Hosts Celeste Carey and Cecil Prescod interview Daniel Martinez HoSang about his book Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California (American Crossroads), which looks at the controversial history of California's ballot measures over the past fifty years. HoSang is professor of Political and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. He will also discuss Oregon ballot measures and local concerns--especially efforts to expand prisons and attack labor rights in Oregon through recent ballot measures.

As the rest of the U.S. watched, California voters banned public services for undocumented immigrants, repealed public affirmative action programs, and outlawed bilingual education, among other measures. Why did a state with a liberal political culture, an increasingly diverse populace, and a well-organized civil rights leadership roll back civil rights and anti-discrimination gains? Daniel Martinez HoSang finds that, contrary to popular perception, this phenomenon does not represent a new wave of "color-blind" policies, nor is a triumph of racial conservatism. Instead HoSang uncovers surprising connections between the right and left that reveal how racial inequality has endured.

Hosts Celeste Carey and Cecil Prescod interview Nancy Altman about her recent article "10 Reasons the Fiscal Commission Social Security Proposals Should be DOA." She is the co-author with Eric Kingson.

Nancy Altman has a thirty-year background in the areas of Social Security and private pensions. She is the author of The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble (John Wiley & Sons, 2005). She is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of beneficiary rights. She is also on the Board of Directors of the Foundation of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, as well as the Board of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a membership organization of over 800 of the nation's leading experts on social insurance.

Hosts Celeste Carey and Cecil Prescod speak with labor organizer, writer and radical theorist John Cronan Jr. He will be speaking at Laughing Horse Books on Thursday, November 11th at 6PM with activist and student orgainzer Casey Asprooth-Jackson. 

John Cronan is a restaurant worker of 11 years and an organizer and writer who lives in New York City where he has been involved in labor, student, and environmental organizing. He is currently an organizer for the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York. He is a regular contributor to Znet and he has written and spoken extensively on issues concerning class, economic democracy, environmental justice, radical political theory, movement strategy and more.

Hosts Celeste Carey and Cecil Prescod interview Doug Henwood, editor and publisher of Left Business Observer. They will discuss the Democrat's pledge to protect Social Security, possible post-election scenarios and how they might affect Social Security, and the factors affecting the future of the program.

Besides editing LBO, Henwood is a contributing editor of The Nation, and hosts a radio weekly program on WBAI (New York). His book Wall Street was published by Verso in June 1997; it went out of print in 2005 and is now available for free download. His social atlas of the U.S. (in the Pluto atlas series), The State of the USA, was published by Simon & Schuster in the fall of 1994. His latest effort, After the New Economy, was published in late 2003 by The New Press. He's now in the early stages of a book on the current American ruling class, whoever that might be.