From New York, this is Democracy Now!
The people’s verdict is back! Guilty!
Guilty of white supremacy! Guilty of patriarchy!
Guilty of supporting the NRA over people!
Guilty of attacking the poor!
Guilty of not expanding healthcare!
Guilty of not giving us educational resources!
Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
It was another dramatic day in Tennessee
as the Shelby County Board of Commissioners
voted to reappoint Justin Pearson
to the Tennessee House of Representatives,
less than a week after he and Justin Jones were expelled
for joining peaceful protests against gun violence
after the Nashville Christian school massacre.
We’ll hear highlights from Wednesday’s Memphis rally,
then speak to Emory University professor Carol Anderson,
author of The Second: Race and Guns
in a Fatally Unequal America.
That fraud has been that swaddling
of the Second Amendment in the flag,
in patriotism, in a sense of —
that the militias were there to protect and defend democracy,
when in fact the militia were there,
designed to control Black people and deny
Black people their rights. So, in the Second Amendment,
what we have in the Bill of Rights
is the right to destroy Black people’s rights.
Then, President Biden signs legislation
ending the coronavirus national emergency,
but millions with long COVID say the pandemic is not over.
We’ll speak with a journalist living with long COVID.
All that and more, coming up.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org,
The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The medication abortion pill mifepristone
will remain available for now,
though with restrictions, after an appeals court
partially blocked a ruling by a federal judge in Texas
last week that banned it nationwide.
A three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals
issued a decision late Wednesday that upheld parts of the Texas
ruling targeting recent moves by the FDA
to increase access to the pill.
That means that while challenges to the ban proceed,
patients will only be able to access the medication
through a doctor’s office or clinic,
and will not be able to receive the pill through the mail
or directly from a pharmacy.
And patients will only be allowed to access mifepristone
through seven weeks of pregnancy,
instead of the expanded 10 weeks.
Mifepristone is used in more
than half of abortions in the U.S.;
it’s also widely used to treat miscarriages
and can keep people from needing surgery.
The issue is likely to end up in front of the Supreme Court.
In Tennessee, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners
voted unanimously Wednesday to reappoint Justin Pearson
to the Tennessee House of Representatives.
His reappointment comes less than a week
after the Republican-led House voted to expel Pearson
and another young Black lawmaker, Justin Jones,
for leading peaceful protests against gun violence
on the House floor after the Nashville school massacre.
Ahead of Wednesday’s vote,
Justin Pearson spoke to hundreds of supporters
who rallied outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis,
where Martin Luther King Jr.
was assassinated this month 55 years ago.
Justin Pearson:
"We’re going to keep fighting to end gun violence.
We’re going to keep fighting to end
environmental racism and injustice.
We’re going to keep fighting for our community,
to lift up those who have been pushed to the periphery,
to move them into the center of conversation
and decision-making — not the gun lobbyists,
not the NRA, not the billionaires
and the people who are funding other folks’ campaigns,
but rather the people."
After headlines, we’ll air extended excerpts
from Wednesday’s rally in Memphis.
The United Nations is warning half of Somalia’s population —
some 8.3 million people —
will need humanitarian assistance
this year amid Somalia’s worst drought in decades.
Speaking from Mogadishu Wednesday, U.N.
Secretary-General António Guterres
said nations must now act to prevent a catastrophe.
Secretary-General António Guterres:
"A devastating drought has already resulted
in the tragic loss of 43,000 lives in 2022 alone.
It has led to the displacement of 1.4 million Somalis,
with women and children making up 80%.
And rising food prices
are naturally aggravating hunger and malnutrition.
Poor and vulnerable communities
are pushed by the drought to the brink of starvation.
And the situation can get worse."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Wednesday
for an international response after video surfaced online
appearing to show a Russian soldier
beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war.
President Volodymyr Zelensky:
"There is something that no one in the world can ignore:
how easily these beasts kill.
This video of the execution of a Ukrainian POW,
the world must see it.
This is a video of Russia as it really is."
A Kremlin spokesperson called the video "awful"
but questioned its authenticity.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
has arrived in China for a state visit,
where he’s planning to ask President Xi Jinping
to have China join Brazil as mediators in peace
talks between Russia and Ukraine.
This comes after the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency
said it expects the war to continue into 2024
with neither side agreeing to peace talks.
The revelation came as part of highly sensitive
U.S. government materials leaked online
and obtained by The Washington Post.
The Post is also reporting the man behind the leak
is a young, racist gun enthusiast
who worked on a U.S. military base
and was seeking to impress a small group of people,
mostly men and teenage boys,
in an invitation-only forum on Discord,
an online platform popular with gamers.
Tunisia’s coast guard says at least 10 people drowned
and up to 30 others remain missing
after their boat sank off the coast of Tunisia Tuesday
while they attempted to reach Europe to apply for asylum.
The deaths came as the United Nations
reported 441 migrants were lost at sea
attempting to cross the Central Mediterranean
so far this year —
the deadliest first quarter on record since 2017.
