democracynow--2020-01-17--Interpretation Crisis at the Border Leads to Deportation of Mayan-Language Speakers Seeking Refuge

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
I ’ m Amy Goodman .
As the U.S. continues to use hostile policies to stop people from seeking refuge and asylum in the United States , we look at a key problem that ’ s preventing migrants from getting due process , and in many cases getting them deported : inadequate translation for indigenous asylum seekers who speak Mayan languages .
Guatemala has a population of 15 million people .
At least 40 % of them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a quarter of a million Guatemalan migrants have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border .
At least half of them are Mayan .
Many speak little or no Spanish .
That ’ s the focus of a New Yorker magazine article headlined “ A Translation Crisis at the Border.
” I had a chance to interview the author of that article , Rachel Nolan , at Constitutional Plaza in Guatemala City .
She is an assistant professor of international relations at Boston University .
And we spoke to Odilia Romero , Zapotec @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Front of Indigenous Organizations for 25 years .
I started by asking Rachel Nolan to lay out her piece .
And so , in Guatemala , you do pay a very small fee to get a birth certificate .
So when he was asked had he paid for the birth certificate of his daughter , he answered yes .
And the Border Patrol agent used that answer as supposed evidence that he had paid for a false birth certificate , which was not true .
And on the basis of that , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months .
And because Mario only speaks Mam , he was not able to understand what was happening and why his daughter was separated from him .
Again , Mam is his primary language , and he speaks very little Spanish , if at all .
So he was answering yes , yes , yes , to try to ingratiate himself to the authorities , to try to control was what was clearly a very fearful situation .
Suddenly , we just started getting these calls .
We have : “ We need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Zapotec .
We need Mam.
” And suddenly everybody ’ s calling us .
We were getting calls from social media , texts .
And at that point , you know , we didn ’ t know what to do , because there were so many .
And the agencies will call us and say , “ I need Zapoteco.
” And I will get on the phone , because they wouldn ’ t know what kind of — what variant of Zapotec .
So I will get on the phone ; it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were just getting those calls to us and trying — figuring how to solve a problem , right ?
So , some of the things that we went — we went to Texas , actually , and we went to some of the detention centers .
And we found out people weren ’ t getting an interpreter .
People didn ’ t know how to identify the languages .
So we launched a campaign , one training more interpreters throughout the U.S .
So we ’ ve been training interpreters in Chicago , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York this month .
In California , everywhere that we can , where these different variants of languages existed .
That way , we are able to respond to some of the needs that we ’ re having at the border and we ’ re going to continue having at the border .
ODILIA ROMERO : I took the test with one of the companies .
And as an ethical interpreter , I know I did not pass the test .
But when they came back with the result , they said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ready to go interpret in immigration court in Zapotec.
” And I asked , “ Well , how did you check ?
Like , how do you know that I was interpreting adequately ?
” And they told me , “ We have a methodology , so you ’ re good to go.
” So then we had our other trilingual interpreters take the test .
And they all , being ethical and being trained by us , were like , “ We did not pass this test .
We are not going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they do not care there .
And , you know , some of the things for us as an indigenous interpreter , we were seeing , well , these aren ’ t making sense to us .
We can not interpret word per word .
In the case of asylum , in my language , I will have — I will have to say that you can — you have to leave , because you could no longer be here because you ’ re afraid that someone within this community or within this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right ?
And if I say “ refugee , ” I ’ m afraid for my life that someone ’ s going to kill me .
So they ’ re two different things .
So , if our interpreters do not know the difference between asylum and between refugee , they will not be able to convey the message .
So we have to — so we have to train them what are these words , because a lot of these pro-profit language agencies , all the interpreters that they have , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] , asilo , reshnabo [ phon . ]
, or refugio .
That ’ s not being said anything to that individual or to that detainee , as opposed to , you know , [ speaking Zapotec ] , which is a very different thing than just reshnabo [ phon . ]
, asilo .
I will tell you about a case about a man that his child was taken away .
And he told me in Zapotec , “ When they took my children away , the tears just fell out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rain in August in our region.
” If I interpret that literally , it doesn ’ t make any sense to Western world , right ?
But these are the way , in the case of Zapoteco , is how he told me .
“ And when I finally was on the bus , the tears just popped out , like the hail after the rain.
” And that doesn ’ t make any sense , because the sentences are not very clear .
So I need to be able to convert @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this man , when his child was taken away , I mean , he didn ’ t know .
He agreed to meet these — this was at the Department of Social Services .
He went there because they had called the police on him , because the child wasn ’ t growing .
And when they got there , they just like , “ OK , sign these papers.
” The kids were taken away , and he didn ’ t know what happened .
But then there ’ s the other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ biggest ally or our biggest enemy will be the Spanish-English interpreter .
If they notice that we ’ re not making coherent sentences , they should stop us and ask , “ Are you understanding what asylum is ?
Can I explain it to you ?
” as opposed to just continuing .
And I mention the Spanish-English interpreters because there are very few trilingual interpreters in the U.S .
Most of them are bilingual , so they have to work with a relay interpreter , which is a Spanish-English interpreter , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And if that Spanish and English interpreter just continues to interpret it without questioning , if they ’ re seeing that we ’ re borrowing a lot of Spanish words , they should stop us .
And this is who you have to work with .
So , instead of saying , “ This interpreter is not doing their interpreting adequately , ” stop and say , “ How can I help you ?
Like , how can I explain asylum for you ?
Do you know where , you know , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So , we have a lot of challenges , so we ’ re trying to solve them little by little .
So , just to give one example , when we were speaking on the phone , Lee Gelernt of the ACLU told me that of the kind of worst cases of families that were separated at the border under Trump ’ s “ zero tolerance ” policy — and I will remind everyone that that policy is officially over , but the separations are ongoing .
