New episode of The Laura Flanders Show spotlights feminist philanthropy

July 21, 2021 Queer Forty Staff 3 min read

How does feminism change the field of philanthropy, and how does it change the landscape for social justice movements specifically?

MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, recently donated nearly $3 billion to more than 280 nonprofits working in historically underfunded sectors – her third in a year. But while Scott has repeatedly made headlines, the media has largely overlooked the impact that women and feminists are making on philanthropy during a pandemic that has created a global crisis for women and girls.

Watch the episode teaser here:

In this episode, Laura Flanders interviews the writer and activist V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, about the effects of what she calls “disaster patriarchy.” Then, Laura goes in depth with Teresa Younger, CEO of the Ms. Foundation and member of the White House Gender Policy Council, to explore how tying the intersections of race and gender into philanthropy could make a better world for us all. Plus, Laura makes some predictions about the Right and the new Child Tax Credit.

About Laura Flanders

Independent journalist Laura Flanders grew up in London, in an Anglo-American family of performers and journalists, attended Barnard College, and became a journalist in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. By 1990 Laura was co-hosting CounterSpin, the weekly radio report from the media watch group FAIR and reporting from Central America, the Middle East and Europe for media outlets like In These Times, New Directions For Women, Ms., Outweek, The Nation, and Pacifica Radio.

Invited to host a daily call-in program, Laura launched “Your Call” on public radio station KALW in 2001 and then The Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio to engage listeners in a deep dive into the issues of the day. Supported by Free Speech TV, Laura moved to television in 2008, starting GRITtv, a daily national news show that covered the Financial Crisis from the grassroots up. Laura emerged determined to introduce audiences to a wealth of people, places (and policy options) that other media ignored. The Laura Flanders Show launched on public television stations in September 2020. The same year, Laura received a Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation “for her tireless work as an independent journalist, interviewing activists who are creating solutions to economic injustice and catastrophic environmental destruction. Her body of work helps the American public begin to imagine alternatives.”

“Flanders’ fearless and humane journalism never fails to challenge our downsized politics of excluded alternatives. But it does more — Flanders wants her reporting to shift power, seed bold ideas and offer people a way forward that is about transformative not transactional change,” says Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation.

Laura lives with her partner, the MacArthur Genius award-winning choreographer and action-hero Elizabeth Streb. She is at work on a new book, The Grand Perhaps. Her previous books include Blue Grit, Making Impossible, Improbable, and Inspirational Change in America, (Penguin Press, 2008); BUSHWOMEN, Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004) and Real Majority, Media Minority, The High Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting (Common Courage Press, 1997).

Watch the full episode here: