 Welcome to Tom Meeting TV. I'm here with Trish O'Kane. Trish, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and where you're working now. You're here at UVM. Yeah, thank you, Megan. It's an honor to be with you here today and everyone who's watching. Yeah, my name is Trish O'Kane. I teach environmental studies at the University of Vermont. I direct a program called Burding to Change the World where I take my students every week to a local elementary school in my neighborhood and pair them with kids and we learn outside in the new north end where I live. I also teach a class called Endangered Environmentalists in Central America because I lived in Central America for 10 years. I was a human rights investigative journalist and so that's kind of the way I connect those two parts of my life. Yeah, and that's what we're talking about today because we met through some connections around Burlington's sister city in Nicaragua that you come with a history of really supporting the revolution in Nicaragua a long time ago and are feeling the disillusionment that a lot of folks are feeling. Is that a correct assessment? Disillusionment? Is that a correct if not? I would say more rage. Rage and also deep sorrow and openness and questioning and wanting to learn and think about my own blinders, ideological blinders that I had on. I don't regret supporting the revolution not for one second and I tell my students as soon as I got out of college I went to support the revolution in Nicaragua. I moved to Managua and I worked with the Jesuit order supporting the Jesuit order and the work they were doing to support the revolution and I wrote for a Jesuit magazine. I worked at a Jesuit research institute and my boss, the priest I worked for father Javier Godostiaga was well known internationally. He was the first minister of planning in the first revolutionary government so I mean he helped make the revolution happen. So that's what I went to do but after many years of supporting the revolution and watching what's happened in the last especially the last 15 years you know it's become a brutal dictatorship and so it's not disillusionment it's horror. I know people in prison and my friends are very afraid the ones who are not in prison and I was a journalist there and all the journalists I know have stopped working. The magazine I wrote for for years which has been around like four decades a wonderful Jesuit magazine about economics and policy and politics. A year ago the editor made the decision to no longer publish people are too afraid. Yeah so there's all these journalists in Nicaragua who I knew and worked with for years who cannot work and in Nicaragua that's there's a term for that now it's called Muerte Civil. It means a civilian a citizen death. Yeah you have to be silent or you risk going to prison so horror it's not disillusionment it's horror and urgency. What can we do to get people out of prison because they're starting to die. Give us a little you know snapshot of the last 30 years in Nicaragua can you give us like give us a timeline of revolution Daniel Ortega being. Sure well make it a little personal so you know the revolution happened in 1979 so many of us admired us. I know in Burlington Burlington was a super important place of support. I was in California starting college I supported the revolution from there I was opposing Reagan's war I was a peace activist and then in 1987 when I finished college and I'd met this priest at a conference in the U.S. because I was part of the solidarity movement like so many people in Burlington and he recruited me to go work for him in Managua because I was bilingual and he wanted me to help because the election was coming up in 1990 the U.S. had this massive kind of propaganda campaign to say that the elections were false and he needed people who could write in English and Spanish to communicate with the U.S. and try to counteract that propaganda machine so I mean that's what I was doing there and then in 1990 the San Anisos lost. I was there during that election I cried too it was you know I wasn't that surprised because as soon as I moved there I saw things I did not like at all especially as regards Daniel Ortega. I mean it was obvious by that point he was starting to just become too in love with power and you know power corrupts absolutely that's really true. I followed him on his 1990 presidential campaign and I'll never forget it I'm a feminist and I loved the women's movement in Nicaragua and I covered it I went to many women's meetings and conferences I was so proud of it and awed by it by what women were doing and when Daniel Ortega had his 1990 election he chose as his slogan Daniel Esmigayo which literally means Daniel is my fighting cock. Okay that's right just throw the women under the bus and appeal to the lowest common denominator I think that will probably sound familiar to people in the United States right? Daniel turned into a Donald Trump that's what I think happened so I remember following him into villages and he would ride in in his cowboy shirt on a white horse with a cowboy hat and the whole thing and it was like oh my god this is such a macho campaign what happened to all the women who supported the revolution and so then he lost the election and I was still living in Nicaragua and there was a move of a huge movement within the San Anista party I was never a member of the party formally but I was always a supporter so there was a move within the party to democratize