By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis MoynihanTechnology is often hailed as an engine of progress, but if unleashed without democratic oversight, it can cause great harm. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is the latest example. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority, alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” warned over 250 computer scientists in a one-sentence statement issued by the Center for AI Safety. They worry that Artificial Intelligence will outpace human intelligence, then orchestrate our demise as a species.But for many, the abuses of technology are not some future threat. Take the cases of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer in 1951, and a more recent example, in 2023, of another Black woman, Porcha Woodruff, a young Detroit mother wrongly arrested for armed robbery and carjacking after being misidentified by AI-driven facial recognition software.“The six police officers came to knock on the door,” Porcha Woodruff said on the Democracy Now! news hour, recounting her arrest with “a warrant for my arrest for carjacking. In the midst of the conversation, I opened up my door a little bit wider so that they could see I was eight months pregnant…I went back and forth with the police officers for a while, trying to convince them, ‘You have the wrong person.’”Porcha Woodruff was handcuffed in front of her two young, terrified daughters and jailed. The actual perpetrator’s face had been recorded by a camera, and facial recognition software pointed to Porcha. She was the first woman known to have been arrested due to faulty facial recognition software. At least five men have been similarly wrongly arrested. All six are Black. Porcha was held for eleven hours, released on $100,000 bond. She began having contractions in the jail cell. She immediately rushed to the hospital after getting out, where she was treated for dehydration.“In 2019, the government shared a study showing that African American faces and Asian faces were 10 to 100 times more likely to be misidentified,” Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, explained on Democracy Now! “In many instances, the worst performance is on the faces of Black women. When you look at the data and what we’ve recorded on the performance of facial recognition technologies, it does mean people of color, women of color, Black women, in particular, are at even higher risk of these types of misidentifications.”Porcha Woodruff is 32 years old. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old mother of five, who went to Johns Hopkins, the only hospital in Baltimore that would see Black patients in the early 1950s. “She ended up going under anesthetic to get a biopsy of her cervix,” Rebecca Skloot said on Democracy Now! Skloot is the author of the bestselling biography, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” also made into a film starring Oprah Winfrey. “That’s when this doctor just took a little extra piece and put that in a dish and sent it to George Gey, who was the head of tissue culture research and had been trying to grow cells for decades. They had been able to keep cells alive for maybe 24 hours in the past, but hers —not only did they not die, but they began doubling their numbers every 24 hours. So they just grew with this incredible intensity that no one had ever seen before.”Henrietta Lacks died of cancer not long after, but her cells lived on,  becoming a cornerstone of biomedical research. The cells taken from Henrietta Lacks without her permissionhave helped cure or treat countless diseases, from polio to HIV to HPV, helped develop vaccines and other medicines, and to map the human genome. Doctors from Johns Hopkins continued to deceive her family members,  subjecting them to studies in an attempt to learn why her cells were able to survive.Johns Hopkins called Henrietta Lacks’ cells “HeLa cells,” claiming they came from a fictitious person, “Helen Lane.”. Many companies profited from her cells. On August 1st, her family settled with one company, Thermo Fisher Scientific.One of her grandsons, Alfred Lacks Carter, Jr., announced, “Our family member, our loved one, Henrietta Lacks, 103 years old today… it couldn’t have been a more fitting day for her to have justice, for her family to have relief. It was a long fight, over 70 years. And Henrietta Lacks gets her day.”Hopefully, Porcha Woodruff will get her day, too. She is suing Detroit for wrongful arrest and imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and for its use of the demonstrably racist AI-driven facial recognition software. She could well be the impetus for passage of the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act now before Congress.From Henrietta Lacks to Porcha Woodruff, it is past time we recognize and reject racist abuses of technology.

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan Technology is often hailed as an engine of progress, but if unleashed without democratic oversight, it can cause great harm. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is the latest example. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority, alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” warned over 250 computer scientists in a one-sentence statement issued by the Center for AI Safety. They worry that Artificial Intelligence will outpace human intelligence, then orchestrate our demise as a species. But for many, the abuses of technology are not some future threat. Take the cases of Henrietta Lacks, who died of cervical cancer in 1951, and a more recent example, in 2023, of another Black woman, Porcha Woodruff, a young Detroit mother wrongly arrested for armed robbery and carjacking after being misidentified by AI-driven facial recognition software. “The six police officers came to knock on the door,” Porcha Woodruff said on the Democracy Now! news hour, recounting her arrest with “a warrant for my arrest for carjacking. In the midst of the conversation, I opened up my door a little bit wider so that they could see I was eight months pregnant…I went back and forth with the police officers for a while, trying to convince them, ‘You have the wrong person.’” Porcha Woodruff was handcuffed in front of her two young, terrified daughters and jailed. The actual perpetrator’s face had been recorded by a camera, and facial recognition software pointed to Porcha. She was the first woman known to have been arrested due to faulty facial recognition software. At least five men have been similarly wrongly arrested. All six are Black. Porcha was held for eleven hours, released on $100,000 bond. She began having contractions in the jail cell. She immediately rushed to the hospital after getting out, where she was treated for dehydration. “In 2019, the government shared a study showing that African American faces and Asian faces were 10 to 100 times more likely to be misidentified,” Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, explained on Democracy Now! “In many instances, the worst performance is on the faces of Black women. When you look at the data and what we’ve recorded on the performance of facial recognition technologies, it does mean people of color, women of color, Black women, in particular, are at even higher risk of these types of misidentifications.” Porcha Woodruff is 32 years old. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old mother of five, who went to Johns Hopkins, the only hospital in Baltimore that would see Black patients in the early 1950s. “She ended up going under anesthetic to get a biopsy of her cervix,” Rebecca Skloot said on Democracy Now! Skloot is the author of the bestselling biography, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” also made into a film starring Oprah Winfrey. “That’s when this doctor just took a little extra piece and put that in a dish and sent it to George Gey, who was the head of tissue culture research and had been trying to grow cells for decades. They had been able to keep cells alive for maybe 24 hours in the past, but hers —not only did they not die, but they began doubling their numbers every 24 hours. So they just grew with this incredible intensity that no one had ever seen before.” Henrietta Lacks died of cancer not long after, but her cells lived on, becoming a cornerstone of biomedical research. The cells taken from Henrietta Lacks without her permission have helped cure or treat countless diseases, from polio to HIV to HPV, helped develop vaccines and other medicines, and to map the human genome. Doctors from Johns Hopkins continued to deceive her family members, subjecting them to studies in an attempt to learn why her cells were able to survive. Johns Hopkins called Henrietta Lacks’ cells “HeLa cells,” claiming they came from a fictitious person, “Helen Lane.”. Many companies profited from her cells. On August 1st, her family settled with one company, Thermo Fisher Scientific. One of her grandsons, Alfred Lacks Carter, Jr., announced, “Our family member, our loved one, Henrietta Lacks, 103 years old today… it couldn’t have been a more fitting day for her to have justice, for her family to have relief. It was a long fight, over 70 years. And Henrietta Lacks gets her day.” Hopefully, Porcha Woodruff will get her day, too. She is suing Detroit for wrongful arrest and imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and for its use of the demonstrably racist AI-driven facial recognition software. She could well be the impetus for passage of the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act now before Congress. From Henrietta Lacks to Porcha Woodruff, it is past time we recognize and reject racist abuses of technology.

