[/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=]

“ORIGIN”: AVA DUVERNAY’S NEW FILM DRAMATIZES “CASTE,” FROM
U.S. RACISM TO INDIA’S DALITS TO NAZI GERMANY  
[[link removed]]


 

Ava DuVernay, Amy Goodman
February 2, 2024
Democracy Now!
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay about her latest feature film,
Origin, which explores discrimination in the United States and beyond
through a dramatization of the book Caste: The Origins of Our
Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. _

, Democracy Now! clip, "Origin" / NEON

 

We speak with award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay about her latest
feature film, _Origin_, which explores discrimination in the United
States and beyond through a dramatization of the book _Caste: The
Origins of Our Discontents_ by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Isabel Wilkerson, whose process of writing the book is a central part
of the film’s story. DuVernay, whose previous projects
include _Selma_ and _13th_, says she was captivated by the ideas in
the book after reading it in 2020 amid mass protests over the police
murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “Isabel Wilkerson writes it
in a beautiful way, but it is pretty dense material. And so my goal
was to attach character into that so that there could be a deeper
empathy,” DuVernay tells _Democracy Now!_ “The film follows
Isabel Wilkerson in her pursuit of truth as she writes the book.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is _Democracy Now!_ I’m Amy Goodman.

We spend the rest of the hour with award-winning filmmaker Ava
DuVernay. She’s explored Black history in many of the movies she’s
directed, from _Selma_ to the documentary _13th_, that explores
race in the prison-industrial complex, to the miniseries _When They
See Us_ about the Central Park Five, now known as the Exonerated
Five. She also directed Disney’s _A Wrinkle in Time_.

Ava DuVernay’s new film is called _Origin_, takes viewers on a
journey that explores racism, from the United States and the killing
of Trayvon Martin to Dalits in India, used to be called the
“untouchables,” to Nazi book burnings in Germany and the killings
of Jews in the lead-up to World War II. It does so by dramatizing the
book _Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents_ by Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, as well as the process of
writing the book. This is the trailer for _Origin_.

ISABEL WILKERSON: [played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor] If you look
closely, you’ll find something tragic was happening.

AMARI SELVAN: [played by Blair Underwood] Are you interested in
writing something for us?

ISABEL WILKERSON: I don’t do assignments anymore.

AMARI SELVAN: Yeah, well, you’re a better writer than most people
do anything. Have you heard the tapes?

ISABEL WILKERSON: No. Of what?

SEAN NOFFKE: Sanford Police Department. This is Sean.

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: Hey, we’ve had some break-ins in my
neighborhood, and there’s a real suspicious guy, looks like he’s
up to no good or something.

ISABEL WILKERSON: I want to be in the story, really inside the
story, and build a thesis that shows how all of this is linked.

KATE: [played by Vera Farmiga] I’ve got to be honest with you. I
don’t understand. I don’t see it.

MARION WILKERSON: [played by Niecy Nash] You go and write your
stories. Folks need to know about this.

SABINE: [played by Connie Nielsen] You’re trying to make sense of
racism, but your thesis is flawed.

ISABEL WILKERSON: It was all lies. They knew we weren’t inferior.

You don’t escape trauma by ignoring it. You escape trauma by
confronting it. I don’t write questions. I write answers.

AMY GOODMAN: The trailer for _Origin_, which is in movie theaters
now. It’s directed by the award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who
I recently interviewed. I began by asking about her decision to make
this a feature film instead of a documentary.

AVA DUVERNAY: Well, I read the book. It came out in 2020, about two
months after the murder of George Floyd. So, Isabel Wilkerson
publishes _Caste_. When I read it, I am captivated by the ideas. I
had never put the idea of caste in a contemporary context, as it
relates to African American history or, you know, American history in
general, and certainly not in a contemporary context, as I put it
against, you know, challenging current cases of criminal misconduct
and the killing of Black people, as we see in the case of Trayvon
Martin, which is discussed in the film. And so, these were all new
ideas to me. I was really motivated to share them with folk in an
accessible way.

So, all of my “aha” moments from reading the book are in the film,
but I needed a main character to drive us through what is truly an
anthropological thesis. I mean, Isabel Wilkerson writes it in a
beautiful way, but it is pretty dense material. And so my goal was to
attach character into that, so that there could be a deeper empathy
and a following of a leading lady. And so, played by Aunjanue
Ellis-Taylor, the film follows Isabel Wilkerson in her pursuit of
truth as she writes the book. And along the way, you watch her
overcome great personal challenge and also complete the book _Caste_.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go where you begin _Origin_, or on the issue
that you begin _Origin_, featuring Isabel Wilkerson, played by
Aunjanue Ellis.

ISABEL WILKERSON: [played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor] Yeah, yeah.
It’s a lot.

AMARI SELVAN: [played by Blair Underwood] Yeah?

ISABEL WILKERSON: It’s a lot. There’s a lot there, but
longer-form stuff, questions that I don’t have the answer to.

AMARI SELVAN: So, ask them in the piece.

ISABEL WILKERSON: I don’t write questions. I write answers.

AMARI SELVAN: Questions like what?

ISABEL WILKERSON: Like, why does a Latino man deputize himself to
stalk a Black boy to protect an all-white community? What is that?

AMARI SELVAN: The racist bias I want you to explore, excavate for
the readers.

ISABEL WILKERSON: We call everything racism. What does it even mean
anymore? It’s the default. When did that happen?

AMARI SELVAN: Hey, Brett.

BRETT HAMILTON: [played by Jon Bernthal] How are you?

AMARI SELVAN: All right. So, wait, so, you’re saying that he
isn’t a racist?

ISABEL WILKERSON: No, I’m not saying that he’s not a racist.
I’m questioning why is everything racist.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that is Isabel Wilkerson, played by Aunjanue
Ellis-Taylor. And if you can go to why you decided to start with
Trayvon Martin? And as you said, actually, you hear George
Zimmerman’s voice.

AVA DUVERNAY: Yes. When I was interviewing Ms. Wilkerson about her
process in writing the book, she had shared that the verdict of the
case against George Zimmerman was a seminal moment in her curiosity
and in her quest to put together the pieces and try to pursue this
notion of caste and explaining it to folks. And so, I wanted to begin
where she began.

In the film, you see it opens with a day in the life of a teenager
named Trayvon, and you are walking with him as he is going about his
business, talking to a friend on the phone, going to, you know, buy a
snack. And those few minutes that you see him, before anything happens
to him, before he is stalked and assaulted and killed, are moments to
— constructed to humanize him and allow you to learn a little bit
about him, outside of the context of what was done to him.

And that was important to me, in any rendering of challenge and
trauma, to make sure that we are doing exactly what caste asks us not
to do. Caste asks us not to humanize one another. But in the rendering
of Trayvon Martin, we make sure that we open on just him, before
anything else. And so, because that was the beginning of Isabel
Wilkerson’s writing journey, part of the beginning of it, we began
the film that way, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about why you decided to call the film
not _Caste_, but _Origin_.

AVA DUVERNAY: Well, because I didn’t want to be disingenuous. The
film is not the book. The film is about the writing of the book, and
it’s about the woman who wrote the book. You’re going to get some
good pieces of the book, but it’s about the intellectual pursuit.
It’s about the curiosity that leads us to knowledge. It’s about
the interrogation of status and power. It’s about — it’s about
obstacle. It’s about love. It’s about triumph over adversity. And
it’s different than the book. You know, it’s about the life and
work of this woman as she’s writing _Caste_. And so I didn’t want
to call it _Caste_ and have you see it and think, “Wait, what am I
doing here inside of this marriage or inside of this relationship with
Ruby Wilkerson, who was Isabel Wilkerson’s mother?” So,
“origin” is a word in the subtitle of the book. The book is, as
you know, _Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents_. And so, we stay
true to the proximity between the two by using the same word.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Isabel herself. I interviewed
[[link removed]] her
in 2020 after she won the Pulitzer Prize for _The Warmth of Other
Suns_, when her book _Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents_ came
out.

AMY GOODMAN: In your book, _Caste_, you write about Bhimrao
Ambedkar, the intellectual leader of India’s Dalit movement, what
people call the “untouchable” movement. He wrote to W. E. B. Du
Bois in 1946, “There is so much similarity between the position of
the Untouchables in India and of the position of the Negroes in
America,” he wrote. Can you talk about who he was in relation to
Gandhi in India, and then W. E. B. Du Bois’s response?

