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The Price of Fighting Back: How Woman Faces 60 Years in Prison for the Death of Her Abusive Ex
Jurors in Connecticut are deliberating the fate of Cherelle Baldwin, a 24-year-old mother accused of killing her alleged abuser. Baldwin is charged with the 2013 killing of her ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey Brown, who Baldwin alleges had stalked and abused her. According to court documents, Brown had repeatedly threatened Baldwin, took her credit cards and money, and assaulted her during visits to see their son, who lived with Baldwin. Baldwin eventually attained a court order barring threats, harassment and assaults during visits, but just before Brown died, he sent Baldwin a series of threatening text messages. Then, according to a police affidavit based on Baldwin’s statements, Brown showed up at her house, climbed through her window and attacked her, choking her with his belt. Baldwin escaped and managed to get inside her car, but so did Brown, who again choked her. What happened next is hard for even Baldwin to remember, but when police arrived they found Baldwin on the ground with a broken leg and Brown dead in front of the car, pinned against the garage wall. Baldwin was arrested on murder charges. Baldwin has already spent nearly three years in jail. If convicted, she could spend decades in prison. We are joined by Charelle Baldwin’s mother, Cynthia Long. We’re also joined by Victoria Law, a freelance journalist whose recent article for Rewire is "Facing Years in Prison for Fleeing Abuse: Cherelle Baldwin’s Story is Far from Unique."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today in Connecticut, where jurors are deliberating the fate of Cherelle Baldwin, a 24-year-old mother accused of killing her alleged abuser. Baldwin is charged with the 2013 killing of her ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey Brown, who Baldwin alleges had stalked and abused her. According to court documents, Brown had repeatedly threatened Baldwin, took her credit cards and money, and assaulted her during visits to see their son. Baldwin eventually attained a court order barring threats, harassment and assaults during visits, but Brown continued sending Baldwin threatening text messages.
Then, according to a police affidavit based on Baldwin’s statements, Brown showed up at her house, climbed through her window and attacked her, choking her with his belt. Baldwin escaped and managed to get inside her car, but so did Brown, who again choked her. What happened next is hard for even Baldwin to remember, but when police arrived they found Baldwin on the ground with a broken leg, and Brown was dead in front of the car, pinned against the garage wall. Baldwin was arrested on murder charges.
AMY GOODMAN: Since the incident, Cherelle Baldwin has spent nearly three years in jail. After a trial in 2015 ended in a hung jury and was declared a mistrial, prosecutors moved to retry Baldwin. If convicted, she could spend decades in prison.
The case has caught the attention of domestic violence organizations nationwide, who are calling for prosecutors to drop the charges against Baldwin. Many groups have cited the case as an example of how black women are disproportionately imprisoned when they defend themselves against domestic abuse. Stacy Suh, a Bay Area activist and organizer with the domestic violence survivors advocacy group #SurvivedAndPunished tweeted a meme with Cherelle’s picture, which stated, quote, "Domestic violence exists in every community, but it is Black women who are consistently denied the right to self-defense and to survive," she said.
Well, for more, we’re joined by Cherelle Baldwin’s mother, Cynthia Long. We’re also joined by Victoria Law, a freelance journalist and author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. Her recent article for Rewire is "Facing Years in Prison for Fleeing Abuse: Cherelle Baldwin’s Story is Far from Unique."
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Cynthia Long, Cherelle Baldwin’s mother. You’ve been going to the trial of your daughter. She has already faced—she’s already served three years in jail—she faces 60 more—for murdering her ex-boyfriend. Can you talk about this case?
CYNTHIA LONG: Well, there are certain things that I can’t talk about, but there are some things I can. Cherelle, my daughter, has been in prison for over three years—well, almost three years. And I just find that it’s very unjustifiable that they keep her in there after a mistrial and not lowering her bond. You know, we went back to court to get the bond lower, and the judge refuses to do it. So, you know, we had to really ask for another trial, like we pretty much had to beg. The lawyer had to pretty much beg to get another retrial, because it took them a while to figure out should they retry her or not, or should she take a plea deal.
You know, it’s been a very difficult time for me and my family. It’s been a very hard struggle, and especially for Cherelle, because she—you know, she’s innocent. She’s innocent. She was home. She was in her own home. She was minding her own business. He had no business there. So, you know, I don’t understand why the court and the police department doesn’t understand that. There was a court order for him to stay away from her. So—
AMY GOODMAN: So, let me bring—
CYNTHIA LONG: I think that—go ahead. I’m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me bring Victoria Law into this conversation. You have been writing about this case for some time now. Lay out the whole context and the history, of the abuse and the order of protection.
VICTORIA LAW: So, Cherelle Baldwin met the man who became the father of her child, Jeffrey Brown, when she was a 19-year-old, so in 2010. They started a relationship. And unbeknownst to many family members, there was abuse in the relationship, which is not uncommon. When abuse begins in a relationship, people may minimize the abuse, they may not realize that they are being controlled or manipulated. Abuse is not necessarily walking down the street with lots of bumps and bruises. The physical assaults may only happen a couple of times, and that’s enough to intimidate people. But what Cherelle’s family has told me is that they noticed that she began pulling away a little bit more, so she wasn’t as—she wasn’t at their family gatherings as much. She often had to check with Jeffrey before she was able to make decisions. And Cherelle’s mother said that this was not like her.
Fast-forward, they had a baby boy together. And by 2013, the couple had actually split up. And domestic violence advocates will tell you that it’s—that ending the relationship is often the most dangerous time for a domestic violence survivor, because that threatens the abuser’s control, and they are more likely to lash out and try to fatally harm their ex-girlfriend or their ex-partner. And so, in 2013, she—they had split up. He had moved out, but he continued to harass her. He continued to come by and use their son as a reason to stay in contact with her and to intimidate her, to take her money, to take her phone. She finally had an order of protection against him after he showed up at her house and threw her clothes out the window and then smashed her cellphone. The police showed up. They saw what had happened. They arrested him. They gave her an order of protection. And he continued to violate this order of protection. So he was not supposed to threaten her. He was not supposed to intimidate her. He was not supposed to—he definitely was not supposed to assault her.
