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"A Victory for the Underdogs": Sanders & Cruz Win Big in Wisconsin as Front-Runners Stumble
In the race for the White House, Tuesday was a big night for the underdogs, as Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Ted Cruz secured decisive victories in the Wisconsin primary. Sanders beat rival Hillary Clinton by winning over 56 percent of the vote. Ted Cruz easily defeated front-runner Donald Trump by 13 percentage points. We speak to political analyst and activist Van Jones and Ruth Conniff, editor of the Wisconsin-based magazine The Progressive.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the race for the White House, Tuesday was a big night for the underdogs, as Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Ted Cruz secured decisive victories in the Wisconsin primary. Sanders beat rival Hillary Clinton by winning over 56 percent of the vote. Ted Cruz easily defeated front-runner Donald Trump by 13 percentage points. Sanders held a rally Tuesday night in Wyoming, which holds its caucus on Saturday.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: With our victory tonight in Wisconsin, we have now won seven out of eight of the last caucuses and primaries. And we have won almost all of them with overwhelming landslide numbers. What momentum is about is that at a time in contemporary politics when every major candidate has a super PAC, we have said no to super PACs, said no to the billionaires who fund those super PACs.
AMY GOODMAN: Senator Sanders, speaking in Wyoming, where he’s projected to pick up another victory at the state’s caucus on Saturday. The focus of the race is already turning to delegate-rich New York, which votes on April 19th. Despite Sanders’ recent victories, Clinton still holds a lead of about 250 pledged delegates. She also maintains a huge lead among superdelegates, members of the Democratic Party establishment, who could change their vote at any point.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the Republican race, Ted Cruz’s victory over front-runner Donald Trump in Wisconsin increases the chances that Trump will fall short of winning enough delegates to secure the nomination before the convention in July. On Tuesday, Cruz gave a victory speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
SEN. TED CRUZ: God bless the great state of Wisconsin. What an incredible victory tonight. And thank you to your tremendous governor, Governor Scott Walker. ... Either before Cleveland or at the convention in Cleveland, together, we will win a majority of the delegates. And together, we will beat Hillary Clinton in November. Tonight was a bad night for Hillary Clinton. It was a bad night in the Democratic primary, and it was an even worse night for her in the Republican primary. We are winning because we’re uniting the Republican Party.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by two guests. Ruth Conniff is with us, editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin-based magazine The Progressive. Van Jones is president and founder of the Dream Corps. He’s the co-founder of #cut50, a national bipartisan initiative to reduce the U.S. incarcerated population by 50 percent over the next 10 years. Van was President Barack Obama’s green jobs adviser in 2009 and founded Green for All. He’s also a CNN political commentator.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Ruth, let’s begin with you in Madison, Wisconsin. Talk about what happened last night, a victory for the underdogs.
RUTH CONNIFF: Absolutely, yeah. It was—it was really unprecedented, Wisconsin, actually. Usually, the state goes with the winner and the front-runner in both the Republican and the Democratic primaries. This year, it was a big upset. On the Republican side, I think what you saw was really an anti-Trump vote. I don’t think it’s so much that you saw Wisconsin Republicans consolidate behind Ted Cruz as you saw them looking for an alternative to Donald Trump. There was a very heavy push for him by the governor of the state, Scott Walker, by the right-wing radio talkers in the suburbs of Milwaukee who really drive Republican politics since the rise of Walker here. And you saw this—you know, this push for anybody but Trump. And that anybody right now looks like Ted Cruz. There’s also a very strong evangelical vote here. Evangelical Christians have also helped propel Walker’s rise, and they came out in force for Ted Cruz.
On the Democratic side, you saw Sanders win by a very significant margin and a bigger margin than the polls show, including the Marquette poll, which has been a very accurate poll. So, he’s got a credible case that he’s really on the run here. It’s a very progressive state. His message really resonated here. This is a state that is partly a Rust Belt state. We’ve seen the flight of manufacturing jobs. And so, when he talks about corporate trade deals that have really hurt the middle class, he gets a lot of response from Wisconsinites.
In addition to that, there was a huge turnout, unprecedented since 1980. Forty percent in a spring primary, it’s pretty amazing. And a lot of students came out to vote and overcame the first go-around of an incredibly restrictive voter ID law, registered to vote in huge numbers at the polls yesterday and, in addition, had to go and get a special ID, because your student ID doesn’t work to vote, your valid out-of-state driver’s license and your proof of residency don’t work to vote. So students jumped through a lot of hoops and still came out in big numbers for Bernie Sanders, propelling his win here.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Van Jones, do you see last night’s results as making any significant change in either of the campaigns, or do you see this as a watershed moment for either one of them?
VAN JONES: Well, absolutely, for the Republicans. It looks like the path to the nomination for Donald Trump has been cut off. It’s very, very hard now to see the math. He has to get, you know, 55 percent or more of all the remaining delegates. He usually gets between 35 and 45. So he has to start doing much, much better. It in fact looks like he’s doing much, much worse.
