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Protesters in the Mexican state of Guerrero have set fire to the local legislature as outrage spreads over the disappearance of 43 students. The students from Ayotzinapa teacher’s college have been missing for nearly seven weeks after they were ambushed by police. Unrest has intensified since Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam announced Friday that suspects in the case have admitted to killing the students and incinerating their bodies at a trash dump. More than 70 people have been arrested in the case, including the mayor of Iguala, who is accused of ordering the police attack. Across Mexico, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in peaceful protests, while groups of demonstrators have laid siege to government buildings, burned cars and blocked highways. The parents of the missing students, meanwhile, have announced they will be traveling across parts of Mexico in three caravans to demand their loved ones’ return. We are joined from Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state, by John Gibler, an author and independent journalist. “I don’t think it’s possible anymore to talk about corruption,” Gibler says. “What we have is two sectors of an industry that have fully merged — the police and the organized crime gangs themselves.”
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today in Mexico, where protesters in the southern state of Guerrero have set fire to government buildings, including the state legislature, as outrage spreads over the disappearance of 43 students. The students from Ayotzinapa teachers college have been missing for nearly seven weeks, after they were ambushed by police. The initial series of attacks killed six people, one of whom was found with the skin of his face peeled off.
Unrest has intensified since Mexican Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam announced Friday that suspects in the case have admitted to killing the students and incinerating their bodies at a trash dump, leading investigators to remains. He says the mayor of Iguala ordered the attack by police, who then turned the students over to a local drug gang.
AMY GOODMAN: Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in peaceful protests, while groups of demonstrators have laid siege to government buildings, burned cars, blocked highways across Mexico. On Wednesday, students blocked access to an airport in the state of Michoacán and took over highways in the southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas.
In Guerrero, multiple mass graves containing dozens of bodies have been uncovered by authorities searching for the students. But a team of Argentine forensic experts has said none of the remains they’ve examined so far match the students. The most recent set of remains, found in trash bags, which authorities say were burned at a garbage dump, have yet to be analyzed.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The parents of the missing students, meanwhile, distrust the authorities’ account and continue to hold out hope their loved ones are alive. On Wednesday, the families announced they will be traveling across parts of the country in three caravans to demand their loved ones’ return. Felipe de la Cruz, the father of a missing student and a spokesperson for the families, announced the caravan.
FELIPE DE LA CRUZ: [translated] We demand punishment for the material and intellectual assassins and the appearance of our 43 boys alive. More than 45 days have passed, and we don’t know anything about them. Yesterday, our Argentinian friends gave us some hope, a little bit of fresh air, when they informed us that of the 30 bodies that they took from the clandestine graves, that were buried by the police, not one corresponds to the students of Ayotzinapa. This gives us the security that our children are alive, because they took them alive, and we want them alive.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The students’ disappearance is among the worst human rights crises to hit the country since the 1968 student massacre at Tlatelolco, but it is not an isolated incident. At least eight Mexican soldiers have been detained for an alleged massacre of 22 people in the rural southern state of Mexico. While the army claimed the victims were suspected gang members who died in a firefight, it appears they had actually surrendered. Last month, three American siblings were found dead in the northern border state of Tamaulipas after witnesses saw them taken away by a local police unit.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for the latest on the 43 missing students from the rural teachers college and the roots of the violence in Mexico, we go to Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state, where we’re joined by Democracy Now! video stream by John Gibler, author, independent journalist, who was been interviewing the survivors of the police attack. He’s the author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt and, more recently, To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War.
John, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you lay out what’s happening where you are in Guerrero?
JOHN GIBLER: Good morning, Amy. Thanks for having me on. I’m here in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state. And as you’ve outlined so far, there has been a massive upsurge in protests since the attorney—federal attorney general’s announcement of their version of the events, their theory about the students were murdered and their remains burned at a trash dump in Cocula. As you heard the representative of the parents say, they do not accept that version.
On Sunday, after Murillo Karam made that announcement, I attended a highway blockade here in Chilpancingo on the highway, federal highway, to Acapulco, where one of the mothers of a young disappeared student said to me, quote, "These are theatrics that the government is mounting to distract us. But we, even though we are humble and poor people, are people with minds capable of understanding what’s going on. They took our students alive, and we want them alive." Constantly, at every stage of the protests, in which here, at least in Guerrero state, the parents themselves participate, as well as the classmates of the 43 disappeared students, there’s the reiteration of the demand: The students were taken alive by police, and it’s the government’s responsibility to return them alive.
Protests have included marches, highway blockades, the destruction—the property destruction of windows and equipment, and setting cars on fire outside of government buildings. One concrete example, when they’ve attacked the government palace in Chilpancingo, across the highway there’s a very large federal auditorium administered by the state government, which is entirely built of glass. They’ve never thrown a single rock at that theater auditorium across the street. They make the seat of government their target.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: John Gibler, also, you’ve said that there’s reason to doubt the government’s account of what occurred. What have you learned from people on the ground there about what happened that night to these students?
JOHN GIBLER: Well, first off, in terms of what happened deep into the night to the 43 disappeared students, the government is basing their—all of their theories and their actions on the confessions of people they’ve detained. But this now, the version that the students were burned in Cocula, is the third round of supposedly trustworthy confessions made by people who have been detained. We should recall that initially, on October 4, there was the discovery of mass graves in the outskirts of Iguala city. And first the state government prosecutors and then later federal prosecutors said that they had direct participant testimony describing how they had taken the students there, murdered them, dug mass graves and burned them with diesel in these graves. It turns out that now the Argentine forensic anthropology specialists have confirmed that 24 of the 30 remains found there have been confirmed not to be the students who are missing. So here we have, you know, now a pattern of the government saying, "We have these credible witnesses in custody, they’ve described to us what they did," but then two weeks later the scenario they described turns out not to be true. So the statement that they have been murdered and their bodied found in plastic bags in a river outside a trash dump in Cocula, I think should be met with suspicion.
