 Good morning, everyone. I have your attention. Thank you for, wow, I am just delighted and thrilled. I'm Heather Caswell, owner and style curator here at the wardrobe and it is my sincere pleasure to see so many familiar faces and such a beautiful community here to honor Amy Goodman and Democracy Now. The wardrobe along with Davis Media Access and KTVS are delighted to be bringing you this beautiful fundraiser for public radio. I'm just trying to get a few more people seated. Okay. All right, so some of you might wonder what do fashion and politics and democracy now have in common? In 1987 I moved to Davis and asked myself shortly after arriving and working at the Blue Mango restaurant, if I could do anything, thanks, if I could do anything what would it be? And the answer was be a DJ. So I proceeded down to Lower Freeborn Hall on KTVS 90.3 FM and I became a DJ. And my show is called The Language of the Future. That is where I found my voice. Four years ago I volunteered at Davis Media Access and became a board member and I started to pay it forward and that's how we got here today. So I ask you to be inspired. Thank you. I ask you to be inspired by what we create here and I ask you to make a difference to donate generously to public radio. 90.3 and 95.7 make Davis Davis. And they both have big, big fundraisers that I hope you'll contribute to. There's an opportunity to contribute after this and again it's my honor to be able to host this along with Davis Media Access this morning and I'm now going to bring you Autumn LaBeie Renault, the director of Davis Media Access. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our speakers so we're gonna get this part out of the way. I'm really honored to be here and I want to give my heartfelt thanks to Heather and the wardrobe for saying yes. It's not every day that one of my personal heroes contacts me and says we'd like to do an event for your organization in three and a half weeks. The day after picnic day. Can you make that happen? So I reached out to my creative friend Heather and she said yes and she and her staff have been wonderful so thank you Heather. And I'd like to thank each of you for coming. As Heather said there's many familiar faces in the audience. I know many of you as longtime supporters of Davis Media Access and I'm sure KDVS as well and KDRT and I'm gonna turn this over briefly to Aaron Frankel who's the Public Affairs Director for KDVS and then when Aaron's done we'll see if our speakers are here and I'll introduce them. Thank you Autumn. I'm Aaron Frankel Public Affairs Director at KDVS. As has been mentioned we have a fundraiser coming up. It starts at midnight tonight. Please donate. We rely on donations from the community. It's what allows us to stay free form. It allows us to stay independent and in addition to music KDVS we also bring public affairs shows. You know which address issues relevant to the community. I also just wanted to thank everybody who's worked hard to put this event together. I know it was definitely last minute Autumn Heather. I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot of people who've done lots of hard work to help help us all be here and help get Amy Goodman to Davis so we can be in contact with the voice that we hear some of us every weekday on the radio. Thank you. And also shout out to Olivia our general manager. She's so again I'm Autumn Labarano. I'm the Executive Director of Davis Media Access and I'm beyond proud to have our guest here today with us. Thank you. I have I'm also celebrating 20 years in community media this year and it is something that in Davis we've at times we've had to fight for it. We've had to fend off funding cuts. We've had to fight signal encroachment for catered. We've done a lot of work to keep it alive and happening. However we've never been beaten, arrested or detained like our Honorable guest here. Thankful to say. But we do have in common just a bedrock commitment to the need for independent outlets, independent media outlets and the need to hear a diversity of voices. I'm not going to spend a lot of time introducing our guest and all their accomplishments because hopefully you found that on your seats with the lovely handout. I'll just say that it's my honor to introduce Amy Goodman, David Goodman and Dennis Moynihan. Well this is a testament to the flexibility of independent media. We're doing things in a variety of venues but a clothing store where as Amy suggested the urge to shop is competing hard with so I'll just say it's great to be here in Davis. I have a special affection for this place because my niece has attended here, worked here and is now moving back to work in Davis. But I'll tell you that 20 years ago my family was, Amy came to tell us about a new project that she was doing, an election show called Democracy Now. She told my parents and they were initially thrilled because Amy, as you will read in this book and hear, had been dodging bullets in and out of police detaining her for trying to report the news. So when she told my parents that she had been asked to host an election show for the 1996 elections, they were thrilled because finally their daughter was going to have a boring desk job. She was going to report on the election. It was the reelection of Bill Clinton. He was running against Bob Dole and Ross Perot, if you remember that name, the Donald Trump before there was a Donald Trump. And you know it's going to be one of these who's hot, who's not and it's all over the day after election day and we go home. Well 20 years later here we are. There is in the beginning of the book, you'll read it didn't quite work out to be a boring desk job. The independent reporter's rap sheet we felt compelled to include in the introduction to the book where you can read about Amy's detention at the Republican National Convention. The arrest at covering a show where plowshares activists were and arrest in front of the White House with Terry Tempest, Williams and Alice Walker and other writers. So really we have after 20 years here, Democracy Now is so much more than a news show. It is the place that tells you where you can go to know that you are not crazy, you're not wrong, and you're not alone. So I want to just say happy birthday to Democracy Now and to my sister once again the tip of the hat to America's most fearless, courageous and honest journalist. Thank you. So do you have these in a size? It's very very unusual. Especially the tutu at the back. But when we were coming into town there was a foot race in what was that community somewhere along the way. This is our I think our 13th or 14th city and a number of the runners were wearing tutus just like that from six years old to adults. Yes, I think just like yeah not to worry. Well thank you so much Autumn and it's wonderful to be here to support independent media, public access TV, and also a shout out to our colleagues at KDVS. Are there any students here who've been involved in the protests? You are. Very interesting. We're just learning about and reporting on in the last weeks what's been the organizing that's going on at Davis. So this is our 11th, 12th, 13th city. We're going on to Chico this afternoon and them this evening at 7.30 we'll be celebrating the first Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley. So Friday was Pacifica's 67th birthday. It's our 20th anniversary. Autumn has also been here for 20 years so the synchronicity is absolutely beautiful. I come originally from Pacifica radio which was founded on April 15th, 1949. It was founded by a war resistor in World War II a conscientious objector who came out of the detention camps and said there has to be a media outlet not run by corporations that profit from war but run by journalists and artists and that's how Pacifica was born. The first Pacifica station KPFA in 49, 59, KPFK in Los Angeles, 60, my station in New York that's WBAI and in its first year hosting a debate between Malcolm X and James Baldwin on the effectiveness of nonviolent civil disobedience the lunch counter sit-ins of the South. 1970 KPFT went on the air in Houston 1977 WPFW in Washington. That's the five Pacifica stations. KPFT is very interesting in the Petro Metro that's in Houston, Texas. It went on the air in the spring of 1970 and within a few weeks it was blown up. The transmitter was blown up by the Ku Klux Klan. They strapped dynamite to the base of it. It was right in the middle of Arlo Guthrie singing Alice's Restaurant and I thought that was a good song. I know people have you know very particular taste but so they get back on their feet they rebuild the transmitter. You know Pacifica doesn't have much money and it's not as if they had money to pay for publicity for their station. Certainly the silver lining was it exploded it into the consciousness of the potential listening audience of Houston and but I don't recommend this as an advertising strategy. They get back on their feet and they go back on the air and the Klan blows it up again this time with 15 times the dynamite. Now it's becoming a national story in the beginning of 1971. It took longer but they rebuilt the transmitter. Public television came in to broadcast them going back on the air and Arlo Guthrie came into Houston to finish his song. Now I can't remember if it was the exalted Cyclops or the Grand Dragon because I often confuse their titles but he said it was his proudest act. I think that's because he understood how dangerous Pacifica is. How dangerous independent media is. Dangerous because it allows people to speak for themselves and when you hear someone describing their own experience whether it's a Palestinian child or an Israeli grandmother whether it is an aunt in Afghanistan and uncle in Iraq. It begins to challenge the stereotypes that fuel these hate groups because you're hearing someone describe their own experience. You might say it sounds like my bubble my baby my aunt my uncle and I'm not saying you'll agree with them right. How often do we agree with our family members even. But you begin to understand where they're coming from and that understanding is the beginning of peace. I think the media can be the greatest force for peace on earth. Instead all too often it's wielded as a weapon of war which is why we have to take it back. We have been on this amazing journey for 20 years. Democracy now began in 1996 as the only daily election show in public broadcast and we're a nine community radio stations. The week of September 11th 2001 coincidentally we went on our first TV station. Like Davis public access TV it was Manhattan neighborhood network in New York City. They had asked if they could start broadcasting the show they were. They had a special link to the community media center we were broadcasting from was a hundred year old firehouse now serving the community in a different way. We went on the air we were the closest national broadcast to ground zero. And we became emergency programming and stations all over the country started to ask can we run you as well. And so the FedEx guys would come I insisted to be delivered