But I don’t want progressives to get too excited about the strife and the stupidity on the right. We need to use this moment to accelerate the strategy and strength on the left. And one big problem that we’ve had is that Hillary Clinton has been able to use African Americans and Latinos to hold off Bernie Sanders. Now, you can, you know, love Hillary, love Bernie, but it’s very, very odd to me that the African-American community, in particular, has been used by the Clintons, who, obviously, with welfare repeal, with the crime bill, with NAFTA, could arguably have done a great deal to hurt black folks. How are African Americans now being used to help the Clintons and to hurt a candidacy like Bernie Sanders’, that shows some weakness on the left that we need to deal with.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think it is?
VAN JONES: Well, I think it’s two things. One is, I think that on the—the Democratic Party is kind of a three-legged stool. You have the corporate establishment wing that Hillary Clinton represents—God bless her. But then you have the populist wing of Elizabeth Edwards [sic], Bernie Sanders. There is a racial blind spot there all too often. It’s going to change this year.
AMY GOODMAN: Elizabeth Warren.
VAN JONES: Elizabeth Warren, I’m sorry. It’s going to change this year. But for a long time, from the white populist wing, it was almost like we were supposed to have trickle-down justice. We’re just going to tax Wall Street, fix Social Security; racism will disappear. And that did not go well with the third leg of this party, the racial justice wing. The racial justice wing has not had a dog in this fight, really. And so, I think there’s been a blind spot for the white populists, but there’s also a weakness on the racial justice left. We have been either anti-electoral or non-electoral for too long. And so, when you put the weakness of the white populist left and the weakness of the racial justice left, when it comes to elections, you have a hole, and Hillary Clinton was able to drive through it. I think that is bad for progressives, going forward.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ruth Conniff, what about that situation in Wisconsin? Clearly, Hillary Clinton’s base of support was in Milwaukee and some of the African-American areas of your state. How do you see this issue of the—how African Americans and Latinos have been responding to Hillary Clinton?
RUTH CONNIFF: Well, I absolutely agree with Van Jones. And he’s made this point, actually, in an interview in The Progressive magazine, and I think it’s really smart. Basically, I think Sanders has failed, for a lot of the campaign, to connect directly with African-American and Latino voters and talk about the particular concerns of those voters, apart from this very general economic justice and inequality message that he has. And in Wisconsin, this is particularly a missed opportunity. It was in the debate, the Democratic debate in Milwaukee, because the collapse of the black middle class in industrial areas of our state is directly tied to the outsourcing of jobs, the collapse of manufacturing, the attack on unions, which Walker has led. Public employee—unionized public employees, people with great middle-class jobs in manufacturing that have been on the decline here are disproportionately African-American.
So, Sanders has begun to turn that around. And it was interesting to see him in rallies in Wisconsin over this last period beginning to speak much more directly to people of color and to connect his message, specifically of economic justice, to that burden that has fallen disproportionately on people of color. And he’s also started to say, "I am listening. This campaign is listening to our African-American brothers and sisters. This campaign is listening to our Latino brothers and sisters." He started to get this riff going. And I think that that was a direct response to this criticism of him that he wasn’t speaking directly to those voters.
VAN JONES: And he hasn’t.
RUTH CONNIFF: And so, you know, I think this idea of a more progressive set of policies being beneficial to voters of color, I think that that has picked up a little bit. He’s corrected a little bit there. And, of course, it’s true that a corporate Democrat is not necessarily great, particularly one who talks about superpredators and bringing people to heel, not the natural candidate necessarily for African-American voters. So I think there is a real weakness there for Hillary.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Van?
VAN JONES: Bernie Sanders has been remarkable in his ability to improve. You remember, when he first started out, you had Black Lives Matter snatching the microphone out of his hand. He has become a great and eloquent champion. The challenge is, though, the racial justice left has been anti-electoral or non-electoral. We are a protest-based left, a not-for-profit-based left, prohibited by law from participating therefore in elections. And that anti-electoral bias is now causing us real problems. And so, this is the moment for the Black Lives Matter, the DREAMers, the Idle No More, the racial justice rising movement to say we have an opportunity to determine who the president of the United States is going to be, who the next nominee will be. Here in New York City, that movement, that Zephyr Teachout was able to capture, the Working Families Party, those are the forces—
AMY GOODMAN: Who ran against Governor Cuomo.
VAN JONES: Who ran against Governor Cuomo and took him all the way to the finish line there. Those forces, those good economic populist forces and the racial justice forces together, are not just the majority in the Democratic Party, we are a majority, a governing majority, potentially, in the country. But we’ve got to take this moment seriously. And we can’t just hope the Republicans blow it. ... Read More →
Juan González Was at Bernie Sanders' NY Daily News Editorial Board Meeting. What Really Happened?
