Democracy Now! Friday, September 18, 2026

0:00From New York, this is democracy now. At the moment, the world is witnessing an inequality emergency. The world is getting ripped apart. There was this hunger and at this moment, Anga needs to play its role. Ensure that we are back to multilateralism. We are back to building a more just equal and sustainable world. A head of anger, the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week here in New York, will speak to the head of Oxfam International, Amitabh Beha. Then we'll be joined by the Pulitzer Prize and Grammy-winning artist, Rianne and Giddens. She's out with a new album today.

1:00Hope is the thing with feathers. If we don't pull our struggles together, if we don't connect the struggles together and the overall larger patterns of extraction, larger patterns of colonialism, larger patterns of empire, larger patterns of massive money making. If we don't connect those dots between the struggles, we're never going to get anywhere. So for me, that's what music is for. And we look back at the legacy of Occupy Wall Street. 15 years ago this week, activists began an encampment in New York that sparked an international movement and popularized the slogan, we are the 99%. I think my Wall Street gave us a lot of things. I think it politicized thousands of people, trained thousands of leaders, built organizations like have led to a decade and a half of mass movements in the streets. But I think the biggest contribution actually is changing the public's common sense about class and class struggle with the 99% and the 1%

2:02I don't think we would be in the political moment that we're in right now with that. This week, Tio Tom Maurem. He helped organize the Occupy Wall Street protests and wrote the book for louder days reaching beyond the politics of powerlessness. So all that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now. Or the War. In Peace Report, I'm Amy Goodman, a United Nations fact-finding mission on Iran. Says it's found evidence the US committed war crimes and two attacks that killed at least 177 civilians, many of them children. In a report released Thursday, experts commissioned by the UN's Human Rights Council cited US strikes and a school in Minab and southern Iran and a school in Minab and southern Iran. And a sports complex in La Mered writing quote, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching in discriminated attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects. End quote. The White House responded in a statement quote, the UN Human Rights Council has accomplished nothing

3:03for human rights while spouting unsurious nonsense for decades. End quote. Meanwhile, ships are not going to be now. Ships continue to come under fire in the Strait of Hormuz earlier today, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it struck a togo flagged tanker. And several US media outlets are reporting Iranian drones and missile struck a US contracted ship near the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week. That attack reportedly injured several crew members, including US personnel. On Thursday, President Trump told Axios he was nearing a decision on whether to annihilate Iran. Trump also dismissed surging US gas costs as a small price to pay for his war. Trump was speaking North Carolina to rally for Republican Senate candidate Michael Watley. I have to say you have a little higher. You have a higher, it's a very inexpensive price to pay for what we've done. Remember that it's a little more.

4:04It's even if it was, frankly, even if it was a lot more. In Yemen, the United Nations warns a number of people displaced by fighting between Houthi militias and Saudi-back Yemeni government forces has soared to 112,000. And it's continuing to climb as both sides trade cross-border strikes. On Thursday, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi rejected claims by Saudi Arabianists allies that his forces had targeted the Holy City of Mecca in a drone attack, calling the claim an ugly lie. He said his fighters were focused on attacking Saudi military sites and oil infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Trump administration said Thursday it approved the sale of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter Jets Saudi Arabia at a cost of over $24 billion. The transaction would require congressional approval. A coalition of Palestinian and progressive groups is urging universities think tanks, elected officials and others, to refuse to hire or collaborate with a group of 20 former Biden officials, accused of, quote, promoting lying

5:05about and covering up the Gaza genocide, unquote. The drop the Genocide 20 campaign has targeted several former Biden staffers, including Anthony Blinken, who served as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan, former National Security Advisor, and Lloyd Austin, Biden Secretary of Defense, all of whom were pivotal and backing Israel's war on Gaza. Since this time as Secretary of State, Blinken was given a book deal with Crown and imprint of Penguin Random House and has often participated in public speaking events, including at Harvard's Kennedy School. The campaign is also demanding the Biden staffers be banned from any future political appointments. The coalition said, quote, the culture of bipartisan elite immunity is what drives US war crimes and support for war crimes. This dynamic is a key reason Biden officials knew they could arm, defend, and cover up the genocide in Gaza for 15 months, and simply move back into liberal spaces, nonprofits, and future governments, unquote.

