democracynow.org
Stories:
Two climate activists were set to go on trial in Massachusetts on Monday for blocking the shipment of 40,000 tons of coal to the Brayton Point power plant, a 51-year-old facility that is one of the region’s largest contributors to greenhouse gases. But in a surprise move, a local prosecutor dropped the criminal charges and reduced three other charges to civil offenses, calling climate change one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced. We are joined by the activists, Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara, and the prosecutor, Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter. Days after they were to square off in court, the three now say they plan to march together in the upcoming People’s Climate March in New York City.
Image Credit: lobsterboatblockade.org
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show with two climate activists who were arrested last year after they used their lobster boat to block a delivery of some 40,000 tons of coal to the Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts. When the ship carrying the coal, named the Energy Enterprise, attempted to unload its cargo, it found a boat, named the Henry David T., in the way. On board were climate activists Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara. Their boat was kept in place by a 200-pound anchor and displayed a banner with the hashtag #CoalIsStupid. Soon after Ward and O’Hara arrived, they called the police to report their direct action.
JAY O’HARA: Anchor’s down here. Anchor’s [inaudible] off of Brayton Point.
KEN WARD: So, do you want to do the honors? I’ll call the Somerset police right now.
JAY O’HARA: I’d like you to do it, to be honest. I’ll record.
KEN WARD: What am I saying?
JAY O’HARA: Ken’s just going to call the Somerset police to let them know that we’re here, let them know that this is a nonviolent protest, this is a purely peaceful protest, that we are intending to do what’s right for this planet and prevent this coal from coming in today.
KEN WARD: Hi. This is Ken Ward. And I wanted to let you know I’m on board the boat, the Henry David T. We’re anchored off of the Somerset—of the pier at Brayton Point. And I wanted to just—sure. It’s Ken Ward. We’re on a boat, the Henry David T. We are anchored off the pier at Brayton Point. And I wanted to let you know we’re conducting a nonviolent, completely peaceful protest against the use of coal, and we’ll be completely cooperative.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara speaking on May 15th, 2013, as their lobster boat blockade successfully blocked a shipment of coal to the Brayton Point power plant, a 51-year-old facility which is one of the region’s largest contributors to greenhouse gases.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, on Monday, more than a year later, Ward and O’Hara were due to appear in court to face charges stemming from their act of civil disobedience. But in a surprise move, the Bristol County, Massachusetts, district attorney, Sam Sutter, announced he had instead dropped their criminal charges and reduced three other charges to civil offenses. This is Sutter speaking just outside the courthouse.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY SAM SUTTER: The decision that Robert Kidd and I—that’s the assistant district attorney who handled this case—reached today was a decision that certainly took into consideration the cost to the taxpayers in Somerset, but was made with our concern for their children, the children of Bristol County and beyond, in mind. Climate change is one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced. In my humble opinion, the political leadership on this issue has been gravely lacking. I am heartened that we were able to forge an agreement that both parties were pleased with and that appeared to satisfy the police and those here in sympathy with the individuals who were charged. I am also extremely pleased that we were able to reach an agreement that symbolizes our commitment at the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office to take a leadership role on this issue.
CROWD MEMBER: Amen!
DISTRICT ATTORNEY SAM SUTTER: Thank you. ... So that’s very inspiring to me, and I will carry that with me in my heart. Thank you.
REPORTER: Will you be a model for across the country?
DISTRICT ATTORNEY SAM SUTTER: Well, I certainly will be in New York in two weeks, how’s that? And I’m walking around with Bill McKibben’s article from Rolling Stone a couple of months ago. How do you like that? So, you know where my heart is.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, that was the Bristol County district attorney, Sam Sutter, who will join us soon from Providence. But first we’re joined by the two climate activists who carried out the lobster boat blockade. They’re joining us here in New York. Ken Ward is a longtime climate activist, co-founder of the National Environmental Law Center, former deputy director of Greenpeace USA. And Jay O’Hara is a Quaker and a sailmaker from Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Jay, let’s start with you. What inspired this action? Talk about how you actually accomplished it last year in May.
JAY O’HARA: Well, I think the inspiration for this is many of us have this huge weight on our hearts, knowing that this crisis is bearing down on us. And almost two years ago in October, Ken and I both ended up at a vigil in downtown Boston, kind of on the eve of Hurricane Sandy, and Ken proposed the idea that it was time to take direct action to stop coal from being burned in Massachusetts. And it seemed—my heart kind of leapt with joy at that first mention of it, and it was clear that that was the work that, for us, we needed to do.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Ken Ward, you’ve been a longtime climate activist. Why did you decide to take this direct action last year? Why did you think it was necessary then?
KEN WARD: Well, nothing else is working. I mean, a lot of us have been doing this through—I mean, one of the things we had to argue—or, would have argued, had we gone to trial—is that we’ve pursued all legal available means to try to address the problem. I mean, we’ve been doing lobbying and public education and a whole set of things for a long time. None of those things have worked. It’s just as—I mean, the trajectory hasn’t changed. So, in terms of how do we change politics, the thing that seemed needed is this, is direct action.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, why did you focus on this coal plant and take the action you did with the lobster boat? Explain how that happened.
KEN WARD: Well, it’s—I’m from New England. This is the biggest visible source of coal burning in New England. And we picked it partly because it is visible—you can see the plant—and partly because it’s coal, and it’s coal coming by ship, so there was a means. I mean, there was a way to interpose ourselves between the plant and the coal. So all of those things are what suggested it.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you concerned about your safety?
KEN WARD: Not physical safety, in the sense of I think—we took very careful precautions. Jay knows much more about this than I do, but we took a number of steps, with several months of planning here, to make sure that we were safe, nobody else would be endangered. Maybe a little question afterwards about the strength of the parts of the ship, but we thought we—
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, could you explain, Jay, exactly what you did?
JAY O’HARA: Yeah. So, on the morning of May 15th, 2013, we—after a short prayer meeting on the docks in Newport, Rhode Island, we motored our boat, the Henry David T., up Narragansett Bay.
AMY GOODMAN: And the Henry David T., how did you come up with the name?
JAY O’HARA: We knew we needed to do some rechristening of the boat, and it was pretty clear that Henry David Thoreau would be a good example for us as we went into this work. We motored up and dropped anchor in the ship channel at Brayton Point, putting ourselves kind of right off the pier where the Energy Enterprise would be attempting to dock. We had dropped a really large anchor, so that we were immovable, called the police, let them know we were there, and then waited.
AMY GOODMAN: And then?
JAY O’HARA: Well, after several hours, eventually the Coast Guard arrived. The ship arrived. Somerset police arrived. The Coast Guard boarded our boat, and through a number of different attempts to get us out of the way, we decided we would comply with their order, after having been threatened with some very, very serious and hefty fines. And then we spent most of the day trying to ourselves haul up the anchor and then waiting for the Coast Guard to say, "Well, you can’t do that. We have to wait for us and have to wait for this ship to arrive. We have to wait for the state police dive team to arrive." And so, between the anchor being stuck on the bottom and some, I’d say, bureaucratic SNAFUs, we ended up being able to block the shipment for the entire day.
AMY GOODMAN: And what were you charged with?
JAY O’HARA: We were charged with four charges: disturbing the peace, conspiracy to disturb the peace, negligent operation of a motor vessel and a failure to act to avoid a collision of a boat.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did you face?
JAY O’HARA: Our lawyers told us that all those charges combined could have maximum sentences of a couple of years.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Were you at any point concerned, Ken, that the Coast Guard may detain you?
KEN WARD: We were surprised that we weren’t detained. But after, after the Coast Guard got on board, it was a very amicable—it was almost along a conversation. And they said right off the bat that they were primarily concerned with our safety, the safety of everyone else on the boat, and moving us. And they weren’t interested in law enforcement in the traditional sense of—it didn’t make sense to them—in essence, it didn’t make sense for them to remove us, because then it would be harder to get the boat out of there.
JAY O’HARA: And I would say, I mean, emblematic of that, we were at some point making jokes with them. They were showing us how to use the radar. They were, as we were trying to raise the anchor, holding on to our life jackets to make sure we didn’t fall overboard. So it was a very friendly, amicable interaction between us and the Coast Guard.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring in Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter. On Monday, as we said, in a surprise move, he dropped the criminal charges and reduced three other charges to civil offenses against Jay O’Hara and Ken Ward. District Attorney Sam Sutter is joining us from Providence, Rhode Island. DA Sutter, can you talk about your decision to drop these charges?
SAM SUTTER: Well, I can tell you that I started wrestling with exactly how I was going to accomplish the various goals that I had on this case as we got closer to trial, and actually reached the decision over the weekend through several discussions with some top people in my office, all of whom, I believe, share my views on climate change.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, talk more about what it is you discussed, what weighed into your decision, and why you’re so concerned about climate change. I mean, this is very unusual for a DA not only to drop the charges like this, but then to make such a dramatic announcement as you did when you came out of the courthouse, I think very much blowing away the very activists who you were about to try.
SAM SUTTER: Well, first about the decision, and then about my point of view and whether it was unusual or not. So, we thought about reporting part of the case to the appeals court, because we were not sure that the criminal court had jurisdiction of the motorboat charges. But that was not met with a positive reception, really, by either the judge or the defense attorneys. So then we had to try to come up with a resolution of the case that met several concerns—obviously, number one, my duty to uphold the law. So I can be in great sympathy with the protesters, but I do have a duty to uphold the law. Secondly, the interests of those in Somerset who had to foot the bill. That’s the taxpayers of Somerset. But then, finally, my moral position on this issue. So, through a very open discussion, which I like very much, there was a synthesis, and we came up with what I thought was really the ideal resolution. This was an act of civil disobedience, so this should be treated as a civil infraction. And I was extremely pleased when we broached the idea with the defense attorneys and they embraced it. And after that, it was simply a question on Monday morning of determining what was a fair figure for the restitution. Once again, the defense attorneys showed great reasonableness. So, I thought that aspect of the case and what we did was not unusual. I thought that was prudent, reasonable and wise.
The second part, though, the decision to walk out and give the short speech that I did. I thought about, when I did this, what one of my colleagues did, not that I agreed with that, but it was a bold move, when Bill Bennett, district attorney in Springfield, after the people of Massachusetts voted to decriminalize marijuana by a two-to-one margin, he dismissed all the pending possession of marijuana cases in his office. Now, I’m not saying that I agreed with that decision, but that’s the kind of move that I have seen district attorneys make that’s bold. And that guided me, to some extent. And so I decided to go out and give a short speech about exactly why I made the decision that I did and state my position on climate change, which I think is in congruence with those of Mr. Ward and Mr. O’Hara.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dean Sutter [sic], can you—sorry, District Attorney Sutter, can you explain what kind of response you’ve received, both to your decision as well as to your speech outside the courthouse?