Much of the corporate media has been openly criticizing Bernie Sanders’ performance during an interview with the New York Daily News editorial board. The Washington Post ran an article titled "9 Things Bernie Sanders Should’ve Known About But Didn’t in That Daily News Interview." Former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer tweeted: "The Transcript of Sanders’ meeting with the Daily News Ed Board is almost as damning as Trump’s with the WaPo." We get a different perspective from someone who was actually there: Daily News columnist Juan González.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: So, right now the race comes to New York.
VAN JONES: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: April 19th. And immediately, there was this New York Daily News meeting. Juan, you were at it. It’s being—the transcript has been released. Hillary Clinton has sent it to her supporters. What did Ryan Grim write in The Huffington Post? "A notion is rapidly crystallizing among the national media that Bernie Sanders majorly bungled an interview with the editorial board of the New York Daily News." CNN just said, "Several times during the interview, Sanders expressed uncertainty over facts, said he couldn’t give a proper answer to a question because he didn’t have all the relevant information, or simply stated, 'I don't know.’" CNN said, "In one exchange, Sanders acknowledged that he wasn’t sure exactly how he intended to break up the big banks, a proposal that has been a centerpiece of his Wall Street reform agenda." A Washington Post says, "This New York Daily News interview was pretty close to a disaster for Bernie Sanders."
But not everyone agrees. Juan, you raced out of here on Friday, because you were racing back to the New York Daily News to attend and question Bernie Sanders at this New York Daily News editorial board meeting.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, well, I certainly didn’t get that impression, tell you the truth. The editorial board is notorious, especially our editorial page editor, Arthur Browne, for his laser-like one question after another, and he bombarded, as several others of us also asked questions. I, overall, thought that Bernie Sanders handled the exchange very well. And I think that there were a few places where he stumbled, and—but I was amazed at his ability to parry the questions that were thrown at him and to, basically, for instance, bluntly say, when he was asked about the Israeli-Palestinian situation, that Israel needed to withdraw from the illegal settlements in Palestinian territory, which I was astounded that he was quite frank and clear on his position, while at the same time saying he would do everything possible as president to negotiate peace and security for Israel in an overall settlement. And I think there—he did stumble a little bit when he was pressed on how he would break up some of the too-big-to-fail banks. He clearly did not have that down pat.
AMY GOODMAN: Who would have the jurisdiction.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Oh, right, who would have the jurisdiction, and—but, overall, I thought his performance was excellent.
VAN JONES: Can I say a couple things here? New York City is the war to settle the score inside the Democratic Party. The Clinton forces understand there is a rebellion in this party. Under ordinary circumstances, it would already be over, because the big donors would have taken the checks back. There are no big checks. This is a people’s movement. They are going to have to bury this movement in New York City, and they know it. You’re going to see a vetting of Bernie Sanders like you’ve never seen. You’re going to see the mainstream media go after him. Now there’s blood in the water on specifics. They’re going to go after him on specifics, you know, way beyond anything any candidate has had to address. And people are going to have to—I mean, he’s going to have to step up his game, because you can’t, you know, write excuses for people. He’s got to be able to answer those tough questions.
But also, if you want for this Democratic Party to take progressive causes seriously, now is the time to speak out and get engaged. And for African Americans in particular, I want to say something. We are the only part of the so-called Obama coalition that has to give not 50 percent of our vote, not 60, not 70, not 80, not 90, but 92 percent of our vote in every presidential election, in order for Democrats to win. So, we are beyond a base vote. We are the decisive vote. If we give 85 percent of our vote to the Democrats, Republicans win. And so, we deserve to have a full hearing on all the issues that affect us, and hear from both candidates. And all of the history needs to be on the table to be vetted, for both candidates.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting. I went up to that South Bronx rally that Bernie Sanders had last week, first time a presidential candidate had been there in a very long time. It was electric.
VAN JONES: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Sixteen [thousand], 18 [thousand], 20,000 people were there. When he raises money, he’s speaking directly to the camera or to the people and just saying, "Hey, send me $3," whatever—his average is $27. When Hillary Clinton raises money, she has to come off the campaign trail. Like last night, the big Wisconsin primary, she was at a fundraiser. And that’s done behind closed doors.
VAN JONES: Yeah. And part of the opportunity that we have—up until now, you could say to any candidate, "Why are you taking money from big people?" "Well, everybody does it. If I don’t take money from the big people, I’ll be obliterated. I have to do this." Guess what. You now have an example of somebody who didn’t do it and who’s been able to show real strength and resolve.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Ruth Conniff, you’re in Madison, Wisconsin; you’re in Paul Ryan territory in Wisconsin. It’s being discussed, the possibility that he would be the candidate, the consensus candidate, that would come out of a brokered or an open convention, the congressman who is the House speaker.
RUTH CONNIFF: Yeah, it’s wild. I mean, you know, I don’t see how the Republicans can really go to their convention and make the case that they need a candidate who didn’t even run. I mean, they’re—I think Donald Trump is right, that they’re going to have a real problem making that case. Paul Ryan has said he’s not interested in being that candidate. Of course, he said that before they made him House speaker.
