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As a jury in Tennessee has convicted two former Vanderbilt University football players of raping an unconscious student in a dorm room, we look at a groundbreaking new documentary about sexual assault on college campuses across the country. Brandon Vandenburg and Cory Batey could face decades in prison after being convicted of a combined total of 16 felony counts, including aggravated rape. Two other former Vanderbilt football players, Brandon Banks and Jaborian McKenzie, are awaiting trial over their role in the rape. However, the court cases mark a rare example where students accused of sexual assault have actually faced punishment. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, "The Hunting Ground" shows how colleges and universities across the nation are covering up sexual assaults and failing to protect students from repeat offenders. We speak with the film’s director, Kirby Dick, and producer, Amy Ziering. Their previous film, "The Invisible War," which exposed the epidemic of sexual assault in the military, won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2012 and was nominated for an Academy Award.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where a new documentary on campus rape has just premiered as a major conviction has unfolded in Tennessee. A jury in Nashville has convicted two former Vanderbilt University football players of raping a fellow student in a dorm room. Brandon Vandenburg and Cory Batey could face decades in prison after being convicted on a combined total of 16 felony counts, including aggravated rape. Two other former Vanderbilt football players—Brandon Banks and Jaborian McKenzie—are awaiting trial over their role in the rape. The victim, who was unconscious at the time, says she doesn’t remember being raped as her assailants took photographs and video of the attack. After the verdict Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Jan Norman read a statement from the victim.
JAN NORMAN: "I am also hopeful that the publicity this case has received will lead to a discussion of how we can end sexual violence on college campuses. Finally, I want to remind other victims of sexual violence: You are not alone. You are not to blame." Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: The Vanderbilt case marks a rare example where college students accused of rape have been punished both by their universities and the legal system. The four students were kicked off the football team and banned from campus after the criminal charges were filed. One of the students, Jaborian McKenzie, enrolled in another school, Alcorn State, where he was allowed to play football despite the charges against him. He was later removed from the team amidst a media firestorm. A fifth player, Chris Boyd, pleaded guilty to helping cover up the rape, and received probation after agreeing to testify against the other suspects. He was dismissed from the football team, but allowed to keep his scholarship and finish his classwork at Vanderbilt. Boyd later joined the National Football League as a member of the practice squad for the Dallas Cowboys.
Well, here at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, a groundbreaking new film has premiered that deals with the issue of sexual assault on college campuses and shows just how rare criminal convictions like the ones at Vanderbilt are. The Hunting Ground was created by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, makers of the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary The Invisible War. This is the trailer for their latest film, Hunting Ground.
KAMILAH WILLINGHAM: I got a call from the dean of admissions asking, "If you were to get into Harvard, would you accept?" And I said yes, because I knew my mom would kill me if I said anything else.
UNIDENTIFIED: The first few weeks, I made some of my best friends. But two of us were sexually assaulted before classes had even started.
KAMILAH WILLINGHAM: I went to the dean of students’ office, and she said, "I just want to make sure that you don’t talk to anyone about this."
CAROLINE HELDMAN: They protect perpetrators because they have a financial incentive to do so.
UNIDENTIFIED: Problem of sexual assault on campuses is enormous.
UNIDENTIFIED: I think it’s fair to say that they cover these crimes up. There’s a lot of victim blaming.
UNIDENTIFIED: He lectured us about how we shouldn’t go out in short skirts.
UNIDENTIFIED: They told me, despite the fact that I had a written admission of guilt that I presented to them, it could only prove that he loved me.
UNIDENTIFIED: They discourage them from going to the police. If it goes to the police, then it’s more likely to end up as a public record.
UNIDENTIFIED: Universities are protecting a brand.
UNIDENTIFIED: Campus police cannot contact an athlete.
DON McPHERSON: He won the Heisman Trophy with his DNA in a rape kit.
DAVID LISAK: Just sit down with the students and ask them, "Where are the hotspots?"
UNIDENTIFIED: SAE, sexual assault expected.
UNIDENTIFIED: The second most common type of insurance claim against the fraternity industry is for rape.
CAROLINE HELDMAN: Her rapist’s name matched the name of two other cases, and he was allowed back on campus.
UNIDENTIFIED: The message is clear: You’re not going to win.
UNIDENTIFIED: We started seeing, you know, what was happening at campuses across the country.
UNIDENTIFIED: Hi.
UNIDENTIFIED: Hi.
UNIDENTIFIED: How has no one connected the dots before?
UNIDENTIFIED: These students went from sexual assault victims to survivors and now activists.
CAROLYN LUBY: My name is Carolyn Luby.
ALEXA SCHWARTZ: My name is Alexa Schwartz.
ARI MOSTOV: My name is Ari Mostov.
UNIDENTIFIED: This is a national problem.
UNIDENTIFIED: We are fed up!
UNIDENTIFIED: I was getting threatened. It was working in their favor to silence me, and I was terrified.
UNIDENTIFIED: I thought if I told them, they would take action, but the only action they took was against me.
UNIDENTIFIED: We’ve got a lot further to go.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer for The Hunting Ground. Just after we arrived here in Park City, I sat down with the filmmakers, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering. Their 2012 film, The Invisible War, exposed the issue of sexual assault in the military, prompting changes in policy. That issue remains in the spotlight as just this week a former Army prosecutor who oversaw sexual assault cases was found guilty of rape. Major Erik Burris was court-martialed and sentenced to 20 years in prison. I began by asking Amy Ziering, producer of The Hunting Ground, why she and Kirby Dick decided to make a film on campus rape.
AMY ZIERING: We weren’t anticipating making another film in this same area, but every time we showed Invisible War on campuses, Amy, someone came up to us and said, "Actually, this happened to me here, and there’s a lot of analogies between what you’re pointing out going on in the military going on at my school." And Kirby would find that, as well, at every—at almost every screening at different universities across the country. And then we started getting letters in our inboxes: "Dear Ms. Ziering, Dear Mr. Dick, will you please make a film on campus assaults? This happened to me at X university." And we actually were working on a very different project, and we just looked at each other and said we cannot not make this film. I mean, we were shocked that this is going on, and we felt like, well, actually, we understand these issues, we know how to make this kind of film, and we felt compelled to do it.
