Occupying the economy with Richard D. Wolff

Three years into the government's announced recovery, working Americans find themselves poorer than when the recovery began. While the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression has exposed corrupt bankers, unregulated speculators and a government willing to serve the interests of the one percent regardless the cost, the wealthy continue to prosper. Economist Richard D. Wolff credits the occupy movement with exposing these symptoms of capitalism but believes we must go deeper to resolve the decades-old causes of the crisis, reaching back to the 1970s when a century-old pattern of rising wages for workers ended.

Joe Clement reads a CounterPunch article by trade-unionist, Alberto Ruiz, called The US Labor Movement and China. Ruiz criticizes the stigmatization of foreign labor by US unionists and explores the dark pro-imperialist history of the AFL-CIO, as well as the vigor of the recent up-surge in China's labor movement.

 Joe Clement hosts this Old Mole, which is shorter than usual because of membership-drive. We hear about growing concern with and resistance to nuclear energy, ecologically driven energy policy in Oregon, and about labor chauvinism toward China.

We take a look at mass incarceration and racism in America today through Michelle Alexander's book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness."

We begin with a speech given by Michelle Alexander in New York in February of 2010, and then will hear from various community members who participated in a Book Group at the Talking Drum Bookstore, located in Reflections coffee shop on NE Killingsworth. This group is going through the book in six weeks, chapter by chapter, to study how and why a majority of young Black men in major American cities are locked behind bars and how  the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness.

The Oakland Police Department is investigating the murder of a transgender woman who was shot in a possible hate crime on Sunday morning. Thirty-seven-year old Brandy Martell was an outreach worker at the Tri-City Health Center in Fremont. She was sitting in the driver's seat of her car with three other transgender women at 3 AM when two men approached the car and started a conversation.

 Kushlani de Soyza critiques the latest examples of Asian and Asian-American representation in advertising. Who thought putting Ashton Kutcher in brownface was a good idea? We also take a look at stereotypes that underpin recent New Balance and Intel commercials featuring APAs.