This Brave Nation Brave New Foundation and The Nation

Brave New Foundation hosted a reception in honor of Cristina Lara, the first winner of the Brave Nation Young Activist award. Cristina was selected out of 350 other young activists as this year's recipient and received her award at the reception. In addition, Brave New Foundation president, Robert Greenwald was featured in conversation with activist and author Tom Hayden. It was incredible to celebrate the beginning of a young activist's career while hearing words of wisdom from those who have been entrenched in social movements since the 1960s.

It's hard to call someone younger than 18 years old a "legend," but Ava Lowery is just that in progressive circles. She created a website at fourteen where she made videos railing against the war. Today, her site, peacetakescourage.com, gets nearly two million hits per month. And she doesn't live in a liberal hotbed like San Francisco or New York, rather in a small town in Alabama. Anthony Romero is the son of a proud Puerto Rican who worked hard to support his family while waiting tables. Anthony grew up to not only be the first in his family to go to college, but to become the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and someone we thought Ava should have on her cell phone speed dial. Just in case. Together they discuss the legal quagmire the country has become since 9/11, among other quagmires created by George W. Bush and his Administration.

Author, Activist and Former California State Senator Tom Hayden talks in depth with the author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein, about the state of the fourth branch of government: journalists. Both Hayden and Klein became serious journalists in college, and it was during that time that both experienced their defining moment. When Tom Hayden interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr at the 1960 DNC in Los Angeles, he asked questions while imagining the headline, "Tom Hayden Interviews MLK," but by the time he wrote the article he knew there were more important things in the world than personal glory. Naomi Klein rebelled from her liberal, feminist mother until Mark Lepine gunned down fourteen women in what became known as the Montreal Massacre. It was then she realized people were dying for the beliefs her mother fought for, and that realization awakened the activist within her. After both events, Hayden and Klein dedicated their lives to telling the truth about the world, and doing everything in their power to not use subjects like "they," but use "we" instead. It is that distinction that defines their journalism to this day.

Author, journalist and syndicated columnist Naomi Klein talks to journalist and activist Tom Haydn about the event that lead her to activism in this powerful segment from This Brave Nation.

Activist, journalist and former state senator Tom Hayden talks to journalist, author and syndicated columnist Naomi Klein about devoting your life to a cause in this powerful episode of This Brave Nation.

In a Lower Manhattan apartment, one of the greatest living musicians and activists sat down with one of the country's newest great leaders. Pete Seeger, with a list of awards and honors longer than the neck on his famed banjo, still works tirelessly at 88 years of age. He spoke with Majora Carter, the young and indefatigable founder of Sustainable South Bronx, an organization that is re-shaping the neighborhood of her youth through pioneering green-collar economic development projects, about the environmental work he has worked at for more than forty years. And while he's at it, he also finds time to sing a couple songs, demanding the film crew sing along, because it's not nearly as much fun singing to someone as it is singing with someone.