the next day because I thought it was breaking news and they would leave with sacks full of video cassettes. That's when we had video cassettes and the stations would get the next day when we would go on a public access station the local community station or NPR station would say can we run you. And then the PBS station started saying can we run you. So you know in San Francisco run KQED and on KRCB PBS and in Los Angeles and KLCS and on KCET. And that's how it works all over the country until it grew to 1400 stations the largest public media collaboration in the country. A station a week is picking us up somewhere in the world. We broadcast like every day a number of times a day in Sweden on their open channels as they call them and on radio in Japan they call it the other America in South Africa throughout Europe. We translate our headlines into Spanish. It is a great way if you're learning Spanish or English. Go to democracynow.org slash espanol and you can read our headlines the very headlines we have in English you could put them against each other or you can read the Spanish and listen to the audio because any radio station can run the Spanish. We deeply believe in media without borders. I think of the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day war and peace life and death and anything less than that is a disservice to the service men and women of this country. They can't have these debates on military basis. They rely on us in civilian society to have the discussions that lead to the decisions about whether they live or die whether they're sent to kill or be killed. Anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society. Now you know we cover movements and movements make history. I want to talk about one year in this 20 years and also if anyone's tweeting or photographing or you're putting out stuff on Instagram or Facebook use the hashtag covering the movements and we're sending around daily digest sign up lists to keep in touch with you to send you our headlines every day and our news stories so you can sign up for them. I know our co-author Dennis Moynihan will be in with them in a minute. We have fantastic volunteers who've come in from all over but you can also on your phone you can text the word democracy now one word democracy now to the number 66866 and you'll get a request for your email you give it you can confirm it in your email later and you will get those headlines that way. It's how we have grown to be completely digitally engaged from the beginning we needed to use the internet I mean 20 years ago because we didn't have the money for satellites to send our radio show and then TV we perfected a way to send broadcast quality video through the internet you know the networks use millions of dollars they would give for example to Saddam Hussein to pay for satellites we didn't do that we had our reporter Jeremy Scahill and many of you may know him from Blackwater and the latest film Dirty Wars the Oscar nominated film Jeremy in Iraq they were producing he and Jackie Suin amazing video reports for us Saddam had put up a firewall so they would go into an internet cafe use a special program send it like by 150 email to us like through a screen and then we would piece it back together in New York and here is the wonderful Dennis Moynihan co-author and Dennis without Dennis and David David a wonderful journalist based in Vermont Dennis my co-author of a daily column in for Hearst first Kings features and then also both of them co-authors of this book these this book would never ever have been written so a huge shout out to them by the way I think we're working with avid reader here and it's wonderful to know their independent bookstores here let's not take this I don't take this for granted we have been on book tours five other times with our previous books and every time we come through another thousands of bookstores close independent bookstores are sanctuaries of descent it's a place you can take journeys through time across continents and so to be able to support them as well as public access and community radio all of these are oasis now if you haven't gotten a book yet you can get a book from avid reader we also just brought in a DVD it's a special democracy now DVD Nermeen Shaykh and I did an interview with Glenn Greenwald the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist just a few weeks ago I mean we've interviewed him many times he just he lives in Brazil but he had just come into Arizona because he was doing a special event with Noam Chomsky and Ed Snowden by you know video stream from Russia where he's in political exile and we talk a lot about Edward Snowden Chelsea Manning Julian Assange who I go periodically to meet with in England in captivity he's gotten political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy there you know he is the co-founder of WikiLeaks released millions of documents that have sparked a critical discussion like Edward Snowden what we don't know is done in our name a discussion that even President Obama has acknowledged as critical you know they're trying to take down Edward Snowden and prison him in the United States but President Obama said well this discussion would have happened without him really who exactly would have prompted this discussion because the Obama administration denied everything he said until he actually had the documents and they could not deny it anymore it also by the way encourages whistleblowers to release the documents because if you don't the administration denies it