CODEPINK Radio

Ayanni Godbold, Teri Mattson, and Paki Wieland are joined by Azadeh Shahshahani and Joslyn Erica. Shahshahani discusses the humiliation and discrimination Iranian students are experiencing when trying and failing to return to the United States to pursue their higher education. Erica discusses recent actions in support of Julian Assange.

What is going on in Portland? This week we talk to two activists on the ground in Portland, OR, Cody Urban from CODEPINK and Tiffany Tag from Bayan Portland. They'll discuss how local activists are responding to the presence of militarized police forces, including unmarked Federal agents and a local campaign to end Portland State University's relationship with Boeing. The second half of the show features clips from Ariel's webinar with Amer Zahr of a funeral for the two-state solution.

CODEPINK's Latin America team compares and contrasts the interventionist foreign policy of the US versus the more humanitarian foreign policy of Cuba. Latin American campaign coordinators Leonardo Flores and Teri Mattson illustrate presidential candidate Joe Biden's historical support of US interventionism in Latin America specific to Venezuela and the region in general. CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin interviews Melissa Barber a US graduate of Cuba's Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM). The conversation emphasizes Cuba's humanitarian efforts to bring healthcare to underserved communities throughout the world...including those in the United States.

Jodie Evans, CODEPINKs co-founder, is joined by Netfa Freeman of Institute for Policy Studies, and Nina Turner, former Ohio Senator and co-chair for Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. Netfa talks us through community control and the process of reimagining what policing looks like as we strive to defund the police, while highlighting the structural power of white supremacy. Nina illustrates the next steps for progressives and shares with us her new social justice project, Hello Somebody-.

CODEPINK Co-founder, Medea Benjamin, is joined by fellow CODEPINK team members. Ariel Gold, the Middle East campaign coordinator, discusses the current Isreal/Palestine conflict and how we are pushing Biden (and Trump) to adopt a just foreign policy. Leonardo Flores, from the Latin America team, gives an update on our campaign to award Cuban doctors the Nobel Peace Prize for the global aid they have provided in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Co-founder Jodie Evans is joined by Eugene Puryear, Marian Moore , and Laura Flynn. Eugene Puryear is a community activist and journalist for BreakThroughNews.org. He talks to us about the first hand action hes witnessing on the very streets of Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and New York and how to keep this movement going. Marian Moore and Laura Flynn are longtime Minneapolis community activists and organizers. They talk about being social justice activists as white women, their witnessing the unimaginable happenings on Sunday, and how their City Council has decided to dismantle the police.

Teri Mattson and Paki Wieland are joined by Rev. Liz Theoharis and Liv Cella from the Poor People's Campaign. The PPC is getting ready for A National Call for Moral Revival, a Poor People's Mass and March on Washington as a digital gathering the 20th of June. Liv shares her financial struggles caused by student debt and the impact it has had on her life. The digital gathering is a call for student debt forgiveness, guaranteed adequate income for those unable to work, end to war mongering and more.

Terri Mattson and Paki Wieland are joined by Gareth Porter, an American historian, investigative journalist, author and policy analyst specializing in U.S. national security issues. They discuss policies that favor military endeavors and how it affects American society as well as ways in which we can work towards divestment and dismantling of the Military Industrial Complex.

This week, Nancy Mancias discusses the upcoming BlackRock virtual protest and the divest from the war machine campaign with Jan Weinberg, Yousef Zakaria from CODEPINK NYC, and Greta Zarro from World BEYOND War.

Teri Mattson and Paki Wieland speak with Mike Weisbrot, Carlos Ron, and Ann Wright. Mike Weisbrot speaks on the effects of sanctions on Venezuela from death to financial insecurity of the entire country as collective punishment. Carlos Ron is the Venezuelan Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs to elaborate on how sanctions, while not recognized as traditional warfare, accomplish the same violence. Ann Wright discusses how sanctions were imposed on Gaza when we were the ones to make the first acts of war against them.

Teri Mattson and Paki Wieland are joined with immigration attorneys, Jesse Franzblau of the National Immigration Rights Center and Gabby Rosazza of the US Labor Education in the Americas Project. The four reflect on the results from Super Tuesday and how that will affect the migrant situation at the U.S./Mexico Border. 

Ariel Gold and Teri Mattson are joined by Anne Wright and Medea Benjamin. It's a full Pink house! Anne Wright discusses the recent Afghanistan elections as well as possible peace plans with the United States. Medea Benjamin discusses the travel opportunities with CODEPINK to delegations in Latin America and Iran.

Ariel Gold and Terri Mattson are joined by Zahra Ali on this week's show. Recap of actions this past week including Swarm the Senate and the action outside the Brazilian Embassy. Zahra Ali is the author of Women and Gender in Iraq and is on CODEPINK Radio to discuss the protests in Iraq that demand U.S. troops out of the country.

Join Paki Wieland as she interviews Teri Wattson for her report back from Venezuela. 45 orders the assassination of Iranian military leader, Qasem Soleimani. How are we to move forward to ensure peace and avoid war?

Join Paki Wieland with guests: Medea Benjamin, Helen Schietinger, and Maha Hillal. Paki and guests touch upon several topics such as the underbelly of Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, and the actions here in the United States commemorating the 18th anniversary of its opening as an illegal detention center.