António Vitorino, who leads the International Organization
for Migration, said,
"With more than 20,000 deaths recorded on this route
since 2014, I fear that these deaths have been normalized.
States must respond.
Delays and gaps in State-led search
and rescue are costing human lives."
Federal prosecutors in Mexico have filed criminal charges
against the nation’s top immigration official
over a fire in the border city of Ciudad Juárez last month
that killed 40 people in an immigration detention center.
Francisco Garduño,
the head of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute,
is accused of failing to prevent the disaster
despite clear warning signs at his agency’s detention centers.
Last week, Vice World News reported the immigration jail
at the center of the tragedy was a de facto "extortion center,"
where only migrants with the means to pay a $200 bribe
to security guards were released.
President Biden is wrapping up a three-day tour of Ireland today
with an address to the Irish parliament
and a banquet at Dublin Castle.
Biden’s visit to the Irish Republic
comes after he met U.K. Prime Minister Rishi
Sunak Wednesday in Belfast, Northern Ireland,
where Biden marked the 25th anniversary
of the U.S.-brokered peace deal
known as the Good Friday Agreement.
The Federal Reserve believes the U.S. economy
will slide into a recession later this year.
That’s according to minutes from the March meeting
of the Federal Open Market Committee
made public on Wednesday,
which reveal the Fed is planning another interest rate hike
during its next meeting, despite the likelihood of a recession.
This comes as new data show U.S. inflation eased to 5% in March —
its lowest level in nearly two years.
In Indiana, a lawsuit alleges the Jackson County Jail
let a schizophrenic prisoner starve to death
while in solitary confinement.
Shocking details and video footage
of Joshua McLemore’s abuse in prison
reveal the 29-year-old was locked up in solitary
for three weeks in the summer of 2021
without access to enough food,
a toilet or any mental healthcare,
despite clear signs of intense distress
and his history of mental illness.
While locked up, he allegedly lost 45 pounds
in less than a month.
He was arrested after grabbing a hospital nurse’s hair,
and charged with battery.
Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinstein
has asked to temporarily step back from her seat
on the powerful Judiciary Committee,
as calls mount for her resignation —
including from within her own party.
Eighty-nine-year-old Feinstein, who is recovering from shingles,
has missed 60 of 82 Senate votes taken so far this year.
Her absence has stalled the approval
of Biden’s judicial nominees.
This follows widespread reports that Feinstein
is suffering from short-term memory loss and mental decline.
In February, she announced she will not seek reelection
in 2024, setting up a heated race to replace her.
California Congressmember Ro Khanna tweeted Wednesday,
"It’s time for Senator Feinstein to resign.
We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty. …
Not speaking out undermines our credibility
as elected representatives of the people."
A judge in Delaware sanctioned Fox News Wednesday
for withholding evidence in the $1.6 billion
Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit.
Lawyers for the network repeatedly downplayed
Rupert Murdoch’s role at Fox News —
where he was a corporate officer,
in addition to being chair of Fox Corporation —
allowing them to turn over fewer materials
as part of the discovery process,
such as Murdoch’s internal communications.
Judge Eric Davis accused Fox News
of having a "credibility problem"
and said he is appointing
someone to investigate the matter.
On Wednesday, MSNBC obtained audio recordings played in court
that were made by former Fox News producer
Abby Grossberg of conversations with Rudy Giuliani
and another Trump campaign official that appear to show
Trump’s team did not believe its own claims that Dominion
Voting Systems were faulty.
This is a recording from December 5, 2020.
Trump campaign official:
"I think they have looked at the machines.
When the secretary of state did its audit, there was a lot —
I think a fair bit of looking at the machines.
The audit came in pretty darn
close to what the machine count was with the receipts.
So, you know, I don’t know the outcome of those,
but our understanding —
again, this is from the secretary of state’s office —
was that there weren’t any physical issues
with machines on those inspections."
Jury selection for the Dominion trial starts today,
and the trial is scheduled to begin Monday.
This comes after a Fox Corporation shareholder
sued Murdoch and other members of the board
for failing to prevent Fox News
from "reporting false and dangerous misinformation"
around the 2020 presidential election.
More than 2,000 residents of eastern
Indiana were ordered to evacuate after a massive fire
broke out at a recycling plant Tuesday,
releasing a huge plume of acrid smoke into the air.
The fire in the city of Richmond has been contained
but is expected to keep smoldering for days,
prompting fears among residents about long-term health
impacts from hazardous particles caused by burning plastic.
Juul Labs has reached a $462 million settlement
with New York, California and other states over lawsuits
that accused the e-cigarette company
of aggressive marketing tactics,
leading to a youth vaping crisis.
It’s the latest settlement in a litany of lawsuits against Juul,
which has yet to receive official regulatory approval
for its highly addictive products.
Juul has withdrawn many of its flavored products
from the shelves following criticism
that it targeted young people.
And those are some of the headlines this is Democracy
Now, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report.