6:05Russian strikes on Ukraine's capital region, injured at least 19 people on Thursday, including two children in Odessa, seven people, injured including two children, while in Zapparicia, a Russian first-person view drone struck a passenger bus, injuring eight commuters, separately a Russian jet-powered drone hit a shopping mall, injuring one person and triggering a massive fire. This is on 32-year-olds, Zapparicia resident, who was out with her husband when the drone struck nearby. We went out for a walk and didn't hear the jet-powered Shahid drone. It's hard to hear it now. It's not like the Shahid drones used to be. The Russians are starting to threaten us, the ordinary people, in the hope that people will rise up. But that won't happen. We are strong. We are free and we will stand firm. On Thursday, Ukrainian forces struck one of Russia's largest oil refineries in the city of Yaroslavl,

7:08north of Moscow. The attack came after President Trump Sunday, told Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to halt attacks on Russian diesel infrastructure. And as U.S. diesel prices hit a record high of nearly $6.40 a gallon. Earlier today, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a speech to Parliament that Moscow's planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on Poland and other European countries that support Ukraine. And Savaki's Prime Minister Robert Fiko said Europe is closer than ever to a large-scale war with Russia. Meanwhile, the U.S. has a representative's voted Wednesday to approve new sanctions on Iran and Russia. The legislation passed the Senate last month. It's named Lindsay Graham sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. After the late South Carolina Republican Senator who has now spoken proponent of both arming Ukraine and attacking Iran, the Kremlin said in a response that new sanctions would make it harder to reach a peace deal in Ukraine.

8:08The White House has withdrawn its nomination of Lance Shroyer, former Oklahoma State Trooper to lead ICE. That's immigration and customs enforcement. Shroyer currently serves as advisor to Homeland Security Secretary Mark Weinmullen as no previous experience with ICE. In more immigration news lawyers who spoke to the New York Times say federal agencies, such as U.S. citizenship and immigration services, are rejecting and heavily redacting vital documents and records and needed by immigrants to prove they have permission to be in the U.S. and fight their deportation. Federal agencies are also claiming these records do not exist. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports ICE has stop tracking data on miscarriages in its custody, as the agency detains a record number of pregnant women and teenagers. ICE recorded at least 18 miscarriages during the first nine months of the Trump administration, but no data has been recorded since October of last year. Women and girls in ICE custody have repeatedly decried medical neglect.

9:09A federal immigration agent charged with shooting of Venezuelan men appeared before a Minnesota judge Thursday following months of evading arrest. ICE officer Christian Castro faces felony assault charges and was initially arrested in Texas. But Trump ally, Texas governor Greg Abbott, refused to extradite Castro to Minnesota. Castro also faces a separate hearing today, Friday, in federal court, for charges that he lied and attempted to cover up the January shooting of the Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa Celes, who was wounded in the leg. This is Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriardi. The process of holding Mr. Castro accountable for his firing a weapon through the front door, striking Julio Sosa's elise, endangering the lives of others and lying to law enforcement has begun. Despite the best efforts of the Texas governor to ignore both the United States Constitution and crystal clear Supreme Court precedent. The Trump administration continues deportations to Haiti with a fourth flight arriving

10:11at the International Airport in Capacien last week. This comes as a new report published by the Ohio Immigrant Alliance as the detention of Haitians has surged by 142% at four immigration jails in Ohio. Since the end of temporary protected status or TPS in late July, the group says ICE has accelerated the arrests of Haitians living in Ohio by racial profiling community spaces, including their schools and apartment buildings, detaining people at their ICE appointments and placing ankle monitors and collaborating with state and local police. Meanwhile, I'm the state nationals calling for the release of two men deported from the US and sent to Equatorial Guinea, who have been detained by local police forces and may face torture. One of them is Ahmed Soliman, a 30-year-old gay asylum seeker from Egypt, who was living in Arizona when he was detained by ICE despite being granted protections by US immigration court. The men were reportedly brutally beaten

11:11and amnesty believes they were arrested for speaking out about the inhumane conditions endured by US deportees while confined in a decommissioned hotel in the city of Malibu. The deportees have also faced threats from armed forces. CNN is reporting more than 300 workers from South Korea, who are swept up in a federal immigration raid at a Hyundai electric vehicle manufacturing plant in Georgia and deported last year, have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. Last September, nearly 500 federal state and local agents descended on the plant and arrested hundreds of workers who say they were held in inhumane conditions, not provided interpreters were shackled and forced to sign documents. They did not understand the plaintiff said, this resulted in intentional inflection of emotional distress humiliation and lasting psychological trauma, unquote. And a federal judge in Washington, D.C. has ordered the Trump administration to give at least 30 days notice before making any major changes to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

12:13Thursday's emergency ruling came after President Trump said he would withhold funding for renovations to the Kennedy Center, essentially condemning it, unless he's allowed to inscribe his name on the building. On Wednesday, a New York Times photographer captured images of Trump, a board Air Force one looking at a poster board appearing to show a building reduced to rubble along with the caption, Kennedy Center demolished. Later in the broadcast, we'll speak with the Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winning artists, Rianne and Giddens, about the attacks on the Kennedy Center. And those are some of the headlines. This is DemocracyNow, democracynow.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York with Juan Gonzales and Chicago, hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listless and viewers across the country and around the world. As world leaders prepared ahead to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, known as Unga.

