Speak Up! Speak Out!

Civil Rights

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Martin Luther King Celebration January 18, 2012

Dave traveled to Bellingham to record the 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration and shares here some of the music and some of the speeches from the event.

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Southern Law Poverty Center - October 12, 2011

jim takes Speak up! Speak out! to Seattle to hear from Southern Law Poverty Center Exec. Director, Richard Cohen, and Founder and chief litigator, Morris Dees. Their presentation was entitled The State of Hate and Extremism in America, honoring their 40 years of championing and fighting for the civil rights of people of color and other foci of hate in America. Norm Gissel, a Coeur d'Alene, Idaho lawyer who spearheaded the lawsuit against the Aryan Nations and its leader, also speaks about that case and what it has meant to his community.

Southern Poverty Law Center - http://www.splc.org

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Taking Back the Right to Self Governance - May 18, 2011

Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Mr. Linzey has worked for years to help communities protect themselves from corporate development project that would cause environmental destruction in their jurisdiction. He now helps municipalities design legislation to challenge the legal foundations that prohibit communities from governing themselves and creating a sustainable future. CELDF conducts "Democracy Schools" in communities throughout the country to train local leaders and activists to do this kind of work.

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INTERVENE: Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking in Skagit County - January 19, 2011

SUSO's Jodie Buller talks to Bethany Dearborn who works with Skagit Against Slavery, SDVSAS, and Tierra Nueva, about an upcoming training for support services, law, and legal professionals on this international and local human rights issue. Detective Sergeant Ryan Long from SPD's Vice and High Risk Victims Unit will be at the INTERVENE training, presented by Shared Hope Intl., and joins us in the studio by phone to talk about bigger picture of human trafficking and what it looks like close to home.

http://www.sharedhope.org
http://www.skagitagainstslavery.org
http://www.polarisproject.org

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Facing Race: 2010 Legislative Report Card on Racial Equity - Jan. 12, 2011

Do race and poverty matter when legislators in Washington state make laws? John Paul Chaisson-Cardenas, legislative director for Washington Community Action Network (CAN) and Julie Chinitz, Policy Director for the Alliance for a Just Society (formerly the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations) join Speak up! Speak out! this week to discuss how Washington state legislators in Olympia scored in the 2010 legislative session when considering legislation that affects racial justice. With one quarter of the state's population being people of color, are they considered in the enacting of laws in the state. For the second year, a Washington coalition of groups concerned about poverty and racial justice evaluated legislators and presented the scores in a report available online at either of the mentioned speakers' websites.

John Paul Chaisson-Cardenas, legislative director for Washington Community Action Network (CAN) - http://www.washingtoncan.org

Julie Chinitz - Policy Director, Alliance for a Just Society (formerly Northwest Federation of Community Organizations) - http://www.allianceforajustsociety.org

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Migrating Towards Justice: Stories to Transform People and Policy - Dec. 1, 2010

Recently, Witness for Peace partnered with Tierra Nueva and the Skagit Immigrant Rights Council to bring a Nicaraguan campesino leader to Skagit. Augusto Castillo Obregon weaves personal stories to connect issues of globalization and neo-liberal economic models to migration and environmental degradation in Nicaragua.

"For me, free trade agreements, neo-liberal policies and the conditions on the aid from the international financial institutions has brought our country to extreme poverty..." Obregon explains, "In my community, the installation of a tobacco factory generates employment but also miserable salaries and contamination of our environment, principally to our water supply. The worst is that some farmers are selling their land to cultivate tobacco, causing less production of food to sustain us."

Join Speak up! Speak out! as we listen through an interpreter to what Obregon has to say about the perils of corporate and IMF (International Monetary Fund) and WTO (World Trade Organization) rule over communities and trade.

Witness for Peace, http://www.witnessforpeace.org/northwest
WFP, NW Coordinator, Colette Cosner at 206.250.2680 or wfpnw@witnessforpeace.org

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Supreme Court decision in "Citizens United," and Corporate Personhood, part 2 - July 14, 2010

This is part 2 of our interview with Steven Reisler, practicing attorney and Chair of the Seattle Chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild, concerning the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case removing limits to what corporations may spend in political advertising.

In this interview, Mr. Reisler discusses the nature of the modern corporation, what the legal standing of corporate personhood means in practical terms, and how this recent Supreme Court decision is being used to erode what's left of our democracy.

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Supreme Court decision in "Citizens United," and Corporate Personhood - July 7, 2010
Steven Reisler, practicing attorney and Chair of the Seattle Chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild, discusses the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case removing limits to what corporations may spend in political advertising.

In this first of two interviews, Mr. Reisler puts this recent decision, and the legal status of corporations as persons into context, by reviewing the history of our court system and the role of corporations in our economy and politics since the late 18th Century.

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Martin Luther King, Jr - January 14, 2009
A dozen people from the Skagit Valley - ages 15 to 80 - share their thoughts about Martin Luther King, Jr., on the 80th anniversary of his birth.

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Privilege and Power - January 19, 2008
6th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr Festival keynote speaker Cecily Hazelrigg-Hernandez, Western Washington University Professor, in Mount Vernon Washington.

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