At least 900 families have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy over a year ago .
But Lee Gelernt of the ACLU told me that of those over 4,000 families that were separated — and one parent , at least , was deported back to their country of origin without their child — of those 4,000 cases , Lee Gelernt of the ACLU estimated that 10 to 20 % affected Mayan-language-speaking Guatemalans .
That ’ s an enormous — that ’ s not just of the Guatemalan asylum seekers .
That ’ s of all of the families separated .
So , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what most surprised me when I began reporting this story .
AMY GOODMAN : Rachel Nolan ’ s piece in The New Yorker is “ A Translation Crisis at the Border.
” We ’ ll link to it at democracynow.org .
Odilia Romero is a Zapotec interpreter with the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations .
For the full conversation , go to democracynow.org .
Monday : Dr. Martin Luther King special .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. As the U.S. continues to use hostile policies to stop people from seeking refuge and asylum in the United States, we look at a key problem that’s preventing migrants from getting due process, and in many cases getting them deported: inadequate translation for indigenous asylum seekers who speak Mayan languages.
Guatemala has a population of 15 million people. At least 40% of them are indigenous. In the past year, a quarter of a million Guatemalan migrants have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. At least half of them are Mayan. Many speak little or no Spanish.
That’s the focus of a New Yorker magazine article headlined “A Translation Crisis at the Border.” I had a chance to interview the author of that article, Rachel Nolan, at Constitutional Plaza in Guatemala City. She is an assistant professor of international relations at Boston University. And we spoke to Odilia Romero, Zapotec interpreter, indigenous leader with the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations for 25 years. I started by asking Rachel Nolan to lay out her piece.
RACHEL NOLAN: Well, thank you so much for having me, Amy. In the course of reporting the story for The New Yorker, I found that many migrants who reach the U.S.-Mexico border are not given access to Mayan-language translation at all. In fact, during credible-fear interviews, during which migrants have to lay out why they’re afraid of returning to their country of origin, many Mayan-language speakers from Guatemala are forced to do so in Spanish, which is a language that they do not speak.
So I’ve heard cases of people being deported after signing papers that they don’t understand. I’ve heard cases of families being separated and children isolated, spoken to in Spanish, which is a language that they don’t understand. And many Mayan-language speakers who are attempting to gain asylum, I’ll say — they’re not migrating into the United States seeking work; they’re attempting to access asylum — and they’re only often given access to Mayan-language translation at their final court date, if at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us a story, one of the people profile? This also goes to the horrific issue of the separation of parents and their children, how you begin your piece.
RACHEL NOLAN: I wanted to focus this story not just on the Mayan-language speakers who have been the victims of some of these immigration policies, but also on those Mayan-language speakers who are doing their best to help. There’s a large community, of which Odilia is a part — and it’s an honor to have her on the program with me — mostly based in California, although throughout the United States, that are providing Mayan-language translation to immigrants crossing the U.S. border.
And one of those people that I was able to speak with at great length and profile and follow is Oswaldo Vidal Martín, who is a Mam-language speaker. Mam is one of 22 mutually unintelligible Mayan languages. And Oswaldo is based in Fruitvale, which is in the kind of Oakland area of California. And Oswaldo was actually called to the border about a year ago, during the family separation crisis, and asked to interpret for several lawyers at the Texas Civil Rights Project. And he and many other Mayan-language translators went, in both paid and volunteer capacity, to the border.
And one of the families that he encountered was that of Mario Perez Domingo, who was a Mam-language speaker separated from his 2-year-old girl at the border because the Border Patrol had asked — had asked him whether he had paid for a birth certificate for his 2-year-old daughter with whom he was traveling. Now, Mario does not speak Spanish very well. Like many Mayan-language speakers in Guatemala, he speaks enough to go to the store, maybe sell tomatoes in the market, but not to navigate a complex legal interview. And so, like many indigenous-language speakers at the border, he was afraid and was answering yes to many of the questions that he was asked.
And so, in Guatemala, you do pay a very small fee to get a birth certificate. So when he was asked had he paid for the birth certificate of his daughter, he answered yes. And the Border Patrol agent used that answer as supposed evidence that he had paid for a false birth certificate, which was not true. And on the basis of that, he was separated from his daughter for several months. And because Mario only speaks Mam, he was not able to understand what was happening and why his daughter was separated from him. Again, Mam is his primary language, and he speaks very little Spanish, if at all. So he was answering yes, yes, yes, to try to ingratiate himself to the authorities, to try to control was what was clearly a very fearful situation.
And only once Oswaldo, the Mam-language translator from California, arrived on the scene in Texas was Mario’s lawyer able to get all of the details of the case and work toward reuniting Mario Perez Domingo with his daughter, which eventually happened, but they were separated for a number of months because of language issues.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Odilia Romero into this conversation. If you could explain what the crisis you confronted was, what you saw, and how you saw, with this massive crackdown on migrants along the border, that the lack of interpretation was leading so many people to be either deported or separated from their children, and then what you did about it?
ODILIA ROMERO: Well, our experience at the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations — for short, I will call it FIOB — was, suddenly we started getting calls. And a little bit I wanted to tell you the history of interpreting in California for indigenous people started in 1996 and ’97 by the FIOB training Mayans and Mexican indigenous interpreters. So people knew of our existence.
Suddenly, we just started getting these calls. We have: “We need K’iche’. We need Zapotec. We need Mam.” And suddenly everybody’s calling us. We were getting calls from social media, texts. And at that point, you know, we didn’t know what to do, because there were so many. And the agencies will call us and say, “I need Zapoteco.” And I will get on the phone, because they wouldn’t know what kind of — what variant of Zapotec. So I will get on the phone; it turned out to be Chinanteco. They were just getting those calls to us and trying — figuring how to solve a problem, right?
