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Historically, even before Harvey, before this storm, before this flood, people of color in Houston bore a disproportionate burden of having to live next to, surrounded by, these very dangerous chemicals. And so you talk about these chemical hotspots, these sacrifice zones. Those are the communities that are people of color. Houston is the fourth-largest city, but it’s the only city that does not have zoning. And what it has is, communities of color and poor communities have been unofficially zoned as compatible with pollution. And we say that is—we have a name for it. We call that environmental injustice and environmental racism. It is that plain and it’s just that simple.
Dr. Robert Bullard, known as the “father of environmental justice” and distinguished professor at Texas Southern University. Bullard spoke to Democracy Now! from Houston today. Full interview here.
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[Steve Bannon] is all over the map on a lot of stuff. But on one thing that he’s quite coherent, and that came through in the interview, he’s quite coherent that he thinks the winning strategy is you connect racist nationalism to anti-immigrant nationalism, to economic nationalism.
Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon phoned Kuttner to grant a “staggeringly uncautious” interview last week. See the full story here.
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Give me a break. Columbus discovered America? Everybody knew that punk got lost. I mean, where was the Indians when he got here? Trust me. If you can discover a country that’s already occupied — I take it personal. I can walk out on the parking lot today and discover your car with you in it.
Pioneering comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, speaking to Democracy Now! in 2002. Dick Gregory passed away Saturday at 84. We spoke with him many times over the years—find all of the interviews here
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I think the basic problem… is a real lack of understanding of what the Civil War was and what its consequences were and the fact that we live with it even today. And so, I support the removal of the statues, but I just want to make sure that we’re not skipping over a conversation by taking down symbols and saying, ‘OK, that’s nice. That’s over.’
Award-winning writer Ta-Nehisi Coates on the push to remove Confederate statues across the U.S. Read or watch the full interview here. 
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We have three unmanned drones that fly 24/7 over the U.S.-Mexico border. There are vehicles, armored vehicles that look like tanks and Humvees, that patrol. We can stop people at checkpoints and violate civil rights. And people do not have freedom to move around that region at the U.S.-Mexico border. So if you have somebody who has a militaristic approach, who has a background as a general, trying to mitigate an influx of people who are poor, and turning it into a war, that seems to be what we have right now. I’ve always made the claim that we are actually at war with Mexico by the way that we manage Border Patrol agents. There hasn’t been one Border Patrol agent in the 100-year history of the U.S. Border Patrol who’s been indicted for murder. Yet Border Patrol agents have killed dozens upon dozens of people, and none of them have ever gone to trial.
Journalist John Carlos Frey looks at militarization on the U.S.-Mexico border. Full interview here. 
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The Trump immigration policy, as announced by Miller, is inspired by the Immigration Act of 1924 and the old White Australia policy. The 1924 act grew out the U.S. eugenics movement, which was pushed by the top academics at U.S. universities, and it claimed to be based on merit. They were using standardized test results to argue, at that time, in 1924, that Nordics and Aryans were intellectually superior… When the Nazis did their Nuremberg racial laws, they specifically cited these U.S. measures as a large part of their inspiration.
Investigative journalist Allan Nairn on Trump’s anti-immigrant push and the RAISE Act, which would create a so-called merit-based immigration system that favors applicants who speak English, have advanced degrees or can demonstrate job skills. Read the full interview here. 
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This is the hypocrisy of this administration. Their company continues to use foreign labor in ways that are absolutely skirting the law often. They are not consistent with anything that they say. They are attacking immigrants, but at the same time all of the Trump hotels, all of the steel that’s used was imported. The labor and the goods are all imported from elsewhere. So, they’re not being realistic about—they’re not being honest, actually, is a better word, with the American people about the fact that they, too, rely on immigrant labor. And actually, they often skirt the laws that exist. That EB-5 visa program has had a lot of issues with misuse by corporations like the Trump Organization. So, if there are some reforms that are needed, it’s in those programs that are being abused by corporations, not in the legal immigration system that allows refugees to come here, that allows parents to come here or that allow for a variety of skills within the immigrants that come to the United States.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Trump’s anti-immigration push. Read the full interview here.
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Las Cafeteras in Conversation & Performance on Democracy Now!

Los Angeles-based Chicano band Las Cafeteras stopped by the Democracy Now! studio to perform and talk about their music, including their new album, “Tastes Like L.A." We asked founding band members Denise Carlos and Hector Flores to talk about their hit song, “If I Was President.”

Denise Carlos: It’s hard to talk about leadership and presidency in these times. And oftentimes I think we’re able to do a lot of critique to folks who make the rules. And we just were sitting around one day and were like, ‘What would we really do, in our neighborhoods? If we can’t make big policy changes, how is it up to us? And how do we write these songs that really connect with the youth of our neighborhoods, with our families? And what do we have access to? What is the power that we have access to?’

Hector Flores: Yeah, so—it’s actually an old-school song, Jarocho song. There’s an old-school song called "Señor Presidente.” And so we would play that old-school jam, but, you know, we’re Chicano kids, Chicana kids, from L.A., and so we would mix in hip-hop and cumbia. And just like Denise said, like we—a lot of it’s like—I think, in the left, we’re always talking about what we’re against. And for us, we really want to reimagine and really think what we’re for, because the day is coming and the day is here where we need to push forward an agenda of what we’re for. And that’s what this song was really about, like what would I do? You know, what would I push for? And, actually, three months leading up to the recording, I went to like Food 4 Less, and every time I went to go buy food, I would ask the workers, I’d say, “Hey, if you were president for a day, what was the first thing you would do?” And basically, their responses are the lyrics to—the lyrics that I wrote for my piece. They always said education. They said, “Man, you know, I’d get my cousin out of jail, because he shouldn’t be in there for weed.” And like, things like that. And that’s sort of what we put into the song.

Watch the full interview and hear the performance here. 

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Meet the Two Catholic Workers Who Secretly Sabotaged the Dakota Access Pipeline to Halt Construction

Two Iowa-based Catholic Worker activists revealed they secretly carried out multiple acts of sabotage and arson in order to stop construction of the controversial $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline.

Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya told us about how they set fire to heavy machinery being used to construct the pipeline. Reznicek says: “I think that the oil being taken out of the ground and the machinery that does it and the infrastructure which supports it, that this is violent… and it needs to be stopped.”

See the full conversation here.

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In Yemen, a civilian is dying nearly every hour from a massive cholera outbreak, as the ongoing U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign and naval blockade has devastated the country’s health, sanitation and water systems. We speak to guests Dr. Mariam Aldogani and Anas Shahari of Save the Children Yemen. See the full conversation here.

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