And on the morning of May 18, 2013, he sent a series of threatening text messages and then showed up at her house, broke into her house, tried to strangle her, tried to hit her with—hit her with his belt. And she tried to escape. She got into her car. He tried to, you know, get into the car after her. And that was when he ended up dead, and she ended up with a broken leg. And so, by the time the police arrived, this had all happened. And witnesses say that they saw him attacking her that morning.
AMY GOODMAN: And where was the child?
VICTORIA LAW: The child was still in the house.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Cynthia Long, can you talk about what you recall of Jeffrey’s behavior and what you know, or knew then, about their relationship, your daughter’s relationship with Jeffrey Brown?
CYNTHIA LONG: Well, in 2012, I noticed that Jeffrey’s behavior became a little difficult. He was very controlling of Cherelle, like she just couldn’t do anything without his permission. She couldn’t go anywhere. We had a family gathering in Miami, Florida, and we all went down, and I noticed that Cherelle was the only person missing from the gathering. And I’m like, "Where is Cherelle?" And he had her in the hotel, like, you know, she wasn’t able to have any kind of contact with us. And, you know, it was just kind of like unusual. And then he just started really acting very, very controlling, and he would stalk her. She would be at my house, and he would be stalking her, he would be calling her. And it was just kind of like weird. And, you know, she never really said that he was doing anything, but, you know, at the time, she was hiding it also, so—and that’s what abused women does. They hide things. So, Jeffrey—I don’t know—he was just so, you know, controlling, and he was determined that Cherelle was going to be with him no matter what. And, you know, this is what we saw in him. And, you know, I just feel like that if the protection order had a—did a little more for Jeffrey besides just hand him a piece of paper, you know, things would be different.
AMY GOODMAN: So, she’s been in jail for three years, was not convicted at this point. There was, though, a first trial.
VICTORIA LAW: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain, Victoria.
VICTORIA LAW: Yes. So, in early 2015, Cherelle Baldwin went to trial on first-degree murder charges. It was a six-week trial. After five days of deliberation, the jury came back and said that there was a hung jury, meaning that they could not all agree. Apparently, 11 jurors wanted to acquit her of charges, and there was one holdout. And after five days of deliberation, they were unable to budge the one holdout. The one holdout was unable to budge the other 11 jurors. So they came back to the court. The judge declared a mistrial. And at that point, the prosecutor’s office could have said, "We’re done. You know, like we’re not retrying the case." And instead, they said, "We’re going to retry this case." So Cherelle Baldwin goes back to prison, because in Connecticut women who are detained awaiting trial are sent to the state’s prison, not to a local jail. So she goes back to prison for almost another year, and now she’s on trial again.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And can you explain why her bail was set so high, a million dollars?
VICTORIA LAW: Supposedly—so, bail is set not necessarily as any sort of risk assessment, but it’s often set to supposedly ensure that people come back to court. But in Cherelle Baldwin’s case, she has family, she has a loving family, she has a son, she had a job, she had strong ties to the community. There was no need to set her bail at $1 million. This seems more punitive. And obviously her family has not been able to raise the money, so therefore she is not allowed to be at home helping to prepare for her defense, which is easier when she’s outside; unable to see her son, except on visits twice a month; and unable to be with the rest of her family.
AMY GOODMAN: According to an article published by the Connecticut Law Tribune earlier this week about Cherelle’s case, Connecticut law states, quote, "when police respond to a domestic violence call, if there is evidence to suggest some sort of altercation took place, at least one party has to be arrested. Often, police who cannot quickly discern who the instigator was will arrest both parties. On average across the country, dual arrests make up 4 to 6 percent of police responses. However, in Connecticut, dual arrests occur almost 20 percent of the time." The article went on to quote a 2007 Department of Justice study that found Connecticut’s mandatory arrest law forces officers to "throw their common sense out the window." Victoria, talk about what happens in these dual arrests.
VICTORIA LAW: So, in these kinds of cases where there is a mandatory arrest and police are required to make an arrest, they show up, and it’s up to the officer to determine who to arrest. And oftentimes if the person who is the victim of domestic violence doesn’t fit their perception of who a domestic violence victim looks like—say, she is loud; say, if she is angry; say, if she is large, black, a woman of color; if she has fought back in any way, even if the fighting back is very disproportionate—so, if she is being badly beaten or strangled, and she throws a remote control at her abuser, they might—the abuser might say, "Well, she also did this to me," and that could be a dual arrest. So, for many women, particularly women who don’t fit this preconceived notion of what a victim looks like, calling the police may very well end up with them behind bars, as well.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So were those some of the arguments that the prosecutors made in Cherelle’s case?
VICTORIA LAW: In Cherelle’s case, no. Fortunately, as far as I know, when the police showed up, they did not threaten to arrest Cherelle. But across the country, we see many women and domestic violence victims talk about how oftentimes they’re not taken seriously or they’re perceived also as being equally aggressive.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the Marissa Alexander case, became famous—
VICTORIA LAW: Mm-hmm, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin.
VICTORIA LAW: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Here was a woman who had been abused. And explain what happened to her, facing 20 years in prison, versus what happened to George Zimmerman.
VICTORIA LAW: So, Marissa Alexander was a Florida mother of three. She had just given birth to a baby nine days earlier. And she was estranged from her husband, but because they had a baby together, they were actually—he was actually at her house. And she went to the bathroom, and he looked at her phone, which is something that abusers do. They want control, so they’re looking at your phone, they’re monitoring your emails, they’re isolating you from your family. He looked at her phone and noticed that she had sent some of the baby photos to her ex-husband. And he—when she came out of the bathroom, he attacked her. He shoved her against the wall. He tried to strangle her.
