| ||||
|
democracynow.org
Stories:
A new analysis of corporate TV news has found there was almost no debate about whether the United States should go to war in Iraq and Syria. The group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that of the more than 200 guests who appeared on network shows to discuss the issue, just six voiced opposition to military action. The report, titled "Debating How — Not Whether — to Launch a New War," examines a two-week period in September when U.S. involvement in Iraq and Syria dominated the airwaves. The report also finds that on the high-profile Sunday talk shows, out of 89 guests, there was just one antiwar voice — Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation. We speak to Peter Hart, activism director at FAIR.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: A new analysis of corporate TV news has found there was almost no debate about whether the U.S. should go to war in Iraq and Syria. The group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that of more than 200 guests who appeared on network shows to discuss the topic, just six voiced opposition to military action. On the high-profile Sunday talk shows, out of 89 guests, there was just one antiwar voice: Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the report, we’re joined by Peter Hart, activism director at FAIR, the author of the new report called "Debating How—Not Whether—to Launch a New War." So, Peter, tell us what you found.
PETER HART: Like you said, the numbers sort of speak for themselves—205 guests, 125 were pro-war, six were against the war. This is the wars in Iraq and in Syria. The debate sometimes looked rather passionate; it had the appearances of a real debate. But what they were really debating was the mechanics of war, whether we should drop bombs just on Iraq or on Iraq and Syria, whether Obama was aggressive enough. There were critics of the White House, but they were critics that were pro-war, people like John McCain, who were adamant that whatever Obama was doing was not nearly enough and that the answer to this was to inflict more violence in Iraq and in Syria. That was the spectrum of debate, from Henry Kissinger to Samantha Power.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s also interesting that you found that, overwhelmingly, pro-war opinions voiced on television and also the majority Democrat.
PETER HART: Yeah. You know, you have the Democratic Party, in the person of Barack Obama, and then his affiliates inside the White House were on TV to make the case for war, but there was never a consideration to present antiwar opinions to oppose those ideas. As Chris Matthews said on MSNBC’s Hardball, everybody is for drone strikes, everybody is for airstrikes with this war. There is an acknowledgment that there’s no need to have a debate about whether the country should go to war. It’s a decision about what kind of war we should be waging.
AARON MATÉ: What’s amazing is we still see on corporate television this preponderance of voices who supported the Iraq War. Is there any effort to engage the networks on why they keep having these guests back?
PETER HART: Well, I think people ask this question all the time, because it’s just an obvious one. You had Phil Donahue sitting right here just a week ago saying—explaining what happened in the run-up to the war, 2002, 2003. And the question is—
AMY GOODMAN: When he was fired.
PETER HART: When he was fired from MSNBC and when he said dissent was basically eliminated from mainstream media. Has anything changed from 2002 to 2003 to right now? And the answer in the study is, absolutely not. If anything, the debate is more restricted now.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you do this study?
PETER HART: These are the guests that showed up for debate and discussion segments—so not sound bites—people who are invited to one-on-one interviews on the Sunday shows, on PBS NewsHour and on a couple of the high-profile cable shows—Wolf Blitzer, Special Report on Fox News Channel.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re activism director of FAIR. What are you recommending?
PETER HART: Well, you know, the most obvious thing to ask people to do is to contact these shows and say, "If we’re going to war"—and, you know, this week Congress is going to debate this war, the Authorization for Use of Military Force—"have people who oppose the war." I know it sounds like a radical idea, but antiwar activists are more than happy to show up on television and debate this, if they’re given the chance.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, if you look back to 2002 and 2003, it was the antiwar activists, the few peace activists you saw on television, who ultimately were correct, that there weren’t weapons of mass destruction.
PETER HART: Absolutely. And, you know, there isn’t a question right now about WMDs. The question is: Is violence the answer to this political problem that we have? And you would think the lessons from Afghanistan, from Iraq and from Libya would be there’s a need to have this debate. But the big media says no.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Hart, thanks so much for being with us, activism director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
|
The FBI vs. Martin Luther King: Inside J. Edgar Hoover’s "Suicide Letter" to Civil Rights Leader
1,185
SHARED
It was 50 years ago today that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made headlines by calling Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the “most notorious liar in the country." Hoover made the comment in front of a group of female journalists ahead of King’s trip to Oslo where he received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the youngest recipient of the prize. While Hoover was trying to publicly discredit King, the agency also sent King an anonymous letter threatening to expose the civil rights leader’s extramarital affairs. The unsigned, typed letter was written in the voice of a disillusioned civil rights activist, but it is believed to have been written by one of Hoover’s deputies, William Sullivan. The letter concluded by saying, "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. … You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation." The existence of the so-called "suicide letter" has been known for years, but only last week did the public see the unredacted version. We speak to Yale University professor Beverly Gage, who uncovered the unredacted letter.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: It was 50 years ago today FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made headlines by calling Dr. Martin Luther King, quote, "most notorious liar in the country." Hoover made the comment in front of a group of female journalists ahead of King’s trip to Oslo, where he received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming its youngest recipient.
While J. Edgar Hoover was trying to publicly discredit King, the agency was also taking covert action. The FBI sent King an anonymous letter threatening to expose his extramarital affairs. The unsigned, typed letter was written in the voice of a disillusioned civil rights activist, but it’s believed to have been written by one of Hoover’s deputies, William Sullivan. The letter concludes by saying, quote, "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. ... You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation."