I’m Amy Goodman.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Tennessee,
where the Shelby County Board of Commissioners
voted unanimously Wednesday to reappoint Justin Pearson
to the Tennessee House of Representatives
less than a week after the Republican-led House
voted to expel him and Justin Jones from the body
for joining peaceful protests against gun violence
after the Nashville school massacre.
Pearson and Jones were the two youngest
Black lawmakers in the Tennessee House.
The Nashville Metropolitan Council unanimously voted Monday
to restore Justin Jones to office, as well.
Pearson is being sworn back in this morning.
Both men will hold the seats
until a special election is held.
On Wednesday, Pearson and Jones
took part in a rally in Memphis with Gloria Johnson,
a white lawmaker who narrowly survived
the expulsion vote last week.
Together, they’ve become known as the Tennessee Three.
This is Justin Pearson addressing a massive crowd
of supporters outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis,
where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 55 years ago.
JUSTIN PEARSON: Show me what democracy looks like!
SUPPORTERS: This is what democracy looks like!
JUSTIN PEARSON: Show me what democracy looks like!
SUPPORTERS: This is what democracy looks like!
JUSTIN PEARSON: Show me what democracy looks like!
SUPPORTERS: This is what democracy looks like!
JUSTIN PEARSON: This is the democracy
that is going to transform a broken nation
and a broken state into the place
that God calls for it to be.
This is the democracy that will bring people from the back,
people who have been pushed to the periphery,
to the center of justice.
This is the democracy that is going to transform our nation.
This is the democracy that’s going to lift up
the victims of gun violence,
instead of supporting the NRA and the gun lobbyists.
This is the democracy that they’re scared of.
This is the democracy that they’re worried about,
because this is the democracy that changes the status quo.
This is the democracy that changes the status quo.
But we’ve got news. The status quo needs changing.
And the status quo needs you.
So, today we march, and we’re going to keep fighting,
and we’re going to keep pushing,
because we believe that this is what democracy looks like!
AMY GOODMAN: Justin Pearson,
speaking Wednesday at a Memphis rally,
where he was joined by Tennessee Representative Gloria Johnson.
REP. GLORIA JOHNSON: We need to lift up
these amazing voices of these young people.
We need a multiracial, multigenerational organization
in the Tennessee Legislature,
and these young voices are critical.
And thank you.
We need to welcome these young voices
and not keep them down,
because these young people are passionate,
they’re smart, they understand the issues
and how they affect every single person in their district.
AMY GOODMAN: The third member of the Tennessee Three,
Representative Justin Jones,
also spoke at Wednesday’s Memphis rally.
REP. JUSTIN JONES: There is a movement rising up in Tennessee,
from Memphis to Nashville to Knoxville,
to send a message to these anti-democratic forces
that you’re in the "find out" portion.
You’re in the "find out" portion,
that you’ve shut off our microphones,
and so we had to bring a megaphone,
that you pushed our people to the back,
so we had to walk up to the front of the well.
And so we have a clear message
that our brother Pearson is going to join us.
We know. I’m confident,
because I know that after crucifixion comes resurrection.
And so, when we walk in that chamber on tomorrow
as representatives again, we must continue the demands
that led us there in the first place,
that a week after a mass shooting hit Nashville,
rather than pass commonsense gun laws,
they passed a resolution to expel the two youngest
Black members in the General Assembly.
And so we walk in there tomorrow with a clear message
that we have a demand of Cameron Sexton to resign.
Speaker Sexton represents an enemy to democracy,
to multiracial democracy.
He’s trying to bring us back to a Tennessee in our past,
the same Tennessee where the Klan was founded.
But we say no longer will we sit by and be silent.
It’s time to rise up not just as individuals.
We didn’t go up there as individuals,
but we went up there representing the people
of our district, the people of our state,
the young people who can’t even vote,
the young people who said we need a voice.
And that’s why we walked up to that well.
And so, we hope that what happens today,
that you come with brother Pearson tomorrow
to walk into those chambers,
because we’re walking into hostile territory,
a place where people —
where young Black voices are not welcome
and those who stand with us are not welcome.
And so, we’re not going to be able to survive that alone.
We need to let them know that you’re on notice
and that the world is watching
and that this does not stop this week or tomorrow or next week,
but something is changing in Tennessee.
Something is changing in our state
that is going to restore democracy
and get rid of these forces that are trying to take us backward.
AMY GOODMAN: After the Justins,
Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, as well as Gloria Johnson,
spoke outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis,
where Dr. King died of gun violence 55 years ago,
they led a march to the Shelby County Board of Commissioners
ahead of a vote on the reappointment of Justin Pearson
to the Tennessee House.
This is Pearson addressing the county commissioners.
JUSTIN PEARSON: So, the message for all the people in Nashville
who decided to expel us: You can’t expel hope!
You can’t expel justice! You can’t expel our voice!
And you sure can’t expel our fight!
We look forward to continuing to fight,
continuing to advocate, until justice rolls down like water,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream!