Racism and the Abuse of Technology, from Henrietta Lacks to Porcha Woodruff

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis MoynihanFormer president Donald Trump has been criminally indicted for the third time in four months. Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment describes Trump’s attempt to overturn his loss in the 2020 election and cling to power. The four charges include the criminal violation of the rights of Americans to have their votes counted. Republican loyalists are parroting Trump’s mantra that the investigations are all part of a witch hunt intended to keep him from regaining the White House in 2024. But many legal analysts have praised the strategy behind the historic indictment for targeting Trump without additional defendants or other complications that might prevent a speedy trial.“I would like to thank the members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who are working on this investigation with my office,” Smith said in his short public statement on August 1st, after the indictment was unsealed. “These women and men are public servants at the very highest order, and it is a privilege to work alongside them.”Smith’s praise may well be warranted in this case. But the FBI has a long, dark history of targeting political dissidents and other marginalized communities. Muslim Americans were especially hard hit in the wake of the attacks of September 11th, 2001.Take the case of the Newburgh Four. Just days before this latest Trump indictment was unsealed, a federal judge in New York granted compassionate release to three inmates who had been convicted in 2010 of terrorism and given the mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison. These prisoners, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen are three members of a group known as the Newburgh Four. The fourth, James Cromitie, is expected to apply separately for compassionate release.“A person…would be left with the impression that the offending defendants were sophisticated international terrorists committed to jihad against the United States,” U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in her order. “However, they were, in actual reality, hapless, easily manipulated and penurious petty criminals…impoverished small-time grifters and drug users/street level dealers who could use some money.”Judge McMahon ordered the three prisoners released within 90 days, having already served 14 years. The Newburgh Four were big news following their 2008 arrest, accused of plotting to blow up a synagogue in the Bronx and to shoot down U.S. military aircraft with surface-to-air missiles. The FBI used a shady paid informant, Shahed Hussain, a career criminal desperate to avoid deportation, to lure the four into the plot.Judge McMahon wrote, “The FBI invented the conspiracy, identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance; federalized what would otherwise have been a state crime…by driving three of the four men into Connecticut to view the ‘bombs’ and ‘stinger missile launchers’…Hussain drove the four men to Riverdale (they had no way to drive themselves); ‘armed’ the ‘bomb’ (because the hapless Cromitie, despite his ‘training,’ could not figure out how to do it); and told Cromitie how to place the device.”McMahon has long criticized the government’s conduct in this elaborate entrapment operation, and the fact that she was forced to sentence the defendants to the mandatory minimum. “The fact that what the government did was legal does not make it just,” McMahon wrote, when ordering the compassionate release of the three.The Newburgh Four were one in a string of informant-driven prosecutions that entrapped members of the Muslim community. “We have a lot of cases out there. The Fort Dix Five is one. The Holy Land Five is another case. Aafia Siddiqui is another case. You can go down a whole long list,” Stephen Downs said on the Democracy Now! news hour. He is the board chair of the Coalition for Civil Freedoms and represents David Williams of the Newburgh Four. Downs is also the former chief attorney of New York State’s Commission on Judicial Conduct.“This was the government’s standard operating procedure right after 9/11,” Downs explained. “They were out there going to create as many terrorists as they could, to show the public…that they were keeping America safe. If they couldn’t find any real terrorists — and they couldn’t; there really weren’t any real terrorists around — they had to create them. And that’s what they did: They created these terrorists.”The prosecution of the Newburgh Four was a political prosecution. They cannot recover the 14 years they’ve lost, they will still be on probation, subject to reimprisonment, and they will still be considered “felons” with all the burdens that designation carries.Meanwhile, last October, a lead federal prosecutor of the Newburgh Four, David Raskin, joined the prosecutorial team investigating the Trump/Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Jack Smith has an enormous challenge before him, prosecuting Trump’s attempted coup d’état, while rising above the FBI’s well-documented legacy of political persecution.

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan Former president Donald Trump has been criminally indicted for the third time in four months. Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment describes Trump’s attempt to overturn his loss in the 2020 election and cling to power. The four charges include the criminal violation of the rights of Americans to have their votes counted. Republican loyalists are parroting Trump’s mantra that the investigations are all part of a witch hunt intended to keep him from regaining the White House in 2024. But many legal analysts have praised the strategy behind the historic indictment for targeting Trump without additional defendants or other complications that might prevent a speedy trial. “I would like to thank the members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who are working on this investigation with my office,” Smith said in his short public statement on August 1st, after the indictment was unsealed. “These women and men are public servants at the very highest order, and it is a privilege to work alongside them.” Smith’s praise may well be warranted in this case. But the FBI has a long, dark history of targeting political dissidents and other marginalized communities. Muslim Americans were especially hard hit in the wake of the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Take the case of the Newburgh Four. Just days before this latest Trump indictment was unsealed, a federal judge in New York granted compassionate release to three inmates who had been convicted in 2010 of terrorism and given the mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison. These prisoners, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen are three members of a group known as the Newburgh Four. The fourth, James Cromitie, is expected to apply separately for compassionate release. “A person…would be left with the impression that the offending defendants were sophisticated international terrorists committed to jihad against the United States,” U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in her order. “However, they were, in actual reality, hapless, easily manipulated and penurious petty criminals…impoverished small-time grifters and drug users/street level dealers who could use some money.” Judge McMahon ordered the three prisoners released within 90 days, having already served 14 years. The Newburgh Four were big news following their 2008 arrest, accused of plotting to blow up a synagogue in the Bronx and to shoot down U.S. military aircraft with surface-to-air missiles. The FBI used a shady paid informant, Shahed Hussain, a career criminal desperate to avoid deportation, to lure the four into the plot. Judge McMahon wrote, “The FBI invented the conspiracy, identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance; federalized what would otherwise have been a state crime…by driving three of the four men into Connecticut to view the ‘bombs’ and ‘stinger missile launchers’…Hussain drove the four men to Riverdale (they had no way to drive themselves); ‘armed’ the ‘bomb’ (because the hapless Cromitie, despite his ‘training,’ could not figure out how to do it); and told Cromitie how to place the device.” McMahon has long criticized the government’s conduct in this elaborate entrapment operation, and the fact that she was forced to sentence the defendants to the mandatory minimum. “The fact that what the government did was legal does not make it just,” McMahon wrote, when ordering the compassionate release of the three. The Newburgh Four were one in a string of informant-driven prosecutions that entrapped members of the Muslim community. “We have a lot of cases out there. The Fort Dix Five is one. The Holy Land Five is another case. Aafia Siddiqui is another case. You can go down a whole long list,” Stephen Downs said on the Democracy Now! news hour. He is the board chair of the Coalition for Civil Freedoms and represents David Williams of the Newburgh Four. Downs is also the former chief attorney of New York State’s Commission on Judicial Conduct. “This was the government’s standard operating procedure right after 9/11,” Downs explained. “They were out there going to create as many terrorists as they could, to show the public…that they were keeping America safe. If they couldn’t find any real terrorists — and they couldn’t; there really weren’t any real terrorists around — they had to create them. And that’s what they did: They created these terrorists.” The prosecution of the Newburgh Four was a political prosecution. They cannot recover the 14 years they’ve lost, they will still be on probation, subject to reimprisonment, and they will still be considered “felons” with all the burdens that designation carries. Meanwhile, last October, a lead federal prosecutor of the Newburgh Four, David Raskin, joined the prosecutorial team investigating the Trump/Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Jack Smith has an enormous challenge before him, prosecuting Trump’s attempted coup d’état, while rising above the FBI’s well-documented legacy of political persecution.

Freedom Coming for the Newburgh Four, After FBI Entrapment

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis MoynihanEmmett Till would have turned 82 on July 25th. But he was murdered at 14, on August 28th, 1955, dragged from his great-uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi by two white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman. They beat, tortured and shot Emmett, tied a heavy cotton gin fan to him with barbed wire, and threw his body into the Tallahatchie River. His bloated, disfigured corpse was discovered several days later. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, had his body returned to Chicago for his funeral. She insisted on an open casket so the world would see the brutality of bigotry, the ravages of racism. Jet Magazine and other publications carried photos of Emmett Till’s beaten, distended face in his coffin, shocking the world and galvanizing the civil rights movement to defeat Jim Crow.“I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me,” Mamie Till-Mobley said of her decision.  “And if the death of my son can mean something to the other unfortunate people all over the world, then for him to have died a hero would mean more to me than for him just to have died.”Sixty-eight years later, President Joe Biden formally established the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, signing the proclamation on Emmett Till’s birthday.Three sites make up the monument: the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ on Chicago’s South Side, where Emmett’s funeral was held; the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Emmett’s two murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury, and the Graball Landing site along the Tallahatchie River, believed to be where Emmett Till’s body was found. The memorial sign at Graball Landing was made bulletproof to withstand the attempts to destroy it. It’s been shot at and vandalized countless times.The painful history of Emmett Till’s lynching and his mother’s remarkable courage is seared into the fabric of this country. Less than three months later, sickened by the photos of Emmett, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on December 1st, 1955, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The March on Washington in 1963 was held on August 28th, the anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder.Yet there are people now attempting to suppress history and whitewash the systemic racism so central to our nation. Leading the pack of these revisionists is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate. DeSantis first forced the revision of the state’s AP African American Studies curriculum, purging key Black writers, feminists, and references to Black Lives Matter.Then, last week,, the Florida Department of Education released its social studies standards for this school year. The 216-page document states, “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”Gov. DeSantis was asked to explain this shocking rewrite of the brutal, bloody history of slavery in the United States, while at a campaign stop in Utah:“They’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.”Renowned civil rights attorney and Florida resident Ben Crump responded on the Democracy Now! news hour.  “It is sickening. It is astonishing that in 2023 we can have a person who is the second in contention for the Republican nomination telling his supporters and his state that he governs that it is going to be mandated now that students in Florida, starting from middle school on, will have to be taught that slavery had positive benefits…It has the potential to cause serious psychological trauma to African American students. We will not stand for it. We will explore every possible legal remedy in the court of law.”The catalog of atrocities during the centuries-long practice of legal enslavement in the U.S. is long: forced labor, beatings, whipping, torture, rape, murder, the separation of families, the denial and criminalization of education, and more. The suggestion that the millions of enslaved people in this country somehow benefitted from their enslavement is simply grotesque.Of course, many enslaved Africans and their enslaved descendants did learn skills that served them later in life–but these were the skills born of resistance. Harriett Tubman escaped north from Maryland to Philadelphia, and used that hard-earned experience to lead between 11 and 30 dangerous missions to rescue more enslaved people, guiding them to freedom, mostly at night, navigating by the stars.Legal slavery ended in the United States on December 5th, 1865, with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, but its echoes painfully persist to this day. Monuments and memorials are important checks on the whitewashing of history, but strong social movements are the best bulwark against those who would rollback progress.

