Thursday, April 14, 2016

Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Thursday, April 14, 2016

Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Thursday, April 14, 2016
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As Clinton Backs Closer U.S.-Israel Ties, Sanders Criticizes Settlements & 2014 Assault on Gaza
As Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders prepare for tonight’s debate in Brooklyn, one issue expected to come up is the Israel-Palestine conflict. New York state, which holds its primary on Tuesday, is home to the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel. Sanders made headlines recently when he mistakenly told the New York Daily News editorial board that 10,000 civilians died in Israel’s assault on Gaza. Sanders said, "I don’t remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?" According to the United Nations, the actual civilian death toll was at least 1,473. Last week, former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, who now serves in the Israeli Knesset, said Bernie Sanders owes Israel an apology. Oren accused Sanders of a blood libel. A blood libel is a false, centuries-old allegation that Jews were killing children to use their blood in religious rituals. During a recent CNN interview, Sanders described Israel’s response in Gaza as "disproportionate." Clinton defended Israel’s actions, saying, "When you are being attacked, with rockets raining down on your people, and your soldiers are under attack, you have to respond."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re on the road at Stanford University in California. We’re on a 100-city tour marking Democracy Now!'s 20th anniversary. Today we will be at Pitzer College at noon, and then tonight we'll be in Los Angeles. Check our website at democracynow.org.
As Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders prepare for tonight’s debate in Brooklyn, one issue expected to come up is the Israel-Palestine conflict. New York state, which votes on Tuesday, is home to the largest Jewish population in the world outside Israel. Much of the population is concentrated in Brooklyn. Bernie Sanders made headlines recently when he mistakenly told the New York Daily News editorial board 10,000 civilians died in Israel’s assault on Gaza. Sanders said, quote, "I don’t remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?" he asked. According to the United Nations, the actual civilian death toll was at least 1,473 people in Gaza at that time. Last week, former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, who now serves in the Israeli Knesset, said Bernie Sanders owes Israel an apology. Oren accused Sanders of a blood libel, which is a false, centuries-old allegation that Jews were killing children to use their blood in religious rituals. On Sunday, Senator Sanders appeared on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Was Israel’s response disproportionate? I think it was. All right, Israel has a 100 percent—and no one will fight for that principle more strongly than I will—has the right to live in freedom, independently and in security, without having to be subjected to terrorist attacks. But I think that we will not succeed to ever bring peace into that region unless we also treat the Palestinians with dignity and respect. And that is my view. And—
JAKE TAPPER: It is interesting, you will permit me to say, that the first Jew in American history to win a delegate, much less a primary, is taking this position with Israel that is usually in American politics—and I’m not criticizing you for it—but is usually in American politics everyone just supports Israel, whatever Israel wants to do. You’re taking a more critical position. You—
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: I’m taking a more balanced position.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senator Sanders on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, who then asked Hillary Clinton to respond in a separate interview.
JAKE TAPPER: Senator Sanders told me that Israel’s response in Gaza was disproportionate—that was his word—leading to an unnecessary loss of innocent life. You told The Atlantic in 2014 that, quote, "Israel did what it had to do to respond to the attacks." What do you make of Senator Sanders’ take on it, that it was disproportionate?
HILLARY CLINTON: Well, he’ll have to speak for himself, but—
JAKE TAPPER: You don’t agree, though?
HILLARY CLINTON: Well, I agree with what I said, which is, when you are being attacked, with rockets raining down on your people, and your soldiers are under attack, you have to respond. And I think that what I learned when I negotiated the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in 2012 is that Hamas provokes Israel. They often pretend to have people in civilian garb acting as though they are civilians, who are Hamas fighters. And it’s a very difficult undertaking for Israel to target those who are targeting them. And I think Israel has had to defend itself. It has a right to defend itself. It did not go seeking this. This was, you know, promoted by Hamas. And I support Israel’s right of self-defense.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Hillary Clinton speaking on CNN Sunday. The network will host tonight’s debate in Brooklyn. To talk more about the Israel-Palestine conflict and the 2016 election, we’re joined by Joel Beinin. He is professor of Middle East history here at Stanford University, the former director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo. He’s author of several books, most recently, Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
Professor Beinin, welcome back to Democracy Now!
JOEL BEININ: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the clips that we just heard of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton?
JOEL BEININ: Bernie has been evolving. If we remember the summer of Israel’s assault on Gaza, when he tried to shout down people in a town meeting who asked him to be more critical of Israel, he was toeing the Democratic Party line. He has now backed off from that. He wants to be more balanced. He has appointed Simone Zimmerman as his Jewish community outreach coordinator. She recently wrote an op-ed in Haaretz, the leading liberal daily of Israel, saying that we should talk about boycott, divestment and sanctions; very friendly to Jewish Voice for Peace. A lot of what he’s saying is still a good bit away from where I think he should be. But compared to Hillary Clinton, who pretty much parrots the Likud line, he’s in a different place.
AMY GOODMAN: And Hillary Clinton right now, where she stands, and your view on that, on the Israel-Palestine conflict?
JOEL BEININ: She’s awful. I mean, you heard in the clip, "Israel didn’t go looking for this." Well, that’s not the historical record. Israel in fact provoked Hamas into the firing of the rockets. It’s not the first time that Israel has provoked Hamas into firing rockets after a period of relative quiet. The testimony of Israeli soldiers who gave evidence to breaking the silence say that Israel used an insane amount of violence and firepower in invading Gaza, and that the levels of destruction of civilian infrastructure was insane. That’s very different than what Hillary Clinton is saying.
AMY GOODMAN: You wrote a letter to Senator Sanders?
JOEL BEININ: Yes. What I tried to do was to say, "OK, great that you’re against the influence of billionaires in American politics. You talk primarily about domestic politics, and I agree with all of that. But there’s also a very pernicious influence of billionaires in foreign policy, and perhaps nowhere more so than Israel-Palestine." Sheldon Adelson, the Adelson primary, all the Republican candidates traipsed to Las Vegas to get his endorsement. And on the Democratic side, Haim Saban is a huge contributor both to Hillary Clinton’s current campaign and to past campaigns of Bill Clinton and to the Clinton Foundation. And both of them are single-issue people. They care only about Israel. Haim Saban said he’s prepared to spend whatever it takes to get Hillary Clinton elected president. And the policies that Hillary Clinton advocates, as we heard in the clip, reflect Haim Saban’s views.
AMY GOODMAN: In her speech to AIPAC last month, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said the U.S. should help Israel maintain its, quote, "qualitative military edge."
HILLARY CLINTON: As president, I will make a firm commitment to ensure Israel maintains its qualitative military edge. The United States should provide Israel with the most sophisticated defense technology, so it can deter and stop any threats. ... One of the first things I’ll do in office is invite the Israeli prime minister to visit the White House. And I will send a delegation from the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs to Israel for early consultations.
