I.C. Grad Zack Ford, Today's Guest Speaker

I.C. graduate Zack Ford is the editor of ThinkProgress LGBT at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, hailing from the small town of Newport, PA. Prior to joining ThinkProgress, Zack blogged for two years at ZackFordBlogs.com with occasional cross-posts at Pam’s House Blend. He also co-hosts a popular LGBT-issues podcast called Queer and Queerer.

Students in country of Ithasia use Facebook to organize protests

As in faraway places like Tunisia, Egypt and Mexico, students on campus using Facebook to mobilize. Faculty protest letter here.  President's response here.

Margaret Sanger

Sanger is proof that media heroes are sometimes flawed. This article from Women's E-News discusses her flirtation with racist (eugenics-oriented) arguments in support of birth control.

Dinner with Amy Goodman

In the early 1900s, the socialist Appeal to Reason newspaper offered yachts, fruit farms and motorcycles as premiums to bring in revenue and subscriptions. Democracy Now! offers Dinner and a Show with Amy Goodman.

After meeting Amy at a dinner party, Regis and his sidekick acknowledge that their Regis and Kelly TV show is about "nothing."

Is Colbert the Upton Sinclair of today?

Stephen Colbert accepted the challenge of experiencing difficult working conditions. Here he is doing farm labor.

Students carry on Ida B. Wells' anti-lynching legacy

In last dozen years, Northwestern University journalism students and their professor have been instrumental in proving the innocence of many prisoners in Illinois, several of whom had been sentenced to death. Their investigative journalism sparked the ending of the death penalty in Illinois

Lynching prompted the classic Billie Holiday song,"Strange Fruit," which she recorded in 1939 over the objections of her record company: "Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." The song's lyrics were inspired by this photograph. Time magazine denounced he song as "musical propaganda."

Journalists Re-fight Old Battles

Sometimes journalism can help expose a problem -- like the jailing of people simply for being in debt -- thereby leading to reform. But other journalists -- years or generations later -- may have to keep exposing the issue...as these investigative journalists for the big mainstream daily in Minneapolis recently did.

"It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found."

I.F. Stone pointed out that some reforms don't happen except through the work of generations of journalists and democracy activists:

“The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it.”