You know, when you saw Donald Trump in his rally in Janesville attacking Paul Ryan, attacking Scott Walker, and getting a huge response, you really saw something about the crackup. And it’s similar to the crackup that Van Jones is describing on the Democratic side, where we now actually have a candidate who represents the progressive end of the spectrum and is speaking to people who have really been hurt by pro-corporate policies by both major parties. Trump is also tapping in to discontent among lower-class, working-class Republican voters who really have not been beneficiaries of Republican policies and are really noticing and angry. And yes, the racism, the white nationalist groups that came into Wisconsin to campaign for Trump are absolutely part of that package. But there is also this rebellion against people like Paul Ryan, who has supported corporate trade deals in Janesville, which is a Rust Belt area, has seen the GM plant leave there—which he blamed on Obama, although it happened before Obama was even in office—has really hurt his own constituents and, thanks to redistricting, has been able to hold onto his seat, even though he loses his hometown of Janesville over and over again. So, for Paul Ryan to be the alternative, that’s a really—that’s a pro-corporate Republican Party establishment dream. But there is going to be hell to pay with regular voters. And that is a huge dilemma for the Republican Party this year.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. We want to thank Ruth Conniff, editor-in-chief of The Progressive magazine, and Van Jones, president and founder of the Dream Corps.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, what happened early this morning in Puerto Rico? Stay with us. ... Read More →
In Shock to Wall Street & Washington, Puerto Rico Moves to Suspend Payments on $72B Public Debt
The Puerto Rican Senate and the House of Representatives have both passed an emergency declaration authorizing the governor to suspend payments on $72 billion in public debt—setting up a dramatic showdown between Puerto Rico and hedge funds amid the island’s historic debt crisis. The bill authorizes the Puerto Rican governor to "protect the health, security and public welfare ... [by] using government funds first and foremost for public services." The dramatic move comes one day after a group of hedge funds sued to freeze the assets of Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank in efforts to stop the bank from spending money on the island that the hedge funds want to go toward upcoming debt payments.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The Puerto Rican Senate and the House of Representatives there have both passed an emergency declaration authorizing the governor suspend payments on $72 billion in public debt, setting up a dramatic showdown between Puerto Rico and hedge funds amidst the island’s historic debt crisis. The bill authorizes the Puerto Rican governor to, quote, "protect the health, security and public welfare ... [by] using government funds first and foremost for public services." The dramatic move comes one day after a group of hedge funds sued to freeze the assets of Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank in efforts to stop the bank from spending money on the island that the hedge funds want to go toward upcoming debt payments.
Juan, you write about this in your column in the New York Daily News. Talk about the significance of what just took place last—what, this morning.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right. Well, I had a column last night, and the final result was not clear yet, because on Tuesday morning, the Puerto Rico Senate, at 2:30 in the morning, approved a moratorium on debt, declared, in effect, an emergency, a public emergency, in Puerto Rico and authorized the governor, under the Constitution, to suspend all debt payments until January of next year. Then what happened, though, that it was an all-day debate in the lower house, the House of Representatives in Puerto Rico. The bond—the Puerto Rico bonds dropped to their lowest level on the markets in history. And the—and there was a huge press by lobbyists, financial industry lobbyists, to stop the House from voting. Then, around 1:00 a.m. this morning, by the barest of majorities—I think 26 votes, which was the bare majority needed—the governor managed to get through a similar bill in the House of Representatives—not exactly the same as the Senate bill. It doesn’t decree an immediate suspension of the payment, but authorizes the governor, on a case-by-case basis, to suspend any debt payment of either the government of Puerto Rico or the public authorities of Puerto Rico.
So, basically, it sets up a collision now between Wall Street, on the one hand, and also with Washington, because there are two things that really have spurred this. One was that on Monday a group of hedge funds went into court to try to basically freeze the assets of the Government Development Bank, because they’re afraid that the bank is using money that should be going to bondholders, to help the government pay its debts—I mean, sorry, pay its services, for public services.
And then, two is, last week, the Republicans in the House finally revealed their proposal for Puerto Rico, which in essence is a complete takeover of Puerto Rico. One former governor of Puerto Rico called this control board that the Republicans would set up a "Dictatorial and Colonial Board," because it would allow the president to name five people to an oversight board in Puerto Rico, only one of whom has to be a resident of Puerto Rico. The other four could live in the United States, be residents of the United States. But more importantly, unlike the D.C. bill—because in ’95, when the government established a control board over the District of Columbia, the president named five members for the control board with—in consultation with the Congress. But the president basically got to name them—Bill Clinton. This time, the Republicans are proposing that President Obama would—four of the people named by President Obama would have to come from a list provided either by Speaker Ryan or by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. So four would be Republicans, and only one would be a Democrat. So it would be, in essence, a Republican takeover of Puerto Rico, and that board would have the right to—must approve all budgets, all laws that would be passed by the—
AMY GOODMAN: Sounds like the city manager laws in Michigan—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, exactly like city manager laws.