AMY GOODMAN: Amy, I went to one of your premieres here at Sundance, and the response afterwards was overwhelming. You were besieged. I watched one woman come up to you and say, "It happened to my daughter."
AMY ZIERING: No, that happens—yeah. With this film also, yeah—
AMY GOODMAN: Said it happened to her daughter.
AMY ZIERING: Yeah, yeah, and also mothers come up and said, "It happened to me 30 years ago at Dartmouth." I’ve gotten that a lot. "It happened to me 30 years ago. And thank you for doing this. I couldn’t speak then."
AMY GOODMAN: Kirby, this film is not only about people who have been deeply hurt, you know, sexually assaulted, raped; it’s about women who are organizing right now all over the country. And it’s led by two women from the University of North Carolina—both of them were raped—Annie Clark and Andrea Pino. They are remarkable. It happened to them several years apart from each other, but they found each other. They’re now traveling the country, helping victims at universities file Title IX antidiscrimination complaints to the Department of Education. They were raped early on in their college careers?
KIRBY DICK: Yes, both of them were, I think, assaulted within the first or second year that they were there, yes. And then, Andrea found out about Annie Clark’s earlier activism three or four years ago and reached out, and they formed this bond. And then they started—you know, Annie was appalled that this was still going on. And so, the two of them decided to really do something. And the first thing they did was start to investigate in how to file a Title IX complaint. And so, they, without any attorneys, wrote and filed a complaint against the school, which was accepted by the Department of Education.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the most galling parts of this film, Amy, is how administrations respond—or don’t respond. I mean, you have Annie Clark, now one of the organizers of a major antirape movement in this country, when she was raped and went to the University of North Carolina administration, one of the officials said, "It’s like a football game"? What is like a football game?
AMY ZIERING: Rape is like football: You have to think back on what you would have done differently, just like you would in any play in any game. That was what she said the administrator had said to her.
KIRBY DICK: This is what was so appalling, is, you know, we interviewed, on camera, over 60 women, and men, and we were—over and over and over, you would hear—you hear the stories of these women who were assaulted, and that was profoundly—you know, it was traumatizing to them. But they trusted their school. They went to their school. They had the courage to come forward to talk about it, and they trusted that their school would do the right thing. And in so many cases, you heard this form of victim blaming, like "It was your fault," like "You drank too much. You were dressed too provocatively." And it was just from across the board, whether it’s Ivy League schools, Southern schools, small liberal arts colleges. It was shocking.
AMY GOODMAN: Amy, can you talk about some of the examples of some of the punishments that are meted out to students? You know, rarely are they found responsible, but in the cases that they are?
AMY ZIERING: Oh, the punishments are ridiculous. One was like a $75 fine, a $25 fine, a book report, a poster board on 10 ways to approach a girl you like. What was it at another school?
KIRBY DICK: Well, it was 50 hours of community service at a rape crisis center.
AMY GOODMAN: Perpetrator is told to serve at a rape crisis center?
KIRBY DICK: Yes, yes, which is just the most absurd.
AMY GOODMAN: Kirby, you have these full screens in the film that show statistics, the number of people who complain on campuses of rape or sexual assault—and, of course, this is very small compared to how many are actually raped or assaulted—but those numbers compared to how many people are expelled. And at university after university, you see on the screen a big fat zero?
KIRBY DICK: Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is—you know, this is what was so shocking, is that these schools—I mean, we know that assaults are going on in each of these schools in the hundreds of times a year, perhaps even thousands of times a year at these schools, and yet no one is getting expelled, year after year after year. You know, at University of Virginia, for example, well over 200 assaults over a period of time, that people have reported—these are only the reported assaults, keep in mind—no one was expelled during that time.
AMY GOODMAN: There’s something else that’s very profound in this film. You come to understand universities all too often want to protect their brand more than the victim, that they don’t want to report these assaults. They don’t want to expel people. And yet, when it comes to what is called "honor crimes," like plagiarism, they expel scores of people. Explain.
KIRBY DICK: I mean, one of the unfortunate things is there’s very low transparency on this issue across the campus—across the country, so it’s very hard to even get these numbers. We were fortunate to get these numbers from the University of Virginia, who had not expelled anyone over a multi-year period, yet they had expelled, I think, nearly 200 people for other much more minor infractions like plagiarism. So that really tells you a lot about the priorities of the school and about, you know, the fact that protecting their students is not the number one priority.
AMY GOODMAN: In The Hunting Ground, you interview people at every level, the women or men who have been sexual assaulted. You also have a rapist, who has come out of jail, his face fogged. Explain his story.
KIRBY DICK: Well, what he had to say was that—I mean, one of the things our film shows is, just like in the military, these crimes are committed by a small number of men, a small percentage of men. It’s—most men are not rapists. Most men and athletes—you know, most athletes are not rapists. Most men in fraternities are not rapists. But it’s a small percentage of men who are committing these crimes, and committing them over and over. So, repeat offenders really are the core of this problem.
So we were able to interview one. And he talked about the MO of a repeat offender, which is, you know, to pick out someone who seems—doesn’t seem to have friends around them, who is getting drunk, who feels safe in a college environment, and then befriend them. And then he said it’s something that, you know, can be done again and again. And he actually did say if they’re not caught, the likelihood of them repeating is, in his words, nearly 100 percent.
AMY ZIERING: And if I can add, it was based on all that research and our knowledge that we wanted to name the film The Hunting Ground and show that it’s actually a calculated, premeditated act. It is not a hook-up gone bad. It’s not he said/she said. It’s not all the things that people intuitively think is what’s going on. "Oh, we can’t do anything about it. Kids drink. What are you going to do?" It’s actually not, you know, and that, I think, is really shocking and revelatory and what people need to know and understand.
AMY GOODMAN: You interview a campus police officer at the University of Notre Dame who would ultimately resign because he felt he was thwarted from conducting investigations into allegations of sexual assault. He said that the campus police were not allowed to approach any student athlete or an employee of an athletic facility or department to find out where an athlete might be.
