EQUAL TIME is where Vermonters talk about issues ignored by the corporate media—mothers opposing toxic pollution, workers fighting for decent jobs, nurses working for health care reform, students speaking out about their education, farmers struggling against corporate agribusiness, and more.
Ashley Smith discusses why Trump won, what he'll do, and how we can fight him.
Mark Hughes, of the racial justice organization Justice for All, addresses systemic issues such as racially biased policing and inequities in the criminal justice system in Vermont and across the nation. Mark speaks about the importance of people and organizations now coming into motion to resist the brutal agenda of Trumpism to learn from and collaborate with the leadership of the black freedom movement.
Judy Solomon, a Senior VP for Health Care Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, explains that the Republican plan to repeal most of the Affordable Care Act without replacing it would double the number of uninsured people to roughly 59 million. The vast majority of people becoming uninsured would be in working families. 35,000 fewer people in Vermont would have health insurance.
Will Lambek, an organizer with Migrant Justice/Justicia Migrante, discusses the reality that the great majority of Vermont’s dairy workers are undocumented, and now find themselves in President-elect Trump’s crosshairs. The hard-fought victories won by immigrant workers organizing for human rights must be defended and advanced in the Trump era.
Seth Ackerman makes the case in his Jacobin magazine article, A Blueprint for a New Party, that we need to think seriously about what it would take to form a democratic organization rooted in the working class. The Sanders campaign has demonstrated that a serious electoral politics to the left of the Democratic Party might be possible.