I traveled to Cocula the other day and was unable to find any kind of witness testimony, people in the surrounding area who could describe either having seen unusual smoke or an unusual amount of traffic on the very desolate, isolated dirt road that heads out to that trash dump. Also, it should be recalled that on the evening of the 26th to the morning of the 27th of September, when the events occurred, it was raining consistently in Iguala and Cocula. I’ve recovered numerous testimonies of people, both surviving students from that night as well as journalists who arrived from Chilpancingo and local journalists in Iguala, who described the rains that night, which has also been confirmed by consulting Mexican meteorological institutions, which makes it somehow hard to—or harder to believe that 43 human beings were murdered and their bodies completely obliterated through a massive fire using diesel and tires, expired tires, considering it was raining all night.
AMY GOODMAN: John, we’re going to break, then come back to this discussion and hear from a first-year student from the teachers college who survived the initial police attack. But it’s just astounding what you’re describing. It reminds me of the early '60s, when Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, you know, Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, their bodies were discovered in Mississippi—they were killed by the Klan—and how when they were looking for their bodies over those weeks in that fateful summer, they kept turning up the bodies of others, African Americans who had been killed that no one had known about before, when you talk about this search for the bodies and this endless discovery of mass graves. We're talking to John Gibler, author and independent journalist based in Mexico. He’s actually in Guerrero right now. We’ll be back with him in a moment.
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Amidst outrage in Mexico over the disappearance of 43 students, we look at the U.S. role in the country’s violence. According to the Center for International Policy, the United States has spent approximately $3 billion to fund the so-called war on drugs in Mexico. Since the war on drugs began under President Felipe Calderón in 2006, more than 100,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence. U.S. support includes $2.4 billion in taxpayer funds through the Merida Initiative, launched as a three-year aid program for Mexican security forces under the administration of George W. Bush. The Obama administration has extended the Merida Initiative "indefinitely." We are joined by Laura Carlsen, director of the Mexico City-based Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy, and journalist John Gibler.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We are talking about the disappearance of 43 students at the hands of the police in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. This is Ernesto Che Cano, a first-year student at Ayotzinapa teachers college who survived the police attack. He’s responding to the claim by Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam that the students were killed and their bodies burned by a local drug gang.
ERNESTO CHE CANO: [translated] He’s just doing this to wash his hands of the problem and appear that he’s doing something. It’s obvious that it is not that way. It is obvious that the attorney general just seems like he is looking for the compañeros. One thing that really bothers me is that this personality, the attorney general, Murillo Karam, and all the other people in charge of looking for my compañeros, are looking for them as if they are dead instead of alive. If the municipal police took away my compañeros while they were alive, why the heck are those people looking for them dead?
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Ernesto Che Cano, a first-year student at Ayotzinapa teachers college. This is Omar García, another student from the school who survived the police attack.
OMAR GARCÍA: [translated] We hope the actions get more intense, so that it is not just all talk. We need real action. We don’t have anything against the buildings or the street pavement. We have everything against the institutions, against the government structure. We want to change this country. We want people who are within these institutions to be honest people, people from our communities, not just people who are there for their own interests. Right now, they are just making it a political issue, pitting one against another, saying, "You knew the mayor," "I went to a dance with him," or "You went out drinking with him." All are involved in some way, including we as a society. We have been accomplices for closing our eyes and keeping silent. We have to end this complicity.
AMY GOODMAN: Special thanks to Andalusia Knoll for this footage, as she is in Guerrero covering these protests. John Gibler with us, author, independent journalist in Mexico, author of Mexico Unconquered, as well as, more recently, To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War. As you hear these students talking, the students of the teachers college that was attacked, we still don’t understand—on the day that this happened, why did the mayor have the police round up these students? What was going on that day in town?
JOHN GIBLER: We still don’t know why, what the mayor was thinking. His statements to the press have been cynical and obviously laden with lies. From the students’ behalf, we should recall that there was never a protest, even though that’s been widely repeated in the English-language press. There was no plan to go to Iguala to interrupt the mayor’s wife’s ceremony. Most of the students who were attacked that night were freshmen. They had been at Ayotzinapa for only a matter of weeks. In fact, that Friday, for many, it was their first day of classes. So, these people, who come from some of the most economically battered municipalities in Mexico, and perhaps in the Western Hemisphere, had no idea who the mayor of Iguala was.
I think what happened speaks to two things. One, it shows the full merger between police forces and local governance and organized crime. I don’t think it’s possible anymore to talk about corruption. The idea of corruption no longer has any kind of descriptive power. But what we have is two sectors of an industry that have fully merged—the police and the drug or organized crime gangs themselves—and the confluence of two forms of violence—the classic state violence of repression and the kind of newish forms of narcobrutality, the violence associated with organized crime organizations here.
Again, the police attack to round up, detain, beat, arrest, perhaps shoot a few students, this is something that’s been going on against the Ayotzinapa students for years. In fact, on December 12, 2011, state police shot and killed, during a protest action on the highway, two students. That case still remains also in impunity. No one has been punished. But also, the mix with the forms of terror—forced disappearance has a long and sordid history as a practice of state violence in Mexico, but very particularly in Guerrero, which during the so-called Dirty War of the 1970s, half of the people disappeared in Mexico were disappeared in Guerrero state. So that’s a long-standing state practice of violence. But this removal of Julio César Mondragón’s face, the gouging out of his eyes, the displaying of that body, I think testifies or shows the merger, confluence of state violence and so-called narcoviolence.
