Report from Santa Fe; Amy Goodman

the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. Hello, I'm Levine Males, and welcome to Report from Santa Fe. Our guest today is Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. Thank you for joining us. It's great to be with you, Lorraine. I am so happy you're here because as I've watched this turbocharged new administration and the pace of all these changes and news of the day, I thought there was no one I wanted to talk with more than you. So thank you for taking the time to come and join us. I'm really glad to be here and good, wonderful to be here in Santa Fe. And one of the things we're going to talk about is your new book, Another New York Times

Best Cellar, called Democracy Now, 20 years covering the movements changing America. So I have to give a little background. You're the host and executive producer of Democracy Now, and grassroots news organizations on 1,400 TV and radio stations, also on www.democracynow.org, and you have all of the international journalists and people who are making news. You've won the Acclaimed, the right livelihood award, which is like the alternative Nobel Prize. You were the first journalist to ever give it. You've got the Gandhi Prize. This one I love, the I have so-and-life time achievement award from Harvard, Sneaman Foundation, a couple more. George Bulk, Robert F. Kennedy Prize International reporting, all of that. But not only are you an observer and a reporter, you have been active since Nigeria in the 90s.

You're even arrested at the 2008 Republican Convention. But what you did this last year, your footage from Standing Rock is what got everyone's attention. Tell us about what that was like, and you had footage of dogs with blood dripping from their muzzles from elderly elders that they had bitten. Tell me about that. I mean, it was horrific. We're talking about the resistance to the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline that snakes its way from North Dakota to South Dakota to Iowa to Illinois and then it'll hook up with a pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico and Native Americans are resisting and they have been for over a year since April 1st when a Ladonna Brave Bull Allard, a descendant of sitting Bull, a member of the Standing Rock Suit Tribe in North Dakota, opened her property to the resistance, a resistance camp they called it sacred stone camp. And soon thousands of people were coming.

It was the largest unification of Native American tribes in decades. We followed this over the months, but we actually went there on Labor Day weekend to see what was happening. This is in the midst of the presidential election when during the main general election debates, not one journalist asked a question about climate change and yet hundreds of people, mainly Native, were being arrested protesting this utter reliance on a fossil fuel economy and yet another pipeline being built. The people there did not call themselves protesters. They called themselves water protectors because the pipeline, what energy transfer partners which owns it wanted to do was drill under the Missouri River, the longest river in North America, that provides water to some 17 million people downstream of the Standing Rock Suit Tribe.

And the tribe said no. And they weren't different from other North Dakotans. I mean, the people of Mandan, North Dakota said no, the people of Bismarck, the capital said no. And their wishes were respected, but not the tribe. And this just ignited a level of resistance we haven't seen. We covered the protests, the water ceremonies, and they were hit by an entirely militarized police force. I mean, with MRAPS and tanks, their tear gas, and the people would say, you protect the Dakota Access Pipeline, what about protecting us, your neighbors, and so on that Saturday. We covered yet another protest where the people marched up to their sacred burial ground and they saw bulldozers operating at Fultilt. They were shocked. It was a holiday weekend. They didn't even expect Dakota Access Pipeline to be excavating this area. And they tried to stop the bulldozers and how dangerous it was, how brave it was.

And they stood in front of those bulldozers, and the bulldozers did pull back. One by one, the bulldozers were pulling back. And what was so significant about this moment is that a judge was ruling on the case. And he had asked the Dakota Access, he had asked the Standing Rock Sue in the days before, to provide him with a map of, they said it was sacred ground, he wanted them to prove it. Where are your burial mounds? And they mapped it out. And he gave that map to the energy transfer partners. And the people believe that the bulldozers came to the site and they were far down the road because of their own map. And that if they changed the facts on the ground, if they excavated this area, it would be a moot point for the judge to rule on the next week. So people were furious. They stood in front of the bulldozers and they prevailed. And it was then that the Dakota Access Pipeline Gords unleashed dogs on the Native Americans,

attacked dogs, old women, native elders, on girls, on boys, and they were biting the water protectors. And even the dogs would pull back and they would throw them into the crowd and they would bite their way out. We filmed a dog with its mouth and nose dripping with blood. Ultimately, though, the people did succeed in pushing everyone back of the pipeline company to prevail at least on this one day. We posted that night online, the video that we had filmed that day. And within 24, 48 hours, there were like 14 million views on Facebook. It showed the hunger for these voices. The corporate media would say they don't raise these issues because people don't want to know. They're not interested.

Oh, I beg to differ. I really do think that those who care about war and peace, those who care about the massive growing inequality between rich and poor in this country, those who care about LGBTQ equality, those who care about climate change, the fate of the planet are not a fringe minority. Not even a silent majority, but the silenced majority silenced by the corporate media, which is why we have to take the media back. But I will just say that we went home after showing that video back to New York. And on Thursday, Governor Dowell Ripple, the governor of North Dakota at the time, called out the National Guard in preparation for the judges ruling on Friday. And they did something else, quietly, the authorities in North Dakota issued an arrest warrant for me. Now I didn't know about it at the time. And on Friday, the judge ruled against the tribe.

But in an unprecedented three-agency letter that came out of Justice Interior and the Army Corps of Engineer on that Friday night, it basically overruled the Justice Department's victory in this legal battle and said that the administration was going to slow down and really look at whether there was native input and whether there was an environmental impact statement. So that was a victory for the tribe. And then I was in Canada. I was covering, I was there to speak, after the premiere of a film at the Toronto International Film Festival that Friday night, a premiere of a film about I Have Stone. And I thought it was worth going up. I had just come from North Dakota people, care about First Nations in Canada. And so we spoke after the film. I was there with my colleague, Nerman Shake, from Democracy Now, and oh, who else was there? Matt Teibi of Rolling Stone, because the film was not only about, I Have Stone, who said, if you're going to remember two words, remember, government's lie.

If you're going to remember three words, remember all government's lie, and that's the name of the documentary. So we spoke after. And the next day, when I was speaking at University of Toronto, I get a text that says you're under arrest. I get a text that says there's an arrest warrant for you. And I really, you know, I came back to the United States. We ultimately went back to North Dakota a few weeks later, because I didn't take this personally. I thought it was a message sent to all journalists, do not come to North Dakota, which is exactly why we have to go to North Dakota, or why we have to cover issues like climate change, because these are issues that are dealing with the fate of the planet. There's so much to cover. I know that Terry Tempest Williams, a friend of both of ours, had an editorial in the New York Times saying, well, bear's ears, the decommissioning of that memorial. Will that be the next standing work? Do you think that since they've demolished what was? Well, I mean, while President Obama slowed it down and ultimately said they weren't

going to grant the permit under the Missouri, as soon as Donald Trump became president, one of his first executive orders was to grant the permit to drill under the Missouri River, and energy transfer partners did build that pipeline. But there is this growing divestment movement that the Native Americans are leading against the financial institutions that support pipelines like Dakota-Axis pipelines, so they're going after Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase Bank, and others. And they are letting people know that it is the whole system that is undergirding this reliance on greenhouse gas emissions and a fossil fuel economy that has to be changed. And this is a critical point of our day. I mean, we are historically the greatest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. People are suffering all over.

When we go to the climate summits and the Maldives, boy came to the UN summit in Copenhagen in 2009 and said to us looking right in the camera, you are drowning our country, or the people of Sub-Saharan Africa who say you are cooking our continent. And it really does matter what is happening today, because it affects people's lives. Well, again, we have so much to cover. You have, you're an outspoken and much honored member of the media. You have some lines I just love. We need a media that covers power and not covers for power. Another one, a media that is the fourth estate, not fourth estate. And you are one of the few independent, broadly shared outlets for kind of an alternative news that the main media just doesn't even touch. And then talk about, let's talk about this administration, they're calling it fake news.

Trump is calling everything fake news and says that the news is the enemy of the American people. How do we fight that? Well, first of all, I don't think we're alternative news. I mean, I really think we represent the voices of the mainstream in this country, because those who care about these critical issues of the day, including immense rights and war and peace and climate change, are not fringe. They represent most people in this country. And we need a mainstream media that reflects this and doesn't just beat the drums for war. You may ask a good question, Lorraine, about this attack on the mainstream media, President Trump calling the media institutions, like the New York Times, failing institutions, saying it's a font of fake news. Well, it takes one to no one. Donald Trump has been a source of so much fake news. He was a leader of the Berthor movement that tried to de-legitimize the first African-American

President of the United States, President Obama, by saying he wasn't born in this country. He would hold up his hand and say, we've got the proof, the smoking gun. I've got the investigators in Hawaii. He should show that. And he should also show his tax returns. Two things that doesn't look like he's going to be doing anytime soon. He is threatened by any entity, person or institution that judges him. Donald Trump doesn't like judges. Not the official kind, who he calls so-called judges. Not the kind that investigates him, like James Comey, the FBI director, who he fired. And he doesn't like the media, the media, which he calls the enemy of the people, the enemy of the American people. The media are central to the functioning of a democratic society. And he is undermining democracy when he goes after every check in balance on power.

Whether we're talking about the three co-equal branches of government, yes. The judiciary can check the executive, can check the legislative. It's like the whole country is engaged in a civics lesson. And yet you have Donald Trump talking about so-called judges when it comes to them staying his Muslim ban. And even Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, said about the federal judge in Hawaii, who stayed the second Muslim ban, barring refugees from six majority Muslim nations. He said about him, how is it possible that a man on an island in the Pacific can stop the president of the United States? Well, I really do think that Jeff Sessions and President Trump should participate in this suffix lesson. Yes, they really need to. We're speaking today with Amy Goodman about her new democracy now, book, 20 years covering the movements, changing America.

Talk a little about the constitutional crisis that we're facing. And will they get, will Sessions and Trump get the civics lesson? And then what, since the inauguration, there have been such amazing demonstrations. I mean, that's key. That's key. There's no question that these men, you know, that President Trump, that the attorney general Jeff Sessions, that the former CEO of Exxon Mobile, who is now the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, that the former governor of Texas who ran for President twice, bank rolled to the tune of six million. You called him the oily garkey. That's right. We're seeing the rise of the oily garkey in Washington, D.C. Rick Perry, bank rolled, I want to say, to the tune of six million dollars by Kelsey Warren, who's the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners that owns the Dakota Axis pipeline. And he's the Secretary of Energy, the department he wanted to get rid of if he could remember its name.

But the protests, yeah, they have occupied powerful positions, but the protests from the day after President Trump's inauguration, he made so much of the comparison between his inaugural size and President Obama's, but what about just the next day? The women who turned out three times the size of his inaugural crowd. And that was just Washington. I saw Kerry Washington at Sundance, we cover the documentary track, you know, of scandal. She was in Los Angeles, gave a speech to 750,000 people. You know the mass of protests that was here in Santa Fe in Montpel, your 20,000 people came out, the police closed the interstate because too many people were coming into the Capitol. We have never seen anything like this. And then it went to the massive actions at the airports when Muslim men, one in two, were imposed. And that was so, so fast and it was suddenly the airports were jammed. There were people offering free legal help and the passion again. The women's movement was such a joyous celebration.

And then you go to the march for science, celebration of science, April 20th. Second, Earth Day freezing cold down for we did a five-hour broadcast of democracy now.org. But people, thousands still came out. One week later, April 29th, the people's climate march, 200,000 people come out and it's the hottest April 29th in Washington, D.C. history at like 97 degrees. And they're talking about climate change and they're holding up signs that say things like, I'm with her with an arrow to Mother Earth. They say things like ice has no agenda, it just melts. And they say things like, there is no planet B. I like the science and silence went to you. That's right. People wearing buttons that said science, not silence. And the other thing that is so impressive is the passion and the energy in these town halls. When Congress people go back to their, their constituents and they are mad. And particularly about the healthcare issue, which is not exactly working in anybody's

benefit at this point. And other issues and they're just calling those lawmakers on the carpet. And a lot of them have had to flee their own town halls or just stonewall or you know it's. They're saying they're going to do a Facebook town hall or they're going to skyth the town hall because they can't face the people. And it's putting a lot of elected leaders on notice. Yes, Republicans, but also Democrats. There is a resurgence in this country. Yes, the forces arrayed against them are powerful. But there is a force more powerful and that is everyone been together. And you know that Santa Fe is a sanctuary city. That's another, you know, they're trying to put federal penalties on the cities a lot in California, actually the whole Southwest. I mean, that's very important. I mean, the crackdown on immigrants. As we travel the country, the number of people who have been arrested and the numbers show now, Donald Trump is basically arresting more people than we've ever seen in this brief amount of time.

And President Obama, he deported millions of people. In fact, even his allies called him the deporter in chief. So for this to be beyond that is very significant. And I have to ask from migrant justice activists in Vermont, two of whom were just arrested and held for almost a week to Arturo Hernandez Garcia, who was an immigrants right to activists who had taken sanctuary in Denver two years ago and now is picked up on the streets. You have to ask, is the Trump administration hunting down immigrants rights activists? You had described what's happening in this administration as dismantling the regulatory state and removing the protections from our air or water or land. We share the air. They take away, they make our air and clean. They got to breathe it too. And it's with divorce and education and brick, period, and energy and and and prove it at the EPA.

It's like they found the worst people to try to destroy everything that's made America great. And education, workers' rights, environmental protections, and it came so fast at us. Every day there be a new shock, it was really literally shock and awe. Now he's on his first, Trump's on his first international trip and that will be very, very interesting. But your book goes through the passion and the power of all these movements and the lines are resist and persist. But I really want to give you the opportunity to tell our audience in New Mexico what we can do. Well, I mean, I'm a journalist that covers what people do. And they have no lack of ideas, energy or enthusiasm. We're on a many city tour, at least 50 cities at this point. And we've been crisscrossing the country and the energy is staggering.

I was just in, oh, Santa Barbara, California, and a high school student who graduated that day, but didn't go to her graduation dinner so she could come to La Casa de La Raza, which is where we are having our event. And she had me sign her diploma, her award. She was talking about ethnic studies now that they need to reinstate studies that where people could appreciate their differences. People have come from all over talking about protecting their, the residents of their cities, towns and hamlets. My colleague Juan Gonzales and I, Juan, who's been hosting democracy now for all 20 years. And who wrote that wonderful, wonderful book, one of my best, all the people. That's a great book. Yes. And Juan is writing a new book. It's called Reclaiming Gotham, and you should interview him if he comes through here. Talking about progressive movements in cities.

We went to a meeting in New York City that was filled with hundreds of local legislators, city council members, state legislators, mayors, elected officials of every stripe who are saying, how do we provide sanctuary? How do we protect the residents of our communities? I mean, never assume, based on someone's position, what their position will be. The resistance is at every level of society. I can see that that nurse is your spirit. But were there any times in this year, you know, since the inauguration, when you just thought, you know, can we overcome this, particularly the war machine, the mother of all bombs and the Tomahawk missile shot into the surface, the mainstream press is going, oh, he's so president. Right. I mean, these were, in effect, kind of useless gestures. I mean, well, the dropping of the Moab, the mother of all bombs, as the Pentagon has nicknamed

it with an air blast radius is something like a mile. It's terrifying. Under Bush, it was developed. He didn't dare drop it under President Obama. He didn't dare drop it. You give president Trump a few weeks and he's dropping this weapon of historic proportions. And again, as you pointed out, while the media has found its backbone, sometimes when they're being hit directly, they become oppositional, not when it comes to war. And they say the president is presidential. And we need a media that is truly independent, that is holding those in power accountable. There's a reason why our profession journalism is the only one explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, because we're supposed to be the check and balance on power and is ever more important today than any time, I think, in history. It's astonishing every day, even today, reporters are just chewing on them, and all these stories

are breaking. This is the wrong, like they say, don't make an enemy of somebody who buys ink by the barrel. And all these young reporters, I'm sure there will be Pulitzer Prizes awarded. There's just a quality of reporting now that is, to me, as a reporter, just thrilling to observe. This you'll give us a little inspiring tagline as we go out to continue the fight. Well, I think that the media's role should be the exception to the rulers. That shouldn't just be the motto of democracy now. It is our job to go to where the silence is. Well, that's what you have done for your life. I really want to thank you for your years of reporting. You and your brothers started a newsletter for your family when you were a little kid. Well, David did.

I was really just the envelope stopper, but I am so thrilled that David, together with Dennis Moynihan, my colleague at Democracy Now, with whom I write a weekly column for King Features of Hurst to get these ideas into the mainstream media. I'm so glad that they were able to collaborate with me on this book Democracy Now, Covering 20 Years Covering the Movements Changing America. It's a New York Times bestseller, and it's your latest, it's your sixth bestselling book, Democracy Now. 20 Years Covering the Movements Changing America. You've been doing this for so long. I want to thank you for your courage and your integrity. It is an honor to have you, our guest, Amy Goodman. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much, Lorraine. And I'm Lorraine Mills. I'd like to thank you our audience for being with us today on a report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Past archival programs of report from Santa Fe are available at the website reportfromsatife.com. If you have questions or comments, please email info at reportfromsatife.com.

Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico.