democracynow--2020-07-06--Egyptian Activist Laila Soueif on the Jailing of Her Children & the Fight Against Authoritarianism

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , as we turn to Egypt , where coronavirus infections are continuing to rise , threatening to overwhelm the healthcare system .
As the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi grapples with the pandemic , it ’ s cracked down , arresting doctors , journalists , lawyers who dare to speak out .
Today , we take a look at one family who ’ s been particularly targeted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Egypt .
But first we go to Cairo to speak with Democracy Now !
correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous about the coronavirus crackdown , it being used as a pretext for arrests , to talk about the interview that he did .
Hi , Sharif .
Talk about what ’ s happening right now in Egypt .
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Well , Amy , as you mentioned , over the past few months , as the coronavirus has spread in Egypt , the state ’ s been trying , even more viciously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and to clamp down on any real or even perceived opposition .
So , as you mentioned , dozens of people have been arbitrarily arrested , including at least 10 doctors , who are being increasingly targeted , six journalists , lawyers , activists and so on .
And also , as the country went into a partial lockdown in March , the Ministry of Interior suspended all prison visitations for the families of detainees .
So prisoners have largely been cut off from their families for the last four months .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Middle East , Egypt has not released thousands of prisoners as a precaution against the coronavirus .
Instead , it ’ s arrested more people and cut off communication .
So , you know , among the leading voices for prisoner rights in Egypt is the Seif family .
The eldest son , Alaa Abd El-Fattah , was a leading figure of the 2011 revolution .
He was released from prison last year , after serving a five-year sentence on trumped-up charges .
During his brief time out , he had an additional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had to submit himself to a police station for 12 hours every day , from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m .
He was rearrested in September , and he remains behind bars in pretrial detention .
Now , Alaa ’ s mother , Laila Soueif , and his two sisters , Mona and Sanaa , have been tireless advocates for Alaa and for prisoners in general .
They ’ ve constantly challenged prison authorities , challenged the judicial system , to fight for the rights of Alaa and other prisoners .
They ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ done actions .
They ’ ve raised awareness .
They ’ re constantly speaking out .
And all of them have been arrested at different times for their activism .
In 2014 , both Alaa and Sanaa were in prison at the same time , and their father , the prominent human rights lawyer Ahmed Seif , died of a heart condition while they were inside .
Just this past March , Laila and Mona were arrested , and released the next day , after holding a small protest to call for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And then , as prison visitations were suspended , communication cut off , they stepped up their actions .
And this kind of came to a head two weeks ago , when Sanaa and Mona and Laila were physically assaulted after spending the night outside the prison demanding that authorities allow them to receive a letter from Alaa .
Sanaa , in particular , was very badly beaten .
And when they went to the public prosecutor ’ s office the next day , Sanaa was forcibly taken by plainclothes security forces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hours later , ordered her to be imprisoned for 15 days in pretrial detention , an order that can be renewed for months or even years .
And Sanaa , who ’ s only 26 , has already spent over a year and a half in prison in two separate cases .
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : So now both Alaa and Sanaa are in prison at the same time .
And I sat down with Laila Soueif a couple of days ago to talk about all of this .
AMY GOODMAN : So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interview , this first broadcast exclusive interview that you did with her since her daughter Sanaa ’ s arrest .
AMY GOODMAN : That ’ s Laila Soueif , mathematics professor and mother of Alaa and Sanaa .
She was interviewed by Democracy Now !
correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous in Cairo , Egypt .
An online petition has been launched at Change.org calling on Egypt ’ s attorney general to release prisoners being held in pretrial detention , and to allow Alaa Abd El-Fattah and other prisoners to communicate with their families , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That does it for today ’ s broadcast .
I ’ m Amy Goodman .
Thanks so much for joining us .
Wear a mask , and stay safe .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn to Egypt, where coronavirus infections are continuing to rise, threatening to overwhelm the healthcare system. As the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi grapples with the pandemic, it’s cracked down, arresting doctors, journalists, lawyers who dare to speak out.
Today, we take a look at one family who’s been particularly targeted, arguably the most prominent activist family in Egypt. But first we go to Cairo to speak with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous about the coronavirus crackdown, it being used as a pretext for arrests, to talk about the interview that he did.
Hi, Sharif. Talk about what’s happening right now in Egypt.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, as you mentioned, over the past few months, as the coronavirus has spread in Egypt, the state’s been trying, even more viciously than usual, to control the message and to clamp down on any real or even perceived opposition. So, as you mentioned, dozens of people have been arbitrarily arrested, including at least 10 doctors, who are being increasingly targeted, six journalists, lawyers, activists and so on. And also, as the country went into a partial lockdown in March, the Ministry of Interior suspended all prison visitations for the families of detainees. So prisoners have largely been cut off from their families for the last four months. And unlike nearly every other country in the Middle East, Egypt has not released thousands of prisoners as a precaution against the coronavirus. Instead, it’s arrested more people and cut off communication.
So, you know, among the leading voices for prisoner rights in Egypt is the Seif family. The eldest son, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, was a leading figure of the 2011 revolution. He was released from prison last year, after serving a five-year sentence on trumped-up charges. During his brief time out, he had an additional five years of probation, where he had to submit himself to a police station for 12 hours every day, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. He was rearrested in September, and he remains behind bars in pretrial detention.
Now, Alaa’s mother, Laila Soueif, and his two sisters, Mona and Sanaa, have been tireless advocates for Alaa and for prisoners in general. They’ve constantly challenged prison authorities, challenged the judicial system, to fight for the rights of Alaa and other prisoners. They’ve gone on hunger strikes, have done actions. They’ve raised awareness. They’re constantly speaking out. And all of them have been arrested at different times for their activism. In 2014, both Alaa and Sanaa were in prison at the same time, and their father, the prominent human rights lawyer Ahmed Seif, died of a heart condition while they were inside.
Just this past March, Laila and Mona were arrested, and released the next day, after holding a small protest to call for the release of prisoners amid the coronavirus outbreak. And then, as prison visitations were suspended, communication cut off, they stepped up their actions. And this kind of came to a head two weeks ago, when Sanaa and Mona and Laila were physically assaulted after spending the night outside the prison demanding that authorities allow them to receive a letter from Alaa. Sanaa, in particular, was very badly beaten. And when they went to the public prosecutor’s office the next day, Sanaa was forcibly taken by plainclothes security forces. And prosecutors later, a few hours later, ordered her to be imprisoned for 15 days in pretrial detention, an order that can be renewed for months or even years. And Sanaa, who’s only 26, has already spent over a year and a half in prison in two separate cases.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif —
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: So now both Alaa and Sanaa are in prison at the same time. And I sat down with Laila Soueif a couple of days ago to talk about all of this.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go to this interview, this first broadcast exclusive interview that you did with her since her daughter Sanaa’s arrest.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Thank you for joining us, Laila Soueif. Your daughter Sanaa was arrested nearly two weeks ago. The prosecution ordered Sanaa to be held in pretrial detention for 15 days. Do you expect her to be getting out anytime soon?
LAILA SOUEIF: I hope so. You can never tell. It’s possible that they will just continue to renew her. But it is also possible that because of all the circumstances around her arrest, that it will not just go into this routine of just renewing. I think it really depends on how much of a headache we can create for the prosecutor. Maybe if we can create a large enough headache about the fact that this is a cover-up for a kidnap, maybe she will be released. I’m not sure.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Two of your three children, Sanaa and Alaa, are now in prison. This has happened before, in 2014. What’s it like for you now that they’re both once again locked up?
LAILA SOUEIF: It hasn’t sunk in that Sanaa is actually in prison. It’s like she went away for a while. I have to remember to walk her dog, feed her dog.
I suppose it’s going to be like before, except — OK, the first time was very tough, because my husband was very sick, and he went into coma and he died while they were in prison. It was really, really tough. And I think — yeah, yeah, I said she managed. I said, about Sanaa, a little while ago, that she managed her imprisonment. But what really hit her was losing her father while she was in prison. That hit her. That hit her. That has left scars that show to this day suddenly. There are times when it just all comes out.
And just hopefully nobody’s going to die while they’re in prison this time, hopefully. So, let’s hope, I mean, it won’t be such a traumatic experience.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: When’s the last time you spoke to Alaa?
LAILA SOUEIF: Just a week before the lockdown, like it was 2 March, 3 March, something like that.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: So, about 4 months ago?
LAILA SOUEIF: Yes.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Is that the longest time you haven’t heard your son’s voice?
LAILA SOUEIF: Yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. And even when he was working in South Africa, I think we talked on the phone like once a week or something. I used to get these horrible bills.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, how’s that experience, that you can’t hear his voice, that there’s just communication through a letter once in a while?
LAILA SOUEIF: With Alaa, in particular, it’s very tough, because Alaa is the person I talk with. Alaa is the person I talk with about science-fiction novels and the stupidity of people who don’t understand the probability and probabilistic dangers. Alaa is the person I talk with. So, four months months without talking to Alaa, it’s really, I mean…
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: You and your family have consistently been trying to put pressure on authorities. You’ve been arrested. You’ve been physically assaulted. Do you ever get afraid of the repercussions? I mean, what gives you the strength to keep doing this?
