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House lawmakers passed legislation Friday to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline to bring carbon-intensive tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf Coast. The Senate is expected to vote this week on a similar pro-Keystone bill backed by Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. Landrieu is facing a tough battle to keep her seat in a runoff next month against Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, who also happens to be the sponsor of the pro-Keystone bill in the House. Landrieu spoke last week about her support for Keystone. We speak to Naomi Klein, author of "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: House lawmakers passed legislation Friday to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline would bring carbon-intensive tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf Coast. It has been in the works for more than six years amidst mass protests over its potential to accelerate climate change. The Senate is expected to vote this week on a similar pro-Keystone bill backed by Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. Landrieu is facing a tough battle to keep her seat in a runoff next month against Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy, who also happens to be the sponsor of the pro-Keystone bill in the House. Landrieu spoke last week about her support for Keystone. This is a part of what she said.
SEN. MARY LANDRIEU: It needs to get done on its own, because it’s standing alone—it will go to the president’s desk stand-alone—and that I believe that the president will have to make an important decision. I’m hoping that he will sign it. But if he doesn’t, that’s the process. I hope that he will, and I will be urging him to do so, because his administration, his State Department, his EPA and his Transportation Department has urged him to support this piece of legislation for the strength of our economy, a signal to our allies, to strengthen America here and abroad.
AMY GOODMAN: Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu speaking last week. Meanwhile, during a visit to Burma, President Obama was asked about the Keystone XL. He refuted claims it would create jobs or reduce the price of gas in the U.S.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: My government believes that we should judge this pipeline based on whether or not it accelerates climate change or whether it helps the American people with their energy costs and their gas prices. And I have to constantly push back against this idea that somehow the Keystone pipeline is either this massive jobs bill for the United States or is somehow lowering gas prices. Understand what this project is: It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. And it doesn’t have an impact on U.S. gas prices.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s President Obama. He’s speaking to reporters last week in Burma, standing next to the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
To find out more about the Keystone XL, we are joined by Democracy Now! video stream by Naomi Klein, journalist, best-selling author—her latest book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate; her previous books, No Logo and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She’s speaking to us from her home in Toronto.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Naomi. Can you respond to what President Obama just said?
NAOMI KLEIN: You know, well, I think he said some important things. The idea that it’s still up for some kind of debate whether or not building Keystone XL has a climate impact is—you know, it’s absurd. Keystone is a pipeline that is intimately linked to plans by the oil and gas industry to dramatically expand production in the Alberta tar sands. They have pipeline capacity, more or less, to get the oil out that they’re producing right now, but they have active plans to double and triple production in the Alberta tar sands, digging up one of the highest carbon fuels on the planet, with tremendous local impacts to—health impacts to First Nations people, to indigenous people living in that region, violating their treaty rights. And, of course, when that oil is burned, it has tremendous climate impacts. It also has climate impacts in the fact that it’s really, really difficult to get that tarry oil into a product that can be burned, because it isn’t liquid, because it is semi-solid. So, it takes a huge amount of energy. This is why it is so carbon-intensive to extract it and to refine. It also takes huge amount of water. So, it obviously has a climate impact, because it is linked to the expansion of the tar sands.
Now, when this debate really started heating up three years ago, the tar sands were booming, and the message was—and when we first saw the first environmental assessments out of the State Department, basically, what they were saying is Keystone doesn’t matter to climate because they’ll be able to get that expanded oil production, they’ll be able to get it out another way, whether through trains, whether through other pipelines built through British Columbia, for instance, or built eastward through eastern Canada. And what’s really shifted in three years is that that claim cannot be made now, because the tar sands are really surrounded by opposition. Everywhere they try to build a new pipeline or expand an existing pipeline, they’re facing fierce direct action as well as legal challenges by indigenous people and by other interests. So, the idea that if you don’t build Keystone, they’ll get it out anyway, is absurd. Keystone is—it’s not a drop in the bucket when it comes to tar sands. If Obama said no to Keystone now, it could really be the nail in the coffin for an industry that is in crisis on multiple fronts, because they have this huge problem of having a landlocked pool of carbon and no viable way to get that oil to the sea if they increase production at the levels they’d like to.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Naomi, correct me if I’m wrong, but this statement by President Obama seemed to be the most clear statement on his part that he wasn’t buying the general line that Republican Party and that the energy industry has been putting out about Keystone for quite a while.
