Report from Santa Fe; Amy and David Goodman

Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education. For bachelor's, master's and PhD degrees, New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for, 1-800-428-T-E-C-H. And by a grant from the Healy Foundation, Taos, New Mexico. I'm Lerine Mills and welcome to report from Santa Fe. Today we have as our guests the Goodman family. We have Amy Goodman and her brother David Goodman who are here on the book tour to talk about their new book called Standing Up to the Madness, Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. Some of the other books they've written, they've written a book called Static, but one that I especially like is called The Exception to the Rulers. What's the subtitle? Exposing oily politicians, war profiteers, and the media that love them.

Oh wonderful, wonderful. Well, you've won so many awards. I am going to let you talk, but you've won the RFK Journalism Award, the George Polk Award, the DuPont Columbia Award, Society of Professional Journalists, UP, API, anything to do with journalism, you've gotten the award. So welcome to report from Santa Fe. It's great to be here. It's wonderful to be in New Mexico. It's great to be here in Santa Fe and it's fantastic to be here with you, Lerine. And David, this is your first time. I know you've collaborated on at least these three books, but you are a South African expert and you've written a book called Fault Lines. So tell us a little, or I'd like to know about your background too, because how do you both end up being investigated journalists and then tell us about South Africa? We'll start with the family and move on to the individual. Well, we grew up together and how journalism came to be, I'd say, a shared interest really. We have two other brothers and I think that being involved and being in one's community in issues

was something that all of us share. We get that from our parents. Our late dad was a physician and the founder on Long Island of the Physicians for Social Responsibility. We have a very famous poster that each of the kids have, which shows a picture of a doctor in a white coat our father, posing, showing a stethoscope with a mushroom cloud and it's saying your doctor is worried. And this was Physicians for Social Responsibilities kind of symbol for many years. So we had our dad looking with that furrowed brow over the mushroom cloud growing up in our youth, but he was also involved in a lot of issues in the community. He headed a task force on a school desegregation in the schools we were attending in our elementary schools, which then were desegregated as a result of his efforts. And our mom was always involved in issues. She was a social worker, was involved in peace issues. So it was normal for us to discuss and debate issues.

And we also had a family journalism outlet. Dave's press was something I started when I was I think about eight years old. It began as basically a family blog, but in written form, and in my eight-year-old handwriting, the treasurer, Amy Goodman, and I think the CEO, Steve Goodman, our older brother, the three of us would get this thing out. But it was all Dave's. I mean, he wrote the articles, the editorials on the Vietnam War, and our grandparents, our great aunts and uncles would weigh in on the letters to the editor page. My grandfather would write in Dovetl. I love you, but your views on war are and David write back. Grandpa, thank you for being the first subscriber to my newspaper, but you're being stupid when it comes to war. And then my great uncle would write in and he would attack my grandfather and my aunt would write it and say to my uncle, how can you do this when the children

are watching? So it was a great way journalism too. Not only talk about family issues, but about issues of the world to integrate them. And we had cartoons, I had movie reviews, I had concert reviews, and of course the front page was always the news of the day. So a lot on Vietnam War at that time, a lot on issues just going on in the country. I remember a front page story on the ABM missile treaty on Nixon versus Johnson and Humphrey and all this. So that's where journalism started in our household. Well, well, and then you rose for the ranks of treasure to his paper to when you went, you went to Harvard, you had a degree in anthropology. Right, David and I were classmates there and I did my thesis in medical anthropology, looking at a contraceptive drug called depopravera and how it was used on women around the world. But particularly in this country in Atlanta, Georgia, 10,000 black women were injected with it

without realizing it was not approved by the FDA. And there were birth defects and sterility. Well, they had a lot of problems afterwards. It was the beginning of the founding of the Black Women's Health Project, Billy Avery did that. And when I presented my thesis at school and the professors were lined up to hear my defense at first, they said they wouldn't accept it because it wasn't really anthropological. It was more sociological. And I said to the professor, as he took a drag of his pipe, I asked him, I figured, you know, we better have the same definition of anthropology if I'm to pass this. So I said, well, what is your definition? And he said, well, anthropology, he said, you should know this since you're supposedly graduating in it, is the anthropologist is a participant observer. You cannot go into your own culture as you have here looked at medicine in the United States because you can't get any distance. You go into someone else's culture. And that's why this thesis is so problematic. I said, well, by your

definition, which I agree with, you have to have a distance when you go into the culture. I think this fits in perfectly because I am looking at science in the United States, which is a white, male, corporate enterprise. And I feel myself very much outside of that. So I do have that outsider's perspective. Took a drag of his pipe and said, carry on. Oh, splendid, splendid, splendid. Well, you went to an alien culture when you went to South Africa. Just tell us the short version because you are, they say that your book fault lines is really one of the seminal books in terms of people, you know, contemplating and setting the future of South Africa. So, well, my interest in going to work as a journalist in South Africa grew very much out of my activism about South Africa and college. In the early 1980s, divesting from South Africa, the university's divesting was a very big issue across colleges and communities around