One paragraph of the letter hints an audiotape accompanied the letter. It reads, quote, "No person can overcome the facts, not even a fraud like yourself. ... You will find yourself and in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time."
AMY GOODMAN: The existence of the so-called "suicide letter" has been known for years, but only last week did the public see the unredacted version. Our next guest found the full letter while researching Hoover’s personal files. Beverly Gage is a professor of American history at Yale University. She’s working on a book about J. Edgar Hoover called G Man. Her recent piece in The New York Times Magazine is headlined "What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals." She’s joining us from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Professor Gage, welcome to Democracy Now! Tell us exactly what you found and how you found it.
BEVERLY GAGE: Well, as you mentioned, I’m writing a biography of J. Edgar Hoover, and this summer I was in Washington doing some research at the National Archives. And at the National Archives, they now have a pretty full edition or copies of Hoover’s official confidential files, which were sort of the secret files that he kept in his own office. And most of them are about major public figures. These have been turned over from the FBI to the National Archives, so you have them sitting there now. And I was going through them really as part of my research for Hoover, not expecting that this letter would be there. I, of course, knew about the letter. It’s one of these really famous documents from both the civil rights movement and the history of the FBI, and so my jaw sort of dropped when I saw this unredacted version just sitting there in the National Archives.
AMY GOODMAN: So, tell us exactly what it said.
BEVERLY GAGE: It’s a very threatening letter. It has sort of two pieces to it. One are these kind of vague threats that you mentioned. "King, you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to take action. You’re a fraud. Take yourself out of public life." And then, most of it is actually about his sex life and is about these kind of over-the-top, really racially charged, very graphic accusations about extramarital affairs, about orgies. And the implication is that all of this is on the tapes that accompanied the letter and that whoever is sending this letter has more information where all of that comes from, and they’re threatening to expose it.
AARON MATÉ: And can you talk about the context here, why the FBI, Hoover especially, was targeting King, and what surveillance tactics they employed in going after him?
BEVERLY GAGE: This letter is probably the most notorious symbol of a much wider campaign against King and against the civil rights movement, against the left in general in the 1960s. But for King, in particular, the FBI had started wiretapping several of his associates well before this letter, mostly people who were suspected of having ties to the Communist Party in the 1950s. And so, that really was the beginning of their kind of getting closer and closer to King himself. By 1963, right after the March on Washington, the Bureau had grown very alarmed about King’s growing influence, and they began to bug his hotel rooms while he was on the road, and they began to wiretap his home and his office. So, by the time Hoover held this press conference, today, 50 years ago, they had been wiretapping King. They had enormous amounts of information about King, about his personal life, about his political activities, and they had been watching many people in his circle, as well.
AARON MATÉ: Well, I want to turn to an audio recording of President John F. Kennedy talking about Dr. King. President Kennedy made these comments during a meeting about the civil rights movement on May 20th, 1963.
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: I think we ought to have some of these other meetings before we have it in the King group; otherwise, the meetings will look like they got me to do it. ... The trouble with King is, everybody thinks he’s our boy anyway. So everything he does, everybody says we stuck him in there. So we ought to have him well surrounded. ... I think we ought to have a good many others. King is so hot these days that if it looks like Martin’s coming to the White House, I should have the—I’d like to have at least some Southern governors or mayors or businessmen in first. And my program should have gone up to the Hill first.
AARON MATÉ: So, it’s hard to hear, so just to repeat some of the key words, Kennedy says, "The trouble with King is, everybody thinks he’s our boy ... King is so hot these days, it’s like Marx [sic] coming to the White House." When we talk about FBI surveillance of Dr. King, J. Edgar Hoover is sort of the face of it, and that’s justifiable, but he had authorization. He had authorization from President Kennedy and President Kennedy’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, the attorney general, who signed the wiretap order. [Beverly], can you talk about how the Kennedys were involved in targeting Dr. King?
BEVERLY GAGE: Right. There was a lot of back-and-forth between the FBI and the Kennedy White House, and they were certainly sharing the fruits of what they found both before and after the wiretaps. So it’s quite clear at this point, though he denied it at certain points in his life, that Robert Kennedy did authorize the wiretaps on King and on his associates. It’s a little less clear that he knew about the bugging of the hotel rooms. But he certainly authorized the wiretaps. And the FBI was quite openly sharing a lot of this information with the White House, and the Kennedys really were responding to it. So, well before Kennedy in the middle of 1963 came out sort of fully in support of some sort of Civil Rights Act, he had been having aides and then he himself had actually pulled Martin Luther King aside, had warned him to separate himself from people in his orbit who had once been associated with the Communist Party. The FBI thought some of them were still secret members of the Communist Party or maybe even Soviet spies, and the Kennedys were very, very responsive to that sort of information. And the Kennedys were also part of a Democratic Party that was very reliant on the votes of the solid South at this point. They were very politically cautious around civil rights. And so, between these kind of secret information that’s being passed and then these political concerns, they were really very cautious about their relationship with King.
AMY GOODMAN: Moving on from Kennedy to Johnson, the journalist, New York Times reporter Tim Weiner, writes about this period, November 1964, when this letter came out, was written. In his book, Enemies: A History of the FBI, Weiner writes, "Hoover held a highly unusual press conference, calling a group of women reporters into his office and proclaiming that King was 'the most notorious liar in the country'. LBJ, conferring with [FBI Deputy Director] DeLoach two days later, expressed a degree of sympathy of Hoover’s position. [LBJ said,] 'He knows Martin Luther King,' [he went on] with a low chuckle. 'I mean, he knows him better than anybody in the country.'" Professor Gage?
BEVERLY GAGE: Well, Hoover and Lyndon Johnson were actually very good friends. They had been neighbors in the '40s. They lived on the same street. And so, they—and they were both people who loved to kind of trade in secret information. So, you have this very odd situation in which Lyndon Johnson is simultaneously kind of publicly championing the Civil Rights Act, publicly championing a lot of civil rights activism in the middle of 1964, but in these much more private conversations they're making jokes about King, particularly about his extramarital affairs, which the FBI had really started finding out about in sort of '63, ’64. This is the kind of gossip that certainly Lyndon Johnson, Deke DeLoach, who you mentioned, and Hoover himself liked to share. So you have a real disconnect both on the part of the FBI, but also on the part of the White House, between what it is that they are saying publicly during these years and what it is that they're talking about in private.
AARON MATÉ: Well, after J. Edgar Hoover called Dr. King, quote, "the most notorious liar in the country," a reporter asked him for his response. This is a clip.
REPORTER: Dr. King, what is your reaction to the charges made by J. Edgar Hoover?
REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: Well, I was quite shocked and surprised to learn of this statement from Mr. Hoover questioning my integrity. And very frankly, I don’t understand what motivated the statement.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Dr. King. Professor Gage, can you talk about what King did when he received this letter? It was actually after he came back from Oslo, right? Was he alarmed by it? Did they understand who it was from?
BEVERLY GAGE: So, the press conference that you were showing King’s response to was 50 years ago today, so November 18th. And right after that is when the FBI actually sent off the letter and the tape. And, however, King didn’t get it until about a month and a half later. And between that moment, there are a couple of things that happened. The first is that Hoover and King actually had sort of a public "Oh, sorry about that. Really, we’re getting along now" sort of public meeting in Hoover’s office. King went off. He received the Nobel Peace Prize. And when he came back, he found this letter and this tape waiting for him.
He knew almost immediately when he received it that it was not just some anonymous person sending him this package, but he recognized pretty quickly, as did an inner circle of his confidants, that this has come from the FBI. He understood it as a threat. There’s some evidence that, you know, he obviously was quite alarmed by this, but that it actually sank him into a certain amount of depression and alarm about what was going to come next. But he actually never spoke publicly about the letter, about the package. And it wasn’t public knowledge until the 1970s, after King had been assassinated and after Hoover had also died.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to end with the words of Dr. King when he was in Oslo. I was just in Oslo last weekend talking about this 50-year-ago moment. Dr. King was the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize at this point. He comes to Oslo, and he delivers his address. And you get a sense of the horror that is going on in this country from his first words, this an excerpt from his Nobel acceptance speech December 10th, 1964.
REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Martin Luther King 50 years ago, December 10th, 1964, delivering his Nobel address in Oslo, Norway. And, Beverly Gage, we want to thank you, professor of American history at Yale University, who’s working on a book about J. Edgar Hoover called G Man, wrote the piece in the Times, finding the letter to King during her research, in a piece headlined "What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals."
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the new war and old views continually being expressed on television. Stay with us.
|
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has declared a state of emergency in advance of the grand jury’s pending decision in the Michael Brown shooting case. On Monday, Nixon issued an executive order to activate the state’s National Guard in response to what he called "the possibility of expanded unrest." Nixon cited the protests in Ferguson and the St. Louis area since Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9. The grand jury has been meeting for nearly three months, and protests are expected to escalate if they choose not to indict. But while state officials say they fear violence, protesters say they fear a return to the militarized crackdown that turned their community into a war zone. As the grand jury nears a decision and all sides prepare for the unknown under a state of emergency, we are joined by two guests: Jeff Smith, a New School professor and former Missouri state senator whose new book is "Ferguson: In Black and White," and Montague Simmons, chair of the St. Louis-based Organization for Black Struggle and a key organizer in the movement that has emerged since Brown’s killing.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: We begin in Missouri, where Governor Jay Nixon has declared a state of emergency. This comes in advance of the grand jury’s decision in the Michael Brown case, which we expect any day. On Monday, Nixon issued an executive order to activate the National Guard in response to what he called, quote, "the possibility of expanded unrest." Nixon cited the protests in Ferguson and the St. Louis area since Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed by officer Darren Wilson on August 9th. The grand jury has been meeting for nearly three months, and protests are expected to escalate if they choose not to indict. On Monday, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said the state of emergency is necessary to prevent violence.
MAYOR FRANCIS SLAY: We are going to be prepared, from a law enforcement standpoint, to make sure that people and properties are safe, as well as the protesters, demonstrators, who have an opportunity to express their First Amendment rights and to protest in a peaceful way. And at the same time, you know, we want to make sure that we’re going to have the resources necessary in the event there is any kind of violence or anything of that nature.
AARON MATÉ: But while state officials say they fear violence, protesters say they fear a return to the crackdown that turned their community into a war zone. The deployment of the National Guard in August came amidst a militarized police response that included armored vehicles, assault rifles and other Army-grade equipment. In anticipation of new unrest, more than 1,000 officers have recently undergone some 5,000 hours in training on crowd control. The St. Louis County Police Department has also stocked up on over $172,000 worth of riot gear, including tear gas, grenades, pepper balls and plastic handcuffs.
AMY GOODMAN: But the threat of a police response—and the increasingly cold weather—has not stopped protesters from hitting the streets. On Sunday, a few hundred activists blocked a major intersection in St. Louis to call for Officer Wilson’s arrest.