AMY GOODMAN: Democratic candidate Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was the only top candidate to skip the AIPAC conference last month. He did not—he did address the issue on the campaign trail in Utah, calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Peace will mean ending what amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory, establishing mutually agreed-upon borders, and pulling back settlements in the West Bank, just as Israel did in Gaza, once considered an unthinkable move on Israel’s part. And that is why I join much of the international community, including the U.S. State Department and the European Union, in voicing my concern that Israel’s recent expropriation of an additional 579 acres of land in the West Bank undermines the peace process and, ultimately, Israeli security, as well. It is absurd for elements within the Netanyahu government to suggest that building more settlements in the West Bank is the appropriate response to the most recent violence. It is also not acceptable that the Netanyahu government decided to withhold hundreds of millions of shekels in tax revenue from the Palestinians, which it is supposed to collect on their behalf.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Bernie Sanders. Professor Joel Beinin, commenting on both candidates.
JOEL BEININ: So, Hillary Clinton was giving you the standard cant. Nobody says Israel has the most powerful military between Morocco and Pakistan. They really don’t need any more armaments. They have 200 nuclear weapons and so on. And moreover, yes, there have been terrorist attacks against Israel. None of them, altogether, represent anything remotely resembling an existential threat to Israel. They’re unfortunate. It’s a tragic loss of civilian life when that happens. But from a security point of view, it’s not a big deal. On the other hand, Israel has aggressively attacked its neighbors in 1956, in 1967, in 1982. On balance, Israel has been the aggressor for most of its historical existence. Hillary, I don’t know if she knows the history, doesn’t care about the history. She says what candidates need to say in order to get elected. Bernie Sanders is inching his way towards a more reasonable position. He is pointing out that Israel is expanding settlements. He mentioned in the interview with the New York Daily News that the settlements are actually illegal, although he wasn’t clear that every single one of them is illegal according to international law. And that’s not a matter of who thinks international law means what. But he’s moving along. It’s clear that the millennials who support him 85 to 15 are more critical of Israel, and he’s getting closer to their views.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Beinin, you urged Sanders in your letter to him to take action against U.S. arms sales to countries in the region, among them Israel, but also Saudi Arabia, which has been enjoying some of the largest arms sales in the—in U.S. history, and, as well, Egypt. Can you talk about why this is so important?
JOEL BEININ: It’s important because it’s the sale of U.S. arms that often fuels conflicts. If the United States didn’t sell any arms to just those three countries, plus the other Gulf Cooperation Councils, the Arab oil monarchies, then all of those countries would have to deal with each other in a more reasonable, diplomatic way. Those arms sales don’t, in fact, contribute to anybody’s defense. Saudi Arabia is essentially incapable of using the American weaponry that it buys. There’s always American advisers to help them do it. And when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the Saudis couldn’t repel that invasion on their own, even though they had tons of military hardware. Those sales are a boon to American military industry. So, basically, what’s happening is American taxpayers are subsidizing the profits of the Lockheed, Douglas—McDonnell Douglas, Northrop Grumman and so on, and those are the real Israel lobby. They are the ones who want that grant of $3 billion-plus a year to go to Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about both aid to Israel and to Egypt, some of the largest recipients of aid in the world, and how much of that aid, of those billions of dollars, go to, in the end, U.S. arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin.
JOEL BEININ: So, Israel gets a little bit over $3 billion officially, grant in aid, military aid. Egypt gets now, let’s say, somewhere between $2.1 [billion] and $2.3 billion. That proportion was set up following the 1979 Arab—Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, and it’s remained fixed since then. Those are gifts. Israel gets the money every quarter, in advance, not tied to any project. Some proportion of that money can be spent on—inside Israel, some of it for Israeli equipment, some of it for equipment that Israel manufactures for itself and for the United States military. Most of it is spent in the United States. In the case of Egypt, every penny is spent in the United States for equipment supplied by American arms manufacturers.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s relationship with Mubarak, the toppled despot of Egypt?
JOEL BEININ: Her relationship with Mubarak exemplifies her hawkish status quo approach, not only to the Middle East, but yesterday you were talking about Honduras. She had a similar view there. The entire population of Egypt was rising up against Mubarak, and she says that she believes the Mubarak regime is stable. She’s tone deaf when it comes to the democratic aspirations not only of the Egyptian people, but certainly also to the Palestinian people.
AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Clinton said in 2009, "I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family."
JOEL BEININ: Well, I’m sure they were. Probably not anymore. Yeah, why not? The president of Egypt, yeah, would be friends with the family of a secretary of state and former president. The American government has done a great deal to keep the Mubarak family in power for 31 years, so they would be friends.
AMY GOODMAN: In a nutshell, though we’d like to have you back to talk more extensively about your new book, Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, talk about the significance of what you found today.
JOEL BEININ: So the basic story is that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank had been for decades trying to impose neoliberal economic structural reforms to reshape the economies of the Middle East. And what happened there is a version of what happened here: The rich got richer, and the poor get poorer, even when, in some cases, the economies did grow. Poverty increased; it didn’t decrease as the World Bank claimed it would. People, in some cases, literally couldn’t afford bread. I was present in Egypt when huge crowds of people were chanting about the price of bread there. In Tunisia, one of the slogans of the uprising was "Bread, water and no Ben Ali," the former president of Tunisia. So, basic human needs were not being met, despite the proud claims of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank of economic success. Two French presidents called Tunisia an economic miracle. Well, it was miraculous for the family of the president’s wife, who owned perhaps 30 percent of the national economy, but not so miraculous for people who started the uprising.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us. Professor Joel Beinin teaches Middle East history here at Stanford University, former director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo, author of a number of books, most recently, Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
And, of course, we will bring you excerpts of the Democratic presidential debate that will take place in Brooklyn tonight, tomorrow on Democracy Now! Juan González will be co-hosting, who got a chance to question both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton at his New York Daily News editorial board meeting. We’ll get more from Juan on the meetings.
I’m Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, kids are involved in a lawsuit around climate change. We’ll find out more. ... Read More →

Landmark Climate Lawsuit: Meet the Youth Activists Suing the U.S. Government & Fossil Fuel Industry
A federal judge in Oregon has rejected an attempt by the U.S. government to dismiss a landmark lawsuit over the government’s failure to take necessary action to curtail fossil fuel emissions. The lawsuit was filed by Our Children’s Trust on behalf of 21 young people—all under the age of 21. They argue that the federal government is violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property by enabling continued exploitation, production and combustion of fossil fuels. In his ruling, Judge Thomas Coffin wrote, "If the allegations in the complaint are to be believed, the failure to regulate the emissions has resulted in a danger of constitutional proportions to the public health." We speak to plaintiff Aji Piper, a 15-year-old 10th grader, and Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, which filed the lawsuit.
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. We’re on the road as part of a 100-city tour, now at Stanford University in California. We are moving on to, oh, today, Pitzer College. I’ll be speaking at noon, and then this evening in Los Angeles. And we’re moving on to Northern California over the weekend. You can check democracynow.org.