AMY GOODMAN: —that led to the poisoning of the water supply of Flint.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: They could also have to approve all contracts of over $1 million. They could create a sub-minimum wage for young people. They could privatize the electric company. Basically, a complete financial dictatorship over Puerto Rico. But the difference between the District of Columbia and these financial management boards is that 60 years ago the United States went to the United Nations and declared that Puerto Rico was no longer a colony, because it had self-government. And precisely, it said to the the United Nations that the president of the United States and the Congress no longer appoint any officials of the Puerto Rico government. This bill would do just the opposite: It would create the most powerful officials in the Puerto Rican government, that it would control the entire economy of the island. So, it’s a direct contravention of what the United States justified to the United Nations for removing Puerto Rico from the list of colonies. ... Read More →
Special Report: Voices from Puerto Rico's Students Leading an Anti-Austerity Movement
Puerto Rican college students have been waging a series of demonstrations to protest austerity measures they say endanger the higher education system. Last night, students at the University of Puerto Rico campus in Bayamón voted to begin an indefinite strike, while students at the Ponce campus voted to begin a 72-hour strike. Students at the University of Puerto Rico at Utuado have also shut down the campus. In March, students held a protest outside the Puerto Rican Treasury, known as Hacienda. Some students had a chance to meet with Juan Flores Galarza, the sub-secretary of the Puerto Rican Treasury. Democracy Now!’s Juan Carlos Dávila was there and filed this report.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Juan, you said the hedge funds are concerned the money would go to public services on the island. Let’s talk about this, because this comes as Puerto Rican college students have been waging a series of demonstrations to protest austerity measures they say endanger the higher education system. Last night, students at the University of Puerto Rico campus at Bayamón voted to begin an indefinite strike, while students at the Ponce campus voted to begin a 72-hour strike. Students at the University of Puerto Rico campus in Utuado have also shut down the campus.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In March, students held a protest outside the Puerto Rican Treasury, known as Hacienda. Some students had a chance to meet with Juan Flores Galarza, the sub-secretary of the Puerto Rican Treasury. Democracy Now!’s Juan Carlos Dávila was there in Puerto Rico and filed this report.
STUDENT PROTESTER 1: [translated] The governor has always said that the people are first and the bondholders last. He should stop lying, because in May and June he needs to make two bond payments. We know that the government of Puerto Rico will pay the bondholders first, and they don’t care about the University of Puerto Rico.
CORALY LEÓN MORALES: [translated] My name is Coraly León Morales. I’m a student in social work. In December 2015, the government decided to pay the debt, which put a freeze on funding for the University of Puerto Rico’s budget. They took money from different public corporations, including the University of Puerto Rico. I’m working on my thesis right now, and the school doesn’t have enough professors to supervise students’ theses.
TANIA HERNÁNDEZ CARABALLO: [translated] My name is Tania Hernández. The university has been eliminating professors and eliminating courses and classes that we need for our professional development.
LODERAY BRACERO MARRERO: [translated] I am Loderay Bracero Marrero. The legislative scholarships that are assigned funding for graduate students have been reduced enormously. This means that graduate students have no financial support for their studies, and many might not be able to finish their doctoral and their master’s programs.
GUILLERMO GUASP: My name is Guillermo Guasp, and I’m president of the Student General Council. What they told the professors and the students, that they cannot guarantee them anymore any financial aid for them to do maybe some research or go to a conference or go to represent the University of Puerto Rico at an international background. So that really jeopardizes our role, not just here in Puerto Rico, but also to compete against other universities in the world.
STUDENT PROTESTER 2: [translated] We are organizing to keep the protests going while our colleagues are negotiating and talking inside. We are giving them one hour.
JUAN CARLOS DÁVILA: On March 18, representatives from all 11 campuses of the University of Puerto Rico met with Juan Flores Galarza, the sub-secretary of the Puerto Rican Treasury, locally known as Hacienda, to push for a dialogue in regards to the funding that belongs to the public university and the disbursement they have withheld. Flores Galarza assured that the Treasury has not stopped giving payments to the University of Puerto Rico, but that the economic crisis of Puerto Rico forces them to pay less money.
JUAN FLORES GALARZA: [translated] There’s a clause in the Constitution which needs to be invoked. That said, when the government of Puerto Rico doesn’t have sufficient resources to meet its obligations, it needs to distribute money according to priorities. And the Constitution of Puerto Rico says that the number one priority is paying for the servicing of the debt.
MELODY VÉLEZ PÉREZ: [translated] What has been created is a crisis of human rights, a crisis for the people. Our country is collapsing. With the money being allocated to the University of Puerto Rico, we cannot operate. The system is getting dismantled.
My name is Melody Vélez Pérez. The conversation that we’re trying to have is that you need to not pay the debt that we are in, because basic services, as it is education, as it’s security, as it’s health, those things have to be assured first. We can’t aspire to get out of this crisis if we don’t have a strong education system. This is where the ideas are going to come from to help our country move forward. Our country is collapsing, and we simply cannot let that happen anymore. There’s something larger at play here, and it is something that will—if we lose this, I think we are going to lose everything else in our country.
