The election of President Barack Obama was a huge step forward in America's history regarding race, but long-time civil rights activist Julian Bond believes there is still much more to be done.

 In the 21st Century, says Bond, the concept of civil rights is expanding to include a multitude of other minorities within the larger society, such as gay men and lesbians.

Julian Bond will speak March 20 at Sonoma State University at 7:30pm  in the Person Theater on "The Road to Freedom:  From Alabama to Obama." The event is open to the public.  He's no stranger to college campuses, even today, as a professor at two universities near Washington, D.C. That has given him a clear sense of who today's college generation are, and where their interests and motivations lie.

The chart below offers an illustration of the central role Julian Bond has played in the national conversation about race over the past half century (links shown with dotted lines are no longer current).

Was the arrest and conviction of Eric McDavid (right) a successful prosecution of an eco-terrorist conspiracy, or a case of entrapment by an overzealous undercover operative? His friends and family make a compelling case for the latter, on today's North Bay Report.

The use of terrorism and conspiracy charges to suppress free speech and dissent has been used most aggressively against members of the Earth Liberation Front and the  Animal Liberation Front, but Jenny Esquivel  observes that the same  tactics were employed to pre-emptively arrest organizers of political protests at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis last summer.

 McDavid's friends and family have also established an online support website for him and his appeal at supporteric.org .

Injustice For an Activist: In 2008, Eric McDavid, an environmental activist was imprisoned, and subsequently sentenced to 19 years and 7 months for crimes he never committed. Loved ones will be giving a 2 hour presentation of Eric's story including the FBI's use of entrapment as part of the government's Green Scare campaign .

Thursday, February 19, 7 pm, at the Peace and Justice Center in Santa Rosa.

 Shepherd Bliss, a Sebastopol farmer and writer, and  part-time instructor in the psychology department  at Sonoma State University talks about his experience in Chile just before the 1973 coup and how it felt to return to that country34 years later, as part of an inquest into the police state execution of his close friend Frank Teruggi. It wasn't easy, but even after three and a half decades, Bliss believes that confronting government-sanctioned brutality and torture is difficult, painful and necessary.

September 11^th was also the date of General Pinochet's Chilean coup in 1973 (above). But Sheperd Bliss suggests that earlier tragedy may have had even more far-reaching consequences.

    Bliss has written about his efforts to come to terms with his recent Chilean experiences in an essay titled "The Grim Reaper, Agrotherapy, Kokopelli and Pinochet's Darkness," which was published in the most recent edition of the University of Hawaii's Manoa Journal:  Enduring War--Stories of What We've Learned. Occidental garlic grower and writer Chester Aarons also has two pieces in the same volume.

Both men will co-host a presentation titled "Storytelling, Farming and Healing," at the VIVA Culinary Institute, 7160 Keating Avenue in Sebastopol, 6:30-8:30 pm, Tuesday, Feb. 17.  Details here or by calling 824-9913.

The Sonoma County Economic Development Board hosted the 6^th annual State of the County breakfast Wednesday morning, with Supervisor Paul Kelley delivering the centerpiece address. KRCB was there to record and bring you his talk.

Supervisor Paul Kelley

Not one but two Project Censored stories this past year came from the work of Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine.

 Matthew Rothschild (below) the Editor of The Progressive magazine spoke last night at Sonoma State University, as part of Project Censored's Modern Media Censorship lecture series. Rothschild had two of his own stories selected by Project Censored for their Top 25 of th4e past year, including one about a shadowy partnership between the FBI and American businesses called InfraGard. You can read it here.

President Elect Barak Obama is on the cover of the current edition of The Progressive, but editor Matt Rothschild is openly skeptical about the cabinet picks and other early moves by the new chief executive.

Newspapers across the country are struggling to reinvent themselves and survive in the Internet age, but Rothschild suggests that the situation for niche magazines such as The Progressive is not so dire.

Much of Rothschild's other recent reporting has addressed the erosion of civil rights in this country over the past eight years, stories he has compiled in his most recent book, You Have No Rights:  Stories of America in an Age of Repression.