PROTESTER 1: For the injustices that we have suffered due to the oppressors over many years, hundreds of years, enough is enough. It ends here. It ends with us here in Ferguson.
PROTESTER 2: The point won’t be made until that cop is indicted. The point won’t be made 'til justice is served, until we can stop the number of black men laying in the street. That's when our point will be made.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, as the grand jury nears a decision and all sides prepare for the unknown under a state of emergency, we’re joined by two guests. Here in New York, Jeff Smith is with us, assistant professor of urban policy at The New School, a former Missouri state senator from St. Louis. His new book comes out this week as a Kindle Single, titled Ferguson: In Black and White.
And joining us from St. Louis is Montague Simmons, chair of the St. Louis-based Organization for Black Struggle, a key organizer in the movement that’s emerged since Michael Brown’s killing. The Organization for Black Struggle is one of around 50 groups in the Don’t Shoot Coalition, which has just proposed new "Rules of Engagement" for St. Louis police.
Well, Montague, why don’t we start there? What are those "Rules of Engagement" you have proposed?
MONTAGUE SIMMONS: They start just with basically treating the protesters as a human. We’re asking that they actually confront us fairly, that they actually communicate with us, that they respect our actual rights for civil disobedience, which means that while we engage them in nonviolent direct action, we expect, in many cases, to be arrested, but when they’re actually just standing on a sidewalk and not actually breaking the law, unprovoked arrest, unprovoked harassment, unprovoked intensification of those engagements is unwarranted. There’s actually a list of 19 different rules of engagement that we’ve actually proposed for them. And so far, they’ve actually been amenable to most of them. We’re actually just pressing for a level of accountability. And more so than from the police, we’re actually looking for it from elected officials.
AARON MATÉ: Well, Montague, the response you got Monday was the state of emergency from Governor Jay Nixon. And let’s go to a clip of him. On Monday, he held a news—a conference call with reporters to discuss his action. Matt Sledge of The Huffington Post asked Governor Nixon if he’s now responsible for how police respond should protests erupt after the grand jury’s decision. Well, Nixon struggled with his answer.
MATT SLEDGE: Given that you’ve declared the state of emergency and you put the Highway Patrol on the unified command, does the buck ultimately stop with you when it comes to how any protests are policed?
GOV. JAY NIXON: Where, you know, it—you know, our goal here is to—is to, you know, keep the peace and allow folks’ voices to be heard. And in that balance, I’m attempting—you know, I am using the resources we have to marshal to be predictable for both those pillars. I don’t—you know, I’m more—I just will have to say I don’t spent a tremendous amount of time personalizing this.
AARON MATÉ: That’s Governor Jay Nixon. He went on to say, "I’d prefer not to be a commentator on it." Montague, your response to Governor Nixon’s answer there, not wanting to take responsibility for the response, the police response, and this overall state of emergency that he has just imposed?
MONTAGUE SIMMONS: It’s disturbing, but it’s consistent both for his behavior in the governor’s office and for all elected officials. When this first started off and he initially declared a state of emergency, he had the power then to change the way that justice could play out by appointing an independent special prosecutor. When we were about to call him to do that, in a press conference the same morning in response to our letter, he shut down the state of emergency. So, everyplace we turn, as far as elected officials, as far as pieces of the system, when they should actually be holding officers in departments accountable for their behavior, not just during the protests, but before this, in terms of the profiling, ongoing harassment, everybody has remained silent. Everyone wants to duck responsibility and point toward someone else. So, as I said, again, while it’s very disturbing, I can’t say I’m surprised, because it’s consistent with what we’ve seen so far.
AMY GOODMAN: So, last week, Missouri Governor Nixon said he’s prepared to redeploy the National Guard after this grand jury reaches its decision. Nixon said Guard members will be on standby should protests erupt.
GOV. JAY NIXON: Officers from the Missouri State Highway Patrol, St. Louis County Police and St. Louis City Police will operate as a unified command to protect the public. The National Guard has been and will continue to be part of our contingency planning. The Guard will be available when we determine it is necessary to support local law enforcement. Quite simply, we must and will be fully prepared.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that is the Nixonian response to the possible—whichever way the indictment comes down. I wanted to bring Jeff Smith into this conversation. Now you’re a professor here in New York at The New School, but you were a Missouri state senator. Can you give us a little background on who Governor Nixon is?
JEFF SMITH: I can, Amy. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Governor Nixon grew up in a town in Jefferson County. That’s an exurban area. It’s about an hour—about 45 minutes to an hour south of St. Louis city. It was a county that a lot of white people fled to in the '50s, ’60s and ’70s, when African Americans started moving from North St. Louis to South St. Louis. So, it's sort of seen as sort of the prototypical white flight county in St. Louis. He was a conservative Democratic state senator in the '80s, in the mid-1980s, pro-gun, strongly pro-life. And then, when he ran for attorney general in 1992, he actually ran as a candidate who opposed the school desegregation program that allowed for voluntary busing of students from St. Louis city to St. Louis County, black students to mostly white schools. So he has a history of being a very conservative Democrat, a strong law-and-order guy. Sixteen years as attorney general—they used to call him the "eternal general" instead of attorney general—and during that time, Missouri executed more people than just about any other state outside of Texas. So, he's always been a strong law-and-order guy. That’s been his posture. What we’ve seen over the last few months, I think, has been consistent with that.
AARON MATÉ: You’re a former Missouri state senator. What kind of political reform do you think is needed there in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death?