STUDENT PROTESTER 3: [translated] We can’t let them come with the excuse that there is a crisis. The crisis is not our fault. We are students, and we will defend what is fair, that everybody has access to a public education.
AMY GOODMAN: That report from Puerto Rico by Democracy Now!’s Juan Carlos Dávila. Multiple campuses of the University of Puerto Rico are currently on strike.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Iceland, where the Panama Papers’ first casualty happened yesterday: The prime minister resigned. Stay with us. ... Read More →
Van Jones: New York Primary is "War to Settle the Score" Between Bernie Sanders & Hillary Clinton
Following victories by Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz in Wisconsin, the candidates are turning their attention to the major contest next week: the New York primary. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are slated to square off for a debate in New York on April 14, ahead of the April 19 primary. We speak with Van Jones, CNN political commentator, about the Democratic showdown.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask about this closed primary. I mean, you have a lot of people who’ve gotten extremely excited about this primary, after the debates and the primaries and the caucuses, when it looked like there was a real contest between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. But the chance to switch affiliation from independent, which is the big draw that Bernie Sanders has, to Democrat was back in October, before all of that started.
VAN JONES: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Is there a concern there around this?
VAN JONES: Well, definitely. And all these deformities and deficiencies in our electoral system always come into sharp relief. Usually, by this time, Wisconsin doesn’t matter, New York doesn’t matter, the whole thing’s wrapped up. Why is that not the case in this moment? Because the second Sanders surge is a real thing. He’s gone to victory after victory after victory. He was able to raise $43 million last month, when he should have been out of the race by normal standards.
AMY GOODMAN: Compared to Hillary Clinton’s $29.5 [million].
VAN JONES: Compared to Hillary—and Hillary Clinton’s—53 percent of her voters—her donors are already matched out—maxed out. They can’t give any more; they’ve already given so much. Three percent of Bernie’s are. That gives you a sense of the broad base of working-class people giving three bucks, 10 bucks, 30 bucks. And yet, because of the way this thing was structured, most of the races were in the South, where Hillary Clinton was going to win, and you do have these barriers to participation.
That said, this is the war to settle the score. New York City is the capital of the world. You have now these two titanic forces inside the Democratic Party clashing on the world stage here in New York City. Every single progressive, every single young person of color or people who care about these issues has a chance to do things that matter in the next two weeks. And I don’t think that we should just assume that because Hillary Clinton has—this is her third declared home state, between Arkansas and Illinois, that Bernie Sanders and other progressive forces can’t be heard from here in a way that matters. ... Read More →
Van Jones Says "Volcano of White Rage" Propping Up "Dangerous" Trump Candidacy
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is facing new criticism over his possibly illegal proposal to attempt to force Mexico to pay for a border wall by blocking Mexicans living in the United States from sending money back to their families. It’s the latest in a series of controversial racist or xenophobic statements by Donald Trump, who has called Mexicans rapists, proposed banning Muslims from entering the United States and refused to disavow former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke. For more on the campaign, we speak with CNN political commentator Van Jones, who calls Trump’s campaign "the most dangerous development I have seen in my lifetime."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you a little bit about the Trump phenomenon and your sense of this enormous effort by the Republican Party to try to stop Trump before the election. How do you see this strategy developing, and do they have any—any hope of doing so?
VAN JONES: I would have said two weeks ago that Trump was unstoppable. He was Trumpzilla. He was just crunching through the village, you know, stepping on former governors and senators. He has managed to hurt himself so badly by that abortion gaffe, where you had both the anti-choice people and the pro-choice people all dog-piling him, because he finally said in public what many of them say in private, that women should go to jail.
AMY GOODMAN: Who have abortions.
VAN JONES: Who have abortion, should go to jail. That hurt him. And so now there’s an opportunity to stop him. But look at the so-called victory of the anti-Trump forces. They were able to dig in for weeks in one state. They threw everything at him. They had the governor. They had the talk radio people. And guess what. He still was able to get a third of the vote. And the people who voted against him, you look at that vote: 70 percent of all the voters, the Republicans, still say ban all the Muslims; a third say deport every undocumented person. So you still have, in this so-called anti-Trump moment, some of—the endorsement of some of his worst policies by the people who voted against him. So this is a very, very dangerous, authoritarian, right-wing party, and we need a much stronger, more coordinated progressive movement to stop it.
AMY GOODMAN: Van, I wanted to go to that night on Super Tuesday when you were on CNN as a CNN analyst debating Jeffrey Lord, a Trump supporter, clashing over Donald Trump’s hedging around the Klan leader David Duke’s endorsement.
VAN JONES: He is whipping up and tapping into and pushing buttons that are very, very frightening to me and frightening to a lot of people. Number one, when he is playing funny with the Klan, that is not cool.