ISABEL WILKERSON: Well, Gandhi was from a family that was an
upper-caste — one of the upper castes. And so, he was the leader in
the effort toward independence for the entire country of India and is
known, obviously, for his nonviolent approach to achieving
independence and to protesting.

Dr. Ambedkar was a leader of the Dalit movement. He was born into what
was then known or called as one of the “untouchables,” one of the
groups that was viewed as untouchable. And he went on to achieve great
heights, and in his education, he actually attended Columbia
University, and he got many advanced degrees. And then he returned to
lead the movement toward, first of all, the Indian Constitution, but
then also continuing to advocate on behalf of his people.

And he is one of the — is an example of how people in India,
particularly those who had been assigned to the lowest caste, had been
looking and aware of what was going on across the oceans, across
continents, of what was going on here in the United States, and made
common cause or recognized the common cause between the plight of the
Dalits, formerly known as “untouchables,” and of African Americans
here in this country.

So, Dr. Ambedkar reached out to W. E. B. Du Bois, who was at that
time, obviously, one of the leaders of African American intellect and
thought and philosophy — reached out to him in recognition of the
connections between the two peoples and the two countries in terms of
the hierarchies. Both of them recognized that hierarchy, the
infrastructure of our divisions, that a caste system was an
appropriate term to look at how both peoples were being treated in
their respective societies, though the countries are very, very
different. They share — somewhat, they share in the ways of
subordinating the very lowest-caste people in their countries.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Isabel Wilkerson talking about her
book _Caste_ when it first came out in 2020. And now we’re going
to go to Isabel Wilkerson, played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, talking
about the Dalits of India.

ISABEL WILKERSON: [played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor] Millennia ago,
Dalits were called the untouchables of India and forced into the
degrading work of manual scavenging, the practice of cleaning
excrement from toilets and open drains by hand in exchange for
leftover food. The only thing that they have to protect their bodies
is oil, each other and their prayers. To refuse is to invite severe
punishment or death. This persists to this day.

AMY GOODMAN: From _Origin_, Ava DuVernay’s film. Ava, talk about
this journey that Isabel Wilkerson takes to India, also the crisis in
her personal life, so deeply involved with her family, so close to her
cousin, her mother, losing her family as she traveled.

AVA DUVERNAY: Yes. Well, the film chronicles the personal life of
Isabel Wilkerson and some of the losses that she shared with me that
she endured during the lead-up to writing the book. In a 16-month
span, she lost her three family members and was still somehow able to
anchor herself in her work and pull herself through — I won’t say
“over,” because you never completely get over those losses, but
through it to a place where she was able to use her creative output,
her kind of intellectual energy, to stand in grief in a different way.
And a part of that process was a visit to India, was one of several
places she traveled around the world to research the book _Caste_.

I was also, you know, thrilled to have the pleasure to go to India and
to shoot those scenes in Delhi, to speak with one of the same scholars
that she spoke to, Dr. Suraj Yengde, who plays himself in the film.
And he introduced me to a whole world of Dalit intellectuals and
activists. The two men that you see kind of performing the act of
manual scavenging are two actual men who are in that position in India
to this day. They are two men who are associated with the advocacy
group, and they generously agreed to, you know, do the work on camera.
They were wonderful to work with. And just to give context to an
American audience, the money that we gave them, that paid them to be
performers in the film that day, was more than they make all year in
that job. It’s not even a job. It’s an existence. And so, it was a
profound experience, as described in the book, for Isabel Wilkerson,
and certainly for me as a filmmaker, to be there.

AMY GOODMAN: And for Dr. King, as you point out.

AVA DUVERNAY: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Martin Luther King, who went to India. Talk about
that part of this connection between —

AVA DUVERNAY: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — the treatment of African Americans in the United
States and what he discovered in India.