SAM SUTTER: Well, it’s been a humbling response and an inspiring one. I don’t think I’ve ever received—maybe the night that I won district attorney, I might have received cheers that loud and that energetic, but it was just a wonderful, wonderful feeling. And the response since, all the requests for interviews, it really has kind of taken me aback, because I think that my position is a reasonable one in view of the data that I’ve looked at, the conversations that I’ve had with individuals more expert than I am. We’re at a crisis point. And I do believe—with all respect for the political leadership, I do believe that there are not enough political leaders speaking out boldly on this issue. And I do hope that what takes place in New York next weekend is similar to some of the great protests, marches that have taken place within my lifetime, from Selma to Montgomery, to the marches on Washington to end the war in Vietnam, to the most—one of the most recent, the million people who gathered in New York in 1983 that clearly had an impact on Ronald Reagan to move him to the point where he had the discussions that he did with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik. I think that’s the goal on September 20th and 21st, and I plan to be a part of it.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re talking about this march on September 21st, the major climate march that’s going to be taking place here as people at the U.N. are weighing the issue of climate change.
SAM SUTTER: That’s correct.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about, in your life, what has influenced you most on this issue. And where does that leave the coal plant that is so significant in your county, the Brayton Point coal plant?
SAM SUTTER: Well, Professor McKibben has certainly influenced me. I remember beginning to read about his books and his insights back in the late 1980s when I was living on Cape Cod. I tried to get involved in some environmental causes then. I’ve been a passionate environmentalist from the time I became an adult. So, the influences are what I read, the shows I watch on television. I watched the Years of Living Dangerously, for example. I saw a program last weekend or two weekends ago about deforestation in Indonesia. So, those are some of the influences. What was the second part of your question again?
AMY GOODMAN: Talking about the influences, and also, where does that leave the coal plant in your county, in Bristol County, that Jay and Ken were protesting?
SAM SUTTER: Well, I think we have to accelerate—thank you, yes. I think we have to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, to green energy. I mean, as I read in Professor McKibben’s article in Rolling Stone, on a sunny day, Germany is getting half of its energy from solar. On a normal day, Texas is getting a third of its energy from wind. Those are the kinds of situations that need to take place globally. And to the extent that I have a forum, I’m going to speak out about this. And to the extent that my office can be a leader for state agencies, district attorneys on this issue, that’s what I’m going to try to do.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But is Brayton Point now scheduled to close in a couple of years? Is that right? Or a few years?
SAM SUTTER: Well, I think that Mr. Ward and Mr. O’Hara know more than I do about this, but the last I heard was 2016, 2017, which frankly isn’t soon enough. I’d like to see that plant closed quickly, as I would like to see Pilgrim nuclear plant closed quickly.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you hope that the decision you’ve made will embolden other climate activists to challenge the coal plant and the whole issue of climate change overall?
SAM SUTTER: Well, that’s a question I have to answer very carefully, and I’ve been asked that question—excuse me—many times since Monday. And what I say is this: I have a great sympathy with what these two gentlemen did, but I do disagree with their action, obviously, because it broke the law. We reached a perfect resolution of the case, in my opinion. So, to say that I agree with their position, but disagree, as the district attorney, with their action, I think is completely consistent. So, am I encouraging more lawful protests and demonstrations? Emphatically yes. Am I encouraging more unlawful ones? No, I’m not.
AMY GOODMAN: What about that question, Ken, of what should be happening to this plant?
KEN WARD: Well, this summer, we learned that the West Antarctic ice shelf is in an unstoppable collapse, which means 10 feet of sea-level rise. That, to me, is really all we need to know. I mean, it’s a signal event. Everything from here—we’re in the downslope. We should therefore be taking emergency actions everywhere we can. And the very first emergency action is to stop burning coal. So, yes, the plant owners of Brayton Point, although it’s now being sold again, did announce that the plant would be closed in 2017. But that’s not soon enough. It should be shut immediately—I mean, within a year. We should be engaging in an emergency shift to renewables right away. And that should be the top of our political agenda.
AMY GOODMAN: And Jay O’Hara?
JAY O’HARA: Well, and I think one of the interesting things is that this plant is scheduled to close currently, but that’s just on the company’s own prerogative, and there’s no legal barrier to continuing to burn coal in Massachusetts. So, there has not been a policy shift significant enough to actually put a final stop to burning coal in Massachusetts, and that’s the sort of action that needs to be taken if we’re going to really solve this problem.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you have something you’d like to say to the district attorney? Did you expect this was going to happen on Monday?
KEN WARD: Well, I’m hoping for an opportunity to talk—
AMY GOODMAN: You can look right into that camera when you—
KEN WARD: Where is he? All right, all right. We were thinking, actually, we should drive back from New York to wherever you are and take a picture with you, inviting people to come to New York to the march with us. Maybe you want to do that. But I’d also like an opportunity at some point to meet you in person again and tell you what we think, which is both to be thankful, but I think that—I think there’s a lot of people in positions of authority, political leadership, law enforcement leadership, who might share your opinions on climate, but nobody else has linked it, as you did, to an actual decision in a way that is powerful. This is quite powerful. We are where we are, not just because of what we did, but because of how you responded to it. And I think that you’ve taken a great and courageous step and really should be applauded for it. Or I applaud you for it, sure.
AMY GOODMAN: DA Sutter?