AMY ZIERING: So that’s what the problem is. It’s not that, you know, athletes are rapists. It’s a problem as we have a broken system that allows them to commit these crimes without any kind of repercussions.
KIRBY DICK: Yeah, it’s—
AMY ZIERING: Right? They’re protected. I mean, it’s crazy. And that’s really what we want to come across, is it’s a hunting ground, it’s a place where people are not safe, not because there’s a preponderance of perpetrators, but because there’s nothing in place to prosecute those people, and there’s no incentive to do so.
AMY GOODMAN: Kirby Dick, the statistics are astounding. When you talk about 16 to 20 percent of undergraduate women have been sexually assaulted on college campuses across the country, you say 88 percent of women raped on college campuses do not report. Eighty-eight percent? In 2012, 40 percent of colleges reported zero sexual assaults. And less than 8 percent of men commit more than 90 percent of the assaults?
KIRBY DICK: Yeah, I mean, this is—you know, it’s astonishing. Again, of course, the last figure goes back to the fact that these are repeat offenders, that, you know, this is not drunk hook-ups, he said/she said. This is—really, another way to refer to it is "target rape," that these are men who do this again and again and get better at it each time.
AMY GOODMAN: In September, we spoke to Emma Sulkowicz, who’s also featured in The Hunting Ground. Emma Sulkowicz is the Columbia University student who says she was raped by a fellow student. After she reported her assault to Columbia, she had to go before a disciplinary panel, where she was forced to explain to a university official how the painful manner in which she had been raped was physically possible. Then the panel found that the accused assailant was not responsible. Two other women also came forward with complaints against the same student. So, in protest, Emma Sulkowicz vowed to carry a dorm mattress around with her everywhere on campus until the student is either expelled or leaves on his own. So, on Democracy Now!, she explained why she chose this form of protest.
EMMA SULKOWICZ: I was raped in my own bed. And, of course, rape can happen anywhere, but for me, it sort of desecrated one of the most intimate and private places of my life. And the way that I’ve brought my story from a place that I keep secret out into the public eye sort of mirrors carrying the mattress itself out into the light for everyone to see. So I felt like it would be an appropriate metaphor.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student, on Democracy Now! She was just invited by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to be her guest at the State of the Union address. Can you talk about how these women, who feel that their complaints, that their allegations of rape and sexual assault, are not being taken seriously by administrations, are taking action? They are building a movement in this country.
KIRBY DICK: It is incredible what they’ve accomplished, what—young women like Emma, and Annie and Andrea in our film. I mean, in two years, this has gone from something that nobody talked about to something that’s on the front pages daily. But I just want to say that that’s just the beginning. It’s really up to all of us—you know, parents, teachers, faculty, trustees, everyone—to solve this problem, because it’s been going on for decades.
AMY GOODMAN: Now scores of universities, colleges across the country are being investigated?
KIRBY DICK: Yeah, I think we now have up to 95 schools are being investigated for Title IX violations. And, you know, those investigations take a long, long time. I mean, and so far—I mean, I applaud the Department of Education for taking this on, but the schools themselves should not wait to be investigated. They should be solving this problem themselves before this ever happens.
AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, you did Invisible War, to tremendous acclaim, and it has really begun a movement in this country to deal with sexual assault in the military. And the big move, especially in Congress, is to have these investigations taken out of the chain of command, because so often they’re involved either with the cover-up or perhaps even involved. Now, with this film, The Hunting Ground, you’re talking about assaults on college campuses. Is there a similar move in the movement that’s growing around the country to, in a sense, take the investigation out of the chain of command, as well, out of the power of the university that’s protecting its brand?
AMY ZIERING: Yeah, there has been. I mean, one of the solutions that people have come up with is have independent bodies investigate these crimes that don’t answer to the university itself, so that you take out that inherent bias. And that would make—just ensure a fairer system, whatever the outcome is. And so, that is something that many people are pushing and suggesting, and one of the things that we recommend.
AMY GOODMAN: That was producer Amy Ziering and director Kirby Dick. Their film, The Hunting Ground, about sexual assault on college campuses, has just premiered here at the Sundance Film Festival. Their previous film, The Invisible War, about rape in the military, won the Audience Award at Sundance in 2012 and was nominated for an Academy Award.
When we come back, I speak with one of the Senate’s leading advocates for changing the way universities and the military respond to sexual violence: California Senator Barbara Boxer. We’ll talk about her bill, her plans for retirement, and why she supports President Obama’s authorization for war. This is Democracy Now! We’re broadcasting from Park City TV. Back in a minute.
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Amy Goodman interviews one of the Senate’s leading advocates for changing the way both universities and the military respond to sexual violence — California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. Boxer talks about her proposed bill to require advocates for sexual assault victims on college campuses, her plans to retire from the Senate in 2016, and why she supports President Obama’s campaign against the Islamic State. "War is a last resort, never a first resort," Boxer says. "I don’t support going to war and sending combat troops. I support President Obama’s plan, which is not to do that, but to make sure we can help people fight against this terror group."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. We’ve just seen a film called The Hunting Ground, about sexual assault on college campuses. One of the people who has championed the cause of the victims, the survivors, is Senator Barbara Boxer.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Thank you so much.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re introducing a bill around this issue.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what it is?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Yes. There are two bills, essentially. One is a very broad, comprehensive bill, which is very important—it’s going to take a while to get done—by Kirsten Gillibrand. Mine is a very narrow, but important, bill that would say, until we stop this, we immediately need to have an advocate for the survivors on every single campus that gets federal funds. And that’s, by the way, every campus gets federal funds. So it would say, on all campuses, you need to have an independent advocate.
And what would that advocate do? They’d be available 24/7, so the minute something horrible happens, someone would have an advocate by their side, telling them their rights, putting an arm around them, leading them to the hospital, making sure the forensics were done, letting them know their legal options, and stay with them throughout the entire process.
