Listen Live on KKFI
Every Tuesday at 6:30pmAbout the Show
CounterSpin
Counterspin is FAIR's weekly radio show, hosted by Janine Jackson, Steve Rendall and Peter Hart. It's heard on more than 125 noncommercial stations across the United States and Canada. Counterspin provides a critical examination of the major stories every week, and exposes what the mainstream media might have missed in their own coverage.
This week on CounterSpin: “A ‘gun-free’ school is a magnet for bad people” is a real statement from the actual president, in response to a horrific event in which a 19-year-old shot and killed 17 people at his former high school in Parkland, Florida. Which suggests that waiting for Trump to act to prevent gun violence should be no part of an effort to prevent gun violence.
If Americans really want to stop being “the only country where this happens,” which keeps officially claiming there’s “no way to prevent” it, it will require not just deep examination of the multiple roots of mass violence of this sort, but also an approach to political processes that keeps its eye on the prize of real change. We’ll talk about possibilities of movement on the issue of gun control and about some of the other cultural aspects of this violence, whose examination has to be part of getting beyond this cycle of mass shootings and ‘thoughts and prayers’ and more mass shootings.
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the political reform program at New America and author of the book The Business of America Is Lobbying. He wrote “Why Parkland Could Be a Turning Point for Gun Control” for Vox.com (2/21/18).
We’ll also hear from Pat Elder, author of the book Military Recruiting in the United States and director of the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, which resists the militarization of schools.