SAM SUTTER: Well, I’m inspired by those words. I look forward to seeing you in New York City. And I look forward to more dialogue. I agree with you about the coal-burning plant. And I just look forward to working together with the activists as much as I can and in crafting stands for my office that put us in a leadership role. There are many in my office that share my views—certainly Robert Kidd, Roger Michael, with whom I worked on this case, Greg Miliote, director of communications. So, this is a first step.
AMY GOODMAN: Might you be marching together at the climate march on September 21st?
SAM SUTTER: It’s certainly possible, if they call me. I’ll give them my cellphone number.
JAY O’HARA: Sounds like a plan.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll leave it there. And we certainly will be out there covering that march on September 21st, the climate march here in New York. That does it for this segment, but though it certainly doesn’t do it for continuing to cover these issues. Of course, Democracy Now! will be moving on from covering what’s happening at the U.N. and the climate march to going to Lima, Peru, for the U.N. climate summit in December. I want to thank you, Sam Sutter, district attorney in Bristol County, Massachusetts; Jay O’Hara and Ken Ward, for joining us.
KEN WARD: Thank you.
JAY O’HARA: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, why is that spinning wheel of death, that circle that just spins and spins when you’re waiting for a website to load, appearing on so many websites today? We’ll talk about the Internet Slowdown. Stay with us.
|
If your favorite website seems to load slowly today, take a closer look: You might be experiencing the Battle for the Net’s "Internet Slowdown," a global day of action. The Internet won’t actually be slowing down, but many sites are placing on their homepages animated "Loading" graphics , which organizers call "the proverbial 'spinning wheel of death,'" to symbolize what the Internet might soon look like. Large Internet service providers, or ISPs, like Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T and Verizon, are trying to change the rules that govern the Internet. Some of the biggest companies on the Internet — Netflix, Mozilla, Kickstarter, Etsy and WordPress — are joining today’s Internet Slowdown to draw attention to net neutrality, the principle that service providers shouldn’t be allowed to speed up, or slow down, loading times on certain websites, such as their competitors. This comes as 27 online advocacy groups sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler Tuesday, calling on him to participate in town hall-style public hearings on net neutrality before ruling on the issue as early as this year. We are joined by Tim Karr of the group Free Press, one of the main organizers of the Internet Slowdown global day of action.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: If your favorite website seems to load slowly today, take a closer look: You might be experiencing the Battle for the Net’s, quote, "Internet Slowdown," a global day of action. The Internet won’t actually be slowing down, but many sites are placing on their home pages animated "Loading" graphics, which organizers call "the proverbial 'spinning wheel of death.'" They’ll symbolize what the Internet might soon look like. As that wheel spins, the rules about how the Internet works are being redrawn. Large Internet service providers, or ISPs, like Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T and Verizon, are trying to change the rules that govern the Internet.
AMY GOODMAN: Some of the biggest companies on the Internet are joining today’s Internet Slowdown to draw attention to net neutrality, that principle that service providers shouldn’t be allowed to speed up, or slow down, loading times on certain websites, such as their competitors. They include Netflix, Mozilla, Kickstarter, Etsy, WordPress.
This comes as 27 online advocacy groups sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chair Tom Wheeler Tuesday, calling on him to participate in town hall-style public hearings on net neutrality before ruling on the issue as early as this year. We asked the FCC for their response to the letter; they didn’t reply by the time of our broadcast.
For more, we’re joined by Tim Karr, senior director of strategy for Free Press, one of the main organizers of the Internet Slowdown today.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Tim.
TIM KARR: Hi.
AMY GOODMAN: Lay it out. Explain exactly what you’re so concerned about.
TIM KARR: Well, the Federal Communications Commission has routinely gotten the issue of net neutrality wrong. And earlier this year, the chairman, Tom Wheeler, put forth a proposal that would allow very powerful websites to dominate the Internet. It would allow Internet service providers to favor their websites and services in a way that degrades access to the rest of the Internet. It creates this two-tiered system. And the Internet was never meant to be that way. So, over the year, there has been this amazing public response rejecting Wheeler’s proposal and asking for real net neutrality protections. Real net neutrality protections involve treating Internet service providers as common carriers, that they are networks that have to move all information equally without discrimination. And today is a culmination of a lot of that effort.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: How many organizations or websites do you have participating in today’s Internet Slowdown?
TIM KARR: Well, we’ll know by the end of the day. I can tell you right now that there are hundreds of tech companies, advocacy organizations and websites that are displaying, as you call it, the spinning wheel of death. And so, but it’s important that the Internet will not be slowing down as a result of that, although one website might slow down. And that is the website of the Federal Communications Commission, which will be receiving a lot of the activism. And the last time we had a moment like this was in mid-July, when there were a lot of people commenting at their website, and it in fact crashed. We don’t want to crash the FCC today. We want comments to come in, and we want them to receive them. We want them to listen to them, and we want them to listen to the overwhelming consensus among the public that real net neutrality protections are needed.
AMY GOODMAN: Netflix spokesperson Anne Marie Squeo issued a statement confirming the site will display the spinning icon on its home page today. She said, quote, "Consumers, not broadband gatekeepers, should pick the winners and losers on the Internet. Strong net neutrality rules are needed to stop Internet service providers from demanding extra fees or slowing delivery of content to consumers who already have paid for Internet access." Now, Tim, this is very interesting that Netflix is one of those participating, because Netflix really highlighted the problem for so many, as they made a deal to have faster—to be on one of those fast lanes and paying Comcast so that Netflix can stream more easily.
