Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio was recently stripped of his federal authority to make immigration arrests after repeated complaints that he abuses power and uses racial profiling to target Latinos in his community. Salvador Reza, U.S. Air Force veteran, community organizer and renowned immigrants rights activist, joins Laura for an exclusive interview on Arpaio’s ongoing abuses.

Dennis Gilman brought us video footage from an Arpaio raid and from protests in Arizona, where white supremacist groups showed up to support Arpaio’s policies.

The National Book Awards were announced this week; Colum McCann was honored for his fiction work Let the Great World Spin: A Novel, and T.J. Stiles’ biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt won the nonfiction prize.  Dave Eggers, author of Laura’s book of the year, Zeitoun, received this year’s Literarian Award.

In honor of the book awards, Jeannie Vanasco of Lapham’s Quarterly, Julian Brookes of the Progressive Book Club and Sir Harold Evans, of The Week magazine and former president and publisher of Random House trade group, join us to discuss other books we loved.

One of the many things that angered people about Sarah Palin was her support for aerial hunting of wolves. In honor of the release of Palin’s book (and Nation editors Betsy Reed and Richard Kim’s response book, Going Rouge), our Got Docs feature this week is Return to the Wild: A Modern Tale of Wolf and Man from MoFilms. This documentary takes a look at the ways people and wolves can and do coexist, as well as the conflicts that inevitably arise.

New America Media brings us this story of one young woman shuttling back and forth from her mother’s and sister’s homes in San Francisco.  Her story reminds us that homelessness takes many forms–she feels at home in one place, but realizes that it is bad for her.

The latest Brower Youth Award winner from the Earth Island Institute is Adarsha Shivakumar, who used his proceeds from winning a spelling bee to co-found a project growing sustainable jatropha, a plant that can be used as biofuel, in India. Thanks to Rikshaw Films for the video.

Finally, Brave New Films brings together U.S. military veterans, including Matthew Hoh, to ask Obama not to send more troops to continue a war that is on its way to being America’s longest in history.

What are the alternatives to the way we live? Since last fall’s financial collapse, we’ve heard more honest discussion about capitalism’s failings than in years. Yet real change is still hard to find. Wall Street is still handing out bonuses, we’re still at war, and even Guantanamo might not actually be closed by the deadline Obama set upon taking office. As Americans question whether change is possible in an election cycle, we stop and think about what an alternative social order would look like.

David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism, and Alexander Cockburn, author of End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate, don’t think small when it comes to change. They aren’t afraid to think about significant, even radical changes to the social order we’ve grown so used to, whether it’s requiring full employment, reimagining urban living, or repudiating credit card debt and abolishing Wall Street speculation. Cockburn and Harvey joined Laura for an event at CUNY’s Center for Place, Culture & Politics, and we bring you part of that discussion today.

Johnny Cash is an American icon, but one rarely discussed when one talks about protest music or thoughts of change. Yet in his new book, A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears, Antonino D’Ambrosio connects Cash to the tradition of folk and political music in America, from Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger to Bob Dylan and the 60s scene. At the peak of his fame, just after “Ring of Fire,” Cash cut a record of songs about the Native American experience, many written by the now-forgotten songwriter Peter La Farge.

D’Ambrosio joined us in the GRITtv studio to talk about the history of protest music, the myth of Johnny Cash, and why music is one of the best ways to carry a progressive message.  Then, in a special performance, he was joined by Anthony Roman and David Milone of the band Radio 4 to perform Cash’s song “Apache Tears” live.

The people of Maine were promised change by the state legislature, which granted gay and lesbian couples the right to marry. But on election day 2009, a referendum snatched that right back from them. Yesterday, we saw video from the campaign fighting for equality in Maine, and today we look at what happened on election night and the reactions from volunteers, ranging from defiant to determined. They want accountability from national organizations, politicians, and especially President Obama and the DNC, who ignored the No On One campaign.

Thanks to Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll of New Left Media for the video.

If you’re interested in the full DVD of the panel with Laura Flanders, Alexander Cockburn and David Harvey, you can email grittv@grittv.org.

The unemployment number officially hit double digits recently, though the actual truth is that it’s been in double digits for a while. The Nation’s John Nichols , author of Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy calls the unemployment crisis a “social, economic and political threat,” writing of the growing sense of urgency within an administration facing a purported recovery that hasn’t extended to everyday people. Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy agrees, noting that unemployment is still a crisis for the families affected, who struggle to pay the bills and put food on the table.

Since Obama is convening a jobs summit and soliciting suggestions on how to put people back to work (that don’t involve the dirty word “stimulus”), we had Baker and Nichols put their heads together and talk about ways to create good, meaningful, well-paid jobs and rethink the way Americans look at work.

Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker describes himself as being “aboard the Obama express,” and his new book, ¡OBÁMANOS!: The Rise of a New Political Era, collects his essays on the Obama generation and the way the campaign changed politics. A year into the administration, Hertzberg is still hopeful, though like many progressives he offers criticisms of the way the health care reform fight and others have been conducted.