AVA DUVERNAY: He talked about his realization when he was there in
India that he is a lower-class American citizen, and talks about the
African American experience in context of caste. And it animates his
thinking about the Black experience in new ways, which he wrote about
and talked about extensively. I did the film _Selma_, didn’t know
that. I have researched Dr. King extensively, knew he had visited
India, knew that he had gone there, but never had read or heard about
his — you know, what he took from it.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you take us from the treatment of African Americans
and the oppression of African Americans in the United States to the
treatment of the Dalits, what was formally known as the untouchables,
to what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany. And that’s where I want to
go next, in this clip of _Origin_ that features a scene when the
character Isabel Wilkerson, played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, addresses
an audience about her book _Caste_.

ISABEL WILKERSON: [played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor] On this day, he
folded his arms rather than salute a regime that deemed that love
illegal. On this day, he was brave. He couldn’t have been the only
one who felt something tragic was happening. So why was he the only
one among the men to not go along that day? Perhaps we can reflect on
what it would mean to be him today. I’ll leave you with that. Thank
you.

AMY GOODMAN: That was a clip of Isabel Wilkerson, played by Aunjanue
Ellis-Taylor, giving a speech about _Caste_, behind her a
black-and-white footage of men and women in Germany putting up their
hand in the “Heil Hitler” salute. Ava DuVernay, you’re talking
there — or, I should say, Isabel is talking about August Landmesser.
Tell us his story.

AVA DUVERNAY: Yes. August Landmesser is one of the first stories
that the book _Caste_ opens with. So, you know, if you’re reading
it, in the first 15 minutes, you’re going to hit this story, which
just captivated my imagination the first time I read it, and I had to
delve deeper and really know what happened to him and what happened to
his love, Irma. So, it’s the story of August and Irma. And they are
both Germans. She’s Jewish. And he had registered as a member of the
Nazi Party a couple of years before the moment of this very famous
picture, which I know many people have seen. And so, in the film, we
chronicle and show and share everything that I could find about what
happened to them after that moment.

But in the book, Isabel talks about this moment of defiance and of
resistance. And, you know, I like the words that we use in the film
— “On this day, he was brave” — because, you know, none of
us are brave all the time. But on that day, when it came down to
standing up for what you truly believe, he would not “Heil
Hitler.” He had someone at home who he loved who was Jewish, and he
stood on those principles and didn’t go along with the status quo.
And it’s a beautiful love story in the film, overall. And it really
kind of exemplifies the humanity that Isabel shares in the book.

AMY GOODMAN: And you weave into this Elizabeth and Allison Davis,
two Black anthropologists who co-wrote the groundbreaking book _Deep
South_. We’re going to play a clip for a moment of book burnings in
Germany and that place outside of Humboldt University, where you see,
instead of cement in the plaza, just a square, where you look down,
bright light, and you just see white empty shelves. This was Isabel
Wilkerson when she took that journey, played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

NIGELLA: [played by Mieke Schymura] In Germany, there’s memorials
to nearly everyone victimized by the Nazis. And there’s no entry
sign, no. No gate. It’s just open — 

ISABEL WILKERSON: [played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor] Yes, it is.

NIGELLA: — both day and night, just standing to bear witness.
Twenty thousand books were lost that night, books filled with
imagination, ideas and history.

ERICH KÄSTNER: [played by Franz Hartwig] Leave here, my friends.
Leave Germany. Go to your home as soon as you can. You will be safer
there.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of the extraordinary film _Origin_. Ava,
introduce us to these authors who wrote this seminal work in the
United States, and your discovery — Isabel Wilkerson’s discovery
of the connection they had between the United States and Germany.

AVA DUVERNAY: Yes, yes. Well, it always moves me in that scene where
he says, “You will be safer there.” Not true. Right? He’s
sending them back home to the segregated South.

So, Allison and Elizabeth Davis were two anthropologists. In the film
— excuse me, in the book, Isabel talks about the connection and the
kindred feeling between Allison Davis’s work and her work. She
regards him as a seminal figure in the development of her ideas around
this work. And she talks primarily about research that they did in
Natchez, Mississippi, for their book, _Deep South_. In the book, she
mentions that they also had studied abroad. And when I dug deeper into
that, I realized that they were actually there, had witnessed a book
burning, and escaped Nazi Germany right as the rise of Hitler was
reaching a crescendo. And so, I couldn’t believe that the two
stories converged in that way.