the U.S. And so when I graduated, Harvard had a billion dollars in investments in companies that did business in apartheid South Africa. So we were working very hard to get Harvard's money out and what that would represent both economically and symbolically for a leading, you know, a global educational institution like that to renounce this. So it was only natural when I got out of college that I wanted to see for myself what apartheid looked like and traveled to South Africa in the mid-80s at the height of apartheid, hitchhiking around the country, getting picked up alternately by white South Africans and black South Africans staying in both white and black communities. It was a view of the country that very few people could possibly hope to have. I was just hitchhiking because I was a kid and I didn't have money. Turns out it was in a remarkable way to experience this country. I returned a number of times, but finally in the late 90s to live there when Nelson Mandela was president. It was also the year

that I lived there when the Truth Commission was operating and you know the book that Amy and I have just written is very much in the spirit of what I saw in the Truth Commission. What the Truth Commission did in South Africa. It was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and its job was in a country where history had been written by the conquerors as it always is. In this case the whites of Africans. They didn't actually have a truthful history of their country with all the voices at the table. The Truth Commission went around and I went around with it. Town by town. Often in these little dorks as they called them, these little backwater villages and they would convene, they would come to your community and it was an opportunity for you who has no money, no status, no title to come up to the table and tell what happened to you and your family under apartheid. Probably there was the

man across the table, the police chief or just a cop or maybe just a local farmer who had done something very bad. You could now have as part of the official record your experience and it dignified and Archbishop Tutu often said this, the critics of the Truth Commission were right to say this isn't justice and you know these people aren't going to jail and Tutu would say well he would talk about restorative justice in which having one story as part of the official record dignifying these really very often very noble actions of people who did not, who were not famous elevated the struggle across South Africa for human dignity and for justice and in standing up to the madness it's kind of what we did here. Well that's that's why I had wanted to ask you about the Truth and their Consolation Commission because one of your things is that you you've been known

for going where the silence is and giving the people who have not heard have their voices heard you give them a voice and so in this book standing up to the madness ordinary heroes and extraordinary times what I loved about this is that you've given us a pattern or a template because people have kind of forgotten that they could say no or that they could say wait a minute I don't this isn't right I can do something about it. It reminds me a little we recently interviewed Jody Williams who won the Nobel Peace Prize and her group helped ban landmines around the world she was an ordinary woman walking down the street and someone handed her a flyer about landmines and she went home and looked at about well this isn't right and in five years it's absolutely ordinary woman with no special training but just incredible heart had worked to change the world and this is what I love about your book that you call this out and people you give them a template how can we fix what's going on so tell us about some of the stories either one of you in this book. Well

we tell the stories of people who didn't plan on being particularly activists but end up when faced with a situation really stand up for example the librarians of Connecticut and you describe them with their little glasses and their starts shirts tell that story. They want to start with the librarians and I'll take it from there. Well trouble came calling to them and these were people Amy and I went and met and interviewed these Connecticut librarians they had this was the 28 libraries that are surround Hartford Connecticut the state capital are linked by a computer system they're the public computers that the public can use in their libraries are all linked together the FBI shows up at the door of the little organization that runs the computer system called the library connection and hands them something called a national security letter to open this letter is like being exposed to radio activity the moment you read the lines

you are not to tell anyone of this investigation you cannot reveal that the FBI is demanding this information of you and you must comply with all requests made by the FBI agents key words their FBI agents there's no judge no one's looking over this this is the the equivalent of the corner cop with the authority to show up at your door and say give me everything I ask for and don't tell anyone about it it isn't a sense the perfect crime one side has all the muscle in this case the government and the other side must simply do as it says and so the librarians who we know is these mild mannered impossibly polite public servants turned out to be the fiercest most tenacious fighters you can ever imagine because to them patron privacy is a sacred trust and so they said no and in so doing took on the entire USA Patriot Act and in fact ended up bringing it down but Amy will tell a few of the details of of how they went about this well they here were

you know men and women who were on their library board connection board just out of a sense of service figured it really didn't take much to do it some of them were just volunteers that's they were volunteers and for example Peter Chase is asked to be the vice president they said it will take no work you know it'll just be a year you've done your duty it will be easy within two weeks he was up against the entire US government they couldn't tell their wives they couldn't tell their kids they've been handed this NSL national security letter of which over a hundred thousand have been handed out around the country and they also couldn't talk about the USA Patriot Act anymore for fear that someone might ask are they the people who've been handed an NSL this means the people who are involved in going after them like the US Attorney of Connecticut who had been debating Peter Chase all over Connecticut around the USA Patriot Act suddenly when he was asked to speak a Peter Chase the librarian he would have to say no and then the US Attorney would go