a very serious movement and after they lost the election people thought okay we're not in the government anymore but so now we can get to work and democratize the party because there's no war anymore we're not going to be invaded and we need some democracy something happened here we should some of the people Stan Anista said we need to listen to the people they voted they voted us out why did they vote us out so I went to I attended the party congress in 1995 in Managua I was actually covering it as a journalist for Radio Pacifica in San Francisco and I was still living in Central America at the time at that time I was in Guatemala and I went to Managua I covered that that that party conference and that was when the party split and I mean I stood there with my microphone recording and cried and I said this is the funeral of the San Anista party people didn't like it on the left in the US when they heard this story but I literally watched Daniel Ortega stopping Sergio Ramirez Dora Dora Maria Teyes Sergio is was the vice president he's now in exile in Spain he can't return to his country Dora Maria Teyes is in prison rotting I watched these people stand up and try to say we need to democratize the party and Daniel Ortega stopped it all and they walked out and I stood there crying with my microphone and that that was it I said that's it this is it this is the end what's going to happen now so that was 1995 what happened after that there were a series of governments you know moderate kind of right wing business aligned governments in Nicaragua and then Ortega was reelected in I think it was 2006 so he has been in power since 2006 and the first one of the first things he did this is this really indicates where he was headed and how wrong we were one of the first things he did was he he went back on one of the pledges of the San Anista revolution which was the San Anistas came in and changed the constitution so that the president could only have one term so you would never have a Samosa dictatorship again I mean we supported the Samosa dictatorship people here in Burlington know that was three Samosas in a row the father and two sons and the revolution was about that never happening again and so the first thing or take one of the first things Ortega did was to get that constitution changed and get an amendment so he can run indefinitely so that was a sign right there oh my god we are in trouble right but I was back in the US you know doing other things like a lot of people I still I had my friends there I communicated with him he got back in power it was very gradual since 2006 Megan that he started to make these changes and one of the one of the theories in the analysis analyses I've read say this that Ortega was so traumatized by the 1990 lost he was like that's never going to happen to me again because the US did the US threw all that money and all that political machinery behind Violeta Chamorro and and the opposition that the US actually molded and so Ortega said I lost because the Catholic Church wouldn't support me the business people wouldn't support me the US wouldn't support me that's never going to happen again so he gets in power the first thing he one of the first things he does is make sure he can run over and over and over again he makes this piece with the Catholic Church he's supposed to be an atheist him and his wife go to the bishop and say we want to get married and we're Catholic okay everything's all good now with the Catholic Church even though it was really right wing the the the bishops right and then he makes this piece with the US and so I think a lot of people don't know here even though there's sanctions against Nicaragua economic sanctions our military does exercises in Nicaragua so you know we are supporting a dictatorship in Nicaragua and the reason we are supporting a dictatorship is because Ortega has a deal with the US to stop people from coming across Nicaragua that are trying to get to the United States and not just from Latin America from Africa and China some of these people have disappeared and who was so who was the president that made that agreement with Nicaragua do you know when that was when that policy was in place I'm not saying there was there's an agreement or a written agreement there's a quid pro quo right okay and it's part of Ortega's strategy to maintain himself in power he's not going to go up against the US again he's no fool he figured it out what he wants us to stay in power so who do I have to keep happy and as far as the church is concerned he threw the whole women's movement under the bus wiped out any rights to abortion in Nicaragua which was very important during revolution and now Nicaragua I think it has the worst and the most restrictive abortion laws in all of Latin America I don't even think if the women mother's health is in danger you can get an abortion don't quote me on that but it's one of the worst if not the worst so I mean it was just it started with the church and then the US and it's just one by one he started taking he started eliminating the gains of the revolution and consolidating his power so that's been happening from 2006 up until 2018 when we started with college students at the University of Central America the Jesuit University and in my class that I teach here at UVM I connected the students at that university in Managua with my students via zoom before COVID and the students the students there explained to my students here environmental