Laura Briggs, Author of Taking Children, A History of American Terror; Vietnam Vet Mike Hastie, the Wall of Vets, Standing Up Against Trump in Portland

Laura Briggs, Taking Children

Laura Briggs, Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her book Taking Children shows that for 400 years the United States has taken children for political ends. Black children, Native children, Latinx children, and the children of the poor have all been seized from their kin and caregivers. This existed on the auction block, in the boarding schools designed to pacify the Native American population, in the foster care system used to put down the Black freedom movement, in US coups in Central America, and in the moral panic about crack babies. In chilling detail we see how Central Americans were made into a population that could be stripped of their children.

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Mike Hastie and the Wall of Vets in Portland

.Mike Hastie, a photographer, activist and Vietnam veteran who joined the protests in Portland, Oregon as part of the Wall of Vets. During protests in late July, he was pepper-sprayed in the face by Trump's storm troopers. He'll join us to talk about that, and about the work he does with the Full Disclosure project of Veterans for Peace.