AMY GOODMAN: On Friday, Mexico’s attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, gave the spreading outrage a new rallying cry, when he ended his news conference in Mexico City by saying, "Ya me cansé," "Enough, I’m tired." The remark has been taken up by protesters who see the attack in Iguala as part of the systematic failure by the state. Filmmaker Natalia Beristáin was among hundreds who posted videos with the hashtag #YaMeCanse.
NATALIA BERISTÁIN: [translated] Señor Murillo Karam, I am Natalia Beristáin, and I, too, am tired. I’m tired of disappeared Mexicans, of the femicides, of the dead, of the decapitated, of the bodies hanging from bridges, of the broken families, of the mothers without children, of the children without parents. I’m tired of the political class that has kidnapped my country and of the class that corrupts, that lies, that kills. I, too, am tired.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, the attorney general, Murillo Karam, appeared on national television and said he does not regret his gaffe.
CARLOS LORET DE MOLA: [translated] Was it a bad phrase?
ATTORNEY GENERAL JESÚS MURILLO KARAM: [translated] No. I was tired, and it was the truth.
CARLOS LORET DE MOLA: [translated] Would you say it again?
ATTORNEY GENERAL JESÚS MURILLO KARAM: [translated] Naturally, I don’t need to lie. I’m as human as anybody, and I also get tired. I have been sleeping four hours for the past 30 days. And on that day, I hadn’t slept for 40. I had also traveled from Chilpancingo. And the truth is, when you listen to them, the relatives of the students, it affects you when faced with helplessness, of not being able to give them an immediate truth.
AMY GOODMAN: So, John Gibler, there’s the Mexican attorney general. The president, Peña Nieto, is with—went to China with President Obama, with the meeting—with the meetings of APEC. Can you talk about what is going on at state level with Peña Nieto in Mexico facing enormous criticism for leaving in the midst of this crisis to attend the APEC summit in China, also under scrutiny following revelations he and his wife possess a $7 million mansion designed for them by a company that has received lucrative government contracts? The company, Grupo Higa, is part of a consortium that won a lucrative high-speed rail contract, last week the Mexican government abruptly reversing the deal following outrage the consortium was the only bidder, the one that built their mansion. Peña Nieto has been championed in the U.S. press for his neoliberal reforms, appearing on the cover of Time magazine earlier this year with the headline, "Saving Mexico." So, can you put this in this broader context? How does this crisis reflect on him and what’s happening in Mexico, John, as the Mexican ambassador to the United States this morning said, "We are all together holding those accountable. We have arrested more than 70 people," he said, "including the mayor and his wife," etc.?
JOHN GIBLER: I think this is the first major kind of crack in Peña Nieto’s veneer. He had been enjoying a kind of love affair with the international press, which I think is epitomized by the Time magazine cover. He was presented—Peña Nieto was presented as the president of reforms, energy and education reforms. He had busted an old-school corrupt union boss. He had grabbed El Chapo. It seemed like everybody, especially, again, in the English-language press, was in love with Peña Nieto. But now, with municipal police, ordered by the mayor, rounding up, murdering, disappearing students, leaving six people dead, 43 disappeared, the army base three miles away and the army never interceding on behalf of the victims, it completely destroys the myth of a Mexico that had been "saved," to quote Time magazine, by this political official.
And again, as Ernesto, the young survivor of the attacks, had said, what’s most outraged the parents, the survivors and the classmates of the 43 disappeared has precisely been that the government, after weeks of ineptitude and foot dragging, when they finally started looking for the students, they looked for them in mass graves. They looked for them dead, in the forms of bones and ash. And the parents are very intense and clear in their demands: "The students were taken away alive by the police. Bring them back alive."
And so, the attorney general’s statements that he’s tired can only seem violent and ridiculous. Imagine how the 43 sets of families feel, what they—how much sleep did they get at night? And the president’s, you know, just insane luxury home, officially registered with this company that he’s gotten contracts for, that news breaking as these families are looking for their children—and recall that these families are from some of the most marginalized places in Mexico. Literally, the state of Guerrero has the top ranking so-called poorest municipalities in the country, so families that live in hand-built, adobe and wood constructions in very small rural communities. Then you have the president’s slick, multimillion-dollar home displayed on television screens and magazines at a time when these people are camping out on a basketball court at a small rural college, waiting for their children to be returned alive. It’s outrageous.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn to the U.S. role in the violence that’s ravaging Mexico. The United States has spent approximately $3 billion to fund the so-called war on drugs in Mexico. Since the war on drugs began under President Felipe Calderón in 2006, more than 100,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence. We’re joined now in Mexico City by Laura Carlsen, director of the Mexico City-based Americas Policy Program of the Center for International Policy.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Laura Carlsen. Can you talk about the role of the U.S. in the crisis that’s unfolding in Mexico today?
LAURA CARLSEN: Good morning. Yes, the United States has a fairly direct role in what’s happening today. And as the students begin and youth begin to analyze it, it’s becoming a major issue in terms of how far they’ll be able to change the model. Besides the nearly $3 billion that’s come through the Merida Initiative, there’s also Department of Defense money, and that money is going to train police forces and armed forces, that now we find are directly involved in attacks on the people, and particularly attacks on youth. We mentioned the case of Tlatlaya, where 22 youth were—now, it seems, by all evidence available—actually executed by the armed forces. And the State Department has admitted that in that battalion, although we don’t know because they won’t give us the names, there are five individuals that were trained in the United States. So there’s been a call for a long time to stop the Merida Initiative precisely for this reason, because of what John mentioned, that the state agents, at this point, in Mexico and organized crime are one in the same in many, many parts of the country.