LAILA SOUEIF: I’m always afraid of the repercussions. Nobody can be not, like I’m not — particularly as the repercussions fall on other people, really. Maybe I’m not that afraid. But I’m 64. It doesn’t matter what happens to me anymore, anyway. But I’m certainly afraid of what can happen to my daughters. When we were arrested, I was afraid for Ahdaf and Rabab. I’m always afraid.
But I think we can’t even give up, because Alaa is in prison. We can’t decide, “OK, I’m not going to — I’m going to stop.” How can I stop? Alaa is in prison. And when Alaa was out of prison, he was in this horrible muraqaba [probation] thing where he had to spend the night every night in the police station, etc. And so, you actually don’t have an option. The option of not doing anything is not there. This is not a regime which will leave you alone if you’re quiet.
And I’ve learned during my life that if there’s something where you don’t have an option, you just do it the best way you can. I mean, long training, long training, long training. You translate things to actual actions. You don’t think about — you don’t sit down and think about the consequences. You don’t sit down and think about the years that are flying by. You just translate it into practical tasks, and you finish the tasks. Like I have to finish the dishes, I have to finish this petition for al-na’eb al-’am [public prosecutor], etc.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Your family has had a long and difficult experience with prisons in Egypt, and two of your children are now in prison. How has all of this affected your family?
LAILA SOUEIF: OK, it’s put all — in a way, it’s put all of our careers on hold. Mona should by now have done a Ph.D. She hasn’t. I’m still a university professor, I still teach, but I haven’t managed to do research for years now. You sort of are forced into becoming a full-time human rights activist, which we actually are not. I mean, the only one who was a human rights lawyer was Seif, my husband. I’m a professor of mathematics. Alaa is a software developer. Mona is a biologist. Sanaa is a film editor. But you end up doing all this around your other things.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: So what are you calling for now?
LAILA SOUEIF: Oh, OK. Mainly, I’m still calling for what I called for when I stood outside Maglis al-Wozara [the Cabinet] and was arrested, that because of COVID-19, there should be massive releases of prisoners. This is the only way to make sure that there is not hundreds of prisoners who will be sick and maybe die — thousands, actually. But this is the initial demand.
In the meantime, while this is not happening, prisons should not be locked down. There should be — either the visits should be opened, or at least there should be telephone calls, stuff like that. And finally, I am demanding the release of Alaa and Sanaa, because they are both on pretrial detention.
And these are only the original demands. We need the authorities to take COVID-19 seriously. We need authorities to spend money on hospitals, on doctors, on protecting doctors. We need the authorities to stop arresting doctors who talk about the problems of COVID-19. We need many things.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Sanaa had said that she had lost hope for change. What about you? What gives you hope?
LAILA SOUEIF: For me, even what is happening now, nightmarish as it is, it is change. I have lived a very long time. I keep saying there’s a very big difference between being part of a popular movement that is in retreat and that has been vanquished, and being part of a very small elitist movement, which is how things were from the ’80s to 2011.
For me, even this nightmarish situation is change, the fact that I get thousands of people talking about Alaa, the fact that this is completely — the fact that even when we talk about a very controversial issue, like homophobia or whatever, we get thousands of supporters. None of this — none of this — I compare to the past. I compare this to the first time Seif took up a case, the Queen Boat case, a case about homosexuals, and nobody — he had to fight with human rights lawyers. OK? Now no human rights lawyer would say, “No, you shouldn’t take this case.” At that time, nobody would touch it. Almost nobody, I mean.
No, we have other — OK, I sincerely believe that part of the viciousness of this regime is the fact that it feels outstripped by events.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: What do you mean?
LAILA SOUEIF: Everything, and so many people are making jokes about them. So many young people are doing things that nobody imagined before. So, they’re trying to curb all that viciousness.
Look at the doctors. OK, they arrest a doctor because he’s talked about corona. Next day there’s another doctor who’s talking about conditions. They are being very vicious, but actually they’re not managing to control things. And I think part of the viciousness is that. OK?
So, there is a difference. There is a very — I can see it in young people. They are angry. They are put upon. But they are not accepting it lying down. For me, a change has happened, and this change will have to bear fruit at some point.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: But many people are disheartened and feel demoralized by what’s happening now, both in Egypt and some places abroad, as well. You seem to strike a more hopeful tone.
LAILA SOUEIF: All these authorities who are disheartening us, like Sisi and like Trump, anyone can see that they are not going to get a stable system. OK? You can have an unstable system that goes on for a long time, but it’s never — you can see, anyone can see, that it’s never going to be a stable system. There are always chances in an unstable system. There are always chances. You might be able to make use of them. You might not. There are always chances.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Are you following the mass protest movement against police violence in the U.S., and how does it resonate for you?
LAILA SOUEIF: Sure. I’ve always thought — since 2011, I’ve always thought that what we have, what is being born, is an international movement against authoritarianism, against this kind of thing, and that there isn’t — I mean, OK, there is a difference, but it’s only a difference in quantity, not in quality, between police in the States and police in Egypt and, I don’t know, police in England, police in France. These are the countries I know.
I’m glad that people are rising. And I’m hoping that — every time I see people rise against authoritarianism, against police brutality, anywhere in the world, this gives me hope, because, for me, this is a movement that has to happen all over the world.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Laila Soueif, mathematics professor and mother of Alaa and Sanaa. She was interviewed by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous in Cairo, Egypt. An online petition has been launched at Change.org calling on Egypt’s attorney general to release prisoners being held in pretrial detention, and to allow Alaa Abd El-Fattah and other prisoners to communicate with their families, and for the release of Sanaa Seif.
That does it for today’s broadcast. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us. Wear a mask, and stay safe.


democracynow--2020-07-06--Indigenous Historian Nick Estes on Toppling Statues, Racist Team Names & COVID-19 in Indian Country

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
I ’ m Amy Goodman , The Quarantine Report , as we talk about Trump ’ s visit to Mount Rushmore and his visit to — and his White House event .
The Rushmore event came [ after ] months of escalating coronavirus infections in Native communities .
There was no social distancing .
The governor proudly announced this .
Seventy-five hundred people packed into the area under Mount Rushmore , and no one was required to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guest , a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe , assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico .
In the last months , there has been a showdown between Indigenous leaders in South Dakota and a Trump ally , South Dakota Governor Noem , around the issue of COVID .
Talk about how hard hit Indian Country is by the coronavirus , Nick .
NICK ESTES : Right .
So , Kristi Noem , like many of her counterparts in the Republican Party , have taken a hallucination-based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that if they just stick to their conservative , right-wing values and blame somebody else , such as China or whatever , that this will be a — you know , this will just be like a headache , and it will go away after a while .
But tribes , you know , ironically enough , have taken a science-based approach .
They believe the science , because they understand that Indian Health Services , or IHS , which are federal responsibilities by the federal government to provide Indian Health Services , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agreements , are chronically underfunded .
And in fact , on May 20th of this year , there were several — there were five tribal organizations that signed a letter to David Bernhardt , the secretary of interior — you know , he ’ s a former oil lobbyist — calling for the resignation of current Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney over several things , but primarily what they view as the mishandling of the $ 8 billion that were allocated under the CARES Act money for tribal coronavirus relief .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ out is that the federal government has used this particular moment as an opportunity to facilitate land grabs .
So , on one hand , the court denied the Mashpee — a federal court denied the Mashpee Wampanoag the right to restore their own homelands .
That has since been reversed .
But that was a process that was set in motion by Sweeney herself back in 2018 .
Her office also failed to protect the Tohono O ’ odham Nation ’ s burial and sacred sites from being destroyed by explosives to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the construction of which , as we know , has continued unabated , despite the pandemic .
And meanwhile , the Interior Department also allowed for-profit Alaska Native corporations , many of which have investments in oil and gas industry , to seek payouts from the COVID-19 relief money reserved for tribal governments .
So , it ’ s unclear how that determination was made , but it has been since ruled by the courts that Alaska Native corporations will receive tribal money .
But at the same time , the governor of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pushing for the TC Energy pipeline , the Keystone XL pipeline , to be constructed through tribal reservation lands .
Meanwhile , the tribes themselves have set up health checkpoints .
And it ’ s important to note that they ’ re not turning people away .
They ’ re not armed checkpoints .
You know , they ’ re just doing health and safety checkpoints for people coming on and off the reservation .
And it ’ s an attempt to basically implement safety protocols that the state itself and Trump himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all leading up to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline .
And while it ’ s been reported , and rightfully so , that this pipeline is bringing in thousands of outside workers , out-of-state workers , into these very precarious tribal communities , and there ’ s concern about man camps and the high rates of sexual violence , but now the threat has been doubled with the threat of spreading coronavirus to these already hard-hit tribal communities .
AMY GOODMAN : Interestingly , after enormous pressure , Dominion and Duke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Coast Pipeline .
But I wanted to go , quickly , before we end , in this last minute , to the pressure on the Washington Redskins to change their racist name .
I ’ m even sorry that I used the word on air .