Let’s get back to work!
AMY GOODMAN: After the Shelby County Board of Commissioners
in Memphis
unanimously voted to reappoint Justin Pearson
to the Tennessee House, he spoke to supporters outside.
JUSTIN PEARSON: The Shelby County Commission
did done their job.
I’m so glad we get to get back to doing our job.
And what is our job?
It’s to elevate the voices of the six kids —
the six people in Nashville,
the three children who were just 9 years old.
It’s to elevate the five folk in Louisville
who died from gun violence that was preventable.
We know it’s preventable,
because there are good laws that exist.
We know it’s preventable, because there are organizations
advocating for the change of the law
in order to save people’s lives.
It’s not enough, as William Lamberth,
the leader of the Republican Party,
said, to put a tank in front of every school,
because we go to banks, we go to businesses,
we walk the streets, we go to church.
These false solutions that they are advocating
will not help or save anybody.
But a movement is rising. A movement is rising.
See, they tried to kill democracy.
They tried to expel the people’s choice and the people’s vote,
and they awakened a sleeping giant!
They put Gloria Johnson and Justin Jones and me on trial,
but they ended up putting themselves on trial!
The people’s verdict is back! Guilty!
Guilty of white supremacy! Guilty of patriarchy!
Guilty of supporting the NRA over people!
Guilty of attacking the poor!
Guilty of not expanding healthcare!
Guilty of not giving us educational resources!
Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
And so, for you guilty people, the people got a message:
We gon’ build this movement. We gon’ build this movement.
We gon’ build this movement! We gon’ build this movement!
You and you and you and you and you and —
we gon’ build this movement, because we are convinced
that there is a different vision for Memphis.
There’s a different vision for Shelby County.
There’s a different vision for Tennessee.
There’s a different vision for the South.
There’s a different vision for these United States of America.
And I believe — I believe it’s a vision of the people
who’ve been pushed to the periphery, coming to the well.
I believe that it’s a vision of the people
who’ve been marginalized, coming to the well.
I believe — I believe it is a vision of the people
who’ve been ostracized, coming to the well.
See, I see white folk and Black folk,
I see queer folk and straight folk,
I see rich folk and poor folk,
coming from the back to the well of the House,
demanding justice right now!
Not tomorrow, but right now! Justice right now!
AMY GOODMAN: Justin Pearson,
speaking Wednesday in Memphis after the Shelby County
Board of Commissioners voted to reinstate him to his seat
in the Tennessee House of Representatives,
less than a week after he and Justin Jones were expelled
for joining peaceful protests against gun violence
after the Nashville school massacre.
His swearing-in ceremony is taking place today in Nashville.
When we come back,
we’ll be joined by Emory professor Carol Anderson,
author of The Second: Race and Guns
in a Fatally Unequal America. Stay with us.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the debate
over gun control, Republican attacks on democracy
across the country and much more,
we’re joined by Carol Anderson, professor at Emory University,
author of The Second: Race and Guns
in a Fatally Unequal America.
The paperback edition has just been published.
She’s also the author of One Person,
No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
and the book White Rage:
The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.
Her new documentary, named after a Langston
Hughes poem, is titled I, Too.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Professor Anderson.
It’s great to have you with us.
So, you have both Justins, the youngest Black lawmakers
in the Tennessee House of Representatives,
being reinstated to the Tennessee Legislature,
after leading, with Gloria Johnson,
a protest against guns on the floor of the House
after the Nashville school massacre.
Talk about the significance of what’s taken place
over the last week with the overwhelmingly white Legislature
expelling these two legislators.
CAROL ANDERSON: You are seeing a convergence of so many
of the multiple streams in American society right there.
So, on one hand, what you’re seeing
is the power of gerrymandering to create a legislature
that is not representative of the people,
that is not one person/one vote,
but instead is that extreme partisan gerrymandering,
so that you have the needs of the people
not being able to be addressed by that legislature.
What you’re also seeing is the power of the youth,
who are pushing forward for a different vision of America.
It is a vision that is multiracial, multiethnic,
multilingual, multicultural, multireligious.
And that vision scares
those who are in those gerrymandered districts,
scares the bejeebers — and that’s the scholarly term —
out of them, because it is a way of being, a way of thinking,
a way of recognizing people’s humanity,
a way of knowing that there are resources, incredible resources,
in this nation that should be available to all.
But instead, you’ve got this hoarding happening,
a hoarding of power,
a hoarding of a way of wanting to be able to control.
And in that control, this is why we’re also seeing
this valorization of the Second Amendment.
And as I laid out in the book,
the Second Amendment emerged really fully out of a concern
about Black people, out of a fear of Black people.
And so, this is what the role of the militia was.
And so, yes, we hear the thing about domestic tyranny.
They really weren’t good at that.
We heard this thing about being able to —
the militia being able to fend off a foreign invasion.
They really weren’t good at that.
But what they were good at was putting down slave revolts.