students what happened this is what the Nicaragua students said they said there was a massive wildfire burning out of control in a very important Mayan reserve a bio reserve in Nicaragua the students said the government wasn't doing anything to put out the fire that the environmental ministry was corrupt it didn't have very much money and the students were very upset about this so they got they made their signs and they went and stood out in the street in front of the Jesuit University and started protesting that's how the 20 April 2018 insurrection started it wasn't a coup you know there's you know it was it was started with college students and then what happened is once the students started protesting other sectors of the population took note and Ortega at that time I don't know exactly why but decided it was budget cuts to social security so he hit the pensioners the same month that April that the students were in the street like a week or two later he hit the pensioners and so the college students they told this to my students they said it was our grandparents like we live with our grandparents everybody lives in the same house here they were cutting their pensions and so then old people young people everybody got out in the street and that's when the police opened fire and they they occupied the university my students were so stunned when they heard these stories from Nicaraguan students and they opened fire and they killed like 22 students yeah and and and Ortega is now just did another lockdown on the public universities recently yeah right yeah he's confiscating private universities and anybody who criticizes his regime loses their job I know doctors who've lost their job after after whenever there was protests doctors in the public hospitals were told if you help a wounded protester you're fired I know someone that happened to I mean so you're just talking a draconian shutdown across the government uh the the OAS ambassador who I know we're going to get to to Nicaragua Arturo Mcfields yes who just resigned publicly in the middle of an OAS meeting denouncing his government as a dictatorship I've been listening to a lot of interviews with him afterwards and he knows what's going on on the inside of the government and he's just described how people are so afraid at all levels of the government um you know and they're told you can't do this you can't do that and people have just really shut down so it's a police state I mean the police on the street will take your phone away my my friend who I work with there a journalist who's been one of my best friends for 30 years the first interviews I ever did as a journalist the first interview I ever did as a journalist Megan was with Dora Maria Teyes when she was health minister in the 80s in Nicaragua so I mean in and you know now she's riding in prison but my friend and I who've worked together for many years and who's helped me teach this class in Vermont she's gone from speaking openly on zoom to my students to now we only communicate about once a month and are extremely careful she doesn't go out much she can't work it's it's just terrifying yeah and what is I mean here's a maybe overly simplistic question but I feel like back in the 80s that you know the bad guy was the US government yeah getting involved in this uprising and now it feels more complicated than that it's like a network of pro-democracy with a small d not the pro-democracy of you know the hammer of the United States we're going to go in and we're going to make democracy happen small d those of us who really believe in people people's political power just can you talk to me a little bit about that as you've kind of grown through your own yeah political awareness and who who are the who who you know here's Mcfield's part of the OAS and you know really good people inside the US government that are condemning what's going on inside Nicaragua yeah how was that for you with your background seeing these allegiances that are confusing and complicated well it's very important and it's especially important to my teaching because you know I went there in the 80s and you remember what the 80s was like it was a war I mean the largest country the most powerful country in the world was attacking one of the smallest country in the world because they were trying to teach people to read and help people farm and it isn't all that simplistic the San Anisez did some terrible stupid things during the 80s too right that I can see more clearly now but they did a lot of great things that's why we supported that revolution so you know the US was the villain it was Reagan but I've learned since then you know even the villain says things that are true it's not all lies so yes it's much more complex and the 1990 elections really interesting because I was covering that so closely and traveling you know following or take around following all of the candidates around and I actually wrote a guide for the United Nations that was monitoring the elections on all the camps so I interviewed every single political party some of them were receiving money from the US at that time I thought that was horrible and I thought the US shouldn't be intervening in other people's elections but you know now in Nicaragua some of the people being charged and put in prison and it's because they've received money from some US organization I mean the fact is in Nicaragua nobody can do anything without money from abroad I mean all of the NGOs are funded by the European