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This Changes Everything: Naomi Klein & Avi Lewis Film Re-imagines Vast Challenge of Climate Change
As we mark the third anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, one of the most destructive storms in the nation’s history, are we prepared for another extreme weather event, which researchers say are becoming more frequent with the effects of climate change? 2015 is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, and nine of the 10 hottest months since record keeping began in 1880 have occurred since 2005. We speak to the duo behind the new film, "This Changes Everything," which re-imagines the vast challenge of climate change. The documentary is directed by filmmaker Avi Lewis and inspired by journalist Naomi Klein’s international best-selling book by the same name. Over the course of four years, the pair traveled to nine countries on five continents to profile communities on the front lines of the climate justice movement — from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta tar sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The East Coast of the United States may have dodged a bullet this time, as forecasters say Hurricane Joaquin may not make landfall due to a northerly turn. The Category 4 storm is, however, hammering the Bahamas, and heavy rains have already caused massive flooding in Charleston, South Carolina.
But as we mark the third anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, one of the most destructive storms in the nation’s history, are we prepared for another extreme weather event, which researchers say are becoming more frequent with the effects of climate change? 2015 is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released a report showing that July was the single warmest month in history, and nine of the 10 hottest months since record keeping began in 1880 have occurred since 2005.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we spend the remainder of the hour looking at a remarkable new film that re-imagines the vast challenge of climate change. The film is called This Changes Everything. It’s directed by Avi Lewis and inspired by Naomi Klein’s international best-selling book by the same title. Over the course of four years, the filmmakers traveled to nine countries on five continents to profile communities on the front lines of the climate justice movement—from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta tar sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond. This is the film’s trailer.
MARC MORANO: The majority of the human race does not see global warming as a serious threat. Celebrate! Climate legislation is dead.
ASAD REHMAN: We in the Global North, with less than 20 percent of the population, are responsible for over 70 percent of global emissions.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We are drilling all over the place.
ASAD REHMAN: On the other side of the world, those people who are the most affected by climate change, most affected by environmental injustice, have the least responsibility for creating this crisis in the first place.
FISHERMAN: [translated] This is our livelihood. This is the water we drink.
ALICE BOWS-LARKIN: The amount of fossil fuel that we’re combusting year on year is growing. We’re going in completely the wrong direction.
NAOMI KLEIN: I’ve spent six years wandering through the wreckage caused by the carbon in the air and the economic system that put it there.
KEVIN ANDERSON: That old paradigm will be forced to change, either by the environment around us or by us.
PROTESTERS: We are all ... part of this movement!
PROTESTER: [translated] This is our wetland.
ASAD REHMAN: When you see communities who are thrown into the front line, you see the incredible transformation. They become stronger. They stand up.
NAOMI KLEIN: So here’s the big question: What if global warming isn’t only a crisis? What if it’s the best chance we are ever going to get to build a better world? Change or be changed.
SUNITA NARAIN: There are limits. Let’s celebrate the limits, because we could reinvent a different future.
AMY GOODMAN: The trailer for the epic new documentary, This Changes Everything. The film opens tonight at the IFC Center here in New York City. Last month, it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada.
For more, we’re joined by Avi Lewis, the film’s director and producer. He was previously a host for Al Jazeera’s show Fault Lines. And we’re also joined by the film’s narrator, Naomi Klein, and writer. She’s a journalist and best-selling author of the book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Her past books include No Logo and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, it’s great to have you with us today together on the U.S. premiere of the film. So, talk about this film. You have been on this journey, Naomi, writing the book, and now to have the cameras following you, and in places you hadn’t even gone, but that you have extensively written about and analyzed. Talk about what you’re doing with the film?
NAOMI KLEIN: So the idea for the film was to do things a little bit differently. Usually what happens is, you write a book, and then a film is made maybe after. That’s what happened with The Shock Doctrine: The [book] was completed, and then it was optioned, and Michael Winterbottom made a film about it. In this—and there’s something kind of inherently flawed about that process, because you’re retracing your steps. You’re going back to places. And, in a way, you’re sort of—you know, you’re mimicking this process of discovery, because, you know, as anyone who’s read the book knows, you’ve already come to those conclusions. So what we wanted to do with this project was Avi and I wanted to work on it together really from the beginning. So we started while—working together on it, actually, while Avi was still working at Al Jazeera. We went to cover the BP disaster together. We went to Bolivia together to cover the Peoples Conference on Climate Change. And then Avi left Al Jazeera to work on this full-time. And so, people who have read the book or skimmed the book, are familiar with it, will see things that are very recognizable. You know, there’s a chapter in the book about my trip to the Heartland conference on—you know, the climate change denier kind of ground zero. And Avi and his crew were filming on that trip, so there are scenes that will be familiar. But it’s very different to be in the room to see the people who are quoted, to see a whole new dimension. Same with reporting that is in the book on geoengineering. But I think the thing that a film can do so much better than a book, frankly, is really bring us into the heart of the social movements that are the final section of the book. And, you know, it’s one thing to read about it—"Oh, these movements are rising up"—but it’s something very different to be immersed in the energy of social movements that are fighting and winning these epic struggles against fossil fuel companies. And, you know, I’m so grateful to Avi and the whole crew for having stuck with this project for now five years to bring that to people.
AVI LEWIS: There’s another thing in the film—there’s another thing that film can do that books just can’t: The look on Naomi’s face in the cutaway in the climate deniers’ conference is pretty unforgettable. That alone was worth the experience.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the other thing a film can do, obviously, is capture, in a way that a book really can’t, the actual beauty of the planet that is being violated by this rampant industrialization, and the haunting pictures that you have are unbelievable. I wanted to ask you about the challenge of being able to put the content of the book into a film.
AVI LEWIS: Well, you know, luckily, I wasn’t trying to take 500 pages of Naomi Klein and force it into a film, because those 500 pages weren’t written when we started shooting. But the kernel of the idea was there. And I think, you know, we talked a lot at the beginning of the process of making nature a character in the film. And I think it’s true that when you see communities who are defending their land and their air and their water, defining rights for communities, and actually challenging the economic logic behind the exploitation of nature, and enacting community-scale alternatives at the same time—the "no" against extraction and the "yes," as well—you know, you see the people, but you also need to know what they’re protecting. And one of the reasons that we shot around the world and made the decision to go epic, as Amy said, is because the scope of Naomi’s argument is vast. The scope of this challenge is global. And the scope of the resistance rising up is global, too. And you need to get that feeling that really these things are happening around the world, and they’re happening in beautiful places that people love. And film has a unique way of touching the heart and the mind at the same time, so we tried to like, you know, bring people to the places.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get a quick question in on AP’s change in their Stylebook, if you’ve heard about this. It was just issued, a staff memo from AP Stylebook editor Sally Jacobsen, David Minthorn and Paula Froke. "We have reviewed our entry on global warming as part of our efforts to continually update the Stylebook to reflect language usage and accuracy. We are adding a brief description of those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces: Our guidance is to use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science and to avoid the use of skeptics or deniers." Your response, Naomi Klein? Clearly, Heartland and others weighing in here.
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s good that they are not using "skeptic," because "skeptic" actually has a positive connotation. We should all be skeptical. We should all be skeptical about science, you know, any scientific claim. And we should be rigorous about it. And, you know, indeed, it’s a phrase that’s celebrated in the scientific community. So, you know, I agree with them about no longer using "skeptic."
But these are climate change deniers. They are denying the overwhelming scientific evidence. They are denying the real human impacts. And, you know, that look on my face at the Heartland conference, I mean, I think—and I tried to capture this in the book—what I found most disturbing about immersing myself in that context was the real lightheartedness, you know, and you see that in the film. They’re sort of laughing in the face of the problem. And what I took away from that experience and the extraordinary contradictory scientific claims being made, with no attempt to resolve them—this is not a rigorous scientific conference. You know, one person is blaming sunspots. One person is saying it’s not happening. One person is saying it is happening, but we shouldn’t worry about it. The overwhelming feeling, though, is that we are going to be fine. Right? And so, I think the most disturbing denial is the reality of the massive human costs that we are already seeing. We are coming close to the end of what looks to be the hottest year on record. We saw thousands of people die in heat waves in India. You know, this is not about people dying in the future, though it is about that, too. It’s about a massive death toll in the present. We’re seeing climate change act as an accelerant for conflicts. This is true for Syria. It’s fueling the refugee crisis. So, I think people should be held accountable for that, and I disagree with not calling it "climate change denial."
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: One of the other powerful aspects of the film is when you actually chronicle the people who are benefiting from the rampant industrialization, especially in the Alberta tar sands—
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —where you interview the people who are making $100,000, $300,000, $400,000 a year, and you realize that there is a constituency—I mean, classical Marxists would call it labor aristocracy—that is actually benefiting from this enormous—and they provide a political support for the continued, unbridled expansion.
AVI LEWIS: You know, Juan—
NAOMI KLEIN: It’s complicated.
AVI LEWIS: It is complicated. And people in Alberta, who live next to that biggest industrial project on Earth, have been very anxious about the pace of development and the costs of that project for a long time. And, you know, the oil and gas industry is a very conformist culture. And if you speak about renewable energy, you really get slapped down. It’s like a—there’s a bit of a locker room thing happening there. But the number of workers who told us off camera that they would rather be building wind turbines and putting up—installing solar panels was remarkable. They wouldn’t say it on camera, except for this one amazing guy in the film who’s a boilermaker named Lliam Hildebrand, who started an organization called Iron and Earth, where he’s organizing tar sands workers in support of renewable energy. And he’s building support fast. And there’s a huge constituency up there, especially now that the oil industry is laying off thousands and thousands of people, of workers in that industry who would rather go home and tell their kids what they did that day and feel proud of it.
NAOMI KLEIN: And there was actually a poll that just came out a couple of days ago in Canada, polling Albertans, where the tar sands are, showing that Albertans support a carbon tax. They overwhelmingly support more investments in renewable energy. There’s an exhaustion in Alberta just about the boom-and-bust cycle, the roller coaster of that boom that we chronicle. I mean, we were there during the peak of the boom. The money was just flowing in. We were interviewing these kids going, "This is nuts. I’m making way too much money." That’s what they were saying.
AVI LEWIS: It’s true.
NAOMI KLEIN: They were kind of laughing, but you know. These are like 24-year-old kids, you know? Sorry, I mean young men. But we also interviewed a lot of workers who just talked about the kind of sadness of the place, right? Almost nobody who you meet in Fort McMurray is from Fort McMurray or has any intention of staying in Fort McMurray. People talk about their time there as, you know, "I’m on the four-month plan," "I’m on the six-month plan," "I’m on, you know, maybe the five-year plan," which is all—and the plan is always the same: Go in, work as hard as you possibly can, get as much money as you can, and get the hell out. Right? So in the film—
AMY GOODMAN: And see if you have a family to come back to.
NAOMI KLEIN: Exactly. I mean, this is hardly heaven. It’s that there aren’t better choices out there for a lot of people.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, then come back to another clip from This Changes Everything. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we go to a clip of the new film that’s just premiered in the United States, that’s directed by Avi Lewis and written by Naomi Klein, based on her best-selling book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, the film This Changes Everything.
NAOMI KLEIN: Can I be honest with you? I’ve always kind of hated films about climate change. What is it about those vanishing glaciers and desperate polar bears that makes me want to click away? Is it really possible to be bored by the end of the world? It’s not that I don’t care what happens to polar bears; it’s just that we’re told that the cause isn’t out there, it’s in us. It’s human nature. We’re innately greedy and shortsighted. And if that’s true, there is no hope.
But when I finally stopped looking away, traveled into the heart of the crisis, met people on the front lines, I discovered so much of what I thought I knew was wrong. And I began to wonder: What if human nature isn’t the problem? What if even greenhouse gases aren’t the problem? What if the real problem is a story, one we’ve been telling ourselves for 400 years?
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Naomi Klein in the new film, This Changes Everything. Now we’re going to the segment in the film that looks at the smog crisis in China.
UNIDENTIFIED: Previously, the environment issues are just peanuts: We can deal with it when we become rich enough. And then, we had this historical moment of a smog disaster. It totally changed the landscape of environment discussion in China.
CHAI JING: [translated] Have you ever seen a star in the sky?
DAUGHTER: [translated] No.
CHAI JING: [translated] What about a blue sky?
DAUGHTER: [translated] I’ve seen one that’s a little blue.
CHAI JING: [translated] What about clouds?
DAUGHTER: [translated] No.
NARRATION: Chai Jing’s film, Under the Dome, was online for just one week before the Chinese government took it down. In that week, it was viewed in China more than 200 million times.
CHAI JING: [translated] This is every day of 2014 in Beijing. I couldn’t take my daughter outside when it was smoggy. How often was that? One hundred seventy-five days were polluted.
CHEE YOKE LING: You know, when you wake up in the morning and you walk—you cannot walk out in the street, cannot walk out, because you can’t breathe. People are saying, "No, this cannot be. This cannot be the way society and the world is supposed to be about."
NARRATION: Lanzhou, 112 polluted days in 2014. Chengdu, 125 polluted days. Shenyang, 152 polluted days. Tianjin, 197 polluted days.
AILUN YANG: Air pollution has really become a very big topic in China. And the rising middle-class people in China, you know, after their living standards in many ways have improved a lot, now start to ask, "When can we buy clean air?"
AMY GOODMAN: From the film This Changes Everything. Avi Lewis is the director. Avi, China?
AVI LEWIS: Yeah, I mean, you know, I felt that it’s—
AMY GOODMAN: The images are unbelievable of the smog.
AVI LEWIS: It’s so striking. And, you know, but this is the model of galloping economic growth, and now people are literally choking on that growth. And it’s the number one issue in China. I mean, we like to sort of let ourselves off the hook. It’s not—you know, "We can’t do anything about it now. China is the biggest emitter. They consume half the world’s coal. And it’s all about China. They’re building a coal plant every week." Those figures aren’t entirely true anymore. China is curtailing its coal use dramatically. This year, the last coal-fired power plant in Beijing will be retired. Last year was the first time this century that coal use in China declined. And yet they have this—they’re choking on this crisis of pollution, and the environment is the number one issue for people in China. The government knows it.
And there’s a growing movement, right at the grassroots level, of protest and activism in China. You know, it’s not easy to be an activist in China, but there are huge pushbacks from local communities around all sorts of pollution disasters and industrial plants. And so, there’s things happening in China, and the government is responding with really tough climate policies, much, much more than countries like the United States. The explosion of renewable energy in China is—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That’s what I wanted to ask you about, the response of the government now to actually be almost in the forefront now of attempting to make changes at the world level, in terms of emissions.
AVI LEWIS: No question. I mean, the price of solar panels has dropped 75 percent in the last six years, largely because China has supported that industry so massively.
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, and, I mean, this is—the days of the Chinese government being able to say, "Well, it’s our turn to pollute," you know, at U.N. conferences, that’s over. And it’s not because of anything that’s happened at United Nations. It’s because of what’s happening inside China and that internal pressure. So, you know, I think one of the things that the film does very, very well—and, you know, I give Avi full credit for this, because it’s sort of less present in the book—is the two big shoots that they did in India and China, and, you know, very deliberately, because we know—first, not just because this is where emission growth is coming, but also because this is our excuse, in countries like Canada and the U.S., to say, "Well, you know, we can’t do anything because of what’s going on there." So what the film really does is explode any kind of claim that these are monolithic trends. And in India, there’s a very powerful story about the amount of resistance to building new coal-fired power plants. It’s really some of the most—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And India is on track to surpass China in population, not too far—
AVI LEWIS: [inaudible]
NAOMI KLEIN: And is surpassing China in air pollution. But the point is, there’s huge grassroots resistance, and we often don’t hear about the resistance in China and India to—you know, the same kind of resistance that we have here against new extractive projects, like the Keystone XL pipeline or coal export terminals or building new dirty projects. People are rising up here. They’re rising up there, too, and those two forces are really supporting each other. There’s—an Indian company has been trying to build the world’s largest coal mine in Australia. Adani has been trying to build the Carmichael mine, which would be the largest—if built, the largest coal mine in the world. But they are facing this pincer of resistance in India, where the coal would go, and huge resistance in Australia. And now it looks like that mine will never be built.
AMY GOODMAN: And that resistance is what you both convey so well in This Changes Everything, the whole notion of Blockadia. Let’s go back to the film.
PROTESTER: Thank you, guys! We have completely encircled the White House!
NAOMI KLEIN: All around the world, people aren’t just writing to their politicians, politely asking them to do the right thing. They are taking direct action, demanding it. On the front lines, they call it Blockadia. The idea behind it is simple: We are in a hole, and before anything new can grow, we have to stop digging. As the drilling rigs and pipelines crisscross the Earth, so does Blockadia, connecting communities along the way, the metal pathways of dirty energy confronted by this new web of resistance. And I’ve noticed something else: At the forefront are the people from the sacrifice zones, the very ones who have been written off for hundreds of years, the keepers of that other story.
CRYSTAL LAMEMAN: If this pipeline goes through, your government will further assist in the raping and pillaging of the lands of my ancestors. Then they’ll promise to give us back what was never theirs in the first place. Don’t be fooled by their ideology of what reclamation is. Reclamation is me standing here with the 99 percent. We’re here today to say we never went anywhere, and nor do we plan to!
ASAD REHMAN: When you see communities who are thrown into the front line because an environmental or political or economic issue is imposed on them, you see the incredible transformation that happens. They become stronger. They stand up. They’re like, "Isn’t this incredible? Isn’t this the society we want?"
AMY GOODMAN: A clip from This Changes Everything, directed by Avi Lewis, narrated and written by Naomi Klein, based on Naomi’s book, This Changes Everything. Sacrifice zones, Naomi, explain.
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, sacrifice zones, yeah, it’s a theme that comes up again and again, and it’s a phrase that actually used to be a sort of an acceptable phrase used by the U.S. government about how there might have to be some areas which would just be sacrifice areas, energy sacrifice areas. And, in fact, the Powder River Basin was discussed as one, in Montana. But, you know, the argument we make in the film is that fossil fuels have always, since the very beginning of powering our economies on an industrial scale with coal, caused—required sacrifice zones, because this is an inherently dirty and polluting energy process. So, the first sacrifice zones were the black lungs of the coal miners and the soot over cities like Manchester and London. We told ourselves some sort of story that there’s this natural cleaning-up process as capitalism evolves: It naturally cleans itself up, and look at the air in London now, and look at L.A.
The argument we make in the film is, you know, we didn’t move beyond pollution, we just moved the pollution, and now it is in China, and now it is in India, and there’s way more of it. And we are all in the sacrifice zone now. And that idea that there are some places that just have to be sacrificed in order for industrial progress to continue is an idea that just keeps growing and growing and growing, until the people who thought they were safe are no longer safe. And in the film, I guess we make the argument that Hurricane Sandy hitting New York City was the ultimate example of that, because this sacrifice zone mentality is often about talking about the middle of nowhere. And indeed—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, let’s go—
NAOMI KLEIN: —it hit the center of everywhere.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Let’s go, if we can—
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —to a clip from This Changes Everything about Hurricane Sandy—
NAOMI KLEIN: I may have just scooped it a little. I didn’t realize you were going to do that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —filmed seven days after—filmed seven days after the storm in the Rockaways in New York.
SHAKIM: When the weather hit, it was a wake-up call. It was really like, "Wow!" you know, holding on dear for life, holding onto the poles, the gates, you know, people—the water pushing them out their houses. The walls cave in. It’s really, really crazy.
AGNES: I put everything in the first floor. Nobody ever told me that the flood insurance go from the second floor up. The whole first floor went. Everything. I don’t have even one penny in my pocket.
SOFÍA GALLISÁ MURIENTE: We are doing everything that we can, and it’s not enough, because the size of this problem is too huge. We’re not supposed to be here. I’m not supposed to be trying to rescue people that are stuck in apartment buildings dying because of lack of medication.
MICHAEL PREMO: Areas that are the hardest hit are the most marginalized, are the poorest communities, some of the poorest communities in New York City. Right? There’s like hundreds and hundreds of people that are trapped up in these buildings. And there’s no—there’s no attention for them. There’s no clinics, there’s no care.
NASTARAN MOHIT: We have a disaster, where we’re supposed to have agencies tasked with addressing these needs. Just like Katrina, it’s not woefully inadequate, it’s a travesty. FEMA, useless. Red Cross, useless.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Avi?
AVI LEWIS: Well, you know, you see what happened in New York. We had this economic justice movement called Occupy. And when the storm hit, where was the government? Just like in Katrina, people who were already focused on the core of the economic system and the need for system change showed up to be the best disaster first responders. Those people were from Occupy Sandy. They were already organizing in the communities, most marginalized communities, that were hit, that are going to be on the front lines of the climate crisis, that already are. So, you really see people filling in the gaps for the retreat of government, this ideological project of the last three, four decades, and people naming and shaming the core logic of our economic system. We got to change everything.
AMY GOODMAN: That does it for our show, but we’re going to do a post-show, and we’ll post it online at democracynow.org. Avi Lewis, director, Naomi Klein, writer, and on whom the film is based. She is the narrator of the film, This Changes Everything. It’s opening in New York tonight at the IFC theater, and then all over the country.
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After Latest Mass Shooting, a Look at the Oregon County Sheriff Who Vowed to Ignore Gun Control Laws
After Latest Mass Shooting, a Look at the Oregon County Sheriff Who Vowed to Ignore Gun Control Laws
As President Obama called for new gun control reform measures, Thursday’s school shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon has brought new attention to the actions of Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin, who is investigating the shooting. In 2013, he wrote a letter to Vice President Joe Biden asking him not to tamper with the Second Amendment, writing, "Gun control is NOT the answer to preventing heinous crimes like school shootings. Any actions against, or in disregard for our U.S. Constitution and 2nd Amendment rights by the current administration would be irresponsible and an indisputable insult to the American people." He went on to say, "I will NOT violate my Constitutional Oath. Therefore, the second purpose of this letter is to make notification that any federal regulation enacted by Congress or by executive order of the President offending the Constitutional rights of my citizens shall not be enforced by me or by my deputies, nor will I permit the enforcement of any unconstitutional regulations or orders by federal officers within the borders of Douglas County Oregon." We speak to Jennifer Lynch of the Oregon Alliance for Gun Safety.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Portland, Oregon, where we’re joined by Jennifer Lynch from the Oregon Alliance for Gun Safety. The group includes more than 50 organizations that pushed for the passage of Oregon’s new Firearms Safety Act, which expands background checks in gun sales in Oregon. It was signed into law in May.
Jennifer Lynch, welcome to Democracy Now! First of all, talk about the reaction in the community to this horrific killing, the massacre that took place yesterday at Umpqua Community College.
JENNIFER LYNCH: Well, of course, the reaction is always horror, but, frankly, never surprise. These things happen entirely too often. It always feels like they could happen close to home. And this time, it was our turn.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And it was especially ironic that this occurs only a couple of months after you had new laws for background checks in Oregon. Could you talk about your campaign there?
JENNIFER LYNCH: That’s right. So, for the third time in three years, the Oregon Legislature considered a bill expanding a background check on the sale of firearms to include every firearm sale. That includes private sales between two individuals, including two individuals who met online. This is a bill that gun violence prevention organizations in Oregon have been campaigning for since 2013, and we were met with resistance in the 2013 and 2014 state legislative sessions. And so, as such, we worked to change the state Legislature. This year, the bill was reintroduced and was able to pass both chambers. It was signed into law by the governor this May.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the chief sponsor of the law, his significance?
JENNIFER LYNCH: Yeah, Senator Floyd Prozanski of Eugene, Oregon, is the chief sponsor of that bill and has carried it for the last three legislative sessions. Senator Prozanski himself has been touched by gun violence. He is a longtime gun owner and a hunter and protective of Second Amendment rights, but also believes this is one small thing that we can do to make Oregon’s communities safer. And there simply is no excuse for inaction at this point.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you about John Hanlin, the sheriff of Douglas County, who is leading the investigation. I want to turn to a clip of his. He is in the lead in the investigation into the shooting of Umpqua Community College, but in April, as the Oregon state Legislature held hearings for new legislation to expand background checks to private gun sales, Hanlin testified against the measure.
SHERIFF JOHN HANLIN: This law is not going to protect citizens of Oregon in that it is going to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It will not do that. We have laws that prohibit the possession of other things, like methamphetamine, and it doesn’t stop it. What I fear most is that we are going to create criminals, and specifically felonous criminals, out of some of our most ordinary, normal, law-abiding citizens. Furthermore, I don’t know how I can, at least in my county, begin to try to enforce this law. Being a timber harvest-dependent county such as we are, our budget is continuously shrinking, to the point that there are times when we have a difficult time simply responding to domestic disturbances, vehicle crashes, the ordinary calls for service that happen every day. And to expect local law enforcement to run down and do an investigation into whether or not an individual, a private individual, has conducted a background check is nearly impossible. I urge you to consider this bill closely and to not pass it. It simply isn’t going to work for us.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin earlier this year. But in 2013—and remember, he is the person now investigating the shooting at Umpqua Community College—he wrote a letter to Vice President Joe Biden. In the letter, he asked the vice president not to tamper with the Second Amendment, writing, quote, "Gun control is NOT the answer to preventing heinous crimes like school shootings. Any actions against, or in disregard for our U.S. Constitution and 2nd Amendment rights by the current administration would be irresponsible and an indisputable insult to the American people."
He goes on to say, quote, "I will NOT violate my Constitutional Oath. Therefore, the second purpose of this letter is to make notification that any federal regulation enacted by Congress or by executive order of the President offending the Constitutional rights of my citizens shall not be enforced by me or by my deputies, nor will I permit the enforcement of any unconstitutional regulations or orders by federal officers within the borders of Douglas County Oregon."
Your response to the sheriff and his stands in the past on this issue of greater or more expanded gun control?
JENNIFER LYNCH: Sheriff Hanlin forgets that commonsense and reasonable, moderate gun safety regulations have in fact been held up as constitutional, first of all, repeatedly. And secondly, he forgets that, as a law enforcement officer, his first duty is to protect the people of Douglas County, not to advance his own political agenda or his own interpretation of what the Second Amendment does and does not allow for. The true insult to the people of Douglas County is that they were victims of a horrendous mass shooting on the campus of a public institution. And that truly is where his attention should be focused today. How did a young man accumulate so many weapons and so much ammunition? How was he able to carry it unnoticed into classrooms and open fire, taking the lives of classmates, innocent bystanders? Truly, this—this is the insult that has been forced upon us. And this is where I would ask that his attention lie in the days and weeks ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Lynch, what do you know about the young man and the weapons that he used and where he got them?
JENNIFER LYNCH: Well, very little. You know, as I’m sure you’ve seen, it’s all very early. It sounds as though, you know, he had the sorts of guns that any American can purchase legally. And I think that what is probably more interesting is that there were, presumably, people who knew how many guns he had in his house. And it’s sounding as though there were people who knew that he might have had ill intent.