In Maine, advocates of marriage equality suffered a setback in this past election, where voters overturned a decision by the state legislature to legalize gay marriage. Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll of New Left Media brought us an inside look at the No On One campaign, from get-out-the-vote training to a rally and candlelight vigil the night before election day. Watch for Part 2 tomorrow!

Though the Bush administration and many other insiders claimed that no one could’ve seen the financial collapse coming, construction workers, whose own pension funds were invested in these companies, knew that there was a housing bubble and feared for their own retirement money. We have video from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund that takes a look at the rating agencies and their future.

16 workers a day die from work-related injuries, according to this latest video from Brave New Films.  Charles Jeffress, former Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), notes that there are hardly any consequences to employers for failing to comply with guidelines–and with four million injuries on the job each year, it seems that employers have decided that it’s easier to flout the law than to comply.

Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue: An American Life, comes out tomorrow, and the corporate media has been all Palin, all the time. We wonder just what it is about the former Alaskan governor that keeps people coming back for more. Is it her folksy ways, her sex appeal, her gender, or her willingness to completely disregard the advice of well-intentioned handlers?

Richard Kim, senior editor at The Nation, is co-editor of a new book timed for release along with Palin’s. Titled Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare, the book collects essays from around the progressive media analyzing the mysterious appeal of Sarah Palin. Richard joins us along with contributors Rebecca Traister of Salon, Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, and Shannyn Moore of Smart Radio in Alaska to talk about the books, the Right, and why Palin just won’t go away.

While Sarah Palin blankets the mainstream media, independent media tries to cover all the stories that are getting missed. Independent radio and television pioneer Amy Goodman has been creating a different kind of news program for years with Democracy Now!, first on Pacifica Radio and now on television. She joined Laura in the GRITtv studio to talk about her new book, Breaking the Sound Barrier, making independent media, and her struggles with the health care system while dealing with her mother’s recent illness.

Speaking of health care, Senator Bernie Sanders breaks it down for our viewers: what’s in the House and Senate plans, what’s good, what needs work, and what’s absolutely unacceptable? (Hint: we covered it a bit last week.)

In San Francisco, hotel workers at the Grand Hyatt, many of them Chinese immigrants, were recently told that their new contract would require them to pay for their own health insurance. The workers went on strike, protesting that this decision would make them choose between paying for health care and putting food on the table.

From Syracuse, New York this weekend, a protest of drone aircraft, including Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Daniel and Jerry Berrigan, gathered outside of the Hancock Air National Guard Base.

Thanks to New America Media, Brave New Films, and EssentialDissent for the video.

Micha Kurz co-founded Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects stories from members of the Israel Defense Forces (compulsory in Israel for young men and women) who served in the occupied territories. Kurz served in the IDF during the second intifada, and his experiences led him to work against the occupation and treatment of Palestinians.

Kurz is now with Grassroots Jerusalem, where he helps bring together grassroots social justice activists from across Israel. Kurz notes that his Jewish upbringing is what caused him to question the way Israel conducts the occupation and to speak out against it, and he spoke to Laura on Monday about what Americans can do to help bring peace in Israel and Palestine.

Why aren’t reporters asking the real questions? That’s what our media panelist Rose Aguilar asked today, and it’s a valid question. With the Stupak amendment and the Fort Hood shootings, new unemployment numbers in the double digits and questions over troop escalation in Afghanistan, not to mention the resignation of embattled CNN host Lou Dobbs, there was a lot to cover this week. Every Thursday, we look at the way the stories of the day get told, point out the problems and offer some solutions with a variety of media makers.

Rose Aguilar, of Your Call Radio and author of Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey Into the Heartland, John R. MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author of You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America, Dan Gross, columnist at Newsweek and author of Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, and Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker and author of ¡OBÁMANOS!: The Rise of a New Political Era look at the media’s biggest hits and misses of the past week.

“Yoga is slow medicine but it is medicinal in character,” Deirdre Summerbell says. She’s the founder of Project Air, where she uses yoga to help women and girls in Rwanda, survivors of the genocide, reconnect with their bodies and heal their spirits. Summerbell joined us in the GRITtv studio to talk about her project and her plans to expand it into the Congo and other areas of the world, like Gaza and Afghanistan.

Last December, videojournalist Jennifer Utz and Mohamed, an Iraqi refugee, joined us at GRITtv to talk about Mohamed’s journey from Iraq to the U.S.  This week, we take a closer look at From Baghdad to Brooklyn, a documentary on Utz’s involvement getting Mohamed to the U.S. and his transition into American society.

As Mohamed’s story shows, even legal immigration is a messy, difficult process. We have video from Breakthrough, Esmeralda, a transgender woman who sought asylum from Mexico, tells her story of detention and abuse at the hands of the U.S. government.

Finally, in a GRITtv exclusive, environmental journalist Karl Grossman gets the dirt on solar energy from Dean Hapshe of Majestic Son & Sons Solar Energy.