13:14UN Secretary General Antonio Gutarrage has warned the world has entered, quote, an era of deep uncertainty, unquote. He identified three existential threats confronting the global community, runaway artificial intelligence, the climate crisis, and deepening inequalities. The UN General Assembly is also taking place amidst the ongoing US war in Iran, which is destabilize in Middle East and disrupted global energy markets, leading to higher fuel prices around the world. A new report by the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University has found Americans have spent over $100 billion more on fuel due to the war in Iran. The soaring fuel prices have sparked protests in many countries, including Syria, Guatemala, Portugal, France, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. We're joined now by Amitabbehar, Executive Director of Oxfam International. You've just come into New York for the UN General Assembly.

14:14It's also climate week. Your focus is the deepening inequality in the world. Lay out what your message is, Amitabbehar. Absolutely. Let me start on a personal note. I grew up in India, and UN was all about hope, hope of a just and a peaceful future. But at the moment what we are seeing is that the world is torn apart by the inequality emergency, the climate crisis, the wars all around. As just look at the obscenity of inequality, at the moment, 3,000 billionaires have a combined wealth of $18.3 trillion. That's almost the GDP of China. And this is the time when the quarter of the global population actually lives with food insecurity. Almost 780 million sleep hungry. They don't get three square meals a day. But I think what is really important is that we need

15:14to reclaim our agency. We need to ensure that there are solutions, and there are solutions, and there are positive steps being taken at this moment. And that's really the message to the UN, that UN cannot continue to live with this fragility. It needs decisive action. It needs to give moral leadership. It needs to ensure accountability, ensure impunity is not tolerated. So there's multiple expectations from the UN, and that's the message from us. But Amitabh Behar, how would you, what precisely would you expect the United Nations to do, especially given the reality that in the current US government, there's more of a continued move toward unilateralism to ignoring the UN, ignoring international agreements? So let me start by talking of same equality,

16:15because it's about rebuilding our future. And on inequality, I actually see more than climbers of hope. One of those big ideas that emerged from the G20 in South Africa is the idea of the international panel on inequality. And that's being backed now by several member states, Brazil, South Africa, Spain, Norway. The entire Africa Union has agreed to back this. So there are different initiatives where specific countries are coming together to fight inequality and also for a better future. And this is really the moment where we do need to look at major reforms. So I'm glad that UN is talking about UN reforms, UN at 80. So the reforms need to look at some of those change geopolitics of the world. We live in a very different world from 1945 when we saw the UN coming. You cannot continue with the veto power,

17:16particularly the penholder power. We need to really, really change that. The realities of the world in terms of where you have a far stronger global south that needs clearer representation. And I would say one of the most important things is we must go back to the opening lines of the UN Charter, which is about we the people. The people get often missing in these conversations. So it's bringing the people's voice. At the moment you're seeing a shrinking of civic space, more than the 90% of global population actually lives in closed context. So there are different challenges, but as I started, there are real possibilities of change. And let me just add that while I talked of the member states and them coming together, I also take huge inspiration. For me personally, I'm hugely inspired by the movements

18:20across the world. And in just, Amy, you were talking about it. These were, you know, whether I come from India. So I've seen movements in Sri Lanka, in Bangladesh, in Nepal, changing regimes. In India, it's the first time the cockroach, Janta Party, a student's movement was able to get a union minister dismissed. So let's not underestimate people's power. People's power is here. And they will certainly move towards a more just and equal society. And the key change that the UN will make very soon is the selection of a new secretary general, as Antonio Cuterres is scheduled to step down. What is Oxfam calling for in terms of a decision on who will lead the world body? It is really odd that in all these 80 years of the UN, we have not had a woman secretary general.

19:21We must ensure that we have a woman secretary general. But let me also say, it is not just having a woman secretary general, what we are talking of is feminist politics. It is a feminist worldview leading the UN. And that's the fundamental shift that we need to make. The new secretary general is going to have an extremely full plate, starting with tackling the emergency of inequality, the climate crisis, and the war is growing everywhere. So there is, this is a moment pretty much of a fundamental reboot for the world. And we need that decisive moral, normative leadership coming from the secretary general. Oxfam is warning that artificial intelligence, AI, can accelerate global inequality, talk about what you're demanding there. So I think it's very clear. And now you are seeing in the last few days, the AI companies themselves are saying that the regulation,

20:21it is really important that there is some multilateral initiatives to govern the AI. We've seen over the years technology when it comes in. We often come say that, oh, it's going to be a huge bone for people. But often we see how it ends up actually accentuating inequalities. We saw during COVID. It was really heartbreaking to see that you actually had vaccine apartheid. Even for something of the scale of the COVID pandemic, there were pharmaceutical companies who wanted to make profits out of that pandemic. So it is really important that we take a decisive multilateral action in terms of the AI. But the story goes bigger. This is also about who owns these AI companies. It's those tech billionaires who are pretty much now,