One of the members of our organization is Sandy Hook Promise. They’re launching a campaign this October called "Say Something Week," starts October 19th. They’re encouraging parents, teachers, students and everybody to speak out when there’s a situation that looks like it might result in this kind of violence. And I would hope everyone would go to SandyHookPromise.org, check out that campaign and learn about tools that you can use in order to get in front of it, when you understand that there could be a danger like this in your community.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Jennifer Lynch, next year will mark really the 50th anniversary of the first mass killings in modern American history. There was Richard Speck, who shot and killed eight nurses in 1966. And then, a few weeks later, Charles [Whitman] climbed to the tower of the University of Texas at Austin and killed, I think it was, 12 or 13 people, wounded 32. But we’re seeing now, in the last year, a shooting—one of these mass shootings every day, on average. So, are we losing the battle here to be able to contain the proliferation of guns in America and continued violence against our own citizens?
JENNIFER LYNCH: It’s hard to say that we’re losing the battle, because the battle is just starting. After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, an organization called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America was created to help organize mothers in the same way that Mothers Against [Drunk] Driving organized mothers in the ’80s. And that organization has grown into a larger grassroots organization, Everytown for Gun Safety. They are our partners here in Oregon, along with several other national organizations. And we are starting to fight back. Poll after poll after poll shows that Americans, in a great majority, want commonsense gun safety regulations to be passed at the state and federal level. And we just have not been organized in a way to ask for them. And the longer we go without demanding action on gun violence prevention, the more—the more of these battles that we are losing.
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Lynch, finally, this isn’t the first time there’s been a mass killing in the neighborhood, is that right?
JENNIFER LYNCH: Oregon has had its fair share.
AMY GOODMAN: Back in 1998 at Thurston High School, which is in Springfield, Oregon, just outside Eugene?
JENNIFER LYNCH: That’s right. That’s right, yes. There was a high school student, a high school student who brought a gun to school after killing his parents and then killed classmates. One of our state legislators was a principal in a nearby school district when that happened, and that shooting still resonates here a decade later—decades.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll continue to follow this, certainly. Jennifer Lynch, thanks so much for being with us, spokesperson for the Oregon Alliance for Gun Safety. The group includes more than 50 organizations that pushed for the passage of Oregon’s new Firearms Safety Act, which expands background checks in gun sales in the state. It was signed into law in May.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report_. When we come back, we’re joined by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis on their new filmchanges. It had its U.S. premiere last night in New York. Stay with us.
WATCH RELATED SEGMENT: 'This Has Become Routine': Obama Speaks Out After 10 Killed in Oregon in Year’s 294th Mass Shooting
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"This Has Become Routine": Obama Speaks Out After 10 Killed in Oregon in Year's 294th Mass Shooting
"This Has Become Routine": Obama Speaks Out After 10 Killed in Oregon in Year's 294th Mass Shooting
Vigils were held in Oregon last night after a gunman opened fire at a community college Thursday morning, killing nine people before he was shot to death. Press reports have identified the gunman as 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer. CNN reported the suspect was armed with three handguns, a "long gun" and body armor. According to one count, this is the 294th mass shooting in the United States so far this year and the 45th shooting on a school or college campus. "Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine," President Obama said. "The conversation in the aftermath of it. We’ve become numb to this."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Vigils were held in Oregon last night after a gunman opened fire at a community college Thursday morning, killing nine people before he was shot to death. The shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg has been described as the deadliest shooting in Oregon’s history and one of the worst mass shootings in recent years. Roseburg is a town of 22,000, located about 180 miles south of Portland. Press reports have identified the gunman as 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer. CNN reported the suspect was armed with three handguns, a long gun and body armor. According to survivors, the gunman at one point ordered cowering students to stand up and state their religion before shooting them one by one. Cassie Welding, a student at Umpqua Community College, described what happened.
CASSANDRA WELDING: It was around 10:30, and I heard a really big, like, kapow noise, almost like a balloon popping, like it sounded like, you know, when your balloon gets too much air and then just pops. And I heard—within five seconds, I heard about four more. And my teacher left before this happened, so I don’t know at this point if she’s OK or not. ... There were also—I heard crying. I heard pretty much just like nonstop breathing and can’t catch your breath kind of, you know—and I was doing the same. Everyone was shaking. I just heard "I love you"s. ... The gunman shot her. I did not see the gunman, but I witnessed her getting shot. And so, at this point, you know, everyone is also in—everyone’s more panicked as it is already, and so we get her inside, because the door was slightly open. And we still hear gunshots, even when this is going on. We pulled the lady in, doing CPR on her.
AMY GOODMAN: According to one count, this is the 294th mass shooting in the United States so far this year and the 45th shooting on a school or college campus. The tally is from the website Mass Shooting Tracker, which records every incident where four or more people are killed or injured by gunfire. On Thursday, President Obama spoke out about the school shooting.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine, the conversation in the aftermath of it. We’ve become numb to this. We talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston. It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.
And what’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of commonsense gun legislation. Right now I can imagine the press releases being cranked out. "We need more guns," they’ll argue, "fewer gun safety laws." Does anybody really believe that? There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country. They know that’s not true. We know because of the polling that says the majority of Americans understand we should be changing these laws, including the majority of responsible law-abiding gun owners. There is a gun for roughly every man, woman and child in America. So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Obama went on to make an appeal to news organizations to publish statistics comparing deaths in the U.S. from terrorist attacks to deaths resulting from gun violence.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We spend over a trillion dollars and pass countless laws and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be? This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.