And I wanted to ask you about what that means .
It ’ s often talked about as a change of heart .
This one that FedEx is pushing for , they own the stadium .
And the Cleveland Indians , the fact that the manager is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Again , of course , this all coming from enormous pressure from below for years .
NICK ESTES : Yeah , we really owe it to activists , such as Suzan Shown Harjo and Amanda Blackhorse , who have been at the forefront of this , facing not just racial discrimination from billionaire team owners , like Dan Snyder , who owns the Washington football team , but also sexist attacks against them because they ’ re Native American women .
We can see this is tied into the kind of gendered violence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ basis in this country .
And I ’ ll say , you know , whether it ’ s Suzan Shown Harjo or whether its Amanda Blackhorrse , they ’ re not just advocating for the changing of the names , right ?
We could see this in the Land O ’ Lakes butter maiden , who — you know , it was a joke going around Indian Country , where it ’ s like , “ Well , they removed the Indian , but they kept the land , ” right ?
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back .
We ’ re actually talking about upholding treaty rights for Indigenous people .
And this is what these activists , primarily Indigenous women , have been advocating all along .
So it ’ s an incredibly important step in the right direction .
AMY GOODMAN : And very quickly , Professor Estes , in Baltimore , the taking down of the Christopher Columbus statue and throwing him into the harbor .
If you can , in a minute , tell us who Christopher Columbus was ?
NICK ESTES : So , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somebody like Trump said that Christopher Columbus represents the American dream , the beginning of the American dream .
Christopher Columbus landed in a Caribbean island that he thought was India , and he thought it was his dying breath .
And he never stepped foot on the continent that later became the United States of America .
So , why he ’ s celebrated as a figure has to do with the fact that he enslaved , raped and tortured Indigenous people , and he himself was a genocider .
And that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump wants to uphold when he ’ s creating these monument statues or he ’ s issuing executive orders for the protection of the so-called heritage of this country .
It ’ s a heritage of conquest and theft .
AMY GOODMAN : Nick Estes , I want to thank you for being with us , citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe , assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico , speaking to us from Albuquerque .
We come back , go to Egypt for an exclusive interview @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Ennio Morricone ’ s “ Theme of Ali ” from The Battle of Algiers .
Morricone passed away today at the age of 91 .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, The Quarantine Report, as we talk about Trump’s visit to Mount Rushmore and his visit to — and his White House event. The Rushmore event came [after] months of escalating coronavirus infections in Native communities. There was no social distancing. The governor proudly announced this. Seventy-five hundred people packed into the area under Mount Rushmore, and no one was required to wear masks.
Nick Estes is our guest, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico.
In the last months, there has been a showdown between Indigenous leaders in South Dakota and a Trump ally, South Dakota Governor Noem, around the issue of COVID. Talk about how hard hit Indian Country is by the coronavirus, Nick.
NICK ESTES: Right. So, Kristi Noem, like many of her counterparts in the Republican Party, have taken a hallucination-based approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, believing that if they just stick to their conservative, right-wing values and blame somebody else, such as China or whatever, that this will be a — you know, this will just be like a headache, and it will go away after a while.
But tribes, you know, ironically enough, have taken a science-based approach. They believe the science, because they understand that Indian Health Services, or IHS, which are federal responsibilities by the federal government to provide Indian Health Services, because of treaties or other kinds of agreements, are chronically underfunded.
And in fact, on May 20th of this year, there were several — there were five tribal organizations that signed a letter to David Bernhardt, the secretary of interior — you know, he’s a former oil lobbyist — calling for the resignation of current Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney over several things, but primarily what they view as the mishandling of the $8 billion that were allocated under the CARES Act money for tribal coronavirus relief. And what their claims kind of set out is that the federal government has used this particular moment as an opportunity to facilitate land grabs.
So, on one hand, the court denied the Mashpee — a federal court denied the Mashpee Wampanoag the right to restore their own homelands. That has since been reversed. But that was a process that was set in motion by Sweeney herself back in 2018. Her office also failed to protect the Tohono O’odham Nation’s burial and sacred sites from being destroyed by explosives to build Trump’s border wall, the construction of which, as we know, has continued unabated, despite the pandemic.
And meanwhile, the Interior Department also allowed for-profit Alaska Native corporations, many of which have investments in oil and gas industry, to seek payouts from the COVID-19 relief money reserved for tribal governments. So, it’s unclear how that determination was made, but it has been since ruled by the courts that Alaska Native corporations will receive tribal money.
But at the same time, the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, is pushing for the TC Energy pipeline, the Keystone XL pipeline, to be constructed through tribal reservation lands. Meanwhile, the tribes themselves have set up health checkpoints. And it’s important to note that they’re not turning people away. They’re not armed checkpoints. You know, they’re just doing health and safety checkpoints for people coming on and off the reservation. And it’s an attempt to basically implement safety protocols that the state itself and Trump himself refuses to implement.
And this is all leading up to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. And while it’s been reported, and rightfully so, that this pipeline is bringing in thousands of outside workers, out-of-state workers, into these very precarious tribal communities, and there’s concern about man camps and the high rates of sexual violence, but now the threat has been doubled with the threat of spreading coronavirus to these already hard-hit tribal communities.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, after enormous pressure, Dominion and Duke have announced they are ending the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. But I wanted to go, quickly, before we end, in this last minute, to the pressure on the Washington R-dsk-ns to change their racist name. I’m even sorry that I used the word on air. And I wanted to ask you about what that means. It’s often talked about as a change of heart. This one that FedEx is pushing for, they own the stadium. And the Cleveland Indians, the fact that the manager is now talking about changing that name. Again, of course, this all coming from enormous pressure from below for years.
NICK ESTES: Yeah, we really owe it to activists, such as Suzan Shown Harjo and Amanda Blackhorse, who have been at the forefront of this, facing not just racial discrimination from billionaire team owners, like Dan Snyder, who owns the Washington football team, but also sexist attacks against them because they’re Native American women. We can see this is tied into the kind of gendered violence that Native women face on a daily basis in this country.
And I’ll say, you know, whether it’s Suzan Shown Harjo or whether its Amanda Blackhorrse, they’re not just advocating for the changing of the names, right? We could see this in the Land O’Lakes butter maiden, who — you know, it was a joke going around Indian Country, where it’s like, “Well, they removed the Indian, but they kept the land,” right? So we’re actually talking about land back. We’re actually talking about upholding treaty rights for Indigenous people. And this is what these activists, primarily Indigenous women, have been advocating all along. So it’s an incredibly important step in the right direction.
AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, Professor Estes, in Baltimore, the taking down of the Christopher Columbus statue and throwing him into the harbor. If you can, in a minute, tell us who Christopher Columbus was?
NICK ESTES: So, it’s really funny, because somebody like Trump said that Christopher Columbus represents the American dream, the beginning of the American dream. Christopher Columbus landed in a Caribbean island that he thought was India, and he thought it was his dying breath. And he never stepped foot on the continent that later became the United States of America.
So, why he’s celebrated as a figure has to do with the fact that he enslaved, raped and tortured Indigenous people, and he himself was a genocider. And that’s the legacy that somebody like Trump wants to uphold when he’s creating these monument statues or he’s issuing executive orders for the protection of the so-called heritage of this country. It’s a heritage of conquest and theft.
AMY GOODMAN: Nick Estes, I want to thank you for being with us, citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico, speaking to us from Albuquerque.
We come back, go to Egypt for an exclusive interview. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Ennio Morricone’s “Theme of Ali” from The Battle of Algiers. Morricone passed away today at the age of 91.


democracynow--2020-07-06--"He Wasn't Invited": How Trump's Racist Mt. Rushmore Celebration Violated Indigenous Sovereignty

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : As many marked this year ’ s Fourth of July weekend by staying home to stop the spread of COVID-19 , President Donald Trump hosted two back-to-back events , in South Dakota and at the White House , over the weekend , where he stoked racial divisions , attacked Black Lives Matter protesters , defended statues of colonizers and white supremacists , and falsely claimed that 99 % of coronavirus cases in the United States are , quote , “ harmless.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a U.S. death toll of nearly 130,000 — a quarter of the deaths in the world — few wore masks at both Trump events .
At Mount Rushmore , a crowd of thousands did not socially distance .
At least 15 Indigenous activists and allies were arrested after blocking a highway heading to the rally .
Mount Rushmore is a monument carved into the sacred Black Hills on unceded Lakota territory .
It was designed by a sculptor with ties to the Ku Klux Klan .
The president of the Oglala Sioux @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s event .
This is President Trump addressing the crowd of thousands in front of Mount Rushmore Friday .
AMY GOODMAN : And this is President Trump speaking in Washington , D.C. , Saturday , where he compared the , quote , “ radical left ” to Nazis .
AMY GOODMAN : The same day of Trump ’ s White House address , protesters in Baltimore , Maryland , pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus .
They then dragged the statue several blocks and dumped it into the city ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Albuquerque , New Mexico , where we ’ re joined by Nick Estes , citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe , assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico .
Welcome back to Democracy Now !
, Professor Estes .