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan Emmett Till would have turned 82 on July 25th. But he was murdered at 14, on August 28th, 1955, dragged from his great-uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi by two white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman. They beat, tortured and shot Emmett, tied a heavy cotton gin fan to him with barbed wire, and threw his body into the Tallahatchie River. His bloated, disfigured corpse was discovered several days later. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, had his body returned to Chicago for his funeral. She insisted on an open casket so the world would see the brutality of bigotry, the ravages of racism. Jet Magazine and other publications carried photos of Emmett Till’s beaten, distended face in his coffin, shocking the world and galvanizing the civil rights movement to defeat Jim Crow. “I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me,” Mamie Till-Mobley said of her decision. “And if the death of my son can mean something to the other unfortunate people all over the world, then for him to have died a hero would mean more to me than for him just to have died.” Sixty-eight years later, President Joe Biden formally established the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, signing the proclamation on Emmett Till’s birthday. Three sites make up the monument: the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ on Chicago’s South Side, where Emmett’s funeral was held; the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where Emmett’s two murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury, and the Graball Landing site along the Tallahatchie River, believed to be where Emmett Till’s body was found. The memorial sign at Graball Landing was made bulletproof to withstand the attempts to destroy it. It’s been shot at and vandalized countless times. The painful history of Emmett Till’s lynching and his mother’s remarkable courage is seared into the fabric of this country. Less than three months later, sickened by the photos of Emmett, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on December 1st, 1955, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The March on Washington in 1963 was held on August 28th, the anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder. Yet there are people now attempting to suppress history and whitewash the systemic racism so central to our nation. Leading the pack of these revisionists is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate. DeSantis first forced the revision of the state’s AP African American Studies curriculum, purging key Black writers, feminists, and references to Black Lives Matter. Then, last week,, the Florida Department of Education released its social studies standards for this school year. The 216-page document states, “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Gov. DeSantis was asked to explain this shocking rewrite of the brutal, bloody history of slavery in the United States, while at a campaign stop in Utah: “They’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” Renowned civil rights attorney and Florida resident Ben Crump responded on the Democracy Now! news hour. “It is sickening. It is astonishing that in 2023 we can have a person who is the second in contention for the Republican nomination telling his supporters and his state that he governs that it is going to be mandated now that students in Florida, starting from middle school on, will have to be taught that slavery had positive benefits…It has the potential to cause serious psychological trauma to African American students. We will not stand for it. We will explore every possible legal remedy in the court of law.” The catalog of atrocities during the centuries-long practice of legal enslavement in the U.S. is long: forced labor, beatings, whipping, torture, rape, murder, the separation of families, the denial and criminalization of education, and more. The suggestion that the millions of enslaved people in this country somehow benefitted from their enslavement is simply grotesque. Of course, many enslaved Africans and their enslaved descendants did learn skills that served them later in life–but these were the skills born of resistance. Harriett Tubman escaped north from Maryland to Philadelphia, and used that hard-earned experience to lead between 11 and 30 dangerous missions to rescue more enslaved people, guiding them to freedom, mostly at night, navigating by the stars. Legal slavery ended in the United States on December 5th, 1865, with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, but its echoes painfully persist to this day. Monuments and memorials are important checks on the whitewashing of history, but strong social movements are the best bulwark against those who would rollback progress.

No, Gov. DeSantis, There’s No Upside to Slavery

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis MoynihanRecord-shattering temperatures are baking the northern hemisphere, causing death, injury and displacement. From China to Europe to the United States, regions are breaking not only high temperature records, but are also surpassing the record number of consecutive days of life-threatening heat. Phoenix, Arizona passed 20 days with high temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Massive rain storms and typhoons are flooding cities and towns from India to southern China to New England. Raging Canadian wildfires are blanketing the eastern United States with thick smoke that can cause long-term respiratory damage.“The extreme weather – an increasingly frequent occurrence in our warming climate – is having a major impact on human health, ecosystems, economies, agriculture, energy and water supplies,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas commented on Wednesday, adding, “We have to step up efforts to help society adapt to what is unfortunately becoming the new normal.”When Taalas says “help society” he isn’t referring to any particular country; he means human society, globally. A truly effective solution to the climate crisis must be global, based on the rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. This transition is going to be costly, but the cost of doing nothing would be far greater. The question is, who is going to pay?It has long been acknowledged inside the annual United Nations climate negotiations that wealthy nations have contributed more to the climate crisis than poorer nations. These summits are referred to as “COPs,” for “Conference of Parties” to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC. In the often complex parlance of the COPs, this concept is called “Common But Differentiated Responsibilities,” recognizing that countries like the United States and those of western Europe grew rich by burning fossil fuels with abandon for over a century, while poorer countries in the Global South, many now facing the worst impacts of climate change, have contributed negligibly to carbon levels in the atmosphere.At COP15 in Copenhagen, in 2009, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced to much fanfare and acclaim that $100 billion per year would be made available to developing nations by 2020.“The G7 countries owe $13.3 trillion to the low- and middle-income countries. That’s massive,” Amitabh Behar, interim executive director of Oxfam International, said on the Democracy Now! news hour last May, as the G7 group of wealthy nations was meeting in Hiroshima. “If you increasingly look at the massive damages happening because of the climate crisis, particularly in the South, somebody needs to take responsibility for that. It’s fairly clear, report after report, that the G7 countries are significantly responsible for these emissions. At this moment, they owe $8.7 trillion in terms of loss and damages. That’s something that must be put up front by the G7 countries, but that’s not happening.”The “Loss and Damages” Behar refers to is the term used at the COPs to describe the current devastation being inflicted by climate change on frontline communities around the world. At COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt last year, member nations agreed to a voluntary mechanism to provide “loss and damage” funding to impacted countries.“Loss and Damage” falls under a broader concept used by climate justice activists to hold polluting countries accountable, called “climate reparations.” This arose in a recent House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing, when the Republican chair, Brian Mast was questioning John Kerry, President Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate:Mast: “Are you planning to commit America to climate reparations? That is to say, we have to pay some other country because they had a flood or they had a hurricane or a typhoon or a wildfire.”Kerry: “No, under no circumstances.”Mast: “Very good. I’m glad to hear you say that.”While Kerry and Republican subcommittee members sparred over just about every other topic, they emphatically agreed on that key point: the United States would take no responsibility as the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gasses.With the string of catastrophes striking the northern hemisphere, the science is unequivocal: the rapidly worsening climate crisis is making these weather events more frequent and more intense.Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodell, author of the new book, “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” said on Democracy Now!,  “We have not at all come close to grasping the scale and scope of the crisis we’re facing.” Goodell was amplifying what he wrote in his recent New York Times essay, “All living things, from humans to hummingbirds, share one simple fate. If the temperature they’re used to rises too far, too fast, they die.”

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan Record-shattering temperatures are baking the northern hemisphere, causing death, injury and displacement. From China to Europe to the United States, regions are breaking not only high temperature records, but are also surpassing the record number of consecutive days of life-threatening heat. Phoenix, Arizona passed 20 days with high temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Massive rain storms and typhoons are flooding cities and towns from India to southern China to New England. Raging Canadian wildfires are blanketing the eastern United States with thick smoke that can cause long-term respiratory damage. “The extreme weather – an increasingly frequent occurrence in our warming climate – is having a major impact on human health, ecosystems, economies, agriculture, energy and water supplies,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas commented on Wednesday, adding, “We have to step up efforts to help society adapt to what is unfortunately becoming the new normal.” When Taalas says “help society” he isn’t referring to any particular country; he means human society, globally. A truly effective solution to the climate crisis must be global, based on the rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. This transition is going to be costly, but the cost of doing nothing would be far greater. The question is, who is going to pay? It has long been acknowledged inside the annual United Nations climate negotiations that wealthy nations have contributed more to the climate crisis than poorer nations. These summits are referred to as “COPs,” for “Conference of Parties” to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC. In the often complex parlance of the COPs, this concept is called “Common But Differentiated Responsibilities,” recognizing that countries like the United States and those of western Europe grew rich by burning fossil fuels with abandon for over a century, while poorer countries in the Global South, many now facing the worst impacts of climate change, have contributed negligibly to carbon levels in the atmosphere. At COP15 in Copenhagen, in 2009, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced to much fanfare and acclaim that $100 billion per year would be made available to developing nations by 2020. “The G7 countries owe $13.3 trillion to the low- and middle-income countries. That’s massive,” Amitabh Behar, interim executive director of Oxfam International, said on the Democracy Now! news hour last May, as the G7 group of wealthy nations was meeting in Hiroshima. “If you increasingly look at the massive damages happening because of the climate crisis, particularly in the South, somebody needs to take responsibility for that. It’s fairly clear, report after report, that the G7 countries are significantly responsible for these emissions. At this moment, they owe $8.7 trillion in terms of loss and damages. That’s something that must be put up front by the G7 countries, but that’s not happening.” The “Loss and Damages” Behar refers to is the term used at the COPs to describe the current devastation being inflicted by climate change on frontline communities around the world. At COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt last year, member nations agreed to a voluntary mechanism to provide “loss and damage” funding to impacted countries. “Loss and Damage” falls under a broader concept used by climate justice activists to hold polluting countries accountable, called “climate reparations.” This arose in a recent House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing, when the Republican chair, Brian Mast was questioning John Kerry, President Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate: Mast: “Are you planning to commit America to climate reparations? That is to say, we have to pay some other country because they had a flood or they had a hurricane or a typhoon or a wildfire.” Kerry: “No, under no circumstances.” Mast: “Very good. I’m glad to hear you say that.” While Kerry and Republican subcommittee members sparred over just about every other topic, they emphatically agreed on that key point: the United States would take no responsibility as the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gasses. With the string of catastrophes striking the northern hemisphere, the science is unequivocal: the rapidly worsening climate crisis is making these weather events more frequent and more intense. Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodell, author of the new book, “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” said on Democracy Now!, “We have not at all come close to grasping the scale and scope of the crisis we’re facing.” Goodell was amplifying what he wrote in his recent New York Times essay, “All living things, from humans to hummingbirds, share one simple fate. If the temperature they’re used to rises too far, too fast, they die.”