JEFF SMITH: I think there’s a lot of reforms needed. The first thing that’s needed is a rule or some new statute that reduces the percentage of municipal revenue that can be brought in from traffic stops. Right now, a lot of the municipalities in North St. Louis County are bringing in as much as 30, 40, even 50 percent of their annual budget just from stopping people and getting fines from that. And that’s ridiculous. So, we need—
AMY GOODMAN: But Ferguson, the Times showed this chart that they are off the charts in the entire country on this.
JEFF SMITH: They are absolutely a huge outlier in that, and they’re also a huge outlier in the number of warrants that they have outstanding. You know, in a lot of these North County municipalities, such as Ferguson, there are more warrants outstanding than there are residents living in these towns. Again, ridiculous. So, the first thing we need to do is reduce the percentage of revenue that can be garnered from traffic stops. Second, we’ve got to make sure that these police forces look like the people they’re policing. Right now—people have seen the statistics—just 6 percent of the police force in Ferguson is black, and nearly 70 percent of the population. So, you’ve got this huge disconnect between the power structure and the people enforcing the laws from the residents who actually live there, and that’s a recipe for disaster.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the militarization of the police. Last week, I talked to a retired three-star U.S. general who helped command the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. I asked General Daniel Bolger his thoughts about the militarization of the police, particularly front and center now with Ferguson.
LT. GEN. DANIEL BOLGER: As an American citizen and a soldier, it’s very disturbing. Tradition of our country is that we want police to do police work. And if you dress somebody like a soldier and you equip somebody like a soldier, they might begin to act with the population like a soldier. Most law enforcement experts will tell you that the way to work in a community is that the police officer has to be on patrol on foot and known in the community. And people have different relations with the police, but certainly a man or woman on foot in a police uniform, you know who that person is. And they know who the people around them are. You put that person in an armored vehicle, you dress them up in helmets and goggles and give them heavy weapons, they begin to treat the population as if they’re the enemy, because that’s what soldiers do.
AMY GOODMAN: That is General Daniel Bolger. And, Montague Simmons, I wanted to get your response to his critique of using police as soldiers. I mean, he has commanded many in his lifetime, and he says this is a key error in Ferguson.
MONTAGUE SIMMONS: For a long time, we talked about policing in St. Louis. We talked about it as a situation where folks feel like they’re under occupation. So, yeah, I think his analysis is dead on. Like, of the 5,000 hours of training that they did this past week, how many hours of that were really focused on community engagement, on identifying or recognizing people in the community? While they’re actually charged with—
AMY GOODMAN: What about that? Actually, this is a—this is a key, key point, when you talk about these 5,000 hours—
MONTAGUE SIMMONS: Mm-hmm, exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: —where they were training. How much effort—
MONTAGUE SIMMONS: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: —has been made by the mayor of Ferguson, by the governor, by the police, to reach out to community and to community leaders right now in this very critical, tense time?
MONTAGUE SIMMONS: Very, very little. We’ve been working hard to make certain, especially as we build toward the actual verdict, that we are engaged, and we’ve done several levels of outreach with very minimal response. I mean, often they respond more quickly through the media than they do to us directly. It’s an unfortunate truth, but this has kind of been the way it’s been even prior to August 9th. It’s like when there’s been police brutality or someone has been executed, it’s taken massive amounts of time and effort just to get legitimate response. Part of what we’re fighting for is a different kind of engagement in policing that interweaves civilian accountability through at least all five areas, from recruitment, hiring, to training, to their accountability mechanisms and their ability to advance. There have to be some levels of actual community engagement and a higher level of accountability that may involve the Department of Justice.
AARON MATÉ: Montague, as we await this grand jury decision, protests have continued, and obviously you’ve been preparing for more. Can you walk us through, for those of us who aren’t there, how you organize, what these meetings look like?
MONTAGUE SIMMONS: There have been a couple of different types of meetings, because, like you know, this weekend, we just passed a hundred days. Remember, this is a community that’s still in mourning. This is a community that’s lost a child. For many folks, they haven’t had a chance to verbally express what they’ve experienced or what the death means to them or what their ongoing experience has been with police. The mass meetings give them a space to both express that, but to also engage in some form of understanding what could happen when the verdict comes down and where they can actually go for safety, what this could look like.
But the other side of that is, since this has begun, we’ve trained hundreds of people in nonviolent direct action. So, the conversations have been both about the tradition itself of what civil disobedience looks like, what it means, and really disrupting myths of saying that nonviolence and civil disobedience are not resistance, because that’s exactly what they are. For many folks, they’ve been politicized by this moment, and they really need ways to actually channel this rage. And the idea of actually being able to engage in ongoing protest is something that’s become very not only attractive, but it’s needed in this moment.
This moment, unfortunately, did not begin and it won’t end with this verdict and what happened just with Michael Brown. Michael Brown was, in this case, a spark, but we know, not only from our own experience here in St. Louis, but nationally, that Michael Brown and Ferguson is everywhere. From New York and Eric Garner to John Crawford in Ohio, this is a national phenomenon. And I think you’re going to see protests not just here in St. Louis, but throughout the country.
AMY GOODMAN: The parents of Michael Brown spoke Friday after they returned to the United States from meeting with the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Geneva about their son’s death and community relations with police. This is Michael Brown’s father, Michael Brown Sr., followed by his mother, Lesley McSpadden.