TIM KARR: Yes, and it’s a very good illustration of the type of companies that are protesting the FCC plan. Comcast, for example, has a competing business with Netflix. They provide us with cable television, so it is in their interest, as an Internet service provider, to slow websites like Netflix. But it’s not just large companies like Netflix that are participating. There are Vimeo, which is a great video-streaming website that a lot of documentary filmmakers use; Etsy, which connects artisans and craftspeople with their customers, is participating. There are a lot of these types of websites, that have built their business on an open Internet, that are very actively involved today.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And explain, Tim Karr, why is the U.S. position on this so important.
TIM KARR: The U.S. position is very important. There are debates about net neutrality that are going on throughout the world. The U.S. position is very important because, in many ways, U.S. policy influences policy that’s made in other countries, although I should say that countries like Chile and Brazil are actually a step ahead of us. They have put in place net neutrality rules that are being enforced today.
AMY GOODMAN: But isn’t it more than that? It’s not just the U.S. is influential. So much of the web goes through the United States.
TIM KARR: Much of the web comes through the United States. Much of the routing takes place in the United States. So if there is a potential for a slowdown at that level, it could affect all Internet traffic around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: And as we wrap up, Tom Wheeler, what he formerly did, before President Obama appointed him to the FCC as chair, and what you’re demanding?
TIM KARR: Tom Wheeler formerly served as the chief lobbyist for the cable and telecommunications industry and, prior to that, for the wireless industry. So he has a history of working with industry. And we’re asking him to put those potential biases aside and side with the people and pass real net neutrality protections by reclassifying Internet service providers as common carriers.
AMY GOODMAN: And that means?
TIM KARR: That means that they have to connect all people equally, and they cannot—
AMY GOODMAN: Like telephones we have at home.
TIM KARR: It’s like if you were to pick up your telephone and make a phone call to your favorite pizza joint down the street. Your telephone company is a common carrier. That means they cannot connect you to Domino’s instead. They have to simply make that connection happen and move the traffic without discrimination.
AMY GOODMAN: And the time schedule for all of this happening?
TIM KARR: Well, today is the Internet Slowdown day, so we encourage everyone to participate today. September 15th at the FCC is the deadline for comments, so there will be a couple more days for people to comment. Then the agency is supposed to look at all of these comments and make a ruling based on what people have said. That could happen probably by the end of this year, maybe next year.
AMY GOODMAN: Are there rules that there have to be public forum for this?
TIM KARR: There aren’t rules, but there has been a long tradition with the predecessors for the FCC chairman of meeting with the public in these open hearings, where public—where the people can come forward, they can comment, their comments are entered into the public record. Chairman Wheeler has yet to schedule any of those types of hearings, and we’ve been very adamant that he does that.
AMY GOODMAN: Tim Karr, I want to thank you for being with us, senior director of strategy for Free Press, one of the main organizers of the Internet Slowdown. When we come back from break, we’ll look at the latest developments in the United States and around the world around marijuana decriminalization. Stay with us.
|
We look at the growing movement for drug decriminalization that is moving ahead in the United States and being amplified by former heads of state from around the around. On Monday, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said he would sign a bill that would make Philadelphia the largest city in the country to decriminalize marijuana possession. Just two weeks ago, the City Council in Santa Fe voted to decriminalize marijuana. Earlier this year, District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray signed a bill to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana in the U.S. capital. Ballot initiatives on legalization of marijuana will go before voters in Oregon, Florida and Alaska in November. This comes two years after voter initiatives in Colorado and Washington state legalized recreational marijuana. Meanwhile, a group of former presidents and United Nations leaders gathered in New York Tuesday to call for an end to the criminalization and incarceration of drug users. Known as the Global Commission on Drug Policy, the panel includes the former presidents of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland. The commission first made headlines in 2011 when it declared the war on drugs to be a failure. We are joined by two guests: Michel Kazatchkine, a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and the United Nations’ special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia; and Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to look at the growing movement toward drug [decriminalization]. On Monday, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said he would sign a bill that would make Philadelphia the largest city in the country to decriminalize marijuana possession. Just two weeks ago, the City Council in Santa Fe voted to decriminalize marijuana, as well. Earlier this year, District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray signed a bill to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana in the U.S. capital. Ballot initiatives on legalization of marijuana will go before voters in Oregon, Florida and Alaska in November. This comes two years after voter initiatives in Colorado and Washington state legalized recreational marijuana.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, a group of former presidents and United Nations leaders gathered in New York Tuesday to call for an end to the criminalization and incarceration of drug users. Known as the Global Commission on Drug Policy, the panel includes the former presidents of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland. Other members include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, as well as George Shultz, the former secretary of state under President Reagan. The commission first made headlines in 2011 when it declared the war on drugs to be a failure. Ernesto Zedillo is the former president of Mexico.
ERNESTO ZEDILLO: Governments, as a general rule, should de-emphasize the pursuit of nonviolent and minor offenders, while directing enforcement resources strategically towards the most disruptive and violent elements of the trafficking.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: César Gaviria, the former president of Colombia, also spoke on Tuesday in New York.
CÉSAR GAVIRIA: What we are trying to do now is exactly to recognize that we will not live in a world free of drugs and that we should move to a control of the drug markets by regulation instead of these idealistic and proper idea that we should—
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Louise Arbour, the former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, also condemned the war on drugs.