Union or the Norwegian aid you know ministry or the Danish foreign aid I mean all the NGOs operate with foreign funds but what what the government's doing is saying if you take anything from the US your toast so so it's more complicated I like what you said about the little D and I think that even if it's complicated and messy and I'm sure the US is still trying to you know mess around I don't have any doubt about that and I do not support any kind of military intervention in Nicaragua no matter what happens Nicaraguans have to overthrow their own dictator again and they're trying very very hard but we shouldn't be supporting a dictator yeah so it's so it's more complex definitely more complex tell us Hugo Torres right so he just died in prison in February tell us a little bit about him and he had some you know I think he you know in the in what I was reading he lived a pretty low key life moderate just tell us a little bit about him yeah well that was very sad I didn't know him personally I mean I saw him at press conferences I don't think I I didn't ever interview him but he was very good person respected you know people in Nicaragua were saying he was a national hero because he wasn't one of those people that became rich from the revolution okay that's something that happened that was also was very disturbing and I saw it in 1990 when the Sandinistas lost didn't happen with my friends who were Sandinistas all of them left the party but the ones who stayed in it was called La Piñata the Piñata I mean people literally just okay we're going to lose the government in six months it's going to be a new government we're going to have to leave so I'm going to take this desk and computer home you know they just the car they took stuff from the state right Hugo Torres didn't do that so he he was considered to be more ethical but so he was one of the people arrested Hugo Torres he was one of the people who freed Daniel Ortega Daniel Ortega when he was a guerrilla fighter in the 1970s was imprisoned by the Samoza regime and torture Hugo Torres mounted was part of an operation that liberated him and Ortega arrested Torres because he's an opposition leader and he he's so well regarded through him in prison Torres I don't know if he was 70 around seven years old or 70 something had cancer and he died you know I think it was early February the the the regime wouldn't release any details nobody knew what happened they even lied about the day that he died nobody knew where he was he was now we know from repress reports in the hospital and his children did get to say goodbye to him but the family that the government the regime refused to do an autopsy human rights organizations were asking for an autopsy and the regime handed the family a bag of ashes they didn't get to see his body so this is being described as just cruelty deliberate cruelty on the part towards someone who liberated Ortega for prison yeah and to put it lightly that's bad karma it's it's it's that's why I say I'm not disillusioned I'm horrified yeah and you know let's talk about the BOAS so that's the Organization of American States yeah what is that tell us a little bit what is the Organization of American States it's kind of like a united nations of Latin America and like the United Nations the U.S. has always had a very powerful role so it's always been seen kind of by the left by myself included as as an organization too manipulated by the U.S. right so if the OAS said something in in the 80s and even 90s I really was like oh it's the OAS you know the U.S. is pulling the strings there and that's probably still true to a great extent but I do think there are other countries in Latin America that are that have a greater voice than they did before like something very hopeful people don't know it the new president of Chile Gabriel Boric if you want to cry with joy watch his inauguration speech he was a student leader just not even a several years ago and now he's present he's not he's like 30 31 or so he's very young and very dynamic and a person on the left who has said in his speech that Chile is going to support human rights and going to denounce human rights violations wherever they are they don't care if it's a government of the left or the right so this is a different kind of leftist government so I think the OAS I hope I hope people like Gabriel Boric will have more of a voice in the OAS but what happened with the OAS was recently because of the human rights violations because Nicaragua had an election in November that was most people did not participate in there was massive abstentionism media estimates maybe 70 percent abstentionism which is very sad because when I lived there in 1990 it was like I don't know 80 or 90 percent it was crazy I mean people were lined up for hours to vote and you know this was massive abstentionism right so the OAS well what happened right before the election months before Ortega started locking up all the candidates for the opposition charging them with bogus stuff so there would be no one to run against him who could possibly win and so the OAS has been making pronouncements and pronouncements about this so it's been a very contentious relationship between the OAS and Nicaragua and also the UN I mean he or take it throughout the UN the UN has tried to get delegations in their human rights delegations and he he's thrown out the UN so UN can't get in there the OAS I don't think he could get in there and it's been a very contentious like