Join us as we discuss the important actions happening around the recent US-backed coup. CODEPINK Co-Founder, Medea Benjamin, joins live from La Paz, Bolivia to discuss what is happening on the ground there. For the past week, Medea Benjamin has been in Bolivia at the request of local activists, who are panicked about the situation in their country, afraid that things are spiraling out of control. They are engaging in peaceful protests to reverse the coup that happened November 10th, but the protests have been met with tear gas and even live ammunition. Unfortunately, mainstream media and even some progressive outlets are refusing to recognize that what happened a week ago was a coup and are not covering the coup regime’s racism and violence. This is why it's important for us to bring you news live from Bolivia. Scroll down to learn more and don't forget to sign our latest petition on Bolivia.

On this episode of CODEPINK Radio. We start off going over the attempted arrest and assault of our own Medea Benjamin. Next, our new Middle East Campaign manager, Enas al Saffadi, interviews Palestine expert on the recent tragedies in Gaza. In the second part, we are joined by Leonardo Flores to take us through the recent coups in Bolivia and Venezuela. 

CODEPINK's Paki Wieland hosts and talks with CODEPINK's Ariel Gold about her recent trip to Iran life for Iranians under U.S. sanctions with Jamal Abdi, National Iranian American Council. Next we discuss the outcome of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 Trial with Sam Husseini, Institute for Policy Accuracy.

CODEPINK's Ariel Gold and Teri Mattson discuss Jewish activism from the US-Mexico border to Palestine. How do people become activists and  human rights defenders? Our first guest is Carolyn Karcher, editor of Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism, discusses that an increasing number of Jews are learning the truth behind Zionist ideology, which has degraded the Jewish religion. The ethics of Judaism are based on pursuing justice, love thy neighbors and repair the world. Yet, none of these are followed by Israelis to Palestinians.  Recognizing that Israel is committing war crimes under the facade of Jewish identity, Jews are grappling with this and renouncing Zionism. In her book, Carolyn collects stories to change hearts and minds, starting with Rabbis explaining Zionism's harmful beliefs and to reconstruct Judaism by going back to ethical principles. Next, Carolyn takes us through the imperialistic and nationalistic history of Zionism starting before WWII. Does Israel represent Jewishness?Visitors to Israel don’t see behind the apartheid wall. Ariel and Carolyn discuss the transformative experience of visiting Hebron, the epicenter of the occupation. Israel blatantly attempts to blind the realities of what is truly happening in Palestine. They turned a religion that was built on loving thy neighbor into a religion of hate Our second guest, Abby Stein, author of Becoming Eve. She discusses the similarities between Auschwitz and the current actions taken by ICE at the Southern Border. These similarities launched the Never Again movement, which points out society’s short term memory and to look at world atrocities through the lens that legal governments could persuade an entire society that millions of people are the source of their problems, by convincing them that we can get rid of them and everything will be great. Never Again asks us to remember that this did not happen that long ago in Germany.

Paki is joined by CODEPINK Latin America Campaign Coordinators, Leonardo Flores and Teri Mattson, to illuminate the hypocrisy of the United State’s treatment of Venezuela and Honduras. Latin America has been suffering for 500+ years under European and American colonialism and more recently from corporate intervention and extractivsm. Leonardo starts us off by reviewing policies that that has led Venezuela to it’s current standing. First, aggression started with the 2002 coup under the Bush Administration. Under the Obama Administration, an executive order was signed that VZ was an unusual threat, even once calling VZ the greatest threat to the US in the Western Hemisphere. The Trump Administration doubled down on policies by enacting sanctions that have killed approximately 40,000 Venezuelans and counting. Next, Teri, recently back from a trip to Honduras,  discusses the massive Neo liberal economic model in Honduras that 100% privatization has created much more poverty than alleviated, heinous violent attempts to grab land, especially on the Caribbean coast, and mining concessions, that all cause disastrous effects. President Hernandez's brother is on trial for Narco-Trafficking just started last week. The brother of US installed president resulted from a coup and named as a co-conspirator in the trial, so then why are we only hearing about VZ being a Narco-Trafficking state? Why is none of this covered in the media? Honduras houses the largest military base in Central America. Once a country accepts a base, the US does not challenge (human rights violations, corrupt government officials). What happens in Honduras purposely stays out of the media. We discuss the impact of the assassination of Honduran environmental activist Berta Caceres for her work against the extraction industry. She is a martyr that inspired many indigenous environmental activists.  The Honduran indigenous community is up against giant transnational corporations. It is comparable to what the western expansion was in the States, using land grabbing to exterminate native people. This is the modern version of it, but we hear so little by the media, especially the violence inflicted. We compare the stark contrasts between the foreign extraction industries. VZ president, Chavez believed the natural resources should be used for the benefit of the developing society. He re-nationalized the oil industry to put profits to work. Oil profits lead enormous strides, including 2.8 million public housing units, approximately 9 million people housed. The contrast to this in Honduras is telling of US corporate interest. We hear so little about the impunity, land grabbing, water and gold extraction which comes with devastating violence all for external benefits backed by OUR tax dollars. The Irony and hypocrisy in profound, VZ is vilified even though they support their people and Honduras is kept out of media. Recently, we learned at the trial of Hernandez’s brother that El Chapo was financing right wing candidates. Who hired him to finance, the most powerful cartel working to undermine the Venezuelan government? The right wing in VZ has links to military and aims to portray VZ as a Narco state. On a global scale, there are five to seven battling cartels that will control all capital resources beyond borders. This is rooted in ideology and global capital. These cartels exist to supply to the US’s high demand for drugs. With Indigenous People’s Day next week, we remind you indigenous people represent a culture, a heritage and spirit and have always been on the front line.