Truthout invites you to join radio and TV host Thom Hartmann, economist Gar Alperovitz and Truthout columnist Dina Rasor at the beautiful Tabard Inn, right near DuPont Circle, on Sunday, May 6. These three leading progressive thinkers and Truthout contributors will share their ideas about how to create a more equal and democratic society.

Cocktails and refreshments will be provided.

Thom Hartmann is a New York Times bestselling, Project Censored Award winning author, and a nationally syndicated progressive radio and television host. "At the Founding of America and for most of the 20th century, 'Freedom' meant having a minimum level of security so one could pursue his or her own dreams," he says. "But conservatives have hijacked the word and increasingly Americans are free to die in the gutter: alone, hungry, physically or mentally ill. We have to reclaim the word and restore its meaning if America is to again become 'The Land of the Free.'"

Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, and author of the newly released and already acclaimed "America Beyond Capitalism." Gar will discuss the vast, quietly exploding underground of co-ops, worker-owned firms, city and state enterprises, and other forms of "democratized ownership" that begin to point towards a new politics and a "next system" beyond both traditional corporate capitalism and traditional socialism.

Dina Rasor, an investigator, journalist and author (most recently of "Pentagon Solutions: How to Actually Get Control of Defense Spending"), writes Truthout's Solutions column. Dina has been fighting waste while working for transparency and accountability in government for three decades. She will make the case that without oversight and accountability for the 1%, there is no guarantee of a just economy, and that there needs to be a serious new blueprint of safeguards and enforcement in the areas of finance and government spending to assure everyone has a fair chance to succeed.

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