NAOMI KLEIN: Look, it’s an encouraging line in that he’s challenging the claim that this is a big job creator. It’s an encouraging line in that he’s clearly stating that this is about exports, it’s not about supplying oil to the U.S. domestic market, because, of course, that pipeline is being built to export terminals. And there’s, frankly, a glut of oil in the U.S. since—because of Bakken oil, because of shale oil. And this is also something that has shifted since this debate really, you know, kicked off more than three years ago. At that time, it was sort of pre-domestic oil boom in the U.S., so the idea that that oil was needed, that argument could be made more credibly, much more credibly than it can today, because there’s actually an oversupply. You know, so he’s saying some important things.
My worry is that he’s still—it’s still a technicality. He’s waiting for yet another environmental assessment. And based on the environmental assessments we’ve seen so far, you know, I’m not holding my breath for an environmental assessment that is genuinely science-based, that takes into account all of these other challenges faced by the tar sands because of all of the resistance to the other pipelines, because of the fact that communities don’t want more oil trains coming through their towns and facing potential disasters like the one in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, or even the fact that the price of oil is now much lower. And eventually, that’s going have a real impact on the Alberta tar sands, because this is—in addition to being an extremely high-carbon extractive process, it’s an extraordinarily high-cost extractive project, that really only became viable on a mass scale when oil hit $100 a barrel. It costs so much to get it out, that the price of oil has to stay high in order for investors to keep putting money into expanding their mines and so on.
And another point that is important to mention is that investors are already getting cold feet. There are three major tar sands expansion projects. These are mines that were supposed to be built to dig up that tarry bitumen. And three of these big projects have already been canceled in the past year: Shell canceled a project; Total, the French oil company, canceled a project; and most recently, Statoil, the Norwegian oil company, canceled a massive expansion project worth more than a billion dollars. And when they made that decision to cancel, one of the reasons they cited was limited pipeline capacity. In other words, they’re afraid that if they dig up that tar sands oil, they won’t be able to get it out.
So, this is why I’m saying that if Obama said no to Keystone, it would have tremendous impacts in terms of sending a message to the market that this whole idea of digging up bitumen, digging up this pool of carbon, that didn’t used to be counted—you know, a little bit more than a decade ago, all of this oil in the tar sands wasn’t even counted as part of the world’s global carbon reserves, because the global oil industry did not believe they could get it out. And now we’re starting to get a few messages that investors are starting to reassess the viability of digging up this carbon. And that’s really important because the whole idea, from a climate perspective, of drawing the line and saying, "No more tar sands pipelines," is about saying, "Look, we can’t—you know, when you’re in a hole, you can’t keep digging." We need to move away from extreme energy. We need to—we can’t keep doing the very thing that is at the heart of this crisis. We need to move towards renewable energy, yes, but we also simultaneously need to stop digging up high-carbon reserves of, you know, high-carbon sources.
AMY GOODMAN: Naomi, I want to get your response to comments made by TransCanada CEO Russ Girling over the weekend, speaking on ABC News to Martha Raddatz Sunday.
RUSS GIRLING: I think there’s a very high probability this pipeline gets built. You know, since we started the project, you know, the demand for it has just continued to increase. Production in the U.S. is up by about two million barrels a day, and in Canada it’s up by about a million barrels a day. The need for transportation continues to grow, and the place where these producers want to put those barrels is into the Gulf Coast of the United States. So, our shippers have not wavered one bit over the last six years. They still want this to happen. And as long as they’re there, we’re going to continue to push to make it happen.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that is TransCanada CEO Russ Girling. Also, as we speak, Naomi, protesters, including members of the Cowboy Indian Alliance, are gathering outside the home of Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu in Washington, D.C. One sign reads, "Sen. Landrieu: if you’re not a climate denier, don’t vote like one." Can you talk about both Girling and the fact that it’s the Democrats now that are supporting the Keystone XL?
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, well, first of all, I think what we’re hearing from Girling is spin. I mean, he’s panicked. This is a company that has several pipeline projects that are being blocked. They’ve already invested significantly. And don’t forget that TransCanada was so sure it was just going to get an easy thumbs-up, that it went ahead and bought the pipe for the Keystone XL pipeline and has been having to pay for storage. You know, so when he says he’s sure it’s going to be approved, he’s talking directly to his backers to say, "Don’t worry, don’t panic, don’t abandon TransCanada."