Climate Reparations Won't Kill Us, but the Heat Will

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis MoynihanA wave of exclusion is sweeping the nation, in state legislatures and federal courts, including the Supreme Court. Major targets of this marginalization are members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Last week, a federal appeals court affirmed Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement after the decision, “This ruling is beyond disappointing and a heartbreaking development for thousands of transgender youth, their doctors, and their families…. We will continue to challenge this law until it is permanently defeated.”While trans people are most openly and consistently in the crosshairs, another group is suffering as well: intersex people. A remarkable documentary called Every Body is now hitting theaters, exposing the extent of the abuse heaped on this community, highlighting the vibrant movement for justice and human rights for intersex people growing worldwide. “Every Body” is a powerful, must-see documentary directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Julie Cohen.According to Planned Parenthood, intersex — the “I” in LGBTQIA+ — is an umbrella term that describes bodies that fall outside the strict male/female binary. This could be “a person with both ovarian and testicular tissues. Other intersex people have combinations of chromosomes that are different than XY.” An estimated 1.7% of people have some intersex characteristics.Historically, the medical establishment in the U.S. subjected most intersex people to surgery to “correct” them, often as children or infants. Many children were not told they are intersex or that they had an operation. Others were told to keep quiet by doctors and/or their parents to avoid stigma and shame.While trans youth are increasingly being prevented from seeking gender-affirming care, including surgery, intersex people are often subjected to surgery without their knowledge. Many trans care bans make an exception to allow surgery on intersex infants and children, which too often is done without real informed consent.The medical and emotional trauma resulting from these nonconsensual surgeries has been immense. “Every Body” features three remarkable intersex activists: River Gallo (they/them), Sean Saifa Wall (he/him) and Alicia Roth Weigel (she/they). They highlight the wide variation in how intersexuality presents itself and the incredible courage underpinning the movement for intersex inclusion and justice.“On my medical records, it was noted that I had a small phallus and undescended testes,” Saifa Wall said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “They just made the arbitrary decision to assign me as female and raise me as a girl, but I never felt like a girl.”“My mom had two children before me who also had AIS [Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome],” Saifa continued. “They were born during the ’60s, when the protocol was to remove undescended testes. Those surgeries were done in infancy…What I experienced, what other people have experienced, are civil rights and human rights violations.”“Every Body” includes intersex activist Alicia Roth Weigel’s 2017 testimony before a Texas Senate committee in opposition to bills that would have discriminated against transgender people and their ability to use public restrooms:“I have XY chromosomes…I was born phenotypically female on the outside with a woman’s anatomy, but with internal testes instead of ovaries. They were subsequently removed.”Roth Weigel appeared on Democracy Now! and explained, “I am a proud Texas woman who is fighting against our high rates of maternal mortality in the state, fighting for body autonomy across the spectrum of all human rights, including free and fair access to abortions. I think bringing the intersex movement intersectionally into the women’s movement is a really important fight.”Intersex activists are fighting for their rights. Roth Weigel explained, “New York City was the first city to pass an ordinance that formally condemned surgeries and outlawed them in New York Health + Hospitals public health system. It also mandated a public awareness campaign for parents and doctors of intersex children, so that they can make better-informed decisions than any of our parents were able to, often at the hands of misinformation provided to them by the medical community.” This ordinance has now been replicated in Austin, Texas, and is now being considered in the New York state legislature.“The state of New York is going to be running a public awareness campaign to raise visibility of the existence of people like the three of us and so many others in our movement,” declared Roth Weigel.Director Julie Cohen said she hopes “Every Body” promotes “more openness, more understanding, less shame and secrecy, more pride.”“Understanding that there is a broad spectrum of what normal can be and what beauty and pride can be … is part of what this film is all about.”

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan A wave of exclusion is sweeping the nation, in state legislatures and federal courts, including the Supreme Court. Major targets of this marginalization are members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Last week, a federal appeals court affirmed Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement after the decision, “This ruling is beyond disappointing and a heartbreaking development for thousands of transgender youth, their doctors, and their families…. We will continue to challenge this law until it is permanently defeated.” While trans people are most openly and consistently in the crosshairs, another group is suffering as well: intersex people. A remarkable documentary called Every Body is now hitting theaters, exposing the extent of the abuse heaped on this community, highlighting the vibrant movement for justice and human rights for intersex people growing worldwide. “Every Body” is a powerful, must-see documentary directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Julie Cohen. According to Planned Parenthood, intersex — the “I” in LGBTQIA+ — is an umbrella term that describes bodies that fall outside the strict male/female binary. This could be “a person with both ovarian and testicular tissues. Other intersex people have combinations of chromosomes that are different than XY.” An estimated 1.7% of people have some intersex characteristics. Historically, the medical establishment in the U.S. subjected most intersex people to surgery to “correct” them, often as children or infants. Many children were not told they are intersex or that they had an operation. Others were told to keep quiet by doctors and/or their parents to avoid stigma and shame. While trans youth are increasingly being prevented from seeking gender-affirming care, including surgery, intersex people are often subjected to surgery without their knowledge. Many trans care bans make an exception to allow surgery on intersex infants and children, which too often is done without real informed consent. The medical and emotional trauma resulting from these nonconsensual surgeries has been immense. “Every Body” features three remarkable intersex activists: River Gallo (they/them), Sean Saifa Wall (he/him) and Alicia Roth Weigel (she/they). They highlight the wide variation in how intersexuality presents itself and the incredible courage underpinning the movement for intersex inclusion and justice. “On my medical records, it was noted that I had a small phallus and undescended testes,” Saifa Wall said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “They just made the arbitrary decision to assign me as female and raise me as a girl, but I never felt like a girl.” “My mom had two children before me who also had AIS [Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome],” Saifa continued. “They were born during the ’60s, when the protocol was to remove undescended testes. Those surgeries were done in infancy…What I experienced, what other people have experienced, are civil rights and human rights violations.” “Every Body” includes intersex activist Alicia Roth Weigel’s 2017 testimony before a Texas Senate committee in opposition to bills that would have discriminated against transgender people and their ability to use public restrooms: “I have XY chromosomes…I was born phenotypically female on the outside with a woman’s anatomy, but with internal testes instead of ovaries. They were subsequently removed.” Roth Weigel appeared on Democracy Now! and explained, “I am a proud Texas woman who is fighting against our high rates of maternal mortality in the state, fighting for body autonomy across the spectrum of all human rights, including free and fair access to abortions. I think bringing the intersex movement intersectionally into the women’s movement is a really important fight.” Intersex activists are fighting for their rights. Roth Weigel explained, “New York City was the first city to pass an ordinance that formally condemned surgeries and outlawed them in New York Health + Hospitals public health system. It also mandated a public awareness campaign for parents and doctors of intersex children, so that they can make better-informed decisions than any of our parents were able to, often at the hands of misinformation provided to them by the medical community.” This ordinance has now been replicated in Austin, Texas, and is now being considered in the New York state legislature. “The state of New York is going to be running a public awareness campaign to raise visibility of the existence of people like the three of us and so many others in our movement,” declared Roth Weigel. Director Julie Cohen said she hopes “Every Body” promotes “more openness, more understanding, less shame and secrecy, more pride.” “Understanding that there is a broad spectrum of what normal can be and what beauty and pride can be … is part of what this film is all about.”