and I say you know I'm not gonna take your word for it until you have the documents and then they have to back off and why does it matter well is it important to know that your government is spying on you is engaged in comprehensive surveillance of American citizens you may say I think it's a good idea you may say I think it's a terrible idea well we should debate it as American citizens and non-citizens and decide what kind of government we want to represent us and what whether we and what are what privacy means and how do we move on as a civilized society so we have a chapter on whistleblowers if you get two copies of the book you get the DVD for free the DVD is more expensive than the book but we are offering the special gift if you get two copies and we're also trying to drive this book up the best seller list of the New York Times why they don't like to talk about democracy now I mean a lot of the media is amusing a court in the corporate media and the networks we've decided that one day Webster's will redefine exclusive as heard on democracy now a year ago look at New York Times today big story on the nuclear arsenal and amazing story and listen to our show at Stanford last week but we've there's been situations I remember an MSNBC we were watching one of the shows and we had just done an interview with one of the major whistleblowers and we had it exclusive you know top story so two days later they were interviewing this whistleblower and I don't know if you know how TV works but so they're they pulled a clip for the billboard when you for when the show first opens and it was the whistleblower speaking but they hadn't actually interviewed me at they were going to interview him in a few minutes so where did they get that clip and they put a lower third that's what's at the bottom of the screen when it identifies the person you can see democracy now the logo sticking out under it they blown it up a little so you don't see our democracy now backdrop and he's talking and on there and by the way that's okay we use clips of CNN Fox and we tell you you know on Fox the heat this guy was interviewed last week but they on the lower third they covered ours with the word exclusive we just saw the entry and that would be coming up I mean it is bald-faced it is but we encourage it we encourage the depravity we deeply encourage people to steal this story place this is why we do what we do to go to where the silence is to bring out the voices of people at the grassroots who represent the movements that have made history to go to where the silence is you know often it's not really that silent but it is in the corporate media these are the movements that are shaping this country that barely hit the corporate media radar screen that we have been with from the beginning I think the reason democracy now has grown so astronomically is because of the authentic authenticity of the voices you hear going to the heart of a story not to the pundits but to the people themselves who are engaged in a particular action you can agree with them or not agree with them but you want to hear someone speaking for themselves so you can make up your mind remember a few years ago President Obama was speaking at National Defense University explaining the drone program right why they're expanding it and Medea Benjamin co-founder of Code Pink was protesting in the audience she stood up and she said I love my country why did you kill Tara Kaziz who is a teenager not the Iraqi spokesperson but a teenager in Pakistan who had just hold a news conference he was a kid talking about how drones were terrorizing his community he'd gone back to the Northwest frontier to document was happening two days later he was killed in a drone strike and she shouted what about under Rahman Alaki the 16-year-old Denver born US citizen who is eviscerated in a drone strike in Yemen should why why don't you explain and as she's being dragged out President Obama actually says you should listen to that woman interestingly enough anyway so I'm watching it on TV like all of us in our newsroom and oh and then I get a call from one of the networks would you like to come on to describe what she did I said I could I mean I watched it like all of you on television I said you know we're actually having Medea on the show tomorrow not that I wanted to give them our exclusive I'd like her to be first in our show but I said you know why don't you have her on she gets jailed a lot but I don't think she got actually arrested for this protest you could probably have her on tonight and they said you know we can't do that so what do you mean you know you can't do that we're journalists you go to where the people are let them say what they have to say have a debate about it if you want what are you afraid of you know how often all these networks bring us this small circle of pundits who know so little about so much explaining the world to us and getting it's so wrong so if you want to get two copies of the book you get this DVD about an hour and a half it was Nermeen who was just texting me saying hi Nermeen talking about you right now she's planning tomorrow's show and we interviewed Glenn when he came here to the United States on every issue with Chomsky and Snowden he was about to go be with them but we talked about the what he calls a coup that's going on in Brazil right now he talked about the surveillance society he talked about war and peace and all of this is on this DVD so you can get that for two books or get one book or don't get any book at all and so deeply