21:21I report earlier this year at Devo, stocked off, now the super rich are not just happy being wealthy. This is about buying political power. So we are shifting from this extreme inequality to oligarchies. It's the same people who own AI are the people who are buying political power. These are oligarchies. They're the ones who also control media. They're the ones who have full control of narratives. And then you have essentially state capture by these oligarchs. So it is AI. It is about our future. It is about the future of democracy. And this needs decisive action. I also wanted to ask you about the issue of Palestine and Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinians. The you recently released a statement titled Palestinian should lead the rebuilding of Gaza. How would you compare how Axe-Fan views

22:23what needs to be done versus President Trump's so-called a board of peace? The board of peace came into existence in November 25. And it has a lot of legislative powers, executive powers. But what do you see? The continued killing of civilians over the last one year. So even after the peace boat has been created, you're at the moment seeing in Gaza 90% of the people being water insecure. 66% of the people do not even get the basic minimum standard of six liters of drinking water. This is not what we expected from any kind of a new executive party. What we really need is the Palestinian people rebuilding and leading their own future. Finally, this last minute climate.

23:25We are moving into climate week this week in New York. And then of course, the UN climate summit, which will be taking place in Turkey, what are the immediate demands you spend much of your time in Nairobi, in India? We see the devastating effect of the breaking way of the glacier, the melting of the glacier in Nepal, and they have thousands. Yeah. The pictures from Nepal, I'm sure everybody has seen them, heart-ranging. And what we need to recognize is that the burden of climate crisis is borne by the most vulnerable and marginalized people. It's the poorest of the poor. It's women who are the ones who are actually facing the burden of this climate crisis. We again need serious action, not just empty words. As a look, look at the question of climate balancing. Even according to the estimates made by G77 and China,

24:29what we actually have, it's not even 10% of their expectations. So we need decisive action, but let me also further add. Again, this is about the actions that the states need to take, but this is also linked to inequality. It's the super rich. Let me just give you another interesting data point. The 0.1% of the top in terms of the wealth, the emite carbon in one day, which is more than 50% of the bottom. So in one day, they're able to emit that carbon, which is more than anybody living in the bottom 50%. This is about the inequality crisis. We need to understand that the inequality crisis, the climate crisis, the crisis of democracy, they are interlinked, the different dimensions of the same fundamental problem of an unequal political economy that we have created. Amitabh Behar, Oxford International Executive Director

25:31here for the UN General Assembly next week. Coming up, the Pulitzer Prize and Grammy-winning artist, Rianne and Giddens, she's out with a new album today. Hope is the thing with feathers. She'll talk about M-Macklemore being kicked off Ed Sheeran's tour. She'll talk about what's happening with the arts in the United States and her own work. Stay with us. Walk with me, oh Lord, walk with me. Walk with me, oh Lord, walk with me. While I'm on this tedious journey, I want you to walk with me.

26:34Be my friend, oh Lord, be my friend. Be my friend, oh Lord, be my friend. While I'm on this tedious journey, I want you to walk with me. Walk with me, a duet by Rianne and Giddens and her sister, Lelena Harrington, from Rianne's latest album, released today. Hope is the thing with feathers. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. We turn now to the Pulitzer Prize-winning two-time Grammy-winning, multi-instrumentalist Rianne and Giddens. In 2023, she won the Pulitzer Prize for music for her opera Omar, about Omar Ibn Saeed, a Muslim scholar in Africa,

27:35who was sold into slavery in the 1800s. Rianne has had a remarkable career with her time with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an old-time blackstring band who will work as a musical consultant on Ryan Kugler's landmark film, Sinners. Rianne and Giddens recently launched the Biscuits and Banjo's foundation, which celebrates the African diaspora's role in shaping American identity and culture through music literature, food, and community. Rianne and Giddens' new album is out today. Hope is the thing with feathers. On Thursday, we sat down together in our studio. And Rianne performed her song, Wish and Bane, with Dirk Powell. I wish I wish I wish it'd be when I'd guide you from a foe to join me in this adrift frame. I wish my hard-worn, made-of breath.

28:38I wish I wish I wish it'd be for then I let you go as and likewise to you do the same. I wish we're on some shady rock. I wish I wish I wish it'd be and all the fighting was for God. And it was peaceful once again. I wish that you and I my love. Rianne and Giddens' Dirk Powell performing, Wish and Bane, in our studio. After they performed, I spoke to Rianne and Giddens. In Wish and Bane, that you've just performed in the studio,

29:39what was the inspiration for it? Can you talk about the world we're living in now, the world refugee crisis? Oh, yeah. It's really hard to know what to do. As an artist, as a musician, I feel really grateful to be able to use the art that I was given to try to deal with these emotionally huge and complex issues that have been part of humanity for generations from millennia. The idea of having to move from one place to another under no fault of your own, whether it's environmental disaster, whether it's nationalism, whether it's all of these things that are happening all over the world, but at the center of it are human beings. And we all miss and love the same things. We all miss each other. We love each other. We love our food. We love our music. We have the same loves and hates. And I think part of the job of folk music, folk music, idiom

30:42is to connect those things emotionally to each other because that's really the only way forward is to direct, to nice ourselves in that other person. So that's just thinking about, like, if I was in that situation, what would I be thinking? Like, what would I be missing my family? To missing my friends? Will I ever see you again? Will I ever get to talk to you again? Will I ever hear my language again? You know, all of those things. Talk about collaborating with your sister with the song Walk With Me. My sister is my first, you know, kind of my first everything. She's been there for me since I was born. She's seven years older. And through all the ups and downs of childhood and family, strife and all that stuff, we've been rocks for each other. And she's the first person I sang with and has shaped how I think about even singing harmony. So to have that, so prominently highlighted on the record, feels really good. And it's also sibling harmony, which is very special.