So, some of the things that we went — we went to Texas, actually, and we went to some of the detention centers. And we found out people weren’t getting an interpreter. People didn’t know how to identify the languages. So we launched a campaign, one training more interpreters throughout the U.S. So we’ve been training interpreters in Chicago, in D.C. We’re going to New York this month. In California, everywhere that we can, where these different variants of languages existed. That way, we are able to respond to some of the needs that we’re having at the border and we’re going to continue having at the border.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to this issue of the for-profit, over-the-phone translations that take place and how it jeopardizes the legitimate asylum claims of so many indigenous people. If you could lay this out for us and then talk about the philosophy behind your translation, interpretation service?
ODILIA ROMERO: I took the test with one of the companies. And as an ethical interpreter, I know I did not pass the test. But when they came back with the result, they said, “Excellent, you’re ready to go interpret in immigration court in Zapotec.” And I asked, “Well, how did you check? Like, how do you know that I was interpreting adequately?” And they told me, “We have a methodology, so you’re good to go.” So then we had our other trilingual interpreters take the test. And they all, being ethical and being trained by us, were like, “We did not pass this test. We are not going to go do it.” So, they do not care there.
And one of the things for us is the way that interpreting was developed was by Spanish-English interpreters. And nobody thought about us on how to develop a manual, on a code of ethics. Nothing was thought within us when these interpretation rules were developed.
And, you know, some of the things for us as an indigenous interpreter, we were seeing, well, these aren’t making sense to us. We cannot interpret word per word. In the case of asylum, in my language, I will have — I will have to say that you can — you have to leave, because you could no longer be here because you’re afraid that someone within this community or within this pueblo is going to hurt you, right? And if I say “refugee,” I’m afraid for my life that someone’s going to kill me. So they’re two different things. So, if our interpreters do not know the difference between asylum and between refugee, they will not be able to convey the message. So we have to — so we have to train them what are these words, because a lot of these pro-profit language agencies, all the interpreters that they have, they borrow Spanish — reshnabo [phon.], asilo, reshnabo [phon.], or refugio. That’s not being said anything to that individual or to that detainee, as opposed to, you know, [speaking Zapotec], which is a very different thing than just reshnabo [phon.], asilo.
So, that’s at the level we’ve gone in our language program to talk about how do we think about these words. How do we think from the immigration language, to the court language, to the medical language? How do we put it into our words? How do we describe it, right? Because it is asilo, asylum. It’s very easy to just translate from Spanish, interpret from Spanish to English. However, for us, it’s very descriptive, so we have to train our interpreters.
But the for-profit language agencies, it’s not about the human rights of the detainees. It’s about making money, who gets the bid. I’ve gotten calls from these companies: “Can you just take the calls?” “I can’t, because I don’t know what variant of Zapotec it is.” “Just take the call. Zapotec is Zapotec.”
So, what we’re doing is training from a very different point as the standard models that they exist in the Spanish-language, Spanish-interpreting schools. We had to develop our own curricula. We had to develop our own glossary. We had to develop everything for ourselves as indigenous people. So it’s a lot of work.
But I think it’s so important that we’re trained, because the life of a person depends on us as the interpreters. If I go to a hospital and I’m not instructed how to give my child a medicine in my language, I might put him at risk. If I go to the court and I don’t know how to say “asylum” and I don’t understand the court system, I could be that tool to deport the person.
AMY GOODMAN: So you have to understand as much Western culture and what’s happening here in the United States as you do indigenous culture.
ODILIA ROMERO: Yes, you have to understand the Western culture very well and then be able to convert it to an indigenous world, in the same way an indigenous worldview to the Western world.
I will tell you about a case about a man that his child was taken away. And he told me in Zapotec, “When they took my children away, the tears just fell out of my eyes and my face like the rain in August in our region.” If I interpret that literally, it doesn’t make any sense to Western world, right? But these are the way, in the case of Zapoteco, is how he told me. “And when I finally was on the bus, the tears just popped out, like the hail after the rain.” And that doesn’t make any sense, because the sentences are not very clear. So I need to be able to convert that into the Western world. And this man, when his child was taken away, I mean, he didn’t know. He agreed to meet these — this was at the Department of Social Services. He went there because they had called the police on him, because the child wasn’t growing. And when they got there, they just like, “OK, sign these papers.” The kids were taken away, and he didn’t know what happened.
And so, we need to know both worlds, like what do the Department of Social Services do, what is the immigration languages, what is the vocabulary. Otherwise, we’re not being useful to indigenous people as interpreters. And we really have to be ethical about it and be honest if I don’t know the word.
But then there’s the other issue that we have, is our biggest ally or our biggest enemy will be the Spanish-English interpreter. If they notice that we’re not making coherent sentences, they should stop us and ask, “Are you understanding what asylum is? Can I explain it to you?” as opposed to just continuing. And I mention the Spanish-English interpreters because there are very few trilingual interpreters in the U.S. Most of them are bilingual, so they have to work with a relay interpreter, which is a Spanish-English interpreter, and that makes it much more difficult. And if that Spanish and English interpreter just continues to interpret it without questioning, if they’re seeing that we’re borrowing a lot of Spanish words, they should stop us. And this is who you have to work with. So, instead of saying, “This interpreter is not doing their interpreting adequately,” stop and say, “How can I help you? Like, how can I explain asylum for you? Do you know where, you know, the calendar is in immigration court?” So, we have a lot of challenges, so we’re trying to solve them little by little.
AMY GOODMAN: As you stand there in Guatemala City, Rachel Nolan, if you could talk about what most surprised you as you did this piece for The New Yorker, as you did your research, “A Translation Crisis at the Border,” and what you feel, what are people saying, needs to happen now?