But we’re talking further north right now. A federal judge in Oregon has rejected an attempt by the U.S. government to dismiss a landmark lawsuit over the government’s failure to take necessary action to curtail fossil fuel emissions. The lawsuit was filed by Our Children’s Trust on behalf of 21 young people—all under the age of 21. They argue the federal government is violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property by enabling continued exploitation, production and combustion of fossil fuels. In his ruling, Judge Thomas Coffin wrote, quote, "If the allegations in the complaint are to be believed, the failure to regulate the emissions has resulted in a danger of constitutional proportions to the public health." Judge Coffin’s decision was welcomed by the youth plaintiffs, who vowed to continue with their legal fight against climate change. Plaintiff Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh, a 15-year-old from Colorado, reacted to the ruling.
XIUHTEZCATL TONATIUH: We’ve been in this frickin’ crazy lawsuit. We sued the government. All my kids at school are like, "Oh, my god, Xiuhtezcatl, you sued the president?" I’m like, "Yeah."
VICTORIA BARRETT: We did. We actually did it.
XIUHTEZCATL TONATIUH MARTINEZ: We did it. And we were just in court in Eugene, Oregon. The fossil fuel industry stood with the federal government to try to get our case dismissed, thrown out of court. This was what happened the last lawsuit we filed, but this one’s way stronger. It has to do with the Constitution, demanding the courts to enforce climate recovery plans upon our government to massively cut carbon for our future, to honor our constitutional right to life, land and liberty. And so, we went to court, because they wanted to dismiss this case. And Judge Coffin ruled in our favor.
VICTORIA BARRETT: And he was like, "Nah, chill. Don’t do that."
XIUHTEZCATL TONATIUH: And he did not dismiss. "Nah, nah." He ruled in the favor of the young people rather than with big money and the government.
AMY GOODMAN: That was teenage plaintiff Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh, one of the 21 young people suing the U.S. government for its alleged failure to curtail fossil fuel emissions. For more, we’re joined now by the lawyer and another of the youth plaintiffs in this landmark lawsuit. Julia Olson is executive director and chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, which has filed the lawsuit on behalf of 21 young people, all under the age of 21. And Aji Piper joins us, one of the plaintiffs, 15 years old, in the 10th grade in Seattle, Washington. He is a member of Earth Guardians’ Rising Youth for a Sustainable Earth council.
Julia Olson, Aji Piper, welcome to Democracy Now! Aji, why have you brought this suit?
AJI PIPER: We brought this suit to protect our constitutional rights to life, liberty and freedom, as stated under the public trust doctrine, which basically says that the government has an obligation to protect the air, land and water for future generations. And they’re allowance of fossil fuel industry to come and, you know, do things like fracking or other fossil exploitations, that destroys the land, and it harms the air, and that’s why we’re suing them.
AMY GOODMAN: And how you—how did you get involved with this issue?
AJI PIPER: So, I am already a plaintiff on a Washington case that is currently ongoing, and because I was involved with that and RYSE—
AMY GOODMAN: What’s that case?
AJI PIPER: That case is us, we sued the Department of Ecology in Washington, because when we petitioned for a rulemaking for new emissions reductions rules in our state, they denied our petition. And so, we were like—so we took them to court. And right now, they stopped their rulemaking, so we’re going back to court. And we were permitted by the judge another oral argument.
AMY GOODMAN: Julia Olson, you are the head of Our Children’s Trust. What is that? And talk about the judge’s ruling?
JULIA OLSON: Yeah, so there’s multiple cases going on. And what Our Children’s Trust does is help elevate the youth voice by connecting them with attorneys who help them sue their governments for acting in ways that are destroying the climate system. So, the decision last Friday is a remarkable decision. There’s really not been anything like it yet. It’s very exciting. And it’s about protecting, as Aji said, these young people’s constitutional rights to life, liberty and property and to their public trust resources. And—
AMY GOODMAN: What was unusual about Judge Coffin’s ruling?
JULIA OLSON: What’s unusual about it is that the court has said that the case can go forward, and it will be the first time that the federal government’s fossil fuel policies will really be looked at in accordance with the Constitution and their obligations to protect young people and future generations.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s the Eugene Climate Recovery Ordinance?
JULIA OLSON: The Eugene Climate Recovery Ordinance is a law that young people, including some of the federal plaintiffs in our case, took before City Council in Eugene and, over a year-long campaign, convinced the City Council to adopt an ordinance that mandates specific emission reductions and a reduction in fossil fuel consumption at the local level. It also requires that the city prepare a carbon budget based on Dr. Hansen’s prescription to return CO2 levels to 350 parts per million by the end of the century. It’s really a groundbreaking ordinance and the first of its kind.
AMY GOODMAN: Aji, as a young person, what concerns you most about climate change?
AJI PIPER: What concerns me most about climate change is—I mean, it’s a very, like, hard thing, because you have to imagine, like, the future. And we know, like, if we don’t act on climate change, the world is not going to, like, end in like a flash and a bang. But what will end up happening is either my generation will feel the effects, where we have to fight for survival. On the Earth, you know, life will be very, very different. It won’t be like—we won’t be as privileged to live on the Earth. It will be a lot harder. But then also you think about, you know, we’re putting generations that haven’t been born yet and generations to come in the position where they have to deal with that, and that’s not a position anybody should be put in. And it’s just not fair. So it’s a moral, logical thing.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Eugene’s Climate Recovery Ordinance, that holds governments accountable for carbon-neutral city operations by 2020, half—50 percent less community fossil fuel consumption by 2030, citywide carbon budget and science-based emission reductions to reach 350 parts per million carbon dioxide. Youth environmentalists were crucial in passing Eugene’s Climate Recovery Ordinance, and I want to turn to a nine-year-old, Tayo Olson, who testified in Eugene, Oregon.
TAYO OLSON: Last night, me and my class went on a field trip to watch salmon spawn. And if climate change gets any worse, that won’t be able to happen. Tonight, we will be giving you the ordinance for climate recovery and as soon as possible put climate change on the agenda.
AMY GOODMAN: Where is that now, Julia Olson?
JULIA OLSON: The Climate Recovery Ordinance? So, right now, the city is working on implementation. And it’s taking a lot of citizen engagement to continue to put pressure on the city. And the youth are right there at every City Council meeting, talking to the city about it. They have developed the 350 carbon budget, and so now we’re really working on how do we implement that at the local level.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask about a new article from InsideClimate News, the Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization. It’s called "CO2’s Role in Global Warming Has Been on the Oil Industry’s Radar Since the 1960s." According to the article, "The oil industry’s leading pollution-control consultants advised the American Petroleum Institute in 1968 that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels deserved as much concern as the smog and soot that had commanded attention for decades." At the time, Stanford Research Institute scientists Elmer Robinson and R.C. Robbins wrote a paper to the American Petroleum Institute that said carbon dioxide was, quote, "the only air pollutant which has been proven to be of global importance to man’s environment on the basis of a long period of scientific investigation." Your response, Julia?
JULIA OLSON: Yeah, it’s really interesting, because that issue is central to the case that is now poised in the district court in Oregon against the federal government and the fossil fuel industry. We have evidence that since 1965, and even the late '50s, the federal government has known that by continuing to extract and burn fossil fuels, that it would cause catastrophic consequences for future generations. So I think the information of the fossil fuel industry actually is predated by knowledge by our federal government. And in collusion, both the fossil fuel industry and our federal government have been causing climate change through their acts. And so that's exactly what’s at issue in this federal case. And so, those facts—the collusion, the destruction of the climate system—is what we will present in trial in Oregon.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with the voices of some of the youth affiliated with Our Children’s Trust expressing their concerns about climate change. And I want to thank Aji Piper and Julia Olson for being with us.
TAYO OLSON: My name is Tayo. Climate change means more droughts and less water for swimming and drinking and animals.
JESSE: My name is Jesse. I care about stopping climate change because I want clean air.
RAY: My name is Ray. I want—we want to keep polar bears alive.
OSCAR: My name is Oscar. I care about climate change because it’s good for the animals.
UNIDENTIFIED: We want the next generation to live a healthy—to be healthy, live in a healthy environment and eat good food.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, Stanford University students are challenging the administration over bringing more diversity to their university. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: That’s "Danger," sung by Aji Piper, the guest who has brought a lawsuit against the U.S. government. ... Read More →

Who's Teaching Us?: Stanford Students Demand Faculty Diversity & Support for Ethnic Studies
Stanford University students are demanding change in faculty diversity. Stanford’s faculty is 73 percent white and 73 percent male, while less than half the undergraduate student body is white. The student diversity effort, called Who’s Teaching Us?, grew out of Stanford’s Asian American Activism Committee in 2014 when the Stanford English Department denied tenure to a queer Asian-American scholar, a trusted mentor among the student community. The movement has since expanded to include all students of color and marginalized identities. Who’s Teaching Us? recently issued a list of 25 demands to the administration, including increased diversity among faculty and the curriculum, residential space and other programs that meet the needs of students of color, and divestment from institutions that harm marginalized communities. We speak to Stanford student Maya Odei and LaDoris Cordell, a retired superior court judge who spent 19 years on the bench in Santa Clara County in California. She is former assistant dean at Stanford Law School and former vice provost of Stanford University.
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. We’re on our 100-city tour, and we end the show here on the campus of Stanford University, where students are demanding change in faculty diversity. Stanford’s faculty is 73 percent white and 73 percent male, while less than half the undergraduate student body is white. The student diversity effort called Who’s Teaching Us? grew out of Stanford’s Asian American Activism Committee in 2014 when the Stanford English Department denied tenure to a queer Asian-American scholar, a trusted mentor among the student community. The movement’s since expanded to include all students of color and marginalized identities.
Who’s Teaching Us? recently issued a list of 25 demands to the administration, including increased diversity among faculty and the curriculum, residential space and other programs that meet the needs of students of color, and divestment from institutions that harm marginalized communities. The group held a rally and forum where members of the administration were invited to address the demands. No one from the administration showed, but Stanford President John Hennessy did send a letter of response. This is student Lina Khoeur reading the letter from President Hennessy, followed by Phuntso Wangdra with the response from Who’s Teaching Us?
LINA KHOEUR: Many of the issues you have identified are complex in nature and must be addressed through detailed analysis and thoughtful discussion. As you know, we have agreed to proceed with a set of structured conversations around each of the six issue areas identified in your letter. ... I believe this process will facilitate a useful and constructive dialogue leading to action. It [also will] reveal realistic timeframes for addressing the issues under discussion.
PHUNTSO WANGDRA: We have already done that detailed analysis. That’s the 25 demands that were given to you and repeatedly given to you. Even though it’s beyond our responsibility as students, we’re going to be holding you to this, to actually taking action from these dialogues that you want so much. This is not a new conversation, people. From the BSU demands of 1968 to the takeover of the President’s Office in 1989, students have been demanding the same things for decades. But where is this change? Why are we here? Time and time again, we see the administrators engage in dialogue but fail to take action. Right now, we demand action.
AMY GOODMAN: The efforts at Stanford University follow several other student actions on campuses across the country, including University of Missouri, Yale and Ithaca College. The president of Mizzou—that’s the University of Missouri—resigned after weeks of demonstrations by black students against what they called a lax response to bigotry and vandalism on campus.
Well, for more on diversity here at Stanford University, we’re joined by two guests. Maya Odei is a graduating senior majoring in bioengineering and a member Who’s Teaching You? And we’re joined by Judge LaDoris Cordell. She’s a retired superior court judge who spent 19 years on the bench in Santa Clara County in California. She’s former assistant dean at Stanford Law School and former vice provost here at Stanford University.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
LADORIS CORDELL: Thank you.
MAYA ODEI: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: But I want to begin with Maya. What is Who’s Teaching Us?
MAYA ODEI: Yeah, so Who’s Teaching Us? is a student coalition working to better our university. So, as you mentioned, we’re calling on the university to diversify its faculty, its student body, its curriculum. And we’re also asking for the university to divest from private prisons and in other ways to cease from harming black and brown bodies.
AMY GOODMAN: And what kind of response have you gotten?
MAYA ODEI: So, as you mentioned, we did not, unfortunately, see any of the administration at our event on April 8th, which we asked them to attend. Fortunately, we have seen some sort of response from them. So, you mentioned the letter from Hennessy. Additionally, we have set up committees, and we are, through those committees, engaging in dialogue with university administrators.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, we are joined, as I said, by Judge LaDoris Cordell. She is the retired assistant dean of Stanford Law School. She is also the first African-American woman judge in Northern California and former vice provost of Stanford University. I’m looking, Judge Cordell, at some old articles about you, and one of them is a picture of you bringing diversity to campus at Stanford University. What is it that you did, what you were called in to do? And then we’ll look at what’s happened since.
LADORIS CORDELL: Right. So we’re talking about 1978. And in 1978, I became the assistant dean of the law school. And I was primarily brought in to diversify the student population. There were very few people of color at the law school. The first African-American Stanford Law graduate was 1968, and the first Latino was 1969. So, I came in, and I was given license to create—
AMY GOODMAN: As a Stanford University—
LADORIS CORDELL: At the law school.
AMY GOODMAN: Right, but as a Stanford University law student, you were one of the very first black woman students.
LADORIS CORDELL: Early on, yes, early on. But there had been some before me. My job, though, as the assistant dean, was to bring in greater numbers, to bring in a critical mass of black and brown bodies into the law school. And I was able to do that by having a very aggressive recruiting process. And I was permitted to do that and to create it on my own. And after the first year, Stanford emerged as the first among major law schools to have such a large enrollment—22 percent of the entering class were black and brown bodies—and sustained that for the four years I was the assistant dean.