It ’ s great to have you with us .
Let ’ s talk about the significance of this moment that President Trump chose to seize on .
July 3rd , in honor of Independence Day , he goes to Mount Rushmore , named for a gold speculator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan , even as leaders of Indigenous nations in the United States demanded he not come to the Black Hills .
Talk about the significance of Mount Rushmore for Indigenous people , and that whole area .
Yes , this is a very kind of important history to talk about , because , as you mentioned in the news brief , the Black Hills , or what we know as He Sápa , is the cultural kind of like center of our universe as Lakota people , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually have origin stories or ties or spiritual connections to the Black Hills .
And the Lakota people , as well as the Cheyenne and Arapaho people , when they signed the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty , became the caretakers of that land .
And so , back in 1980 , there was a Supreme Court decision that ruled that the Black Hills itself had been illegally taken from the Lakota Nation and that the Supreme Court itself could only reward a monetary compensation , because the courts can ’ t actually award @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so , since 1980 , the tribes have been refusing to accept money for — they can ’ t put a price tag on the Black Hills , so they ’ ve been refusing to accept money .
But at the same time , the Black Hills themselves has become a hot spot of the kind of cultural war that Trump is trying to stir up across the nation .
For example , there are about 2 million visitors per year that go to Mount Rushmore .
And with the kind of new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see that this is only further exacerbating the COVID-19 pandemic and tribes ’ responses to it .
And so , when Trump announced that he was coming to this particular area , he wasn ’ t invited by the tribes .
The tribes actually asked him to seek an invitation to respect their sovereignty .
And if you listen to the audio clip , not once does he mention the fact that the tribes opposed his visit there .
So , this is a very contentious issue for Lakota people .
AMY GOODMAN @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrested in South Dakota Friday have been released , except for Nick Tilsen , who we interviewed Friday , president of the NDN Collective and a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota , currently being held without bond .
This is what he had to say on our broadcast .
AMY GOODMAN : So , that ’ s Nick Tilsen , from an illustrious Indigenous family , his great-grandmother Meridel Le Sueur , his grandfather , his parents all deeply active in Indigenous rights activism , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of the largest in the Black Hills region in the early ’ 80s .
Only larger was what ?
The Ku Klux Klan march there in the 1920s .
Do you have the latest news on Nick Tilsen and why he alone is continuing to be held , Nick Estes ?
NICK ESTES : Yeah .
So , first of all , the arrests that happened of those 15 people at the blockade , they were treaty defenders , right ?
So , when Trump is talking about erasing history , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people who were arrested at this particular blockade were arrested because they were representing the true histories , right ?
And so , Nick Tilsen was charged with several things .
One of them is a serious charge .
It ’ s a second-degree robbery charge , which in the state of South Dakota is a Class 4 felony , which is punishable up to 10 years in prison .
He appears this morning in several hours , at about 10 a.m. Mountain Standard Time , before a judge .
And it has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tilsen himself will be charged with the new riot boosting laws that Kristi Noem signed into law earlier this year , something that Nick himself has successfully sued the state of South Dakota over in the past , and the courts have sided with him , saying that it is a violation of First Amendment rights .
The state went back and rewrote the laws .
But now it ’ s a question about whether or not he ’ s going to be charged with these new riot boosting laws that were created @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Keystone XL pipeline , something that NDN Collective and Nick himself has been adamantly opposed to because it violates , again , the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty , because it trespasses through the heart of our treaty lands and skirts around two major reservations , the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe as well as the Rosebud Sioux Tribe .
So , it ’ s important to remember that already the state of South Dakota has one of the highest rates of incarceration of Native people .
There are about 10 % — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the state ’ s population , but we make up about 30 % of the jail population .
And in a place like Pennington County , where Nick ’ s being held right now , I think it ’ s around 50 to 75 % jail population are Native right now .
So , this is more than just about his arrest at Mount Rushmore .
It ’ s about a long-standing treaty claim .
And I think Nick would agree with me on this , that this is about treaty rights .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ defender .
And it ’ s unclear why all 15 other protesters were released , but not Nick himself .
AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to go back to this history , because a number of people seem surprised by the whole history of Mount Rushmore , you know , having the four sculpted heads of Presidents Washington , Jefferson , Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt blasted out of the ancient granite between 1927 and 1941 by 400 workers , directed by Gutzon Borglum .
Earlier , he was recruited by the Daughters of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mountain memorial to Confederate leaders in Georgia .
He left that project in a dispute , but that allowed him to hone his mountain-carving skills , enabling the Rushmore monument .
Borglum , close to the KKK , might even have been a member of the KKK .
And this weekend also , the march on Stone Mountain by leaders demanding it be taken down .
The connection between Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore , and who is carved into the ancient granite , Nick Estes , and what he means in Indigenous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ESTES : Right .
So , it ’ s important to remember that Stone Mountain was a meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan .
It ’ s actually where the Klan re-formed and reconstituted itself at a particular moment in time .
So that site was chosen because of that particular significance .
And so , while there ’ s speculation about whether or not Gutzon Borglum himself was a member of the Klan , it ’ s not as important as the fact that , like , he ’ s creating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Crow segregation laws .
So , when he comes to a place like the Black Hills , this is part of a larger kind of effort to intimidate and also to lay claim on the Black Hills in spite of these treaty claims , right ?
So , if we look at the more recent history — so , for example , on June 25th , Dusty Johnson , who is a Republican congressman , introduced a bill to prevent the destruction of Mount Rushmore , the renaming of the mountain or the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it says nothing of the Fort Laramie Treaty , the very document that was signed in 1868 to protect the Black Hills for the Lakota people in perpetuity .
And why would he — why would Dusty Johnson — you know , I ’ m a historian .
There ’ s no coincidences in dates .
Why would Dusty Johnson choose June 25th as the date that he introduces this bill to protect this symbol of white supremacy ?
Well , for Lakota people , for Cheyenne and Arapaho people , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because in 1876 an alliance of Lakota , Dakota , Cheyenne and Arapaho defeated Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn , or the Battle of Greasy Grass .
And that was a victory that was kind of mounted against the United States right before it tried to celebrate its 100-year anniversary of signing of the Declaration of Independence , a document that was written by Thomas Jefferson , who ’ s one of the figures , who wrote in that document “ merciless Indian savages ” to describe Indigenous people .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on that date that Trump read his speech at Mount Rushmore , he said , “ Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history , defame our heroes , erase our values and indoctrinate our children.
” We don ’ t think it ’ s coincidence that he used that language , the same language that Thomas Jefferson used .
It ’ s also important to note that George Washington was named town destroyer by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for his scorched-earth campaigns against the Iroquois Nation prior to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ War itself .
Abraham Lincoln was responsible for multiple things , such as the passage of the Morrill Act , which created modern land-grant universities , that dispossessed — that used dispossessed Indigenous land to create the modern university system , as well as the 1862 Homestead Act , which carved out 270 million acres of Indigenous territory and basically gave it away for free to white families , and it categorically excluded , of course , Indigenous and Black folks , as well .
But also he oversaw the 1862 hanging of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Minnesota , as well as the Navajo Long Walk , which imprisoned Navajo people , as well as Apache people , at Bosque Redondo , and oversaw also the — you know , he was the commander-in-chief when the Colorado militias massacred the Cheyenne people at Sand Creek in 1864 .
And then , lastly , you know , the bust of Teddy Roosevelt is incredibly important , because he ’ s kind seen as the father of the modern kind of conservation movement and the creation of national parks .
Well , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Indigenous people had to be removed from it .
And so he carved out millions of acres in what we now know as the kind of national monuments , the natural national monuments or natural wonders of the West , the iconic kind of vistas of the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park .
Those were created under Teddy Roosevelt ’ s watch , but it was also under his watch that they removed Indigenous peoples from these lands so that white settlers could enjoy them in peace .
AMY GOODMAN : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to break and then come back .
I want to ask you about a number of issues — COVID in South Dakota and other places , for example , where you are , in New Mexico ; the standoff with the governor of South Dakota , a Trump ally , Governor Noem , going after Indigenous leaders for setting up checkpoints to check for COVID ; and about the renaming of the sports teams , from the Redskins to the Cleveland Indians .
Stay with us .
This is Nick Estes .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New Mexico .
AMY GOODMAN : “ Warrior People ” by Nahko and Medicine for the People .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: As many marked this year’s Fourth of July weekend by staying home to stop the spread of COVID-19, President Donald Trump hosted two back-to-back events, in South Dakota and at the White House, over the weekend, where he stoked racial divisions, attacked Black Lives Matter protesters, defended statues of colonizers and white supremacists, and falsely claimed that 99% of coronavirus cases in the United States are, quote, “harmless.” Despite the warnings of public health officials and a U.S. death toll of nearly 130,000 — a quarter of the deaths in the world — few wore masks at both Trump events. At Mount Rushmore, a crowd of thousands did not socially distance.
At least 15 Indigenous activists and allies were arrested after blocking a highway heading to the rally. Mount Rushmore is a monument carved into the sacred Black Hills on unceded Lakota territory. It was designed by a sculptor with ties to the Ku Klux Klan. The president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe had ordered Trump to cancel Friday’s event.