She escaped and fled into the garage, and she had meant to get in her car and drive away. She got to the garage, realized she had forgotten her keys and her cellphone inside the house in her hurry to get away from him. So she had no choice but to re-enter the house. And she was in Florida. She had a registered and licensed gun. And what she said is that she fired the gun at the ceiling as a warning shot to say, "Don’t come any closer." And he did not come any closer. He left the house, and he immediately called the police and said, "My estranged wife tried to shoot me." And she was arrested and tried.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Michelle Alexander—not Marissa Alexander, but Michelle Alexander—back in 2013, author of The New Jim Crow, talking about Marissa Alexander’s case.
MICHELLE ALEXANDER: The case you just described is, you know, a stark example of the discriminatory application of the Stand Your Ground law itself. You know, here is a woman firing shots in the air to protect herself from what she believed is an abusive spouse, and she winds up getting 20 years, while George Zimmerman, you know, is released scot-free after pursuing someone based on racial stereotypes and assumptions of criminality. She received a 20-year sentence because of harsh mandatory minimum sentences, sentences that exist in Florida and in states nationwide.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Michelle Alexander talking about Marissa Alexander. Ultimately, what happened?
VICTORIA LAW: Ultimately, what happened was Marissa Alexander tried to plead Stand Your Ground, which, as we all know, George Zimmerman was successful in doing, and the judge ruled that she could not argue Stand Your Ground because he said that she could have retreated from her own house. So we see the ways in which the law is not equally applied to people in the state of Florida, or perhaps anywhere. And she ultimately was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. An appeals court overturned her conviction, and, as in the case of Cherelle Baldwin, the prosecutor could have decided not to retry her. But instead, the prosecutor, who is the same prosecutor who tried George Zimmerman, vowed to retry her and seek a 60-year sentence, if she was convicted.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Cynthia Long, before we conclude, could you tell us where Cherelle’s son is, who’s now five years old, and who’s been taking care of him, and also talk about some of the support that you’ve received from advocates of survivors of domestic abuse?
CYNTHIA LONG: At this time now, the baby is in split custody with me and the other grandmother. We’re sharing custody. So he spends five days with her and five days with me. He—lovely little child. Right now, the whole advocate people are—they’ve just been so wonderful. Holly, out of Chicago, has been excellent. There’s been a lot of support from all the domestic violence advocates around the country, even in the United Kingdom. I had some people from Australia who Facebook us, and they’re showing all their support and love for Cherelle. I’m just happy that everyone was able to hear Cherelle’s story and hear about it, because we couldn’t get any kind of support in the beginning of this, and now that everyone knows about her story, you know, we’re very grateful for all the support out there. And we want to thank the Stamford advocate, domestic crisis center, for coming to her closing argument on Thursday—Wednesday. But they’ve been so supportive, and I just want to thank everyone.
AMY GOODMAN: And does Cherelle get to see her son?
CYNTHIA LONG: Yes, I take him up there every other Sunday. Not so much during the week, but every other Sunday I take him up there. So he’s pretty—he’s fully aware who his mother is.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, now the Bridgeport court, the case is in the jury’s hands, is that right, Cynthia?
CYNTHIA LONG: Yes, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And you’re just awaiting their decision.
CYNTHIA LONG: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll certainly continue to cover this. Cynthia Long is the mother of Cherelle Baldwin, a 23-year-old Connecticut mother on trial for killing her alleged abuser. Cherelle faces 25 to 60 years in prison, if convicted. And thank you very much to Victoria Law, freelance journalist, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. Her recent article for Rewire is headlined "Facing Years in Prison for Fleeing Abuse: Cherelle Baldwin’s Story is Far from Unique." We’ll link to your article, and thanks so much.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, Adam Hochschild on Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Stay with us. ... Read More →
Fueling Fascism: The Secret History of How Texaco Supplied Oil to Fascists in Spain
While thousands of Americans fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War, some chose to back Franco’s fascist regime. The most notable was the CEO of the American oil giant Texaco. He violated U.S. law by selling Franco’s regime discounted oil on credit. Also in violation of U.S. law, the oil was transported to Spain on U.S. ships. For more on this remarkable story, we’re joined by Adam Hochschild, the author of the sweeping new history book, "Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Our guest is Adam Hochschild. His book, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Adam, I’d like to ask about Torkild Rieber, the CEO of Texaco at the time of the Spanish Civil War. As you point out in the book, he made a deal with Franco’s regime. So could you talk about that deal and what the implications of that deal came to be?
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: Well, Nermeen, he was a remarkable man who had a remarkable effect on this period—and is almost unnoticed by historians, went completely unnoticed by the foreign correspondents of the period. Here were all these correspondents. Nearly a thousand journalists reported from Spain at one time or another during the war.
AMY GOODMAN: Including Ernest Hemingway.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: Including Ernest Hemingway and everybody else you can think of. The big story for them was the bombing of Madrid. And here they were, the first European capital under heavy, sustained aerial bombardment. They looked up at those aircraft in the sky, which had been sent by Hitler, and they never stopped to think, "Whose fuel is powering those planes?" Because nationalist Spain had no oil wells. Hitler and Mussolini were sending a lot of help, but they were oil importers and not exporters, and it would have been very difficult or expensive for them to send oil to Franco.
As it happened, Franco had no problem, because Torkild Rieber, the CEO of Texaco, major American oil company, was a fascist sympathizer, who decided to back Franco, violated U.S. law by selling him oil on credit, which was against the law when you were selling anything to a country at war, violated U.S. law further by transporting the oil to Spain on American ships. The ships would—full of fuel, would leave the Texaco pipeline terminal at Port Arthur, Texas, ostensibly bound for Amsterdam or Rotterdam or Antwerp. At sea, their captains would open sealed orders redirecting them to ports in nationalist Spain. This violated U.S. law and—because that oil was not supposed to be transported on American ships when it went to a country at war. Furthermore, without telling Texaco shareholders or, as far as we can tell, even his own board of directors, Rieber gave Franco the oil at a huge discount.