the 80s except except we really Nicaragua really needs international human rights organizations pressuring and observing what's going on I mean any point of pressure again I don't support any kind of military intervention whatsoever or the CIA messing around in Nicaragua because of the history yeah so Arturo McFields is the OAS ambassador from Nicaragua he's been in there for how he was there for a couple of years at least right no no Arturo McFields is he's a very interesting person okay all right so in 2011 he was named to be the press Nicaragua press attaché in Washington at the embassy so you're talking one of the Nicaragua's international mouthpieces in Washington very important and prestigious post right before he'd been a journalist in Nicaragua a tv journalist the only tv journalist allowed to film inside the Ortega's personal residence that's how close he is to Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo his father David McFields was a famous poet and Rosario Murillo vice president Rosario Murillo that's the other thing Ortega did he became president he made his wife vice president okay so we're talking about family dictatorship so Moses style all over again nightmare right so she's a famous poet and she had a group of very you know close poets around her McFields father was one of those so this guy in the OAS who just resigned publicly very very close to the Ortega's so in November Daniel Ortega the president of Nicaragua named McFields to be ambassador to the OAS and I just listened to some long interviews with him explaining because Nicaraguan journalists in exile are asking him why did you accept this post if you really felt this way and he said I did it on purpose because I really believed I could change the system from within and because the only way for me to speak to the president and his wife and get to power was to have a very high post he said that's why I did it and I tried I begged he said my goal was just to even get 10 political prisoners out of jail by December the ones that are going to die including he really was busted up when he up Hugo Torres he said I warned them in October you or take Hugo Torres you've got to let him out and then he died you know and he said I'm not going to say I told you so but he told them so so he purposefully took that post I don't think with the intention of resigning he really believed that there needed to be people on the inside that's what he's saying in the interviews yeah yeah um shall we listen to his yes so there's a there's a speech that's circulating on twitter and I'm going to go ahead and share my screen so that we can listen to that and you can give us a translation of it I speak today in the name of more than 177 political prisoners and more than 350 Nicaraguans who have lost their lives in my country since 2018 I speak today in the name of thousands of Nicaraguan civil servants civilians and military those today in Nicaragua who are forced to pretend by the regime and to fill the public squares shouting party slogans because if they don't do it they'll lose their jobs to denounce the dictatorship in my country is not easy but to continue to be silent and defend the indefensible is impossible I must speak mr president even though I'm afraid I must speak even though my future and my family's future is uncertain I must speak because if I don't do it the very stones of the earth are going to speak for me days before nicaragua announced its withdrawal from the oasis we met in the foreign ministry with a team of presidential advisors in this meeting I suggested that we release at least 20 elderly political prisoners and another 20 prisoners whose health conditions demand our consideration I told them this would be a humanitarian gesture and politically intelligent because no one should die in prison especially if they are innocent or because of inadequate medical attention or because they received no medical care whatsoever no one would listen to me mr president they said we're not even going to write that down what you just said because you know what could happen and remember they said the more bones we throw to the right wing the more they'll demand from us this is what they told me in that meeting in this government nobody nobody listens and nobody speaks I've tried several times over the last several months but every door shut on me I've always believed that dialogue and diplomacy weren't that important in times of peace and tranquility and democracy but that diplomacy is needed most during the difficult times the complex times the times of democratic crisis like the one my country is living through right now however what I've learned over these past months is that the situation in Nicaragua is too much for my meager diplomatic skills mr chairman there is another point of order from in Ciudad in Brabura and I will ask you to let me finish because I'm about to finish shortly okay would you be kind enough to finish Nicaragua please yes I will I will it's just one minute and a half since 2018 Nicaragua has become the only country in Central America probably in all of Latin America where there are no longer any printed newspapers where you don't have the freedom to even post a critical tweet or comments in social media there are no longer any human rights organizations there are none well just one the rest were shut down or expelled from the country there are no independent political parties there are no real elections there is no separation of powers