And upon further research, we were able to, you know, really try to
build out what those book burnings looked like, what they did, how
they functioned. And so, what you just saw is the culmination of a
sequence that digs into Allison and Elizabeth Davis in Germany as
— you know, studying, and then coming across this burning of books
in a place called Bebelplatz. And we shot in the exact square. Some of
the scenes that you were — shots that you were seeing are exact
recreations of photographs of that actual incident. So, it was a
thrill to actually be there standing on the same cobblestone and
rendering those images about two African American scholars who had to
leave under the cover of night to get out of Germany under the Hitler
— to avoid Hitler, and being an African American woman standing in
that square, recreating those images freely — a big full circle
moment.

But the book, _Deep South_, has been republished with a foreword by
Isabel Wilkerson. And it tells the remarkable stories of caste that
the Davises, as well as their colleagues, the Gardners, developed and
share in the book about caste.

AMY GOODMAN: And again, that book is called _Deep South: A Social
Anthropological Study of Caste and Class_. So, you deal in the United
States, in India. You deal with Germany. And this goes to the issue of
Isabel Wilkerson developing her thesis in the book _Caste_. I want to
go to that scene when Isabel, played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, is at a
dinner party with fellow scholars discussing the thesis of _Caste_.

SABINE: [played by Connie Nielsen] Well, there are so many
differences between here and there. We are talking about the
systematic murder of 6 million Jews. That’s the official number. So,
it’s just very different than monuments to soldiers and whatnot.

NATHAN: [played by Leonardo Nam] Well, what? What are you saying is
different?

SABINE: Well, all of it. We’re talking about deliberate
extermination, over many years.

NATHAN: Yeah, but wasn’t slavery for like hundreds of years? Right,
Isabel?

ISABEL WILKERSON: [played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor] Slavery lasted
246 years. That’s 13 generations of people, plus another hundred
years of Jim Crow, segregation, violence and murder.

SABINE: It is, of course, horrific. I am not downplaying any of it.

ISABEL WILKERSON: There were so many millions of African Americans
who were murdered, from the Middle Passage until the end of legal
segregation, that it goes beyond the realm of an official number.
There is no number.

NATHAN: I didn’t know that.

ULRICH: [played by John Hans Tester] No. It’s stunning.

SABINE: It is. And I understand you’re trying to make sense of
American racism. It is noble. But your thesis linking caste in Germany
with the United States is flawed.

ULRICH: Yeah, maybe — maybe it’s not exactly the same, but the
thesis of structural similarity certainly gives context for a
framework.

SABINE: Right, but a framework is not a book, my friends. She is
trying to connect the United States to Germany, but it doesn’t fit.
It’s as if you’re trying to fit a square inside a circle, as they
say. I would just like you to note for yourself that American slavery
is rooted in subjugation, dominating Blacks for the purposes of
capitalism, using bodies and labor for profit. But for the Jews during
the Holocaust, the end goal was not subjugation. It was extermination.
Kill them all. Wipe them off the face of the Earth. There is no need
for them here. It’s different.

AMY GOODMAN: A scene from the extraordinary film _Origin_. Ava
DuVernay, that was one of the longest clips you shared with us. Talk
about why this is so central, and the kind of pushback that Isabel
Wilkerson got as she developed this idea of _Caste_.

AVA DUVERNAY: Yes. Well, she shared with me, as she, you know, took
these ideas around the world and talked with different scholars,
different writers about it, that there were questions, and people had
different points of view about caste, about the way that it works, and
its connective tissue between cultures and communities. And so, you
know, I think it’s all part of a conversation that I hope the film
instigates. You know, I’ve said that the film is not — I’m not
seeking agreement with all of the ideas, but I do feel that we should
engage with ideas. And I think that far too often we’re in our
corners and not engaging with one another about these things.