JEFFREY LORD: He didn’t play funny with the Klan.
VAN JONES: Hold on, hold on a second. I know this man when he gets passionate about terrorism. I know how he talks about terrorism. The Klan is a terrorist organization that has killed—
JEFFREY LORD: A leftist terrorist organization.
VAN JONES: You could put whatever label you want to on it. That’s your game to play.
JEFFREY LORD: No, it’s an important—it’s important history.
VAN JONES: But—no, that’s your game to play.
JEFFREY LORD: It’s history.
VAN JONES: No, they’re not labeled—we’re not going to play that game. Not going to play that game.
JEFFREY LORD: We are going to understand history.
VAN JONES: No, no, no, no. You need to take a serious look at the fact that this man has—is playing fast and loose and footsie. When you talk about terrorism, he gets passionate. He says, "No, this is wrong." But when you talk about the Klan, "Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know." That’s wrong. And then you came on the air, and you said, "Well, this is just like when Reverend Wright was speaking."
JEFFREY LORD: Yeah, yeah.
VAN JONES: Reverend Wright never lynched anybody, Reverend Wright never killed anybody.
JEFFREY LORD: Reverend Wright is—Reverend Wright is an anti-Semite.
VAN JONES: Reverend Wright—no, hold on a second. Reverend Wright never put anybody on a post. And you guys play these word games, and it’s wrong to do in America.
JEFFREY LORD: It is wrong to—
VAN JONES: It is wrong to do.
AMY GOODMAN: Van Jones, there you are. You’re debating Jeffrey Lord, the Trump supporter who’s on CNN all the time. What are you thinking about Trump right now?
VAN JONES: This is the most dangerous development that I’ve seen in my lifetime. Too many people now say, "Oh, it’s crazy. It’s crazy." Quit saying it’s crazy. That makes it seem like it’s funny. This is dangerous to have a right-wing authoritarian movement. Notice, no amount of racial violence that he whipped up at his rallies slowed him down. None. No amount of racist, xenophobic hatred that he’s spewed slowed him down. In fact, it lifted him up. The reason that he’s having trouble now is because the field finally whittled down a little bit, some of his foreign policy positions with NATO are a little bit erratic, and he made the social conservatives mad with his abortion gaffe. That’s what’s slowing him down. That lets you know that we have—we are sitting on a volcano of white rage.
And what we’ve got to be able to do, first of all, is say, "Listen, why—how come all these white guys could be mad? I got 40 million black people; we could be mad. There’s 50 million Latinos; they could be mad. Six million Muslims. We could all be mad. Then what you got? You have no country." So, let’s have—you know, civility is something important, because that gives you civilization. So, if you’re going to start saying, "You guys could be angry, say whatever you want," just because it’s authentic doesn’t mean it’s all right. You’ve got to have some boundaries here. Those boundaries have been blown through. We are now adapting to absurdity. The idea of complete racial hostility—no dog whistles; megaphones—has now been normalized. That is dangerous. Now, we cannot rely, as progressives, on stupidity and strife in the Republican Party to stop this. The next guy will be smarter. The next woman will be smarter. And then what are we going to do?
AMY GOODMAN: Well, what about Ted Cruz?
VAN JONES: Well, for instance. And so, my plea, and the reason I’m here today, is I’m begging progressives to come off the sidelines. Often, we say, "Oh, well, you know, both the parties are horrible." That can often be true. But there’s a moment now where the character of the country is on the table, on the world stage, and too many progressives have been silent. We need to speak out against the hatred. ... Read More →
Iceland's Pirate Party Gains Popularity After Prime Minister Walks the Plank over "Panama Papers"
Iceland’s prime minister resigned Tuesday, becoming the first major casualty of the Panama Papers revelations. Leaked documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed that Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson owned an offshore company with his wife, which he failed to declare when he entered Parliament. He is accused of concealing millions of dollars’ worth of family assets. Gunnlaugsson’s resignation followed the largest public demonstrations in Iceland’s history, with more than 20,000 protesters massed in Reykjavík outside Iceland’s Parliament on Monday demanding the prime minister step down. We speak to Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic Parliament and an unofficial leader of the Pirate Party, which has seen a surge of support following the publication of the Panama Papers. Polls show it is now the country’s most popular party with 43 percent support.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Iceland’s prime minister resigned Tuesday, becoming the first major casualty of the Panama Papers revelations. Leaked documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed that Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson owned an offshore company with his wife, which he failed to declare when he entered Parliament. He’s accused of concealing millions of dollars’ worth of family assets. His resignation followed what might have been the largest public demonstrations in Iceland’s history, when as many as 20,000 protesters massed in the country’s capital outside Iceland’s Parliament demanding the prime minister step down.
EINAR BERGMUNDUR: I’m just protesting the corruption of the government. The prime minister has been hiding his money in Tortola and lying about it. The financial minister has also been lying about his participation in secret companies. And everybody is just fed up with this.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday evening, protesters returned to the streets of Reykjavík, rejecting the interim setup and calling for fresh elections.