Just today, a court injunction is going to be enforced in Burnaby, British Columbia, which is just outside Vancouver, because there are protesters there opposing an expansion of another TransCanada pipeline carrying tar sands oil that would go through that—that would be carrying the bitumen west to try to get onto tankers there. [Correction: After our interview, Naomi Klein contacted us with a clarification. The Burnaby pipeline that just got an injunction is owned by Kinder Morgan, not TransCanada. TransCanada is pushing a different Canadian pipeline, Energy East, that is also facing opposition.] And it’s facing fierce opposition from local people and, most importantly, from First Nations people, from indigenous people, whose rights have been affirmed by Canada’s Supreme Court again and again and again, saying that you cannot have these massive infrastructure projects without the consent of First Nations people. So, he’s panicked, not just because of Keystone, but because several big TransCanada infrastructure projects are being legally challenged. And so, he has to send that sort of message to his backers.
In terms of the protests that are happening against Mary Landrieu, I mean, I think it’s fantastic. I think the world is watching in horror as the climate becomes this prop in this Vaudevillian piece of political theater trying to save Landrieu’s rapidly tanking political career by pushing this vote forward through the Senate—I believe it will be tomorrow—so that she looks more pro-oil. And it’s just extraordinary, and it’s really an expression of the capture of American politicians by the oil industry. She’s speaking to her backers. She’s setting herself up not just potentially to win that election, which looks very unlikely, but maybe for what she’ll do when she loses that election, which is, you know, very likely getting a job as an oil and gas lobbyist. So she wants to be able to say she pushed as hard as possible to get Keystone passed, because the refineries on the Gulf Coast want to process that dirty oil.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Naomi, I’d like to ask you about the upcoming vote in the context of the recent announcement of a deal between China and the Obama administration over carbon emissions and reduction of carbon emissions over the next few decades. Could you talk about the significance of that deal and to what degree President Obama has any ability to impact such a long-term commitment?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I think the point—the point is that Obama does have the ability to impact the commitment he made in China, which there are things that—you know, it is important to say that this deal matters, in the context, the political context, of the United States post-midterm elections, where, you know, I think there’s a tremendous amount of hopelessness in climate circles about how the Republican control of Congress is going to translate into climate negotiations. And there’s a very important climate negotiation round coming up in Paris in 2015. So, that deal was important in sort of signaling, "OK, don’t count the U.S. out. Don’t count China out, as well." And anybody who’s covered climate negotiations, as you have at Democracy Now!, knows that these summits almost invariably descend into finger pointing between the U.S. and China as they accuse one another of being the reason why no progress is possible. So, to begin the next round with U.S. and China vaguely on the same page, you know, is moderately good news.
But if we look at it from a scientific perspective, the commitments being made both by China and the U.S. are nowhere near the level of emission reductions necessary to avoid temperature increases beyond what these governments have themselves agreed to. You know, in Copenhagen, China and the U.S. agreed to keep temperatures below two degrees—a warming below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but the emission reduction target they both agreed to will send temperatures much higher than that. So, we have this gap, really, between political realities and physical realities. What is politically possible in the context of the United States clashes directly with what our planet, what it needs to avoid destabilizing climate change.
AMY GOODMAN: Where do you—
NAOMI KLEIN: And that’s why—
AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead, Naomi.
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I was just going to say that that’s why I make the argument, you know, in my book that we will not do what we need to do to prevent catastrophic warming, unless we radically change what is politically possible. That’s why this is not just about one vote in Congress or one deal that is made between China and the U.S. It is about radically shifting the pole, the political pole, away from this extreme right-wing market fundamentalism, that dominates both political parties, and creating a sense of real political possibility. This is really a political project. It’s not some sort of technocratic challenge.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Naomi, you were arrested—
NAOMI KLEIN: If I could just add—sorry, if I could just add one more thing. I think one thing that’s important to stress is that the commitments that Obama has made are mostly commitments that his successor is going to have to deliver on. You know, even though the emission reduction targets are insufficient, the hardest ones kick in well after he’s in office. So, one thing he can do right now is not make the job of his successor harder by locking in infrastructure projects, like the Keystone XL pipeline, that will increase emissions. So, one thing he can do right now is say no to Keystone XL, to prove that he isn’t just kicking the can down the road.
AMY GOODMAN: Politics are being determined in the U.S. and Canada around oil politics. You have Gregor Robertson who was re-elected as Vancouver mayor. How significant is this? And finally, you were arrested in front of the White House, along with 1,200 other people, like Bill McKibben and others, protesting the Keystone XL, what, three years ago. Do you think progress has been made?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, you know, as I’ve been saying, that landscape has shifted dramatically in those three years. And I think it has shifted, you know, when I think about what we were doing three years ago outside the White House. And the counter-arguments at the time were, "Well, it doesn’t really matter," as I just said, "We’ll get the oil out some other way." And now, you know, all of the arteries that would carry that bitumen out of Alberta are facing challenges.
