Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:02 — 49.5MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS | More
Though the 2016 election in the US is still a long ways off, it’s never too soon to start campaigning. In fact, some would argue campaigning has all but replaced the grinding, tedious task of actually governing altogether. With an eye firmly fixed on the electoral horizon, America’s next president-elect will be holding forth next week, bringing his message right here to Victoria!
That’s correct, inveterate American activist singer/songwriter in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger David Rovics is breaking new electoral ground by taking the highly unusual, (and strategically questionable) step of beginning his run for president in a foreign country. Top that Obama!!!
Over the years, David has played at demos too numerous to count for myriad issues both universal and circumstantial, and he’ll be at the famed Norway House a week Friday playing his stump speech and other current samplings from his considerable songbook.
Troubadour and presidential hopeful, David Rovics in the first half.
And; Monday marked the fifth anniversary of the earthquake that devastated much of Haiti. This week, the people are in the streets, facing the guns and batons of both the thuggish, RCMP-trained police, and the infamous UN Blue Helmets, remembered locally for shooting up Cite Soleil and aiding the equally thuggish “dictator” president Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly.
If the January 12th, 2010 7.0 magnitude quake was disastrous, worse was in store for the Haitian people; and their suffering continues yet. Five years later, thousands have died due to disease and exposure, while hundreds of thousands more remain essentially homeless, and the entire population exists beneath the shadow of a foreign occupier whose soldiers are responsible for an ongoing litany of crimes committed with effective impunity.
Kim Ives is founder of, and contributing editor to, Haiti Liberté, a newspaper with offices in Haiti and New York, has more than twenty years experience reporting with the paper, Haiti Progrès and hosts the weekly WBAI New York radio program, ‘Haiti: The Struggle Continues.’ Ives is also a filmmaker who has collaborated on many films documenting human rights abuses, trade struggle, and conflicts between the island’s peasant farmers and corrupt State enterprises, and has contributed to the books, ‘Dangerous Crossroads,’ ‘The Haiti Files,’ and Haiti: A Slave Revolution.’ Kim has appeared on international news programs promoting the cause of Haiti’s disenfranchised, and traveled Canada and the U.S delivering lectures on the situation there. He flew out of Haiti just this morning.
Kim Ives fresh out of Haiti and live from Miami in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher emeritus and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us news of some of the good things going on in and around our city in the coming week and beyond. But first, Running with the next president of the United States, David Rovics.
