This week on All Ears, Abby is joined by Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. Sara is a force to be reckoned with. As one of the most powerful labor leaders in the country she’s devoted her career as a flight attendant and union member to improving the conditions of working people. At the height of the pandemic, she helped assure that aviation workers got paid and kept their healthcare, by negotiating for some of the strongest protections in the CARES act. And during the 2018-2019 government shutdown her leadership played a significant role in then-President Trump finally agreeing to end the shutdown. In this week’s conversation with Abby, she talks about why, under capitalism, there must always be a struggle between workers and management, the power and necessity of unions, and why she loves to be called militant. Plus, her recollections from the United Airlines crisis room on September 11, 2001. Tune in for an exciting conversation about the power and potential of organized labor. EPISODE LINKS Association of Flight Attendants-CWA: Sara Nelson Flight Attendants Tell Airlines: Don't Even Think About Concessions (Labor Notes) How Labor Unions Won Historic Protections for Aviation Workers (Forbes) The Shutdown Made Sara Nelson Into America's Most Powerful Flight Attendant (New York Times)The Ascent of Labor Leader Sara Nelson, Workers' Great Hope (Fast Company) Sara Nelson is the face of the militant modern labor movement (Fast Company) The New Union Label: Female, Progressive, and Very Anti-Trump (Politico)  CARES Act Payroll Support to Air Carriers and Contractors Sara Nelson on Twitter: @flyingwithsara

Season 3 of All Ears kicks off with a rich and varied conversation with Me Too Movement founder Tarana Burke. Thought you knew the Me Too story? Think again! Burke’s inspiring new memoir Unbound: My Story Of Liberation And The Birth Of The Me Too Movement is out this week. Burke has been in the trenches of movement work for the better part of two decades, transforming her own experience as a survivor into a vision for helping those in crisis to get help and those dealing with past trauma to heal. Working for so long at a grassroots level, primarily in communities of color, Burke tells Abby that her focus is for the benefit of all: “[My work] never, ever leaves anybody out. There’s not a single white woman who will not benefit from my work being grounded in or centering black women and girls.” Tune in for an inspiring conversation!Find Tarana on Twitter: @TaranaBurke and @MeTooMVMTContent Warning: This episode contains discussion of rape and sexual assault.EPISODE LINKSUnbound: My Story Of Liberation And The Birth Of The Me Too Movement (Tarana Burke)Me Too Movement website21st Century Leadership MovementBefore the Mayflower: A History of Black America (Lerone Bennett)Maya Angelou book covers (Google)You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience (Tarana Burke & Brené Brown, editors)

As the country struggles to reset from a global pandemic, why does it seem that so many women continue to bear the burden of this ongoing crisis? In Season 3 of All Ears, Abigail Disney interviews a slate of creative and courageous thinkers who are pushing back on old systems and reimagining what “normal” should look like for all people.

This week on All Ears, Abby talks to Varshini Prakash, who co-founded the Sunrise Movement, a youth-centered activist organization created in 2017 to end climate change. Sunrise has mobilized two incredibly valuable resources for grassroots organizing: young people and the internet. As the 27 year-old Executive Director of Sunrise, Varshini talks to Abby about how she fell into organizing, and the event that put Sunrise on the map: a 2018 sit-in in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office that became a global sensation (they were joined by new-and-not-yet-sworn-in Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). As a result of the viral event, Sunrise’s visibility ballooned, and in 6 months they grew from 20 local chapters nationally, to over 350. Varshini talks about the challenging task of converting energy and ideals into concrete policy wins, and how two years as a thorn in the side of the Democratic Party earned her a seat at the table in the halls of power. Also, Abby reflects on how Sunrise has overcome some of the miscalculations of past environmental movements and offers Varshini some unsolicited advice from a surprising source. Varshini Prakash on Twitter: @VarshPrakashSHOW LINKS:The Sunrise MovementWinning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can Watch the sit-in at Nancy Pelosi's office in 2018The Sunrise Movement Actually Changed the Democratic Conversation. So What Do You Do For a Sequel? (Politico) How Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders joined forces to craft a bold, progressive agenda (Vox)