And yeah, the re-election of Gregor Robertson, and the fact that Vancouver stood up to a huge amount of funding that was coming from the oil industry to try to beat Gregor Robertson and also other candidates from other parties that were also opposing Vancouver being more of an oil export terminal than it already is, is an indication of the huge amount of popular opposition to all of these projects. By one poll, 80 percent of people in British Columbia oppose increased oil traffic on their coast. So, you know, despite all of the money that was spent by the oil industry to try to get their candidate in elected mayor of Vancouver, they were defeated.
AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, we want to thank you very much for being with us. Naomi Klein, of course, is the journalist and best-selling author—her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. When we come back, Meldown: Terror at the Top of the World. Stay with us. →
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We look at a new investigation by the Pulitzer Prize-winning website, InsideClimate News, titled “Meltdown: Terror at the Top of the World." It tells the story of seven American hikers who went on a wilderness adventure into polar bear country in Canada’s Arctic tundra — and faced a harrowing attack. But despite taking proper steps to protect themselves, a polar bear came to their camp in the middle of the night and pulled one of the hikers out of his tent. Scientists say that climate change is greatly impacting polar bear habitat, which may be the cause of increased polar bear attacks on humans. We speak to Rich Gross, a Sierra Club guide on the trip, and Sabrina Shankman, a reporter with InsideClimate News and author of the new ebook.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We continue to look at climate change as we turn to a new investigation by the Pulitzer Prize-winning website InsideClimate News. It’s called "Meltdown: Terror at the Top of the World." It tells the story of seven American hikers who went on a wilderness adventure into polar bear country in Canada’s Arctic tundra and faced a harrowing attack. The trip was led by two Sierra Club guides, including Rich Gross, who will join us in a minute. But despite taking proper steps to protect themselves, a polar bear came to their camp in the middle of the night and pulled one of the hikers out of his tent. In this clip from a documentary with the report, Matt Dyer [describes] what happened after the bear clenched his head in his mouth and dragged him into the forest.
MATT DYER: I had a broken jaw. I had a collapsed lung. I had cracked vertebrae in my neck, broken neck, but it didn’t get into the spinal column. This hand was just kind of crunched, so he broke some of these bones. And his bottom jaw kind of dug in here, and his top one was over in here, and he kind of had me like that. And I can remember, looking out, I could see his belly and leg and everything. He didn’t take his claws to me, which is good. So I think all the injuries I got were bites. He was just trying to get me out of that tent with his mouth, probably trying to hold the tent down with his hands. I don’t know.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s a clip from the Vice documentary that’s being published in three parts next week, along with the new ebook, Meltdown: Terror at the Top of the World, by Sabrina Shankman, who joins us now, a reporter for InsideClimate News. And in San Francisco, we’re joined by Rich Gross, the Sierra Club guide since 1990, one of the two on the Arctic trip documented by Shankman.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Rich, take it from there—I mean, you were there—and describe what further happened.
RICH GROSS: Sure. So we had gone to the Torngat Mountains, and in part to see bears, in part to see a remote area in the Arctic. And we had been—it was the third day on the trip. We had seen a mother and cub before that and seen a large male bear before that, as well. And it was our third night in the Torngats. I woke up to hear Matt screaming, "Help me! Help me!" I tore out of my tent, grabbed a flare gun, which was one of the pieces of protection we had brought with us. And when I got out of the tent, I saw Matt being dragged away from our camp. Our camp was surrounded by an electric fence. The bear had torn through the fence and was dragging Matt by his head away from camp. I took out the flare gun, shot at the bear. The bear dropped Matt, started running away. The bear ran about 50 yards and started coming back for Matt. We thought Matt was dead at that point. I then shot at the bear again, and the bear ran away. We then went out and got Matt, found that he was not dead, thankfully, and carried him back into camp, started arranging for his evacuation and then, later on, our evacuation, and started treating Matt, as well.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the rest of the night there, I imagine you must have been up all night fearing the possibility of a bear coming back.
