PERSPECTIVES with Julie Rufo

PERSPECTIVES interviews, Table of Contents

• Ann Ginger on Civil Rights
• Kate Resucha and Karen Kenney, from Girls Inc., on raising young women
• Two Muslim neighbors, Dr. Hatifie and Sister Baldes
• Susan Galleymore about mothers in Middle East conflict areas, 2 shows
• Sureya Sayadi on Honor Killings
• Andrea Buffa on Media Reform
• Sanaz Meshkinpour on U.S.-Iran relations
• David Bacon on Immigration
• Sheryl Lane and Venesia Thompson of Urban Habitat
• Rafael Schiller-Laden of World Can't Wait
• Dr. Richard Walker on the Greening of the SF Bay Area. 2 shows
• Jacqueline Cabasso, on the dangers of nuclear energy and the resurgence of nuclear weapons, 2 shows
• Dr. Michael Parenti on the meaning of Imperialism and what we can do about it, 2 shows
• Barbara Lubin, Executive Director of the Middle East Children's Alliance
• the Renegade Rescuers about the SF Bay Oil Spill in 2007
• Elizabeth de la Vega on Outlaw Government, 2 shows
• Dahr Jamail on Iraq: What We Have Done, 2 shows
• Virender Goswami on Immigration Law Abuses
• James Soper on Electronic Voting Machines
• Antonia Juhasz on The BU$H Agenda, 2 shows
• May Day 2008, when Labor shutdown all West Coast ports to protest the invasion of Iraq
• Dr. Raj Patel on the worldwide food crisis
• Dr. Barry Schutz on Zimbabwe
• Matt Heberger on the water crisis
• MaryAnn Thomas of World Can't Wait, protesting military recruiting in Berkeley
• Daniel Lavelle on Venezuela
• Norman Solomon on the Warfare State and Political Possibilities, 2 shows
• Dr. Farid Younos on Afghanistan, 2 shows
• Betsy Rose on the importance of singing, 2 shows
• Ann Fagan Ginger on "Undoing the Bush-Cheney Legacy", 2 shows
• Ishmael Reed, on the Media's Treatment of African-Americans, 2 shows

Andrea Buffa was the Executive Director of the Media Alliance from 1997-2000. She co-founded United for Peace and Justice. Recently, she began working at the University of California Labor Center. She is a widely renowned media and antiwar activist, hoping to build bridges between peace and labor communities.

In this interview, she talks about what's wrong with U.S. media and the damaging effects of the profit motive in the hands of large corporations who dominate control of the information we receive. She goes into the importance of diversity in media and the wealth of alternative media available in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Importantly, she describes in detail why the Internet in threatened by the loss of net neutrality, which she explains. She identifies the companies that want control of it. She is also critical of PBS/NPR which she feels has not fulfilled its mandate to inform our citizenry, but is, nonetheless, under attack by the right-wing. She explains why the California Public Access Television law threatens to take away city control of their own cable monopolies. She considers the low power FM radio stations an important media force that should be expanded. She advises us how to get involved and make reforms.

Sanaz Meshkinpour is an Iranian-American activist of Jewish and Muslim parents, living and working in San Francisco. She serves as the Middle East Program Coordinator for Global Exchange, organizing delegations to Iran, Israel and Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. Sanaz holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, with an emphasis on Middle Eastern Politics, from U.C. Berkeley. She has family in Iran, Israel, and the U.S. and she regularly visits family and friends in Iran.

In this interview, she talks about the difference between the U.S. attitude toward Saudi Arabia and Iran, the reaction of Iranians to the threat of U.S. attack and continued U.S. intervention. She reviews the history of Iran's involvement with Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. She evaluates the threat of nuclear arms in Iran. Sanaz frankly discusses the repression of political expression in Iran. From personal and historical example, she talks about the treatment of Iranian Jews and answers the question, Would Iran attack Israel.

David Bacon works long and hard as a labor reporter and photojournalist. He is associate editor at Pacific News Service, and he writes for Truthout, the Nation, American Prospect, the Progressive, L.A. Weekly, and the S.F. Chronicle. His recent books include Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the US/Mexico Border, and Communities Without Borders. Both books examine life among workers severely affected by economic changes wrought by NAFTA. Many of David's photos and essays can be found on his website at http://dbacon.igc.org.

In the first interview, David explains how NAFTA has displaced Mexican workers, forcing them into grim working conditions along the border and in the United States. The effects of driving down standards of living are affecting workers in the U.S. Mexican workers face the discrimination that has confronted other immigrant groups, and talks about how the color line makes life even harder.

Julie asks David to talk about the amount of taxes paid by undocumented workers and the impossibility of collecting most social benefits they have paid for. Julie also asks David to explain the recently defeated immigration bill, and its economic basis. David reviews guest worker programs and the attempts of the Bush administration to go backwards in resuming those harsh policies which were defeated by the Civil Rights Movement.

David talks in detail about the economic motives of large companies in the U.S. that benefit from the exploitation of immigrant workers and uses them to force down living standards for all of us.

In the second interview, David recalls the efforts of large companies, in collaboration with the U.S. Federal Government, to divide workers and pit them against each other using job competition and other techniques that terrorize workers and keep them from organizing for just wages and working conditions.

The techniques of divide-and-conquer to reduce wages and to render workers powerless to improve their jobs is like the policies the U.S. enforces in Iraq to make oil worker unions illegal. David talks about conditions there that he has reported on.

He summarizes the principles he thinks should guide our immigration policies: equality, justice, decent standards of living, and support for family and communities. Workers should unite to compel a better life for all. David also criticizes trade policies that are destroying livelihoods for whole communities in Mexico, and calls for the U.S. to stop forcing people into desperate circumstances.