Everybody Should See “Every Body”

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” asked Frederick Douglass, speaking to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society on July 5th, 1852. Douglass escaped slavery around the age of 20, and, by the time he gave this speech at 34, was a renowned abolitionist, author and orator. “I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham.” Douglass’ powerful words and tireless organizing helped educate and mobilize the nation for abolition, to support the Underground Railroad, and, ultimately, to wage an incredibly costly civil war to permanently stamp out slavery. His words, indeed his life, stand as a striking example of why we need a deep, critical understanding of our unvarnished national history if we hope to address the problems that now confront us. Yet a well-organized movement is spreading to obscure and obliterate much of our history, to ban books, and to compel the teaching of a sanitized rendition of our difficult and often bloody past.One of the seminal texts that focuses on ignored or suppressed U.S. history is the classic book by the late historian Howard Zinn, “A People’s History of the United States.” Since its publication in 1980, more than four million copies have been printed. The book presents a sweeping account of everything from the genocide perpetrated by Christopher Columbus, to the forgotten heroes in the struggles for labor rights, women’s rights, and the peace movement. The book became so popular that Zinn and publisher Anthony Arnove put out a companion volume, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, packed with source material, including writings, speeches and more from scores of historical figures that “have mostly been shut out of the orthodox histories, the major media, the standard textbooks, the controlled culture,” as they write in the book’s introduction.“When I became a historian, I already knew that I was not going to be neutral,” Howard Zinn explained on the Democracy Now! news hour in 1999.Zinn and Arnove began producing live readings from “Voices,” with prominent actors and writers presenting these historical texts, bringing them to life. Oscar-winner James Earl Jones presented Frederick Douglass’s critique of the Fourth of July, in his well-known basso profundo:“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, today, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”Howard Zinn died in 2010, but his work continues. Anthony Arnove and Haley Pessin co-edited a new volume, “Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century: Documents of Hope and Resistance.” Like its predecessor, the book also covers movements, but from recent decades, including the opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq to the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri for racial justice to Occupy Wall Street, the MeToo movement and resistance to the Trump administration.“I was lucky to have A People’s History of the United States as one of the textbooks that we read,” Pessin said on Democracy Now!  “I really read it voraciously, in a way that no textbook had ever really grabbed my attention.”That very influence on young students is the target of the fast-growing far-right organization called “Moms for Liberty.” Claiming to have grown to 285 chapters with 100,000 members since its founding in 2021, the group seeks to control school curriculum, banning topics its white leadership deems offensive. Moms for Liberty just held its annual convention in Philadelphia – the birthplace of the U.S. Constitution and the first city that Frederick Douglass reached in his daring escape from slavery in 1838. Most of the major GOP presidential contenders addressed the pro-censorship gathering, including Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, while thousands protested outside.As threats to free speech and the teaching of our nation’s genuine history mount, it is worth recalling the answer Benjamin Franklin gave to a member of the public who asked him in 1787, about the new constitution he had just helped draft, “Do we have a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic madam, if you can keep it.”

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” asked Frederick Douglass, speaking to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society on July 5th, 1852. Douglass escaped slavery around the age of 20, and, by the time he gave this speech at 34, was a renowned abolitionist, author and orator. “I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham.” Douglass’ powerful words and tireless organizing helped educate and mobilize the nation for abolition, to support the Underground Railroad, and, ultimately, to wage an incredibly costly civil war to permanently stamp out slavery. His words, indeed his life, stand as a striking example of why we need a deep, critical understanding of our unvarnished national history if we hope to address the problems that now confront us. Yet a well-organized movement is spreading to obscure and obliterate much of our history, to ban books, and to compel the teaching of a sanitized rendition of our difficult and often bloody past. One of the seminal texts that focuses on ignored or suppressed U.S. history is the classic book by the late historian Howard Zinn, “A People’s History of the United States.” Since its publication in 1980, more than four million copies have been printed. The book presents a sweeping account of everything from the genocide perpetrated by Christopher Columbus, to the forgotten heroes in the struggles for labor rights, women’s rights, and the peace movement. The book became so popular that Zinn and publisher Anthony Arnove put out a companion volume, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, packed with source material, including writings, speeches and more from scores of historical figures that “have mostly been shut out of the orthodox histories, the major media, the standard textbooks, the controlled culture,” as they write in the book’s introduction. “When I became a historian, I already knew that I was not going to be neutral,” Howard Zinn explained on the Democracy Now! news hour in 1999. Zinn and Arnove began producing live readings from “Voices,” with prominent actors and writers presenting these historical texts, bringing them to life. Oscar-winner James Earl Jones presented Frederick Douglass’s critique of the Fourth of July, in his well-known basso profundo: “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, today, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.” Howard Zinn died in 2010, but his work continues. Anthony Arnove and Haley Pessin co-edited a new volume, “Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century: Documents of Hope and Resistance.” Like its predecessor, the book also covers movements, but from recent decades, including the opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq to the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri for racial justice to Occupy Wall Street, the MeToo movement and resistance to the Trump administration. “I was lucky to have A People’s History of the United States as one of the textbooks that we read,” Pessin said on Democracy Now! “I really read it voraciously, in a way that no textbook had ever really grabbed my attention.” That very influence on young students is the target of the fast-growing far-right organization called “Moms for Liberty.” Claiming to have grown to 285 chapters with 100,000 members since its founding in 2021, the group seeks to control school curriculum, banning topics its white leadership deems offensive. Moms for Liberty just held its annual convention in Philadelphia – the birthplace of the U.S. Constitution and the first city that Frederick Douglass reached in his daring escape from slavery in 1838. Most of the major GOP presidential contenders addressed the pro-censorship gathering, including Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, while thousands protested outside. As threats to free speech and the teaching of our nation’s genuine history mount, it is worth recalling the answer Benjamin Franklin gave to a member of the public who asked him in 1787, about the new constitution he had just helped draft, “Do we have a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic madam, if you can keep it.”

After the July 4th Fireworks, History Itself is Still Under Attack

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis MoynihanPresident Joe Biden has embraced the term “Bidenomics,” despite its origins as attempted disparagement from pundits in the fever swamps of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages and other MAGA sinkholes. Biden invoked “Bidenomics” in an address he gave Wednesday, happily taking credit for the state of the economy. In his opening remarks, he referenced the great American poet Carl Sandburg’s 1916 description of Chicago as the “City of the Big Shoulders,” in praise of the region’s muscular workforce. While recent economic numbers may give Biden reason to wax poetic, they also mask the suffering of millions of Americans shackled by poverty.“Poverty is America’s death sentence, and we won’t be silent anymore,” Bishop William Barber intoned as he opened the Poor People’s Campaign Moral Poverty Action Congress on June 19th in Washington, DC. Barber had just retired after 30 years as the activist Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina. After leading historic Moral Monday marches on the North Carolina legislature in 2013, he went on to co-found the Poor People’s Campaign, which borrows its name from the organizing drive launched by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 – cut short by King’s assassination. Barber, whose deep voice and rhetorical style is often compared to King’s, is calling for a “Third Reconstruction,” to build political power for and improve the lives of poor and low-wealth people.The first reconstruction followed the U.S. Civil War, from 1865 until 1877, when federal troops were pulled out of the former Confederate states, ushering in a century of white supremacist terrorism and oppression, aided by the Ku Klux Klan. The second reconstruction occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, with the gains achieved by the civil rights movement.Working with Democratic Congresswomen Barbara Lee of California and Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, Barber is promoting their House Resolution 532: “Third Reconstruction: Fully addressing poverty and low wages from the bottom up.”“Here are 20 policies,” Barber said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “Does the Congress have the resolve — not a Democratic resolve or Republican resolve, but a human resolve, a moral resolve — to eradicate poverty and other systems of injustice, which can be done? This death is unnecessary. It is policy murder.”Central to Barber’s argument is the grim fact that poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Wealth inequality is at an all-time high, as detailed in fact sheets released by the Poor People’s Campaign with the Institute for Policy Studies. Billionaire wealth increased by $1.5 trillion over the past two years, while, with the cancellation of pandemic relief programs, poverty is increasing. The Childhood Tax Credit alone cut childhood poverty in half in the U.S. Its cancellation pushed 3.5 million children back into poverty. In New York City alone, more than 100,000 people are in homeless shelters.“Living wages could stop death,” Barber explained. “Healthcare could stop death. Child poverty tax credits could stop death. Redirecting the war economy could stop death. Voting rights could stop death.”Barber espouses “fusion politics,” bringing together people of different races, ethnicities and classes in concerted grassroots action.“In this coming year, 2024, we’re planning 30 major actions, nonviolent, at state capitols. We’re planning on June 15th of next year, a massive Poor People’s, Low-Wage Workers and Moral March on Washington, D.C.,” Barber said. “And to the polls, because we’re going to be mobilizing the 87 million poor and low-wealth people in this country. Poor and low-wealth people now make up over 30% of the electorate, generally, and over 40% of the electorate in battleground states. In most places, poor and low-wealth people are not voting because they feel like the system has just abandoned them.”At the opening of the Moral Poverty Action Congress, Barber, like Biden, invoked a renowned American poet, reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of LIfe.” The poem included Longfellow’s directive “to act, that each to-morrow 	Find us farther than to-day.”In the same book with the poem “Chicago,” Carl Sandburg, who grew up poor himself and championed working people throughout his life, included another poem that commented on the constant attacks on the working class, and the power of the masses when provoked.“I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?”In the century since these Sandburg poems were published, the People have risen up many times, demanding change. The coming years will be no different. As Bishop Barber and his allies poetically affirm at every rally, “Forward ever, backwards never.”