RACHEL NOLAN: I was shocked at the extent of the problem, frankly. When I called Lee Gelernt of the ACLU and asked him, you know, “To what extent are the issues that are affecting all Central American asylum seekers in the United States affecting indigenous-language speakers?” he said, “It’s enormous. They’re disproportionately affected. All of the problems that Spanish-language asylum seekers face are exacerbated if they speak Mayan languages.”
So, just to give one example, when we were speaking on the phone, Lee Gelernt of the ACLU told me that of the kind of worst cases of families that were separated at the border under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy — and I will remind everyone that that policy is officially over, but the separations are ongoing. At least 900 families have been separated since the official end of that policy over a year ago. But Lee Gelernt of the ACLU told me that of those over 4,000 families that were separated — and one parent, at least, was deported back to their country of origin without their child — of those 4,000 cases, Lee Gelernt of the ACLU estimated that 10 to 20% affected Mayan-language-speaking Guatemalans. That’s an enormous — that’s not just of the Guatemalan asylum seekers. That’s of all of the families separated. So, the kind of scale of the problem was what most surprised me when I began reporting this story.
AMY GOODMAN: Rachel Nolan’s piece in The New Yorker is “A Translation Crisis at the Border.” We’ll link to it at democracynow.org. Odilia Romero is a Zapotec interpreter with the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations.
For the full conversation, go to democracynow.org. Monday: Dr. Martin Luther King special.


democracynow--2020-01-17--"They Must Conduct a Full and Fair Trial": Senators Sworn In for Historic Trump Impeachment Trial

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : For just the third time in history , the U.S. Senate has opened a trial to determine if a sitting president should be removed from office .
The Senate trial comes a month after the House impeached President Trump for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden .
On Thursday , Congressman Adam Schiff , one of seven House impeachment managers , addressed the Senate .
AMY GOODMAN : Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts , who will preside over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later swore in senators who will serve as jurors when the trial officially begins on Tuesday .
AMY GOODMAN : After that , each senator stepped up and signed the oath book .
While the impeachment trial is beginning in the Senate , more information is coming to light about the actions of President Trump and his associates .
On Thursday , the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said the White House Office of Management and Budget violated federal law ; they broke the law by withholding $ 400 million in aid money to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ allocated by Congress .
The GAO wrote , quote , “ Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law , ” unquote .
Meanwhile , pressure is growing on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow witnesses to testify during the Senate trial .
On Thursday , Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine said it ’ s likely she would support a motion to call witnesses , just as she did in 1999 during President Clinton ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is Lev Parnas , a Soviet-born businessman and former associate of Trump ’ s lawyer Rudy Giuliani , who said this week , in a series of interviews , the president was fully aware of efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden .
Parnas is under federal indictment .
To talk more about the impeachment trial , we go to Massachusetts to speak with attorney John Bonifaz , co-founder and president of Free Speech for People , co-author of The Constitution Demands It : The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for this for several years .
Talk about the significance of what we have witnessed over the past few days , the whole ceremony about the Senate impeachment trial , and what ’ s about to happen .
JOHN BONIFAZ : Well , thank you , Amy , for having me .
This is a serious moment for our nation .
Our democracy and our Constitution are on the line .
And what we ’ ve seen over these past few days is that this is a very solemn occasion .
The Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against this president issued by the House of Representatives , and they must conduct a full and fair trial .
And the very fact that you have the chief justice of the United States , who only presides over the Senate for an impeachment trial — and the third time in our history this is happening — both take the oath to do impartial justice but then also administer that oath for every United States senator , and then each one signs the oath book , they all have taken now that oath @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they took when they assumed the office at the United States Senate to defend and protect our Constitution .
And so , each and every senator now must comply with that oath and must conduct a full and fair trial , hearing witnesses , demanding the documents , and not engaging in the cover-up that this president has engaged in so far to try to protect himself and his associates .
AMY GOODMAN : Now , talk about what he ’ s on trial for , and explain what it means if he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ automatic removal from office ?
JOHN BONIFAZ : The president is on trial for abuse of power and abuse of the public trust .
These are precisely the kinds of charges that the Framers envisioned when they placed the impeachment clause in the Constitution : crimes against the state .
And these abuses of power come out of the Ukraine scandal , where this president illegally solicited foreign assistance from the Ukrainian government to assist his re-election campaign .
And he engaged in extortion and bribery in the process , misusing nearly $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ try to hold back those funds from the Ukrainian government to get what he wanted , which was the announcement of an investigation against a political rival , Joe Biden , and his son , Hunter Biden .
And , you know , this is the kind of misuse of the office that the Framers feared .
And the idea that we would have a president who would so engage in that kind of abuse of office , in violation of the oath of office to defend and protect the Constitution , means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And the House was right to issue these articles of impeachment .
You ’ re right , Amy , that we at Free Speech for People have been calling for accountability for this president ’ s abuses of power since the moment he took the oath of office , violating the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses and treating the Oval Office as a profit-making enterprise at the public expense .
And he ’ s repeatedly abused his power since that time .
But I think what we now see is a president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yes , if he is removed by the Senate , there is no further appeal .
The Senate has the sole power to engage in this impeachment trial and removal .
And he will be removed from the office if the Senate votes to convict .
AMY GOODMAN : So let ’ s talk about the issue of witnesses — it looks like up to five Republican senators are weighing whether to call for witnesses — and what exactly this means .
JOHN BONIFAZ : Well , as we know , every trial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what the House has done is effectively an indictment against the president , and that indictment now must be heard in the United States Senate with a full and fair trial .
And these witnesses must be brought forward .
In the Johnson impeachment trial , there were 41 witnesses that were heard .
There were three witnesses heard in the Clinton impeachment trial , but then many other witnesses had been deposed during the Ken Starr investigation .
Here what we have is a Senate majority leader , Mitch McConnell , claiming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that somehow we don ’ t need any evidence to be heard in the U.S. Senate .