appreciative that you're here that you're supporting public access here in Davis that is ultimately what's so important but in terms of the politics of what it means to get on the best sellers aside from that and we actually even named this book to marks now so they actually put the word on it's that's just mathematical right and that just that's how it gets onto that list our first book was called the exception to the rulers and the reason David and I called it that is because that should be the motto of all the media the exception to the rulers exposing oily politicians or profiteers in the media that love that the second was called static and the reason we called it that is even in this high-tech digital age with high definition television and digital radio still all we get is static when what we need is the media to give us the dictionary definition of static criticism opposition unwanted interference we need a media that covers power not covers for power we need a media that is the fourth the state not for the state and we need a media that covers the movements that create static and make history our third book was called standing up to the madness ordinary heroes and extraordinary times those books I wrote with my brother journalist David Goodman the next two were the books of our columns the first of those two written with Dennis who just came in is breaking the sound barrier what we do every day an incredible journalist how we doing on time Dan we're doing well because I want to get time by the way to sit down sign books you can come up even if you haven't if you have something that share a story or by the way email all story ideas to stories at democracy now org not just today whenever something comes up if you know someone who should be interviewed if there's something in your community that's why democracy now is so rich with original voices it's people saying this is what's happening in our community not the media appointed leaders who often the people in the community don't even know who they are or say that doesn't represent my point of view but breaking the sound barrier and the last one we called the silenced majority and let me explain I really do think that those who care about war and peace those who care about the growing inequality between rich and poor in this country between the rich and the rest of us I mean think about this 62 people in the world 43 of them from the United States a warm wealth than half the world's population then 3.5 billion people 43 people 43 Americans part of this group of 62 you could fit them on a school bus and you think in this country of the schools that are being closed that are being shuttered kids the kind of education they get when they call it austerity in other countries we deal with austerity right here at home I really do think that those who care about war and peace who care about inequality who care about climate change the fate of the planet are not a fringe minority not even a silent majority but the silenced majority silenced by the corporate media which is why we have to take it back build our own media challenge them they are using our airwaves it's not private property they may be private corporations they're using the public airwaves they have responsibility to bring out all the opinions of people movements or have their licenses revoked and so we have to challenge those that are using the public airwaves and build our own media all over this country I want to talk about the year 2011 but before I do that when as we go on this tour Juan Gonzales is here with me in spirit co-host of democracy now for the full 20 years one just retired from the New York Daily News who has been a columnist for 29 years who was the biggest city paper in the country he's very beloved when he announced his retirement the mayor you know tweeted and all the big journalists tweeted about Juan he's gonna be a professor at Rutgers but he's staying with his other DN that's democracy now from the Daily News to democracy now but just a few months ago the whole gang of us at democracy now went to midtown Manhattan to honor Juan because he was being inducted into the New York Journalism Hall of Fame the first Latino journalist to be inducted and I wanted to read you a few words of Juan's putting the other inductees to shame as he spoke they were like Charlie Rose and Leslie Stahl and Juan said I figured my modest contribution would be not writing about outcast neighborhoods but from them not simply to entertain but to change not after the fact but before it when coverage could still make a difference I've tried to use as many of my columns as possible to probe the injustices visited upon the powerless yes the rich and famous are also victims on occasion but they have so many politicians lobbyist lawyers gossip columnist and even editorial writers ready to jump to their defense that they'll always do fine without my help I prefer the desperate unknown reader who comes to me because he or she has gone everywhere else and no one will listen more often than not I come across the unexpected gems human beings whose tragedies illuminate the landscape and his courage hopefully inspires the reader to believe that there is indeed some greater goods served by a free press than just chronicling or influencing the ouster of one group of politicians by another our book democracy now celebrates some of the people and movements who've been making history during our first 20 years it's not an exhaustive history it's not meant to be greatest hits this book is just our