Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa during the apartheid era, Marisa Handler eyewitnessed injustices firsthand, and it was these experiences that helped feed her passion for activism and global political organizing.
“I have come to believe that every one of us is an activist, and that every action taken in the name of our interconnection — every action that brings us closer to ourselves, to each other, to the planet — births a better world,” Handler writes on her Web site.
Handler captures her coming-of-age story as a political activist in her memoir, “Loyal to the Sky: Notes from an Activist,” the winner of the 2008 Nautilus Gold Award for world-changing books. She will be reading from her book tonight at 7PM at Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City.
Marisa Handler
The reading will be broadcast live via the University of Iowa Writing University Web site, and it will also be recorded for broadcast on Iowa Public Radio’s “Live from Prairie Lights” series. Hour-long “Live from Prairie Lights” productions, hosted by WSUI’s Julie Englander, air at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturdays, and 7 p.m. Sundays on WSUI-AM 910 in Iowa City and WOI-AM 640 in Ames.
When she was 12-years old, Handler’s family relocated to Southern California which served as the catalyst for her quest for global justice — her journey traversing the Berkeley campus, Israel, India, Nepal, Ecuador, Peru, and all over the Unites States – including the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia.
Handler has written for Salon.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, AlterNet, and Tikkun, Orion, and Bitch magazines. She has worked as an activist with numerous organizations, including Direct Action to Stop the War, United for Peace and Justice and the Tikkun Community, where she was national organizer.
Handler currently resides in Iowa City and is enrolled in her first year of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop Fiction program.
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