AMY GOODMAN: You did something unusual for Stanford: You actually started to recruit from historically black colleges?
LADORIS CORDELL: Absolutely. I got off the campus and went out and was at—a presence at campuses around the country, but for the first time was a presence at historically black colleges and universities.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Who’s Teaching Us? raises the question of faculty diversity. What’s the faculty diversity at the Stanford Law School?
LADORIS CORDELL: Well, let’s go back just when I was a student, which was 1971 to '74. There were no professors of color at all in the law school. So, I was—ended up being the only black female in my class, sporting a big Afro and the whole bit. And I had no one to whom I could relate, in terms of looking like me. So, today, there is quite a bit of difference. There has been progress. But I will note that today, and this is from the entire history of Stanford Law School, there has never yet—there's yet to be a tenured black woman professor.
AMY GOODMAN: Why is this so important to you, Maya Odei?
MAYA ODEI: Yeah, so, as you mentioned, it’s very important to me to have professors who look like me and who I feel that I can relate to. So, especially being in a STEMM field, you don’t see too many—
AMY GOODMAN: Explain STEMM.
MAYA ODEI: Oh, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: What does it stand for?
MAYA ODEI: So, especially being in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine, you don’t see too many diverse faculty, which is very unfortunate for students who look like me.
AMY GOODMAN: And this issue of investment and divestment, explain the companies you want Stanford to stop investing in.
MAYA ODEI: So we want Stanford to stop investing in the private prison-industrial complex, including companies like Corrections Corporation of America, including GEO Group and other auxiliary companies who help them to remain so robust.
LADORIS CORDELL: I was telling Maya that when I was a student here, our protest was to divest—ask Stanford to divest from companies that engaged in business with South Africa. So, it’s so interesting how we’re still on the same arc.
AMY GOODMAN: So, we’re talking to you. You’re not a current administration official here at Stanford; you’re a past one. How difficult is—does a movement like Maya’s, Who’s Teaching Us?—that’s their organization—how did you find the administration responds when they get pressure from students?
LADORIS CORDELL: Yeah, well, first of all, it’s hard to do it as a student, because student body is transient. You’re going to be here for a few years, and then you’re out. And so, it’s really hard to keep momentum going on the student side. On the other, it’s really the more you have administrators and faculty who look like you, the more responsive or quickly responsive they will be to you. And I’ve found that, as a student, it’s the more pressure you can sustain on an administration, and that’s how you bring change. So, it’s not easy. And I say to you, Maya, hang in there, because the more you can sustain this and have others coming after you, then the more certain you are to bring change.
MAYA ODEI: Yeah, which is why we’re really attempting to build sustainability into our movement, so we not only have a large upperclassman representation, but also do very active recruitment for underclassmen, freshmen, sophomores.
AMY GOODMAN: And how large is Who’s Teaching Us?
MAYA ODEI: So, we’re a pretty large organization. I’m not sure of the exact number. And then, in addition to our core members, we have a lot of support from the student body at large.
AMY GOODMAN: Judge Cordell, I wanted to ask you about a slightly different issue.
LADORIS CORDELL: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: The big front page—let’s see, we’re traveling on the road, and I’m taking a look at USA Today. It says, "Chicago Police Face Racism Charge." It’s the big story across the whole front page. Talk about what you’re doing today, how you’re related to oversight around police actions.
LADORIS CORDELL: Right. So this report is not a surprise to me, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to those who—racism in policing in Chicago. It’s kind of—we know about it. But it’s a very in-depth report, and I encourage everyone to read it. So, for the last five years, I’ve been engaged in independent civilian oversight of the police. And this is really important, because what I did in working in this capacity was to bring transparency and accounting to policing, because there is no sunshine in policing. There is very little the public knows about how police departments operate and the rules that guide them. So, and my involvement was to basically provide oversight. If you had an issue with a police officer in San Jose, you could come to our office, bring a complaint, and then we had oversight over how that complaint was investigated by the department. Independent oversight is spreading throughout the country, and clearly it’s needed in Chicago, and it’s needed in New York, it’s needed everywhere. I’m not sure if that’s a recommendation—I’m willing to bet it is—in the task force report.
AMY GOODMAN: I think there are over—well over a hundred recommendations in this report. The first sentence of the USA Today piece: "The city’s police department"—talking about Chicago—"is beset by racism and needs sweeping reforms to help it win back [trust in] the community."
LADORIS CORDELL: Right. And winning back trust all depends on accountability and transparency. Without it, there can be no trust.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you have any advice for Maya and for the students of Who’s Teaching Us?, as a former administrator at Stanford—
LADORIS CORDELL: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —how best to force change here?
LADORIS CORDELL: Right. First is, don’t be discouraged. Change will come. But it will only become—come about—and it’s something about what Amy Goodman has been talking about for years, and it’s that movements matter, that a movement—and just in the word itself—means you’re making progress, you’re moving forward. Movements matter. And it is important that you all continue the message, sustain it. Do not get discouraged because you’re not seeing change right away. It will happen.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Maya Odei, what do you think is the most important thing for the administration here to respond to right now? Or is it just about, for you, student organizing?
MAYA ODEI: So, I think what’s most important is for the administration to truly show that they care about what we, the students, have to say—for example, by showing up to events like our April 8th event.
AMY GOODMAN: Which was?
MAYA ODEI: It was titled "Pack the NACC." And at the event, we asked for the administration to come, to show their support and to sign on to our demands.
AMY GOODMAN: And did they?
MAYA ODEI: And they did not.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. This is clearly a conversation that’s continuing here and at campuses across the country. We’ll be at a number of campuses on our 100-city tour. You can check our website at democracynow.org. Maya Odei, member of Who’s Teaching Us? at Stanford University, and Judge LaDoris Cordell, retired superior court judge, the first African-American woman judge in Northern California, assistant dean at the Stanford Law School formerly and former vice chancellor.
That does it for our broadcast. We’re on our 100-city tour. Today we’ll be at Pitzer College in Claremont, California at noon, and tonight in Los Angeles. Check our website. Tomorrow, we’ll be at Skylight Books in L.A. and Bookstar in Studio City at night; Saturday, Santa Rosa, Willits and Redway; and on Sunday in Davis, Chico and Berkeley. Then we’re on to Salt Lake City and Idaho Springs in Colorado and Denver and Boulder. Check, again, democracynow.org.... Read More →
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SPEAKING EVENTS
We are on the road in San Francisco, as we continue our conversation about the 2014 police killing of Alex Nieto and a slew of other police killings—Mario Woods, Amilcar Pérez-López and now Luis Gongora. Three of four of these killings happened in San Francisco’s rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, the Mission District and Bernal Heights. We speak about the link between these police killings and gentrification in San Francisco, with author Rebecca Solnit and community organizer Adriana Camarena.