But what ’ s appeared to happen over the past several days is that a number of Republican senators are breaking away from Mitch McConnell .
We ’ ll see when the vote finally occurs on this question .
But if 51 senators , which would be at least four Republican senators joining the 47 Democratic senators , vote to have witnesses , then there will be witnesses .
And some of these witnesses have yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been part of this cover-up this president has required : Mick Mulvaney , the chief of staff for the White House ; John Bolton , the national security — former national security adviser ; Lev Parnas , certainly , the associate who has now come forward talking about how the president knew all about this scheme .
So , these witnesses need to become brought forward , as well as the documents that the White House has withheld under the president ’ s direction .
The senators can not be complicit in this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s go to Lev Parnas , the Soviet-born businessman , former associate of Trump ’ s lawyer Rudy Giuliani , now under federal indictment , speaking to MSNBC ’ s Rachel Maddow .
AMY GOODMAN : So , Lev Parnas emphatically says the president knew , and he was in on conversations with the president about this , but he is under federal indictment .
If Nancy Pelosi , the House speaker , had not held off on handing over the articles of impeachment , would this have been included ?
And then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Susan Collins saying , “ This all should have been dealt with in the House .
We ’ re not going to deal with this ” ?
JOHN BONIFAZ : Well , first , we know that Senator Mitch McConnell said , right at the time that the House voted on the articles of impeachment in December , that he was working directly with the White House , in coordination 100 % , and that he was therefore going to not allow for any witnesses and force a quick dismissal of these charges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Speaker Pelosi was correct to hold back those articles until there was some understanding of what could happen .
And once some of these senators came forward and said they would like to hear from witnesses , then it became clear that Senator McConnell would not necessarily be able to control these proceedings entirely and get a quick dismissal .
He ’ s already now said that , in fact , there ’ s not an appetite for quick dismissal in the Senate , despite some senators trying to advocate for that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re going to hear opening arguments next week , and then there will be this crucial vote on whether there are witnesses .
But as for Senator Collins ’ s claim , it ’ s completely specious .
I mean , what we , again , have from the House is an indictment , but that does not mean that further witnesses that come forward , further documents that come forward , shall not be heard by the United States Senate .
And this is , again , directly related to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has taken to do impartial justice .
They must not be complicit with this cover-up and with a criminal enterprise operating out of the Oval Office .
They must conduct themselves according to that oath .
AMY GOODMAN : John Bonifaz , I want to thank you for being with us , co-founder and president of Free Speech for People , co-author of The Constitution Demands It : The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump .
When we come back , we turn to Honduras , where at least 15 women have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this year .
We ’ ll look at the case of Berta Cáceres and the men who have been imprisoned for her murder .
Stay with us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: For just the third time in history, the U.S. Senate has opened a trial to determine if a sitting president should be removed from office. The Senate trial comes a month after the House impeached President Trump for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. On Thursday, Congressman Adam Schiff, one of seven House impeachment managers, addressed the Senate.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF: Donald J. Trump has abused the powers of the presidency in that using the powers of his high office, President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States presidential election. … President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who will preside over the impeachment trial in the Senate, later swore in senators who will serve as jurors when the trial officially begins on Tuesday.
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: At this time, I will administer the oath to all senators in the chamber in conformance with Article I, Section 3, Clause 6 of the Constitution and the Senate’s impeachment rules. Will all senators now stand or remain standing and raise their right hand? Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you God?
SENATORS: I do.
AMY GOODMAN: After that, each senator stepped up and signed the oath book.
While the impeachment trial is beginning in the Senate, more information is coming to light about the actions of President Trump and his associates. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said the White House Office of Management and Budget violated federal law; they broke the law by withholding $400 million in aid money to Ukraine even though the funds had been allocated by Congress. The GAO wrote, quote, “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” unquote.
Meanwhile, pressure is growing on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow witnesses to testify during the Senate trial. On Thursday, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine said it’s likely she would support a motion to call witnesses, just as she did in 1999 during President Clinton’s impeachment trial. One potential witness is Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born businessman and former associate of Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said this week, in a series of interviews, the president was fully aware of efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. Parnas is under federal indictment.
To talk more about the impeachment trial, we go to Massachusetts to speak with attorney John Bonifaz, co-founder and president of Free Speech for People, co-author of The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump.
John, you have been calling for this for several years. Talk about the significance of what we have witnessed over the past few days, the whole ceremony about the Senate impeachment trial, and what’s about to happen.
JOHN BONIFAZ: Well, thank you, Amy, for having me.
This is a serious moment for our nation. Our democracy and our Constitution are on the line. And what we’ve seen over these past few days is that this is a very solemn occasion. The Senate must now take up these serious charges against this president issued by the House of Representatives, and they must conduct a full and fair trial. And the very fact that you have the chief justice of the United States, who only presides over the Senate for an impeachment trial — and the third time in our history this is happening — both take the oath to do impartial justice but then also administer that oath for every United States senator, and then each one signs the oath book, they all have taken now that oath, a separate oath from the one they took when they assumed the office at the United States Senate to defend and protect our Constitution. And so, each and every senator now must comply with that oath and must conduct a full and fair trial, hearing witnesses, demanding the documents, and not engaging in the cover-up that this president has engaged in so far to try to protect himself and his associates.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, talk about what he’s on trial for, and explain what it means if he were found guilty. Does that mean automatic removal from office?