RICH GROSS: We were. So that was the fourth bear we had seen. The large bear we saw the day before, we had had to scare away with a flare gun, as well. So we had been left with—we started out with eight cartridges. They’re 12-gauge flare guns, flare cartridges. We had at that point used three of them. And we knew that we—you know, we didn’t know that that bear wasn’t coming back or that some other bear wasn’t coming back. So, we were—it was a long night, waiting. You know, at least when it turned light, we could see a bear coming. And that was the scariest part. And we weren’t sure how long it would take to get Matt evacuated or to get our own evacuation arranged.
AMY GOODMAN: Sabrina Shankman, you’re with the Pulitzer Prize-winning news website, InsideClimate News. You’ve turned this story into a book. Talk about what this attack means for climate change.
SABRINA SHANKMAN: Sure. You know, when we first heard about this attack, it was interesting because it’s on par with almost what’s expected. So, you can’t ever say that a specific polar bear attack is related to climate change, because you can’t get inside the head of a polar bear. But what we do know is that biologists have been predicting for a couple of years now that as the sea ice continues to disappear, the habitat from which polar bears hunt, there’s going to be an increase in these kind of human and polar bear interactions. And so, that’s exactly what you’ve seen. You know, Matt’s attack was horrific, but it’s one of a number that have happened. You know, you’re looking at—we’re on course for about 35 attacks this decade, according to one of the researchers I spoke with. In the past, back in the '60s and ’70s, you're talking about 10 per decade. So, exactly what the biologists have said is going to happen as climate change progresses is what we’re seeing.
AMY GOODMAN: Is it more people are going there?
SABRINA SHANKMAN: That’s—you know, so there is this question: Is it that there are more people going there? Possibly. It could also be that, you know, polar bears are traveling further inland. So you have these Inuit communities, especially around the Hudson Bay, where the bears are traveling further and further inland, and you’ve got people being attacked in the middle of these main streets. I mean, last year in Churchill, there were two people, about a month apart, who were walking home on a main street, you know, late at night or early in the morning, around 5:00 in the morning, and they were attacked not by a mugger, but by a polar bear.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rich Gross, you’ve been a Sierra Club guide since 1990. Could you talk about the change in the terrain that you’ve witnessed over these years?
RICH GROSS: Sure. I mean, it’s a slow change, and so you can’t—you know, and we go to different places, different remote places throughout the Arctic. And so, you know, I don’t think we’ve seen particular change over years, because we don’t go back to the same places. But you can—you know, whenever you talk to native people, they will talk about the change in both hunting and in the animals’ behavior. And I think the Torngats and the polar bears are just an example of that.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Sabrina, how it starts lower down from the polar bear, the melting sea ice, what does this have to do with polar bear attacks?
SABRINA SHANKMAN: Yeah. So, people talk about polar bears a lot when you talk about climate change, because, as one of these apex predators, that’s—you know, someone, one biologist, said—explained it to me that they’re on the thin edge of climate change. They’re experiencing impacts right now. But it’s not just about the polar bears. These impacts happen throughout the ecosystem there, because the ecosystem has evolved to rely on the sea ice, and the sea ice is disappearing. So, when that happens, it sets off—it triggers these impacts that start at the very smallest organisms, the phytoplankton, these things that you can barely see, and it works its way up and impacts the fish and the seals, and eventually gets to the polar bears, too.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, but we’re going to do part two after the show and post it at democracynow.org. Sabrina Shankman, with InsideClimate News, and Rich Gross, a Sierra Club guide since 1990, who experienced and helped to save a man from this attack. The new book, ebook, is called Meltdown: Terror at the Top of the World.
And that does it for our show. A clarification: After our interview, Naomi Klein contacted us to say the Burnaby pipeline that just got an injunction is owned by Kinder Morgan, not TransCanada. TransCanada is pushing a different Canadian pipeline, Energy East, that’s also facing opposition.
And in breaking news, a surgeon brought to the United States over the weekend for treatment after contracting Ebola in Sierra Leone has died. Martin Salia’s death marks the second Ebola fatality in the United States. He was Sierra Leonean.