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan President Joe Biden has embraced the term “Bidenomics,” despite its origins as attempted disparagement from pundits in the fever swamps of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages and other MAGA sinkholes. Biden invoked “Bidenomics” in an address he gave Wednesday, happily taking credit for the state of the economy. In his opening remarks, he referenced the great American poet Carl Sandburg’s 1916 description of Chicago as the “City of the Big Shoulders,” in praise of the region’s muscular workforce. While recent economic numbers may give Biden reason to wax poetic, they also mask the suffering of millions of Americans shackled by poverty. “Poverty is America’s death sentence, and we won’t be silent anymore,” Bishop William Barber intoned as he opened the Poor People’s Campaign Moral Poverty Action Congress on June 19th in Washington, DC. Barber had just retired after 30 years as the activist Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina. After leading historic Moral Monday marches on the North Carolina legislature in 2013, he went on to co-found the Poor People’s Campaign, which borrows its name from the organizing drive launched by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 – cut short by King’s assassination. Barber, whose deep voice and rhetorical style is often compared to King’s, is calling for a “Third Reconstruction,” to build political power for and improve the lives of poor and low-wealth people. The first reconstruction followed the U.S. Civil War, from 1865 until 1877, when federal troops were pulled out of the former Confederate states, ushering in a century of white supremacist terrorism and oppression, aided by the Ku Klux Klan. The second reconstruction occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, with the gains achieved by the civil rights movement. Working with Democratic Congresswomen Barbara Lee of California and Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, Barber is promoting their House Resolution 532: “Third Reconstruction: Fully addressing poverty and low wages from the bottom up.” “Here are 20 policies,” Barber said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “Does the Congress have the resolve — not a Democratic resolve or Republican resolve, but a human resolve, a moral resolve — to eradicate poverty and other systems of injustice, which can be done? This death is unnecessary. It is policy murder.” Central to Barber’s argument is the grim fact that poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Wealth inequality is at an all-time high, as detailed in fact sheets released by the Poor People’s Campaign with the Institute for Policy Studies. Billionaire wealth increased by $1.5 trillion over the past two years, while, with the cancellation of pandemic relief programs, poverty is increasing. The Childhood Tax Credit alone cut childhood poverty in half in the U.S. Its cancellation pushed 3.5 million children back into poverty. In New York City alone, more than 100,000 people are in homeless shelters. “Living wages could stop death,” Barber explained. “Healthcare could stop death. Child poverty tax credits could stop death. Redirecting the war economy could stop death. Voting rights could stop death.” Barber espouses “fusion politics,” bringing together people of different races, ethnicities and classes in concerted grassroots action. “In this coming year, 2024, we’re planning 30 major actions, nonviolent, at state capitols. We’re planning on June 15th of next year, a massive Poor People’s, Low-Wage Workers and Moral March on Washington, D.C.,” Barber said. “And to the polls, because we’re going to be mobilizing the 87 million poor and low-wealth people in this country. Poor and low-wealth people now make up over 30% of the electorate, generally, and over 40% of the electorate in battleground states. In most places, poor and low-wealth people are not voting because they feel like the system has just abandoned them.” At the opening of the Moral Poverty Action Congress, Barber, like Biden, invoked a renowned American poet, reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of LIfe.” The poem included Longfellow’s directive “to act, that each to-morrow 	Find us farther than to-day.” In the same book with the poem “Chicago,” Carl Sandburg, who grew up poor himself and championed working people throughout his life, included another poem that commented on the constant attacks on the working class, and the power of the masses when provoked. “I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?” In the century since these Sandburg poems were published, the People have risen up many times, demanding change. The coming years will be no different. As Bishop Barber and his allies poetically affirm at every rally, “Forward ever, backwards never.”

Bidenomics and the American Death Sentence of Poverty

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis MoynihanTitan and Adriana are two vessels recently lost at sea, four days and 4,000 miles apart. The five men who lost their lives on the Titan have been getting wall-to-wall coverage in the media worldwide. Meanwhile, the estimated 700 who died when the Adriana sank off the coast of Greece, mostly women and children, have been essentially forgotten. Passengers on the Titan were wealthy; two were billionaires. Each had paid $250,000 for an adventure of a lifetime, a deepsea dive to view the wreckage of the Titanic, the “unsinkable” passenger liner that sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. Those crammed onto the ramshackle Adriana fishing boat were seeking not adventure but refuge from war, poverty, climate change or any of the many other life-threatening crises that force people to flee their homes with little more than the clothes on their back. They paid human traffickers to ferry them from Libya to Europe.Perhaps the most notable difference between these two disasters was how the world responded to them. Governments immediately spent millions mounting a search and rescue operation to find the Titan, submerged somewhere in the north Atlantic, deep below an area twice the size of Connecticut. Media outlets provided continuous coverage, with one launching a countdown clock predicting when the submersible’s oxygen would run out. The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy and the Canadian government sent planes and boats to the search area. France and Canada each deployed deep sea robots. People around the world watched and waited breathlessly.Meanwhile, in Greece, officials knew the exact location of the overcrowded, disabled Adriana. Shocking details are now emerging of its sinking on June 14th. First-hand accounts, reported in El Pais, suggest the Greek Coast Guard could have saved the doomed vessel’s 400-750 passengers, but opted not to.El Pais reported:“The Greek authorities had been aware of the ship’s presence since 11 a.m. on June 13 and, in addition to keeping it under surveillance, ordered two ships in the area to deliver food and water to those onboard. They never activated a rescue operation, despite the conditions in which the ship was sailing, not even when the ship’s engine broke down at 1:40 a.m. Between 2:04 a.m. and 2:19 a.m., the old metal fishing trawler jolted violently and then disappeared right before the eyes of the Greek coastguard. It is still not clear what happened, but the sea swallowed everything up.”(The Adriana’s sinking at 2:19 am grimly paralleled that of the Titanic, which sank at 2:20 am. Both sank in water over 12,000 feet deep.)Most or all of Adriana’s roughly 100 survivors were helped not by Greek authorities but by a private yacht that had responded to the distress call. Among the survivors were 47 Syrians, 43 Egyptians, 12 Pakistanis and two Palestinians. All were men, as they were traveling above deck on the Adriana. Hundreds of women and children were trapped below deck, and went down with the ship.“I am struck by the alarming level of tolerance to serious human rights violations against refugees, asylum seekers and migrants that has developed across Europe” Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, said on June 19th, one day before World Refugee Day. “Reports of human rights violations…are now so frequent that they hardly register in the public consciousness.”Mijatović continued, “Last week’s shipwreck off the Greek coast is yet another reminder that, despite many warnings, the lives of people at sea remain at risk in the face of insufficient rescue capacity and coordination, a lack of safe and legal routes and solidarity, and the criminalisation of NGOs trying to provide life-saving assistance. Elsewhere in Europe, pushbacks at land and sea borders, violence against refugees and migrants, denial of access to asylum, deprivation of humanitarian assistance and the harassment of refugee rights defenders, are widely documented.”The International Migration Organization’s Missing Migrant Project puts the Mediterranean migrant death toll at over 27,000 since 2014. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that close to 1,200 have perished so far this year in dangerous sea crossings to Spain, Italy and Greece. These deaths, about the same number as died on the Titanic, are surely an undercount. Just this week, 39 migrants are believed to have drowned attempting to cross from Morocco to Spain’s Canary Islands.The Titan and the Adriana disasters were very different, but both were preventable. All travelers, whether migrants or millionaires, deserve rescue. The global response to the Titan’s disappearance should be the model for how we respond to migrant vessels in distress. Knowing the names and the plights of those seeking refuge is what makes the world care.

