of corporations such as Chevron and Monsanto. But Scahill’s research may be just the tip of the iceberg. "This needs to be investigated," says Scahill, "I’m hoping that other journalists can follow up on what Blackwater was doing…for these powerful multinational corporations." Watch the video here.
PODCAST: The Breakdown with Chris Hayes – Does the DREAM Act Have a Future?
This Tuesday Senate Republicans successfully filibustered a defense authorization bill to which Democrats had attempted to attach the DREAM Act, leaving immigrant rights activists to question the future of the now-stalled legislation. Standing for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, the DREAM Act would allow some undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children to earn legal status by completing two years of college or military service. On this week’s episode of The Breakdown, DC Editor Chris Hayes and immigration expert Angela Maria Kelley explore the future of the DREAM Act and possible ways forward for politicians, voters and activists working for humane immigration reform. Listen here or subscribe in I-tunes.
VIDEO: Dean Baker on Elizabeth Warren and Solutions to Poverty
"Poverty is a one-day event, we get a report released and we’re going to talk about poverty. But every day we hear what the stock market does," says Nation contributor Dean Baker. The problem with that kind of coverage, Baker says, is that "many more people will experience poverty than will strike it rich in the stock market." Millions of Americans experience poverty not as a one-day affair, but as a constant, grinding force in their lives. Baker joined The Nation on Grittv via Skype to talk about Elizabeth Warren’s sort-of-appointment, the whinging of the rich over tax increases and Bill Clinton’s comments about the recession’s end. Watch here. Coming up next week on The Nation on GRIT TV: Betsy Reed and Rebecca Traister on conservative women and the "mama grizzlies" (posting Monday) and Eric Foner on his new book about Abraham Lincoln (posting Wednesday. See full episodes at www.grittv.org.
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Finally this week: Editor’s Cut may be quiet next week as we set sail for the Annual Nation cruise. The seminar cruise is both a fundraiser for the magazine and a remarkable week of discussion and debate. This year Nation regulars like Calvin Trillin, John Nichols, Jeremy Scahill, Chris Hayes, Richard Kim and Melissa Harris-Lacewell are joined by progressive voices like Amy Goodman and Jim Hightower; you can see highlights of the 2009 cruise here. We’ll all be tweeting from the boat as best we can, and we’ll bring you video and audio of the sessions here at TheNation.com in the weeks to come.
As always thanks for reading. I’m on Twitter – @KatrinaNation – and I welcome your comments below.