And finally, he did something else which has come to light only in recent years, which was this. Being a multinational oil company, Texaco had installations, tank farms, agents, offices in ports all over the world. Rieber sent out orders to all of these places saying, "Send in immediately, as you get it, any information about oil shipments going to the Spanish Republic." This was then collated, put together by the Texaco staff and swiftly forwarded to the nationalists, where it was to be used by bomber pilots and submarine captains looking for targets. Over the course of the war, 29 oil tankers carrying oil to the Spanish Republic were sunk, captured or damaged. And in one or two cases, we can directly tie that to information supplied by Texaco. So, even though we think of General Franco’s allies as being primarily in Rome and Berlin, there was one at Texaco headquarters in the Chrysler Building in New York City who gave him a lot of help.
AMY GOODMAN: Was he ever prosecuted?
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: He got a little bit of a wrist slap from the Justice Department during the war, a $22,000 fine for selling goods on credit to a country at war. He could have been prosecuted much more severely, should have been, but President Roosevelt was very wary of getting drawn into the Spanish conflict in any way. He knew there was very strong isolationist feeling in this country. And he decided not to do anything more. And a lot of this stuff he didn’t know about—the business about the intelligence information, for example—and it’s only come out in recent years.
AMY GOODMAN: And this is very interesting about Torkild Rieber, the CEO of Texaco, in light of Jane Mayer’s new book, Dark Money, about Fred Koch, the father of the Koch brothers, who made his fortune partly on providing an oil—building an oil refinery that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: That’s right. And he also, Koch Sr., built oil installations in the Soviet Union long before the United States recognized the Soviet Union. Oil companies have always made their own foreign policy, and it’s time we recognize that.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about FDR? Can you talk more about what happened to these Americans—thousands of them go to fight in the Spanish Civil War—and what this label meant in the United States—they were called, officially, "premature anti-fascists"?
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: That’s right. FDR, you know, he was a good man. He was a good president. He was certainly someone who himself hated fascism. But he was a shrewd politician, and he knew that he had no constituency in the United States for heavy involvement in the Spanish Civil War. It’s also believed, although nobody has ever been able to prove it because it’s one of these things that was never written down, that he promised the hierarchy of the Catholic Church before the 1936 election that he would stay neutral on Spain. The church was very pro-Franco, because the Spanish Republic was very anti-clerical, and mobs had killed clergy and burned a lot of churches. So, he stayed hands-off.
And we should remember, though, that it was not a matter of should the U.S. send military aid to the Spanish Republic. That’s not what they were asking for. They weren’t asking for the United States to send in the battleships or anything. They were simply asking for the right to purchase arms from the Western democracies, from the United States, Britain and France. And Republican Spain had the money to do so, because they had the world’s fourth-largest gold reserves. And all of the major democracies—the U.S., Britain and France—essentially shut their doors and said no arms purchases. The only place that would sell them arms was Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union.
So, this was Roosevelt’s policy throughout his presidency. In early 1939, just before the war ended, he said in a Cabinet meeting, "We’ve made a grave mistake." He realized at that point, you know, that fascism was continuing to rise and expand in Europe. And—
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that the defeat of—if Franco had been defeated, that that could have preempted the rise of Mussolini and Hitler?
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: I don’t think so, because Mussolini and Hitler were both already entrenched in power at the time that the Spanish Civil War began. And I think Hitler always, above all, was interested in expanding eastward. He had his sights set on showing Russia who was boss, on taking over Eastern Europe, on grabbing the Balkan and Caspian oil fields. Whatever happened in Spain wouldn’t have prevented him from doing that.
But I do think that if the Spanish Republic had won the war, Spain, A, would not have had to have lived under a very harsh dictatorship for 36 years—36 years of no free press, no free education, no elections, a dictatorship, routine torture. The Spanish people would have been spared that. And had the Republic won the civil war, Hitler would not have had a de facto ally in Spain in World War II. During World War II, General Franco gave Hitler a base on Spain’s Atlantic coast, where there were 21 German attack submarines that attacked convoys in the North Atlantic. Lots of American sailors lost their lives as a result of that. He supplied Hitler with a steady stream of strategic minerals. And he encouraged 45,000 volunteers to join Hitler’s army.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, another issue that I want to ask you about that you raise in your book has to do with what you say is the failure of a number of foreign correspondents who were covering the war. You say that they weren’t asking the right questions, that they omitted a lot of information, and that one of the exceptions to that was Virginia Cowles, who’s not as well known as a number of other reporters who were covering the war—Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, etc.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: Right. Cowles, I think, was the best journalist writing in English from Spain, almost totally forgotten today, unjustly so, because her book about that time is still a very lively read today. She was also working there at a time when it was very hard for women to work as foreign correspondents. She played the role of the helpless feminine ingénue, traipsing in in high heels and getting people to carry her suitcases and pretending that she didn’t really know what was going on. But she noticed everything. She wrote beautifully. And she was one of the very few—and she was, incidentally, 26 years old when she got to Spain, had never gone to college.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to a clip of the documentary Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War, featuring an actor reading the words Virginia Cowles wrote soon after the bombing of Guernica in 1937.
VIRGINIA COWLES: [read by an actor] When I arrived, a press officer asked if I had been subjected to the Guernica propaganda, declaring that everyone knew that Guernica was not bombed by the whites, but burned by the reds.
Guernica was a lonely chaos of timber and brick. One old man was inside an apartment house that had four sides to it, but an interior that was only a sea of bricks. I asked him if he had been in Guernica during the destruction. He nodded his head and declared that the sky had been black with planes. "Aviones," he said, "italianos y alemanes." The press officer turned pale. "Guernica was burned," he contradicted. The old man stuck to his point, insisting that after a four-hour bombardment, there was little left to burn. The press officer moved me away. "He’s a red," he said.