just dark powers powers operating outside the institutional and democratic realm this year the government has begun to confiscate private universities it's shut down 137 nonprofit organizations catholic organizations evangelical organizations environmental organizations operations smile mr president and the list continues to grow 170 000 Nicaraguans have fled the country others are trying to flee right now while i'm speaking mr president to finish i'd like to say that although it appears that all is lost and the panorama is very dark i believe firmly that there is hope i've said this to many people everyone inside the government and outside everyone is tired of this dictatorship in its actions every day there will be more people tired of this dictatorship and who say basta enough because the light will always overcome the shadows because love is stronger than hate and because you can lie to the people some of the time but not all the time god may take his time but he never forgets you thank you i said that that's a pretty powerful statement um what tell us a little bit what was the interruption was that interruption a political interruption was somebody trying to get him to stop speaking or was it just like uh well no so imagine i'm meeting of the oas and it was some procedural meeting and he raised his hand and asked to speak and he gave this statement so they weren't expecting it that i i don't remember it's a subcommittee or something of the oas and they were doing something and so people are just stunned yeah i mean this this has never happened before in the middle where is he where is he now in his family he lives in he's lived in washington since 2011 yeah but but um i've listened now to two long interviews with him with nicaraguan media that's an exile and um he has a lot of family nicaragua and he's afraid for them brothers and sisters and you know um so he's been in washington but he goes back and forth to nicaragua and he's been questioned pretty you know severely by these nicaragua journalists like why did you wait so long and he said you don't understand like they said why did you say that because before the oas he protested that the oas criticized the election that was his role and he said no this was a you know a fair election and everybody could vote and blah blah blah and the journalist said this morning said you know why did you say that and he said you don't understand i was in nicaragua they could take my passport away he said there there are ministers in the government that that have had their passports taken because people are defecting this is a major public defection but he said there are many many people who've been leaving the government for quite some time he said they just do it quietly because they have mansions and properties they've accumulated and he said but i'm broke he said i don't have anything i mean do you see you know with his family yeah and so i guess he figured he had nothing to lose yeah so one of the things yeah one of the things that we talked about because i think we'll come to a close and i think you know you've said it a few times no us intervention in nicaragua um also the lack of news in us newspapers i think the washington post had something that you shared about his defection but nothing in the new york times tell us where you go to get news and information and there is um for spanish speakers arturo mcfieldt is going to have a q&a session in spanish on the 30th of march so i'll put that information here as well but tell us where you go to get information and what you know anybody watching this might take away yes well that's that's a very important question and something i talk about with my students like if you don't read in spanish um you know and i tell my students you've got to study other languages what happened during the 80s as you probably know and other people listening know there was an amazing network of solidarity journalism and a lot of that has just collapsed most of it has collapsed like the magazine that i worked for in nicaragua people are too afraid to write so all those journalists are out of work when you know they're just sitting at home so that's why we're not hearing and the the solidarity journalism that still exists in the us i'm very sorry sorry to say most of it supports the ortega regime now i don't blame them i can understand because in the 80s i didn't believe a lot of the stuff either and so i think people think that it's that the us is lying but nicaraguans aren't lying but if you don't speak spanish how do you get those voices um so here's what i do first of all i have my friends there that give me information um but i read every day i look up confidencial now that's in spanish c-o-n-f-i-d-e-n-c-i-l c-i-a-l that is the only independent media left nicaraguan media and the editor had to go into exile because both his brother and sister have been just arrested that's Carlos Fernando Chamorro who was a sandinista right he was the editor of barricada when i lived there barricada was the sandinista newspaper okay so he was a sandinista journalist and now he's the only independent journalist left um but he had to leave the country because they were going to arrest him um so i go there but if you go to the havana times that's an independent cuban media critical on the left that publishes um some stuff in england has a section in english on nicaraguan i know the editor his name is circles robinson he lived in nicaragua 30 years he had to leave um his