Conspiracy theories abound on the left and the right–the “Birthers” are only the most recent incarnation. But there are plenty of scary secrets out there that are real and well-documented, from Max Blumenthal’s investigations into the religious right to Jeremy Scahill’s work on Blackwater. It can be hard to tell where the conspiracy theories begin and the truth ends. Our guests today talk about shady global conspiracies, corporate overlords, and the military-industrial complex, and what we can do about any of it.

John Perkins is the author of Hoodwinked and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and has written about how corporations push politicians around and even threaten them with violence. Russ Baker, meanwhile, is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America and has written extensively about the military-industrial complex.  They argue the only weapon we have is public opinion and public pressure–and we need to bring it to bear not just on the government, but on the corporations.

In the new film Collapse, filmmaker Chris Smith follows Michael Ruppert, a former Los Angeles police officer who publishes a newsletter where, among other things, he predicted the economic crisis. But his theories often range into the apocalyptic. Smith joined Laura in the studio to discuss his film and whether or not he believes Ruppert. Is he a genius, or just paranoid?

Today is Veterans Day, and we are supposed to honor those who have served in the military.  This video from New America Media takes a look at the struggles of veterans to readjust to civilian life, and asks what more we could be doing to truly honor them.

With all the depressing news about corporations and the government today, we thought we’d add some of the brighter side of capitalism. Social Capital Markets aims to help save the world–and still make a profit.  The Earth Island Institute created the annual Brower Youth Awards to honor six young people for their outstanding activism and achievements in the fields of environmental and social justice advocacy, and we take a look at another of their winners, a food justice activist in Texas who is redefining environmentalism.

The passage of the Stupak-Pitts amendment came as a shock to many prochoice activists and writers, but it’s not a secret that “pro-lifers” would like to roll back the right to abortion at any chance they get. Now that the amendment is in the House bill, progressives have to fight twice as hard to make sure it stays out of the final bill, and with some of the allies we’ve got, that’s going to be an uphill slog–after all, Rep. Stupak is a Democrat.

Jill Filipovic of the blog Feministe, Frances Kissling, contributor to RH Reality Check and Visiting Fellow at the Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania, Diane Archer, Special Counsel & Director, Health Care Policy, Institute for America’s Future, and Eesha Pandit of Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need join us to talk about strategies for responding to Stupak, and what activists, feminists, and allies can do to make Democrats understand that women are not bargaining chips.

The health care bill passing the house with a public option should’ve been cause for celebration, but the Stupak-Pitts amendment came as a shock to many prochoice activists and writers. It’s not a secret that “pro-lifers” would like to roll back the right to abortion at any chance they get, but most of us didn’t think that we’d see a move like this supported by 64 Democrats.

Jill Filipovic of the blog Feministe, Frances Kissling, contributor to RH Reality Check and Visiting Fellow at the Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania, Diane Archer, Special Counsel & Director, Health Care Policy, Institute for America’s Future, and Eesha Pandit of Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need join us to talk about strategies for responding to Stupak, and what activists, feminists, and allies can do to make Democrats understand that women are not bargaining chips.

William Kunstler was perhaps best known for his defense of the “Chicago Eight,” but he represented many of the best-known radicals of the sixties. His daughters Emily and Sarah were born after most of his biggest cases, but still grew up in the shadow of his fame, and join us to talk about the documentary they have made about their father, William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe.

We also check in with the situation in Honduras, with video from The Real News. We learn that the agreement seems to be doing more to legitimize the coup government than to get rid of it.

Finally, we have video from an Iraq veteran, Casey J. Porter, who put together this clip contrasting statements made before the war with the grim realities of combat. And 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in Ni’ilin yesterday, Palestinian activists tore down a segment of the wall across the West Bank in protest of increasing Israeli settlements.

Veterans Day is this week, and the shootings at Fort Hood this week brought to the forefront many questions about soldiers and military personnel: how are soldiers surviving the wars, and readjusting to life at home? What are we doing to help them, and is it enough?  With the war in Iraq supposedly winding down and the war in Afghanistan ratcheting up, it’s time to take a serious look at some of these questions, and try to understand the role that the military plays in all of our lives.

We discuss these questions and more with Anuradha K. Bhagwati, executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network, Dr. Anna Burton, psychiatrist with The Soldiers Project, Dahr Jamail, independent journalist and author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Nadia McCaffrey, Gold Star mother and founder of the Patrick McCaffrey Foundation.

U.S. soldiers aren’t the only ones struggling to reconcile their lives before and after the military. Micha Kurz is cofounder of Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects stories from members of the service (which is compulsory in Israel for young men and women) who served in the occupied territories.  Now with Grassroots Jerusalem, where he helps bring together grassroots social justice activists from across Israel, Kurz talks to Laura about his experiences during the second intifada, serving in the occupied territories, and what grassroots activists can do to bring peace to the Middle East.

The health care battle just keeps getting nastier–pro-choice progressives got thrown a curveball this weekend with the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which would curtail the ability of women to obtain an abortion if they can’t pay out of pocket. Laura has commentary, and Tammy Johnson of ColorLines asks what kind of public option doesn’t cover all people. We also have video provided by Essential Dissent of a single-payer protest in Syracuse, and from Brave New Films, a look at industry “spokesjerks.”