Last year, student loan debt passed $1 trillion—surpassing credit card debt for the first time. We talk to two organizers helping people tackle the student debt crisis in different ways: Chris Hicks, of Jobs with Justice, who is helping students stand up to loan giant Sallie Mae; and William Winters of Change.org, who tells the story of Ella Edwards, a woman who started a petition after her son died... but whose student loans lived on. Help came from an unexpected source. Tune in.

Until Newtown, talking about gun violence was politically taboo. But it wasn't just the horrific killings that changed the debate. It was also the voices of survivors of the mass shootings of the last few years—voices like that of our guest, Stephen Barton's, who was hit and nearly killed by a shotgun blast during the massacre in Aurora, Colorado in 2012. Stephen tells the story of that awful night... and the story of how, instead of trying to put that trauma behind him, he joined the fight to stop tragedies like that from happening again. It's an intense, but ultimately uplifting, episode of The Flaming Sword of Justice.

What happens in US politics will happen in Florida first. And a new group called Dream Defenders—an alliance led by Black and Brown youth, founded after the killing of Trayvon Martin—is rising up to tackle the injustices that deny the American Dream to so many. Hear about their launch action that shook the Tallahassee statehouse; Phillip's personal journey from a childhood in the church to lifetime dedication to social justice, with a depressing detour in corporate America selling, ironically, anti-depression drugs; and the transformative forty-mile march that set Dream Defenders in motion.

Since Aaron Swartz's tragic suicide in January 2013, tens of thousands of words have been written about his life, his death, and his legacy. What none of them noticed is what he was doing with most of his time for the last couple of years of his life (other than fighting an outrageous prosecution and launching the campaign that stopped SOPA—a story he told on The Flaming Sword of Justice episode 2). So what was keeping him busy? For one thing, he met, and fell in love with, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. For another, he co-founded this very show. We tell both stories on this personal edition of The Flaming Sword of Justice. 

Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, founders of MoveOn.org, tell the inside story of how it all began—and the thrill and terror of waking up to discover that hundreds of thousands of people are asking you what they should do next.

Two Executive Directors of MoveOn.org--past and present--take us inside the philosophy and some early formative moments of the progressive powerhouse that defined online organizing in the 21st century. First, Eli Pariser remembers MoveOn's first wave of citizen lobbying of members of Congress, in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Then Anna Galland, MoveOn's new ED, tells us her own journey in activism and organizing, from her grandmother's house being shot all the way through MoveOn's new Million Member Strategy.