This is President Trump addressing the crowd of thousands in front of Mount Rushmore Friday.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Make no mistake: This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. … To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol and memory of our national heritage.
AMY GOODMAN: And this is President Trump speaking in Washington, D.C., Saturday, where he compared the, quote, “radical left” to Nazis.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters and people who, in many instances, have absolutely no clue what they are doing. … In every age, there have always been those who seek to lie about the past in order to gain power in the present. Those that are lying about our history, those who want us to be ashamed of who we are, are not interested in justice or in healing. Their goal is demolition. Our goal is not to destroy the greatest structure on Earth, what we have built.
AMY GOODMAN: The same day of Trump’s White House address, protesters in Baltimore, Maryland, pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus. They then dragged the statue several blocks and dumped it into the city’s harbor.
For more, we go to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we’re joined by Nick Estes, citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, assistant professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Professor Estes. It’s great to have you with us. Let’s talk about the significance of this moment that President Trump chose to seize on. July 3rd, in honor of Independence Day, he goes to Mount Rushmore, named for a gold speculator and New York attorney, designed by a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan, even as leaders of Indigenous nations in the United States demanded he not come to the Black Hills. Talk about the significance of Mount Rushmore for Indigenous people, and that whole area.
NICK ESTES: Good morning, Amy.
Yes, this is a very kind of important history to talk about, because, as you mentioned in the news brief, the Black Hills, or what we know as He Sápa, is the cultural kind of like center of our universe as Lakota people, but more than 50 different Indigenous nations actually have origin stories or ties or spiritual connections to the Black Hills. And the Lakota people, as well as the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, when they signed the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, became the caretakers of that land.
And so, back in 1980, there was a Supreme Court decision that ruled that the Black Hills itself had been illegally taken from the Lakota Nation and that the Supreme Court itself could only reward a monetary compensation, because the courts can’t actually award land back to the tribes. And so, since 1980, the tribes have been refusing to accept money for — they can’t put a price tag on the Black Hills, so they’ve been refusing to accept money.
But at the same time, the Black Hills themselves has become a hot spot of the kind of cultural war that Trump is trying to stir up across the nation. For example, there are about 2 million visitors per year that go to Mount Rushmore. And with the kind of new guidelines about social distancing, we can see that this is only further exacerbating the COVID-19 pandemic and tribes’ responses to it. And so, when Trump announced that he was coming to this particular area, he wasn’t invited by the tribes. The tribes actually asked him to seek an invitation to respect their sovereignty. And if you listen to the audio clip, not once does he mention the fact that the tribes opposed his visit there. So, this is a very contentious issue for Lakota people.
AMY GOODMAN: All of the protesters who were arrested in South Dakota Friday have been released, except for Nick Tilsen, who we interviewed Friday, president of the NDN Collective and a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, currently being held without bond. This is what he had to say on our broadcast.
NICK TILSEN: This is an act of violence and aggression against us, and it’s also pushing this falsehood narrative about American democracy, when we actually really should be uplifting the truths of what happened throughout history and how those truths are directly connected to the disparities that exist today in society amongst Indigenous people.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Nick Tilsen, from an illustrious Indigenous family, his great-grandmother Meridel Le Sueur, his grandfather, his parents all deeply active in Indigenous rights activism, his parents leading a march that was one of the largest in the Black Hills region in the early ’80s. Only larger was what? The Ku Klux Klan march there in the 1920s. Do you have the latest news on Nick Tilsen and why he alone is continuing to be held, Nick Estes?
NICK ESTES: Yeah. So, first of all, the arrests that happened of those 15 people at the blockade, they were treaty defenders, right? So, when Trump is talking about erasing history, he’s actually suppressing history. The people who were arrested at this particular blockade were arrested because they were representing the true histories, right?
And so, Nick Tilsen was charged with several things. One of them is a serious charge. It’s a second-degree robbery charge, which in the state of South Dakota is a Class 4 felony, which is punishable up to 10 years in prison. He appears this morning in several hours, at about 10 a.m. Mountain Standard Time, before a judge. And it has yet to be seen whether or not Tilsen himself will be charged with the new riot boosting laws that Kristi Noem signed into law earlier this year, something that Nick himself has successfully sued the state of South Dakota over in the past, and the courts have sided with him, saying that it is a violation of First Amendment rights. The state went back and rewrote the laws. But now it’s a question about whether or not he’s going to be charged with these new riot boosting laws that were created and drafted in preparation for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, something that NDN Collective and Nick himself has been adamantly opposed to because it violates, again, the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, because it trespasses through the heart of our treaty lands and skirts around two major reservations, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe as well as the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.
So, it’s important to remember that already the state of South Dakota has one of the highest rates of incarceration of Native people. There are about 10% — we’re about 10% of the state’s population, but we make up about 30% of the jail population. And in a place like Pennington County, where Nick’s being held right now, I think it’s around 50 to 75% jail population are Native right now. So, this is more than just about his arrest at Mount Rushmore. It’s about a long-standing treaty claim. And I think Nick would agree with me on this, that this is about treaty rights. Right? He’s a treaty defender. And it’s unclear why all 15 other protesters were released, but not Nick himself.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to this history, because a number of people seem surprised by the whole history of Mount Rushmore, you know, having the four sculpted heads of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt blasted out of the ancient granite between 1927 and 1941 by 400 workers, directed by Gutzon Borglum. Earlier, he was recruited by the Daughters of the Confederacy to carve the huge Stone Mountain memorial to Confederate leaders in Georgia. He left that project in a dispute, but that allowed him to hone his mountain-carving skills, enabling the Rushmore monument. Borglum, close to the KKK, might even have been a member of the KKK. And this weekend also, the march on Stone Mountain by leaders demanding it be taken down. The connection between Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore, and who is carved into the ancient granite, Nick Estes, and what he means in Indigenous history — what they mean?
NICK ESTES: Right. So, it’s important to remember that Stone Mountain was a meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan. It’s actually where the Klan re-formed and reconstituted itself at a particular moment in time. So that site was chosen because of that particular significance.
And so, while there’s speculation about whether or not Gutzon Borglum himself was a member of the Klan, it’s not as important as the fact that, like, he’s creating these symbols at a time of Jim Crow segregation laws. So, when he comes to a place like the Black Hills, this is part of a larger kind of effort to intimidate and also to lay claim on the Black Hills in spite of these treaty claims, right?
So, if we look at the more recent history — so, for example, on June 25th, Dusty Johnson, who is a Republican congressman, introduced a bill to prevent the destruction of Mount Rushmore, the renaming of the mountain or the monument itself. But in that bill, it says nothing of the Fort Laramie Treaty, the very document that was signed in 1868 to protect the Black Hills for the Lakota people in perpetuity. And why would he — why would Dusty Johnson — you know, I’m a historian. There’s no coincidences in dates. Why would Dusty Johnson choose June 25th as the date that he introduces this bill to protect this symbol of white supremacy? Well, for Lakota people, for Cheyenne and Arapaho people, we celebrate June 25th as Victory Day, because in 1876 an alliance of Lakota, Dakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho defeated Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn, or the Battle of Greasy Grass.
And that was a victory that was kind of mounted against the United States right before it tried to celebrate its 100-year anniversary of signing of the Declaration of Independence, a document that was written by Thomas Jefferson, who’s one of the figures, who wrote in that document “merciless Indian savages” to describe Indigenous people. And it’s important to note that on that date that Trump read his speech at Mount Rushmore, he said, “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children.” We don’t think it’s coincidence that he used that language, the same language that Thomas Jefferson used.
It’s also important to note that George Washington was named town destroyer by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy for his scorched-earth campaigns against the Iroquois Nation prior to the Revolution, but also during the Revolutionary War itself.
Abraham Lincoln was responsible for multiple things, such as the passage of the Morrill Act, which created modern land-grant universities, that dispossessed — that used dispossessed Indigenous land to create the modern university system, as well as the 1862 Homestead Act, which carved out 270 million acres of Indigenous territory and basically gave it away for free to white families, and it categorically excluded, of course, Indigenous and Black folks, as well. But also he oversaw the 1862 hanging of 38 Dakota patriots in the state of Minnesota, as well as the Navajo Long Walk, which imprisoned Navajo people, as well as Apache people, at Bosque Redondo, and oversaw also the — you know, he was the commander-in-chief when the Colorado militias massacred the Cheyenne people at Sand Creek in 1864.
And then, lastly, you know, the bust of Teddy Roosevelt is incredibly important, because he’s kind seen as the father of the modern kind of conservation movement and the creation of national parks. Well, for this settler nation to enjoy nature, Indigenous people had to be removed from it. And so he carved out millions of acres in what we now know as the kind of national monuments, the natural national monuments or natural wonders of the West, the iconic kind of vistas of the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park. Those were created under Teddy Roosevelt’s watch, but it was also under his watch that they removed Indigenous peoples from these lands so that white settlers could enjoy them in peace.