When later in the day we ran into two staff officers, he brought the subject up. "Guernica is full of reds," he said. "They all try to tell us it was bombed, not burned." "Of course, it was bombed," said one of the officers. "We bombed it and bombed it and bombed it. And bueno, why not?" The press officer never mentioned Guernica again.
AMY GOODMAN: That was from Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War, featuring an actor reading the words of Virginia Cowles. Virginia Cowles, Martha Gellhorn—women—were leading reporters then.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: They were. Very few besides those two. Josephine Herbst, the novelist, was also in Spain at that time. One of my favorite characters in this book was a young woman who was not a correspondent but was a 19-year-old honeymooner who found herself in Spain two months after the war began, Lois Orr of Louisville, Kentucky, who lived through a part of that experience that seldom gets written about, which is the social revolution that took place in Spain’s northeast in the first eight or 10 months of the war, where workers took over factories, waiters took over restaurants, peasants took over these huge estates, railway locomotive engineers took over the transportation system. It was an extraordinary moment. The foreign correspondents largely ignored it, although Virginia Cowles at least noticed that the hotel where she was staying seemed to be being run by its busboys and elevator operators. Lois Orr observed the whole thing, wrote about it in a remarkable series of letters home.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to continue this conversation after the show and post it online at democracynow.org, including asking you your thoughts on Donald Trump and his comments about fascism. Spain in Our Hearts is the name of Adam Hochschild’s new book. He teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley. Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.
And that does it for our broadcast. We’re beginning our 100-city tour next week. Go to democracynow.org. ... Read More →
Spain in Our Hearts: Adam Hochschild's New Book Gives Life to the Americans Who Fought Fascism
As Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has catapulted the issue of fascism into the mainstream U.S. political realm, we turn to best-selling author Adam Hochschild, who has just written a remarkable, sweeping history of the Spanish Civil War. The book is called "Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939." It tells the story of how the Spanish Civil War captivated the world with volunteers flooding to Spain to bolster the democratic government’s efforts to stave off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Some 2,800 Americans went to Spain as volunteers in the fight against fascism, and nearly a quarter of them perished there. The Americans were known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. After two-and-a-half years of fighting, the fascists were able to declare victory on April 1, 1939. World War II began shortly afterward. Adam Hochschild is the author of eight books, including "King Leopold’s Ghost," "To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918” and now "Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We spend the remainder of the hour with best-selling author Adam Hochschild, who has just written a remarkable, sweeping history of the Spanish Civil War told through a cast of a dozen characters, including Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. The book is called Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. The book tells the story of how the Spanish Civil War captivated the world, with volunteers flooding to Spain to bolster the democratic government’s efforts to stave off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Some 2,800 Americans went to Spain as volunteers in the fight against fascism, and nearly a quarter of them perished there. The Americans were known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. After two-and-a-half years of fighting, the fascists were able to declare victory on April 1st, 1939. World War II began shortly afterwards.
Earlier this month, Delmer Berg, the last known surviving veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, died in his home in California at the age of 100. Berg was also a longtime labor organizer who worked with the United Farm Workers. He recalled his decision to fight in Spain in an interview in 2013.
DELMER BERG: I was very affected by the fascist attempt to take over in Spain. I can tell you why: I just didn’t like the idea. And that was my political understanding: I didn’t like what them SOBs were doing. So, I bought out of the Army. Then I didn’t know how to get to Spain, 'til one day I was going to work in Hollywood as a dishwasher in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and I see on the side of a building: "Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade." I turned the corner, went up there, told them, ’I want to go to Spain.'"
AMY GOODMAN: Most of the people Adam Hochschild profiles in his new book fought against fascism and in defense of democracy. But some supported Franco, including the CEO of Texaco, who supplied the fascists with fuel for their military exploits.
We’ll talk about this and more with Adam Hochschild, now in our studio. He teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, co-founded Mother Jones magazine. He’s the author of eight books, including King Leopold’s Ghost and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. His new book, just out, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: Great to be with you.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you, Adam. Start off with why you decided—I mean, I don’t know if you knew how relevant fascism would become in this election year, specifically being addressed by some of the candidates, but before we go to that, why you decided to write this book.
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: I had always been interested in the Spanish Civil War. When I was in my twenties, one of my first jobs was as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, and, as it happened, there were two other reporters on the newspaper, each 30 or 40 years older than me, who were veterans of the American—of the Spanish Civil War. They were Americans who had volunteered to fight there. And when times were slow in the newsroom, I used to ask them about their experiences. Later, of course, I read Ernest Hemingway, I read George Orwell, visited Spain, grew more fascinated by the war and, a few years ago, finally decided, well, it’s time to write a book about this. And I discovered all kinds of things that—some of which I think had not been well known before. I had just a fascinating time doing it.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what about the title of your book, Spain in Our Hearts?
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: It comes from a quotation from Albert Camus, which I should know by heart by now but don’t. But it goes something like—he said it some nine or 10 years after the war: "Men of my generation have always had Spain in our hearts. There we learned that you could be right but still be defeated, that courage was not its own reward." And it goes on like that.
AMY GOODMAN: So, thousands of Americans went to Spain to fight. Explain who they were—this is before World War II—why they did it. And do you think this could have stopped World War II and the rise of Mussolini and Hitler?
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: Big question. Roll back the clock for a moment to the mid-1930s. Fascism is on the rise everywhere. Mussolini has just conquered Ethiopia. Hitler is making noises about taking over Eastern Europe. He clearly has his eyes set on capturing a big slice of Russia. This is an aggressive movement. All of a sudden, in Western Europe, in a democracy, Spain, which had had an elected government since 1931, there is a rising of right-wing generals, from whom a leader quickly emerges, a tough-talking young general, Francisco Franco. And they try to take over the country. And they clearly want to impose a regime that will suppress all trappings of democracy—free trade union, free press, none of that. And it was very clear who their friends were, because immediately Hitler and Mussolini began sending large quantities of help—airplanes, pilots, tanks, tank drivers, artillery, military advisers, equipment of all kinds. And Mussolini sent 80,000 ground troops, as well. So, from all over the world, people began coming to Spain as volunteers to fight to defend the republic.
