The November 5 issue of The Nation magazine features as an ad, “A Call To Stand Together to Oppose the Obama Administration’s Dangerous Assault on Fundamental Rights.” The Call encourages resistance to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and also declares that people cannot allow the powers-that-be to determine which movements or organizations are “acceptable” or “unacceptable.” This has particular relevance owing to the fact that the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and its Chairman Bob Avakian were singled out in a legal ruling about the NDAA and mischaracterized in a way that could cause great harm.
Talking about all this will be Peter Phillips and Raymond Lotta, two of the signatories of the Call. Raymond Lotta is a writer for Revolution newspaper, and an advocate of Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of communism. Peter Phillips is president of the Media Freedom Foundation and former director of Project Censored. For more on resistance to the NDAA, go to opposerepressionndaa.net.
David Dow on life without parole, a different death penalty. David Dow is an attorney and law professor in Texas who has defended death-row clients since the late 1980s, as well as the founder of the Texas Innocence Network. His most recent book is a memoir, The Autobiography of an Execution. Read his article, "Life Without Parole: A Different Death Penalty," in The Nation. To hear more of David Dow, see his talks on TED.
Poet, performer and playwright Reg E Gaines will be speaking to us about his new work, The Last Celebrity, a collage of video, poetry, music and monologue. He will be touring this piece in celebration of Black History Month, 2013. And he’ll be reading from The Last Celebrity on November 7, at the World Stage in Los Angeles.