Well, to find out more about what’s happening in Iceland, we’ll go directly there. We’re joined by Birgitta Jónsdóttir. She is a member of the Icelandic Parliament, an official spokesperson of the Pirate Party, which has seen a surge of support following the publication of the Panama Papers.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! by video stream in Reykjavík.
BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: Hi.
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about what has taken place, the resignation of your prime minister, why everyone—why tens of thousands demanded he resign, and what the Panama Papers means to you.
BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: Yeah, great to be on again, and thanks for having me, Amy.
So, actually, the strange twist of events is that the prime minister has sent an email to all the mainstream media around the world, declaring that he’s just temporarily stepping down. He is going to resume as a parliamentarian, and he might step in again—unless something has happened while I’ve been waiting to get on this stream. His interim or second in line, the offer that we got for the next prime minister, is absolutely not what the Icelandic people are calling for. Even if Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson decides to resign as a minister and not only have a temporary leave, that is just simply not enough, because he is not the only minister that is mentioned in the Panama Papers. We also have two other ministers from the other coalition party, the Independence Party. One of them is the finance minister and the minister of taxes. So, obviously, people want him to leave. And the other one is the interior minister, the minister for the—the judge system and so forth. So, people are still very upset. There were—there are planned protests, I guess, until the government leaves. We have prepared a new vote of no confidence, the minority parties in the Parliament, that we will put forward immediately after a new government has been formed.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Birgitta, to what do you attribute this huge outpouring into the streets? Because these revelations now have been spreading for several days, and there’s outrage in many countries, but people aren’t turning to the streets like they have in Iceland. Why is that?
BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: Well, Iceland, unfortunately, is a country—in Scandinavia and in Western Europe, is the only country that has sitting ministers in this leak. So other countries might have former leaders, but Iceland is the only country in Western Europe and Scandinavia that has ministers that are actually in office now. So I guess that’s one of the reasons. But, of course, we had, you know, a massive financial collapse in 2008 that really shook Icelandic society, and many people simply woke up. And we had massive demonstrations back then that I was a part of, and—like so many other Icelanders.
The protests two days ago were really unique, because in Iceland, like in many other countries, it is very difficult to get people to come out to protest unless their livelihoods are threatened in one way or another. So this was a protest against what people sensed was the ethical collapse that was relieved—revealed, by the one-percenters of Iceland. So, I was—I can’t really describe the feeling I felt to see so many Icelanders actually come forward and in massive demonstration, biggest in our history, to show the rest of the world that not all Icelanders are of the same nature as the leaders of Iceland.
AMY GOODMAN: Birgitta Jónsdóttir, you are a member of the Icelandic Parliament. Your party, the Pirate Party, according to one poll, has now 43 percent support. Is that right? Could you become the next prime minister of Iceland?
BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: Well, I haven’t and we haven’t really gone that far in our thought process. Yes, the Pirate—a member of the Pirate Party could become the next prime minister. And actually, it is very interesting to look at the polls for the last year, because the Pirate Party has been going up in the polls on a steady level, and we’ve been somewhere—we’ve been measured between 35 to 42 percent in the last half a year. And we’ve been measured bigger than both of the coalition parties put together, that are in governance, for a half a year. So it is obvious that the government does not have the support of Icelanders.
And this was the sort of—you know, the drop that filled the cup and is spilling over, the anger towards the type of governance that we have been witnessing. It is important to note that one other minister, the former interior minister, was forced to resign a year ago, or half a year ago, because her assistant had leaked confidential information about a refugee and was found guilty. And it wasn’t until he was found guilty that she resigned. But instead of actually showing that they are—you know, have learned from it, they actually made her the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Parliament. So, obviously, these people that represent the parties that are in power have zero trust by the nation, or very little trust.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And we have only about a minute left, but could you tell us how Iceland has fared since the financial collapse? What’s the state of your economy right now?
BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: OK, so, we actually managed to do things right, and we were lucky enough to have a left-wing government that went through the austerity measures in the wake of the crisis. We were the first Western country to go through an IMF program. We have had capital controls. We sort of closed Iceland off, and we publicized or we took ownership of the collapsed banks again. So we’re doing actually quite well. We’re in a really sensitive state of lifting the capital controls. And it is imperative that we have people that are lifting the capital controls that the general public in Iceland trust, and the rest of the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Birgitta Jónsdóttir, we have to leave it there, but we’re going to do a post-show with you to find out the platform of the Pirate Party, and we’ll post it online at democracynow.org. Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a member of the Icelandic Parliament with the Pirate Party.
That does it for our show. Our 100-city tour starts tonight at Ithaca College. On Monday—on Friday, we’ll be in Columbus, Ohio, then St. Louis, Columbia and Kansas City, Missouri, on the 9th; Los Angeles and Santa Barbara on the 10th; San Francisco on the 11th; then to Stanford University and Santa Clara on the 12th. Check our website at democracynow.org. ... Read More →
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