From the United States, some 2,800 Americans went, before long—the largest number of Americans who have ever gone to fight in somebody else’s civil war. And I think they went, above all, because of the danger of fascism. One young New Yorker, Maury Colow, said later, "For us, it was never about Franco. It was always about Hitler." Another young American, Hyman Katz, who was actually a 23-year-old rabbi, wrote to his mother from Spain shortly before he was killed, saying if he hadn’t come to Spain, he said, "for the rest of my life, I never could have forgiven myself for not waking up when the alarm clock rang."
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, in fact, close to half of all the American volunteers were Jewish. Could you explain what you think accounts for that?
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: A think a couple of things. Above all, the fact that Hitler was rapidly rising. He had come to power in Germany in 1933, was making no secret that life was going to be very, very tough for the Jews. The full extent of the Holocaust, of course, nobody could imagine at that time, but it was clear terrible things were coming. Jews were also heavily overrepresented in the left wing in the United States. And the organization of most of these volunteers who went to Spain was orchestrated by the Communist Party, in this country and in the other countries the volunteers came from. Not all of them, though, were communists. Many came from other strains of the left, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to a few of them. I want to turn to another veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the late Moe Fishman. I spoke to him in our firehouse studio in 2007.
MOE FISHMAN: The International Brigade, of which we were a part, consisted of about 40,000 to 45,000 volunteers from 52 countries who came to the aid of the Spanish Republic, and I want to emphasize "came to the aid of." It was the Spanish Republic and their people who fought this war and deserve the major credit for the big fight that they put up, which gave the democracies a two-and-a-half-year window of opportunity to change from a policy of appeasing fascism, led by Chamberlain of Britain and subscribed to by Roosevelt, to one of actively fighting fascism. If they had actively fought fascism in 1936-’39, we would have stopped Hitler, and there would have been no World War II.
AMY GOODMAN: How would you have stopped Hitler? This was Spain. This was Franco. How would you have stopped Hitler?
MOE FISHMAN: Well, Hitler had been appeased by—they permitted him to re-arm Germany, and it was done with the finances of both Britain and the United States, the financiers—financed it on credit—that permitted Hitler to march into Austria. And then Spain came along, and they were letting him do as he felt in Spain with this policy of appeasement. If they had turned to fighting fascism and opposing what he was doing, Hitler would not have attempted a two-front war, which he was trying like mad to avoid. He would not have been armed as much as he became armed, when he conquered one country after another and built a war machine that almost succeeded in conquering the world. And he would have been stopped if there had been a conflict, and there might have been. He might have been rash enough to start something there. He would have had a two-front war to confront, and it would have been a minor kind of war. It would not have been World War II, where fascism almost won—and 60 million dead and destruction beyond compare. And, no, there would have been no Holocaust, if Hitler had been stopped in Spain in 1936-’39.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Abraham Lincoln Brigade veteran Moe Fishman speaking in April of 2007. He died four months later at the age of 92. That same year, I interviewed another veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Clarence Kailin, in Madison, Wisconsin.
CLARENCE KAILIN: We were fighting against fascism. And we were political enough to understand that, so it wasn’t for an adventure, and it wasn’t for money. It was—it was fighting against Italy and Italian fascism and German Nazism, is what it was about. And we felt that if we lost the war, that World War II was pretty much inevitable, which is what happened. And it happened because Britain and France and the United States refused to give us any help at all. And so, we fought barehanded at times.
AMY GOODMAN: That is—was Clarence Kailin speaking in 2007. I talked to him in Madison, Wisconsin. He died two years later at the age of 95. Adam Hochschild?
ADAM HOCHSCHILD: A moving story about Clarence Kailin. When he enlisted to fight in Spain, he went to Spain together with a schoolmate of his from Wisconsin, a man named John Cookson. Cookson, who was a physics instructor at the University of Wisconsin, was killed, one of the last Americans killed in Spain in the late summer of 1938, and was buried there. And Cookson’s grave is the only known grave of an international volunteer in Spain that survived destruction under Franco and his nationalists during the long period of Franco’s rule. It was hidden by Spanish villagers behind some bushes in a little town called Marsa. It was moved at one point, so I’m not sure the gravestone is actually where the body is right now. But it was kept, tended, flowers put there, carefully hidden for decades afterwards. Clarence Kailin went back several times in later years to visit his friend’s grave and asked that when he died, he be buried next to it. So, today, you can find these two gravestones side by side.
AMY GOODMAN: When Clarence talked about John Cookson, he wept. Adam Hochschild is our guest. His book is Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. When we come back from break, we will ask him about the CEO of Texaco. What did Texaco have to do with the rise of fascism? Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Jarama Valley" by Woody Guthrie. Jarama Valley, the first big battle of the Spanish Civil War that Americans participated in. Again, more than 2,700 Americans went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. ... Read More →
Headlines:Dramatic Sea Level Rise Could Flood Coastal Cities by 2100Coastal cities including New York, London, Shanghai and Hong Kong could be flooded before the end of the century. The dramatic new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, predicts global warming could melt the West Antarctic ice sheet within decades—far faster than previously predicted. The collapse of this sheet, combined with ice melting in other regions, could cause seas to rise up to six feet by 2100. The study’s authors, Robert DeConto of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and David Pollard of Pennsylvania State University, also found the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet is not yet inevitable, but that the emission reduction plans outlined in the 2015 Paris climate deal are far too weak to stop the sheet from melting.
