The American Dream leads most Americans to believe they are entitled to prosperity and success. Some feel they are more entitled to that prosperity and success than others. Some also are more willing to toil for that prosperity and success. If one is handed down prosperity and success, there is an even greater weight to hold up on one’s shoulders, since failure can mean losing everything a family has built from years of hard work and sacrifice.

From the school cafeteria to rural tomato farms, and all the way to pickets at the White House, people are challenging the ways in which government programs benefit big agribusiness to the detriment of small- and mid-sized farmers. Urban gardeners, PTA parents, ranchers, food coops, and a host of others are organizing to make the policies that govern our food and agricultural systems more just, accountable, and transparent. They are spearheading alternative policies on the local, state, national, and international levels.

Thanksgiving, a time to celebrate and to be thankful for all that we have been given; but it is not a memory wipe.

We are a good people, badly led and badly misled. We live in a beautiful and bounteous land in which millions upon millions of our own citizens can no longer earn enough to survive in it and yet, that is not considered a national crisis.

The system is designed to split us, and we are the ones who have to engage in education and conversation in order to come together to reform the political structure.

It’s time to put the taboo subject of public ownership back on the progressive agenda. It is the only way to solve some of the most serious problems facing the nation. We contend that it is possible not only to talk about this once forbidden subject but to begin to build a serious politics that can do what needs to be done in key sectors.

Off the release of his new publication, OCCUPY (Occupied Media Pamphlet Series), Laura Flanders (GRITtv) sat down with MIT professor Noam Chomsky to reflect on the grim state of America, and the role activists have to play in turning it around.

As you file your taxes this week, before complaining about how much you’re forking over to Uncle Sam, bear in mind that the tax man might not be the only one you’re writing a check to: Your boss might be getting a big cut, too.

The Sunlight Foundation looked at the eight companies that spent the most on lobbying and found that all of them saw their reported tax rates drop. This drop in tax rates effectively reduced the taxes the companies paid in 2010 by $11.2 billion.

I learned two useful things that are central to American life today, yet which I have never once heard stated on the radio or TV or read in a newspaper: I learned about the labor shortage that fueled the 150-year period of rising wages in the United States, and I learned about the fact that corporations used to pay a lot more in corporate taxes, especially as an overall percentage of American tax revenues, than they do now.

There will be a billion pixels spilt on these stories that you can read elsewhere by scholars, experts and journalists. What I’m most interested in is what works/worked for the media activists out there.