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The Flaming Sword of Justice, with Ben Wikler
After 64 hours of original interviews, inspiring stories, and flames that leapt from our honed steel edge up to the merciless skies, The Flaming Sword of Justice has been reforged.!
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#18: Dream Defenders: Origins (re-release)
The Flaming Sword of Justice, with Ben Wikler
The Dream Defenders have been occupying the Florida State Capitol for 17 days, making national headlines with their call for a special legislative session to pass a "Trayvon's Law"--to repeal Stand Your Ground, ban racial profiling, and end the school-to-prison pipeline....
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#64: The world. Getting better?
The Flaming Sword of Justice, with Ben Wikler
92 years of life can give you some perspective. Especially if you spend seven-odd decades in service of others, as a diplomat and peacebuilder working on five continents. Today, we interview Ambassador John W. McDonald, co-founder and chair of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, about his extraordinary journey: from his far-flung childhood in a military family to his arrival as a young foreign service officer in postwar Germany in 1947; from the Berlin airlift to the nerve center of the Marshall Plan; from camel caravans through snow-choked Afghanistan to...
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#63: Minutemen Murders
The Flaming Sword of Justice, with Ben Wikler
What happened to the Minutemen? A refresher: the Minutemen were the group that whipped up American conservatives into hysterics around the supposed issue of "border security" a few years back. They called themselves "a citizens' Neighborhood Watch on our border," and organized press stunts in which armed white people would tromp around the border with Mexico and argue that they weren't racist. You don't hear from them so much anymore. Partly, that's because their positions—and many of their former members—moved on to the Tea Party. But partly that's because...
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#62: DOMA Loses, Love Wins
The Flaming Sword of Justice, with Ben Wikler
When the Christian Right launched the organization "True Love Waits," they might not have been intentionally referring to the wait for a Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Defense Of Marriage Act. But as of Wednesday, June 26th, 2013, the wait is over. And true love won. ...
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#61: Not supposed to win
The Flaming Sword of Justice, with Ben Wikler
Remember the Dean campaign? It never ended. A decade later, the people he inspired are still winning elections coast to coast, using the idea that was always at the heart of his campaign: people powered politics.In 2003, a 22-year-old named Arshad Hasan joined Dean's campaign for president. Today, he's preparing to depart from his post as Executive Director of Democracy for America, the organization that sprang up from the Dean community after the campaign's end. On today's Flaming Sword of Justice, recorded live at the Netroots Nation 2013 conference in San Jose, Arshad tells the story...
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#60: Wisconsin WTF?
The Flaming Sword of Justice, with Ben Wikler
There's deadlock in DC, but in Wisconsin—as in 23 other states—Republicans have total control. So what is the party of Palin doing with all that power? ...
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#59: PRISM Break
The Flaming Sword of Justice, with Ben Wikler
The NSA vs the ACLU: one side knows everything. The other has read the Constitution very carefully. Winner gets bragging rights. And shapes the course of history....
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#58: Credo
The Flaming Sword of Justice, with Ben Wikler
Want to win an election? The formula's supposed to be simple: raise a ton of money, buy a ton of TV ads, stir in a little get-out-the-vote action, book your tickets to DC. Except: that's not what the research says.A wave of political science studies have upended the conventional wisdom about what counts in politics, and suggested a very different way to win elections. And on this episode of The Flaming Sword of Justice, our guest—Becky Bond of CREDO—tells the story of how she put that research into action. While billionaires bankrolled a tidal wave of TV ads in the...
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#57: Factories
The Flaming Sword of Justice, with Ben Wikler
On March 25, a clothing factory caught fire. Workers ried to escape, but they found the doors locked—and 146 of them died. Sounds like Bangladesh. But this happened in New York City. In 1911. What happened after that has been written in a thousand history books: a national outcry; new legislation protecting workers' rights; and a wave of union organizing that helped transform the lives of workers in this country. Fast forward a century, loop around to the other side of the globe, and you'll find almost exactly the same story—fire, locked doors, death—in...
info_outlineFor years—for decades—the Boy Scouts didn't just discriminate. They insisted on discriminating. They forced local troops to throw out gay scouts. They won a Supreme Court case to defend their right to discriminate. They told the press, over and over, that nothing was going to change.
And then, suddenly, something changed.
This is how that happened.
This is the story of how an Ohio mom, a Iowa Eagle Scout, and a gay teenager in California sparked a nationwide movement that ended one of the most hotly-defended policies of discrimination in America. This is the story of how their voices inspired millions to join the cause—to sign petitions and make phone calls, to march and lobby and send in their merit badges in protest. How they fought, and fought, and refused to give up.
In this episode of the Flaming Sword of Justice, we interview Mike Jones, the behind-the-scenes campaign director at Change.org who worked with the public heroes of this campaign to win a change that many had dismissed as an impossibility. And then we talk to Jennifer Tyrrell, the mom whose petition sparked the wildfire—reaching her by phone the day after the vote to allow gay scouts. (The fight now continues to end the ban on gay leaders.) This is the first time anywhere that you can hear the whole story, from the inside, of how it all unfolded. It's inspiring, and it's more than that: it's a case study of how to beat the odds, from the bottom up.
Below: see photos of our guest, Mike Jones, and the heroes of the story; and a timeline of the scouts campaign.