And what’s exciting to me is, I know how long it takes to get things through this particular Congress, so I took this idea to all my campuses, my public campuses in California. And they have agreed to do this. And it’s exciting. The UC system, the state system and the community college system.
AMY GOODMAN: And the larger bill that Senator Gillibrand has introduced?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Yes. Well, it’s going to take a while, because it really changes the penalties if a college doesn’t really report the truth. It’s pretty broad. And it gives them disincentives not to report. It’s a little more controversial, but I think we can get it done, because these stories are unbelievable. This is an epidemic when 20 percent of the women in college campuses are being attacked. And men are being attacked, too, not in those large numbers, but, still and all, it’s happening to them, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, this is also an issue you’ve taken on in the military.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Oh, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the progress you did or didn’t make—
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —around sexual assault in the military?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: We have made a lot of progress in the military, but not enough progress. What Kirsten and I wanted to have happen—and we did get bipartisan support for it—was to take the whole handling of sexual assault in the military outside the chain of command, keep it in the military, but give it to professional prosecutors who were not in the chain of command. A lot of times, the commander himself was the one perpetrating. A lot of the times the commander knew who was perpetrating and put "order and discipline," in quotes, ahead of justice. So, we didn’t get that part done.
But let me tell you what we did get done. I had a bill that did—was signed into law, that when there’s questioning of a woman who does report a case, you have to not ask her questions like, "Did you wear a provocative dress? Have you—how many sexual partners have you had?" That’s all out. You can’t do it in a civilian grand jury, and now you can’t do it in the military. Other things that were done is making sure there’s an advocate for the complainant. So, we have made progress, but the big and most important reform, we haven’t made yet, which is to take the reporting outside the chain of command.
AMY GOODMAN: And interestingly, one of your biggest opponents was another woman, another Democrat, Senator McCaskill.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Yes, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain why you disagreed on that?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Yes. Well, first of all, women are not joined at the hip. We have to understand that. They see things differently. And Claire, I think, was wrong; she thinks I’m wrong. And it’s respectful. But it did hurt us, because out of the 20 women in the Senate, bipartisan, we had 17, she had three. And those three could have made a big difference. So, it’s a sadness for me, but it’s her right to have a different opinion.
AMY GOODMAN: Many of those in the film, or a number of the survivors, the victims of rape and sexual assault, were from the University of California system—
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —whether it was University of Southern California, UC Berkeley, San Diego, Santa Barbara.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Well, USC is a private college, it’s not in the UC system. So let me make that clear. They’re a private college, and they have some answering to do. And also, the UC system has some answering to do, you’re absolutely right. Santa Barbara was mentioned, UC Berkeley. I think what’s important, as the makers of this film have said, they could have chosen any campus. So, the reason I went to my campuses is I knew they were going to be mentioned in this, and I wanted to get out ahead of it, and I wanted them to start to respond.
And I’m very proud to say—you know, as a senator, you can pass legislation, and you can also use your office as a bully pulpit. And a lot of times my staff will have meetings and will say, "Let’s talk about the bully pulpit today." And what I did was I used the bully pulpit to go to the UC system, the state system, the community college system, and said, "Don’t wait for us to pass this law. Do it now." And they agreed. Now the question is follow-through, and I’m going to make a tour of these campuses in the spring to make sure that they are doing this advocacy.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you spoken to the chancellor, for example, about it?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: I have spoken to, absolutely, Janet Napolitano, who is the head of the entire UC system, and they have many, many campuses and hundreds of thousands of students. And she’s really on board with this. I’m excited about it. And, you know, California, we’re just a leader in a lot of ways, and I’m hoping we’ll be a leader on this.
AMY GOODMAN: Senator Boxer, speaking of the bully pulpit, you’re giving it up. Why?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: I’m not giving up the bully pulpit in any way, shape or form. You have a bully pulpit right here. The person asking the questions has a bully pulpit. There are different bully pulpits. So, I have been in elected office for 40 years. And the truth of the matter is, I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t think we had a wonderful deep bench of progressives in California. And I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t think we had a really good bench of progressives in the United States Senate. I feel really good, because the issues I’ve given my life to on the progressive side are so important, and they will be carried on. But I’m going to be—I’m not retiring in any way. I made that point. I’m going to be working. I don’t know exactly how, where and what, but I’m going to be helping other people. I hope to help Hillary Clinton become the first woman president in 2016. And I have a very full agenda, for the rest of my life, as long as I’m standing here and I’m not horizontal.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you’re still standing in the Senate, and the Senate just voted, about half of the Senate, that climate change is not caused by humanity, by humankind. Can you comment on this? The environment is one of your big issues.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Well, it’s just a joke. I mean, we offered all kinds of amendments. The Keystone pipeline is being looked at right now. And that is a big wet kiss to the Canadian oil interests and the Koch brothers, who own a lot of land up there. This is the filthiest, dirtiest oil. We don’t need it. It has a trail of misery that accompanies it, from the excavation through the pipeline, if there’s a spill. You know, there’s a spill in Michigan that still hasn’t been cleaned up for years. It’s dangerous. And then, when you refine it in Texas, people get really sick. And then they’re going to export it. We’re not even going to keep it.
So, in relation to that bill, we had one victory. Senator Whitehouse had an amendment that said climate change is not a hoax. It passed 98 to one. So I guess they think it’s not a hoax. But now they say, "OK, we agree, it’s not a hoax, but it is not caused by human activities," which goes up against 98 percent of scientists. You know, if you look back at the struggle we had on tobacco and the dangers of tobacco, honestly, the same people who conducted a disinformation campaign on tobacco are involved in this disinformation campaign. And the Union of Concerned Scientists did an amazing investigatory report, and they told us that. We are really up against it. This is a tragedy for our grandkids. The New York Times recently ran a report that scientists are saying the choice now is between a unpleasant planet or an uninhabitable planet. That’s what we’re left with. So now we have to work for an unpleasant planet. But God help us if we don’t win that battle.