Watch Part 1
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. We’re on the road in San Francisco, California, where we’re continuing our 100-city tour and our conversation about the 2014 police killing of Alex Nieto, as well as a slew of other police killings—Mario Woods, Amilcar Pérez-López and now Luis Gongora, a homeless man who was killed just last Thursday. Three of four of these killings happened in San Francisco’s rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, the Mission District and the adjacent Bernal Heights. We’re going to talk about the link between these killings and gentrification in San Francisco, with author Rebecca Solnit, who wrote a piece called "Death by gentrification," and community organizer Adriana Camarena. This is Part 2 of our conversation. In the first part, we particularly focused on the death of Alex Nieto and a recent jury decision to acquit the officers who killed him of excessive force. And we also talked about the killing of a homeless San Francisco man named Luis Gongora.
So, Adriana, we ended the first part of the conversation by talking about how you’re organizing. What are the groups that are dealing with these killings? And what do they have in common?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: There have been other groups before the Justice for Alex Nieto Coalition, that formed in 2014, and—like the Idriss Stelley Foundation, the Kenneth Harding Jr. Foundation. And now, with each killing, we have new coalitions forming with community members, neighbors, family. We now have the Justice for Amilcar Pérez-López, which is a group of neighbors who did an extraordinary job of putting together the first witness accounts. And unfortunately, Amilcar was literally killed in front of my house. So I was then part of another case.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go further—
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —for those who didn’t see Part 1, and they should go to our website to see it, but explain very briefly what happened to Alex Nieto March 21st, 2014, and then what happened to Amilcar.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Alex was eating a burrito in the park around sunset on March 21st, 2014, just before he went off to work at his job as a night club security guard. And he was wearing his work Taser on his hip. And the short version is that two people passed by, they saw the Taser at his hip, became concerned and called 911. Alex was—didn’t actually engage with them at all, but they proceeded to inform 911 of his location. The police arrived. And two officers first arrived, and they—those first officers unloaded two clips and then reloaded and kept on shooting for a total of 43 bullets, before two other officers arrived and shot 16 more bullets. That’s—
AMY GOODMAN: You have two things. He was carrying a Taser—
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —which he used for work. And he was wearing his 49ers jacket and a baseball cap.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: But they were red.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Right, and they were red. And so, the description, which was actually elicited by the dispatch caller, was, "What is he"—you know, "Where is he? What is he wearing? What race is he?" And so, the description that was sent out to police is that they were looking for a Hispanic male, six feet tall, 200 pounds, wearing a red jacket and a gun at his hip. And so, with that description, they were basically setting up Alex Nieto to be killed, because he was—he could easily be profiled by police as a Norteño gang member.
AMY GOODMAN: Because they wear red.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Because they wear red.
AMY GOODMAN: But they don’t consider the rest of San Francisco that wears these red 49ers jackets to be gang members.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Exactly. One of Alex’s close friends, Ben Bac Sierra, said, "What if it had been a white person in a jacket? Would they have taken him for an off-duty cop?" Right?
AMY GOODMAN: So, he was killed by police March 21st.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: And a trial just acquitted them of excessive force.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened to the man, Amilcar, who was killed in front of your house? When was this?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: This was February 26, 2015, so almost a year later. Amilcar is a—was a day laborer, 21-year-old Guatemalan man from Ch’orti’ indigenous descent. And he lived in a house across the street from us. And so, because day laborers would congregate outside the house, and so he was having a confrontation with somebody who took his cellphone. And so, he—this person walked away with his cellphone. The person had a bicycle. And so, to understand—these are people who don’t speak Span—English, sorry, sometimes not even Spanish. But he took a knife from his house and wanted to impress upon this person to give him back his cellphone. At that point, there were two undercover cops who came up behind him, did not identify themselves. They jumped him. And he had the natural reaction of wriggling out. He didn’t know what was happening. He dropped the knife that was in his hand, and he ran away from them. But what happened is—what I know from eyewitness accounts is that they—the police officer dropped the flashlight he had in his hand, and so his reaction was to immediately stand up and shoot him. And so, what’s remarkable about this version is that immediate version of police is that Amilcar [Pérez-López] was lunging at police officers. But very smartly, the lawyers who took the case did immediately an autopsy, and the finding is that there were six shots to the back.
AMY GOODMAN: Six shots in the back?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Yes. And what was really impressive about it was that the—and the police said, from the—immediately and into the town hall meeting, that their version of events was that Amilcar had lunged at them with a knife. But the autopsy showed that all shots were to the back.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, what did the police say once the autopsy came out?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: They have sustained their version. They have now shifted slightly to say that he was turning. But we all know that when the police put out a statement, it is—it’s a fictional narrative. It’s a narrative that is adjusted to the legal standards, which is basically that they felt a threat and they feared for their lives. So, what’s really important is sometimes to hold them to those accounts, because, over time, as evidence comes forward, that narrative will fall apart.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the story of Amilcar Pérez-López.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: No one was held accountable in his killing.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Well, in this case, we’re waiting to see if the district attorney is actually going to press charges in this case. There’s rumblings that he might.
AMY GOODMAN: When was Amilcar killed?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: On February 26 of 2015.
AMY GOODMAN: So why has it taken so long? This is more than a year later.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Yes, it’s usually—they usually wait for the autopsy report, that I think was just released around his anniversary. And so, we are literally waiting for the district attorney to make a statement. There’s pressure right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Mario Woods, what happened to him on December 2nd? This is a very well-known story in San Francisco, but not as well known nationally, although it was raised by some of the Super Bowl dancers with Beyoncé who held up a sign, "Justice for Mario Woods."
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Exactly, and, yes, it’s very well known in San Francisco. In this case, there’s actually video of bystanders where you see Mario being surrounded by approximately five officers. And you can see him literally cowering and walking against a wall. He’s not being aggressive. You can see he’s terrified. And what happens is that one of the officers moves into his line of where he’s walking. At that moment, there’s a release of a barrage of bullets from all of them. I’ve heard the number 20 bullets. And we see Mario die in the video. And it’s very shocking and traumatic for those who view this video or everybody who’s there present.
AMY GOODMAN: And where did this happen?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: This happened in the Bayview neighborhood. And in this case, the police were asked why did so many shoot, as clearly he wasn’t a threat. And the answer the chief of police said is that there’s a thing called sympathetic fire. And so, basically, there’s sympathy for other officers firing, but not for one man surrounded by all these officers. And so, there has been a strong coalition and other community organizers, including the coalition—the 3 Percent Coalition, who’s focused also on gentrification, looking into the case of Mario Woods.
AMY GOODMAN: Rebecca Solnit, this piece you wrote, "Death by gentrification," which very much profiles the story of Alex Nieto, his death back in 2014, and then this civil trial, which may not be familiar to many, the idea that police officers go on trial, but they’re not going to face criminal charges. This is a civil suit that the family has brought against them using excessive force, though the jury found they did not use excessive force. Were jurors interviewed afterwards about why they felt what they felt?