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan Titan and Adriana are two vessels recently lost at sea, four days and 4,000 miles apart. The five men who lost their lives on the Titan have been getting wall-to-wall coverage in the media worldwide. Meanwhile, the estimated 700 who died when the Adriana sank off the coast of Greece, mostly women and children, have been essentially forgotten. Passengers on the Titan were wealthy; two were billionaires. Each had paid $250,000 for an adventure of a lifetime, a deepsea dive to view the wreckage of the Titanic, the “unsinkable” passenger liner that sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. Those crammed onto the ramshackle Adriana fishing boat were seeking not adventure but refuge from war, poverty, climate change or any of the many other life-threatening crises that force people to flee their homes with little more than the clothes on their back. They paid human traffickers to ferry them from Libya to Europe. Perhaps the most notable difference between these two disasters was how the world responded to them. Governments immediately spent millions mounting a search and rescue operation to find the Titan, submerged somewhere in the north Atlantic, deep below an area twice the size of Connecticut. Media outlets provided continuous coverage, with one launching a countdown clock predicting when the submersible’s oxygen would run out. The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy and the Canadian government sent planes and boats to the search area. France and Canada each deployed deep sea robots. People around the world watched and waited breathlessly. Meanwhile, in Greece, officials knew the exact location of the overcrowded, disabled Adriana. Shocking details are now emerging of its sinking on June 14th. First-hand accounts, reported in El Pais, suggest the Greek Coast Guard could have saved the doomed vessel’s 400-750 passengers, but opted not to. El Pais reported: “The Greek authorities had been aware of the ship’s presence since 11 a.m. on June 13 and, in addition to keeping it under surveillance, ordered two ships in the area to deliver food and water to those onboard. They never activated a rescue operation, despite the conditions in which the ship was sailing, not even when the ship’s engine broke down at 1:40 a.m. Between 2:04 a.m. and 2:19 a.m., the old metal fishing trawler jolted violently and then disappeared right before the eyes of the Greek coastguard. It is still not clear what happened, but the sea swallowed everything up.” (The Adriana’s sinking at 2:19 am grimly paralleled that of the Titanic, which sank at 2:20 am. Both sank in water over 12,000 feet deep.) Most or all of Adriana’s roughly 100 survivors were helped not by Greek authorities but by a private yacht that had responded to the distress call. Among the survivors were 47 Syrians, 43 Egyptians, 12 Pakistanis and two Palestinians. All were men, as they were traveling above deck on the Adriana. Hundreds of women and children were trapped below deck, and went down with the ship. “I am struck by the alarming level of tolerance to serious human rights violations against refugees, asylum seekers and migrants that has developed across Europe” Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, said on June 19th, one day before World Refugee Day. “Reports of human rights violations…are now so frequent that they hardly register in the public consciousness.” Mijatović continued, “Last week’s shipwreck off the Greek coast is yet another reminder that, despite many warnings, the lives of people at sea remain at risk in the face of insufficient rescue capacity and coordination, a lack of safe and legal routes and solidarity, and the criminalisation of NGOs trying to provide life-saving assistance. Elsewhere in Europe, pushbacks at land and sea borders, violence against refugees and migrants, denial of access to asylum, deprivation of humanitarian assistance and the harassment of refugee rights defenders, are widely documented.” The International Migration Organization’s Missing Migrant Project puts the Mediterranean migrant death toll at over 27,000 since 2014. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that close to 1,200 have perished so far this year in dangerous sea crossings to Spain, Italy and Greece. These deaths, about the same number as died on the Titanic, are surely an undercount. Just this week, 39 migrants are believed to have drowned attempting to cross from Morocco to Spain’s Canary Islands. The Titan and the Adriana disasters were very different, but both were preventable. All travelers, whether migrants or millionaires, deserve rescue. The global response to the Titan’s disappearance should be the model for how we respond to migrant vessels in distress. Knowing the names and the plights of those seeking refuge is what makes the world care.

A Titanic Disparity in How the World Responds to Maritime Disasters

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis MoynihanJuneteenth is the newest federal holiday, signed into law by President Biden in 2021. It commemorates June 19th, 1865, the day enslaved people in Texas first learned they were free, more than two and a half years after they were declared free by President Lincoln in his Emancipation Proclamation.For generations, formerly enslaved people and their descendants have observed Juneteenth. It has grown over the decades, embraced by an increasingly diverse population that realizes its historical importance. But despite Juneteenth’s long overdue acceptance as a federal holiday, the Black population of the United States still suffers intolerable levels of discrimination, de facto segregation, health and wealth disparity, and many other symptoms of systemic racism.Olympic track and field star Tori Bowie was just 32 years old when she died at home last month. The Orange County, Florida medical examiner reported she was eight months pregnant and in labor when she died, most likely from eclampsia, a complication of pregnancy. Bowie, who was Black, won bronze, silver and gold medals in the 2016 Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro. The CDC recently marked Black Maternal Health Week in April, noting that Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women.Bowie’s Olympic teammate Tianna Bartoletta wrote after learning of her death, “As of June 2023…3 of the 4 members of Team USA’s 4×100m relay team…who ran the second fastest time in history, and brought home the gold medal…have nearly died or did die in childbirth. We deserve better. #BlackMaternalHealthCrisis.”In Colorado, Jor’Dell Richardson had just finished 8th grade at Aurora West College Preparatory Academy. On June 1st, the young African American boy was chased into an alley by two Aurora police officers and tackled. “You got me,” Jor’Dell can be heard saying on the police body camera footage. An instant later, an officer shot him in the abdomen. Screaming in pain, Jor’Dell shouted, “I’m sorry! Please…I can’t breathe…” He died in pain on the ground.Aurora, a large, diverse working-class and immigrant suburb of Denver, is where police killed Elijah McClain on August 24, 2019. A call to police reported a “suspicious black male” who was “acting weird.” In fact he was heading home from the store after buying iced tea. The police response was caught on body camera. Elijah was 23-years-old, he was 5’6” tall and weighed only 140 pounds. He was believed to be on the autism spectrum. Elijah volunteered at the local animal shelter, playing violin for the stray dogs and cats. Moments after police arrived, he was tackled and put in a choke hold. “My name is Elijah McClain … I’m an introvert and I’m different. [Sobbing] I’m just different, that’s all…Why are you attacking me?”“I can’t breathe,” Elijah McClain cried. Emergency Medical Technicians arrived and injected him with a lethal dose of ketamine, a sedative. He never regained consciousness and died in the hospital several days later. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, a violin vigil was held outside the Aurora Municipal Center, honoring Elijah McClain’s memory with classical music. Aurora riot police attacked the vigil.Three of the officers and two of the EMTs involved with McClain’s death have been criminally charged, with trials scheduled to start in September.And in New York City, Jordan Neely, a Black street performer and Michael Jackson impersonator, was assaulted and killed while on the subway on May 1st. He was crying out that he was hungry and thirsty. Daniel Penny, a white  24-year-old former U.S. Marine, put it in, in a chokehold, claiming that Neely was threatening passengers. Two other men joined in the vigilante action, pinning Neely’s hands and legs as he struggled to breathe. Some of the assault captured on cell phone video shows Neely struggling for several minutes before going limp. His death was ruled a homicide, caused by “compression of neck (chokehold).”Daniel Penny was questioned by police then released. Following growing outrage and protests, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Penny with second degree manslaughter, more than a week later. A grand jury has now formally indicted Penny.These three cases, the deaths of Tori Bowie, Jor’Dell Richardson and Jordan Neely, each under different circumstances within weeks of each other, are all connected by the painful throughline of the Black experience in America, stretching back to 1619, the year the first ship arrived on the shores of Virginia delivering enslaved Africans.White supremacists are trying to obliterate that history, to prevent it from being taught. We should celebrate Juneteenth, but we must also remember the bloody history that led to that day in Galveston, and commit to fighting racism as it exists today.

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan Juneteenth is the newest federal holiday, signed into law by President Biden in 2021. It commemorates June 19th, 1865, the day enslaved people in Texas first learned they were free, more than two and a half years after they were declared free by President Lincoln in his Emancipation Proclamation. For generations, formerly enslaved people and their descendants have observed Juneteenth. It has grown over the decades, embraced by an increasingly diverse population that realizes its historical importance. But despite Juneteenth’s long overdue acceptance as a federal holiday, the Black population of the United States still suffers intolerable levels of discrimination, de facto segregation, health and wealth disparity, and many other symptoms of systemic racism. Olympic track and field star Tori Bowie was just 32 years old when she died at home last month. The Orange County, Florida medical examiner reported she was eight months pregnant and in labor when she died, most likely from eclampsia, a complication of pregnancy. Bowie, who was Black, won bronze, silver and gold medals in the 2016 Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro. The CDC recently marked Black Maternal Health Week in April, noting that Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women. Bowie’s Olympic teammate Tianna Bartoletta wrote after learning of her death, “As of June 2023…3 of the 4 members of Team USA’s 4×100m relay team…who ran the second fastest time in history, and brought home the gold medal…have nearly died or did die in childbirth. We deserve better. #BlackMaternalHealthCrisis.” In Colorado, Jor’Dell Richardson had just finished 8th grade at Aurora West College Preparatory Academy. On June 1st, the young African American boy was chased into an alley by two Aurora police officers and tackled. “You got me,” Jor’Dell can be heard saying on the police body camera footage. An instant later, an officer shot him in the abdomen. Screaming in pain, Jor’Dell shouted, “I’m sorry! Please…I can’t breathe…” He died in pain on the ground. Aurora, a large, diverse working-class and immigrant suburb of Denver, is where police killed Elijah McClain on August 24, 2019. A call to police reported a “suspicious black male” who was “acting weird.” In fact he was heading home from the store after buying iced tea. The police response was caught on body camera. Elijah was 23-years-old, he was 5’6” tall and weighed only 140 pounds. He was believed to be on the autism spectrum. Elijah volunteered at the local animal shelter, playing violin for the stray dogs and cats. Moments after police arrived, he was tackled and put in a choke hold. “My name is Elijah McClain … I’m an introvert and I’m different. [Sobbing] I’m just different, that’s all…Why are you attacking me?” “I can’t breathe,” Elijah McClain cried. Emergency Medical Technicians arrived and injected him with a lethal dose of ketamine, a sedative. He never regained consciousness and died in the hospital several days later. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, a violin vigil was held outside the Aurora Municipal Center, honoring Elijah McClain’s memory with classical music. Aurora riot police attacked the vigil. Three of the officers and two of the EMTs involved with McClain’s death have been criminally charged, with trials scheduled to start in September. And in New York City, Jordan Neely, a Black street performer and Michael Jackson impersonator, was assaulted and killed while on the subway on May 1st. He was crying out that he was hungry and thirsty. Daniel Penny, a white 24-year-old former U.S. Marine, put it in, in a chokehold, claiming that Neely was threatening passengers. Two other men joined in the vigilante action, pinning Neely’s hands and legs as he struggled to breathe. Some of the assault captured on cell phone video shows Neely struggling for several minutes before going limp. His death was ruled a homicide, caused by “compression of neck (chokehold).” Daniel Penny was questioned by police then released. Following growing outrage and protests, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Penny with second degree manslaughter, more than a week later. A grand jury has now formally indicted Penny. These three cases, the deaths of Tori Bowie, Jor’Dell Richardson and Jordan Neely, each under different circumstances within weeks of each other, are all connected by the painful throughline of the Black experience in America, stretching back to 1619, the year the first ship arrived on the shores of Virginia delivering enslaved Africans. White supremacists are trying to obliterate that history, to prevent it from being taught. We should celebrate Juneteenth, but we must also remember the bloody history that led to that day in Galveston, and commit to fighting racism as it exists today.

