As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You may not have heard much lately about the disaster in the Gaza Strip. That silence is intentional: The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering the occupied territory.
Filed under Weekly Column
Evo Morales knows about “change you can believe in.” He also knows what happens when a powerful elite is forced to make changes it doesn’t want.
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Alice Walker is the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. But Monday, I called her to talk about a true story. The Obamas had just visited the White House. The first African-American elected president of the United States had visited his soon-to-be residence, a house built by slaves.
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Democracy Now! producer Anjali Kamat writes, “To all those for whom America has represented generations of racial injustice, the election of America’s first Black president marks the beginning of a new era…But unless the inspired millions who brought him to power continue to believe their demands matter and insist on holding him accountable each step of the way, it will be Obama’s corporate and hawkish friends who determine the domestic and foreign policies of the coming administration and our collective future.”
Filed under D.N. in the News
You could almost hear the world’s collective sigh of relief. This year’s U.S. presidential election was a global event in every sense. Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, represents to so many a living bridge—between continents and cultures.
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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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Election Day approaches, and with it a test of our election system’s integrity. Who will be allowed to vote; who will be barred? Who will get paper ballots; who will use electronic voting machines? Will polls be open long enough to accommodate what is expected to be a historic turnout?
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Democracy Now! reports from the streets of New Orleans. We speak with community organizer Malik Rahim who points out a dead body in his neighborhood that has been neglected since hurricane Katrina hit and we ask soldiers and police why it hasn’t been picked up. [includes rush transcript]
New Orleans resident Mike Howell is a “holdout”–one of those refusing to leave his home–in the French Quarter. He discusses the looting of a local grocery store saying, “this could happen in Santa Monica, California, it could happen on Long Island, New York, it could happen in Palm Beach, Florida…if people felt they were going to run out of food and water.” [includes rush transcript]
A New Orleans resident discusses why she is refusing to leave her home in the French Quarter and describes how soldiers approached her house and asked her to leave: “It was kind of like being in Nazi Germany, [the U.S. military] came with guns and told us we had to leave our home. Very, very nasty, and said they would come back the next day and drag us out of our homes.” [includes rush transcript]
New Orleans resident Mike Howell discusses how the federal and state government, relief organizations and aid agencies betrayed the people of his city in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. [includes rush transcript]
We go to Gonzales–between Baton Rouge and New Orleans–where a shelter has been set up for evacuees. One New Orleans evacuee compares the shelter to jail and says, “It ain’t our fault that the hurricane came and we had to come here. Like we had to end up in a place that we got to be told what to do.” [includes rush transcript]
In addition to the thousands of military troops patrolling the streets of New Orleans, there are also scores of private soldiers that are now spreading out across the city, like those from the Blackwater Security firm. Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill reports. [includes rush transcript]
As the eyes of the nation remain focused on these devastated Gulf States, people across the country marked the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. In Baton Rouge, some 300 New York Police and Firefighters held a commemoration ceremony. We speak with one firefighter about hurricane Katrina and 9/11. [includes rush transcript]