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Climate Change
Global Warming
Trump: Women Should Be "Punished" for Abortions, If Procedure Banned
In news from the campaign trail, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has sparked widespread outrage by saying women should be "punished" for having abortions if the procedure were to become illegal. Donald Trump has advocated for banning abortions. This is Donald Trump speaking to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews during a town hall aired Wednesday night.
Chris Matthews: "Should abortion be punished?"
Donald Trump: "Well, people in certain parts of the Republican Party and conservative Republicans would say, yes, they should be punished."
Chris Matthews: "How about you?"
Donald Trump: "I would say that it’s a very serious problem. And it’s a problem that we have to decide on."
Chris Matthews: "Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no, as a principle?"
Donald Trump: "The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment."
Chris Matthews: "For the woman?"
Donald Trump: "Yeah, there has to be some form."
Chris Matthews: "Ten cents? Ten years? What?"
Donald Trump: "Let me just tell you—I don’t know. That I don’t know. That I don’t know."
Chris Matthews: "Why not?"
Donald Trump: "I don’t know."
Chris Matthews: "You take positions on everything else."
Donald Trump: "Because I don’t want to—I—frankly, I do take positions on everything else. It’s a very complicated position."
The comments drew immediate backlash from other presidential hopefuls, an array of women’s groups and even some anti-choice groups. NARAL, the nation’s oldest pro-choice group, called the statement "horrifying." The anti-choice group March for Life said Donald Trump was "completely out of touch with the pro-life movement." All the other presidential candidates responded to Trump’s statements. Ohio Governor John Kasich told MSNBC, "Of course, women shouldn’t be punished for having an abortion." Texas Senator Ted Cruz did not reject the proposal, but said Trump would "say anything just to get attention." On the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, "What he said today is among the most dangerous and outrageous statements that I’ve heard anybody running for president say in a really long time." Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said, "To punish a woman for having an abortion is beyond comprehension." Following the backlash, Donald Trump attempted to walk back his comments by saying that if abortions are banned, then it should be doctors who perform the procedure who should be prosecuted, not the patients.
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Abortion
Donald Trump
2016 Election
Wisconsin: Teenager Groped, Pepper-Sprayed at Trump Rally
Trump’s comments come only one day after a 15-year-old girl was pepper-sprayed and sexually assaulted during protests outside a Donald Trump rally in Janesville, Wisconsin. The teenager was holding a sign reading, "Damn, Donald, back at it again with the white supremacy." She was surrounded by Trump supporters, some chanting, "All lives matter." She says she was groped by a man in the crowd. A video then shows her being pepper-sprayed by another person when she confronted her alleged attacker. This comes as Donald Trump faces increasing criticism that he permits violence at his rallies. Trump has said he would pay the legal fees of his supporters charged with attacking protesters.
Minneapolis: Protests Erupt After No Charges for Cops Who Killed Jamar Clark
In Minneapolis, hundreds of people took to the streets Wednesday night after Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced no charges will be filed against the two Minneapolis police officers involved in the shooting death last fall of Jamar Clark, an unarmed 24-year-old African American. Clark was shot in the head after a scuffle with officers who responded to a report of an assault. In announcing the decision, the prosecutor rejected claims by multiple witnesses that Clark was shot while handcuffed. Clark’s death sparked a series of protests in Minneapolis, including a weeks-long occupation outside the 4th Police Precinct. On Wednesday, hundreds gathered to protest the lack of charges against the officers.
Protesters: "I am a revolutionary! I am a revolutionary!"
Jamar Clark’s family also spoke out against the lack of charges and rejected prosecutor Freeman’s claims that Clark placed his hand on an officer’s gun during the scuffle. This is Jamar’s cousin, Cameron, saying Freeman has blood on his hands.
Cameron Clark: "There’s blood on Mike Freeman’s hands. I can’t control what the city—we’ve been [inaudible] for four months. We’re tired of this. And ya’ll supposed to be protecting and serving. Ya’ll are not protecting. Ya’ll is the biggest gang. Ya’ll are killing us. And ya’ll get to get away with it."
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Police Brutality
In Victory for Health Advocates, FDA Updates Label for Abortion Pill
In a victory for public health and reproductive rights advocates, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved new labeling for the most widely used abortion drug, mifepristone. The labeling change says women can use the drug further into a pregnancy, with fewer visits to a doctor and at a lower dosage. The change replaces restrictions that the medical establishment had long considered outdated and deals a blow to states where anti-choice advocates had been trying to use the outdated FDAlabel to place restrictions on women’s use of the drug.
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Abortion
Pentagon Proposes Troop and Tank Buildup in Eastern Europe
The Pentagon has drafted plans deploy U.S. troops and tanks full time along NATO’s eastern border, in what would be the first such deployment since the end of the Cold War. The proposal is part of a broader U.S. military escalation in Eastern Europe, amid increasing tensions between the U.S. and Russia.
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Pentagon
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DOJ and DOD Have Spent $86M on Aircraft That Has Never Flown
Meanwhile, a new report by the Justice Department inspector general reveals the Defense Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration have spent more than $86 million on an aircraft that has never once actually flown in Afghanistan. As of March, the aircraft was still inoperable.
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Pentagon
Afghanistan
French President Hollande Ditches Controversial Constitution Changes
French President François Hollande has abandoned controversial plans to change the constitution to install a permanent state of emergency and to strip people of their French citizenship if they are convicted of terrorism. Hollande had proposed the constitutional amendments in the wake of the November Paris attacks, which killed 130 people. The proposals inspired widespread opposition across the political spectrum. French human rights activists are now organizing to oppose proposed laws to widen mass surveillance.