REBECCA SOLNIT: No. Some journalists went after them, but weren’t able to get interviews. We don’t know why they made the decision they did.
AMY GOODMAN: You also interviewed Alex Nieto’s boss at the night club. He was a bouncer at a night club. Talk about how he described Alex.
REBECCA SOLNIT: Yeah, he was a—worked at a night club. Is it El Toro? I’m suddenly forgetting the name. Yeah. That has a Latino immigrant population going there. It can get very rowdy. Sometimes they have as many as nine security and bouncer guys working there. We went to talk to his boss after the trial, because I still felt like, OK, they’re talking—you know, the police story is that he was mentally ill, etc. And I was like, how could you work as a bouncer if you, like, were unable to deal with stress and make decisions in conflict, etc.? His boss could not say enough good about him. He adored Alex. He just deeply admired him. He loved how he could really defuse conflicts. He was a peacemaker. He would take people who were drunk and rowdy out in ways that didn’t—weren’t macho, didn’t increase the conflict, was really good at just like a really peaceful, calming presence, a real kind of hero in that space. And his boss couldn’t believe that he would do that with a Taser, and can’t believe this happened, and clearly just values and honors him deeply.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s pivot to the larger issue of gentrification that you raise, your piece headlined "Death by gentrification." Three of the four cases that we have looked at—we previously talked about the killing of the homeless man, Luis Gongora, just last week—talk about where they took place in San Francisco and what’s happening here.
REBECCA SOLNIT: Mario Woods was killed in the Bayview district, which is a historically black district in southern San Francisco. The other three killings—the two non-English-speaking immigrants were killed in the Mission District, a historically Latino district with deep roots in really strong, beautiful Latino culture. And Alex was killed in the adjoining neighborhood that’s really part of the Mission in many ways, Bernal Heights.
And the gentrification—you know, the feeling you get from the community is that we’re being pushed out in many different ways. We’re being pushed out by evictions, by unaffordable housing, by the destruction of churches and businesses, bookstores, social services, nonprofits, etc., making way for a culture—you know, for new enterprises that serve a new incoming population of young, mostly white, mostly male tech workers. So you’re really having the wholesale replacement of one culture by another. And in the Mission, which is a really culturally rich place with really deep roots, really deeply meaningful, I think, for the United States Latino cultural identity as a whole, you know, this destruction is particularly painful. People are losing something, a sense of connection, a sense of community, a sense of memory and history. And it’s really kind of like a lobotomy for the neighborhoods as everything that makes people connected to the past, to each other, to a sense of meaning, to an identity, gets stripped away, and it all turns into a kind of shiny new kind of place that could be any place in the developed world.
AMY GOODMAN: You have written that Alex Nieto may have been killed in part because he grew up in a multicultural neighborhood where he dared to think that he belonged.
REBECCA SOLNIT: That—you know, it’s very hard, since Alex is not available for interviews. But the sense that I get from many of his friends and from knowing people who grew up right around him—some of my closest friends did—is that, you know, when he grew up, Bernal Heights was multi-ethnic, including white people. But it was—but people were really comfortable being around diversity. And the sense I get of him is of somebody who felt like he was an insider, felt at home, assumed that people respected him and respected his right to be there, and that he wasn’t really prepared for outsiders who saw him as an intruder, as somebody who didn’t belong, as somebody who didn’t have the right to be there.
AMY GOODMAN: His parents lived in this neighborhood for how many decades? Adriana, let me put that to you. You’ve become very close to them. They lived in one apartment, one house, for how many years with Alex and his brother?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: After they married, Refugio and Elvira Nieto moved into their home on Cortland street in 1984. So, since then, they’ve lived there.
AMY GOODMAN: And raised their two boys.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: And they raised their two boys there, Hector and Alex.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happened to Hector, Alex’s brother, after Alex was killed? He sat next to his parents in the courtroom.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Yes, absolutely. He was there every day. He’s a very quiet, reserved young man. And he—but he stood there, and he took on the information. And he and I would sometimes debrief a little bit, but he basically understood that there was a version of the narrative the police were telling about his brother that was truly false.
AMY GOODMAN: And moving forward, in terms of gentrification and police sweeps of the homeless, Luis Gongora just last week, the homeless man, being killed. And he was killed in which neighborhood?
REBECCA SOLNIT: He was also killed in the Mission. And for me, this is really a death-by-gentrification story, because first he’s evicted from his home, and, of course, there’s incredible competition for the incredibly expensive housing, and an immigrant laborer was not going to compete successfully. So he became homeless, lived in a tent, established himself in a kind of tent community as a kind of beloved and trusted and kind member, was—as some of the people who lived in houses around really liked and trusted him. And so there’s a sense of people being pushed further and further. First he’s pushed out of his home. Then the mayor, particularly when the Super Bowl happens, pushes the homeless out of places they’ve traditionally been, and steps up the harassment of homeless people, 71 percent of which, as I said earlier, were previously housed in San Francisco. And then the police come and shoot him, and he’s just driven out of this life altogether.
AMY GOODMAN: And the Super Bowl, what happened as a result of the Super Bowl or the plans for it to happen?
REBECCA SOLNIT: It was so ridiculous. The Super Bowl actually happened in Santa Clara in Silicon Valley. The 49ers have moved south. But to make the city look pretty for the newcomer, for the visitors, for the tourists, the mayor decided to do massive sweeps of the homeless. And so like a whole new level of persecution began where people were pushed out of a lot of other neighborhoods. Many of them moved south of Market, which is adjacent to the Mission, and to the Mission. It’s been a very rainy, wet winter, so they’re living in tents. The tents were confiscated and trashed. One of the really painful things we saw was a disabled veteran who required a walker to get around. We saw his walker thrown into a garbage truck and compacted. People are losing their medicines, their possessions, their identity, their phones. You know, all their belongings are just thrown away. And so, it’s a real kind of purge. And where are these people supposed to go? They have no place to go.
AMY GOODMAN: This was just in this morning, published this morning. A sixth witness disputes police account of homeless man’s killing in San Francisco, Luis Gongora’s killing. She says he appeared relaxed and was not posing a threat to anyone before officers shot and killed him.