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President Obama is considering issuing an executive action that could protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. According to The New York Times, Obama’s executive actions will not provide any formal, lasting immigration status, but many immigrants will receive work permits, which will give them Social Security numbers and allow them to work legally under their own names. Another key component could prevent the deportation of parents whose children are U.S. citizens. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González breaks down the numbers of who will benefit from this possible executive order.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today’s show with news that President Obama is considering taking an executive action that would protect up to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation. According to The New York Times, Obama’s executive actions will not provide any formal, lasting immigration status, but many immigrants will receive work permits, which will give them Social Security numbers and allow them to work legally under their own names. Another key component could prevent the deportation of parents whose children are U.S. citizens. Speaking at a news conference in Burma, Obama vowed to take action by the end of the year.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I believe that America is a nation of immigrants. Everybody agrees that the system is broken. There has been ample opportunity for Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration bill that would strengthen our borders, improve the legal immigration system, lift millions of people out of the shadows so they are paying taxes and getting right by the law. It passed out of the Senate. I gave the House over a year to go ahead and at least give a vote to the Senate bill. They failed to do so. And I indicated to Speaker Boehner several months ago that if in fact Congress failed to act, I would use all the lawful authority that I possess to try to make the system work better. And that’s going to happen. That’s going to happen before the end of the year.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama speaking in Burma on Friday. Republican House Speaker John Boehner has vowed to fight any such action "tooth and nail."
Meanwhile, last week, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over Obama’s record number of deportations. The group says the agency violated the law by failing to respond to a rule-making petition seeking relief for millions of undocumented immigrants.
Before we go to our first guest, Juan, you’ve been covering this issue very closely. Talk about the significance of President Obama’s words and plans.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the president clearly made the—he made the statement right after the election, that this was the direction he was going to go to. But what happened on Friday was that it’s becoming clearer that it’s going to happen sooner rather than later, as we head to the end of the year. But the key thing, I think, that’s being missed is that the numbers that are being bandied about, between 3.7 and 5.3 million undocumented, that number includes the 1.2 million young people that are already under a protected status, or deferred deportation, under DACA. So it’s really a much more modest number that we’re talking about. And the difference is, it’s still a question of what plan President Obama takes, whether he will require the parents of U.S. citizen children to have been here at least 10 years or five years, which would affect the final number, and whether he will include the parents of the DACA young people who have already received a deferred deportation situation. And, of course, this is all temporary, because Congress can change it at any moment. So, I think it’s actually a pretty modest proposal whichever way President Obama goes, because even at the most expansive plan, which would be about 5.3 million people, that’s still less than half of the undocumented that are in the country currently.
AMY GOODMAN: And President Obama having said in the past he’s not king, you know, sort of raising questions about whether he would issue an executive order. He’s certainly changed his tune there.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I think there’s been no question that he made—he signaled, from the beginning of the year, pretty much, that he was at some point going to act if Congress did not. So I think he’s merely following through on what his initial promise to the Congress was, if the Republicans could not pass an immigration bill, because, remember, the Senate bill that was passed more than a year ago, if there’s not an accompanying bill by the House by the end of December, that bill will be void, and then both the Senate and the House would have to start all over again in January.
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As President Obama vows to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, we speak to two people who could be directly impacted by an executive order. Rosi Carrasco and her daughter, Ireri Unzueta Carrasco, are both members of Organized Communities Against Deportations. We first interviewed Rosi when she was about to get arrested during a protest at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 calling for Obama to stop deportations. She was born in Mexico and has lived in the United States for 20 years. Ireri was a DREAM Act activist and recipient of the Deferred Action program.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined from Chicago by two guests who could be directly impacted by President Obama’s executive order on immigration: Rosi Carrasco and her daughter, Ireri Unzueta Carrasco. Rosi Carrasco is a member of Organized Communities Against Deportations. We first interviewed her when she was about to get arrested during a protest at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 calling for President Obama to stop deportations.
ACTIVISTS: No papers, no fear! No papers, no fear!
ROSI CARRASCO: Good afternoon. We are here to ask President Obama what his legacy will be. Will he be the president that has deported the most people in U.S. history? Or will he recognize our dignity and our right to organize? For that, we are risking arrest.
ACTIVISTS: Follow us!
AMY GOODMAN: That was Rosi Carrasco in 2012. At that point, she had lived in the United States for 18 years. Now it’s been 20 years. She’s originally from Mexico and came out as undocumented after her daughters did so first. She is one of the parents of the so-called DREAMers who could potentially benefit from Obama’s executive order.
And Ireri Unzueta Carrasco is with us, undocumented immigrant, recipient of the Deferred Action program, also member of Organized Communities Against Deportations and Undocumented Illinois, the daughter of Rosi.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Rosi, can you respond to this latest news of the possible issuing of an executive order by President Obama?