MICHAEL BROWN SR.: I think the world—I think the world understands my pain. There’s a lot of people that went through the same situation, that voices haven’t been heard. I’ll speak for everyone that may have been through police brutality, and to help just everyone that can’t speak, that doesn’t have a voice.
LESLEY McSPADDEN: This is not a year or two years, this is hundreds of years this has been going on. I hate that it happened to my son, but it must stop with my son.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Lesley McSpadden and Michael Brown Sr. in Geneva, as they spoke before the U.N. Council Against Torture. Jeff Smith, you went to high school with Lesley McSpadden, with Mike’s mom?
JEFF SMITH: I did, and her older brother, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, can you talk about that community, the community that you both came out of?
JEFF SMITH: Well, we came out of a community called Olivette, which is one of the few relatively integrated communities in St. Louis County. And Ferguson, actually, over the last decade or so, has been a relatively integrated community. It’s been unique in that it’s one rare area where a lot of whites tried to stay and sort of take a stand against the white flight that had characterized most of North St. Louis County. But unfortunately, it didn’t work very well. The population of Ferguson went from about 75 percent white in 1990 to about 70 percent black in 2010. And that flight helps account for this huge disconnect between the power structure and the actual residents, because the political representation just hasn’t caught up with the rapid demographic changes.
AARON MATÉ: So how does that change now?
JEFF SMITH: How will that change now?
AARON MATÉ: Yeah.
JEFF SMITH: Well, it remains to be seen. There’s a few reforms, I think, that could help. Number one would be changing the municipal elections from the springtime to the fall, when turnout is much broader. Number two, you’re going to have to get everybody in these communities registered. You’ve got, again, this demographic change means that a lot of the older people in this community are white, the younger people are black. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re white, black, green or purple in this country, older people are much more likely to turn out to vote than young people. So, that’s another structural issue they’re dealing with.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, it was very interesting—it just came out in the past few weeks—the issue of this no-fly zone. Local authorities in Ferguson have privately conceded they sought a no-fly zone to limit media coverage of the protests that erupted after the killing of Mike Brown. The federal government granted the request to bar all flights around Ferguson, including news helicopters, on safety grounds. But in new audio recordings obtained by the Associated Press, a federal official says, quote, "They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out." So, now we learn this about the no-fly zone, and I want to put this question to Montague. But we also have other video that have come out that have selectively been released, you know, stories about Mike Brown and then Darren Wilson, this video that has come out of him leaving the police station and going to the hospital. Newly released footage also shows Darren Wilson threatening and arresting a resident for filming him last year. The video posted to YouTube shows Wilson after he arrives at a home to serve a summons. The resident asks his name, and Wilson threatens to, quote, "lock [his] ass up." Listen carefully.
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.
MIKE ARMAN: Sir, you just allowed me—you just—
AMY GOODMAN: The resident, Mike Arman, was then arrested. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, meanwhile, has released audio of police radio calls from the day Michael Brown was shot. It shows the fatal shooting took place in less than 90 seconds. And the paper released that surveillance I was talking about of Wilson leaving the police station for the hospital two hours after the shooting, then returning a few hours later. Montague, he doesn’t seem to be holding his face, to be injured in the way that the police have said. Your response to all of these different revelations in this lead-up to the decision by the grand jury?
MONTAGUE SIMMONS: Unsurprised. As even Ms. McSpadden said before, this is part of a continuum that’s happened for generations. At one point, it was characterized as lynching. I don’t think it’s very different now. But part of what happens is, one, you see authority figures begin to paint the victim with criminal behavior, with malevolence, with them becoming a threat. And then, the other side is they paint whoever the officer or whoever actually did the killing as defending themselves. We’ve heard report after report of not just Darren Wilson, but the way police have engaged residents and people just visiting the area for years. It’s not a surprise.
We’ve witnessed reporters be arrested and harassed just like protesters on the street. And the harassment was directed at their ability to begin to report what’s actually happening in the community. I’d say it’s—if we hadn’t actually lived in it, outside I’d be shocked and amazed, but the idea that folks who live here don’t want to expose the reality of life and what it means to be in relationship between the black community and police officials is not surprising.
And again, it’s not unique to Ferguson. You can go a mile one direction, you’re in Dellwood, same experience; a mile the other direction, you’re in Florissant, you may deal with the same thing. Or further out, to Velda City, St. Louis city, Pine Lawn, there are departments that are notorious for doing that and worse. And we’ve caught them on camera. You’ve actually had news stations do reports on people trying to file complaints and see them being violently run out of the station for doing that. This is endemic to this area, this part of the culture. It’s just that at this point all eyes are here, and people are watching, and no one wants that to be seen.
AARON MATÉ: Montague, in August, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch responded to calls for him to step down from the Michael Brown case. McCulloch said the decision has to come from Missouri Governor Jay Nixon. He made his comments during an interview on KTRS radio.
BOB McCULLOCH: We’re going to proceed, you know, as I’ve laid out to people, until I’m told, if I’m told, by the governor that I can’t. And the most devastating thing that can happen is if a week from now, a month from now, he decides that he’s taking me off this case. You know, then everybody’s starting over. So, stand up. You know, man up. Stand up and say, "I have this authority. I am not removing McCulloch/I am removing McCulloch," and let’s get on with this. This family deserves nothing less than that.
AARON MATÉ: That’s Bob McCulloch telling Governor Jay Nixon to man up. Jeff Smith, can you talk to us about who McCulloch is and also comment on the nature of this grand jury? Very unusual to be meeting for this long, for three months, and hearing evidence in a way that makes it seem like it’s a trial.