AMY GOODMAN: And the meeting—presumably, President Obama spoke with President Peña Nieto in China in this meeting that they’re having around the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. What do you think, Laura Carlsen, needs to be done? Where is the accountability for this—where this money goes, in this connection between the police forces, the drug gangs, in fact, often indistinguishable? And how high up does this go?
LAURA CARLSEN: Well, the main point, at this point, that President Obama and President Peña Nieto—John mentioned the problem that he seems to have been more dedicated, by far, to damage control than to ever resolving the problem here in Mexico, and there’s a reason for that. The main thing that both of them are concerned with is foreign investment. Mexico, with the reforms under Peña Nieto, that the Ayotzinapa students were very active in protesting, by the way, which is a big part of why they’ve been targeted, as well, is now betting the entire country on foreign investment, especially in the newly opened oil and gas area. And President Obama and the Mexican government and the transnational corporations that are based in the U.S. have been pushing this, and it’s one of the reasons they created this very false image of everything’s great and modern, and Peña Nieto is the great reformer in Mexico, that has now been completely shattered by the revelations not just of the 43 students, but the mass graves and the disappearances and the corruption and collusion throughout the country.
So, right now, first of all, in the United States, all funding to these police and military forces through this drug war model, which has militarized the country and created a new model for repression against youth and against opposition, must be cut off immediately, or we’re directly responsible for future crimes which will occur. And on the Mexican side, the call in all these marches—and I’ve been to giant marches, 50,000, 100,000. There’s assemblies in UNAM. We’ve been to four or five in which students are already planning what to do to force the resignation of Peña Nieto. The idea is, if there’s a country where there can be mass graves, if there’s a country where 43 students can go missing at the hands of state agents, then something is so deeply wrong that the government needs to be changed completely and the whole system needs to be changed. So there are constant discussions to try to figure out how to do that. But there is a very firm commitment on the part of these protests that whatever happens in terms of the fate of the students right now, it will not end there.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And do you think, Laura Carlsen, that police in Iguala could have benefited from U.S. funds?
LAURA CARLSEN: Yeah, it’s very possible. There’s a fund for municipal security, for example, that they received 80 million pesos from. But we’re having a very hard time tracking it, because we can’t get the information for the State Department or the Mexican government to make direct ties. But it doesn’t matter, in the broader sense, because what we know is that the United States is funding this drug war to support security forces that it turns out are in deep collusion with the criminal forces and that in fact this collusion is directed against the population, instead of being the "good guy" government against the "bad guy" drug cartels. And so, even if you don’t find the smoking gun or the exact ties between this dollar went to this government agency, we know it’s there. And, in fact, the Merida Initiative lately has explicitly gone more toward municipal funding, which is even more problematic in Mexico, because that’s where you find the highest levels of direct collusion.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Could you explain, Laura Carlsen, what the Merida Initiative is?
LAURA CARLSEN: Yeah, the Merida Initiative was started by the Bush administration. In 2007, it was announced as a counternarcotics, counterterrorism and border security initiative, and then was funded in 2008. And the Obama administration, instead of coming in after the three-year initiative ran out and saying, "Well, what are the results of this?"—we already knew that the results were increased violence in Mexico—announced that it would be extended indefinitely. And indeed that’s what’s happened. So, this goes to training police forces. At the beginning, it went to funding a lot of big-ticket military equipment.
There’s a constant lobbying effort on the part of defense companies, intelligence companies and private security firms in the United States to perpetuate the Merida Initiative and to perpetuate the drug war in Mexico. And it seems to have no impact whatsoever that we can go and say to Congress, "There’s a direct correlation between this model and 100,000 people dead. This is not working. It’s not only not working; it’s completely dangerously counterproductive." No matter how often that’s said, there is still this impetus to continue because of the money that’s involved and because of the Pentagon’s interest, through this vehicle of the drug war, to have a far stronger hand in Mexico. You know, it’s part of this concept that Mexico now forms part of the U.S. security parameter, which says a lot about the disregard for Mexican sovereignty, and it’s also put Mexico in this position of doing the United States’ dirty work to enforce prohibition laws in the United States at this incredibly high social cost for Mexico.
AMY GOODMAN: And the very much hailed program of President Peña Nieto around energy that so benefits U.S. multinational corporations—oil companies, in particular—how will that impact how the U.S. deals with Mexico on this issue, and, ultimately now, how you see this resolving, Laura?
LAURA CARLSEN: Well, it will have a tremendous impact, because what this means is—in the first place, it means that in Mexico, where there’s concessions for oil, just as we’ve seen where there have been concessions for mining in recent years, it means that the government will want to have complete territorial control, that guarantees that those businesses and those corporations will be able to extract and make a lot of money off Mexican natural resources. This is a big problem, because they’ll be taking over resources that actually belong to the people. And we will see resistance, because the Mexican people in the farming communities are not going to just allow this to happen with their land.
And then, in terms of what’s happening with the binational relationship, you know, we’ve talked before about this whole process of arming NAFTA, which means that there’s a series of mechanisms—the drug war being the most important—that are really aimed at militarizing the country in order to protect foreign investment. So, as that becomes even more intensified with the greater investment in oil and gas, including fracking, including things that are going to be devastating to Mexican communities and to the Mexican environment, there’s going to be more emphasis on the militarization, not to fight the drug cartels, because they haven’t even really been doing that, and certainly not been doing that effectively, but to fight the resistance of the people to the takeover of their lands and resources.
AMY GOODMAN: John Gibler, final comment, as you take this back home to Guerrero, where there is so much strife, not to say this hasn’t ignited all of Mexico?
JOHN GIBLER: I think, first off, Laura’s point about the lobbyists constantly pushing for the continuation of the Merida Initiative, I think that’s excellent. It recalls, I think, our necessity to analyze how the drug war is designed to perpetuate itself. The drug war is built to fuel the drug war, not to stop drug production, trafficking or consumption, not to address real public health issues, but to create these very forms of violence, which require further military intervention.