way of giving back by celebrating some of the ordinary heroes who've done extraordinary things to make the world a better place and just mentioning this year 2011 arbitrarily taking one year you think about what happened in that year at the beginning the Tunisian revolution at the end of December 2010 sparked by a young man who set himself on fire Muhammad was easy because he felt no opportunity and he'd been harassed by the authorities they took his scales where he weighed vegetables and fruits in the marketplace couldn't take it anymore it sparked the Egyptian the Tunisian revolution so did wiki leaks because when Asanjan wiki leaks released the documents that showed the US was shoring up the dictator they knew that they had a corrupt dictator but they realized the US full well knew it and still shored up this dictator. Tunisia, Sparta, Egypt, our producer Sharif Abdo-Kadus I can't say enough about as he flew back to his country he was Egyptian-American and honey Masoud our videographer Egyptian-American as well leaps tall buildings in a single bound you want him at your side in times of trouble he like played on the Egyptian national basketball team and they flew into top rear and you got coverage like nowhere else the networks have much more resources but we developed this way to send broadcast quality video through the internet you know and the thugs knocked down the satellites now we do satellites too now by the way all over but we also know how to do it the other way so you had Anderson Cooper sort of the old democracy now skypey way with a lower third that said reporting from an undisclosed location in his hotel room and you had Sharif you had Sharif in the middle of talk rear saying i'm here in talk rear this is the safest place to be in this country and honey would be filming as interviews and you didn't just get the bird's eye view which was impressive a million people in talk rear that the networks were bringing you but the satellites had gone down you got these 25 30 minute rich series of interviews you were meeting the people fomenting revolution people like you all over you met oh i have that sweat the great Egyptian writer who wrote map of love who was with two nine month pregnant women by the way it's beautiful to see you here today because our finance director is in labor as we speak and i'm texting her wildly as we're driving has owner come yet has owner come yet just calm down Amy i said you are forbidden to go to work she has this tendency where she goes to work at times like this like i don't know to alleviate stress it's hard to believe that that's leaving a strike i said you're in labor but you're not supposed to be laboring with us he said okay okay i'll stay home um so i had to sweat was with two women who are nine months pregnant and they say they're not going to deliver their babies until the dictator mubarak was toppled because they she wants them to be born in freedom you meet um you meet Nawal Sadawi at the time 79 year old Egyptian writer psychiatrist presidential candidate you've been imprisoned and exiled under uh under Nasser under Mubarak and she'd been telling young people even before Takriar we will win we will win you met the young high school student who was standing in front of the state media building that had spewed lies for so long putting out a broad voices of Takriar this was an amazing revolution that was fomented by community we don't know where it's going to go today Egypt is in deep deep trouble but what they did then in toppling this dictator was historic and that inspired i think Wisconsin right right here 150,000 people marching against the governor of busting public unions he was going after the teachers and the nurses he assured the firefighters and the police i'm not going after you he had a problem though because the police and the firefighters were married to the teachers and the nurses and um and so it seemed like almost everybody rose up they took over the capital building in madison and democracy now flew in it was amazing Egyptians were ordering pizza for the wisconsin protesters online they were sleeping in the capital building um i saw some scenes like students with dreads down their backs drumming on anything they could find in front of the governor's office with the police rocking out next to them no we don't have that in new york um and i saw some of the biggest guys i'd ever seen the ashkosh prison guards and i went up to them and i said who did you vote for and they said governor walker of course and i said so what are you doing here they said protesting governor walker of course and they said we didn't know he was going to do this and i saw this guy outside in a freezing cold 150 000 people in the snow older gentleman white hair glasses and he's marching with his placard that says irs auditors against walker and i said are you a republican or a democrat he said a republican so i said so what are you doing here he said i'm protesting the republican governor because we didn't know that he was going to try to destroy our community i said well you have a mighty weapon there irs auditors against walker and if you wonder well what difference does it make right he was reelected he then ran for president walker you know any of these if they just flash in a pan why people waste their time you could stay home in front of a fire and uh cozy up with your family they make an enormous difference over time movements matter i looked out over the vista of people protesting there was the labor museum in madison go back to 1968 dr