REBECCA SOLNIT: We have a lot of witnesses who say he was not a threat, and they conflict with the police story. The police claim that there were three witnesses supporting their version. But no journalist has ever heard—we’ve never heard from them. We don’t know their names. They haven’t appeared. We don’t know if they exist. And as Adriana and I have been telling you, the San Francisco police don’t have a great reputation for truthfulness right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Adriana Camarena, you are a community organizer. You’ve been very close to the Nietos. During the trial, you sat with them. You helped translate. You’re also a lawyer—well, in Mexico. And you’re now trying to document what is taking place in your communities here in San Francisco. Can you describe what happened to you on Saturday night as you tried to film?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Sure. One of the things that we’ve learned, unfortunately, through these cases is that it takes the neighbors to get the first account of these shootings right, because we know that the narrative of the police is that they were threatened and had to shoot for their lives. So, as soon as I could on the night that he was killed, I made a first round and introduced myself to the residents of the homeless encampment. And after that—
AMY GOODMAN: This is when Luis Gongora was killed?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Yes, when Luis Gongora was killed on Thursday, April 7th. And so, after that, I returned, and we exchanged numbers. And so, now they had my numbers, two of the witnesses. And what—and I told them, "If you need help, just call me." So it’s Saturday night. I’m already ready to go to sleep, and they call around 11:00 p.m. to say that they—the cops have arrived with sticks, they’re hitting on the tents, they’re pushing them out. So I put a call out. I blasted out a call saying, "Whoever can go out there right now, come out and observe what’s going on." So, by the time I arrived, it was closer to midnight, maybe 11:30 into midnight. And I started filming.
And I did see the cops tearing down tents. What I learned that had happened is that many of the homeless people who are terrified of contact with police, as soon as they arrived, they fled. So the police officers were—there weren’t that many, maybe about four. Some people have said up to six, but I saw four. They targeted the tents that were unattended. One of them belonged to another one of the witnesses. And they literally dismantled, slashed them, tore them apart. And it really felt like a retaliation, because they just targeted the homeless people on that block, on Shotwell from 18th to 19th Streets. There were homeless people around the corner. And basically, they didn’t actually even pick up. The remains of these structures were left there for the homeless people, on a rainy night, to pick up during the night.
And so, as I was filming there, I also had an interaction with one of the officers, who resented my filming, and so he flashed a flashlight into my face. And I asked him, "Are you doing this so I can’t film you?" And he responded, "No, I’m doing this because you’re pointing an object at me, and I’m concerned for my safety," which is basically the language that police officers use to pull out their guns and shoot people.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, I want to go to the clip of you, Adriana Camarena, filming the police in San Francisco dismantling this homeless camp shortly after Luis Gongora’s killing.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: So you’re flashing your camera—your flashlight at me so that I can’t record? Is that the idea?
POLICE OFFICER: I’m flashing my flashlight at you because you’re pointing something at me, and I’m concerned for my safety.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: You’re concerned about your safety, after there was a police shooting on this block?
POLICE OFFICER: Yeah.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Yes?
POLICE OFFICER: Especially after that.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Especially, because it’s on video that you responded—your colleagues responded within 30 seconds by shooting bean bags and then bullets? You are the danger on the streets.
AMY GOODMAN: "You are the danger on the streets," you said to the San Francisco police.
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Yes, that’s exactly how I feel and how many of my members in the coalitions and also just neighbors at this point feel. It’s dangerous that they are so reckless about their use of force. And I think they have become brazen, especially after the Alex Nieto trial. They feel emboldened to use their weapons, because no charges have come from the district attorney, and the case was not successful. But it was successful in pointing out their behavior.
AMY GOODMAN: The California primary is coming up on June 7th. Are these issues of police brutality, of police killings being raised at the higher levels of government? Is the movement, do you feel, coalesced enough that this will become a presidential campaign issue?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: What I have been able to—the only instance that I’ve seen so far is that—precisely on the Facebook page for Luis Gongora, also known by his nickname Willy Gongora, a supporter for Bernie Sanders has mentioned, #MovementForBernie, that they will respond to the shootings in San Francisco. So, it could be possible that that’s coming up.
REBECCA SOLNIT: We do have local candidates with different positions on the issue running for the state Assembly. And San Francisco is like pretty nearly 100 percent Democratic Party, but there’s a real schism between the people serving the tech corporations and the wealthy elite, and in the Assembly race for San Francisco that’s represented by Scott Wiener, and by Jane Kim, who’s much more on the populist side of the divide in city politics.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s so interesting the way these stories are described, so often the person who is shot by police seen as the threat—and this is something you referenced, Adriana. Rebecca, what about this?
REBECCA SOLNIT: You know, what was interesting to me, when I was charged with not saying enough about Alex Nieto’s mental illness, which I actually didn’t say anything about in my Guardian piece because nothing convinced me that he had any mental illness—and if the evidence of that was supposed to be that he pointed his Taser at the police, and the only outside witness says he didn’t, then forget that story—what I suddenly realized, with my experience with rape stories, something I’ve covered a lot, is that the victim gets put on trial. The victim is treated as the guilty one. The victim undergoes character assassination. A lot of red herrings are thrown out about things that are irrelevant. We heard about Trayvon Martin’s high school, you know, suspension. We heard about Eric Garner’s arrest record for nonviolent, petty sort of harassment offenses. And so, there is this weird way where who’s guilty—and are you guilty of being shot by the police?—but all this evidence comes up to prove—to justify what the police did.
And the other similarity for me between these police stories and the rape stories that I’ve covered so often, nobody ever shows up in court and says, "Yeah, I totally raped that person." Nobody—the police never show up and say, "Oh, hell yeah, that was excessive use of force. Oh, hell yeah, we violated that person’s civil rights." So of course they always say that there was a threat, that it was justifiable, etc., and then start trying to convince people to not care about this person, to not value this person, to not believe the people who stand up for this person. And that’s kind of routine. There’s a way in which you should look at all the evidence and form your own opinion, and there are justifiable homicides in like hostage situations and things like that. But in these cases where—it’s kind of a given that you’ll be told that this was a very bad person who was doing very terrible things.
AMY GOODMAN: Adriana, finally, in the case of Alex Nieto, the man who made the original 911 call, though he hadn’t even seen Alex—his partner had seen Alex and was concerned that the Taser looked like a gun—he attempted to apologize at the trial to Alex Nieto’s parents?
ADRIANA CAMARENA: Yes, he did apologize. I was there with the Nietos. It was during a recess after he had testified. He came straight at them. And I’ll try to recall what he said, but he said that he was very sorry for the loss of Alex, that no parent should have to go through what they went through, and that he just wanted to tell them how sorry he was. And at that moment, I was—the Nietos got a translation of the apology, and they had different reactions. And the father immediately took his hand and embraced him. And he later—Refugio later told me that, for him, he heard Alex saying that even in facing some of our—the people who hurt us, you have to take the higher ground. His mom, on the other hand, heard the apology, but she wasn’t in the place to hear it or, you know, to accept it or to allow herself to be touched. And since I am studying restorative justice, I would say that that was appropriate, and each victim has their journey. And I respect the parents very much, each—each one of them for their reaction.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both very much for spending this time talking about what’s happening in your communities. Adriana Camarena is a community organizer, a lawyer in Mexico. Here, she is working with families who have been victimized by police. And Rebecca Solnit, we’re going to link to your piece, "Death by gentrification," that you did for The Guardian. Rebecca Solnit is a well-known author and writer, acclaimed all over the United States. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
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