Discern This takes a look at the progressive movement in the United States with a focus on the Poor People’s Campaign founded by Reverend William Barber. This modern analogue to the social movement founded by Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, echoes its predecessor’s conviction that society needs to confront the interlocking and mutually reinforcing injustices of poverty, racism, militarism, and adds climate change to the list. Author and progressive activist Phyllis Bennis explains how the PPC functions as fusion movement with interconnected objectives. Using clips from some of Reverend Barber’s powerful and emotive speeches, Discern This discusses the intellectual underpinnings and practical goals of the Poor People’s Campaign. Phyllis Bennis, who is a research partner to the campaign, gives context to the speeches and lays out Reverend Barber’s view of military spending and intersectionality. In her conversation with host Lonzo Cook, she emphasizes the importance of mobilization to achieve progressive goals.

The conversation explores progressive landscape beyond the Poor People’s Campaign, with Lonzo Cook asking Phyllis if the American left has been undermined by its fissiparous tendency to split into narrow interest groups. In the final section, Phyllis Bennis details her engagement with local media outlets across the country and how that meshes with her focus on affecting change in local politics.

Phyllis Bennis is an author and progressive activist. She is the Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington DC.

Discern This delves into America’s changing role in the world with veteran journalist and political commentator David Andelman, whose career includes stints as New York Times bureau chief in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. How does the United States self-perception mesh with the views of it around the world and is it still “the shining city on the hill”? David Andelman brings into focus the shifting status of the US, as viewed from abroad, a topic he covers as a CNN columnist and in his own substack Andelman Unleashed.. He highlights a fascinating finding from a recent international survey which placed Canada and its constitution as the leading example to emulate, according to respondents in countries considering their own constitutional revisions.

Drawing on his perspective gained from reporting from 86 countries over his career, David Andelman sketches the major fault lines in world affairs. He identifies the possibility of fighting a two front war- in Ukraine and over Taiwan- as the greatest threat facing the United States. Andelman explains why the Baltic states and Poland have had a more realistic and accurate appraisal of Russian intentions and how the France and Germany fell victim to wishful thinking in their policy with Moscow. He highlights the attritional nature of the war in Ukraine and posits the negative feedback loop of Russian casualties could have on the Kremlin. He adds that some of the overlooked disruptions caused by the Russian invasion, include overtures between former Soviet republics in central Asia and the United States.

Andelman endorses Henry Kissinger’s dictum that strong domestic support is required of the conduct of a successful foreign policy- that international events are too often refracted through the prism of national politics. He chides the US media for inconsistently explaining the relevance and impact of international events to its domestic audience. For him one of the weaknesses of the American political system is that Americans are not being educated about the linkage between America’s global position and America’s prosperity.

David Andelman is a journalist, author and political commentator. His career includes stints as New York Times bureau chief in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. David was also a Paris based correspondent for CBS News. He is currently an opinion columnist for CNN on international affairs and writes regularly for his own substack: Andelman Unleashed.

The United States is an imperial power, driven by predatory capitalism with a foreign and security policy aimed at supporting the maintenance of an American Empire. So runs the controversial thesis of Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell. He asserts that the long running wars which the US has fought in the wake of September 11,2001 have been waged for the deep state and the maintenance and extension of Empire. In his view, US support for Ukraine is motivated by a desire to maintain US hegemony over Europe.

In an extended conversation with Discern This host Lonzo Cook, Colonel Wilkerson shares his independent view of US defense spending, a view at variance with establishment orthodoxy one might expect from a former senior military and government official. He charges that defense contractors have been massive beneficiaries of America’s post 911 foreign and security policy and lambasts the inefficiencies of prominent military procurement programs like the F-35 fighter. In an echo of President Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex, Colonel Wilkerson explains how defense spending is not as productive as investments in health, education or business and laments the bloated defense budget as “a drain on the body of America”.

Drawing on his experience at the highest levels of the Army and State Department, Colonel Wilkerson points out that the militarization of US foreign policy dulls the knife of diplomacy and chides the poor quality of senior US diplomats. And in a warning that all Empires run their course, he warns that US adventurism abroad could lead to an expanding global coalition of opponents to the US.