martin luther king memphis tennessee he was assassinated april fourth 68 what was he doing in memphis what momentous thing he'd simply gone to memphis to stand with sanitation workers you know apse me was born in wisconsin the american federation state county municipal employees so was a john birch society john birch society co-founded by the co-brothers father fred coke the oil barons fred coke john birch study racist segregationist anti-civil rights organization one after king and others apse me john birch study two different tendencies when king died he was standing with sanitation workers who were simply trying to organize a local of apse me that was 1968 it was born in 1932 in wisconsin and then move forward summer of 2011 thousands of people march against the keystone excel in front of the white house rows around ring around the rose garden 1200 get arrested like Naomi Klein her first arrest the great writer who wrote the shock doctrine rise of disaster capitalism and uh and her most recent book this changes everything capitalism versus the climate jim uh bill macibbon who co-founded 350 dot org they all got arrested a few weeks later occupy wall street thousands stream in tizucati park with every sign under the sun against war against poverty against climate change and the media first ignored them that's the most powerful thing they can do as if they don't exist they vanish but then they they continued there in these encampments and they couldn't ignore them so they mocked them i remember on cnn the first report of a new show um it said seriously you know every issue under the sun can't they settle on one but that was its power they saw all these issues linked and where are the leaders they were a leader full organization not leader less some of those people who marched into occupy wall street were carrying signs that said i am troi davis troi davis was on death row in jackson georgia he was slated to die four days later september 21st 2011 we raced to jackson few days later to cover this execution if we could have been in the execution chamber we would have been i really do think if you see the images that's where you begin to make a decision about what you want this country to represent troi davis on death row for 20 of the 40 years of his life so many people had taken up his cause we describe in the book his case i'm not going to describe it here suffice it to say right now but there were three death warrants before this one that were all vacated didn't know what would happen with this by the time that he was slated to die you had the traditional anti-death penalty activists you had prison wardens you had a former u.s president and the pope all demanding that troi anthony davis be allowed to live thousand people gathered in jackson at the death row prison and we just decided we would broadcast that day and um we were handed a press packet from the from the prison guards and we read this press packet on the air it was extremely puzzling what they were focusing on they focused on what he would be fed for dinner no first they gave us his schedule they said his family would be cleared out of three o'clock so he could have a routine physical routine physical you know uh right before that a texas prisoner on death row had attempted suicide on death row they raced him to the hospital got him better than they executed him so then they the print packet said what he would eat for dinner they said he would be given grilled cheeseburgers oven brown potatoes baked beans coleslaw cookies and a great beverage another page listed the four lines of the lethal cocktail that would follow pentobarbital pancheronium bromide potassium chloride and adivan a sedative the pentobarbital anesthetizes the pancheronium bromide paralyzes the potassium chloride stops the heart davis refused the sedative and the last supper by 7 p.m and we were broadcasting now we didn't know what would happen we were out on the grounds where 150 people were allowed in a protest pan across the street a thousand students from morehouse students from spellman the traditionally black colleges all holding candles people from around the world the heads of amnesty international the NAACP the family of troi davis it was an astounding moment we were the only ones continuously covering this our broad our broadcast we had a satellite truck our broadcast was being projected onto saint mary's church in harlem as thousands of people all over the country were trying to access what would happen students were gathering around in libraries around the country watching our broadcast on the computer by 7 p.m the u.s supreme court was reportedly reviewing davis's plea for a stay the case was referred to supreme court justice clarence thomas who hails from pinpoint georgia a community founded by freed slaves near savannah the supreme court denied the plea davis's execution began at 10 53 p.m a prison spokesperson delivered the news to the reporters outside the time of death was 11 08 p.m the eyewitnesses to the execution stepped out according to an associated press reporter who was there these were troi davis's final words he said i'd like to address the mcfail family the officer who had been killed mark mcfail a hero cop who had gone to help a homeless man who is being pistol whipped and he was shot he didn't even have time to draw his gun troi said to the family you know how an execution works is that they're put out on a kind of christlike cross and they're strapped down to the cross with their arms out in their legs and then just before the the