This week, as the Sundance Film Festival launches a virtual festival for the first time, Abby talks to the festival's director, Tabitha Jackson. After spending 25 years in non-fiction filmmaking, Tabitha moved from head of the Sundance Documentary Program into the festival chair, beating out 700 applicants and becoming the first woman, and first person of color, to hold the job. What came next was a year of tumult and challenge, in which she unexpectedly faced the task of transforming America’s premiere film festival, normally held in scenic Park City, Utah, into an almost entirely online event. Tabitha says it forced her and her team to "reconsider the value of everything we were doing and how we were doing it because it was all threatened." What emerged was a re-commitment to the original mission of Sundance: use the power of the Festival to direct attention to independent voices and work that may otherwise get lost in the noise. Also, Tabitha tells Abby about her traumatizing experience going to the cinema for the first time, how being British in an American institution can be to her advantage, and why she's skeptical of flattery. Plus, the laborious process of whittling down 13,000 submissions into a program of 71 features and 50 shorts.Check out the Sundance Film Festival line-up & purchase tickets for virtual or in-person screenings in your area.Tabitha Jackson on Twitter: @Tabula4 Sundance Film Festival on Twitter: @SundanceFilmFestivalFILMS MENTIONEDVarda, the Peregrine Falcon (Imdb)Watership Down (Criterion Collection)Grey Gardens (Criterion Collection)BlackfishThe Truffle HuntersHale County This Morning, This EveningOTHER LINKSSundance Film Festival Names Tabitha Jackson as Director (Variety)Sundance Festival Opens Doors for Minority Filmmakers (CodeSwitch)The Experimental High Notes of "Hale County This Morning, This Evening (The New Yorker)Movie Theaters Survived A Century of Change. We Must Save Them From Covid 19. (The Washington Post)

What could be more a timely topic for inauguration week than the US Constitution? But this isn’t any old patriarchal take on our country’s founding document. This week on All Ears Abby talks to playwright and actor Heidi Schreck, creator of Tony-nominated Broadway hit, “What The Constitution Means To Me”. In the play, Heidi reflects back on her teenage experience as an award-winning orator, traveling the country to compete with other teens on the topic of the US Constitution. If anyone ever had a mad crush on a document, it was 15 year old Heidi. But she also looks at it as an adult woman, processing the generational trauma of domestic abuse in her family, and the impact of how our laws have been historically interpreted through the lens of the values and biases of the landowning white men who wrote it. Though Abby and Heidi grapple with our nation’s historical sins and its uncertain future, you will come out the other side of this lively conversation with a spark of optimism. Much like Inauguration 2021! Follow Heidi on Twitter @HeidiBSchreckEPISODE LINKSWhat The Constitution Means To Me | Amazon Prime VideoThe American Legion Oratorical Contest (The American Legion)What The Constitution Means To Me's Heidi Schreck On Releasing The Movie During Another Supreme Court Battle (Slate)Coronavirus In New York: Some Women Must Face Childbirth Alone (LA Times)Griswold v. Connecticut (Oyez.com)Castle Rock v. Gonzalez (Oyez.com)

This week on All Ears Abby talks to New York Times Magazine staff writer, Yale Law School scholar, and Slate Political Gabfest co-host Emily Bazelon on a host of legal and legislative changes on the horizon in the American judicial system. With the looming shift from Republican to Democratic control of the federal government on January 20th, the Supreme Court is on its own separate trajectory, set into motion by the addition of Amy Coney Barrett to the bench. Focusing primarily on women’s reproductive health and justice, Emily breaks down how Supreme Court could begin to dismantle the legal scaffolding around abortion rights, and how it could reverberate through states and communities. With an eye toward the Democrats’ newly-shifted but still razor-thin control of Congress, Abby and Emily game the potential outcomes and discuss what values and metaphorical baggage justices bring into a courtroom. With Emily’s smart takes and deep knowledge, this is an episode for the legal-savvy, the legal-curious, and even the legal-agnostic.  Find Emily on Twitter @EmilyBazelonEPISODE LINKSCharged: The New Movement To Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (Emily Bazelon)Roe v. Wade (Oyez.com, 1971)People Are Dying. Whom Do We Save First With the Vaccine? (Emily Bazelon, NYT 12/24/20)Why Inmates Should Be at the Front of the Vaccination Lines (Emily Bazelon, NYT 12/3/20) The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation (Emily Bazelon, NYT 10/13/20)Why Ruth Bader Ginsburg Refused To Step Down (Emily Bazelon, NYT 9/21/20)Police Reform Is Necessary. But How Do We Do It? (NYT, A discussion about how to reform policing, moderated by Emily Bazelon)

