October 9 - Something's Happening in the Streets; America's Decade in the Graveyard of Empires; An Update From the D.C. Demonstrations

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Part 1	We begin with Todd Gitlin, a former president of Students for a Democratic Society who helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam war. Now a Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, he has a recent article in the New York Times “The Left Declares its Independence” and we discuss the emerging “Occupy Wall Street” movement in terms of populist movements of the past and try to determine its political direction as we head towards a crucial election year.
Part 2	Then, on the tenth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, we speak with Thomas Barfield, an anthropologist who has been visiting and studying Afghanistan for fifty years. As we continue to spend eight billion a month in a war-torn land of mud brick villages, he provides a perspective on the American decade, in a country often described as the graveyard of empires.
Part 3	Then finally we go to the on-going demonstrations in Washington DC against the war in Afghanistan and speak with one of the protest organizers Kevin Zeese of October2011.org, an organization which seeks to end corporatism and militarism. He served as Ralph Nader’s press secretary and spokesman in 2004 and has been a political activist since graduating from George Washington Law School in 1980.