JOHN BONIFAZ: The president is on trial for abuse of power and abuse of the public trust. These are precisely the kinds of charges that the framers envisioned when they placed the impeachment clause in the Constitution: crimes against the state. And these abuses of power come out of the Ukraine scandal, where this president illegally solicited foreign assistance from the Ukrainian government to assist his re-election campaign. And he engaged in extortion and bribery in the process, misusing nearly $400 million of U.S. funds, to try to hold back those funds from the Ukrainian government to get what he wanted, which was the announcement of an investigation against a political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden. And, you know, this is the kind of misuse of the office that the framers feared. And the idea that we would have a president who would so engage in that kind of abuse of office, in violation of the oath of office to defend and protect the Constitution, means that he must now face this trial. And the House was right to issue these articles of impeachment.
You’re right, Amy, that we at Free Speech for People have been calling for accountability for this president’s abuses of power since the moment he took the oath of office, violating the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses and treating the Oval Office as a profit-making enterprise at the public expense. And he’s repeatedly abused his power since that time. But I think what we now see is a president who must face a trial. And yes, if he is removed by the Senate, there is no further appeal. The Senate has the sole power to engage in this impeachment trial and removal. And he will be removed from the office if the Senate votes to convict.
AMY GOODMAN: So let’s talk about the issue of witnesses — it looks like up to five Republican senators are weighing whether to call for witnesses — and what exactly this means.
JOHN BONIFAZ: Well, as we know, every trial requires witness testimony. You know, what the House has done is effectively an indictment against the president, and that indictment now must be heard in the United States Senate with a full and fair trial. And these witnesses must be brought forward. In the Johnson impeachment trial, there were 41 witnesses that were heard. There were three witnesses heard in the Clinton impeachment trial, but then many other witnesses had been deposed during the Ken Starr investigation.
Here what we have is a Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, claiming that there shall be no witnesses, that somehow we don’t need any evidence to be heard in the U.S. Senate. But what’s appeared to happen over the past several days is that a number of Republican senators are breaking away from Mitch McConnell. We’ll see when the vote finally occurs on this question. But if 51 senators, which would be at least four Republican senators joining the 47 Democratic senators, vote to have witnesses, then there will be witnesses. And some of these witnesses have yet to come forward because they’ve been part of this cover-up this president has required: Mick Mulvaney, the chief of staff for the White House; John Bolton, the national security — former national security adviser; Lev Parnas, certainly, the associate who has now come forward talking about how the president knew all about this scheme. So, these witnesses need to become brought forward, as well as the documents that the White House has withheld under the president’s direction. The senators cannot be complicit in this cover-up.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Lev Parnas, the Soviet-born businessman, former associate of Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, now under federal indictment, speaking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
LEV PARNAS: See, this was the whole key. They would constantly — every time somebody would meet Zelensky, they would, like, agree, and then they would walk it back. So, they announced something about corruption, that he’s going to be on a corruption, but that Giuliani blew his lid on that, saying, “That’s not what we discussed,” that it wasn’t supposed to be a corruption announcement. It has to be about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and Burisma.
RACHEL MADDOW: He said the name Biden needs to be spoken, was his insistence?
LEV PARNAS: Always, always.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Lev Parnas emphatically says the president knew, and he was in on conversations with the president about this, but he is under federal indictment. If Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, had not held off on handing over the articles of impeachment, would this have been included? And then, what about people like Republican Senator Susan Collins saying, “This all should have been dealt with in the House. We’re not going to deal with this”?
JOHN BONIFAZ: Well, first, we know that Senator Mitch McConnell said, right at the time that the House voted on the articles of impeachment in December, that he was working directly with the White House, in coordination 100%, and that he was therefore going to not allow for any witnesses and force a quick dismissal of these charges in the Senate. So, yes, Speaker Pelosi was correct to hold back those articles until there was some understanding of what could happen. And once some of these senators came forward and said they would like to hear from witnesses, then it became clear that Senator McConnell would not necessarily be able to control these proceedings entirely and get a quick dismissal. He’s already now said that, in fact, there’s not an appetite for quick dismissal in the Senate, despite some senators trying to advocate for that.
So I do think that we’re going to hear opening arguments next week, and then there will be this crucial vote on whether there are witnesses. But as for Senator Collins’s claim, it’s completely specious. I mean, what we, again, have from the House is an indictment, but that does not mean that further witnesses that come forward, further documents that come forward, shall not be heard by the United States Senate. And this is, again, directly related to the oath that she and every other senator has taken to do impartial justice. They must not be complicit with this cover-up and with a criminal enterprise operating out of the Oval Office. They must conduct themselves according to that oath.
AMY GOODMAN: John Bonifaz, I want to thank you for being with us, co-founder and president of Free Speech for People, co-author of The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump.
When we come back, we turn to Honduras, where at least 15 women have been murdered in the first two weeks of this year. We’ll look at the case of Berta Cáceres and the men who have been imprisoned for her murder. Stay with us.


democracynow--2020-01-20--SPECIAL: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : Today is a federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr .
He was born January 15th , 1929 .
He was assassinated April 4th , 1968 , at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis , Tennessee .
He was just 39 years old .
While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader , he also championed the cause of the poor , organizing the Poor People ’ s Campaign to address issues of economic justice .
And Dr. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ foreign policy and the Vietnam War .
“ Beyond Vietnam ” was the speech he delivered at New York ’ s Riverside Church on April 4th , 1967 , a year to the day before he was assassinated .
In it , Dr. King called the United States “ the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.
” Life magazine called the speech “ demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.
” The Washington Post said King , quote , “ diminished his usefulness to his cause , his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Well , today we let you decide .
We play an excerpt of Dr. King ’ s speech , “ Beyond Vietnam.
” AMY GOODMAN : Dr. Martin Luther King , April 4th , 1967 , at Riverside Church in New York , explaining why he opposed the war in Vietnam .
We ’ ll come back to his speech in a minute .
AMY GOODMAN : Mahalia Jackson , “ Take My Hand , Precious Lord , ” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 's favorite song .
This is Democracy Now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Peace Report .
I 'm Amy Goodman , as we return to Dr. Martin Luther King ’ s speech “ Beyond Vietnam.
” He gave this speech April 4th , 1967 , a year to the day before he was assassinated .
He was speaking at Riverside Church in New York .
AMY GOODMAN : Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , April 4th , 1967 , speaking at Riverside Church in New York , explaining why he opposed the war in Vietnam , the speech he delivered exactly a year to the day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Motel in Memphis , Tennessee , April 4th , 1968 .
The night before he died , Dr. King delivered his last major address .
He was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers as he built momentum for a Poor People ’ s March on Washington .
This is some of Dr. King ’ s last speech , “ I ’ ve Been to the Mountaintop.
” AMY GOODMAN : Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , April 3rd , 1968 , the night before he was assassinated .
We ’ ll come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tennessee , in a minute .
AMY GOODMAN : Nina Simone singing “ Why ?
( The King of Love Is Dead ) .
” This is_Democracy Now !
_ , democracynow.org , The War and Peace Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , as we continue with Dr. Martin Luther King ’ s speech the night before he was assassinated .
It was April 3rd , 1968 , a rainy night in Memphis , Tennessee .
But I ’ m going to tell you what my imagination tells me .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ afraid .
You see , the Jericho road is a dangerous road .
I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem .
We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho .
And as soon as we got on that road , I said to my wife , “ I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.
” It ’ s a winding , meandering road .
It ’ s really conducive for ambushing .
You start out in Jerusalem , which is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feet above sea level .
And by the time you get down to Jericho , 15 or 20 minutes later , you ’ re about 2,200 feet below sea level .
That ’ s a dangerous road .
In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the “ Bloody Pass.
” And , you know , it ’ s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around .
Or it ’ s possible that they felt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ merely faking , and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt , in order to seize them over there , lure them there for quick and easy seizure .
And so the first question that the priest asked , the first question that the Levite asked was , “ If I stop to help this man , what will happen to me ?
” But then the Good Samaritan came by .
And he reversed the question : “ If I do not stop to help this man , what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOODMAN : Dr. Martin Luther King , speaking April 3rd , 1968 .
Within 24 hours , he would be dead , assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel , April 4th , 1968 .
Today is the federal holiday that honors him .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Today is a federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was born January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated April 4th, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old.
While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor, organizing the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. And Dr. King was a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War.
“Beyond Vietnam” was the speech he delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4th, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated. In it, Dr. King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Life magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post said King, quote, “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people,” unquote. Well, today we let you decide. We play an excerpt of Dr. King’s speech, “Beyond Vietnam.”
REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: After 1954, they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over the united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.
Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreements concerning foreign troops. And they remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South, until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.
Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8,000 miles away from its shores.
At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called “enemy,” I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else, for it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after the short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long, they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America, who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote: “Each day the war goes on, the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism,” unquote.
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.
The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.
In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war and set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.
Part of our ongoing — part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under the new regime, which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary.
Meanwhile — meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task: While we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment, we must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.
These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
Now, there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality — and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy and laymen concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past 10 years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression, which has now justified the presence of U.S. military “advisers” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago, he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin — we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay a hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Martin Luther King, April 4th, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York, explaining why he opposed the war in Vietnam. We’ll come back to his speech in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Mahalia Jackson, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s favorite song. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, as we return to Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech “Beyond Vietnam.” He gave this speech April 4th, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated. He was speaking at Riverside Church in New York.
REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions.
It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism. With this powerful commitment, we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.”
A genuine revolution of values means, in the final analysis, that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft-misunderstood, this oft-misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.
When I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response, I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I’m speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the First Epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.”
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says, “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word,” unquote.
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The “tide in the affairs of men” does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam writes, “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on…” We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah,
Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet ’tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.
And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., April 4th, 1967, speaking at Riverside Church in New York, explaining why he opposed the war in Vietnam, the speech he delivered exactly a year to the day before he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, April 4th, 1968. The night before he died, Dr. King delivered his last major address. He was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers as he built momentum for a Poor People’s March on Washington. This is some of Dr. King’s last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”
REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” I would take my mental flight by Egypt, and I would watch God’s children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through — or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn’t stop there.
I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire, and I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his 95 theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would come on up even to 1863 and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn’t stop there.
I would even come up to the early '30s and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation and come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. But I wouldn't stop there.
Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.”
Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land, confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the 20th century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.
Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: “We want to be free!”
And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. And I’m happy that he’s allowed me to be in Memphis.
I can remember — I can remember when Negroes were just going around, as Ralph has said, so often scratching where they didn’t itch and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God’s world.
And that’s all this whole thing is about. We aren’t engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying — we are saying that we are God’s children. And if we are God’s children, we don’t have to live like we are forced to live.
Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., April 3rd, 1968, the night before he was assassinated. We’ll come back to this speech in Memphis, Tennessee, in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Nina Simone singing “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead).” This is_Democracy Now!_, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue with Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech the night before he was assassinated. It was April 3rd, 1968, a rainy night in Memphis, Tennessee.
REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: We aren’t going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don’t know what to do. I’ve seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth. And they did come. But we just went before the dogs singing, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.”
Bull Connor next would say, “Turn the fire hoses on.” And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn’t know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn’t relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist and some others, we had been sprinkled. But we knew water. That couldn’t stop us.
And we just went on before the dogs, and we would look at them; and we’d go on before the water hoses, and we would look at it. And we’d just go on singing, “Over my head I see freedom in the air.” And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, “Take ’em off.” And they did. And we would just go on in the paddy wagon singing, “We Shall Overcome.” And every now and then we’d get in jail, and we’d see the jailers looking through the windows, being moved by our prayers and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn’t adjust to, and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham.