31:44And it's also a tradition in North Carolina, of sibling gospel harmony, you know, that we're also pulling from. Walk with me, oh Lord, walk with me. While I'm on this TV. You know, Fannie Lou Hamer is part of the story of that song. And so these things... Tell us about Fannie Lou Hamer. Fannie Lou Hamer was an amazing activist, a woman who like lived her life, lived her convictions in her life, and really didn't get her flowers in her lifetime. You know what I mean? And it just makes me so distraught thinking about what that woman went through. But... Can you tell us what you're talking about? Well, I mean, just in trying to get rights for her people, just coming from such a hard background and just being completely laser focused

32:45on what she was trying to do. Well, while her body is taking all of this abuse, like physical abuse, but also the emotional abuse of how she had to go through walk through life, the weight that that life particularly, and when she was alive, the weight and the tear that that does on black bodies. And just for her to have to go through all that, and to not really be able to see, you know, the... Well, I don't even know where we are right now. I mean, it's really hard to talk about the civil rights movement and think about where we are right now. I'm gonna be honest with you, you know, because, you know, what a deal with what they went through. You know what Fannie Lou Hamer went through? She was like, be and like, her life just so we can vote, you know? I think by prison guards.

33:45Yeah, absolutely. And like, was trying to do something for her people, you know? And like, the selflessness of that, and like, here we are. Like, where are... Like, it's just... I can't even really be articulate about it, because it's just so distressing to think about what folks went through. And here we are with our voting rights being challenged and, you know, the whole system being destabilized kind of day by day by day. And it's just like, what was it for? You know, if we don't... If we don't figure out a way to stop what's happening, I don't know. I don't know. But what it does when I think about what's happening now is, boy, it just puts a whole other light on what those folks were doing and the strength that they had, you know? And we just have to figure out how to draw from that and find that again in this fractured landscape. Rianne Giddens, you talk about having this conversation today and coming back to the United States.

34:47I mean, you go back and forth, North Carolina, Ireland, where you also live. And it makes me think about what is happening right now as we speak. You know, the Ed Sheeran musical tour through the stadiums of the United States, all these bands and his own backup band. And now he's asked Macklemore not to be a part of the act because he says, free Palestine. He sings a song called, Hins Hall about her job, Hins, a five-year-old girl who is really soldiers killed in Gaza, along with many members of her family. I'm wondering, you coming from Ireland, you have Ed Sheeran, not only the musical acts he's with, have quit the tour, but his own backup band, the Irish folk band Veoga and the Irish musician Aaron Rowe dropped out as well. And Rowe said in a social media post,

35:48as Irish people, we know all too well about genocide, force, famine, and violent occupation. I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence the rightful voices of those who speak up against Israeli genocide and who highlight the savage murder of children. Your thoughts. I mean, it's been really interesting to watch the fallout. I've been really thinking a lot about celebrity and a lot about like multimillionaire musicians and what does it all mean? You know, because I think we have a really unhealthy relationship with who we lie in eyes and who we put out in the world. And this is a crossroads, right? Because like Ed Sheeran is a guitar player, you know, he writes songs and he's a lovely musician and I'm sure he's a lovely person and he's like, you know, contributed a lot to charity and I'm sure he treats his people well. None of that is at issue here. But at issue for me is that when you hire somebody like Michael Moore

36:50who's been very pro-Palestinian and his, I mean, this is not a surprise, right? It shouldn't be a surprise. And when you hire Irish musicians, Ireland has been one of the only stood fast like Palestinian informed countries like, you know, that I know of, you know, and look, I'm also just a banjo player. But from what I see and I'm like, tire adjust banjo player. Well, you are a just banjo player. Thank you. I like that. I'm going to get a shirt made. I'm going to be credit. But like, but I, but I, but I'm still just like, we're like these people are not gods. You know what I mean? And they're fallible human beings and it's like he hires all these Irish people and then Mac and more and then is like, I don't know. It's just like, well, I don't know what he was expecting, you know? So this is the thing that really disturbs me is, you know, as a musician, you have to think about what you're doing in the world. And he has every right to do whatever he wants.