JEFF SMITH: It is very rare. You’d almost think that they’re deciding guilt or innocence, as opposed to simply deciding whether there’s probable cause to indict. So, I agree it’s very unusual.
Who is Bob McCulloch? you asked. Well, he’s an interesting guy. He has a father who was shot and killed in the line of duty by a black man several decades ago. A lot of people in the black community believe that that colors his opinion. And if you look at his history, I think there’s some evidence that would suggest they’re right. There was a case, I believe in 2001, where undercover cops shot and killed two drug suspects. One of them, there was no evidence that he was involved in anything. And I believe there were 21 shots that killed this man. The undercover cop said that the suspected drug dealers were driving a car at them and threatening them, but the forensic evidence didn’t bear that out, and even other police on the scene said that wasn’t true. And yet, McCulloch did not prosecute that case. That’s really the root of a lot of the distrust that a lot of people in the black community have for him.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Montague, preparations for both sides, for if there is an indictment against Darren Wilson, as well as if there isn’t, do you think there is that possibility?
MONTAGUE SIMMONS: Most of us at this point—and you referred to the way the grand jury is played out—don’t hold a lot of faith that there would be an indictment. Even if there would, I think our preparations have to be the same. We’re in a long-term struggle for systemic change and transformation. We need something very different than the type of policing that we have right now. And what we’ve seen is that there’s no place inside the system to turn for justice, not even from our elected officials, that the only way that we’ve actually been able to receive response, let alone the opportunity for change, is nonviolent direct action. So, in any case, we’re going to keep training. We’re going to keep folks in the streets. We’re going to keep pushing ’til we actually see something very different.
AMY GOODMAN: Montague Simmons, I want to thank you for being with us—Organization for Black Struggle is his organization—speaking to us from St. Louis.
MONTAGUE SIMMONS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: And Jeff Smith with us here, he’s in New York now, assistant professor of urban policy at The New School, but he’s a former Missouri state senator from St. Louis. And his new book is out this week as a Kindle Single; it is called Ferguson: In Black and White.
When we come back, it was 50 years ago today that the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, called Dr. Martin Luther King, the leading civil rights activist in this country, a liar. Today we’re going to bring you a Yale professor who found, to say the least, some incriminating information about the FBI in a standard search she did of J. Edgar Hoover’s files in his office. Stay with us.
|
Missouri Governor Activates National Guard Before Michael Brown Decision
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has declared a state of emergency ahead of the grand jury’s decision on whether to indict the white police officer who killed unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown. Brown was shot dead by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson on August 9. Since then, mass protests against police brutality have erupted in Missouri and across the country. On Monday, Nixon issued an executive order to activate the National Guard in response to what he called "the possibility of expanded unrest." The grand jury has been meeting in secret for nearly three months, and several groups have vowed to escalate protests if they choose not to indict. A decision could come any day. We will have more on Missouri after headlines.
Parents of Peter Kassig Issue Call to Pray for All Prisoners
The parents of a U.S. aid worker executed by the Islamic State have spoken out for the first time since the death of Peter Kassig. Paula and Ed Kassig remembered their son, who was also known as Abdul-Rahman after he converted to Islam in captivity.
Paula Kassig: "Our hearts are battered, but they will mend. The world is broken, but it will be healed in the end. And good will prevail as the one god of many names will prevail."
Ed Kassig: "Please pray for Abdul-Rahman, or Pete, if that’s how you know him, at sunset this evening. Pray also for all people in Syria, in Iraq and around the world."
Report: Over 1,400 Syrians Killed by Islamic State
A monitoring group says the Islamic State has killed more than 1,400 Syrians in non-battlefield attacks. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, most of those killed were civilian. U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have continued with more than 30 since Friday.
Jerusalem: 6 Dead After Attack on Synagogue
In Jerusalem, two Palestinians wielding a meat cleaver and a gun attacked worshipers at a Jewish synagogue, killing four people, before the attackers were shot dead. Six people were injured. It was the deadliest such incident to hit Jerusalem since 2008. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to wage a "harsh response," while Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the attack as an "act of pure terror." The killings came a day after a Palestinian bus driver was found hanged in his vehicle in what Israeli authorities say was a suicide. The man’s relatives say bruises on his body show he was murdered.
Surgeon Brought from Sierra Leone Dies of Ebola in U.S.
A surgeon brought to the United States over the weekend after contracting Ebola in Sierra Leone has died, marking the second Ebola fatality in the United States. Martin Salia was a native of Sierra Leone and a legal permanent resident of the United States. His wife, who lives in Maryland, reportedly paid $200,000 to fly him to the United States, but by the time he arrived he had been sick for nearly two weeks. Dr. Dan Johnson, director of critical care at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said Salia was critically ill when he was admitted.
Dr. Dan Johnson: "He had no kidney function. He was working extremely hard to breathe, and he was unresponsive. Within the first few hours of his arrival, we started running continuous dialysis, and within the first 12 hours, he had progressed to complete respiratory failure, requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation."
Doctors said Salia received the same treatments as other Ebola patients in the United States, included a dose of the extremely rare experimental drug ZMapp.
Report: Congo Police Killed 51 Youth
A new report accuses police in the Democratic Republic of Congo of summarily killing at least 51 youths and disappearing 33 others during an anti-crime campaign launched last year. Human Rights Watch says uniformed police dragged suspected gang members from their homes at night, then killed them.
