Free Forum with Terrence McNally

As the government shutdown continues and 800,000 federal workers suffer along with asylum seekers caught by the President’s anti-immigrant actions, listen to my interview from last February with ALI NOORANI, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum and author of THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration. You can learn more at ali-noorani.com and immigrationforum.org where you can link to Ali’s podcast, Only In America.

BILLY WIMSATT, is the founder and executive director of Movement Voter Project, which offers a clear break from the tired and true strategy of electoral politics - big donors, big consultants, and big TV ad buys. MVP helps progressive donors move some of their money to support the best local community-based organizations in key states - organizations alive on the ground 365 days a year, whether there’s an election or not. In 2018, they moved more than $13M to 350+ groups in 42 states - in almost every competitive US House, Senate, Governors race and ballot measure. You can learn more at movement.vote.

In his newest book, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the 21st Century, ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, Dean of Berkeley Law, makes the case that the right has since the 1970s developed and enacted a clear vision of constitutional interpretation. He calls on progressives to fight back with an alternative vision based on fulfilling the Constitution’s promise of liberty and justice for all.

Investigative reporter GREG PALAST (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) has been exposing GOP dirty tricks and voter suppression since 2000. Listen for the latest in the mid-terms in Georgia, Florida, and elsewhere - and how to fight back.

As Trump cronies are caught up in Mueller’s dragnet, let’s look at how justice works for regular folks. 2006 documentary AFTER INNOCENCE tells the stories of wrongly convicted prisoners exonerated and freed by DNA evidence. My guests include: JESSICA SANDERS, Director, Producer, Writer; MARC SIMON, Producer, Writer, and a former attorney with the Innocence Project; HERMAN ATKINS, exonerated and released in 2001 after 13 years in prison; DENNIS MAHER, exonerated and released in 2003 after 19 years in prison; and J W CARNEY who prosecuted Maher.

While elections matter, a vital society demands much more. In How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don't, LESLIE CRUTCHFIELD examines some movements that have succeeded — from tobacco control and gun rights expansion, to marriage equality and acid rain reduction — as well as recent campaigns that haven’t - like Occupy Wall Street, controlling C02 emissions, and gun violence prevention. Her research identifies six practices linked to success. We’ll explore them so you can put them to work.

Midterms are over, Sessions has been fired, Trump has two months till the new House arrives. I’m on vacation and can’t respond to any of that. This week you’ll hear my April 2010 conversation with Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries. We’re joined by Luiz Perez, one of the senior staff at Homeboy. My guests and their work run absolutely counter to the kinds of prejudice and ugliness indulged in by the President.

DAVID CORN wrote the Mother Jones cover story - The Most Important Election of Our Lives, declared that "The Russia scandal is the most important scandal in the history of the United States", and co-authored with Michael Isikoff, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. Who better to talk to at this moment...less than two weeks till the midterms.

JOHN NICHOLS, Nation magazine’s national affairs correspondent, reports from Texas on Beto O’Rourke’s insurgent campaign against Senator Ted Cruz. We place today’s political and societal crises in context - How are things broken? How did they get broken? How do we fix them? With a nod to new blood and new passion on the campaign trail.

MARSHALL GANZ dropped out of Harvard in ’64 to work on Freedom Summer, was a lead organizer for years with United Farm Workers, and led the grass-roots storytelling model for Obama ’08. He’s a lecturer in public policy at Harvard, having returned after 28 years to earn his BA and PhD. I participated recently in one of his public narrative trainings. For the mid-terms and beyond, we need to learn from him. Here’s our conversation, recorded in March 2012.