By Jerilyn Bowen
Since one of our PDA challenges is to take the hex off the McCarthy era scare word socialism, in case you missed any of the below, am sending along for your delectation. (And possible use in other networks.) The AOC clip is a real spirit-lifter…I recommend as antidote to any activist malaise that may sneak up on you in the dead of night.
1) Intercept video narrated by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, seven-minute gone-viral envisioning of the future we could have if we adopt a Green New Deal approach and put it into action sooner rather than later:
+ Two excerpts from Democracy Now in which prominent economists talk about what’s gone wrong with our present system and how that can be fixed.
In the first one Stiglitz uses “Progressive Capitalism” to describe what he says is pretty much the same as Democratic Socialism. On the latter, important to get across that Democratic Socialists like AOC & Bernie are not talking about Soviet style Communism, but rather, about a regulated marketplace economy like the ones most European countries have, with the government acting on behalf of the citizenry to control capitalist excesses & insure a fair distribution of economic resources so as to create secure, livable lives for all members of society. Many millennials seem to get this distinction but a lot of less youthful people still react to the notion of socialism as if it were poison, something Trump & Fox News are already using to scare their low information followers with.
[Intro: We look at staggering inequality and the state of the U.S. economy with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton. Joseph Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University and chief economist for the Roosevelt Institute. His latest book, out this week, is “People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent.]