AMY GOODMAN: Nick Estes, we’re going to break and then come back. I want to ask you about a number of issues — COVID in South Dakota and other places, for example, where you are, in New Mexico; the standoff with the governor of South Dakota, a Trump ally, Governor Noem, going after Indigenous leaders for setting up checkpoints to check for COVID; and about the renaming of the sports teams, from the R-dsk-ns to the Cleveland Indians. Stay with us. This is Nick Estes. He’s a professor at University of New Mexico.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Warrior People” by Nahko and Medicine for the People.


democracynow--2020-07-06--Headlines for July  6, 2020

Headlines for July  6, 2020

Around the world , where confirmed cases have now topped 11 million , with over half a million deaths , other countries are also reversing lockdowns after recording new spikes in coronavirus cases .
Australia has closed the border between its two most populous states — New South Wales and Victoria — for the first time in 100 years .
Around 3,000 people across nine public housing tower blocks in Victoria ’ s capital Melbourne have been on strict lockdown since Saturday and have been told they can not leave their homes until further notice .
In Spain , parts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been ordered to lock down .
In India , the world ’ s largest temporary hospital to treat coronavirus patients opened in New Delhi .
The 10,000-bed hospital opened Sunday as officials reported a record 25,000 new cases and 600 deaths .
Mexico topped 30,000 COVID-19 deaths this weekend , to overtake France as the country with the fifth-highest reported death toll .
Brazil , second only to the U.S. in cases and death toll , surpassed 1.6 million coronavirus cases .
In the Persian Gulf , infections in the United Arab @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rise after curfews in both nations were lifted last month .
Meanwhile , around 240 medical experts from around the world are asking the World Health Organization to revise its official recommendations based on evidence the coronavirus is airborne and can be transmitted through tiny droplets that linger in the air in closed spaces .

Around the world, where confirmed cases have now topped 11 million, with over half a million deaths, other countries are also reversing lockdowns after recording new spikes in coronavirus cases.
Australia has closed the border between its two most populous states — New South Wales and Victoria — for the first time in 100 years. Around 3,000 people across nine public housing tower blocks in Victoria’s capital Melbourne have been on strict lockdown since Saturday and have been told they cannot leave their homes until further notice.
In Spain, parts of the regions of Galicia and Catalonia have been ordered to lock down.
In India, the world’s largest temporary hospital to treat coronavirus patients opened in New Delhi. The 10,000-bed hospital opened Sunday as officials reported a record 25,000 new cases and 600 deaths.
Mexico topped 30,000 COVID-19 deaths this weekend, to overtake France as the country with the fifth-highest reported death toll.
Brazil, second only to the U.S. in cases and death toll, surpassed 1.6 million coronavirus cases.
In the Persian Gulf, infections in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are on the rise after curfews in both nations were lifted last month.
Meanwhile, around 240 medical experts from around the world are asking the World Health Organization to revise its official recommendations based on evidence the coronavirus is airborne and can be transmitted through tiny droplets that linger in the air in closed spaces.


democracynow--2020-07-07--"They Don't Care About Our Health": Hunger Striker at Otay Mesa ICE Jail Speaks Out as COVID Spreads

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
The number of people jailed by ICE — that ’ s Immigration and Customs Enforcement — who have tested positive for the coronavirus continues to rise , with more than 2,700 cases reported .
Among the hardest hit by the pandemic is the Otay Mesa Detention Center in California , where a mass outbreak of COVID-19 has infected at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 57-year-old Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia last month .
Immigrants detained there report dire conditions , lack of medical care , and the repeated use of pepper spray as retaliation .
Last week , we reached immigrant and activist Anthony Alexandre , who ’ s detained there .
He spoke to us by phone .
He ’ s a longtime resident of the United States , originally from Haiti .
He has led two hunger strikes inside .
I began by asking Anthony Alexandre to describe the conditions he and others are facing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , because we were asking for basic dignity .
And as a retaliation , they pepper-sprayed us .
This was really hard for us .
It was really hard to breathe .
It was about 20 minutes , when they came in and asked us that they ’ re going to put us in a unit that had 15 — 15 detainees that had tested positive .
We didn ’ t want to leave , because our body was so feeble because we were on a hunger strike .
And they decided to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was like people on the floor .
It was like 20 minutes , 20 minutes of pain .
Just like you could see Floyd is struggling for air , that ’ s how we were at this point .
And they came in , dragged us out of our cell and put us to another unit to go to a pod where Carlos Escobar were .
So they took 15 detainees that was on M pod to put them on L pod , that they just finished pepper-spraying .
It was unbelievable .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ so pernicious , because they took Carlos at that time .
We saw him gasping for air when they were putting him on L pod , which was the pod that we just left , they just finished pepper-spraying .
They waited three days .
After watching Carlos Escobar struggling for air , they waiting for three days to take him to outside medical .
I could not believe that .
That was something that is very negligent .
And they want you to sign to get those little instant masks that I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now .
And most of these detainees does not speak English .
And you have to sign for it .
I was the one that ’ s trying to translate what it was , to make sure that everybody got one in my unit so they could be able to protect themselves .
That is accurate .
So , yes , this is indicative to how they behave when you don ’ t — when they don ’ t like you to do something , they just pepper-sprayed you .
That ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , everybody in here , we ’ re all worried .
Everybody thinks that , you know , if something happened to us , we might die .
Some of these guys are signing letters to their family to say , you know , please — because after Escobar , we saw what had happened with Escobar , we all thought maybe we won ’ t make it , because some of these guys , this condition is so bad .
Some of the — I remember seeing one guy slit his own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that swallowed a battery , you know , because they don ’ t want to go back to their country .
And they don ’ t want to leave — they don ’ t want them to stay here in the U.S .
So , this is very stressful being in here .
ANTHONY ALEXANDRE : Well , this was difficult , because this is very important to hear .
When I arrived here , I ’ ve been trying to vindicate my life , and ICE blocked me from vital information that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They block numbers , like , for example , Otay Mesa Resistance .
They block their numbers for us to call , because sometimes I would need information they ’ re doing that would help me out .
They block those numbers .
They ’ re making sure that we have — you watch specific shows they want to watch .
We ’ re not allowed to speak to other detainees on the different units .
It ’ s like having their foot on our necks .
So , this is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrive here , you will basically have no rights .
That ’ s what they ’ re telling us .
This is civil detention .
It can not be — we are both in a world — we are all in a world that none of us have lived before , so it can not be business as usual , you know , and ICE can not just ignore basic , basic dignity and have us being in here , where we could be on ankle monitors with our family .
There ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us in here , unless profiting from our suffering .
AMY GOODMAN : That ’ s immigrant and activist Anthony Alexandre , speaking to us from inside the Otay Mesa Detention Center near San Diego , California , last week , one of the ICE jails that ’ s been hardest hit by the pandemic .
The jail is owned by the private prison company CoreCivic .
A mass outbreak there of COVID-19 has infected at least 167 people and led to the death of one man , 57-year-old Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the former acting director of ICE , John Sandweg , has joined doctors and human rights advocates and groups calling for the immediate release of people in ICE detention to stop the further spread of COVID-19 .
In other immigration news , a federal appeals court has struck down President Trump ’ s near-total ban on asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border .
That does it for today ’ s show .
If you ’ d like to sign up for our Daily Digest , you can text the word “ democracynow ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That ’ s the word “ democracynow ” to 66866 .
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Democracy Now !
is produced with Renée Feltz , Mike Burke , Deena Guzder , Libby Rainey , Nermeen Shaikh , Carla Wills , Tami Woronoff , Charina @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , John Hamilton , Robby Karran , Hany Massoud , Adriano Contreras and María Taracena .
I ’ m Amy Goodman .
Thanks for joining us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. The number of people jailed by ICE — that’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement — who have tested positive for the coronavirus continues to rise, with more than 2,700 cases reported. Among the hardest hit by the pandemic is the Otay Mesa Detention Center in California, where a mass outbreak of COVID-19 has infected at least 167 people and led to the death of 57-year-old Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia last month. Immigrants detained there report dire conditions, lack of medical care, and the repeated use of pepper spray as retaliation.
Last week, we reached immigrant and activist Anthony Alexandre, who’s detained there. He spoke to us by phone. He’s a longtime resident of the United States, originally from Haiti. He has led two hunger strikes inside. I began by asking Anthony Alexandre to describe the conditions he and others are facing.
ANTHONY ALEXANDRE: Well, we are still in a unmitigated disaster, that it’s — the condition is still dire. The amount of detainees that’s been affected with the positive here in Otay Mesa is around 250 detainees. And they still haven’t done anything to mitigate the situation. The lack of healthcare is still — we have between three to nine medical staff on any time on the premises.
And we decided to hunger strike, because we were asking for basic dignity. And as a retaliation, they pepper-sprayed us. This was really hard for us. It was really hard to breathe. It was about 20 minutes, when they came in and asked us that they’re going to put us in a unit that had 15 — 15 detainees that had tested positive. We didn’t want to leave, because our body was so feeble because we were on a hunger strike. And they decided to come in and pepper-spray us. There was like people on the floor. It was like 20 minutes, 20 minutes of pain. Just like you could see Floyd is struggling for air, that’s how we were at this point.
