Episodes
Wednesday Nov 14, 2012
Leid Stories - The Oblique Angle - 11/14/12
Wednesday Nov 14, 2012
Wednesday Nov 14, 2012
Sam Smith, editor of The Progressive Review, discusses contemporary political issues -- including party politics, President Obama and his administration, the paradox of left-of-center movements, and the need to move quickly on reassembling coalitions to deal with the onslaught to come.
Monday Nov 12, 2012
Leid Stories - Statehood for Puerto Rico? - 11/12/12
Monday Nov 12, 2012
Monday Nov 12, 2012
In a referendum that coincided with U.S. general elections, Puerto Ricans strongly favored changing their island's status as a commonwealth to becoming America's 51st state. The issue is among a list of high-priority items on the Latino political agenda, now reinforced by a strong showing at the polls by Latino voters that proved pivotal to the re-election of President Obama and his Democratic administration. Dr. Carlos Vargas-Ramos, a researcher at the Manhattan-based Center for Puerto Rican Studies, assesses the impact of the referendum in Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Diaspora, and its legislative fate in a lame-duck, tumultuous U.S. Congress.
Friday Nov 09, 2012
Leid Stories - The New Voting Bloc to Obama: "Andale!" - 11/09/12
Friday Nov 09, 2012
Friday Nov 09, 2012
Among the precedents set in the 2012 election is the definitive emergence of a Latino voting bloc that played a pivotal role in the re-election of President Barack Obama. Louis DiSipio, a political scientist and professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of California-Irvine, discusses the coalition of heretofore disparate Spanish-speaking constituencies, their formation as a new electorate, and the impact this voting sector is likely to have on of U.S. politics and in the theater of hemispheric affairs.
Thursday Nov 08, 2012
Thursday Nov 08, 2012
President Barack Obama's victory at the polls Nov. 6 is a definitive line of demarcation and departure, not just in American politics, but in the deeply entrenched racist narrative that governs practically all aspects of life in the United States. "Experts" wax philosophic and scientific about why he won, but won't go so far as to unmask the real reason. In a no-nonsense analysis Utrice Leid deconstructs the magic political moment we're experiencing as a nation, and precisely frames Obama's victory within the context of America's age-old -- and all-too-familiar -- construct of race. Obama's first-term run and second-term victory, she contends, are "trial balloons" for beneficiaries -- especially white women and white "ethnics" -- who in the heat of battle steered comfortably clear of helping to build the political base he established nationwide, but, as with the civil-rights struggle and others before it, are eager to reap their unearned reward.