President Obama presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to 16 people in a ceremony today at the White House. Check out Democracy Now!’s past interviews with some of those who received the award:
* Rev. Joseph Lowery
* Mary Robinson
* Archbishop Desmond Tutu
* Muhammad Yunus
Imprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier will have his first full parole hearing in 15 years on Tuesday. He has been in prison for the past 33 years after being convicted of killing two FBI agents during a shootout on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. Peltier has long maintained his innocence and is widely considered a political prisoner who was not granted a fair trial. In 2000, we conducted an extensive interview with Peltier from his jail cell:
More...President Obama said Cambridge police acted “stupidly” in the arrest of leading African American scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his own home last week. Obama said the incident is a reminder that racism “still haunts us.” Check out our extended interview with Gates in 2004 on “America Behind the Color Line.”
More...The Environmental Protection Agency has declared a public health emergency in the town of Libby, Montana, where hundreds of people have died from asbestos contamination. It is the first time such a declaration has been made by the EPA. For decades, W.R. Grace and Co. mined asbestos-contaminated vermiculite in Libby.
See extended Democracy Now! coverage
The legendary radio broadcaster, writer and oral historian Studs Terkel has died at the age of 96 in Chicago. Over the years Terkel has been a regular guest on Democracy Now!
In 2005, Studs Terkel appeared on Democracy Now! shortly after undergoing open heart surgery. He told Amy Goodman, “My curiosity is what saw me through. What would the world be like, or will there be a world? And so, that’s my epitaph. I have it all set. Curiosity did not kill this cat. And it’s curiosity, I think, that has saved me thus far.”
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The National Book Critics Circle Awards have just been announced and two past DN! guests were among the winners: Edwidge Danticat (“Brother I’m Dying”) and Harriet Washington (“Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present")
Watch/Listen to Democracy Now!’s Interviews With Alex Gibney, director of the Oscar-winning documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side.” [2/1/08 || 2/12/08 ]
More...Fidel Up Close: Filmmaker Jon Alpert on His Many Encounters With Castro Over the Past 30 Years
More...Check out our award-winning coverage of Indonesia’s brutal invasion and occupation of East Timor
More...Tariq Ali on Pakistan in Turmoil after Benazir Bhutto’s Assassination
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto Assassinated
Deception: How the United States Secretly Helped Pakistan Build Its Nuclear Arsenal
Under House Arrest, Pakistani Human Rights Leader Asma Jahangir Speaks Out on Musharraf’s Crackdown
Thousands Arrested in Pakistan Defying Musharraf’s Crackdown
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