ROSI CARRASCO: Yeah. Thank you for having us. And, you know, this is something that we have been fighting for, we have been organizing for. I think that it’s the step in the right direction. President Obama will do what he needed to do for a long time. And I know that he can defer it—he can grant Deferred Action. He can stop Secure Communities. And hopefully he will expand Deferred Action and to cover as many people as he can. So I think we are happy to get to this moment, and we will continue fighting to stop deportations of everyone, not us, not only the parents of citizens and the parents of DACA recipients.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’d like to ask Ireri Unzueta Carrasco, what has this meant to you, the first order of the president, the DACA order that was issued a couple of years ago? What’s been the impact on you and other young people like yourself that are in a similar situation?
IRERI UNZUETA CARRASCO: Hi, good morning. So, very honestly, I think it’s been a bittersweet experience. On the one hand, I have had access to jobs and opportunities that I didn’t have before. Right now I have a job that I love, working with young people here in Chicago. And I remember going to one of my first days, when I was signing my contract, and I had to bring in my work permit, right, my little piece of plastic that I didn’t have for over 18 years. And so, at the same time, I’ve been able to see a lot of people who haven’t had access to that, who are still seeing doors being closed to them about these opportunities that I believe everyone should have, right, the right to be able to work according to your abilities and to be able to have better opportunities. And so, for me, it’s been a bittersweet experience. I am happy that other people will have these opportunities now, but I also know that we’re going to have to keep fighting to make sure that everyone has access to well and dignified jobs.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your concern over the last year, as President Obama first promised to take action, then held back, then promised again, then held back, and now has promised this week, finally, the third time he’s promised to take action? Your concern over this back-and-forth from the White House?
IRERI UNZUETA CARRASCO: Yes, honestly, for me, every time that President Obama does this, it’s a little bit sad, right? We’re here in Chicago, where he was our senator, and then he became our president. And just to see that while, you know, Congress was debating and while President Obama was delaying action that he could have taken, we lost a lot of community members to deportation, right? Some are back in the countries that they came from. Some are figuring out what to do while they’re in detention. And so, honestly, like, this action cannot come soon enough.
AMY GOODMAN: Republicans in Congress have vowed to fight President Obama’s plan to change immigration laws through executive action. This is House Speaker John Boehner.
SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: You know, the president is threatening to take unilateral action on immigration, even though in the past he’s made clear he didn’t believe he had the constitutional responsibility or authority to do that. And I’ll just say this. We’re going to fight the president tooth and nail if he continues down this path. This is the wrong way to govern. This is exactly what the American people said on Election Day they didn’t want. And so, all the options are on the table. We’re having discussions with our members, and there are no decisions been made as to how we will fight this if he proceeds.
AMY GOODMAN: Rosi Carrasco, I’d like to get your response. And, you know, I’m going back to 2012 in Charlotte in front of the Democratic convention, that first day in the pouring rain, when you got arrested, as did your husband, Martin Unzueta—and I remember, just before he got arrested, he said, "I’m undocumented. I’m living here for 18 years. I pay taxes. I’m paying more taxes than Citibank"—as well as your other daughter. Can you talk about what Boehner says and where you see this country headed?
ROSI CARRASCO: You know, I think that it’s time to stop listening to the Republicans’ threats. Undocumented immigrants has been having the courage to fight for their rights, and I think for the Democrats to start doing the same. For us, it’s very clear that we won’t stop until we see the deportations stopped. We will continue on organizing. We have been organizing. We have been doing protests in front of the detention centers. When Obama came here to make a fundraising, we did a protest in front of the hotel. So, for us, we are not going to stop. And if we, as immigrants, as undocumented immigrants, have had the courage to fight, I think Democrats can do it, too. And I think they need to stand up to the anti-immigrants in Congress and do the right thing. And they have an opportunity to do the right thing. I hope that they will do it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rosi Carrasco, can you tell us something in terms—you’ve been here now in the United States 20 years, undocumented. Could you talk a little bit about the toll it’s taken on you to be able to raise a family and be able to survive and maintain yourself with this constant threat of the possibility of being deported?
ROSI CARRASCO: Yeah. It is really hard to be in this country for 20 years. It is sad to see how you have to fight for things that are granted for every human being, like the right to work, to live without being afraid to have your family divided, as you mentioned. However, we are here. We are working, paying taxes. We have our families, my daughters. I love my daughters. I love my family, my community. And I have been fighting for have—this, what I have. It’s a human right that everyone should have. And for me, to be as close as we are now, to be able to have what—that opportunity to be considered as human being, to be considered someone that can live happy with their family and work and make contributions to this country is something very important. And I know that we are—stay here, and we will continue to be here, and we will continue working for our communities. And I hope that this society, this Congress, this government, recognizes this right that we have.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Ireri and Rosi, your decision to come out? Ireri, you eventually were, you know, granted the right to vote because of your activism, ultimately, and so many other young people’s. But that time years ago when you were deciding whether you could do this, given that you could be deported at any one of these actions or anywhere you spoke?