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France
German Historian Says AP Cooperated with Nazi Regime
A German historian has revealed the Associated Press cooperated with the Nazi regime in the 1930s and at times supplied U.S. outlets Nazi propaganda billed as news stories. The revelations are based on archival materials unearthed by historian Harriet Scharnberg. The documents show the AP signed onto a law promising not to publish anything to "weaken" the regime. Under the law, the AP also hired reporters who worked for the Nazi propaganda division, including a photographer whose photos were personally selected by Hitler. The Associated Press says it "rejects the suggestion that it collaborated with the Nazi regime at any time."
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Journalism
Germany
FBI, DOJ Launch Probe of Unaoil, After Exposé Shows Global Corruption
The FBI, the Department of Justice and British and Australian authorities have launched a joint investigation into the Moroccan company Unaoil, which brokers contracts between governments and international oil service giants. This comes after The Huffington Post and Australia’s Fairfax Media published a multi-part exposé based on thousands of leaked documents showing how Unaoil paid million-dollar bribes to government officials in Iraq, Libya, Kazakhstan, Syria, Tunisia and other countries to broker contracts for some of the world’s largest companies, including Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR. The exposé also shows how U.S. military contractor Honeywell colluded to conceal bribes in Iraq contracts. Reporters are calling it the biggest leak of files in the history of the oil industry.
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FBI
Natural Gas & Oil Drilling
Iraq
Libya
Syria
Tunisia
Arizona: Protesters Block Gov. Office to Oppose Anti-Immigrant Bill
In Arizona, five people were arrested during a protest outside Arizona Governor Doug Ducey’s office demanding he veto House Bill 2451—the first in a series of anti-immigrant bills to reach his desk. Four protesters locked themselves together to block the entrance to Governor Ducey’s office. This is protestor Maria Castro.
Maria Castro: "I’m willing to do whatever it takes for my community. It’s important for us to make our voice heard. The state of Arizona doesn’t care about our vote. They don’t care about democracy. This is the only way for us to be heard in the state of Arizona."
During the protest, capitol police also arrested Carlos García, the executive director of Puente Arizona, although he was not part of the lockdown and was off to the side doing media interviews.
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Arizona
Immigrant Rights
Harvard to Install Plaque Acknowledging Legacy of Slavery on Campus
And the president of Harvard University, Drew Faust, has announced she will install a plaque to commemorate four enslaved people who lived and worked at Wadsworth House, the one-time home of Harvard presidents. In an article for The Harvard Crimson, Faust wrote, "Slavery is an aspect of Harvard’s past that has rarely been acknowledged or invoked. ... But Harvard was directly complicit in America’s system of racial bondage from the College’s earliest days."
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Slavery
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"North Carolina: Flush Your Bathroom Bill Down the Toilet" by Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan
Opponents call it "the Bathroom Bill." In a special session last week, the North Carolina state legislature passed HB2, officially called the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act. Gov. Pat McCrory signed the law that night. The new law denies transgender people use of the bathroom, changing room or locker room that matches their gender identity. Resistance to the bill is fierce, and growing daily.
HB2 was rushed into law in response to the expansion of the anti-discrimination ordinance in Charlotte, North Carolina, passed just over a month ago. The city law added protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. The state law bans local governments from making any such accommodation, rendering Charlotte’s inclusive ordinance illegal. Similar bills have been put forth in states "from Washington state to Virginia (and everywhere in-between)," writes Chase Strangio, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.
"The larger context in which these laws are playing out is deeply disturbing," Strangio told us on the "Democracy Now!" news hour. "The North Carolina law is almost a greatest hits of all of the terrible things we’ve seen in the almost 200 bills that have been introduced targeting LGBT people this year."
The ACLU has filed suit challenging the constitutionality of HB2. "You pass an unconstitutional law Wednesday night, we’re going to sue you on Monday morning," Strangio said. We spoke with one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit, Payton McGarry, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro — the site of the legendary Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins against segregation in 1960.
Of the immediate impact on his life, McGarry said, "It’s requiring me to use the female restroom ... this is distressing because I used the female restroom until it was not feasible for me to, until I was getting pushed, shoved, slapped, screamed at every time I went into a female bathroom." Strangio concurred: "It means that trans people are now completely unable to participate in public life, because trans people have no idea where they’re supposed to go to the bathroom."
The bathroom ban is a symptom of systemic, institutionalized discrimination against transgender people. Last year, more transgender people were murdered in the United States than in any previous year. In particular, Chad Griffin, president of Human Rights Campaign, writes, "transgender women of color are facing an epidemic of violence that occurs at the intersections of racism, sexism and transphobia." A survey of 6,450 people in the U.S. who identify as transgender, conducted by the National LGBTQ Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality, found that respondents were four times more likely to live in poverty than the average American. A stunning 41 percent had attempted suicide.
As HB2 became law, Charlotte marked the one-year anniversary of the suicide of Blake Brockington, the first transgender high school homecoming king in North Carolina. In a video shot before his death, 18-year-old Brockington said, "I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, in a Southern Baptist home. I’ve always been kind of different, and it was always a bad thing in my family. ... And it’s been really hard. High school has been really hard." On being crowned homecoming king, he said, "It made me feel like, for once, I could just be ... a normal teenage boy just doing normal teenage guy things, like being homecoming king."
North Carolina’s attorney general, Roy Cooper, who is running for governor against Pat McCrory, announced he would not defend the new law in court. More than 90 major corporate CEOs, including those from Apple, Google, Facebook, Marriott International and Charlotte-based Bank of America, have signed a letter to Gov. McCrory saying: "We are disappointed in your decision to sign this discriminatory legislation into law. The business community, by and large, has consistently communicated to lawmakers at every level that such laws are bad for our employees and bad for business." The NBA said it may pull its 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte. Facing comparable pressure in Georgia, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed a similar bill this week.
Payton McGarry sees hope in the reaction, both on his own campus and around the country: "This is really bringing people together and making people realize that this is a threat to our movement to accept each other and our movement to love each other."
Let’s celebrate love, acceptance and equality. Take American politics out of the toilet.WORK WITH DN!
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