LOUISE ARBOUR: It is a model, the model that we’ve embraced for the past 50 years, that is now demonstrably ineffective, inefficient, costly—and by "cost," I don’t mean only financial cost, catastrophic human cost—that delivers nothing on a promise that was a ridiculous one to make in the first place.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about this drug summit and the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s new report, we’re joined by two guests here in New York. Dr. Michel Kazatchkine is the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and former executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Ethan Nadelmann is with us, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Ethan, let’s start right here in the United States, this major development, largest U.S. city yet to decriminalize pot. It looks like October 20th may be the big day in Philadelphia. Talk about the significance of this.
ETHAN NADELMANN: Well, I mean, on the one hand, one has to say that there’s decriminalization, and there’s decriminalization. There’s decriminalization which results in marijuana being treated simply as a $25 ticket or a traffic fine, and then there’s what happened in New York and other states back in the '70s. When we decriminalized marijuana, arrests initially dropped, and then somehow the police—the NYPD, in this case, or other police—found ways to keep arresting mostly young men of color for having some marijuana in their pocket. I think this latest wave of decriminalizations are much further-reaching. People understand what went wrong before. And I'll tell you, in New Mexico, it’s a very important move. Some of these others are very important, as well. In D.C., the decriminalization law that passed just a few months ago, that was probably the furthest-reaching of ever. Now the cops can’t even say, "Oh I smelled marijuana on him, and that’s why I started searching him and arresting him." So, we’re really moving in that direction. And D.C., in fact, will have a ballot initiative this November that will be a quasi-legalization initiative and hopefully set up for the City Council to fully tax and regulate marijuana next year.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, let’s turn to this report. You’re a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Could you talk about the key recommendations of the report and how they differ from policies for drug control in the past?
DR. MICHEL KAZATCHKINE: Well, they’re radically different. The policies in the past have been based on a prohibition paradigm. As César Gaviria was saying in the short piece you were showing, there was a dream or an unrealistic goal of drug policies of a drug-free world, and that could be achieved by just prohibiting drugs, prohibiting production, sale, distribution, consumption. That paradigm has failed. That’s what we have been saying since our first report in 2011. So, we’re talking about a new paradigm, and that is that we advocate for policies that are not based on repression and prohibition, but policies that are based on health, promotion of human rights and more humane policies. And that implies, first, to prioritize health. Drugs is about health, we say, not about policing. And that’s not just a rhetoric sentence. This is about shifting resources that are currently going into totally ineffective repression into promotion of health and social interventions of proven efficacity. Then, it’s about decriminalizing. It’s about shifting the repressive efforts from targeting small dealers, vendors, farmers, onto the big fishes that are currently escaping the system. And finally—and this is a very sensitive and a new, somehow, advocacy point of our commission—we’re saying, ultimately, one day, we will have to renegotiate the international drug control regime—that is, the international treaties that were agreed like 60 years ago—because we advocate for legal regulation of drugs, and in order for that to come one day, we’ll have to renegotiate those treaties.
AMY GOODMAN: Ethan Nadelmann, what do you think are the most difficult arguments you face in the United States? I mean, issues around—or for someone to listen might be saying, or someone watching might say, "What about the massive issue of addiction, overall, when you’re talking about, well, drugs even beyond marijuana?"
ETHAN NADELMANN: Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you, Amy, I mean, the typical argument here is: "But what about the kids?" Right? You hear about this with marijuana. And I think, with respect to marijuana legalization, I think there will be greater levels of marijuana use in our society, but I don’t think it’s going to be the kids, because they’ve had the best access to marijuana for decades now and will continue to do so, and the laws aren’t going to legalize it for them anyway, right? I think it will be probably with older people. And to the extent we’re talking about marijuana, it’s not at all clear that that’s going to be a net harm if people are having a puff of marijuana in the evening instead of a drink or a sleeping pill or whatever it might be.
I think the second argument—I mean, our most vigorous opposition now is coming from the prison-industrial complex, the police and others. And they’re just trying to hold on to what they had. They’re making arguments about health, which is bizarre coming from the police, because they’ve never apparently cared about the health issues before. And the whole move towards marijuana legalization has created a kind of crisis of identity for them, almost in the existential identity.
So I think the last argument that remains that we really struggle with is, look what’s happened with pharmaceutical opiates in our society. You know, 15 years ago, there was a big problem with people not getting sufficient painkillers for things like cancer pain and terminal illness and all these things. So we expanded the availability. But then physicians and others started prescribing them much too broadly for chronic pain, where they didn’t work that well. And so now, last year, more people died of an opiate overdose, either heroin or pharmaceuticals, than in auto accident—number one cause of accidental death. So the greatest challenge is, we know prohibitionist policies have failed; can we intelligently regulate the drugs once they’re legal? That’s the real challenge now.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a federal law coming down the road?
ETHAN NADELMANN: Well, the feds, on an issue like this, are almost always the last. But I will give President Obama some credit here, because when Washington and Colorado voted to legalize and legally regulate marijuana, the White House and the Justice Department had to figure out what to do. And they hemmed and hawed for months, but finally, last summer, they said, "We’re going to allow Washington and Colorado to proceed." Congress wasn’t yet willing to change the law. But that was monumental, and not just in the U.S., because once Washington said that Colorado and Washington have room to proceed, then they had to say the same thing to people externally. So when Uruguay legalized marijuana in December, the U.S. ambassador said, "The U.S. regards that as a domestic issue for Uruguay." That’s opened up—I mean, it’s remarkable, actually, the international impact of Washington and Colorado legalizing marijuana.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And Dr. Kazatchkine, what are the drugs that you’re calling for the decriminalization of, in trade and in other laws?