IRERI UNZUETA CARRASCO: Well, to be honest, I mean, the right to work is a great thing, right? But before I had the Deferred Action, anything could have put me in deportation proceedings, any small mistake, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, right? I really wanted to travel, and traveling isn’t something that you can just do, necessarily, right? And sometimes there are risks involved, and there are, you know, different ways to get stopped. And so, this is a risk that I was running every day. To me, when I decided to come out publicly and talk about my status, it was a decision about that. If this is something that I’m facing every day, then I need to take this head-on. I need to be able to show my side of the story publicly, and I need to be able to use that to benefit the other members of my community. So, coming out as undocumented, to me, is something that was taking back that power that sometimes is taken away, right, by the government, by people saying that I don’t belong in this country, and saying, "Look, this is where I’ve grown up. This is where my family is. This is where my work is. This is where I, you know, love here and all my family, wherever they are." And so, for me, coming out is part of that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ireri, I wanted to ask you to comment also on this whole issue that many Americans—not just Republicans, but other Americans who are not familiar with the immigration issue—raise, that why should you get legal status or your mother get legal status, when there are millions of people who have been waiting on line in other countries to come into the United States, even though we did have in 1986 an immigration bill that legalized the status of about three million people, and even though President Reagan himself, the following year, issued an executive order giving 200,000 Nicaraguans a legal status in the United States, as well. I’m just wondering, how do you respond to those Americans who say you should be getting to the back of the line with others who are trying to get into the country?
IRERI UNZUETA CARRASCO: Well, I believe that the immigration system needs to be fixed, and there’s a lot of components that need to be fixed, including how long people have to wait to be able to come into the U.S. I know friends here who ended up coming across the border because they couldn’t wait the 20 or 18 years that it takes to get in here. And so, for me, just making sure that we are taking care of our communities, right—and that includes the people that are living within our borders now, whether or not they are undocumented—is very, very important. And so, I wish for people to take a look at their neighbors, a look at their friends. There are undocumented people amongst all of us. And we’re living, and we are struggling, and we are contributing, right? And, yes, there’s people that are waiting, and I believe that we need to fix all these things and stop terrorizing our communities through programs like Secure Communities and other Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us, Ireri Unzueta Carrasco and your mom, Rosi Carrasco, both undocumented immigrants, though Ireri became documented through her activism, and members of Organized Communities Against Deportations in Chicago. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’ll be back in a minute with Naomi Klein.
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ISIS Beheads U.S. Aid Worker Peter Kassig
The Islamic State militant group has beheaded U.S. aid worker Peter Kassig. A video released Sunday shows a mass beheading of Syrian soldiers, followed by an image of Kassig’s severed head. Unlike four previous videos involving American and British hostages, this video does not show the actual execution or any statement by Kassig. The shift has caused speculation Kassig may have resisted and managed to disrupt the filming. Kassig, who was 26, converted to Islam in captivity and was also known as Abdul-Rahman. He was an Army Ranger who served in Iraq and later founded an aid group to help Syrian refugees. President Obama called his killing "pure evil."
Top U.S. General Makes Surprise Visit to Iraq
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Afghanistan: Female Lawmaker Survives Attack; U.S. Soldier Killed
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Burkina Faso: Interim President Chosen After Military Takeover
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Texas: Chemical Leak at DuPont Plant Kills 4 Workers
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House OKs Keystone XL Pipeline; Senate to Vote This Week
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Empty Oil Train Derails in Casselton, Site of Previous Crash in North Dakota
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Oil Firms Halliburton, Baker Hughes to Merge in $34.6 Billion Deal
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State Department Shuts Down Email After Breach
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Japan: Okinawa Voters Choose Governor Opposed to U.S. Base
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Mike Arman: "What’s your name, sir?"
Darren Wilson: "If you wanna take a picture of me one more time, I’m gonna lock your ass up."
Mike Arman: "Sir, I’m not taking a picture. I’m recording this incident, sir. Do I not have the right to record?"
Darren Wilson: "No, you don’t. Come on. Come on."
Arman was then arrested.
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