Amy Goodman will moderate an online discussion that is part of the 2022-2023 Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series, presented by the UMass Amherst History Department in Collaboration with the Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy.

The series description of the event reads:

Throughout the twentieth century, the United States trained and financed military regimes to crush reformist and revolutionary movements. This keynote will explore the devastating consequences of U.S.-backed state terror in Central America and Southeast Asia. In Central America alone, U.S. intervention from 1960-1996 led to the deaths of over 300,000 people. U.S.-backed dictatorships in Guatemala and Indonesia killed more than a million people accused of revolutionary activism. At the same time, throughout the Global South, rural workers led powerful movements against U.S.-backed regimes to win basic rights.

The keynote presenter, Dr. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, participated in the farmworker movement as a young woman. Her seminal testimonial, I, Rigoberta Menchú, An Indian Woman in Guatemala, denounced Reagan’s support for government attacks on Mayan communities. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her social justice work. Journalists Vincent Bevins and Amy Goodman will join the keynote presenter. Bevins will outline a global history of U.S. terror against civilians during the Cold War, based on this book The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. Renowned journalist Amy Goodman will moderate the event. Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, and co-author of six New York Times bestsellers.

Spanish interpretation and closed captions available.

Go To Event Website

by Amy Goodman, David Goodman, and Denis Moynihan