around talking about it when John Ashcroff the Attorney General would say librarians are not being subjected to the USA Patriot Act targets of it they could not say it was actually true they were gagged and you take it from going to court so they challenged it they went to court and you have and what unfolded from there was an orwellian odyssey into the nether worlds of how a secret police operates nothing we thought we'd ever see in our democracy certainly nothing these librarians thought they'd see they became the plaintiffs in a case they lost their name and their voice they became John Doe Connecticut when it came time for the trial they were suddenly informed that they the plaintiffs could not appear in court America's four most dangerous terrorists the librarians of Connecticut were too dangerous to have their faces or words heard in court and so they the spectacle arose of the trial took place in a federal court in bridge port Connecticut the

librarians were forced to watch the proceedings on closed circuit TV in a locked storage room two hours away in a federal courthouse in Hartford but they saw something on that closed circuit TV over the shoulder of the judge that's where the camera sat they saw two things they saw their old friend the US Attorney for Connecticut who had been running around the state telling people librarians would never be the you know the subject the target of investigations making the case about how libraries had to be not only investigated but we had to do it in secret and they had to tell us everything we wanted to know about their patrons and they saw something else in there a courtroom packed with librarians from across the state of Connecticut then they knew that they were not alone and it gave them great strength to continue they won the first round but the government immediately appealed and the gag order was kept in place and so they went to a second trial

this one in federal court in Manhattan well now their lawyers told them okay you can appear but you cannot come as ordinary plaintiffs you must dress like lawyers and act like lawyers that no one should suspect who you are you must not enter the courthouse together that no one should think you know one another do not look at your lawyers so no one thinks that you are the plaintiffs also in that courtroom will be John Doe New York John Doe Connecticut will never know who John Doe New York is who happens to be the owner of a small internet service provider who is also fighting an FBI demand that it release information about its patrons and so the John Doe's assemble in the courtroom and they once again see something else now librarians from up and down the east coast have packed the courtroom on the same day a protest is taking place in the steps of the US Supreme Court in Washington librarians organized by the American Library Association

are marching around with an orange gag in their mouth that says NSL on it these are people standing up to the madness ultimately the gag was less lifted when just after the debate over the US Patriot Act took place in Congress Peter Chase said there was nothing more that he wanted to do than testify before Congress and talk about what they had been subjected to but they couldn't they were gagged and we go on from there in fact we stay in Connecticut it's not a book about Connecticut but not far from there in Wilton Connecticut a group of kids high school kids students who are doing their annual play no big deal every year they do another play now Wilton Connecticut happens to be the basis of well Ira Levin's book The Stepford Wives he grew up in Wilton so this should give you a little sense and the kids decide they're going to do a play on war that year and they put together with their profess their teacher the quotes of soldiers who've written home or vets who've talked about their experiences and they're going to

perform it for their high school friends and families until the books of these quotes published yes and they animated them they dramatized them in their drama class the principal comes in says fine for you to make the costumes for you to stage the play for you to practice and memorize it but you won't be performing it on the Wilton high school stage and they asked why not he said it was too controversial they argued with him they begged him and he said that ship has sailed which sailed them right on to the New York stage word got out the public theater the culture project in New York invited the kids to perform there and so there they were in New York the dream of many actors their whole lives performing for hundreds of theater goers in New York as well as for some soldiers who come to watch their own words given that kind of dignity absolutely remarkable David and I interviewed them after one of their performances and when they walked into the night air they were so excited their parents said this was their greatest moment I mean the education they had

gotten standing up never thinking that's what was going to happen but this is ultimately what happened to hear these words and the kids did look though a little longingly and said but I wish my high school friends could have seen it too but these kids defied power they stood up for what they felt was right and they also stood up for American soldiers who'd come back who were still there who maybe didn't make it back who were in pain which brings me to the winter soldier hearings that just took place and Silver Spring Maryland these were the hundreds of soldiers active duty or vets from Iraq and Afghanistan who like Vietnam veterans in 1971 in Detroit Michigan packed into a Howard Johnson's decided they wanted to testify about their experiences they did it just a few months ago in Silver Spring Maryland we thought all the corporate media would be there here were young people who were talking firsthand about their own experiences they had documentary evidence

videotape photographs and some of this of atrocities either they had committed or witnessed this is the core of an important story this is journalism at its best finding the people who were involved in letting them tell their stories we thought at democracy now that we would have to wait in line because the cameras would all be their first story we generally cover but you know comes around just once in a lifetime where everyone gets together well the corporate media wasn't there there was plenty of space for us and that's really in the spirit of standing up to the madness when people in whatever walk of life whether in the military or in civilian life decide we're not going to just take it anymore given the situation we feel that the only answer our only weapon is simply to speak out to break the sound barrier and that's also what soldiers did in our book the first officer to say no to deployment Aaron Wattata Lieutenant Aaron Wattata who lives just outside Seattle Washington and the wrath of the state coming down on him he's still involved

in legal proceedings or Augustina Guaya 34-year-old Mexican-American wife two twin girls decides to apply for CO status conscientious objector status goes to Iraq won't load his gun for a year no matter what danger it puts him in goes back to Germany they tell him he's going back he's to been denied CO status he says no he jumps out his bathroom window goes a wall and says he would do anything but to kill someone and ultimately he turns himself in and says he'll serve the time and you have to ask if we live in a just society who would be behind bars and who would be free well I can't answer that question but it is very provocative what what I'm hoping that you're able to do with this book and this tour that you're doing because you're going to be traveling all over America to public radio stations because it's to to do benefits fundraisers for radio and television to a radio public television public access low power

fem right here you are public talent so because this is the this and the internet are really the only viable alternative to the media machine that is so corporate now you have a phrase in in the exception to the rulers called access of evil not access of evil but that the one of the reasons that a lot of the reporters to have such softball questions is they want to be asked back so I want to talk to a little because I've admired your your interviewing techniques so much and how do you how do you do what you do and how do you keep pushing there's a lot of resistance you know well I mean even when Bill Clinton called you the last election there's a lot of examples where you've just just you know they try to stone while you and everything you're still in there well ours isn't a comfortable position as journalists we're not trying to win a popularity contest there's a reason why our profession journalism is the only one protected by the US constitution explicitly because we are supposed to be the check and balance on power it's our job

and when it is critical to ask the question the reason we talk about the access of evil is that all too often journalists trade truth for access ask the softball question so that they can get that sound bite from the vice president or the president or whoever is in power they could bring it back to their editor and say he answered my question or she answered my question well it is about challenging those in power because they have you know they have been entrusted with the public's confidence in them to be our leaders and so we have to ask tough questions it's not pleasant it's just our job so impressive Clinton called on election day 2000 to get out the vote for Hillary Clinton for Al Gore for John Corazine in New Jersey he called into our radio station in New York WBAI he was calling many radio stations this was an opportunity to ask the most powerful person on earth the president of the United States some questions

so we began he had wanted to talk about getting out the vote and asked him why should people vote when people feel that the parties have been really hijacked by corporations and he responded to that and he was still on so I asked him interestingly when I was coming here to the roundhouse to do this interview with you we saw some graffiti on the wall it said Leonard P for Leonard Peltier and that was the time that president Clinton as he was going out of office was weighing granting executive clemency to Leonard Peltier Native American leader in prison for life and he responded and I asked him would he be granting him an executive clemency and he answered again then we asked him about the bombing of VIECAS and at the time they were napalming the supporturican island asked him about racial profiling about the sanctions against Iraq that had killed over half a million children and he got annoyed particularly when I asked him about Ralph Nader's success maybe it could be attributed to Bill Clinton taking the Democratic Party to the right so he said I was

hostile combative at times disrespectful so I said I just had a few more questions I don't want to be hostile or combative I just looked at the timer we're almost out of time so please please tell us what what the people who are watching this can do how can they stand up to the madness well we conclude our book by trying as best we can to distill some of the messages that these ordinary heroes told us about why they did what they did from librarians to high school students to soldiers of conscience to scientists who stood up to censorship and to speak about global warming James Hansen the great yes a scientist is the government vacuums the words government weren't global warming off government websites so we do hope and try in this to offer a bit of practical wisdom that these people share and there are too many pointers to sort of summarize neatly but I will say that our overall feeling here is that people should feel empowered

and hopeful by reading these stories of people just like them and what they can do and should do maybe we can end with the quote of Gandhi first they ignore you then they laugh at you next they fight you then you win absolutely absolutely I'm so pleased to have as our guests today Amy Goodman and David Goodman their recent book standing up to the madness ordinary heroes and extraordinary times there's another book static that we don't have but another book of yours will love is the exception to the rulers so again I hope that everyone does just do that common sense thing say hmm this isn't right what can I do about it and you've done something about it by joining us today on report from Santa Fe thank you thank you thank you and I'm Lorraine Mills I'd like to thank you for joining us today on report from Santa Fe we'll see you next week report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from New Mexico tech on the frontier of science and engineering education for bachelors masters and PhD degrees New Mexico tech is the

college you've been looking for 1-800-428-T-E-C-H and by a grant from the Healey Foundation Taos New Mexico