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When you hear someone speaking for themselves—whether it's an elder from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe or legendary activist and scholar Angela Davis, an icon of the Black liberation movement—it changes you.
That's why we cover the movements that are rising up and demanding a greener, more peaceful and just world—from the Indigenous-led struggle against the fossil fuel industry to the coalition of Black activists, organizers and everyday people who are fighting for an end to police violence and racist polices in the United States that terrorize Black and Brown communities.
In the age of COVID-19—amid so much loss and horror—it's these voices of resistance that give me hope for the future. They are beacons of light at one of the darkest times in U.S. history.
Day in and day out, Democracy Now! provides people with a platform to tell their stories of hope and resistance. I'm writing to share some of these stories with you—stories of the activists and scholars who are speaking up, taking action and changing the world.
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The protests against police violence have helped dramatically shift public opinion on policing and systemic racism. For analysis of this historic moment, we turned to the legendary activist and scholar Angela Davis, who for half a century has been one of the most influential activists and intellectuals in the United States.
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"One never knows when conditions may give rise to a conjuncture such as the current one that rapidly shifts popular consciousness and suddenly allows us to move in the direction of radical change," Davis said. "If one does not engage in the ongoing work when such a moment arises, we cannot take advantage of the opportunities to change. ...The intensity of the current demonstrations cannot be sustained over time, but we will have to be ready to shift gears and address these issues in different arenas, including, of course, the electoral arena."
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The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Indigenous organizers across the country scored a massive legal victory Monday when a federal judge ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline to be shut down and emptied of all oil, pending an environmental review.
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We spoke to LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and founder of Sacred Stone Camp to resist the Dakota Access Pipeline, who said, "You ever have a dream, a dream that comes true? That is what this is ... I know that it’s going to be appealed. I know it’s going to be a long journey, but we’re here for the long journey. It is not about who’s right or wrong; it’s about how do we live in the future."
In 2016, thousands of people traveled to North Dakota to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline’s construction on sacred lands. Democracy Now! was there on the ground covering the struggle. On September 3, 2016, Labor Day weekend, the Dakota Access Pipeline company unleashed dogs and pepper spray on Native Americans seeking to protect their sacred tribal burial site from destruction. Democracy Now! caught it all on video. To watch the full exclusive report, click here.
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Anti-pipeline activists are celebrating after Duke Energy and Dominion Energy announced on Monday that they are dropping plans to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile pipeline that would have carried fracked gas from West Virginia to North Carolina and threatened rural Indigenous, Black and Brown communities.
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Donna Chavis, senior fossil fuel campaigner for Friends of the Earth and elder of the Lumbee Nation, joined us on Democracy Now! to discuss the victory and how it was brought about through solidarity between Indigenous peoples and Black communities in West Virginia and North Carolina.
“As we were working up and down the pipeline in resistance and opposition, we found ourselves in a wonderful situation of crossing the boundaries between race and class, and bringing together the Indigenous and African American communities," Donna Chavis said on Democracy Now! "We held each other up and kept going ..."
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Hours before President Trump spoke at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 20, the Poor People’s Campaign offered a counterpoint with a mass digital gathering, where the campaign unveiled a policy platform to spur “transformative action.”
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Reverend Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, joined us on Democracy Now! to talk about the digital march, a virtual gathering of over 2.5 million people, and what his campaign identifies as the most pressing issues of our time: racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and nationalism.
Rev. Barber talked about how reducing the military budget and spending those funds on key social services and green energy could transform the U.S. "Just one military contract could give preschool to all the children ... If we just took the money that we spent since 9/11, we could have had a green grid," Barber said.
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At least 15,000 people marched through Brooklyn on June 14 to protest violence against Black transgender people, particularly women, who face disproportionate levels of violence at the hands of police and on the streets.
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Democracy Now! spoke to journalist Imara Jones, creator of TransLash, who said the trans rights movement currently has “tremendous visibility” but also faces a “tremendous backlash.”
"We have these two forces that are at work right now, where we have tremendous visibility, tremendous realization of the presence of trans people, the need for trans rights, our power, our contributions both now and throughout history, and at the same time a tremendous backlash, that is very real, that is funded, that is coordinated, that is on the march. And these two things are colliding," Jones asserted.
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As protesters worldwide continued to topple monuments to racists, colonizers and Confederates as part of the wave of demonstrations against racism and state violence, we spoke to Bree Newsome Bass, artist and antiracist activist based in North Carolina, who five years ago was arrested at the state Capitol in South Carolina after scaling a 30-foot flagpole to remove the Confederate flag.
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Newsome Bass said the current backlash against racist symbols reflects “impatience with the pace of incremental progress” both in the United States and elsewhere. “People are tired of centuries of colonialism and white supremacist ideology.”
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For all of our recent coverage on the uprisings for racial justice, the climate crisis, COVID-19 and much more, please visit democracynow.org.
None of this would be possible without you and the rest of our global audience of listeners and viewers.
Stay safe. Wear a mask to protect yourself, your family and the whole community. And thank you so much for tuning in to our daily, independent news hour.
Democracy Now!
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