injection begins uh curtains are pulled back and the audience views what's happening you've got the family of the murder victim you've got the the people the prisoner chose to come if the prison allows that and you've got the reporters so the ap reporter said this is what troi said he said i'd like to address the mcfail family let you know i'm not the one who killed your son your father your brother i am innocent he said the incident that took place that night was not my fault i didn't have a gun all i can ask is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth he said for those he said i asked my family and friends to continue to fight this fight and then ended by looking at his executioners and said for those about to take my life god have mercy on your souls god may god bless your souls the state of georgia took davis's body to atlanta for an autopsy charging his family for the transportation on troi davis's death certificate the cause of death is listed simply as homicide as i stood on the grounds of the prison just after troi davis was executed the georgia department of corrections threatened to pull the plug on our broadcast the show was over and i could only think about what muhammad ghandi reportedly answered when asked when he thought of western civilization he said i think it would be a good idea that was september 21st 2011 move forward november you know what happened here in davis students in solidarity with occupy wall street were protesting on the grounds of the campus and they are hit at point blank range with pepper spray this story continuing through this day right five years later it's agonizing to be hit to even inhale pepper spray in the vicinity let alone to be hit at point blank range peaceful students doing what responsible citizens in this country if you want to have a say in your country and you want to do it nonviolently people engage in the time-honored traditions look at dr king sit-ins making your voices heard rallies and universities should be the incubators of this teaching people to be responsible citizens even it's when it's when the students are protesting their campuses or their administrations and then the students learning today as we've reported on democracy now that afterwards that the university is spending close to $200,000 to erase websites referencing this moment all of these protests all of these expressions of we can be better than this together we can make mistakes but we can move forward together or what make this country great and I want to end with the end of 2011 on the issue of climate change we cover every UN climate summit you know from Copenhagen to Cancun from Odoha to Durban from Poland to Peru to Paris where they are in force the only national broadcast there every day bringing you the voices of people all over the world who are threatened with extinction it's amazing what these summits are about not so much what doesn't happen inside but the thousands of people who come to educate the most powerful country on earth the United States about what we are doing that threatens them because we're historically the largest greenhouse gas emitter the United States China must be held responsible here and I wanted to end with the words of a young activist who was invited to address the world body representing the youth her name was Anjali Apadurai and then me Dennis and David whoops then David Dennis and I we've written a book after all but we'll go outside and sign books it's so gorgeous outside um and look forward to meeting you um Anjali is invited to the stage and she looks out on the thousands of her elders the delegates the scientists the diplomats and she says I speak for more than half the world's population we are the silent majority you've given us a seat in this hall but our interests are not on the table what does it take to get a stake in this game lobbyists corporate influence money you've been negotiating all of my life you've failed to meet pledges you've missed targets but you've heard this all before we're in Africa home to communities on the front line of climate change the science tells us we have five years max you say give us ten the starkest betrayal of your generation's responsibility to ours is that you call this ambition where is the courage in these rooms now is not the time for incremental action in the long run these will be seen as the defining moments of an era in which narrow self-interest prevailed over science reason and common compassion she said stand with Africa there is real ambition in this room but it's been dismissed as radical deemed not politically possible long-term thinking is not radical what's radical is to completely alter the planet's climate to betray the future of my generation and to condemn millions to death by climate change what's radical is to write off the fact that change is within our reach 2011 was the year in which the silent majority found their voice the year when the bottom shook the top 2011 was the year when the radical became reality she ended by quoting nelson mandela who said it always seems impossible until it's done so distinguished delegates this college student said to the masses of her elders so distinguished delegates and governments around the world governments of the developed world deep cuts now get it done democracy now by two books and get it complimentary dvd thank you again for coming and supporting community radio and democracy now's 20th anniversary and uh thank you to all the businesses and people that helped make this possible and have a great sunday