And then, as a last point, I’d like to recall some of the words from the open letter from protesters and allies in Ferguson, which have really been resonating for me as I’ve been attending the recent protests in Guerrero, where from Ferguson they wrote, "We are not concerned if this inconveniences you. Dead children are more than an inconvenience. We are not concerned if this disturbs your comfort. Freedom outweighs that privilege."
AMY GOODMAN: John Gibler, we want to thank you for being with us, author, independent journalist, speaking to us from Guerrero. He’s the author of Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt and, more recently, To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War. And, Laura, thank you, as well, director of the Mexico City-based Americas Policy Program for the Center for International Policy. Laura Carlsen was speaking to us from Mexico City.
This is _Democracy Now!_, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. And speaking of Ferguson, as the parents of Michael Brown testify in Geneva before the U.N. Human Rights Council around the issue of torture, we’re going to come back home in our next segment, and we’re going to look at the issue that African-American boys, girls, men and women face in this country with Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw. Stay with us.
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Democratic lawmakers are meeting today to debate the way forward in the lame-duck session. One key issue will be the timing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing of attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch. It looks increasingly likely the hearing won’t begin until next year when the Republicans take control of the Senate. If confirmed as attorney general, Lynch would be the first African-American woman to hold the position. We are joined by one Lynch’s law school classmates, Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at UCLA and Columbia University and the founder of the African American Policy Forum. Crenshaw also discusses the latest in her campaign to include girls and women of color in Obama’s "My Brother’s Keeper" program, which calls on community groups and businesses to help men of color out of the criminal justice system.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: In news from Washington, Democratic lawmakers will be meeting today to debate the way forward in the post-election lame-duck session. One key issue will be the timing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing of attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch. It looks increasingly likely, to the shock of many, that the hearing won’t begin until next year, after the Republicans take control of the Senate. On Saturday, President Obama nominated Lynch to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder. Lynch is currently the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It’s pretty hard to be more qualified for this job than Loretta. Throughout her 30-year career, she has distinguished herself as tough, as fair, an independent lawyer who has twice headed one of the most prominent U.S. attorney’s offices in the country. She has spent years in the trenches as a prosecutor, aggressively fighting terrorism, financial fraud, cybercrime, all while vigorously defending civil rights.
AMY GOODMAN: If confirmed as attorney general, Loretta Lynch would be the first African-American woman to hold the position. Lynch has served as U.S. attorney in the Eastern District since 2010. She also worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Eastern District Office between 1990 and 2001, and served in the top post from 1999 to 2001. In her first stint in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, she worked on the prosecution of New York police officers who were convicted in connection with the torture of the Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. In 2001, she became a partner at the law firm Hogan & Hartson. In 2003 to ’05, she was a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
For more on Loretta Lynch and other issues, as well, we’re joined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at UCLA and Columbia University and the founder of the African American Policy Forum. She went to Harvard Law School with Loretta Lynch. Kimberlé Crenshaw has led the campaign to include girls and women of color in President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper, which calls on community groups and businesses to help men of color out of the criminal justice system.
Well, we’re going to take these one step at a time, Professor Crenshaw. Let’s start with—well, you know Loretta Lynch.
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: You were in law school together. You were in a small class together.
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Yes, yes. So, we are all, of course, delighted that President Obama has seen the good wisdom in nominating Loretta Lynch. It couldn’t come at a better time for him, given how much pressure the administration has been under over the last 10 months to actually recognize that women of color do exist. It was interesting, in one of his addresses on My Brother’s Keeper, one of the things he said is that boys need role models, they need to be able to look up and see the possibility that they could become the attorney general of the United States. Well, at the very time he said that, most boys of color already had that role model. And the question was: Would he recognize that the one constituency that has not yet had that opportunity to look up and see someone that looks like them in that position had been women of color? So, we kind of scratched our heads about, gee, why doesn’t he make this as an opportunity to provide that role model? And thankfully, he’s done so.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, this is Loretta Lynch, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, speaking last week after President Obama announced her nomination to replace Eric Holder as U.S. attorney general.
LORETTA LYNCH: I pledge today to you and to the American people that if I have the honor of being confirmed by the Senate, I will wake up every morning with the protection of the American people my first thought. And I will work every day to safeguard our citizens, our liberties, our rights and this great nation, which has given so much to me and my family.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Loretta Lynch speaking last week after Obama announced her as the nominee for attorney general. So could you explain why he’s not going to put her forward as the nominee until after the lame-duck session ends and Republicans are in control of the Senate?
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Well, you know, it’s obviously difficult for any of us to intuit why. What we can do is say something about the consequences. At this point, when the leadership of the attorney general is so important and when the importance of moving this particular candidate just serves so many purposes, it seems like low-hanging fruit. So the failure to simply grab onto that low-hanging fruit actually is a cause of some concern. We don’t want the first African-American nominee [sic] to this important position to be subject to politics. We want this to be as—
AMY GOODMAN: African-American woman, right?
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: African-American woman.
AMY GOODMAN: Because, of course, Eric Holder was the first African-American man.
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Exactly, which, again, is one of the reasons why this is such an intersectional moment, right? We’ve had women, and they broke glass ceilings. We’ve had African-American men, and they—and he’s broken a glass ceiling. This is an important moment. So, one would think that one message that the administration might want to give, given that they’ve been soft on supporting their most, most solid constituency, is to say, "This one is in the bag for us. This one, we’re going to make happen." So, there is a degree of consternation and disappointment that, on one hand, here’s a wonderful package, but, you know, you’re going to have to wait until you get into the middle of a dogfight in order to open it.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it’s astounding. Congress is—they’ll be having a meeting today, but the fact that they’re not using these weeks they have Democrats in control, where they just need a majority to approve Loretta Lynch, that they’re going to put this off and say, "Well, I’m sure the Republicans will do it."