AMY GOODMAN: Does the issue come down to money in politics and politicians, both Democrat and Republican, being beholden to the largest monied interests, and so often it’s the oil, it’s the gas, it’s the coal industry?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: I don’t think there is any question that special interests aren’t behind this. Otherwise, why would somebody take a stand against 98 percent of scientists? But I think if you look at the Democrats in the Senate, even those who support the Keystone pipeline, they admit that climate change is real, and they’re willing to work. It’s the Republicans that refuse to sit down with us and do anything about it. And it’s really sad, because when you really attack climate change and you really invest in alternative energies, eventually we’re going to see lower prices for everything, because we’re going to have energy efficiency, is the word of the day. And we’re going to see millions of jobs created as we put solar rooftops on and turn to wind generation. So, it’s a tragedy right now. And I’m proud of the president. He is not giving in. Do you know they tried to cancel the agreement with China that the president agreed? If we don’t have an agreement with China, the number one polluter, I don’t know what the world is going to look like.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama said in his State of the Union address he’s calling for authorization to attack the Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Uh-huh, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering your thoughts? Years ago, it was your colleague, Barbara Lee, who stood alone in the Congress—
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —and said no to the authorization for war after 9/11. What way will you vote?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Oh, I disagreed with Barbara on that, and I still strongly do. I don’t think you sit back when people are cutting off the heads of Americans. I’ve already voted to give the president authority to wage an anti-terror campaign against ISIL, because they are dangerous to humankind. And, you know, some people are pacifists. Barbara, I believe, is a pacifist. And I vote—you know, when I’ve been confronted with these terribly difficult decisions, half the time I’ve said absolutely no to war, and half the time I’ve said it’s a last resort, and it needs to happen. And I think this threat by ISIL is a massive threat, and I think it threatens us all. And so, I’m not putting boots on the ground. I would never vote to put boots on the ground. But there are ways we can help others fight back, so that they don’t have to sit there while their girls have acid thrown in their face and their heads cut off. I’m just not going to do it. Can’t do it.
AMY GOODMAN: But if you look at Iraq and the years that the U.S. has been there, there’s no question there’s a massive problem, but the U.S. has been at war there for well over a decade. Is there another way to deal with this, like the root causes of the violence?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Well, I was a leader in the antiwar movement on the Iraq War. That was—I think it will go down as the biggest error that has ever been made, you know, in history. But when it comes to this threat of these terrorists, that’s different. I’m not talking about boots on the ground. I’m not talking about going to war. I’m talking about not sitting back while we have people who are—who are so frightening, that they steal women, and they make them sex slaves, and they marry little girls, and then they put suicide vests on them. I am not going to sit back. And Barbara Lee, I adore her—
AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking about Boko Haram in Nigeria.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: I’m talking about terrorists today. And I could tell you, Barbara Lee, I adore Barbara, but we just don’t agree on this.
AMY GOODMAN: But as a leader of the peace movement, you see that diplomacy is not doing nothing.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Well, you want to do—what do you want to do? Do you want to give money to ISIL so they won’t cut off the head of the Japanese hostage? They’re asking $200 million. I don’t think so. So, you know, how do you negotiate with people who want to cut your head off? I just don’t see it.
AMY GOODMAN: What about looking—
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: So, let me just say, as a leader in what I call the peace movement, because I’ve been ever since Vietnam, I think if someone sits back and allows people like this, who don’t value human life, who enslave women, who rape women, who throw acid in the faces of women, if we can’t stand up to that—sure, if there’s a diplomatic way, you do that. War is a last resort, not a first resort. But for me to stand here and say I’m going to do nothing about ISIL, I think I would—I would be dead wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: But isn’t standing up to that perhaps looking behind that—for example, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. support of Saudi Arabia?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Well, look, if you won’t be—you and I just disagree, so why do we cut it off? It seems to me that you don’t see any reason ever to confront people who are uncivilized, who don’t care one stitch about your life or mine, who would just as soon cut off your head as say "good morning."
AMY GOODMAN: No, but what about cutting off their support?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: And let me—you’re asking me a question. And I don’t support them. As a matter of fact, I already voted to give the president authority to go after them. So why don’t we leave it at that? And as far as trying to find out the root causes of why they are the way you are, I’ll leave that to you. I’m a senator. My people are threatened, and I’m going to take action. War is the last resort, never a first resort. I don’t support going to war and sending combat troops. I support President Obama’s plan, which is not to do that, but to make sure that we can help people fight against this terror group, which is so frightening and so frightening to humankind. Thank you so much.
AMY GOODMAN: Senator Boxer, final question.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you want to be remembered in the Senate?
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Well, I’m not going to tell you that now, because I’ve got two more years left. I’ll come on the show again, and we’ll go over it then.
AMY GOODMAN: I will invite you. Thanks so much.
SEN. BARBARA BOXER: All right. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: California Senator Barbara Boxer. Earlier this month, she announced she is retiring from the Senate in 2016. We’re here in Park City, Utah, at Park City TV at the Sundance Film Festival. When we come back, Egypt. Stay with us.
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At least 18 protesters have been killed as they marked the anniversary of the 2011 uprising in Egypt that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak, in the bloodiest demonstrations since General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power. A viral video also shows Shaimaa al-Sabbagh, a leading member of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, being shot dead Saturday at a protest near Tahrir Square. "Like all social change, the fight for democracy in Egypt and across the region is going to continue," says Karim Amer, producer of "The Square," which documented the Egyptian revolution of 2011 from its roots in Tahrir Square and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2014. "What keeps us optimistic is the same critical mass of young people you saw in 'The Square' ... are continuing to stand up." We also speak with film’s director, Jehane Noujaim, about Sanaa El Seif, an assistant producer who worked on "The Square" and is now in prison in Egypt.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We are broadcasting from Park City, Utah, where the 31st Sundance Film Festival is taking place. I’m Amy Goodman. We end today’s show in Egypt, where at least 18 people were killed Sunday as protesters marked the anniversary of the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak. The protests were the bloodiest in the country since General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power. Riot police, backed by soldiers in armored vehicles, sealed off roads, including those leading to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where the uprising was centered. Riot police with rifles and plainclothes men with pistols were seen chasing protesters through the streets of Cairo. The heaviest death toll was in the Cairo suburb of Matariya, a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold, where eight people, including one policeman, were killed. On Saturday, Shaimaa al-Sabbagh, a leading member of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, was shot dead at a protest near Tahrir Square. Video and photos of the shooting went viral across Egypt. The leader of the liberal Dostour party, Hala Shukrallah, condemned the killings.