37:53But and people will pile on as they will. But I just, I really think that there's two things. One, he can do whatever he wants, right? That doesn't mean that we don't take him to account for that. We have the right to take him to account for that because that's what being in the public eye means, you know? And you have the benefits and the detractions from that. But number two, okay, like let's talk about that. As a musician, I'm like, I'm very interested in, you know, in that because I'm like, you have power there. Why are you not using that power, right? He's folding and I'm just like, and folding too. Let's talk about Robert Kraft. Who's the owner of the New England Patriots also, Gillette Stadium. And he said he is organized a boycott of other stadium owners. So if Ed Sheeran wants to continue through his tour, Macklemore can't be a part of it. Right. And so that's the pressure that's on Ed Sheeran.

38:53And like, I sympathize with him. He's got all these people who have their jobs depending on these stadium shows. Many of them are now quit. Right. And I understood that that was a difficult decision. But for me, it wasn't a difficult decision. You know what I mean? Like you're a multi-millionaire. But anyway, look, the second thing is, is just what you said. I'm like, okay, Ed Sheeran, whatever. But if it doesn't direct the intention to Robert Kraft and if it doesn't direct the attention to the people who actually have the power who are doing these things, that's then it's for not. You know, so like we have to, we have to be informed. We have to inform ourselves and stop expecting celebrities to do it for us. Like we have to go, what do we stand for? What are we putting our money towards? What are we putting our time towards? The entertainment complex is massive. It's too big. There's too many people out there. Like you know what I'm saying? Like put me out of a job. Pick up a bandjo, play some music, write your own song, not to perform for other people, but to just like process the emotions that are going on right now.

39:56People need art to do that, but they need to do it themselves. And like be inspired by somebody who's a really good songwriter, whatever. I'm not saying that. There's room for both. In 2024, you led the Silk Road ensemble in releasing Palestinian lullabies. Yeah, it's like, you know, one of our, whatever our members is Lebanese, like, you know, the, the being in. In a group that includes somebody from the Congo, right? That includes somebody from the Armenian diaspora, right? That includes somebody from India. Like being in a group where people are bringing the histories with them and telling personal stories, telling what this means. You know what I mean? Put it all in a different light and you're just like, if I can't do something like this, you know, what am I doing? What am I doing? Like we now do Wayne Audermoa in our show, you know, and I've interpolated it into

40:57whatever I've put in. I've written verses about Tulsa, Oklahoma and Wilmington. 1898 into, and it's like, if we don't pull our struggles together, if we don't connect the struggles together and the overall larger patterns of extraction, larger patterns of colonialism, larger patterns of empire, larger patterns of massive money making. If we don't connect those dots between the, the, the struggles, we're never going to get anywhere. So for me, that's what music is for. That's what art is for. And that's why we have to make music with people from different backgrounds because then we had that conversation and then it turns into a song and then it turns to a performance and me. As you talk about what's happening today, the final question is about President Trump saying he may well rip down the JFK Center for the performing arts, which many take as a metaphor for the performing arts for the role of arts in our culture. Yeah, you, unless he gets his name inscribed in the

42:00marble in the building, the new normal is insane. You know what I mean? Like just consider what we're talking about, you know, the tantrums of a, of a person who is has unbelievable amounts of power. I don't really know. It's really hard to articulate. But I will say it's also tied to generative AI because generative AI is controllable and artists are not just look at the Maclemore thing, right? Why people want generative AI to make the music is because they can make it do whatever they want. And this is tied to taking the Kennedy Center down because like artists like our job and this is, you know, there is no a political stances, right? Because artists job.

43:00Now I'm not talking about, you know, I think part of the problem is that we have a commercial music industry where music is a commodified product, you know, and artists survive in that, in that, in that framework, but in spite of not because of, right? So you sell what you got to sell and are to make the statement that you're trying to make, right? And, but I think that artists job is to push on you know, these fishers in society is to put is to make people uncomfortable is to make people think about what they're doing is to make people think, who are we morally? Right? So people who are in power only want the things that are going to keep them in power and that are going to not challenge them. So artists are going to challenge them because that's what we do. So yeah, let's take it down. Let's take take down the Kennedy Center, take down, you know, like 40 what 40% of new music on Spotify is is is AI?

44:01Like you see it's happening is happening. You know, people don't even know that they're listening to AI music, you know, like the Grammy, the Grammys like have, like they're they're not making a stand on how much of music is is AI? We have to label it should be labeled. It should be regulated. It should be, you know, so people can can choose whether they opt in to air and up and there are this idea, this myth of inevitability. Well, it's going to happen anyways. We've got to get in front of it. No, nobody agreed on this. Just the people with the money and the power agreed on this. You know what I mean? So we deserve the opportunity to say no. Rehannen Giddens Pulitzer Prize and Grammy winning artist, her new album, Miss Out Today. Hope is the thing with feathers. This is democracy now, democracy now, dot org. I made me good. And coming up with one in zealous, we look at the legacy of Occupy Wall Street, 15 years ago this week, activists began an encampment in New York that sparked

45:04an international movement and popularized the slogan, we are the 99%. I wish I were the evening star. I wish I wish I was in vain. And I guide you from a foe to join me in this I pray. I wish my heart were made of brass. I wish I wish I was in vain. For then I let you go as fast. Likewise to you do the same.