Talks on Iran’s Nuclear Program Open in Vienna
The latest round of nuclear talks between Iran, the United States and five other world powers have opened in Vienna, Austria. The talks are aimed at reaching a deal over Iran’s disputed nuclear program before a deadline next Monday.
Senate to Consider Bill Curbing NSA’s Dragnet Surveillance
In the United States, Senate lawmakers are set to vote today on whether to advance a measure to rein in the National Security Agency’s dragnet surveillance programs. The USA FREEDOM Act, sponsored by Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, would curb the bulk collection of telephone records by requiring the NSA to make specific requests to phone companies for a user’s data, rather than vacuuming up all records in a given area. It would also create a panel to advocate for privacy rights before the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Major tech companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter have backed the bill, saying it would let them provide more transparency about government demands for user data. Privacy groups have also backed the bill, despite seeing it as a compromise that could still leave room for abuses.
Senate to Vote on Keystone XL Oil Pipeline
The Senate is set to vote today on a bill to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline after the House took similar action last week. President Obama has signaled he may veto the measure backed by Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who faces a tight runoff for re-election. On Monday, protesters rallied outside Landrieu’s home holding a sign that read "Sen. Landrieu: If you’re not a climate denier, don’t vote like one." The pipeline would carry carbon-intensive tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast, passing through states including South Dakota, where it would run through the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. Rosebud Sioux President Cyril Scott has vowed to defend the reservation’s borders against the pipeline, which he calls an "act of war against our people."
Britain: Student Convicted in Terrorism Trial Held Largely in Secret
In Britain, a law student has been convicted on a terrorism charge following a trial that was largely conducted in secret. Erol Incedal was found guilty of possessing a bomb-making document last Tuesday, but a judge barred the media from reporting the verdict until Monday. Much of the evidence against Incedal was heard in secret after prosecutors cited national security concerns.
Greece: 40,000 March Against Austerity on 41st Anniversary of Student Uprising
In Athens, tens of thousands of people marched to oppose austerity and commemorate the 41st anniversary of the student uprising against Greece’s military dictatorship. The demonstrators, policed by some 7,000 officers, marched on the U.S. Embassy to protest U.S. backing for the dictatorship, which lasted from 1967 to 1974. Protester Dimitris Papoulias said, four decades later, the legacy of the student protests continues.
Dimitris Papoulias: "Some 40 years later, the message from the polytechnic is still alive, because then there was a junta, and today we are imprisoned by the euro, the European Union, the IMF and all these unpopular measures that have degraded the middle class and the youth. They have made us poor."
Colombia Suspends FARC Peace Talks After General’s Kidnapping
Colombia has suspended talks with FARC rebels and launched a massive search after the rebels kidnapped an army general. The kidnapping over the weekend marks the first time the FARC has taken a general hostage. General Rubén Darío Alzate had reportedly entered the area in civilian clothes to visit an energy project. Talks aimed at ending the 50-year conflict with the FARC were due to resume today, but Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos suspended them and ordered the rebels to release the general and two other people who were captured with him.
Greenpeace Activists Injured After Spanish Navy Rams Boats
The environmental group Greenpeace says one of its activists had her leg broken and three others were also injured after a confrontation with the Spanish navy during a protest against oil exploration off the the Canary Islands. Video footage shows Spanish navy vessels ramming into the Greenpeace dinghies. Greenpeace spokesperson Julio Barea said the navy’s response shows the power of oil firms like the Spanish company Repsol, which is exploring for oil in the area.
Julio Barea: "It was disproportionate. We didn’t expect that from state forces. But I repeat, it shows how the government supports the interests of a multinational like Repsol and disregards the activist groups in the Canary Islands, environmentalists, the government of the Canaries and the Spanish society in general."
Report: 1 in 30 U.S. Children are Homeless
A new report finds the number of homeless children in the United States surged 8 percent last year to a record high of 2.5 million. That means one in 30 children in the United States are homeless. The National Center on Family Homelessness says the crisis has reached "epidemic proportions," fueled by factors like racial inequality, domestic violence and a lack of affordable housing.
Undocumented Mother Takes Sanctuary from Deportation in Philadelphia Church
In Philadelphia, an undocumented mother of two U.S. citizens has taken sanctuary from her deportation order inside a church. Angela Navarro, whose children are eight and 11, is among millions of people who could potentially benefit if Obama issues an executive order to end his record deportations. According to the faith-based group New Sanctuary Movement, Navarro is the ninth immigrant nationwide to take sanctuary in a church after receiving a final deportation order, and the first on the East Coast.
Time Magazine Apologizes for Suggesting "Feminist" Should Be Banned
Time Magazine has apologized for including the word "feminist" on a poll of words that should be banned in 2015. Time apparently included "feminist" in response to a growing number of celebrities, from Beyoncé to Taylor Swift, who have embraced the term. Time’s suggestion the term should be banned sparked massive protest, prompting Time’s managing editor, Nancy Gibbs, to issue an apology, saying, "While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost."
Transgender Activist Leslie Feinberg, Author of "Stone Butch Blues," Dies at 65
The pioneering transgender activist Leslie Feinberg, author of the groundbreaking novel "Stone Butch Blues," has died at the age of 65. According to an obituary by her partner and spouse, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Feinberg died at home in Syracuse, New York, after a decades-long battle with tick-borne infections, including Lyme disease. Her last words were: "Remember me as a revolutionary communist."
____________________________
207 W 25th Street, 11th Floor
New York, New York 10001 United States
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment