In those three years, we've brought to public attention hundreds of fresh thinkers not seen anywhere else, and drilled down hard, and day after day, on critical themes like the foreclosure crisis and the Wall Street meltdown. We spoke regularly with real experts as well as real working people.

We traveled to D.C. for the inauguration of President Obama. “What are we going to inaugurate?” was our question. And we stood in the cold with labor protesters, week after week, in Wisconsin.

Special guests I remember -- the extraordinary Eduardo Galeano reading aloud from his book Mirrors, labor rank and file like Angel Warner describing what it is to organize. The much missed Juliano Mer Khamis with his students from Jenin talking about theater and freedom. When the National Portrait gallery caved to the censors we played David Wojnarovicz's video on homophobia and AIDS for all to see. And we platformed the work of our brilliant GRITtv Commentators, GRIT Group partners and friends at The Nation, Brave New Films, Women Make Movies, and many more.

Three years later, you can find all that work permanently archived at our website. Just check it out. Effective today, though, we're suspending daily production to retool.

Come this fall, with your help, you'll see a new project: a one-hour weekly program, right here, and also on PBS stations from coast to coast. You can contribute to that effort online, right now.

I think of the words of a few recent guests. Vandana Shiva reminded us of the principles of Gandhi: self governance, self-sufficiency, struggle for truth.

The reality is that effective self governance requires a free media, but independent media makers have yet to make ourselves self-sufficient. We hope a weekly show will have a better chance. But today it breaks my heart to close down a daily platform for movements, and to say goodbye to an extraordinary team - Gina Kim, Diane Shamis, Sam Alcoff, Rich Kim, Diane Pottinger, Sarah Jaffe, Jason Abbruzzese, Danya Abt and Rebecca McDonald---  most of whom have been with me since day one.

We asked Bob Herbert recently if it's hard to stay on the beat of the "left out" people when our money culture so prioritizes insiders and fame? His answer -- it's what I'm interested in. The same is true for us too.

Fight for Truth. While we're taking a break today, that work will carry on. You can support GRITtv at GRITtv.org and support Free Speech TV. We'll see you in the next place soon.

Chris joins Laura in studio for a conversation about the death of Bin Laden and the continuing concern over terrorism, the end of empathy in the U.S., and what avenues are left for progressives to fight back.  "The elites are not going to help us," he warns, "We're going to have to help ourselves."

We first met the steelworkers from Metropolis, Illinois in Madison, Wisconsin early this spring, where workers from all over the country gathered to defend the right to collectively bargain.  Until their lockout in June of last summer, these workers ran Honeywell's uranium conversion plant, the only one of its kind in the country, and they depended on their collectively bargaining rights to defend the health and safety of themselves and their small community.

A few weeks back, United Steelworkers Local 7-669 came to Morris New Jersey to exercise another right--their rights as shareholders of the very company that has locked them out.  Our own Danya Abt traveled there to get the story with cinematographer Zac Halberd.

Finally, three years ago today GRITtv first went on air, and on our birthday Laura says goodbye, for now, and introduces you to the next chapter for our organization--a new weekly program on public broadcasting stations.

With prices two times higher than they were when President Obama took office, and up 37% just this year, Americans are feeling an additional squeeze at the pumps. The White House's plan to reduce fuel costs may be a step in the right direction, says Antonia.   However, as we continue to navigate issues like speculative trading and a lack of regulation in the Intercontinental Oil Exchange, true progress may be difficult. Is there a responsible way forward? And, more importantly, is the Obama administration ready to set us on that path?

"People actually want to believe in heroes, so they'll believe in Glenn Beck, they'll believe in Barack Obama, they choose individuals to believe in but won't believe in politics itself," says Walter Mosley, author and activist.  Obama may have been pressured into releasing his "long form" birth certificate this week, but that won't heal the hurt in our politics, Mosley says, until Americans stop trusting heroes and experts and start trusting each other.

Mosley joins us for part one of a two-part conversation on his vision for a truly people-powered America.

Finally, the media is more obsessed with the British royal wedding than the US people actually are, but why should we bother with British royals at all when we have our own royals right here? They're called corporations.

“Royal wedding reminds us why we tossed Brits,” ran one letter to a local paper recently. That exorbitant $80 million spent on a medieval style ritual in time of 21st century austerity. It's shameful. It's old world. It's just what Americans fought a revolutionary war to throw off.

And then there are the folks like Rupert Cornwall at the UK Independent who argue hat people in the US love British royals precisely because they don't have their own real thing.  Gary Younge at the Nation noted that even his liberal friends wanted to know what he, a British citizen, thought of the prince marrying a "commoner." Oh please.

The only serious and in fact actually quite insidious part about this is that it re-inscribes the notion that the US has no  class.

Really? When the top one percent of wealthiest Americans own 34 percent of the country's wealth and enjoyed 80 percent of the total increase in wealth here between 1980 and 2005? No class?

As for ruling class? In the UK the commoners keep their royals on welfare. Here we do the same with our corporations. Billions in tax dollars keep them afloat and keep CEOs in mansions. Why not just give them palaces? At least we could keep them open for tours.

Since the Supreme Court has given corporations free speech rights and personhood -- how about marriage equality next?

Then, we could string up Bunting flags for the next monopolistic coupling... At the Comcast and NBC nuptials we'd all throw money while they stroll down the aisle. And -- with a nod to Jim Hightower -- instead of aristocrats with  coats of arms, the paid off politicians would express their heritage -- in corporate logos on their lapels. At least then we'd know who owns whom.