DR. MICHEL KAZATCHKINE: Well, we’re talking—our discourse is generic. We talk about—
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So it’s not just marijuana; it’s all.
DR. MICHEL KAZATCHKINE: —currently illicit drugs. No, absolutely. For example, synthetic psychoactive substances, ATS, as they are being called, amphetamine-like stimulants. You may know that in New Zealand in the last year, the government and the Parliament passed bills by which some of the ATSes can be submitted to national authorities just as you submit a dossier for a pharmaceutical drug, a medicine, and—
AMY GOODMAN: Heroin, as well?
DR. MICHEL KAZATCHKINE: Not—heroin is different. I’ll come back to heroin in a second. You submit your dossier. You show the adverse events. You document what the substance is. And if that is, quote, "approved," then it is being sold under regulatory conditions, like not to people below the age of 18, sold in adult shops, and so on. That’s what we call regulated market. And people—actually, from the 2,000 and so substances that were circulating in New Zealand, people are—
AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds. We have 20 seconds to go.
DR. MICHEL KAZATCHKINE: Yeah, people are now using around 200, which means that people want to use stuff that they know what it contains. Heroin is different. Heroin, to me, can be a medicine for some of the people who are addicted to heroin and cannot use anything else and are strictly dependent on a high-quality product that we, as doctors, should be able to provide to people in need.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re meeting with Ban Ki-moon today. We’ll talk about that in a post-show and put it online at democracynow.org. Dr. Michel Kazatchkine, thanks so much for being with us, member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe. And thanks so much to Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
|
Headlines:
•Obama Claims Existing Authority to Expand Strikes on Islamic State to Syria
The White House is asserting President Obama already has authority for the expanded military campaign against the Islamic State he has asked Congress to approve. The message was delivered to lawmakers ahead of Obama’s address to the nation tonight. Obama is expected to outline his strategy for what the White House calls "degrading and ultimately destroying the terrorist group." Leaked details forecast a long-term campaign that will extend U.S. airstrikes from Iraq to Syria, where ISIS has established a foothold battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Obama’s calculations are said to include how to intervene without aiding the Assad regime. Speaking to reporters, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Obama’s plan is informed by the mistakes of the Iraq War.
Josh Earnest: "You know, the president is very interested in communicating clearly with the American public about what our priorities are and what our plans include, and what our plans don’t include. And it’s important to note that the president, as much as anyone else, has certainly learned the lessons that are evident from previous military activities in Iraq. Specifically those are that the United States cannot — again, at least it does not serve our interest to put the United States in a position in which we are bearing the load of the responsibility for providing security in the nation of Iraq."
Although Obama has asked Congress to vote on the authorization of force he says he already has, it’s unclear if enough lawmakers want the opportunity. Speaking to The New York Times, Republican Rep. Jack Kingston, who supports an authorization vote, said: "A lot of people would like to stay on the sideline and say, 'Just bomb the place and tell us about it later.' It’s an election year. A lot of Democrats don’t know how it would play in their party, and Republicans don’t want to change anything. We like the path we’re on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long."
•Syrian Rebel Leader Among 45 Killed in Blast
President Obama’s plan to confront the Islamic State also includes new military equipment and training for Syrian rebels not aligned with ISIS. In a setback for that group, a top leader of the Ahrar al-Sham rebel organization, Hassan Abboud, has died in a bombing attack in Idlib that killed at least 45 people, including several top commanders.
•Brown Wins GOP Senate Primary in NH; Cuomo Survives Primary Challenges in NY
The last of the 2014 primaries were held in five Northeast states Tuesday ahead of the approaching midterm elections. In New Hampshire, Scott Brown won the Republican primary to challenge Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. Brown previously served as a senator for Massachusetts until losing his seat in 2012. The Brown-Shaheen contest is seen as one of the key races deciding which party controls the Senate for the last two years of President Obama’s term. In the night’s biggest upset, Iraq War veteran and political newcomer Seth Moulton defeated nine-term Democratic Rep. John Tierney in Massachusetts. In New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo won the Democratic nomination, defeating his main challenger, Zephyr Teachout. With more than 35 percent of the vote, The New York Times says Teachout posted the strongest challenge to an incumbent governor since the state’s primaries began in 1970.
•Ferguson Residents Pack City Council Meeting with Calls for Change
Residents of the town of Ferguson, Missouri, packed a city council meeting last night, the first since last month’s police killing of 18-year-old African American Michael Brown. The City Council unveiled reforms that have stemmed from activist demands, including a citizen review board for police, a cap on how much of city revenue can come from fines, and a one-month recall program for warrants. But a number of residents voiced criticism that the reforms do not go far enough, calling for the resignation of top officials and the arrest of the officer who shot Brown, Darren Wilson. Over the course of the night, many who rose to speak gave their name simply as "Mike Brown."
•Senate Holds Hearing on Police Militarization in Ferguson Aftermath
The city council meeting in Ferguson came as the Senate held a hearing on the militarization of police forces nationwide. Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said the hearing was prompted by concerns over the heavily armed crackdown on the Ferguson protests following Michael Brown’s death.
Sen. Claire McCaskill: "I saw armored vehicles with a sniper pointing a rifle at an unarmed protester on a warm summer afternoon. I think most Americans were uncomfortable watching a suburban street in St. Louis being transformed, with vivid images, powerful images across this country, into a war zone, complete with camouflage, tear gas, rubber bullets, armored vehicles and laser sights."
