Eve Ensler of V-Day joins labor and civil rights leaders to discuss the state of female America. Can the violence be stopped? With Ai-Jen Poo, Randi Weingarten, Karen Higgins, Kimberle Crenshaw & Amber Hollibaugh. Laura Flanders hosts. Recorded 11/27/12 at New York’s Cooper Union.

Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination gave media pundits another excuse to shout about the role of race in Obama’s politics. The Global Affirmative Action Praxis Project of the African American Policy Forum has convened scholars, professors and students to have an intelligent, inclusive and just discussion on issues of racial and social equality around the world. Today on the show, Prof. Kimberle Crenshaw of UCLA and founder of the African American Policy Forum, Martin Macwan, founder of the Navsarjan Trust of Gujurat, India and recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, and Dr. Jurema Werneck, physician and black feminist activist from Rio de Janeiro, Brasil and Founder of Criola.org.

The big, almost too big elephant in the room this election year, is the issue of race. It has been discussed in hushed tones, mentioned in passing, but hardly engaged with. The strategy for the Democrats and the Obama campaign has been to minimize race as much as possible. But as the right wing smear machine gears up . . . is that sound strategy? All week, we’ve heard a lot about what connects, and little about what separates us as Americans at the start of the 21st Century. In the latest polls, Obama’s still pulling just ahead of John McCain but not by enough to make any Democrat really comfortable. And almost every one says quietly that much as they hope, they fear — in particular, that the right’s Swift Boat tactics will play out racist themes to turn the electorate against the change represented by the first African-American presidency. Can you combat racism without talking about it?On GRITtv we dive in with Polly Baca, President and CEO of the Latin American Research and Service Agency (LARASA); Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, a Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia University and one of the architects of critical race theory; and from the Five Points Media Center here in Denver Brother Jeff – a writer, poet, cultural and community organizer, and entrepreneur. He has been a key coordinator for a wide array of national mobilizations around racial equality, including the national Stop the Killing Tour & the Million Man March.