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Well, this is disappointing. And for many of us who have watched the administration closely, this seems to be one of the gestures that has gotten the administration in trouble in the past. "We’ll show that we’ll play nice. We’ll show that we are not anxious to exercise power in a way that would force people away from the table." And that just seems not to have worked. And this is not one of those situations that I think we really want to play politics with. We have the power now to make this happen. It is a most important thing to happen. So they should go ahead with it.
AMY GOODMAN: So, yesterday there was an interesting meeting at the White House—
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —led by Valerie Jarrett. Most people, I think, in this country may not know what My Brother’s Keeper is. And in the brief moments we have, if you can talk about the significance of what President Obama put forward and what is happening with it now?
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Yes. So, My Brother’s Keeper has been the president’s racial justice initiative. Coming out of Trayvon Martin, his basic approach was: We need to send a message to men and boys of color that they’re valued and they’re loved. So he called together, basically using his bully pulpit, private fund—private foundations, private corporations, to say, "We’ve got to make a serious commitment to making sure that boys are not left behind. Here are all the statistics that show that they’re really in significant trouble." And he ordered all of the departments of the administration to look into their administration, see how boys were situated and what could be done to make their lives better. That was the point of departure.
Many of us had been concerned about this. We thought, of course it’s important to send a message that people of color are in crises, but it’s not just boys of color. So, 1,400-1,600 women, 200-300 African-American men wrote letters saying, "We cannot stand by while we exclude a whole half of our population, who are living in the same neighborhoods, going to the same schools, having the same police encounters that men are, and watch as though those issues aren’t happening to them."
So, finally—we see this as somewhat of a response—the White House has issued a report. There was a big event, as you said, to indicate that the White House has been listening, and here are some of the things that the White House has done for women and girls. The problem is that most of these things are simply public relations accounts for the White House. They’re not things that are based on the fact that African-American women are the only group that hasn’t achieved any kind of advance through the economic recovery. They’re doing worse now than ever before. Nothing about why it is that girls are—black girls are six times more likely to be suspended from school. They acknowledge it, but they don’t say it’s largely because of racial stereotypes; they’re more likely to be suspended for subjective kinds of infractions, more likely to be sent home because they have a bad attitude. This is a moment where girls experience a particular kind of race discrimination, and they don’t pay attention.
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds. Are you hopeful because the meeting was held yesterday—
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: Oh, we are.
AMY GOODMAN: —and a January session is also expected?
KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: We’re not hopeful about the meeting. We’re hopeful because finally the attention is back. So, people across the country in My Brother’s Keeper cities, including New York, are signing letters, asking mayors to include women and girls in My Brother’s Keeper, including—interesting—Ferguson. Ferguson, Missouri, is a My Brother’s Keeper partner with the Obama administration.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, I want to thank you so much for being with us, founder of the African American Policy Forum.
I’ll be speaking at Columbia High School tonight at Maplewood, New Jersey, then on to Berlin on the weekend.
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Ebola Toll Tops 5,000; Infections Slow in Liberia, Guinea While Worsening in Sierra Leone
The official death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has topped 5,000, with another 14,000 stricken with the disease. The World Health Organization says there are signs infections have slowed overall in Liberia and Guinea, while the outbreak in Sierra Leone is getting worse. U.N. envoy David Nabarro discussed the mixed picture.
David Nabarro: "The signs are that in parts of West Africa where the elements are put in place, where communities are fully involved in the response, there is a slowing of the outbreak, fewer cases appearing each week. And that’s, I think, a real source of inspiration. But there are other parts of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea where transmission is still fierce, where there are many new cases emerging each day."
Obama Admin Seeks Ebola Funding Before Congress, Backs Partial IMF Debt Relief
In the United States, the Obama administration went before Congress on Wednesday to seek approval for $6.2 billion in emergency funding to contain Ebola. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said the United States is ramping up training of medical personnel.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell: "To date, more than a quarter of a million healthcare personnel have been trained by the CDC and the assistant secretary for preparedness and response — doctors, nurses, EMTs, fire departments. But we need to continue this training and make sure that the training is getting through."
The Obama administration has endorsed a proposal that would give partial debt relief to the three countries worst hit by Ebola. In a statement, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said the International Monetary Fund should forgive around $100 million in debt held by Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — about one third of the total they collectively owe.
Report: Ebola Countries Lose More to Tax Dodging than They Spend on Health
A new report says the three Ebola-stricken countries have lost more money to corporate tax dodging than they spend on public health. According to ActionAid, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea "lost an estimated $287.6 million through corporate tax dodging in 2011 while spending just $237 million on healthcare. An African Union report earlier this year found tax dodging costs the continent up to $60 billion each year.
Family of Late Ebola Patient Reaches Settlement with Dallas Hospital over Botched Care
The family of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian national who became the only person to die of Ebola in the United States, has reached a settlement with the hospital that mishandled his care. Duncan, who was uninsured, was initially sent home from Dallas Presbyterian despite suffering from a high temperature and telling a nurse he had recently visited Liberia. Duncan’s nephew, Josephus Weeks, says a foundation will be established in his uncle’s name to support respect for African life and the promotion of better treatment.
Josephus Weeks: "This deal we reached is an outstanding deal, and we have a foundation that needs our support, and everyone here can do your part. Africa and Africans are not a virus. We made a mistake, and we lost one. But we can save a thousand. That’s my goal. I can never replace Thomas Eric Duncan, but what I can do is make sure that everything that happens from here makes it better for everybody else."