Now let me say, as I move to my conclusion, that we’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base. Now, that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air and placed it on the dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn’t stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administered first aid and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the “I” into the “thou” and to be concerned about his brother.
Now, you know we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn’t be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that “One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body 24 hours before the ceremony.” And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem — or down to Jericho, rather, to organize a Jericho Road Improvement Association. That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect.
But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, “I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1,200 miles — or rather 1,200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, 15 or 20 minutes later, you’re about 2,200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the “Bloody Pass.” And, you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking, and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
That’s the question before you tonight, not “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job?” not “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?” The question is not “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” The question is “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question.
You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was “Are you Martin Luther King?” And I was looking down writing, and I said, “Yes.” And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it, I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the x-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that’s punctured, you’re drowned in your own blood; that’s the end of you.
It came out in The New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheelchair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the president and the vice president. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I had received a visit and a letter from the governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, “Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth grade student at the White Plains High School.” And she said, “While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”
And I want to say tonight — I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn’t sneeze, because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in interstate travel.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.
If I had sneezed — if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation and brought into being the civil rights bill.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.
I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.
And they were telling me — now, it doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked and to be sure that nothing would be wrong on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully, and we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.”
And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats or talk about the threats that were out, of what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers. Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Martin Luther King, speaking April 3rd, 1968. Within 24 hours, he would be dead, assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, April 4th, 1968. Today is the federal holiday that honors him.


democracynow--2020-01-21--Greta Thunberg Addresses Global Elite at Davos: Our House Is Still on Fire

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : We end today ’ s show with the words of a 17-year-old : Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg .
She just turned 17 in the last weeks .
She addressed world leaders today at the World Economic Forum in Davos , Switzerland .
GRETA THUNBERG : One year ago , I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire .
I said I wanted you to panic .
I ’ ve been warned that telling people to panic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dangerous thing to do .
But don ’ t worry .
It ’ s fine .
Trust me .
I ’ ve done this before .
And I can assure you : It doesn ’ t lead to anything .
And for the record , when we children tell you to panic , we ’ re not telling you to go on like before .
We ’ re not telling you to rely on technologies that don ’ t even exist today at scale and that science says perhaps never will .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about reaching net zero emissions or carbon neutrality by cheating and fiddling around with numbers .
We ’ re not telling you to offset your emissions by just paying someone else to plant trees in places like Africa , while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate .
Planting trees is good , of course , but it ’ s nowhere near enough of what is needed , and it can not replace real mitigation and rewilding nature .
And let ’ s be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a low-carbon economy .
We don ’ t need to lower emissions .
Our emissions have to stop , if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5-degree target .
And until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus , then we must forget about net zero .
We need real zero , because distant net-zero emission targets will mean absolutely nothing if we just continue to ignore the carbon dioxide budget that applies for today , not distant future dates .
If high @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few years , that remaining budget will soon be completely used up .
The fact that the U.S.A. is leaving the Paris accord seemed to outrage and worry everyone .
And it should .
But the fact that we are all about to fail the commitments you signed up for in the Paris Agreement doesn ’ t seem to bother the people in power even the least .
Any plan or policy of yours that doesn ’ t include radical emission cuts at the source starting today is completely insufficient for meeting the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Paris Agreement .
And again , this is not about right or left .
We couldn ’ t care less about your party politics .
From a sustainability perspective , the right , the left , as well as the center , have all failed .
No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency and create a cohesive and sustainable world , because that world , in case you haven ’ t noticed , is currently on fire .
AMY GOODMAN : Seventeen-year-old Swedish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the World Economic Forum in Davos , Switzerland .
She spoke just after President Trump spoke at the gathering , touting the economy but not talking about the climate crisis , which is the focus of the World Economic Forum , the World Economic Forum in Davos .
That does it for our show .
We ’ ll post her whole speech online .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s show with the words of a 17-year-old: Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. She just turned 17 in the last weeks. She addressed world leaders today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
GRETA THUNBERG: One year ago, I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire. I said I wanted you to panic. I’ve been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do. But don’t worry. It’s fine. Trust me. I’ve done this before. And I can assure you: It doesn’t lead to anything.
And for the record, when we children tell you to panic, we’re not telling you to go on like before. We’re not telling you to rely on technologies that don’t even exist today at scale and that science says perhaps never will. We are not telling you to keep talking about reaching net zero emissions or carbon neutrality by cheating and fiddling around with numbers. We’re not telling you to offset your emissions by just paying someone else to plant trees in places like Africa, while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate. Planting trees is good, of course, but it’s nowhere near enough of what is needed, and it cannot replace real mitigation and rewilding nature.
And let’s be clear: We don’t need a low-carbon economy. We don’t need to lower emissions. Our emissions have to stop, if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5-degree target. And until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about net zero. We need real zero, because distant net-zero emission targets will mean absolutely nothing if we just continue to ignore the carbon dioxide budget that applies for today, not distant future dates. If high emissions continue like now even for a few years, that remaining budget will soon be completely used up.
The fact that the U.S.A. is leaving the Paris accord seemed to outrage and worry everyone. And it should. But the fact that we are all about to fail the commitments you signed up for in the Paris Agreement doesn’t seem to bother the people in power even the least. Any plan or policy of yours that doesn’t include radical emission cuts at the source starting today is completely insufficient for meeting the 1.5- or well below 2-degree commitments of the Paris Agreement.
And again, this is not about right or left. We couldn’t care less about your party politics. From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left, as well as the center, have all failed. No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency and create a cohesive and sustainable world, because that world, in case you haven’t noticed, is currently on fire.
AMY GOODMAN: Seventeen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressing world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She spoke just after President Trump spoke at the gathering, touting the economy but not talking about the climate crisis, which is the focus of the World Economic Forum, the World Economic Forum in Davos. That does it for our show. We’ll post her whole speech online.