The trinkets from a corporate marriage might be dreary. And the offspring, who can say? But at least we'd get a day off and one hell of a party. Plus we'd move out of denial.  The more I think about it the more I like it. Monarchies or Megacorps? Why not declare them royal?

Katrina joins Laura in studio to talk about what's needed to shift the conversation back to things that matter: jobs, good government, and putting the taxes where they belong.

Katrina joins Laura in studio to talk about what's needed to shift the conversation back to things that matter: jobs, good government, and putting the taxes where they belong.

"There is a hunger out there for some kind of serious approach to the big issues of the day, and you have to be creative about it— that’s our job," says former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert of today's media landscape. Bob joined us in his first in-depth interview since leaving the New York Times in March of this year.

After 20 years of working the at the Times' op-ed desk, Bob left for greener pastures--and a longer word-count. Bob is now working on a new book that will tackle, in depth, some of the issues that he covered in his nearly 20 years of working the "beat of left-out people". Bob joins us today to talk about his career as a journalist, why he left the Times, media, race, and more.

Is there a journalism school somewhere that that teaches up-and-comers to put stories into little boxes?  Laura has some thoughts on the connections that aren't being made in the news.

But Jane McAlevey made the point in a recent issue of The Nation that doing away with unions does away with one of the only forms of popular education we have. It's not just the organized schoolteachers that teach—unions have a long history as face-to-face educators, keeping history and even songs alive, passing them generation to generation.

And it's not just history. In 2008, when the question on everyone's lips was “Will working-class white voters pull the lever for a black man,” the voice that answered that question wasn't in the mass media. It was Richard Trumka, whose powerful words to the United Steelworkers convention might not have been celebrated the way Obama's “race speech” was, but combined with groundwork by union organizers, helped tip the balance for the Democrats.

It's no surprise, then, that the Right is going after unions in the states where unions helped fight ignorance and fear.

What happens without unions? We've seen what damage FOX can do, and the Tea Party may seem quiet now as pro-labor, anti-bankster protest swells, but they've not stopped organizing—a group in Queens, New York, just held its opening meeting last night.

We can't count on mass media to do our education for us. Those of us in the independent media do what we can, but we still scramble for funds while the behemoths merge and tighten their grip. No wonder they love the Tea Party—they certainly don't want regulation of their own power.

No, until we have some Murdochs on our side, it's person-to-person education that will save us. Organizing. And we need the unions for that.

John and Matt join Laura in the studio at WORT, Wisconsin community radio, in Madison, Wisconsin for a special broadcast from the site of the historic labor protests.

"Unions realize that this is a threat to their very existence," says Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, of Scott Walker's attempt to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers. And some of the usual suspects are behind Walker's attack--from the Koch brothers to Republican ideologues. "These corporations want to get these people off the playing field," says John Nichols, of The Nation. Matt and John discuss the history behind this week's historic labor protests.

If Scott Walker is allowed to gut public employees' right to collective bargaining, Sheila Cochran of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council points out, it will lower the floor for all Wisconsinites' wages and benefits.  The unions in the state have long helped keep wages high and benefits, including health care, good for all of the state's workers, even as factories have closed and jobs gone overseas.

The public sector remains the last bastion of union workers around the country, and Sheila and Diane Palmer of SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin discuss the impact the cuts will have on working families in Wisconsin and around the U.S.

"People understand this is a national struggle," says Mary Bottari of the situation in Wisconsin right now, and Mark Pocan, Wisconsin State Assemblyman from the 78th District, says "This has to be the spot where we stop it nationally."  If Scott Walker manages to take away the workers' right to collective bargaining, they point out, other states will do the same--Ohio and Indiana are already trying.

While the Assembly continues to hold nonstop hearings, letting the people of the state express their anger, the Democrats in the State Senate are meeting outside of Wisconsin to hold off a vote in that chamber, and Mary and others are investigating the connections to Karl Rove, the Club for Growth, and other groups pushing for union-busting laws. Mary and Mark take some time to tell Laura why Wisconsin matters for the entire country.

"When firefighters see an emergency, we respond," says Mahlon Mitchell, the new president of the firefighters' union in Wisconsin. Scott Walker left the firefighters and the police out of his drastic cuts to union employees' rights, but the firefighters have been rallying in solidarity with the rest of the public employees all week. "It's not a movement, it's a way of life. It's not just a union way of life, it's letting them know that labor is important," Mitchell notes.

Mitchell spoke with Oliver Dykstra from The Uptake inside the Capitol building this weekend.

"There's nothing like learning about how you change something outrageous," says Laura Dresser of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, who's been at the protests in Madison all week with her nine-year-old son. It's not just the kids who are learning from supporting their teachers' union this week against Scott Walker's cuts--Laura notes that she's learned that even when the votes appear to be there in the legislature, there can be ways to stop a vote.

Laura joins our Laura Flanders to discuss what she's learned this week--and what it appears that Scott Walker still hasn't learned.

Thanks again to WORT Madison for the studio space, and for The Uptake and Free Speech TV for making this broadcast possible.

Sarah joins us via Skype to give us a rundown of the good, the bad, and the unintentionally hilarious--from Ann Coulter's declaration of support for GOProud to Dick Cheney's run-in with a heckler or two.