Nurses Stage Nationwide Protest over Ebola Protection, Protocols
The settlement in Dallas comes as nurses across the country have held a one-day strike to protest what they call the inadequate protection of health workers treating patients hospitalized over Ebola. National Nurses United says hospitals still lack proper equipment and protocols weeks after a pair of Dallas nurses contracted the disease from Thomas Eric Duncan. Wednesday’s protests included a rally outside Congress in Washington.
Evan Brost: "We know that Ebola has already reached our soil. We know other epidemics may reach our soil. So we want nurses to be protected. The best way to protect our community is to protect our nurses."
NATO Accuses Russia of Military Escalation as Ukraine Violence Threatens Truce
The U.N. Security Council has met over the conflict in Ukraine following renewed violence threatening a two-month-old truce. The separatist stronghold of Donetsk has seen its heaviest shelling since pro-Russian rebels and the government in Kiev reached a ceasefire in September. NATO is accusing Russia of a major military escalation inside Ukraine, sending tanks, weaponry and combat troops across the border. Addressing the Security Council, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said Russia is violating its commitments.
Samantha Power: "The question is what we, the international community, will seek to do to prevent yet another frozen conflict in Europe manufactured by Russia. The Minsk agreement was brokered under the auspices of the international community. As such, there must be consequences when Russia flouts the commitments it made and continues to destabilize its neighbor."
Free Syrian Army Rejects U.N. Truce Proposal for Aleppo
The opposition-backed Free Syrian Army has rejected a U.N. proposal to halt fighting in the besieged city of Aleppo. The plan laid out by Staffan de Mistura would allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid and the potential launch of wider peace talks between the rebels and the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Speaking at the United Nations, de Mistura outlined some potential steps.
Staffan de Mistura: "The need for focusing on the real threat of terrorism, as defined by the resolution of the Security Council. Second is to reduce violence, and I’ll come back to that one. Three, through the reduction of violence, try to reach as many people as possible in Syria and outside Syria who have been suffering from this ongoing conflict, and through that, hopefully facilitate it and use it as a block in the direction, a building block, of a political solution."
De Mistura says the regime of Bashar al-Assad has shown "constructive interest." But speaking to Al Jazeera, a commander with the Free Syrian Army rejected the U.N. truce offer, saying it will only strengthen Assad. A truce in Aleppo between government forces and rebels could help thwart an advance by the Islamic State, which has already attacked nearby opposition areas.
Group: 50 Syrian Civilians Among Hundreds Killed in U.S. Strikes
New figures show U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria have killed at least 865 people since they began nearly two months ago. The toll includes nearly 750 Islamic State fighters and 50 civilians. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the actual number could be much higher.
U.S. "Deeply Concerned" over New Israeli Settlement Construction in East Jerusalem
Israel has approved a new round of illegal settlement construction in East Jerusalem. On Wednesday, the Israeli government authorized the building of some 200 new homes in the Arab neighborhood of Ramot. The move comes amidst continued unrest in Israel and the occupied West Bank over Jerusalem and its holy sites. In Washington, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said the United States is "deeply concerned" by the decision.
Jen Psaki: "We are deeply concerned by this decision, particularly given the tense situation in Jerusalem as well as the unequivocal and unanimous position of the United States and others in the international community opposing such construction in East Jerusalem. These decisions to expand construction have the potential to exacerbate this difficult situation on the ground, and they will not contribute to efforts to reduce the tensions."
Obama Visits Burma Amid Renewed Junta Repression
President Obama is in Burma today, the second stop of his Asia tour and his second trip to the country in two years. Obama’s three-day visit comes amidst a renewed crackdown by the ruling junta on journalists and dissidents, and continued repression of Muslims in the western state of Rakhine.
Major Banks Fined $4.3 Billion over Exchange Market Manipulation
Six of the world’s largest banks have been fined a collective $4.3 billion for manipulating the foreign exchange market. HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS AG and Bank of America were found to be negligent in traders’ collusion around global currency. Martin Wheatley of Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority unveiled the penalties.
Martin Wheatley: "The traders put their own interests ahead of their customers. They manipulated the market, or attempted to manipulate the market, and abused the trust, I think, of the public, and certainly us as regulators. The banks’ failures to establish adequate systems and controls are what allowed the traders to manipulate the fixed rates across the world’s largest currencies, and failings like this seriously undermine confidence in the market and undermine the attempts to genuinely reform banking culture."
Fatal Police Shootings Hit 2-Decade Record
New figures show U.S. police forces were responsible for their highest number of shooting deaths in two decades. According to the FBI, police across the country fatally shot 461 people last year.
Michael Brown Family Testifies at United Nations; Grand Jury to Hear from Forensic Pathologist
The news comes as the family of Michael Brown appears before a U.N. panel in Geneva investigating the U.S. record on torture. Brown family attorney Daryl Parks called for reforming U.S. law enforcement toward community policing.
Daryl Parks: "Our call today is that we ought to cry out and say that Michael Brown Jr. deserves justice, number one; number two, that Michael Brown Jr.'s life mattered — that's the call.; and number three, that there has to be something done as relates to policing in our country, a serious look at it. And I think that process is starting, and I want to encourage our government to make a stance that they continue to be very pro for proper community policing, and maybe a proper community police commission, to make sure that we have the proper things that take place in our communities."
Meanwhile in Missouri, the grand jury in the Brown case will hear testimony today from the forensic pathologist who performed a private autopsy on the teenager’s body. The autopsy by Michael Baden found that Brown was shot at least six times, including twice in the head.