And so, as Isabel explained to me, you know, she did attend a dinner
party where there was a difference of opinion, and intellectuals were
talking and wrestling with ideas in this way. And that scene really
propels her on a journey to prove the kinds of things that she’s
trying to prove, to uncover what binds us together, as opposed to
standing in our corners and saying that these things aren’t alike.
And, you know, I feel that her quest to do that, and the book that
came from it, was a great gift. You know, certainly, there are
instances in the journey where there are obstacles, and people are
saying, “I don’t agree with that.” But it doesn’t mean you
don’t take the journey. And I think that’s one of the big things
that I learned from her in making this film. And hopefully it comes
across when you watch this scene and then the scenes that come after.
This scene propels her forward with a new zest for actually, you know,
proving her thesis.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there anything else you want to add, Ava, before we
end?

AVA DUVERNAY: I would love to add that this picture is in the world
in a way that is very independent. And I believe your audience
embraces that.

AMY GOODMAN: And you made it in time for the 2024 election.

AVA DUVERNAY: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Does that have any meaning to you, the fact that it is
out for this pivotal election year, some calling it perhaps the most
important election ever?

AVA DUVERNAY: Yes. I mean, this was intentional. It was important
for me that the film be out this year. There were opportunities for us
to make it with more money and with more bells and whistles, with
studios’ involvement, but it wouldn’t have been out this year. You
know, it is not a film made to make money for corporations. It’s a
film made to ignite our imaginations and our curiosity and get us to
lean in and figure out what we’re going to do next, because this is
an essential time for action. And so, that’s our offering, and
that’s our hope.

AMY GOODMAN: Award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who explores
Black history in many of her films, from _Selma_ to _13th_ to the
series _When They See Us_. Her new movie, _Origin_, is in theaters
now, as Black History Month begins in the United States. It dramatizes
the book _Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents_ by the Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson. Ava is the winner of the
Emmy, BAFTA and Peabody Awards and an Academy Award nominee.

AMY GOODMAN is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a
national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on
over 1,400 public television and radio stations worldwide.

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard honored Goodman with
the 2014 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence Lifetime
Achievement Award. She is also the first journalist to receive the
Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize'
for “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots
political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative
voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.” She is the
first co-recipient of the Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy
Award, named for the great muckraking journalist I.F. Stone, and was
later selected for induction into the Park Center’s I.F. Stone Hall
of Fame. The Independent of London called Amy Goodman and Democracy
Now! “an inspiration.”

Goodman has co-authored six New York Times bestsellers. Her latest,
Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America,
looks back over the past two decades of Democracy Now!

AVA MARIE DUVERNAY is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, film and
television producer. She is a recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award, two
NAACP Image Award, a BAFTA Film Award and a BAFTA TV Award, as well as
a nominee for two Academy Awards and four Golden Globes. In 2011 she
founded an independent distribution company, ARRAY, which also
distributes and amplifies the work of people of color and women
directors.

DEMOCRACY NOW! produces a daily, global, independent news hour hosted
by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González. Our
reporting includes breaking daily news headlines and in-depth
interviews with people on the front lines of the world’s most
pressing issues. On Democracy Now!, you’ll hear a diversity of
voices speaking for themselves, providing a unique and sometimes
provocative perspective on global events.

Democracy Now! is broadcast daily across the United States and Canada
as well as in countries around the world. Our program is on
Pacifica, NPR, community, college and satellite radio stations;
on PBS, public, community and satellite TV; and viewed by millions of
people online each day. Our headlines are broadcast in Spanish on
radio stations across the U.S., Central and South America, and in
Europe.

Democracy Now! launched in 1996, airing on nine radio stations. More
than two decades later, we have grown to be one of the leading
U.S.-based independent daily news broadcasts in the world.

As an independent news program, Democracy Now! is audience-supported,
which means that our editorial independence is never compromised by
corporate or government interests. Since our founding in 1996,
Democracy Now! has held steadfast to our policy of not accepting
government funding, corporate sponsorship, underwriting or advertising
revenue. 

Please donate today! [[link removed]]Your support
is vital to sustain and grow Democracy Now!

* Films
[[link removed]]
* Ava DuVernay
[[link removed]]
* discrimination
[[link removed]]
* Racism
[[link removed]]
* caste
[[link removed]]
* History
[[link removed]]
* Social Movements
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[/contact/submit_to_xxxxxx?utm_medium=email&utm_source=]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [/faq?utm_medium=email&utm_source=]
Manage subscription [/subscribe?utm_medium=email&utm_source=]
Visit xxxxxx.org [/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]