The Pentagon’s 1033 program has transferred more than $5.1 billion in military equipment to local agencies since 1991, including some 600 Mine-Resistant Armor-Protected vehicles, or MRAPs. Speaking in defense of the program, Brian Kamoie of the Department of Homeland Security said military equipment helped locate the surviving suspect after the Boston Marathon bombing last year.
Brian Kamoie: "The response to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing demonstrated how preparedness grant investments have improved capabilities. Grant-funded equipment such as the forward-looking infrared camera on a Massachusetts State Police helicopter enabled the apprehension of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, while enhancing the personal safety of law enforcement officers and protecting public safety."
In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union says it plans to deliver a petition calling on the government to "stop funding the militarized policing of communities of color." Kara Dansky of the ACLU said the Pentagon transfers fuel police crackdowns in low-income, majority black communities like Ferguson.
Kara Dansky: "I think one net result is that having all this equipment at the disposal of local law enforcement is that it contributes to the culture of militarism that we’ve seen in law enforcement, again, for several decades, particularly in poor communities and communities of color. I think we need to be very concerned that it’s not quite as though all Americans experience the militarization of policing equally."
President Obama ordered a review of military transfers to local police forces in the aftermath of Brown’s killing. The Justice Department is also carrying out a civil rights probe of the Ferguson police force.
•Questioned on Assault Tape, NFL Commissioner Won’t Rule Out Rice’s Return
National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell is maintaining neither he nor any other league official saw the videotape of Ray Rice punching his fiancée before its release this week. The video’s disclosure prompted the NFL to suspend Rice indefinitely. But the details of the case have been known for months, after a previous video from a different angle showed Rice dragging his fiancée, now wife, out of an elevator and dropping her face-first on the ground. Speaking to Norah O’Donnell of CBS News, Goodell was asked why it took the new tape for him to take action.
Roger Goodell: "Well, we certainly didn’t know what was on the tape. But we have been very open and honest, and I have also, from two weeks ago, when I acknowledged that we didn’t get this right. That’s my responsibility, and I’m accountable for that.
Norah O’Donnell: "But what changed? I mean, on the first tape, she was lying unconscious on the ground, being dragged out. Did you really need to see a videotape of Ray Rice punching her in the face to make this decision?"
Roger Goodell: "No. We certainly didn’t, and that — and I will tell you that what we saw on the first videotape was troubling to us in and of itself. But what we saw yesterday was extremely clear, is extremely graphic, and it was sickening. And that’s why we took the action we took yesterday."
The website that released the video, TMZ, says the NFL never asked the casino where the assault occurred for the new tape. Goodell says the league was relying on law enforcement to hand over any evidence instead of acting on its own. Goodell also refused to rule out Rice’s return to football if he has "paid the price for [his] actions."
•Missouri Executes Death Row Prisoner; Texas Next
Missouri has executed an African-American prisoner despite concerns over his conviction and sentencing by an all-white jury. Earl Ringo Jr. was convicted of killing two people during a robbery in 1998. His attorneys also expressed concern about the sedative midazolam, a drug used in prolonged executions in other states, including one in Arizona where a prisoner gasped for air, choked and snorted during a two-hour-long ordeal. A report by St. Louis Public Radio found Missouri had used the sedative in all nine executions since last November, despite public claims by officials that it would not be used. Missouri officials said Ringo declined to take midazolam, or any sedative, before his execution today. Texas, meanwhile, is set to execute its first prisoner since state Attorney General (and Republican gubernatorial candidate) Greg Abbott said the state can keep the source of its execution drugs secret. Convicted murderer Willie Trottie is scheduled to be put to death this evening, despite claims by his attorney the execution drugs may have expired. Texas, Missouri and Florida have accounted for more than three-quarters of the 28 executions carried out in the United States this year.
•Ousted Professor: University of Illinois Threatening Academic Freedom
A campus day of action was held Tuesday at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign over the unhiring of a professor critical of the Israeli government. Steven Salaita was due to start work as a tenured professor in the American Indian Studies Program. But after posting a series of tweets harshly critical of this summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza, Salaita was told the offer was withdrawn. In his first public comments on the controversy, Salaita told a packed news conference the unhiring has caused personal hardship, leaving his family without income, a home and health insurance. More broadly, Salaita said school administrators are trampling academic freedom.
Steven Salaita: "As hard as this situation is on me personally, the danger of the university’s decision has farther-reaching implications. Universities are meant to be cauldrons of critical thinking; they are meant to foster creative inquiry and, when at their best, challenge political, economic or social orthodoxy. Tenure, a concept that is over a hundred years old, is supposed to be an ironclad guarantee that university officials respect these ideals and do not succumb to financial pressure or political expediency by silencing controversial or unpopular views."
The school’s Board of Trustees is expected to take up the controversy at a meeting on Thursday.
•Philadelphia Set to Decriminalize Marijuana
Philadelphia is poised to become the largest U.S. city to decriminalize marijuana. Mayor Michael Nutter has pledged to sign a City Council bill imposing a $25 fine for possession of an ounce or less of pot. Those cited would reportedly have to appear before a judge, but would not have a criminal record. People caught smoking pot in public would face a $100 fine, which could be waived through community service. The measure could prevent thousands of arrests each year.
___________________________
Democracy Now
207 W 25th Street,11th Floor
New York, New York 10001 United States
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment