June 12, 2011

Broadcast Date: 
Jun 12 2011

At least 20 alleged dead in IDF attacks on demonstrators at Syrian border; New York City activists revive "Pins and Needles," the International Ladies Garment Workers Union's 1937 Broadway hit; plus Vivian Gornick and historian Paul LeBlanc duke it out on the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg.

Episode segments
  • IDF Attacks Naksa Day Protesters at Syrian Border
    Israel/Palestine
    Max Blumenthal is a fellow at the Nation Institute and the author of "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party."
    Marissa Brostoff

    On June 5, Palestinian refugees demonstrated on the border between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights to commemmorate the Naksa (the "setback" of the 1967 war); Israeli forces attacked and allegedly killed more than 20. Max Blumenthal gives us his take on what this latest round of protests means.

  • Union-Made Musical Gets NYC Revival
    Labor, Theater
    Foundry Theater artistic producer Melanie Joseph. Plus, an archival interview with original "Pins and Needles" cast member Ruth Rubenstein Graber.
    Dan Katz. Produced by Kiera Feldman.

    In 1937, members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union wrote, starred in, and produced "Pins and Needles," a musical comedy about labor politics--and went all the way to Broadway. This month, members of FUREE--Families United for Racial and Economic Equality--are reviving the show at Brooklyn's Foundry Theater.

  • Who Was Rosa Luxemburg?
    Literature
    Essayist, memoirist, and critic Vivian Gornick, author of "The Men in My Life" and "Fierce Attachments," and Paul LeBlanc, professor of history at La Roche University and editor of "Rosa Luxemburg: Reflections and Writings."
    Marissa Brostoff

    Rosa Luxemburg was a revolutionary icon, a pathbreaking Marxist theorist, and, according to the editors of Verso's new volume of her correspondence, a "fanatical" letter writer. Gornick and LeBlanc discuss--and debate--what Luxemburg's letters can tell us about women and communism at the dawn of the Soviet era.