And they came in, dragged us out of our cell and put us to another unit to go to a pod where Carlos Escobar were. So they took 15 detainees that was on M pod to put them on L pod, that they just finished pepper-spraying. It was unbelievable. That’s what made the situation so pernicious, because they took Carlos at that time. We saw him gasping for air when they were putting him on L pod, which was the pod that we just left, they just finished pepper-spraying. They waited three days. After watching Carlos Escobar struggling for air, they waiting for three days to take him to outside medical. I could not believe that. That was something that is very negligent.
And they decided after that to take us to a medical unit that had three other detainees that tested positive, where we’re sharing phone. They’re not properly cleaning it. The cell where we were was dirty, filthy, dirty with bloodstain on walls, spit on the floor. I had to clean the cell myself, when I was so weak. It was unbelievable, unbearable in this facility.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Anthony, I wanted to ask you — back in April, the prisoners were told to sign contracts that were written only in English, in exchange for receiving face masks. And I would assume that the vast majority of the detainees there are of Mexican or Central American origin. Many of them don’t speak English. What was your — and then they were pepper-sprayed when some refused?
ANTHONY ALEXANDRE: Yes. The reason why this occurred is because they did not give us proper PPE at all. The mask they gave us was actually one-day use only. And they give you that twice every what? Two months? And we had to cut off pieces of clothing to make personal masks with that. So, because those property belong to them, they pepper-sprayed us for cutting pieces of those clothing to put as mask.
And they want you to sign to get those little instant masks that I’m just discussing with you right now. And most of these detainees does not speak English. And you have to sign for it. I was the one that’s trying to translate what it was, to make sure that everybody got one in my unit so they could be able to protect themselves. That is accurate. So, yes, this is indicative to how they behave when you don’t — when they don’t like you to do something, they just pepper-sprayed you. That’s indicative to how they behave.
AMY GOODMAN: Anthony, I wanted to play a video, a recording you made for the organization Otay Mesa Detention Resistance to play for California Governor Gavin Newsom during a meeting with his staff last month. ANTHONY ALEXANDRE: My name is Anthony Alexandre. I’m at Otay Mesa Detention Center. I’m a legal permanent resident for 30 years. I was born in Haiti. Governor, you have been a beacon of hope to all of us here. We believe that you are a pragmatic type of person, you will do the right thing. Governor Newsom, send the AG to investigate, or please tell us: What step are you going to take to save our lives?
AMY GOODMAN: So, Anthony Alexandre, do you know if the governor heard this? The conditions in the prison now, is it — are you still asked to sign a waiver, if you get a mask, if you want to get a mask, that would absolve CoreCivic of liability? This is a for-profit detention company, prison company, that runs Otay Mesa. Describe what CoreCivic is and whether the governor has responded.
ANTHONY ALEXANDRE: The governor — 40 detainees on my unit, we signed a letter to Governor Newsom, and we sent it to their office. They sent back a letter saying that they wanted to speak to us, but we haven’t heard back from them ever since we had the first conversation.
Now, at Otay Mesa Detention Center, the last time they gave us a mask was at least a month and a half ago. These are cloth masks they give us, not those, you know, instant masks anymore. So they give us two masks. We have to wash them all the time.
And, you know, most of the detainees are not wearing any mask anymore, because we’re back in our unit. We try to keep it clean. They don’t allow us to go outside. They lock us up at least 18 hours a day now. And they’re giving us, three times a day fed bologna sandwiches.
So, basically, CoreCivic is telling us they do not care about our health. They do not care about anything else but their bottom line. So, this is not a place where you can be comfortable. They make it very difficult for you to breathe.
They tell us that we have to, if you don’t want to get infected — first of all, they say they’re not responsible for us if we get COVID-19. And they tell us that if you don’t want to test positive, you can sign for your deportation. So they’re basically using the COVID-19 to make us sign for our deportation.
This is not a place where you know they are doing — taking measures to make sure that our health is up to date. So, it’s very difficult to be relaxed in a place like this — stress everywhere, everybody’s getting sick, and you know you have to make sure that you wear a mask every day and gloves to be — I’m extremely vigilant because I suffer from an underlying condition. So, every time I go out of this 7-by-12 cell, I have to put a mask, wear gloves, to make sure that, you know, I don’t get sick, because I suffer from an underlying condition.
So, everybody in here, we’re all worried. Everybody thinks that, you know, if something happened to us, we might die. Some of these guys are signing letters to their family to say, you know, please — because after Escobar, we saw what had happened with Escobar, we all thought maybe we won’t make it, because some of these guys, this condition is so bad. Some of the — I remember seeing one guy slit his own throat. There was one other guy that swallowed a battery, you know, because they don’t want to go back to their country. And they don’t want to leave — they don’t want them to stay here in the U.S. So, this is very stressful being in here.
AMY GOODMAN: Final words, Anthony, as we wrap up here, speaking to us from inside the Otay Mesa Detention Center? What the external solidarity means to you? You have the Otay Mesa resistance movement outside. How do they get word inside? How do you get word out?
ANTHONY ALEXANDRE: Well, this was difficult, because this is very important to hear. When I arrived here, I’ve been trying to vindicate my life, and ICE blocked me from vital information that would facilitate me to win my cases. They block numbers, like, for example, Otay Mesa Resistance. They block their numbers for us to call, because sometimes I would need information they’re doing that would help me out. They block those numbers. They’re making sure that we have — you watch specific shows they want to watch. We’re not allowed to speak to other detainees on the different units. It’s like having their foot on our necks.
They’re not allowing us to do the things that needs basic — basically, our right is violated. Our First Amendment right is violated. So, ACLU has filed them — filed a letter to let them know to cease and desist, because, you know, they’re not supposed to do that. So, basically, now they are allowing us to speak to the resistance again.
So, this is not United States of America. Once you arrive here, you will basically have no rights. That’s what they’re telling us. This is civil detention. It cannot be — we are both in a world — we are all in a world that none of us have lived before, so it cannot be business as usual, you know, and ICE cannot just ignore basic, basic dignity and have us being in here, where we could be on ankle monitors with our family. There’s no reason why they should keep us in here, unless profiting from our suffering.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re calling for Otay Mesa to be shut down, Anthony?
ANTHONY ALEXANDRE: Yes, because we all — we don’t have to be here. We all could be home with our family on ankle monitors to fight our cases on the outside. What’s the point of being in here, if it was just not for profit?
AMY GOODMAN: That’s immigrant and activist Anthony Alexandre, speaking to us from inside the Otay Mesa Detention Center near San Diego, California, last week, one of the ICE jails that’s been hardest hit by the pandemic. The jail is owned by the private prison company CoreCivic. A mass outbreak there of COVID-19 has infected at least 167 people and led to the death of one man, 57-year-old Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, last month. This comes as the former acting director of ICE, John Sandweg, has joined doctors and human rights advocates and groups calling for the immediate release of people in ICE detention to stop the further spread of COVID-19.
In other immigration news, a federal appeals court has struck down President Trump’s near-total ban on asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
That does it for today’s show. If you’d like to sign up for our Daily Digest, you can text the word “democracynow” — one word — to 66866. That’s the word “democracynow” to 66866. Or you can go to our website at democracynow.org and sign up there. You can also go there for all of our broadcasts, the transcripts, the video, and the audio podcasts. And tell your friends about Democracy Now!, the daily, grassroots, global news hour.
Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Libby Rainey, Nermeen Shaikh, Carla Wills, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Adriano Contreras and María Taracena. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.


democracynow--2020-07-07--How Black & Indigenous Groups Won the Fight to Stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
We ’ re going now from Standing Rock to Appalachia , where anti-pipeline activists won another massive victory over the weekend when Duke and Dominion Energy said they had canceled plans to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline , a 600-mile pipeline that would have carried fracked gas from West Virginia to North Carolina .
Indigenous leaders and environmental groups have opposed the pipeline since it was announced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Indigenous , Black and Brown communities .
The pipeline ’ s planned route would have run through Union Hill , Virginia , a historically Black community founded by freed slaves after the Civil War , and Robeson County , North Carolina , home to the Lumbee Tribe .
The massive utility companies said lawsuits had increased costs for the pipeline by at least $ 3 billion , citing increased costs , ongoing delays and potential future legal battles as reasons for canceling the project .
Well , for more on the canceled Atlantic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , North Carolina , where we ’ re joined by Donna Chavis , senior fossil fuel campaigner for Friends of the Earth , elder of the Lumbee Nation .
She has called the fight against the pipeline a “ David versus Goliath ” struggle .
Welcome to Democracy Now !
Well , it looks like you have won this struggle , Donna Chavis .
Can you respond to the decision and where you think it came from ?
DONNA CHAVIS : Yes , and thank you for having me today , Amy .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ elated about .
I was in a grocery store when I heard about it , and had to go outside to celebrate .
Where it came from ?
I think it came from a number of sources .
Of course , we have Duke and Dominion ’ s answer , in that it became too expensive , and all of the delays caused by people on the ground forced them to pull out .
