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Democracy Now!

Independent, global weekday news hour anchored by Amy Goodman & Juan González. Follow us for behind the scenes pics, live stories & interviews. democracynow.org

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Demonstrators have flooded the streets around Trump Tower in New York City in protest of the Trump administration’s decision to end DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gives nearly 800,000 young people permission to live and work in the United States. Protesters are chanting "Sin DACA, sin miedo” (“Without DACA, without fear”), and dozens have reportedly been arrested. Vanita Gupta of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said: "President Trump’s decision to end DACA in six months is inhumane, cruel and shameful." Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) says Trump "is destroying the future of nearly 800,000 young men and women who were brought here by their parents and know no other country but this one." #nyc #daca #trump #trumptower #immigration #undocumented #protest

📸 Environmental justice activist Bryan Parras shows Democracy Now! a superfund site near the San Jacinto River in Baytown, just outside of Houston. In the background is an ExxonMobil refinery—the second largest refinery in the country. As we ended the interview we saw a plume of black smoke, billowing upward from the Arkema plant in Crosby. Tune into the show Tuesday to see a full toxic tour of the area after Hurricane Harvey.
#houston #hurricaneharvey #environment #crisis #arkema #crosby #harvey #democracynow

Legendary organizer Dolores Huerta joined us in our studio today for a special interview after the broadcast. She responded to Trump considering ending DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals: "We have one disaster here when it comes to the flooding in Houston. Why create another disaster for all of the young people that are under the DACA program?"
Full interview at democracynow.org
#doloreshuerta #ufw #daca #DREAMers #news #immigration #interview

"A lot of people that were demonized in the media the last couple of weeks—anti-fascists, antifa, or antifa, as it’s often called—are the same people who are now on the ground building relief all across Houston and the Gulf Coast in areas that are not even being talked about." - Anarchist author and activist Scott Crow on decentralized disaster relief efforts in response to Hurricane Harvey. Crow co-founded the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans after Katrina, which provided grassroots solidarity and aid. #hurricaneharvey #harvey #flooding #houston #texas #relief #katrina

Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, is suing Greenpeace, Earth First! and other environmental groups, accusing them of inciting an "eco-terrorism" campaign against the pipeline’s construction. The pipeline’s construction was delayed for months last year after thousands of Native Americans led by the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota, and their non-Native allies, launched a nonviolent encampment to stop the pipeline from crossing the Missouri River, saying a spill could contaminate the drinking source for millions. More coverage at democracynow.org.
#dapl #dakotaaccesspipeline #oil #gas #environment #fossilfuels #news #democracynow

Dick Gregory was jailed and beaten by Birmingham police for parading without a permit in 1963. He took a bullet in the knee while trying to calm a crowd during the Watts riots in 1965. Two years later, he ran for mayor of Chicago against the infamous Richard Daley.

He was a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. and in 1968 he ran for president against Richard Nixon. He said he pulled an astonishing 1.5 million votes—as a write-in candidate. During that campaign, he was arrested by U.S. Treasury agents for printing and distributing fake American currency with his picture on the bills as campaign literature.

He was an activist and a comedian, well known for his hunger strikes for justice. In 1967, he weighed more than 280 pounds and smoked and drank heavily. Then he began a public fast starting Thanksgiving Day to protest the war in Vietnam. 40 days later, he broke his fast with a hearty glass of fruit juice. He weighed 97 pounds.
In the summer of 1968 he fasted for 45 days as a show of solidarity with Native Americans. The following summer he did another 45 days in protest of de facto segregation in the Chicago public schools. In 1970 he went 81 days to bring attention to the narcotics problem in America. Beginning in 1971 he went nearly three years without solid foods, again to protest the war. During that stretch he ran 900 miles from Chicago to D.C.
During the Iran hostage crisis, he traveled to Tehran in an effort to free the hostages and he traveled to the north of Ireland to advise hunger-striking IRA prisoners. In his campaign against hunger he traveled to Ethiopia more than ten times.

Throughout his life, Dick Gregory was a target of FBI and police surveillance, and he was virtually banned from the entertainment arena for his political activism. He died today at the age of 84. We spoke with him many times on the broadcast, on racial profiling, the death penalty & more in 2002, in 2011 and 2012 -- find the full interviews at democracynow.org. #dickgregory

22-year-old college student Takiyah Thompson explains why she pulled down a Confederate statue in Durham, NC. She was arrested on two charges of felony inciting a riot—and three misdemeanor charges for bringing down the statue. Thompson is out on bail and spoke to Democracy Now! this morning. See the full, powerful interview with Thompson and Bree Newsome at democracynow.org.
#takiyahthompson #confederate #statue #whitenationalism #racism #protest #whitesupremacy #heatherheyer

Arguments for preserving Charlottesville's Confederate statues are based on a lie, says Black Lives Matter organizer & @uva professor Jalane Schmidt. "It’s a testament to the perverse success of these monuments to misrepresent our past that so few people knew prior to this process, or still know, that the majority, the outright majority, of our community at the time of the Civil War was enslaved. And, in fact, if any general deserves to be in a central place, it would be General Sheridan, who rode in on March the 3rd, 1865, and liberated the slaves in the area. And we have many accounts, documented accounts, from Union soldiers who were part of the liberating forces of the Union army about the responses of enslaved persons and how jubilant and relieved and grateful they were. That was the majority opinion. That was the majority response to the end of the Civil War in Charlottesville, not these two generals that never even came here." Full story at democracynow.org.
#confederate #statues #robertelee #slavery #history #uva #jalaneschmidt #blm #blacklivesmatter #charlottesville #virginia

Dr. Cornel West says anti-fascist and anarchist protesters protected clergy from being "crushed like cockroaches" by white nationalists Friday night in Charlottesville: "They saved our lives, actually… I will never forget that." Today we spent the hour on this weekend's events in Charlottesville—full show at democracynow.org.
#charlottesville #virginia #cornelwest #antifa #whitenationalism #whitesupremacy #racism #protest

Hector Flores (@chuchumbe) of @lascafeteras on their hit song, "If I Was President": "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.' Full performance and interview published at democracynow.org. #lascafeteras #chicano #cumbia #ifiwaspresident #tasteslikeLA #livemusic #music #interview #democracynow #losangeles

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