46:08I wish we're on some shady rock. I wish I wish I was in vain. We should vein performed by Rehannen Giddens and Dirk Powell in our Democracy Now studio. Today is the release of Rehannen's new album, Hope is the thing with feathers. This is DemocracyNow, DemocracyNow, dot org. I may be good men with one González. We end today's show looking back at Occupy Wall Street, 15 years ago this week, September 17, 2011, thousands of activists marched on the financial district here in New York then formed an encampment in Zucati Park, launching a movement that shifted the conversation on economic inequality. Protesters go on to sleep in Zucati Park for nearly two months before the New York police raided the encampment. The Occupy movement spread across the nation and the globe. Under the slogan we are the 99%. The impact of the Occupy movement is still being felt today. DemocracyNow is one of the only national outlets to report on the first day of the action.

47:12This is our producer Sam Alkov filing this report. On Saturday thousands of protesters took to the streets of downtown Manhattan for what was described as an action to Occupy Wall Street. Inspired by the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring and the European anti-ostearity movements, ad busters, a Vancouver-based Culture Jamming magazine, put out a call for Saturday's protest on Wall Street in July. The goals were various, from limiting corporate contributions to political campaigns, to auditing the Federal Reserve, to challenging all of global capitalism. Protesters included 71-year-old Mary Ellen Moreno of Princeton New Jersey. I came because I'm upset with the fact that the bailout of Wall Street didn't help any of the people holding mortgages. All the money went to Wall Street and none of it went to Main Street. We've just learned that Geithner was actually asked to split up the city bank and he didn't do it and Obama didn't do anything about it.

48:14The plan wasn't simply for a one-day protest, but an ongoing and creative occupation of the financial district itself. Organizer Lorenzo Serna. The ideas have an encampment, like this isn't a one-day event, like we're hoping that people come prepared to stay as long as they can. They can and they're there to support each other. But on Saturday, after hundreds arrived, the NYPD shut Wall Street down itself, barricading activists off from Wall Street and forcing a move to the nearby Zucati Park. Despite sometimes tense standoffs with the police, hundreds slept in the park and have maintained that they will stay until their demands are met. That report by Democracy Now Sam Alkov. You can see the whole thing online at democracynow.org, but this is 15 years later and we're joined in studio by Yotam Aron. New York-based political organizer, educator and writer, the author of the new book for louder days, reaching beyond a politics of powerlessness. Yotam helped organize the Wall Street protest here in New York.

49:16Pick it up where Sam left off. You were there that day. Talk about the significance of this moment, 15 years ago. You know, it's hard to track how the impact that movements have when they're happening. And Occupy is a complicated one. I remember actually in the immediate aftermath wondering, what did we accomplish? Did we win anything and feeling, you know, a lot of loss and despair? But it's really clear to see now 15 years back, I mean, how much of an impact it's made. I think obvious things like, you know, thousands of people get politicized in these big movement moments and that definitely happened without Occupy Wall Street and then training of lots of leaders and building a lots of organizational infrastructure that movements really didn't have at that time. But I think the biggest impact, I think the biggest contribution, is the 99% and the 1% this sort of intervention in the language of this, of the public. I think this is what movements often do really well when they're successful.

50:16They change the public's common sense about something. And Occupy Wall Street changed the public's common sense about class and class struggle and inequality in this country. And I mean, I think when you, I think it's hard to see how you get a Bernie Sanders 2016 run without the public shifting its relationship to that story. Bernie's been saying the same thing for decades, you know, a blessing. But suddenly it was popular. And that's because movements came around and made it a thing. And then, you know, effective organizations and good politicians can support that and turn it into something durable. And that's how you get, you know, Bernie and AOC and the squad and so on. And yeah, I think that's a huge impact. You talk about the international inspirations to Occupy because clearly about a year earlier, the Arab Spring had broken out in May of 2011, the Indignados in Spain to what degree the activists in New York

51:16and across the United States were aware and fired by those movements? Yeah, I think we were hugely, I think a lot of the people in the sort of heart of Occupy Wall Street were hugely inspired by those movements by Arab Spring. And yeah, I mean, the Indignados in Spain and, you know, movements kind of all across. And yeah, and really saw ourselves as part of a lineage of mass movements in the streets, you know, taking life into their own hands. I think we were, and I think even the form, this sort of like decentralized taking over public squares, we were deeply inspired by those movements. Yes, on September 19, 2001, two days after the start of Occupy, democracy now interviewed the late activist and anthropologist David Graber, who's been credited with hoping to coin Occupy's defining rally and call. We are the 99%. He talked about who showed up on the first day of the protest.