And I would have to agree with them , in the sense that there was an awful lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ means is that the environment , the communities that would have suffered irreparable harm and the Indigenous , Black and other peoples of color who would have been disproportionately impacted , had the pipeline been built , now have that cloud lifted from them .
I think that there were signs that this pipeline was not going to go anywhere .
It was called the “ pipeline to nowhere ” at least two years ago , when all of the financial disarray related to the project began to become apparent .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the situation , the energy market situation worldwide , as oil has plummeted in price , fracked gas is no longer seen as a good investment by energy companies ?
Do you think that , combined with the public pressure and the lawsuits , had something to do with it , as well ?
DONNA CHAVIS : Absolutely .
In fact , Friends of the Earth , over the last 18 months , released no less than three reports that showed the risk of investing in this project , and not just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in general .
Gas and oil are no longer the cheapest source for energy .
And I know that , at least in North Carolina , decisions are supposed to be made about what is the best product for the citizens .
And in this case , gas and oil is not the best .
As you just pointed out , the price for both of those has just plummeted .
In the United States , we have a glut .
We have a glut of both gas and oil .
So , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was going to be used in North Carolina , in my case , it was clear that this was going to be for export .
So , there were so many factors that were involved with the calamity that happened — to the companies , anyway .
They see it as a calamity .
AMY GOODMAN : In 2017 , Unicorn Riot interviewed John Laury , a lifelong resident of Union Hill , the historic Black community founded by the descendants of freed enslaved people in [ un ] incorporated Buckingham County , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years spoke out against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline , which would have cut right through Union Hill .
This is what he said .
AMY GOODMAN : So , that ’ s John Laury , lifelong resident of Union Hill .
If you could , Donna Chavis , talk about the solidarity between Indigenous people , the African American community , as well , what this solidarity meant in defeating the pipelines — the pipeline ?
DONNA CHAVIS : This solidarity was absolutely necessary .
Early on , we began to say that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relate totally to everything that Mr. Laury said , because , in so many cases , the communities , the Black communities , the Indigenous communities , are sometimes officially declared sacrifice zones .
And so , 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 .
I ’ ll give you one example .
Northampton County , which is what I call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the pipeline coming into North Carolina , it is a majority-Black community .
And then you have Robeson County , that is a majority-Native American and Black community together .
So , along the pipeline route , we were joining together the northern gate and the southern gate , and all those in between , to work against this substantial problem that we were facing .
And we held each other up and kept going , until we were on the phone Sunday calling and texting and emailing all over the place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Donna Chavis , we have only about a minute or so left , but I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the Friends — Friends of the Earth is turning its attention now to a gas storage facility in North Carolina that Piedmont Natural Gas , a subsidiary of Duke Energy , is planning to develop .
Could you tell us briefly what that project is about ?
DONNA CHAVIS : Yes , it is a Duke Energy project through Piedmont Natural Gas , which is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 1-billion-cubic-foot storage and distribution facility .
And it is sitting smack dab in the middle of a majority-Indigenous community , Lumbee and Tuscarora , very close to a school , just barely within the limits of the one mile that would have stopped it from being able to be built .
The impact has already been shown , in the sense that there ’ s been clearcutting of all the forest that ’ s there .
There has been some flooding , with all the rains we still have .
We were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that particular spot was flooded most of the time during the storm and for quite a while afterwards .
So , we had been already paying attention to that project , and now we will just be able to put even more of our resources into approaching and assisting the community in its opposition .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , Donna Chavis , we want to thank you for being with us , senior fossil fuel campaigner for Friends of the Earth and an elder of the Lumbee Nation , Friends of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , North Carolina .
This is Democracy Now !
When we come back , we go inside Otay Mesa Detention Center , the jail near San Diego .
Stay with us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. We’re going now from Standing Rock to Appalachia, where anti-pipeline activists won another massive victory over the weekend when Duke and Dominion Energy said they had canceled plans to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600-mile pipeline that would have carried fracked gas from West Virginia to North Carolina.
Indigenous leaders and environmental groups have opposed the pipeline since it was announced in 2014, saying it threatened rural Indigenous, Black and Brown communities. The pipeline’s planned route would have run through Union Hill, Virginia, a historically Black community founded by freed slaves after the Civil War, and Robeson County, North Carolina, home to the Lumbee Tribe.
The massive utility companies said lawsuits had increased costs for the pipeline by at least $3 billion, citing increased costs, ongoing delays and potential future legal battles as reasons for canceling the project.
Well, for more on the canceled Atlantic Coast Pipeline, we go to Pembroke, North Carolina, where we’re joined by Donna Chavis, senior fossil fuel campaigner for Friends of the Earth, elder of the Lumbee Nation. She has called the fight against the pipeline a “David versus Goliath” struggle.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Well, it looks like you have won this struggle, Donna Chavis. Can you respond to the decision and where you think it came from?
DONNA CHAVIS: Yes, and thank you for having me today, Amy. The decision is something that I was elated about. I was in a grocery store when I heard about it, and had to go outside to celebrate.
Where it came from? I think it came from a number of sources. Of course, we have Duke and Dominion’s answer, in that it became too expensive, and all of the delays caused by people on the ground forced them to pull out. And I would have to agree with them, in the sense that there was an awful lot of opposition to this.
What the decision means is that the environment, the communities that would have suffered irreparable harm and the Indigenous, Black and other peoples of color who would have been disproportionately impacted, had the pipeline been built, now have that cloud lifted from them.
I think that there were signs that this pipeline was not going to go anywhere. It was called the “pipeline to nowhere” at least two years ago, when all of the financial disarray related to the project began to become apparent.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Donna Chavis, what about the situation, the energy market situation worldwide, as oil has plummeted in price, fracked gas is no longer seen as a good investment by energy companies? Do you think that, combined with the public pressure and the lawsuits, had something to do with it, as well?
DONNA CHAVIS: Absolutely. In fact, Friends of the Earth, over the last 18 months, released no less than three reports that showed the risk of investing in this project, and not just this project, but fossil fuels, in general. Gas and oil are no longer the cheapest source for energy. And I know that, at least in North Carolina, decisions are supposed to be made about what is the best product for the citizens. And in this case, gas and oil is not the best. As you just pointed out, the price for both of those has just plummeted.
In the United States, we have a glut. We have a glut of both gas and oil. So, even though it was said that it was going to be used in North Carolina, in my case, it was clear that this was going to be for export. So, there were so many factors that were involved with the calamity that happened — to the companies, anyway. They see it as a calamity.
AMY GOODMAN: In 2017, Unicorn Riot interviewed John Laury, a lifelong resident of Union Hill, the historic Black community founded by the descendants of freed enslaved people in [un]incorporated Buckingham County, Virginia. Residents of Union Hill for years spoke out against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would have cut right through Union Hill. This is what he said.
JOHN LAURY: We are in the zero zone. In other words, we are first to go. We know that it will emit poisonous gases. We know that. And we know that it will definitely contaminate the water. We are now just recently beginning to find slave cemeteries. This community is perhaps 85% Black. Perhaps that’s why they say this area has no culture or natural resource, which is both lies.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s John Laury, lifelong resident of Union Hill. If you could, Donna Chavis, talk about the solidarity between Indigenous people, the African American community, as well, what this solidarity meant in defeating the pipelines — the pipeline?
DONNA CHAVIS: This solidarity was absolutely necessary. Early on, we began to say that we were in sacrifice zones. I relate totally to everything that Mr. Laury said, because, in so many cases, the communities, the Black communities, the Indigenous communities, are sometimes officially declared sacrifice zones. And so, 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.
I’ll give you one example. Northampton County, which is what I call — used to call the northern gate of the pipeline coming into North Carolina, it is a majority-Black community. And then you have Robeson County, that is a majority-Native American and Black community together. So, along the pipeline route, we were joining together the northern gate and the southern gate, and all those in between, to work against this substantial problem that we were facing. And we held each other up and kept going, until we were on the phone Sunday calling and texting and emailing all over the place with celebration.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Donna Chavis, we have only about a minute or so left, but I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the Friends — Friends of the Earth is turning its attention now to a gas storage facility in North Carolina that Piedmont Natural Gas, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, is planning to develop. Could you tell us briefly what that project is about?
DONNA CHAVIS: Yes, it is a Duke Energy project through Piedmont Natural Gas, which is a wholly owned subsidiary. It will be a 1-billion-cubic-foot storage and distribution facility. And it is sitting smack dab in the middle of a majority-Indigenous community, Lumbee and Tuscarora, very close to a school, just barely within the limits of the one mile that would have stopped it from being able to be built. The impact has already been shown, in the sense that there’s been clearcutting of all the forest that’s there. There has been some flooding, with all the rains we still have. We were hit very badly with Florence, and that particular spot was flooded most of the time during the storm and for quite a while afterwards. So, we had been already paying attention to that project, and now we will just be able to put even more of our resources into approaching and assisting the community in its opposition.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Donna Chavis, we want to thank you for being with us, senior fossil fuel campaigner for Friends of the Earth and an elder of the Lumbee Nation, Friends of the Earth, speaking to us from Pembroke, North Carolina.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go inside Otay Mesa Detention Center, the jail near San Diego. Stay with us.