And so, when you’re having the debates
about the Second Amendment, you’re having the battles
over the ratification of the Constitution,
the Second Amendment was the bribe to the South
to not scuttle the Constitution of the United States,
in order to have control of that militia
to keep the enslaved in check.
And so, this stream that comes through is —
what we’re consistently seeing is —
and I think about Charlie Kirk,
who said last week that, you know, unfortunately,
there are going to be gun deaths,
but that’s the price you have to pay
in order to have the Second Amendment.
And so, what it’s saying is,
because of the inherent, fundamental fear of
Black people in this nation,
we are willing to be unsafe in our schools, in our churches,
in our grocery stores, in our amusement parks,
on our streets, in our parking lots.
We are willing to be unsafe in order
to be able to have the access to weaponry,
where we can’t even think through it
in terms of what is logical.
What is logical is that weapons of war
do not belong in the hands of civilians.
What is logical is that you have background checks.
What is logical is that you have red flag laws.
But all of those, because of the gerrymandering
that has happened politically and the barriers
that have been put up for access to the ballot box,
you’ve got a political system that is not responsive
to the needs of the people.
And that is what you saw in Tennessee.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Anderson,
I wanted to go to who Justin Jones is,
one of the two Black legislators who were expelled,
was reinstated on Monday,
but there still has to be a special election,
with untold amount of money having to be spent
because of the overwhelmingly white Legislature
expelling them.
But Justin Jones, before he was elected in November,
was a well-known activist.
And one of the things that he did in the last years —
one of his targets was the bust of the Confederate Lieutenant
General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
He wanted it removed from the state Capitol.
Now, this is very interesting, going to who Nathan Bedford was,
the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,
sold slaves in Memphis,
was in command at the Fort Pillow massacre.
Cameron Sexton, the speaker of the House in Tennessee,
voted against the removal.
And, of course, each time Justin Jones speaks,
he is now calling for him to resign.
Talk about the significance of this push —
ultimately, of course, they did succeed — and guns.
CAROL ANDERSON: And so, part of what you’re also seeing here
is the kind of, again, valorization
of those who were steeped in anti-Blackness,
those who — and to put that in a public space,
saying this is — these are our value systems right here,
that speaks volume. It speaks volumes about
how intricately woven the anti-Blackness
is in the operating code and how you have this —
this has been a consistent push to open up this nation.
So, you know, "We hold these truths to be self-evident."
The push that you’re seeing, what we heard from Justin Jones,
what we heard from Justin Pearson,
was to make those truths self-evident.
And that is to break apart this notion that you’ve got —
that you embrace the Confederacy,
you embrace the treason of attacking
the United States of America, you embrace slaveholding.
And so, I think about Tate Reeves,
the governor of Mississippi,
bringing this out as Confederate History Month in Mississippi,
the same Mississippi
that is removing the control of the police
and of the judicial system from Jackson.
Again, it’s part and parcel of the same pattern,
part and parcel of the same drive
to put Black folks back in their place.
I mean, that’s what Nathan Bedford Forrest was about.
Black folks thought they could be free.
Black folks can’t be free.
Black folks thought that they were equal.
Black folks can’t be equal.
And so, when you think about that as the signal,
as the public-facing signal,
what it says to the rest of the community
is a kind of violence, a violence on your own humanity.
And this other vision that the Justins are talking about
is a vision that recognizes and embraces our humanity
and that finds a way for us
to be able to live into that full humanity,
not to have this exclusion, this control,
because part of what you’re seeing in these legislatures
is a drive for control
to put all the things back in their place.
So, Black folks need to go back in their place.
Women need to go back in their place.
Immigrants need to go back in their place.
The LGBTQ community needs to go back in their place.
That drive to put things back in their place,
the push, the counterweight, has been no.
No. And you heard it when they said, "No.
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty."
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Anderson, I want to ask
about your new documentary, I, Too.
I want to play first a clip of the trailer.
CAROL ANDERSON: Were you taught the Hamburg massacre in school?
UNIDENTIFIED: No. You looked across the river,
all you could see is a jungle.
UNIDENTIFIED: As African Americans,
you’ve got to go find it yourself.
You’ve got to go research it,
because you’re going to miss it because they’re not telling you.
UNIDENTIFIED: That’s the original cross,
with the bullet holes.
CAROL ANDERSON: So, you have this church
that is providing sanctuary and protection
to those who are being chased out of their homes.
UNIDENTIFIED: Right.
CAROL ANDERSON: Now, that is biblical.
UNIDENTIFIED: When it happened, he hid underneath a streetcar.
And so, he could look underneath the car
and see people hitting the street.
UNIDENTIFIED: Here, they’re sitting in this circle,
and they would grab someone,
and they’d take them over a hill,
and you would hear a gunshot.
UNIDENTIFIED: We have no idea
how many Black people were murdered.
Some of these records were intentionally not kept,
and some things have, oddly enough, gone missing.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that is a clip of the trailer
for the new film about you,
I, Too. You’re talking there about the Hamburg massacre.