52:16It was mostly young people, and most of them were people who gone through the educational system who were deeply in debt, and who found it completely impossible to get jobs. I mean, these people have felt, really feel very strongly that they did the right thing, they did exactly what they were supposed to, the system has completely failed them. And they're not going to be saved by the people in charge. You're just going to have, if there's going to be any kind of society, like we're worth living in, we're going to have to create it ourselves. That's the late David Graber, of course, he was talking about, there was two days after September 19, 2011. And then Occupy, that mass protest in October, in Times Square, talk about the scene and looking up and seeing the ticker. Yeah. So this is a story in my book, too, that I helped, you know, played a bunch of roles in Occupy and one of them was helping to pull off this October 15th action, which was our biggest day of action. And, you know, we're sort of tearing through the streets of New York and shutting down banks and blocking traffic.

53:21It was also the day that I think 100, 150 occupations started in other cities around the country. And not just big cities, but also like, you know, parking lot in Idaho and, you know, the state lawn and wherever. And, you know, really, it became, you know, a significant political force. And that day ended in Times Square with like 80,000 people. And I remember this moment, standing on a trash can in Times Square. And, you know, Times Square has these massive buildings. And the ABC building has a ticker, a rolling ticker that pumps out the news. And we're standing there and the ticker goes, Occupy Wall Street goes worldwide while we're there. And it's this like time stops kind of moment. And I look back at that as a, actually, as a pretty transformative moment for me. And I think, I think in a way Occupy was very transformative for a whole generation of us. For me, what that moment was was a first feeling that we could build movements that were powerful, that were popular.

54:21I think I had come, grown up in movements that had lost. And we're used to losing. And I think we over time sort of accepted the idea that we were going to be on the margins. We were going to be the righteous few, but we weren't going to win. And Occupy Wall Street was this first glimmer of, oh, we could be. We could be powerful. We could be something that the public is paying attention to. We could potentially win. And of course, that's not exactly how Occupy played out. But when you look at, you know, that is an important prerequisite to movements. It's the sense that we could be powerful, but the movements that don't believe that they can win, tend to take on, you know, hard dynamics internally. And you mentioned your book for a lot of, for a lot of days reaching beyond the politics of powerlessness. But clearly, as you also mentioned, a lot of what the, the protesters were hoping for did not occur.

55:21And you also deal with the conflicts and divisions that develop within the movement. I'm wondering if you could talk about that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. And I think, look, I think Occupy Wall Street brought us a lot. And I think there's a lot to be grateful for. But I also think in some ways it was an embodiment of this thing that I call the politics of powerlessness, which is the, when movements and organizations internalize the sense that they belong on the margins and that they're always going to be on the margins, whether because, you know, at a bad habit or having lost for a very long time, we're feeling despair in the face of the climate crisis, or this towering opponent. When movements don't believe that they can win, they tend to turn away from our opponent. We turn to turn away from the public we're supposed to be organizing and we turn towards each other and often against each other because that's what we can control. We don't like to feel powerless in the face of this big, wide world. So we sort of enact power on each other. And that often looks like tearing down leaders. It looks like, you know, forming these sort of tight clubs that are really hard for every day. People to join.

56:21It looks like, you know, battles over identity and things like that. And kind of conflict avoidance that makes all that possible. So the book is really about, you know, Occupy was in a way a case in that where I learned a lot of that. And then the book is stories from my work as a movement facilitator and strategist for social movement organizations. Supporting them to work through that thing and watching them break through those patterns over the course of the last, you know, 10, 15 years. Yeah, that's what I mean by the politics of powerlessness and stop there. And to what degree do you think the decentralized autonomous anti-hierarchal approach of the Occupy protesters made it more difficult for them to actually once the process ended, build a national organizations that could actually exercise power.

57:21Yeah, I thought about that totally. Yeah, it's another good question. I think, you know, all the things that made Occupy magical were also, it's sort of self-destruct mechanism. You know, the sort of leaderlessness was a thing that invited people to join and take agency and be creative. And movements often are decentralized and that's how they go to scale. But it also made it impossible to figure out, to craft a strategy, to build long-term organization, to really absorb all these thousands of people who are being politicized. In some ways, that is just part of what happens in movement moments. And it's our responsibility as movements to be building organizations and parties and things that can capture that kind of momentum. But I do think that, yeah, we got it wrong on a lot of things. We had a ton of internal conflict that really, I think, jeopardized the project. Well, you write all about it in four louder days, reaching beyond a politics of powerlessness as we talk about Yotam Maurelm's book out on the 15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.

58:28But it does it for our show. On the 22nd on Tuesday, we'll be at IFC here in New York for the screening of Steel of the Story, please. Then to London, beginning Friday, September 25th, and over the weekend as well, we'll be at the picture house Hackney. And then we'll be in Copenhagen on the 29th at the Grand Theatre in then to Berlin, Germany. On the 1st of October, we'll be at Spore. And we'll be at the Grand Theatre in Germany, Goodman, with Juan González for another edition of Democracy Now.