Laura Flanders Show

It has been 10 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial crash and people are building economic alternatives to climate devastation and capitalist extraction.

It has been 10 years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial crash. One thing we've learned since then is that there is more than one economy in the U.S., and many kinds of economic actors.

Two forms of government have dominated in the west over the last hundred years. In one big power is vested in the state, the government, in the other policy is dominated by the influence of big industry, big corporations, or big money. Well a hundred years after the Russian revolution, and ten years after the financial crash, a whole lot of people all around the world are saying “are there any alternatives?” especially as neither of those models has delivered on a promise of shared prosperity. In Preston, Lancashire, England, a formerly industrial city, the birthplace of the industrial revolution in many ways, they’ve seen ten years of austerity, and partly out of need, and partly out of aspiration they’re practicing, experimenting, with a new model. They’re calling it the Preston model of community wealth building, and it’s inspired by a model in another formerly industrialized city: Cleveland, Ohio, the Evergreen Cooperative model. On today’s program a transatlantic experiment in cooperative community wealth building. This episode is co-produced with the Democracy Collaborative and the Laura Flanders Show.

Economist Michael Hudson discusses infrastructure spending.

The formerly industrial city of Preston, Lancashire, England is experimenting with a new model of community wealth building that has inspired Cleveland, another formerly industrial city across the pond.

This week, economist Michael Hudson joins us to say his predictions on the Trump budget have come true and seem to suggest, more than ever, that capitalism is not only a disservice to the people, but it's also unsuccessful.

This week on the Laura Flanders Show an interview with immigrant and human rights leader, Ravi Ragbir. Ragbir, of the New Sanctuary Coalition in New York was detained January 11 at a routine check in with ICE. He is currently awaiting a hearing on his status. If the intent, or at least the effect of deportations like this one is to silence voices like Ragbir's our response is to lift them back up.

100 years after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and almost ten years after the financial crisis that drove a stake of austerity through many of our surviving social democracies, this week on The Laura Flanders Show we talk about alternatives; alternatives to both soviet-style socialism and Wall-Street style financial capitalism, and we consider, what might the movements look like that take us to that new place?

From taking power to making power. This week "The Laura Flanders Show" presents a special report from Athens, Greece, where many are asking if progressives in government can change much if people don’t change society first. Many people recall the story of Syriza, the progressive left government that took power after the financial crisis. But what fewer people know is the creativity with which Greeks responded to the financial crisis to meet the needs of their community. Their approach to meeting the needs of their community could be be sowing the seeds for societal transformation.

With the FCC repeal of net neutrality, how do movements sustain action within the context of mass surveillance -- and what can we do to protect ourselves against incoming attacks? This week, we revisit an interview from earlier this year with Thenmozhi Soundararajan, founder of digital security advocacy organization Equality Labs.