When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer. When Americans are killed in floods and hurricanes, we make communities safer. When roads are unsafe, we fix them to reduce auto fatalities. We have seatbelt laws, because we know it saves lives. So the notion that gun violence is somehow different? That our freedom and our Constitution prohibits any modest regulation of how we use a deadly weapon? When there are law-abiding gun owners all across the country who could hunt and protect their families and do everything they do under such regulations? Doesn’t make sense.
WATCH NEXT: After Latest Mass Shooting, a Look at the Oregon County Sheriff Who Vowed to Ignore Gun Control Laws
Oregon: Vigils Held After Gunman Killed 9 at Community College
Vigils were held in Oregon last night after a gunman opened fire at a community college Thursday morning, killing nine people before he was shot to death. The shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg has been described as the deadliest shooting in Oregon’s history and one of the worst mass school shootings in recent years. Press reports have identified the gunman as 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer. According to one count, this is the 294th mass shooting in the United States so far this year and the 45th shooting on a school or college campus. We’ll have more on the Oregon shooting after headlines.
California: Planned Parenthood Facility Firebombed
In California, a Planned Parenthood facility has been firebombed. Authorities say arsonists threw a container with flammable liquid through the window of the Thousand Oaks facility on Wednesday night. This follows an attack on the same facility in August in which windows were smashed. Wednesday’s attack came one day after the Republican House hearings on Planned Parenthood.
Afghanistan: 11 Americans Die in Crash; Fighting Rages in Kunduz
In Afghanistan, 11 Americans have died after a U.S. transport plane crashed at the Jalalabad airport, killing six U.S. soldiers and five civilian contractors. Three Afghan civilians also died in the crash. Meanwhile, fierce fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security forces backed by U.S. airstrikes and U.S. special operations troops continues to rage in the northern city of Kunduz. The Taliban have reportedly also seized control of the nearby Warduj district. The Pentagon has confirmed U.S. Special Forces have engaged in gunfire in Kunduz, although it says the troops were acting in self-defense. Obama declared an official end to the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan last year.
House Passes $612 Billion Military Spending Bill; Obama Promises Veto
In Washington, the House has passed a $612 billion military spending bill that allows the Pentagon to sidestep mandatory "sequestration" budget cuts for the Defense Department, while the cuts remain in effect for domestic programs. The bill would also make it more difficult to close Guantánamo. Obama has said he would veto the measure because of the "irresponsible" way it boosts military spending.
Israel Deploys 4 Battalions to West Bank Following Fatal Shooting
Israel has deployed four battalions to the West Bank, following a shooting Thursday that killed a Jewish Israeli couple as the family drove between two Jewish settlements. The Israeli military is describing the shooter as a Palestinian gunman. The additional Israeli troops are slated to arrive in the West Bank this morning.
Israeli PM Netanyahu Slams Iran Nuclear Deal in U.N. Speech
This comes one day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the Iran nuclear deal in an address to the U.N. General Assembly. Netanyahu compared Iran to a dog, saying, "Unleashed and unmuzzled, Iran will go on the prowl, devouring more and more prey." He also said he was prepared to resume peace talks with the Palestinians "without any preconditions whatsoever" — an assertion Hanan Ashrawi of the Palestinian Liberation Organization immediately contested.
Hanan Ashrawi: "So, in a sense, all his statements about peace and seeking peace have nothing to do with reality, are actually the opposite of what has been doing. He is the one who walked out of the peace talks. Israel is the country that reneged on all its commitments and signed agreements. Israel is refusing to abide by international law. And then it turns around, and it blames the Palestinians, who are its victims. Israel is a strong military power, holding a whole nation captive and at the same time blaming its victim for its own belligerence and its own destructive policies."
Labour Party Leader Corbyn Says He Would Not Use Nuclear Weapons
In Britain, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is clashing with members of his party after he told the BBC that if he were prime minister, he would not order the military to use nuclear weapons, regardless of the circumstances.
BBC reporter Laura Kuenssberg: "Would you ever push the nuclear button, if you were prime minister?"
Jeremy Corbyn: "I am opposed to nuclear weapons. I am opposed to the holding and the usage of nuclear weapons. They are an ultimate weapon of mass destruction that can only kill millions of civilians if ever used. And I am totally and morally opposed to nuclear weapons. I do not see them as a defense. I do not see the use of them as a credible way to do things."
Kuenssberg: "So, yes or now, you would never push the nuclear button?"
Corbyn: "I’ve answered you perfectly clearly. It’s immoral to have or use nuclear weapons. I’ve made that clear all of my life."
Corbyn also said that he would oppose the renewal of Britain’s billion-dollar submarine-based nuclear program Trident, calling the program a waste of money.
Russia Launches Third Day of Airstrikes in Syria amid U.S. Protest
Russia has launched a third day of airstrikes in Syria as the United States calls on Russia to stop the attacks, saying they "only fuel more extremism." On Wednesday, Russia became the 10th foreign power to begin bombing Syria this year. The United States says Russia is targeting U.S.-backed rebels that are fighting ISIL. Facing questioning during a news conference at the United Nations over the targets of the airstrikes, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday, "If it looks like a terrorist, walks like a terrorist, acts like a terrorist, fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist, right?"