HALA SHUKRALLAH: [translated] The atmosphere in which we have been during the past year, after all the struggle, is an atmosphere that cannot be accepted, after what happened yesterday. What happened yesterday should lead to a real response by all those parties that say they are fighting for democracy, social justice and a civil state. We must all take a stand together to ask for no institutions to be above the law.
AMY GOODMAN: Also over the weekend, two of Mubarak’s sons were released from prison, nearly four years after they were first arrested along with their father. Last week, an Egyptian court ordered the release of Alaa and Gamal Mubarak, pending their retrial in a corruption case. Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters and a number of journalists remain in Egyptian jails, including the three Al Jazeera journalists, Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed.
To talk more about events in Egypt, we’re joined now by two guests: director Jehane Noujaim and producer Karim Amer. They are the prize-winning filmmakers of The Square, which documented the Egyptian revolution of 2011 from its roots in Tahrir Square. The Square won several awards, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2014. Jehane Noujaim also made Control Room, about Al Jazeera.
Jehane Noujaim, Karim Amer, welcome to Democracy Now!
JEHANE NOUJAIM: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, very serious developments over the last week that you’ve been here in Park City. First, can you talk about this killing of this activist leader?
JEHANE NOUJAIM: Yeah, she was going to put a wreath on the grave of people that had died in the 2011 uprising. She was shot at a two-meter distance by police, eyewitnesses say. And Ragia Omran, a dear friend and a human rights lawyer who was both in the film The Square and is continuing to work on the ground defending many of the protesters that are in prison, attended her autopsy and said she was pummeled in the back by birdshot, which caused internal bleeding, which led to her death. But the impunity of policemen shooting in broad daylight is something that we need to talk about, just like the killings of police here, around the world, is something that can’t go on silence.
AMY GOODMAN: The killings of protesters?
JEHANE NOUJAIM: Well, the killing of protesters, yeah. I mean, since Shaimaa, there’s been around 18 people, I believe, that have been killed.
AMY GOODMAN: You have been documenting change in Egypt, Karim. A major day in Egypt is January 25th. Now, as we move forward, talk about these dates, because it didn’t just happen on one day.
KARIM AMER: Yeah, I mean, I think what’s really important for us, as people who are storytellers and active in trying to propel this change forward, is the difference between the event of change and the ongoing struggle for change. I mean, we have these dates. We have these important moments that we like to reference to, like January 25th. But the reality is that there’s an ongoing struggle that continues. And like all social change, the fight for democracy in Egypt and across the region is going to continue. And change does not necessarily happen in a linear manner. You know, there’s a series of ups and downs. And we’ve seen, like in many revolutions in the past, a counterrevolution that is vibrant.
But what keeps us optimistic is that the same critical mass of young people, that you saw in our film The Square and that many saw on programs like yours, are continuing to stand up, are continuing to say, "We will not allow for our story to be written for us. We will continue to fight and believe that we have the right to write a more equitable story." And I think that that is what’s shaping the future of the country, and we will get there eventually.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Jehane, the significance of January 28th?
JEHANE NOUJAIM: Significance of January 28th was that it was the time that people came back. I mean, I’ve been following protests for a long time in Egypt, made a film in 2007, where you would watch protests happen, people would be beaten up, jailed, but people wouldn’t come back. And what happened on January 28th, people came back and said, "We will not allow this." And they stayed. And it was really where you saw those images of people really standing up to the police for the first time. It was where that iconic image took place on the bridge where people were showered.
So, at this time, years later, it’s a difficult time to be optimistic. I would say that we’re very optimistic people, in general, but being on—you know, continuing to talk to people on the ground in Egypt, going back, it is a very difficult time to be optimistic. But, as Karim said, it’s so important that we continue to be engaged, because in many movements of the past, civil rights movement and others, there have been such ups and downs, and terrible downs, and we just need to remember that if we keep engaged, keep telling these stories, that we will ultimately get to a better place.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to talk about a young woman who worked on your film—
JEHANE NOUJAIM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —who we met here at Sundance two years ago, when The Square came out, Sanaa El Seif. She worked on The Square. She’s now in prison in Egypt. Sanaa helped publish a newspaper, in defiance of laws requiring government permission, when she was 17. But when you all had The Square here, she was one of those, part of your team, that came out. I had a chance to interview her here at Sundance. She was 19 years old at the time.
SANAA EL SEIF: It’s amazing experience. And the best thing—the thing that makes me really respect Jehane and that made me want to work with her is that most of the cameras left the square after the stepdown. While—
AMY GOODMAN: The stepdown is when Mubarak was forced out.
SANAA EL SEIF: When Mubarak stepped down, yes. Everybody was talking all over the world, were talking about the Arab Spring, the Arab Spring, but all the cameras left, and we were left alone in the square. And the army was really vicious. And these cameras, this media—we didn’t get that media attention back, until like we lost like a huge number of people. It takes, like—if you have two people or three people dying in the square, the media is not going to be interested in that story. But if you have like a big massacre like Maspero, 28 people being crushed by army tanks, then now the media cares. I think if there had been much more media attention, it could have stopped the bloodshed. It’s possible.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Sanaa El Seif. She was 19 when she came here to Sundance two years ago with you two as you were winning these major awards, the whole team, for The Square. What’s happened now?
JEHANE NOUJAIM: Sanaa was jailed in June, and she has been sentenced for—to two years in prison and an additional two years of supervision. This is for participating in a peaceful protest, marching against the protest law, calling for her brother Alaa’s release from prison.
AMY GOODMAN: Alaa, the well-known activist—
JEHANE NOUJAIM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —who we have been covering, and I hope you go to our website at democracynow.org to see our interviews and Sharif Abdel Kouddous’s interview with him.
