Happy Thanksgiving! Tonight GRITtv presents a special program on national security featuring the views of the largest group of marginalized experts on the topic—women. How would we think about personal, national and global security differently if women weren't sidelined in the debate? As the world looks to the US for some new thinking, and new behavior on the global stage, GRITtv went to Seattle to host a free, public discussion. This program was produced with The Media Consortium and recorded in October as part of a pre-election series, Live From Main Street.
First, alternatives to the national security policies that have led us to where we are. When surveyed shortly after the attacks of 9/11-- it turned out that women -- already a minority of guests on Sunday talk shows had all but disappeared from the national security debate. Where were they and why were they locked out? Here to discuss the absence of women in the post 9/11 national security debate are Erin Solaro, an analyst of military affairs, Iraq war veteran Sarah Mott, and Sara Rich, the mother of Suzanne Swift, a U.S. soldier who served time in detention for refusing to redeploy and continue to go on what she called “useless missions.”
And who’s security are we talking about anyway? The nation’s or someone else’s? Gael Tarleton, Commissioner at the Port of Seattle, Rep. Marlayn Chase of Washington’s 32nd district in the state Assembly, Carol Kessler, Director of the Pacific Northwest Center for Global Security at the Pacific Northwest National Lab, and Mako Fitts, a professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Seattle University discuss the rhetoric of security and what it means.
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director of Moms Rising, Martha Burk, Money Editor at Ms. Magazine and the author of Your Money and Your Life, and Sarah van Gelder, Executive Editor at YES! Magazine, on the arms industry, war profiteers, and the national security state.
Also tonight a report from The American News Project on how banks are spending their bailout funds. And a video from Amnesty International’s Stop Violence Against Women Campaign.