Bernie Sanders Raises Nearly as Much Money as Hillary Clinton
In news from the campaign trail, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has raised nearly as much money as contender Hillary Clinton over the last three months, even as Sanders continues to refuse to accept donations from super PACs or corporations. Sanders has raised $26 million since July, compared to Clinton’s $28 million over the same period. Sanders has received small contributions from more than 1 million people so far, at a rate even faster than President Obama did in 2008.
CA Rep. Kevin McCarthy Sparks Outrage on Benghazi Committee Comments
House speaker contender California Congressmember Kevin McCarthy is facing criticism after he suggested the Benghazi oversight House committee had been set up to discredit former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. McCarthy made the comments in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News Tuesday.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy: "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought and made that happen."
McCarthy has been vying to become the next speaker of the House, following John Boehner’s announcement he would resign, but House Republicans are questioning McCarthy’s abilities following these statements.
Virginia Executes Alfredo Prieto amid Concerns about Execution Drugs
Virginia has executed death row prisoner Alfredo Prieto, following a federal judge’s decision Thursday to reject his lawyers’ concerns that the drugs used to put him to death were unsafe. Prieto was executed at 9:17 p.m. local time Thursday after being injected by a three-drug cocktail that included the chemical pentobarbital, which was obtained not from a pharmacy but from the Texas prison system.
Wisconsin: Memorial Held for Trans Teen Skylar Lee
And in Madison, Wisconsin, community members are holding a memorial service today to commemorate the life of 16-year-old Skylar Lee, a transgender teenager and LGBT activist who took his own life on Monday. In a video he recorded before his death, Lee discussed the need for more resources to support youth of marginalized identities.
Skylar Lee: "Forty percent of transgender youth report having attempted suicide. People say that 'it will get better.' But what would happen if we invested our resources in the development and well-being of our youth? If I had a trillion dollars, I would spend money to create education programs designed to combat the system that sets youth of marginalized identities up for failure."
According to the National Center for Transgender Equality and the LGBTQ Task Force, more than 40 percent of trans people attempt suicide in their lifetime — nearly 10 times the national average.
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WEB EXCLUSIVE
"No Papal Bull: Francis Hails Peace and the Activists Who Fight for It" by Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
Activist Dorothy Day is pictured in this photo taken on December 31, 1915. (Wikimedia Commons)
Pope Francis has left the building. His first trip to the United States created news at every turn.
On Thursday, Sept. 24, Pope Francis made his historic address to the joint session of Congress, the first time for a pope. When dealing with refugees, he said, “Let us remember the Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’” To that assembly of lawmakers, a majority of whom support capital punishment, he called for global abolition of the death penalty. He also called for an end to the international arms trade, saying, “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood.” Nevertheless, as he read his remarks aloud in a slow, careful English (his fifth language), he was frequently interrupted by rousing, bipartisan standing ovations.
Pope Francis framed his talk around four Americans: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and two lesser-known figures, two Catholics, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. “These men and women, for all their many differences and limitations, were able by hard work and self-sacrifice—some at the cost of their lives—to build a better future. They shaped fundamental values which will endure forever in the spirit of the American people.”
Lincoln and King need little introduction. Dorothy Day was a crusading 20th-century activist who is formally being considered for Catholic sainthood.
“She was a radical in her youth, underwent a conversion, and then started a movement, the Catholic Worker, to combine her faith with her commitment to social justice, the poor and the pursuit of peace,” Robert Ellsberg told us on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. He is the editor and publisher of the selected writings by Dorothy Day, as well as her diaries and letters.
Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn in 1897. By 1917, she was writing for radical newspapers in New York City, covering social movements like the IWW union (the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the “Wobblies”), the Russian revolution, communism and anarchists like Emma Goldman. Day was an active suffragette, and was arrested in November 1917 for picketing outside the White House, demanding the right to vote for women.
Throughout the 1920s, Day pursued her writing and activism, refusing to conform to the socially prescribed norms for women at the time. She had an abortion in the early 1920s, and, in 1925, had a daughter with a man to whom she was not married. She met a nun who inspired her to turn to Catholicism.
In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, Ellsberg explained, “she founded a movement called the Catholic Worker ... which combined the works of mercy, living in community among the poor, in New York and other cities, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, but combining that with a radical social criticism of our economic and social system, and also combining that with a strong commitment to the peace message of Jesus, for which she was repeatedly arrested during her life.”
Dorothy Day helped create Catholic Worker communities, now numbering more than 200 worldwide, offering hospitality, food and shelter to the poor and indigent. She launched a newspaper, The Catholic Worker, on May 1, 1933, which remains in publication to this day, selling still for one penny.
“Thomas Merton was the surprise for me,” Robert Ellsberg said. “Just 10 years ago, the American Catholic bishops decided to remove his name from a list of exemplary Catholics to be included in a catechism for young adults. Merton began engaging with the issues of the world, especially the Cold War, the arms race, nuclear weapons, racism, the Vietnam War. His own Trappist order censored him and wouldn’t allow him to publish on those topics for some years. ... He said, ‘I want my whole life to be a protest against war and political tyranny. No to everything that destroys life. Yes to everything that affirms it.’”
Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton were both outspoken proponents of an engaged form of religion, taking their beliefs into action. Dorothy Day took her activism a step further, getting arrested scores of times, protesting against war. The Catholic Workers she taught and inspired continue her mission, engaging in civil disobedience at nuclear-missile sites and at military bases like Hanford and Creech, where drones are operated remotely. The movement to saint Day got a big push forward by Pope Francis last week. But as Dorothy Day said herself in 1980, the year she died: “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”
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.
(c) 2015 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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