JEHANE NOUJAIM: So she celebrated her 21st birthday in prison. She’s an incredible filmmaker, an incredible person, a creative mind, you know, somebody that should be the future of Egypt. And so, it is heartbreaking, devastating, that the government is treating their youth this way.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Karim, the Egyptian activists lost a final appeal at protest sentences—Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma and Mohammed Adel—for taking part in unauthorized protests?
KARIM AMER: Yeah, I mean, you know, again, this is just something that shows you the way that the government is taking the country, when you imprison young activists like Ahmed Maher and like Sanaa and many of the people who are willing to die for this country, for Egypt, to help rebuild this country, who are putting their lives at stake. Instead of taking those people, who love their country, and using them in the rebuilding of this country and using them as critical catalysts for that change, you’re putting them in jail. And—
AMY GOODMAN: And, Jehane—I’m just going to interrupt, because we have 10 seconds—the Al Jazeera journalists, Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, still in jail. You did Control Room.
JEHANE NOUJAIM: Still in jail, unjustly in jail, and join many other journalists and protesters that should be out.
KARIM AMER: And what’s critical, as both Egyptians and Americans, right now, Egypt being the second largest recipient of U.S. aid, we need to, as active citizens, be aware of where our tax money is going.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. Karim Amer, Jehane Noujaim, thank you so much, award-winning filmmakers of The Square.
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Headlines:
Jordan Agrees to Prisoner Swap with the Islamic State
The Jordanian government has agreed to release a female prisoner in exchange for the freeing of an air force pilot captured by militants in Syria a month ago. The Islamic State had threatened to kill the pilot and a kidnapped Japanese journalist if the prisoner, Sajida al-Rishawi, was not released. She had been facing a death sentence for her role in a 2005 attack on three hotels in Amman that killed more than 57 people.
Israel-Hezbollah Exchange Fire Along Lebanon Border
In other news from the region, tension is growing along Israel’s borders with both Syria and Lebanon. Earlier today, an anti-tank missile was fired at an Israeli military vehicle near the Lebanon border wounding four soldiers. The incident came several hours after Israel launched an airstrike in Syria. On Tuesday, at least two rockets from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Editor’s Note: Since our live broadcast ended, Israel announced two of its soldiers died in the missile attack. A United Nations peacekeeper from Spain was killed in Israel’s shelling of Lebanon]
U.S. to Give $2 Billion to Ukraine as Fears Grow of Full-On War
The United States has agreed to give the Ukrainian government $2 billion in loan guarantees as fighting increases between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels. Three more Ukrainian soldiers reportedly died over the past 24 hours. On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warned about the growing threat of a continental war.
Petro Poroshenko: "I will not mention clear and obvious parallels between the events in Europe in the 1930s and present developments. The threat of continental war is now great as never before. There should be no doubt that the ambitions and appetite of the aggressor go far beyond Ukraine."
New Greek Government Begins Rolling Back International Bailout
In Greece, the country’s new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has promised "radical" change as his government begins to roll back key parts of Greece’s international bailout. The government has put off the planned sale of the country’s biggest power utility while pledging to raise pensions for those on low incomes and reinstate some fired public sector workers. On Tuesday, the new Greek government was sworn in.
George Katrougalos, new deputy minister of public administration: "It is the reforms, but the reforms that the country needs, not the reforms that are dictated from outside its borders. We must restart the economy. We must reinvigorate democracy. It is a big challenge, but I think we are fit to it."
Obama Defends Decision Not to Focus on Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Record
President Obama has wrapped up a short visit to Saudi Arabia to meet the new King Salman and pay his respects following the death of King Abdullah. In an interview on CNN, Obama defended the United States’ close partnership with Saudi Arabia despite the the kingdom’s poor human rights record.
President Obama: "Sometimes we have to balance our need to speak to them about human rights issues with immediate concerns that we have in terms of countering terrorism or dealing with regional stability."
Mexico Says 43 Missing Students Were Killed by Drug Cartel
The Mexican government is now saying the 43 Mexican students who disappeared four months ago were murdered on the orders of a drug cartel who mistook them for members of a rival gang. Attorney General Jesús Murillo said the gang members suspected of killing the students had been so thorough in the destruction of their remains that it was difficult to identify them. The remains of only one of the missing students has been identified so far. On Monday, Attorney General Murillo discussed the case with reporters.
Jesús Murillo: "Closing the investigation is perhaps not the most adequate word. While we don’t have all the suspects, I can’t close it. It’s not the right word. You asked me if the elements that we have are sufficient enough to determine what is there, that they killed them, burned them. I would say yes, much more than in any other case."
Confirmation Hearings Open for Attorney General Nominee Loretta Lynch
On Capitol Hill, the confirmation hearing of attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch begins today to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder. Lynch is currently the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Georgia Executes Warren Hill, Intellectually Disabled Prisoner
The state of Georgia executed an intellectually disabled prisoner last night, ending a four-year legal battle. Warren Hill was determined to be mentally retarded by several doctors, but Georgia officials disputed their finding. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court banned executing mentally retarded people, but gave states some discretion in deciding who qualified for protection.
Employee of National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Tied to White House Drone
More information has to come to light about the small drone that crashed on the grounds of the White House on Monday. The recreational drone was operated by an employee of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. According to the agency, the employee was off duty and is not involved in work related to drones or unmanned aerial vehicles in any capacity.
Florida Domestic Abuse Survivor Marissa Alexander Freed After Three Years in Prison
In Florida, domestic abuse survivor Marissa Alexander has returned home after three years in prison. She was jailed after firing a warning shot into a wall near her abusive husband. Alexander, who is African-American, was originally sentenced to 20 years in prison. Alexander’s attorneys unsuccessfully tried to use Florida’s "Stand Your Ground" law in her defense, saying she feared for her life when she fired the shot. After an appeals court ordered a new trial over faulty jury instructions, a deal was reached for her early release.
