The Week Starts Here, for September 11, 2011 - 7:30pm
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The Week Starts Here ---It All Began with a Seed....Download this clip (mp3, 15.41 megabytes)
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Host Veronica Faisant promotes getting back to basics in Mind, Body & Spirit. In this, the premier program, Jere Gettle author of The Heirloom Life Gardener, discusses everything you ever wanted to know about growing heirloom, GMO-free vegetables.
Holly Hirshberg, describes her non profit, "The Dinner Garden" which provides vegetable seeds and instructions for growing your own food.
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Hello Donna,
Thanks for listening and for taking the time to document your thoughts on this site.
In the general sense, I guess, any topic dealing with people can be thought of as "Public Affairs". KPFA has a limited number of categories, so my show was grouped with the shows that deal with "political reality", "the power of the corporate driven State", etc. As I mentioned on my first show, my colleagues here at KPFA do a stellar job taking on the system.--Not Me! I believe peace begins with the individual and, at the very least, if a person's goal IS to take on the establishment, they should feel rested and empowered for the fight.
My show isn't for everyone. The wonderful thing about KPFA's programming is the diversity of opinion.
I hope you keep listening, Donna, to whatever point of view resonates with you.
Sincerely,
Veronica Faisant
Veronica Faisant's new show seems opposed to direct action and radical, grass-roots activism challenging the corruption of U.S. capitalism, favoring instead feel-good denial and life-style-change politics. In Veronica Faisant's world-view, let's all chant 'ommm' and try and be one with the universe, as Republicans and Democrats roll back 20th-Century progressive gains.
Listener "David" called in toward the end (1:07:45 to 1:10:21). It was sad to hear him call in, mention his economic hardship, and then, essentially, try and sound happy about the poverty he endures alongside millions across the nation because VF 'feels' there's too much 'bad news' and so she only wants to focus on 'good news' and 'positivity.'
Some of us remember Zack de la Rocha, "your anger is a gift!" ("Freedom," by Rage Against the Machine)
What's more empowering than knowing one's enemy and joining up with others in solidarity against such a common enemy, as embodied, for example, by the U.S. ruling class, the Democratic Party, and the Republicans?
Too bad, "The Week Starts Here," prefers to help depoliticize KPFA listeners, like Kris Welch and other liberals on KPFA insist on doing.
I'd rather listen to Joe Frank than this. That would be more radical and subversive than this lobotomizing don't-worry-be-happy kumbaya drivel.
(Nothing against the guests, but it is possible to talk about these topics and radically challenge the system and denounce crooked corporate politics strangling our society at the same time. But not when hosts come from a defeatist politics world-view, which views squarely confronting reality as a bummer.)
Thanks for listening & sharing your views. Joe Frank comes on at 9...immediately following my show!
Veronica Faisant says her new show “is not a public affairs show,” but who is she fooling? On her first show she deals with public affairs, as she will undoubtedly do on every show.
Look up “Public Affairs Programs on KPFA” (at http://www.kpfa.org/programs/publicaffairs ). And what do we find? That’s right, “The Week Starts Here.”
What a blooming joke.
Just because VF's world-view shuns electoral politics (helping take heat off the corrupt Democratic and Republican parties) and refuses to make the necessary connections between the political reality (of the hindrances to sustainability created by Dems and Repubs) with her notions of providing “an inspirational, empowering environment” doesn’t make this show any less of a public affairs show than “Living Room,” where she often presented Pollyannish interviews as a substitute for the similar Kris Welch.
It’s total fraud to act like TWSH isn’t a public affairs show. It is. It’s fraud to pretend like TWSH is not political. Everything is political, even that which ignores the power of the corporate-driven state wielded over our daily lives.
If TWSH continues as it’s started, much like VF’s contributions to “Living Room,” it will be very much political in the sense that it will only serve to support the status quo by refusing to speak in a bold, empowered language capable of incorporating a radical world-view aware of the road-blocks Dems and Repubs pose to sustainability and truly progressive politics.
Acting like simple life-style changes, however noble, will somehow magically make the ruling class change and be nice is beyond naïve, it's diametrically opposed to the elevation of class-consciousness. It’s regressive for the left.