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A Pivotal Time for Immigrant Rights
Last year the United States deported more immigrants than in any other year of its entire history. If the current trend continues, President Obama come next January will become the biggest deporter of immigrants of any president in U.S. history. In six years, he’ll have surpassed what the previous Deporter-in-Chief, George W. Bush, did in…
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What’s Wrong With NATO?
Rick Rozoff is not only Chicago’s premiere expert on the NATO military alliance, he is internationally renowned for his encyclopedia knowledge of the largest such alliance in world history. With NATO coming to Chicago this May, our local media has been dominated by NATO trivia rather than focusing on NATO’s crimes against peoples around the…
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The 1st Amendment & Chicago’s G8 / NATO Protests
In the run-up to Chicago May 2012 G8/NATO summits, the City is preparing to pass repressive legislation designed to punish protesters for exercising their 1st Amendment rights. Predictably, Mayor Emanuel introduced the legislation by saying that it was “just” for protests against the summits. But in a typical Chicago bait-and-switch, the nasty legislation is slated…
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The ‘Occupy Movement’ and LGBTs
The Occupy Wall Street Movement has captured international attention as a breath of fresh air in contrast to the financial scandals, economic malaise and bankruptcy of “mainstream” politics. What stake do Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people have in this movement? Daniel Williams of Occupy Chicago joins the Gay Liberation Network’s Andy Thayer for a…
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Opposing the G8 & NATO in Chicago
Leaders of the G8 (“Group of 8”) nations, generally the wealthiest in the world, will hold a summit in May 2012 in Chicago, along with the heads of the NATO military alliance. The meetings represent the single biggest confab of war-making leaders in many years, and if past meetings are any indication, a focus for…
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Using Direct Action Tactics to Promote Real Change
From sit-ins to directly confronting President Obama at his fundraisers, direct actions seemed to be coming back into favor as more and more progressives soured on the Democrats. In this episode the Gay Liberation Network’s Bob Schwartz and Brent Holman-Gomez discuss the increasing moves to use direct action tactics to promote equality for Lesbian, Gay,…
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Learning the Lessons of the Stonewall Rebellion
How did the modern gay political movement emerge onto the public stage after decades of repression? What can we learn from the early modern gay movement of the early 1970s? On the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City that gave birth to our modern movement, Kevin Sparrow and veteran gay rights…
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Protesting the 6th Anniversary of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq
Vicki Cervantes of La Voz de Los de Abajo leads a discussion about events to protest the U.S. war on Iraq on the sixth anniversary of the American invasion. To protest not only that war, but the war in Afghanistan, the occupation of Palestine by U.S.-allied Palestine, and the war on immigrants in the U.S.,…
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REPEAL the “Defense of Marriage Act”
Missy Lorenzen of Join the Impact-Chicago and Andy Thayer of the Gay Liberation Network discuss the anti-gay federal “Defense of Marriage Act,” also known as DOMA. DOMA was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 and forbade any federal recognition of same-sex marriages even in states that voted to recognize them, and directly contradicted…
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The 10th Anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s Lynching
Many LGBTs were lynched both before and after the murder of Wyoming gay college student Matthew Shepard in 1998. Several gay riots happened before the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion. What made both events different from many other similar ones was that protests and other street organizing that came in their wake. Among the many organizations and…