December 5 - A Report From the Front Line of Fast-Food Worker's Protests; The Growing Economic Feudalism in the United States; As Mandela Dies, So is the Central African Republic Dying

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with President Obama’s pledge to dedicate his remaining time in office to raising the minimum wage and reverse the “dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility” in America. Joining us from one of the many demonstrations across the country by fast food workers, union organizers and community supporters is Kendall Fells, the President and Organizing Director for Fast Food Forward, a movement of New York City fast food workers demanding living wages and worker’s rights. We  discuss the struggle of fast-food workers who the president mentioned “work their tails off and are still living at or barely above poverty”.

Part 2

Then we hear from Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist and co-chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at U.C. Berkeley who researches family budgets, low-wage labor markets, inequality and minimum wages. We discuss what the president calls “the defining challenge of our time”, the growing gap between the rich and poor, and look into the plight of bank tellers who do not make a living wage while banks are enjoying record profits, a sign that we are fast declining into what Warren Buffett warned we are in danger of becoming, “a plantation economy.”

Part 3

Then finally, although the death of Nelson Mandela should remind us of all of what he stood for in terms of racial justice, human rights and reconciliation, we are obliged to cover what is going on in the middle of Africa in the Central African Republic where a military coup installed a Muslim leader in a predominately Christian country, leading to sectarian massacres and counter- massacres, mostly against innocent civilians. The United Nations Director at Human Rights Watch, Phillipe Bolopion, who was recently in the Central African Republic, joins us to discuss the danger of one of the poorest nations on Earth becoming the latest killing fields and a haven for armed groups.