wife is still there and and i think a couple of his children circles went there is in solidarity de marigalpa in the um eighties and and you know participated in all kinds of projects and he's still trying to help nicaragua so havana times is a good one i mean i look at the guardian they have more stories yeah i look at el país of spain um but there is a total lack i mean especially since the war in ukraine started and not that that's not important it's very very important and it's heartbreaking and horrific yeah by the way ortega was one of the first leaders of the world to um say that he supported putin yeah and he thought that that was a good idea in fact i have a quote from daniel ortega which just give people an idea of where what direction he's taken he said after uh putin invaded ukraine he said quote i'm sure that if they meaning ukraine do a referendum like the one carried out in Crimea people will vote to annex their territories to russia really that was february 21st 22 22 report in reuters yeah i mean a month later really you think the ukrainians are all going to vote to annex their territory to russia so that's that's where he's coming from um so i get my information all over the place but a lot of it the best is in spanish and it really comes from confidential and the havana times i am very deeply frustrated by the lack of information give you another example of the skewed media coverage i mean how how little there is and how ridiculous it is i mean we're seeing these heartbreaking images of children in the ukraine and their cars with their stuffed animals having to flee and go across the border and it's horrible but the same day in the new york times there was a front page story of a little girl in the car looking at the window with tears in her eyes that same day there was a story in the mexican newspapers about a 19-year-old pregnant nicaraguan girl about to give birth she was in the back of a truck a closed cargo truck filled with people trying to get across the border to the us the smugglers abandoned the truck in the heat did you see this story uh they abandoned the truck in the heat those people were locked in there without air they finally managed to get the door open and as they opened it they trampled her she died where's that story yeah yeah these are refugees yeah well there's yeah i mean there's a lot of threads here the importance of a free press the importance of you know that a democratic society is only as strong as the ability to protect the voices of dissent um racism right our you know our willingness to see the suffering of people that look like the dominant majority versus the folks that don't so yeah there are a lot of threads here but we're in dark times yeah but i'd like to say one more thing there is something we can do i mean i know we have economic sanctions and i know some people don't agree with economic sanctions my friends in nicaragua want more sanctions i don't think our military should be doing exercises there and i also think that berlington has a very special responsibility just like i feel i have a special responsibility as a person of the left who who who supported the revolution who moved in nicaragua became a nicaraguan resident and lived there i have to examine my own blinders and we need moral sanctions and this is an appeal to senator sanders and his supporters and i support him i love him um where's the moral sanction on ortega senator sanders yeah thank you for denouncing gladamere and your statements and your videos and i've sent them to my students and people where's the statement announcing the dictator in nicaragua that you and i both supported yeah that would be a very powerful moral sanction to the left internationally and especially people who still support or take it and don't know all this or don't believe it or think somebody like me works for the cia yeah so burlington burlington as a history of supporting this revolution which was about people's empowerment literacy women's rights it was about things that were very much in line with progressive values that has that has that has imploded upon itself and i'm hearing you say that there is a moral imperative for folks in burlington who supported that to denounce what's going on yes and has have has there been any attempt to reach out to sanders in particular about that yes yes it has i tried i've been trying since 2018 and um the editor of confidencia carlos fernando chamorro who does a wonderful weekly tv wants to interview you senator sanders um and both his brother and sister are now in prison they've been uh charged or convicted eight years on trumped up charges and he is in exile but he he would really like to interview senator sanders and it would be a message to the left internationally and i think it echoes what the president the new president of chile is saying and again i want to end up with a hopeful message god be abhoric that we have to denounce human rights violations wherever they are here in guantanamo in our own prisons the death penalty and in igoraguan in russia wherever they are and especially where we have a a long and terrible history of being involved yeah i've never understood why that was confusing to folks but it is because of political power so trish thank you so much for sharing your the breadth and depth of your knowledge with everyone today thank you so much megan it's been wonderful to be with you here today discussing such an important topic to people in burlington and nicaragua