My enemy is the white people, not the Viet Cong or Chinese or Japanese. You’re my opposer when I want freedom. You’re my opposer when I want justice. You’re my opposer when I want equality.
Democracy Now! is an independent, daily global news hour anchored by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González. We air live weekdays 8-9AM ET and rebroadcast throughout the day on nearly 1,400 TV & radio stations in 43 countries. Here we post excerpts from our interviews and key moments from our daily show.
Aragorn – Err, Viggo Mortensen joined the show today. The Warrior-King of Middle Earth is a peace activist on this one. Viggo defended Quentin Tarantino’s criticism of police killings, talked about “hawkish” foreign policy stances of both @berniesanders and Hillary Clinton and even read a poem from his book on the 2003 U.S. Iraq invasion, “Twilight of Empire.” Watch his interview here.
PHOTOS: In Japan, police have dragged away about a hundred elderly protesters blocking construction of a proposed new U.S. military base on the island of Okinawa. The majority of Okinawa’s residents oppose the new base. The rally was held as the central government resumed building despite a lack of permits. Okinawa houses about 26,000 U.S. troops. Their presence has come under protest for decades. Watch and read more:
Democracy Now! remembers civil rights pioneer Julian Bond, who died on Saturday at the age of 75. Bond first gained prominence in 1960 when he organized a series of student sit-ins while attending Morehouse College. He went on to help found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). After the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Bond was elected as a Democrat to the Georgia House of Representatives. But members of the Legislature refused to seat him, citing his vocal opposition to the Vietnam War. Bond took the case to the Supreme Court and won. He later served 20 years in the Georgia House and Senate. In 1971 he co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center, and from 1998 to 2010, he was chairman of the NAACP.
Tune in to a special remembrance of Julian Bond on Democracy Now! today.
There will never be decent treatment for minority peoples in this country until we begin to concentrate on freedom and justice and equality for those at home, and stop worrying about puppet dictatorships and despotic governments in Southeast Asia.
Julian Bond (1940-2015), pioneering civil rights activist. Tune in to Democracy Now! for a special remembrance of Bond’s life and legacy.
Apartheid exists now. If you keep identifying it as a future danger instead of recognizing that it’s a present reality, you will never reach that future — you will never recognize the truth of the system that you have in Israel.
Henry Siegman, former executive director of the American Jewish Congress. He spoke to Democracy Now! about Israeli politics and the prospects for peace. Watch the interview on Democracy Now! today.
Meet Rev. John Dear and Rev. James Lawson, two of the nation’s leading peace activists. Today, on the 70th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they join activists from across the nation in Los Alamos, New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb and home to the country’s main nuclear weapons laboratory. This afternoon they are marching toward the laboratory’s main entrance calling for nuclear disarmament. Watch today’s Democracy Now! special report.
I am not seeking an apology from President Obama for Hiroshima. Rather, I believe it’s important to have an expression of the will and dedication to create a world free of nuclear weapons.
Kenzaburo Oe, acclaimed Japanese author and recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. He spoke to Democracy Now! on the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Tune in at DemocracyNow.org.
One year since the launch of Israel’s 50-day assault on Gaza, the blockaded coastal strip remains in crisis. Not one of the 12,000 homes demolished has been rebuilt, in part due to Israeli restrictions on the importation of building supplies. Overall unemployment now stands at 43 percent — the highest in the world, and the World Bank warns that Gaza’s economy is on the verge of collapse. Democracy Now! speaks to Gaza-based journalist Mohammed Omer about the situation on the ground today. Tune in at democracynow.org.
Next door to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, Yemenis wait days at the pump. The United Nations says 20 million Yemenis, 78 percent of the population, need urgent humanitarian aid. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s bombardment of Yemen enters its third month.
Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports live from the capital, Sana`a, Watch at democracynow.org.