Like the rest of the country, All Ears is reeling from the disturbing events this week at the Capitol Building, so we decided to switch gears away from our planned programming to talk about the impact of this seemingly inevitable burst of political violence. Looking for some perspective from outside U.S. borders, Abby calls her good friend, 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee, who lived through civil and military insurrection in her native Liberia and as an ordinary social worker and grass roots organizer helped to lead her country out of a very dark era. Leymah’s perceptive commentary on the race and gender dynamics at play this week in Washington offers insight into the ways men, white people, and people in power shield themselves from moral responsibility and solution building. Abby and Leymah also talk about the ways women can both perpetuate and break apart conservative coalitions. Leymah insists that faith in the goodness of all people is a necessary ballast to her work as a peace builder, and as someone who has lived through the brutal undoing of a Democracy, her words have resonance for Abby. We hope you find inspiration in Leymah’s words as well. Leymah Gbowee on Twitter: @LeymahRGboweeEPISODE LINKSPray the Devil Back to Hell (Fork Films)Leymah Gbowee (Nobel Prize biography)Gbowee Peace Foundation USA The Washington Post Man who posed at Pelosi desk said in Facebook post that he is prepared for violent death (The Washington Post, 1/7/2021)The Baltimore Sun What were Liberians thinking? How did Charles Taylor win last month's voting by such a large margin? (The Baltimore Sun, 8/3/1997)

For All Ears this week, Abby hosts a rare and revealing interview with On Being host, Krista Tippett. Krista talks about growing up in Shawnee Oklahoma, and the enduring influence of her grandfather, a Southern Baptist minister, on her life’s work. Krista describes the experience of going from a sheltered, church-centric upbringing, to throwing herself into big, bold life experiences (Brown University, a Fulbright Scholarship in Bonn, a job at the US Embassy in Cold War Berlin) and the disorientation that unsettled her once she realized that powerful people in important jobs don’t necessarily have steadfast principles or rich emotional lives. Her subsequent path to divinity school and the creation of the On Being Project have been a process of defining what a “moral imagination” is, and why we, as a culture and as a country, need it. Krista and Abby also discuss how we can learn from one of the most trying and tragic years in our nation’s history, and where we can find hope, which Krista says, “is a muscle that keeps us moving and acting and doing.” It’s a fitting conversation to end the year on, and we wish you all the best for this holiday season. Our next episode drops on Thursday, January 7. See you in 2021!Find Krista on Twitter: @kristatippett and @OnBeingEPISODE LINKSOn Being with Krista TippettNew York Times’ Stringer Reflects On Life In The East (The Berlin Observer, 12/13/85)Choruses from “The Rock”, by T.S. Eliot (Poetrynook.com)

This week on All Ears, Abby goes deep with professor and long time activist Loretta Ross. As an outspoken critic of cancel culture, Loretta’s sharp insights have made her class “White Supremacy in the Age of Donald Trump,” one of Smith College’s most popular. Loretta tells Abby that social media shaming is counterproductive to her long-sought goal of building a human rights movement; while it can be an important tool for holding the powerful accountable, more often than not “we're spending our best bullets on each other.”  And besides, Loretta reminds Abby, the revolution should be fun! Instead of calling people out, Loretta describes the practice of "calling in." "It's not that deep," she tells Abby, "It's a call out done with love and respect." In her efforts to build a movement for all people, Loretta is always looking for ways she can partner with others, even her ideological opposites. Loretta also tells her own story of sexual assault and sterilization at a young age, experiences which helped propel her into a lifetime of activism.EPISODE LINKSUp From Hatred (LA Times)What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In? (NY Times)Loretta Ross Keynote Address - Hampshire College Commencement 2018The Dalkon Shield Disaster (Washington Post)Reproductive Justice (SisterSong)LorettaRoss.comLoretta Ross on Twitter: @LorettaJRoss