I’m wondering if you can elaborate on that
and also the attack on African American history —
on American history — across this country,
where you have Missouri,
the House, voting to defund the libraries,
because if they can’t have their books banned,
they don’t want the libraries open, as in Llano, Texas,
they’re saying if a judge forces them to put them back,
just close the libraries.
You recently wrote a piece in The Washington Post titled
"Florida’s past paints Ron DeSantis’ war on
'wokeism' in a dark light."
Put it all together for us, Professor Anderson.
CAROL ANDERSON: So, as part of this pattern
that we’re talking about,
there’s also the attack on history,
the attack on knowledge,
because a people who knows their history,
oh, then they’re thinking in very new, vibrant ways.
When you know where you come from,
when you know the violence that has been
rained down on communities, it begins to shatter
those very traditional political narratives.
So, one of the things we did in that film
was to link the January 6th insurrection
with the coup in Wilmington, North Carolina,
where you had a multiracial government in the late 1890s
that was overthrown by white supremacists,
where you had Black folks slaughtered,
where you had the newspaper for the —
the Black newspaper burned down and trashed,
where in Hamburg you had the Black militia
marching on January 4th down Market Street,
and you had two white men come up behind them,
just angry that Black men were in uniform,
and demanded that they disband,
and then demanded they had over their guns to them.
This is a state militia.
And when the Black soldiers said no, they were massacred.
Massacred.
But when we don’t know these histories,
then we’re able to talk about,
we’re able to see "American" as white
and male, as "patriotism" as white and male,
as the folks who are fighting for this country
as white and male.
But what we’re really seeing is that you have had
Black folks believing in America
even when America didn’t believe in them.
You had Black folks fighting for America
when America wouldn’t fight for them.
And you had Black folks just pushing this nation
to be stronger, to be better, to live up to its ideals.
And that is what you saw in Tennessee in the Legislature
when the Justins stood up and spoke the truth.
AMY GOODMAN: And Ron DeSantis,
if you can talk about the significance?
He’s not only, of course, governor of Florida,
but is probably running for president.
CAROL ANDERSON: And he’s running on that platform of,
basically, anti-Blackness, anti-LGBTQ and anti-woman.
So, you’ve got him pushing for the six-week abortion ban.
I believe he signed off on that.
You had the scuttling of the African American studies
AP course because it lacked educational value.
And you had the attack on Disney,
because Disney said, you know, LGBTQ folk are folk,
and that is a radical idea.
And so, you see him attacking, attacking, attacking,
because the marginalized, apparently, in his worldview,
don’t have the power to fight back.
And that platform is so racist, homophobic and disgusting.
And it is part of that narrative of trying to bring back control.
I think about the old Archie Bunker song,
"The days when men were men, and girls were girls,
and you knew who you were then.
Wouldn’t we like to go back to those great old days again?"
It’s harkening back to a past that wasn’t so great,
because it was violently exclusionary,
because it undermined democracy.
And so, what we’re seeing is a full-blown assault on democracy.
We’re also seeing that full-blown assault on democracy
by going after the rule of law, threatening judges,
threatening prosecutors who are trying to bring justice
to those who have allegedly broken the law.
So, all of these are factoring in —
the assault on education, the assault on knowledge,
the assault on access to reproductive care,
the assault on the right to vote by raising these barriers,
and then opening up full-blown access to guns,
to the violence that those guns bring,
and to craft it in that language of crime,
crime, crime, which has that subtone of Blackness,
Blackness, Blackness. It’s a formula. It’s a recipe.
And it’s an authoritarian recipe.
It is an anti-democratic recipe.
And it is a recipe that you have young folk pushing back,
fighting back.
And one of the things that is consistent in American history
is that that right-wing authoritarianism
is always met with a larger,
better vision of what America could be.
And that is what we’re seeing right now,
a battle for that vision. There’s the Ron DeSantis vision,
and then there’s the Justin Pearson and Justin Jones vision.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, going back
to Justin Pearson and Justin Jones,
I couldn’t help, continually this past week,
but think of the title of your book, One Person,
No Vote, the issue of gerrymandering
all over this country,
these hyper-supermajorities in states,
where actually the state itself is evenly divided,
but because of gerrymandering and what you have in Tennessee,
these men, it was not only they who were expelled,
it was all the people who voted for them.
This wasn’t like getting fired from your employment in a store.
They were elected.
CAROL ANDERSON: Right.
And oddly enough, or ironically enough,
Tennessee was the site of that massive Supreme Court decision
that laid out "one person, one vote,"
because of the ways that white rural conservative counties
had disproportionate power in the state
Legislature vis-à-vis Nashville and Memphis.
And because of a series of Supreme Court decisions,
subsequent Supreme Court decisions,
particularly Shelby County v.
Holder in 2013, these states have been able
to hyper-partisan gerrymander again,
and this is the result.