Justice Department to Pay $25,000 to Student Detained for Arabic Flashcards
The Justice Department has agreed to pay $25,000 to a college student who was detained at an airport for five hours in 2009 for having Arabic-language flashcards in his pocket. The student, Nicholas George, was studying Arabic and had visited several Mideast countries through a summer study program. His flashcards included the words "bomb" and "to kill." One Transportation Security Administration supervisor interrogating him asked about the Sept. 11 attacks and noted that Osama bin Laden also spoke Arabic.
Winter Storm Drops Record-Breaking Amount of Snow in Massachusetts
Parts of New York and Massachusetts are digging out after a massive snowstorm. Massachusetts’ second largest city, Worcester, received a record-breaking 33 inches of snow. The entire island of Nantucket lost power during the storm.
Protesters Interrupt U.S. Trade Rep at TPP Hearing
The top U.S. trade official has told lawmakers the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal could be wrapped up within months and urged Congress to give the White House fast-track authority to approve the deal. Protesters with the group Flush the Trans-Pacific Partnership repeatedly interrupted U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman’s testimony before Congress. The protesters — Dr. Margaret Flowers, Kevin Zeese and retired steelworker Richard Ochs — were all arrested after being removed from the hearing.
Michael Froman: "At USTR, we’re advancing those goals by knocking down barriers to U.S. exports and leveling the playing field for American workers and businesses of all sizes. As we work to open markets around the world, we’re"—
Dr. Margaret Flowers: "Mr. Froman, you are not telling the American people the truth. We know that the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been negotiated in secret for five years, when you’re trying to rush it through Congress with fast track because it’s secret and you know that things in there are going to hurt the American people. They’re going to offshore our jobs and lower our wages, in fact. Our job is to protect our communities."
Sen. Orrin Hatch: "Let’s have order. All right, remove this person from the room, and if anybody else—if anybody else does this, we’re going to be—you’re going to be removed."
Dr. Margaret Flowers: "They’re not going to allow us to protect our communities from corporations that want to poison us. They’re not going to allow us to protect our workers from poor working conditions. You are not going to get fast track. The American people are against it. They’re against the TPP. No secret trade deal!"
Kevin Zeese: "We’re saying stop fast track, today."
Richard Ochs: "No TPP! No"—
Kevin Zeese: "We don’t want supersized NAFTA. We don’t want—we don’t want [inaudible]."
Sen. Orrin Hatch: "Remove these people."
Kevin Zeese: "We don’t want to undermine [inaudible]. We believe in democracy, not secrecy. We want transparency!"
Richard Ochs: "No TPP! No TPP! No TPP!"
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"Imagine Something Different" by Amy Goodman
“Imagine if we did something different.”
Those were just six words out of close to 7,000 that President Barack Obama spoke during his State of the Union address. He was addressing both houses of Congress, which are controlled by his bitter foes. Most importantly, though, he was addressing the country. Obama employed characteristically soaring rhetoric to deliver his message of bipartisanship. “The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong,” he assured us.
From whose lives has the shadow of crisis passed? And for whom is this Union strong?
“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?” Obama asked. “Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”
Oxfam, the international anti-poverty organization, weighed in on the question, releasing a report the day before the speech called “Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More.” Oxfam analyzed data from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014 and the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires to determine some shocking facts about global inequality.
First, it found that, as of 2014, the 80 richest individuals in the world are wealthier than the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population. This bears repeating: The 80 wealthiest people, a group that could fit on a bus, control more wealth than 3.5 billion people. The wealthy are not only accumulating more wealth, but they are getting it faster. Between 2009 and 2014, Oxfam reports, the wealth of those 80 richest people in the world doubled. This, while the rest of the world was mired in the Great Recession, with rampant unemployment and people’s life savings wiped out. If current trends continue, Oxfam notes, by 2016 the richest 1 percent of the world’s population will control more wealth than the bottom 99 percent.
One way the wealthy manage to increase their wealth, Oxfam reports, is through lobbying. The report identifies two industries, finance/insurance and pharmaceutical/health care, as major sources of wealth for the richest, and as principal founts of political contributions. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by these industries annually to shape public policy and safeguard profits.
“For far too long, lobbyists have rigged the tax code with loopholes that let some corporations pay nothing while others pay full freight,” President Obama said in his State of the Union. “They’ve riddled it with giveaways the super-rich don’t need, denying a break to middle-class families who do.”
Obama has proposed increasing taxes on the very rich: “Let’s close the loopholes that lead to inequality by allowing the top 1 percent to avoid paying taxes on their accumulated wealth.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston is an expert on taxes. We spoke to him on the “Democracy Now!” news hour soon after the State of the Union. “The idea that we shouldn’t adjust the tax rates for people at the top and doing so is somehow class warfare is absurd,” he said. “The president is proposing that for those people in the top one-half of 1 percent—and almost all the money would be paid by the top tenth of 1 percent, people who make over $2 million—that their capital-gains tax rate be at the Ronald Reagan rate of 28 percent,” Johnston summarized. “And Republicans are saying that that’s outrageous. Well, I’m sorry, they’re always telling us Ronald Reagan is a saint.”
What would these taxes pay for? Among other things, Obama pledged to make child care more affordable. He promised free community-college education. These are genuine, good ideas. After his address, Republicans repeatedly said he was for the “redistribution of wealth,” code for socialism. But wealth IS being redistributed by the government—upward, from the poor to the rich—through policies promoted by both major parties, from tax loopholes to “free trade” deals that protect corporate profits over workers’ rights.
And who is promulgating these laws? The Center for Responsive Politics, a political contribution watchdog group, reports that, for the first time ever, more than half of the members of Congress are millionaires. The group states that this “represents a watershed moment at a time when lawmakers are debating issues like unemployment benefits, food stamps and the minimum wage, which affect people with far fewer resources, as well as considering an overhaul of the tax code.”
As President Obama said in his State of the Union, “To everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it.”
Growing economic inequality not only hurts the poor, and the working and middle class, but destabilizes society overall. Yes, we must “imagine if we did something different.” Everyone must have a stake in the state of the union.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2015 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate____________________________
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