Paul Street on Why it Matters Today – Paul Street is an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, teacher, journalist, historian, and author of seven books. In this talk, that he gave at the Open University of the Left in Chicago in March 2019, he offered arguments and proof that the US constitution is not the sacred document protecting the “Peoples Rights”, but on the contrary is authoritarian and anti-democratic by design.
For the 18th Century slaveholders and merchants popular sovereignty was the ultimate nightmare and they embedded safety mechanisms into the constitution that remain in force today via the Senate, Supreme Court and Electoral College. Street details how U.S. politics and policy are badly distorted by the nation’s exceptionally durable charter and how we might finally stop playing “Simon Says” with militant anti-democrats like Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.
Paul Street has authored seven books to date, among them: Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History; The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power; Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics; and They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy.
Paul Street’s essays and commentaries have appeared in a wide variety of media such as CounterPunch, Truthdig, Black Agenda Report, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and CNN to name only a few.
Credit for the recording goes to Dale Lehman of WZRD Radio in Chicago. Date Recorded: 2019-03-23
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)