So, when you have something like 70% or so of Americans
wanting to have sensible gun safety legislation,
but you have a legislature that is built
on extreme partisan gerrymandering,
where they appear to be immune from the will of the people,
you’re not getting that kind of legislative response.
And that is why the bullhorn came up,
because you had young folk saying to their representatives,
"We need gun safety legislation. We do not need to be in a space,
in our workplace, where we are being gunned down."
And the response from that Legislature
was they were concerned about their decorum being disrupted
because people were responding to the needs of those people,
to the needs of those young folk who were out in the halls.
So, extreme partisan gerrymandering is —
it is so anti-democratic, so anti-one person/one vote.
And the result is, is that you’ve got a society
that believes in reproductive rights,
a society that believes in the right to vote,
a society that believes in gun safety legislation,
and you have legislators who aren’t responsive
to the wants and the needs and the desires of the people.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Carol Anderson,
I want to thank you for being with us.
We’ll continue this discussion.
Carol Anderson is a professor at Emory University in Atlanta,
author of The Second: Race and Guns
in a Fatally Unequal America —
the paperback edition has just been published —
also author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression
Is Destroying Our Democracy and the book White Rage:
The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.
Coming up, President Biden signed legislation
ending the coronavirus national emergency,
but millions with long COVID say the pandemic is not over.
We’ll speak with a journalist living with long COVID.
Stay with us.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy
Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
I’m Amy Goodman.
This week, President Biden signed legislation
that declared an end
to the COVID-19 national emergency.
But the pandemic is ongoing for millions living with long COVID.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
found nearly one in five people infected with COVID-19
go on to experience symptoms of long COVID.
One of them is Democratic senator,
former vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine.
SEN. TIM KAINE: I got COVID in March 2020.
My case was mild, and by early April 2020 I was fine,
except for one lingering symptom.
When I first got COVID,
I noticed that all of my nerve endings were tingling, 24/7.
Feels like they’ve been dipped in an Alka-Seltzer,
like they’ve all had five cups of coffee.
I didn’t talk about it for a while,
because I thought I would wake up one day
and that symptom would be gone. But that didn’t happen.
Three years later, the symptoms haven’t gotten worse,
but that it also hasn’t gotten better.
I’ve since learned that my long COVID symptom
is a significantly possible
aftereffect of this viral infection.
And while it likely won’t get worse, it may never go away.
I wish I didn’t have long COVID, but having it connects me
with people across the country who do.
AMY GOODMAN: Virginia Senator Kaine reintroduced the CARE
for Long COVID Act with Senators Ed Markey
and Tammy Duckworth last month,
but funding for research and resources remains limited.
This is Terri Wilder, chair of the
#MEAction Minnesota, testifying in March
before the Minnesota House
Health Finance and Policy Committee.
TERRI WILDER: It’s estimated that 10 to 20%
of all Minnesotans
who got COVID have experienced long COVID symptoms.
That suggests that there are potentially
hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans with long COVID,
who are experiencing significant impacts
to their health, functionality and quality of life.
And that includes children, adolescents and young adults.
It’s also estimated that around 50% of people
with long COVID meet the clinical criteria
for the disease I have, myalgic encephalomyelitis.
And this is a disabling and complex disease
that impacts multiple body systems.
It’s a neurological disease,
according to the World Health Organization.
I also want to highlight that COVID-19 has disproportionately
impacted Black, Indigenous and other nonwhite communities,
as well as low-income, rural, disabled and elder populations.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in Atlanta
by Ryan Prior, journalist-in-residence
at The Century Foundation, author of The Long Haul.
His new article for The Nation magazine
is headlined "The Long COVID Revolution."
His new column for Psychology
Today is called "Patient Revolution."
He’s also on the #MEAction board of directors.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Ryan.
First of all, explain more fully what ME is,
how it relates to long COVID.
And, I mean, you’re not only writing about this;
you are living this every day. Talk about your life experience.
RYAN PRIOR: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
ME refers to myalgic encephalomyelitis,
as Terri Wilder was talking about in the segment.
And "myalgic" refers to pain; "encephalomyelitis"
refers to inflammation of the brain
and the spinal cord.
It also goes by the term "chronic fatigue syndrome,"
so sometimes it’s referred to as ME/CFS.
So, it’s a neuroimmune disease
that has no approved treatments from the FDA.
And many patients become disabled and can’t work.
I’m fortunate that I’m in the —
even though some of the worst experiences
of my life made me better,
and I’m now in the situation where I have a more mild case,
and I am able to work.
But I use my voice as a journalist, as an advocate,
and working for a think tank now,
working in public policy, to pursue ideas and situations
and telling the story of millions
who can’t tell their own stories
and who can’t live out their dreams.
And the primary symptom of ME/CFS,
and really the primary symptom of long COVID,
is called post-exertional malaise,
which means that people do minor exertions,
which could be taking a shower
or walking down the block on their street,
and that can leave them bedridden or sick for days,
if not weeks, afterwards.