Celebrate Juneteenth, but Racism Still Kills

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis MoynihanThe modern struggle for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people has been waged for over a century. Despite significant gains, the work is sadly far from over as Pride Month begins. Just as massive plumes of sun-dimming smoke from wildfires now raging north of the border billow over the eastern half of the United States, darkening the sky and driving people indoors, so too has an epidemic of discrimination and hate targeting traditionally marginalized LGBTQ+ communities swept the land, unleashed by demagogues, cynical politicians and bigots. State and local governments from coast to coast are passing repressive bills, banning books and criminalizing people.The rash of laws, often accompanied by intimidation and acts of violence, has prompted the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, to announce:“We have officially declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States for the first time following an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year. More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record.”Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Kelley Robinson explained on the Democracy Now! news hour:“In this moment, when people are traveling across the country, when they’re deciding to move or what schools to go to, we had a responsibility to let people know that, one, there’s an imminent health and safety crisis facing our community, and, two, there’s a dizzying patchwork of protections for us and for our families depending on the state that you’re in.”HRC tracks these anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Over 520 of them have been introduced so far this year, and 75 have already been signed into law, with broad impacts: criminalizing the provision of gender-affirming health care for youth, prohibiting the teaching of LGBTQ-related topics, barring transgender people from using a gender-appropriate bathroom, banning books, and more.“A loud and vocal minority…is sowing hate and fear against our community because they’re not willing to solve the real problems,” Robinson added. “If they actually cared about the safety of our kids, they would be moving forward legislation to prevent gun violence, the number one killer of our children.”The legislative assault is occurring in parallel with the 2024 Republican presidential primary season. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has championed several oppressive laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community, including the school curriculum ban known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, and banning gender affirming care for minors. Others in the increasingly crowded Republican field are following suit.Former South Carolina Governor and presidential hopeful Nikki Haley suggested opposing trans rights was a feminist issue:“The idea that we have biological boys playing in girls’ sports, it is the women’s issue of our time,” Haley said at a recent CNN town hall. “How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms?”Robinson responded on Democracy Now!, “This is political theater. They are doing this to pander to a MAGA Republican base in so many of these states…Seventy percent of Americans support the LGBTQ+ community and believe that legislatures should be standing with our values. One in five of Generation Z identifies as a member of this community, 20 million American adults. This is not an issue of the margins.”The evangelical Christian movement has long been at the forefront attacking the LGBTQ+ community. Major televangelists like Pat Robertson, who died this week at the age of 93, and groups like Focus on the Family and the Alliance to Defend Freedom have stoked intolerance and repression not only here at home, but around the world.Uganda is now on the front lines of this US-based push to criminalize homosexuality. In May, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed an anti-LGBTQ law that makes same-sex relationships punishable by life in prison or, in some cases, death. Many LGBTQ Ugandans have gone into hiding or have fled the country.“The homophobia and transphobia we are seeing towards queer and trans persons in Uganda is from the West. It is mostly peddled by extreme American evangelicals,” Ugandan LGBTQ activist Frank Mugisha said on Democacy Now! He fears similar laws will follow in neighboring countries like Tanzania and Kenya.Human Rights Campaign’s state of emergency declaration is unprecedented, but is not simply a warning. Their statement ends with a call to action, one which everyone, whether LGBTQ+ or not, should heed this Pride month and beyond:“Our community is in danger, but we won’t stop fighting back — not now, not ever.”

By Amy Goodman &amp; Denis Moynihan The modern struggle for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people has been waged for over a century. Despite significant gains, the work is sadly far from over as Pride Month begins. Just as massive plumes of sun-dimming smoke from wildfires now raging north of the border billow over the eastern half of the United States, darkening the sky and driving people indoors, so too has an epidemic of discrimination and hate targeting traditionally marginalized LGBTQ+ communities swept the land, unleashed by demagogues, cynical politicians and bigots. State and local governments from coast to coast are passing repressive bills, banning books and criminalizing people. The rash of laws, often accompanied by intimidation and acts of violence, has prompted the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, to announce: “We have officially declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States for the first time following an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year. More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record.” Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Kelley Robinson explained on the Democracy Now! news hour: “In this moment, when people are traveling across the country, when they’re deciding to move or what schools to go to, we had a responsibility to let people know that, one, there’s an imminent health and safety crisis facing our community, and, two, there’s a dizzying patchwork of protections for us and for our families depending on the state that you’re in.” HRC tracks these anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Over 520 of them have been introduced so far this year, and 75 have already been signed into law, with broad impacts: criminalizing the provision of gender-affirming health care for youth, prohibiting the teaching of LGBTQ-related topics, barring transgender people from using a gender-appropriate bathroom, banning books, and more. “A loud and vocal minority…is sowing hate and fear against our community because they’re not willing to solve the real problems,” Robinson added. “If they actually cared about the safety of our kids, they would be moving forward legislation to prevent gun violence, the number one killer of our children.” The legislative assault is occurring in parallel with the 2024 Republican presidential primary season. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has championed several oppressive laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community, including the school curriculum ban known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, and banning gender affirming care for minors. Others in the increasingly crowded Republican field are following suit. Former South Carolina Governor and presidential hopeful Nikki Haley suggested opposing trans rights was a feminist issue: “The idea that we have biological boys playing in girls’ sports, it is the women’s issue of our time,” Haley said at a recent CNN town hall. “How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms?” Robinson responded on Democracy Now!, “This is political theater. They are doing this to pander to a MAGA Republican base in so many of these states…Seventy percent of Americans support the LGBTQ+ community and believe that legislatures should be standing with our values. One in five of Generation Z identifies as a member of this community, 20 million American adults. This is not an issue of the margins.” The evangelical Christian movement has long been at the forefront attacking the LGBTQ+ community. Major televangelists like Pat Robertson, who died this week at the age of 93, and groups like Focus on the Family and the Alliance to Defend Freedom have stoked intolerance and repression not only here at home, but around the world. Uganda is now on the front lines of this US-based push to criminalize homosexuality. In May, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed an anti-LGBTQ law that makes same-sex relationships punishable by life in prison or, in some cases, death. Many LGBTQ Ugandans have gone into hiding or have fled the country. “The homophobia and transphobia we are seeing towards queer and trans persons in Uganda is from the West. It is mostly peddled by extreme American evangelicals,” Ugandan LGBTQ activist Frank Mugisha said on Democacy Now! He fears similar laws will follow in neighboring countries like Tanzania and Kenya. Human Rights Campaign’s state of emergency declaration is unprecedented, but is not simply a warning. Their statement ends with a call to action, one which everyone, whether LGBTQ+ or not, should heed this Pride month and beyond: “Our community is in danger, but we won’t stop fighting back — not now, not ever.”

A Pall of Hate Darkens Pride Month

Goodman and Moynihan report each week on the people and places caught in the middle, the ones most directly affected by policy debates, war and social issues. The column breaks through the glib clichés, dogmatic language and overall static that has permeated mainstream media coverage. Goodman and Moynihan’s unrestrained commentary from the front lines resonates with a generation that has an uncanny ability to spot the inauthentic in any discourse. The energy and passion for the truth found in this column inspires and rouses readers young Goodman and Moynihan report each week on the people and places caught in the middle, the ones most directly affected by policy debates, war and social issues. The column breaks through the glib clichés, dogmatic language and overall static that has permeated mainstream media coverage. Goodman and Moynihan’s unrestrained commentary from the front lines resonates with a generation that has an uncanny ability to spot the inauthentic in any discourse. The energy and passion for the truth found in this column inspires and rouses readers young and old from across the political spectrum.

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