Generic Drug Firms Subpoenaed as Price Hikes Draw Federal Scrutiny
Two generic drug manufacturers have been subpoenaed in a federal probe into price hikes. The Justice Department is seeking information from the two firms on their interactions with competitors. Generic drugs have seen a major price jump over the past year. A medication for congestive heart failure, digoxin, now costs more than $1 per pill, up from just 11 cents two years ago. The price for an antibiotic brand went from $20 per bottle last fall to over $1,800 today. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders has submitted questions to 14 pharmaceutical companies ahead of a Senate hearing on generic drug pricing next week.
U.S. Made $100,000 in Secret Payments to Families of Yemen Drone Strike Victims
The British group Reprieve has revealed the United States has made secret compensation payments to the families of two Yemeni civilians mistakenly killed in a drone strike. A relative of the victims, Faisal bin Ali Jaber, was given a bag containing $100,000 at a meeting with Yemeni officials. The United States made the payments despite never publicly confirming its responsibility for the killings nor issuing an apology.
Activist, Exonerated Death Row Prisoner Darby Tillis Dead at 71
The activist and former death row prisoner Darby Tillis has died of an apparent aneurysm at the age of 71. Tillis was sentenced to death in Illinois in 1979 for the murder of a hotdog stand employee. He was freed in 1987 after new evidence emerged, and 14 years later he became one of the first death row prisoners to be exonerated. On September 21, 2011, just hours before the execution of Troy Anthony Davis in Georgia, Tillis came on Democracy Now! and spoke about his commitment to abolishing the death penalty.
Darby Tillis: "But I was released from death row. I was not free of death row. I never will be free of death row."
Amy Goodman: "What do you mean?"
Darby Tillis: "Death row lives in me. And this is why I’m here today. I will always continue, as long as there is a man anywhere on death row, to fight for the abolishment."
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"Tomas Young, Rest in Peace" by Amy Goodman
There were 8,920,000 military veterans in the United States as of last June, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Sometime last Sunday or Monday, hours before Veterans Day began, that number dropped by one, when Tomas Young died at home in Seattle, with his wife by his side. He was one of many soldiers who were sent to Iraq and were grievously injured there.The public may know more about Tomas Young than about most veterans, thanks to the remarkable documentary “Body of War,” directed and produced by legendary talk-show host Phil Donahue and filmmaker Ellen Spiro. His journey, his struggle and now his death follow an arc along the tragic U.S. wars and occupations in this post-9/11 world.
Like so many, Tomas was inspired to join the military after Sept. 11. He was surprised to learn, though, that he would be deployed not to Afghanistan, but to Iraq. On April 4, 2004, five days after Tomas arrived in Baghdad, he was shot in the spine, paralyzing him from the chest down. The injury rendered him a paraplegic, causing a cascade of additional complications. His breathing was labored. His body’s capacity to regulate temperature was impaired, occasionally requiring that he wear an ice-pack vest. Despite the enormous challenges, Tomas summoned tremendous strength and embarked on a path of antiwar activism.
During the summer of 2005, he joined the grieving mother-turned-peace-activist Cindy Sheehan at Camp Casey, the protest camp in Crawford, Texas, not far from the ranch of then-President George W. Bush. Cindy named the encampment after her dead son, Casey, killed on the same day in the same city—Sadr City—where Tomas was shot. Cindy Sheehan stood in protest outside Bush’s retreat while he vacationed there, and the protest grew and grew. Tomas joined Iraq Veterans Against the War, and served on its board of directors.
In 2008, I spoke with Tomas. He directed a comment to then-Vice President Dick Cheney: “From one of those soldiers who volunteered to go to Afghanistan after Sept. 11, which was where the evidence said we needed to go, to [Cheney], the master of the college deferment in Vietnam: Many of us volunteered with patriotic feelings in our heart, only to see them subverted and bastardized by the administration and sent into the wrong country.”
“Body of War” depicts the personal cost of war. In one of the most moving scenes in the film, Young meets Sen. Robert Byrd, the longest-serving senator, with the most votes cast in Senate history (more than 18,000). Byrd said his “no” vote on the Iraq war resolution was the most important of his life. Young helps him read the names of the 23 senators who voted against the war resolution. Byrd reflects: “The immortal 23. Our founders would be so proud.” Turning to Young, he says: “Thank you for your service. Man, you’ve made a great sacrifice. You served your country well.” Young replies, “As have you, sir.”
The release of “Body of War” propelled Tomas into the limelight, as the country became embroiled in the hot summer and the 2008 presidential elections. It was then that a blood clot lodged in his arm, causing severe complications. He lost most of the use of his arms, and suffered diminished ability to speak. He never lost his deep commitment to peace, or his hope that those responsible for the war would be held accountable.
In February 2013, appearing before an audience of “Body of War” in Litchfield, Conn., via video stream, he shocked the audience by telling them that he intended to end his own life by stopping eating.
He was still in his hometown of Kansas City, Mo., with his wife, Claudia Cuellar. Tomas was battling extreme, chronic pain, and as Claudia told us after his death, he found some relief from marijuana, which is illegal in Kansas and Missouri. So they moved to Oregon, where medical marijuana is legal. Unfortunately, Claudia felt the Veterans Affairs hospital in Portland did not support his use of marijuana, and punitively reduced his prescription pain medications in response. Seeking a safe, compassionate place for Tomas, they moved to Seattle, another place with legal medical (and now, recreational) marijuana. Tomas and Claudia felt the VA dragged its heels, leaving them to ration his pain pills.
It was in the midst of this ordeal that Claudia found Tomas, last Monday morning, lying in deep silence. He was dead.
Eighteen months earlier, he had written an open letter to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. He ended the letter: “My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.”
May Tomas Young, who fought so hard for peace in life, now rest in peace.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2014 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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