So, it makes it impossible to participate in society,
if you can’t do basic functions.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Ryan,
talk about what it means for President Biden
to say that the COVID national emergency is over,
what this means for millions of long COVID sufferers.
What do you think needs to be done?
RYAN PRIOR: Yeah.
So, for people who have had chronic illnesses
for decades prior to the pandemic,
many felt that long COVID was a moment
where their needs were going to be met.
And there has been tremendous power
from the chronic illness community
that has helped embolden the long COVID movement,
this long COVID revolution that we talk about in the piece,
that so many groups have come together in this moment
of tremendous post-viral illness
in ways that they never had before.
And so, the message that our chronic illness community
would have to President Biden
is to acknowledge the fact that there’s millions missing,
millions of people missing from their lives,
and there’s millions of dollars that are currently still missing
from the research that needs to be done,
and really the drug repurposing trials that need to be done
to urgently find new treatments to help people with long COVID.
As a society, we came together with a public-private
partnership for Operation Warp Speed,
creating vaccines at the fastest rate
and distributing them to the entire population
faster than any vaccine in history.
We now have an opportunity to do a similar thing for long COVID,
to do an Operation Warp Speed.
There’s dozens of drugs that could work for ME/CFS
and for long COVID, and we need much greater urgency
from the National Institutes of Health
and from others to get these treatments tested.
And many of those probably will work for treating the long,
disabling symptoms of long COVID.
And this is a moment, maybe,
if we can actually learn to characterize and research
and treat a number of different diseases, not just long COVID,
but long COVID is a way into understanding,
like I mentioned before, ME/CFS, another disease,
postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, POTS,
which means that people’s blood — heart rates
rise rapidly upon standing, and people faint.
That’s another major characteristic of long COVID.
So, there’s so many other chronic illnesses
that are post-infection chronic illnesses.
And so long COVID represents a time for all of us,
as a society, to understand the number of people
who are living with invisible disabilities,
these millions missing who are homebound or bedbound,
and this is their moment to sort of be brought back
into the mainstream of medicine.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Prior, in your book,
your columns, your articles,
you draw on the history of HIV/AIDS activists with ACT UP,
who changed healthcare policy, and disability activists,
who crawled up the steps of the U.S. Capitol
to demand passage of the American Disabilities Act.
Talk about this kind of action,
what you call a "patient revolution."
RYAN PRIOR: Yes.
And so, my colleague Fiona Loewenstein
and I wrote a piece for The Nation.
Fiona is the author of a book
called The Long COVID Survival Guide,
and I’ve also written a book that chronicles
the rise of patient groups, primarily online.
And our piece for The Nation starts with a
#MillionsMissing protest outside the White House
held one day after the president said
on 60 Minutes that the pandemic was over.
This was last September.
But I think this protest was indicative
of a larger history of people with diseases that were not well
recognized by the medical establishment,
who came together to rally for a cure,
rally for treatments. ACT UP
and the Treatment Action Group in the 1980s and the 1990s
are kind of the hallmark of what health advocacy
in the wake of an epidemic or a pandemic looks like,
and the same with those who campaigned
for the Americans with Disabilities
Act that was passed in 1990.
So, this new generation has stepped up,
thinking about how to advocate for chronic illnesses.
This protest outside the White House
was part of this noble tradition of patients
speaking on behalf of those that can’t speak for themselves.
And one note I’ll have here is that
because people with ME/CFS are so disabled,
and they experience post-exertion malaise,
it’s hard to get a — even a small protest
is a major accomplishment in our community,
because so much of it has to happen over social media,
and people are too sick to go out.
But I think that this is a step forward.
And bringing more media attention to this protest,
and really to this larger movement,
is something that policymakers need to understand.
And Senator Kaine’s CARE for Long COVID
Act is one of a number of different solutions.
This Operation Warp Speed
for long COVID treatments is another idea
that I think that these need to be acted on.
And patients will be gathering next week
for the Long COVID Advocacy Week on Capitol
Hill, telling their members of Congress
to move these bills forward
and to greenlight millions, if not billions,
of more dollars that could be used to treat this disease.
If we don’t act quickly to research it
and to cure it and to treat it,
or to provide disability accommodations
or disability benefits for those who are sick,
the long-term impact of this, of long COVID,
is of a scale and scope that’s hard to understand.
Harvard economist David Cutler estimates
that there’d be a $3.7 trillion —
"trillion" with a T —
impact on the U.S. economy for years to come,
if we don’t address long COVID now.
So, a major, urgent approach to research for long COVID
is really important for helping people
unlock their dreams
who might not be able to live the lives that they intended.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Ryan Prior, I want to thank you so much
for coming in to the studio in Atlanta, Georgia,
especially given the price you will pay for this,
that you yourself are suffering from long COVID,
but how important it is to share this information.
And we’ll continue to cover this much understood,
not often talked about issue of long COVID. Ryan
Prior, journalist-in-residence at The Century Foundation,
wrote the book The Long Haul. I’m Amy Goodman.
Thanks so much for joining us.