As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

You may not have heard much lately about the disaster in the Gaza Strip. That silence is intentional: The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering the occupied territory.

Last week, executives from the Associated Press, New York Times, Reuters, CNN, BBC and other news organizations sent a letter of protest to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert criticizing his government’s decision to bar journalists from entering Gaza. Israel has virtually sealed off the Gaza Strip and cut off aid and fuel shipments. A spokesman for Israel’s Defense Ministry said Israel was displeased with international media coverage, which he said inflated Palestinian suffering and did not make clear that Israel’s measures were in response to Palestinian violence.

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Morales is the first indigenous president of Bolivia, the poorest country in South America. He was inaugurated in January 2006. Against tremendous internal opposition, he nationalized Bolivia’s natural-gas fields, transforming the country’s economic stability and, interestingly, enriching the very elite that originally criticized the move.

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Many decades ago, Alice Walker had broken anti-miscegenation laws in Mississippi by marrying a white man. She is a descendant of slaves.

While Barack Obama is not—he is the son of a Kenyan man and a white Kansan woman—his wife, Michelle, is, and so, too, are their daughters, Sasha and Malia. Michelle Obama’s ancestors come from South Carolina; her grandfather was part of the great migration north to Chicago.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, reflected on the Obamas’ forthcoming move: “There are two African-American girls, little girl children, who are going to grow up with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as their home address. That’s an astonishing difference for our country. It does not mean the end of racial inequality. It does not mean that most little black girls growing up with their residence on the South Side of Chicago or in Harlem, or Latino boys and girls growing up at their addresses, that the world is all better for them. But it does mean that there is something possible here.”

Construction of the White House started in 1792, with sandstone quarried by slaves in Aquia, Va., then transported up the Potomac River and hauled into place by slaves. The White House Historical Association lists several of the slaves on that historic construction crew: “Tom, Peter, Ben, Harry and Daniel, three of whom were slaves owned by White House architect James Hoban.” Stonecutters, or sawyers, “on government payrolls, such as ‘Jerry,’ Jess,’ ‘Charles,’ ‘Len,’ ‘Dick’, ‘Bill’ and ‘Jim’ undoubtedly were slaves leased from their masters.” Randall Robinson, in his book “The Debt,” wrote of slave labor in the construction of the U.S. Capitol: “The worn and pitted stones on which the tourists stood had doubtless been hauled into position by slaves, for whom the most arduous of tasks were reserved. They had fired and stacked the bricks. They had mixed the mortar. They had sawn the long timbers in hellishly dangerous pits with one slave out of the pit and another in, often nearly buried alive in sawdust.”

Looking forward, Barack Obama can make history in another way. The executive orders he issues will set the tone of his presidency and could usher in a new era. Human-rights groups are calling for the closing of the Guantanamo prison camp and CIA “black sites,” where torture has been commonplace.

Which brings us back to slavery. When Frederick Douglass, the renowned abolitionist, was young, he was enslaved on a plantation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, called Mount Misery, owned by Edward Covey, a notorious “slave breaker.” There, physical and psychological torture were standard. That property, today, is owned by Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense who was one of the key architects of the U.S. military’s program of torture and detention.

With the stroke of a pen on Inauguration Day, President Obama could outlaw torture. It would be a tribute to those slaves who built his new home, the White House, a tribute to those slaves who built the U.S. Capitol Building, a tribute to those who were tortured at Mount Misery.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

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The legendary radio broadcaster, writer and oral historian Studs Terkel has died at the age of 96 in Chicago.

Studs Terkel worked as an activist, a civil servant, a labor organizer, an ad writer, a television actor, and a radio DJ, among many other occupations. But since the 1960s, he was particularly well-known as a world-class interviewer, a writer and radio personality who drew celebrities and, far more often, average citizens into sharing their oral histories.

For 45 years, Studs Terkel spent an hour each weekday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conversing with famous and not-so-famous guests and with a loyal audience of Chicago listeners.

With his unique style of oral history on subjects such as race, war and employment, Terkel spent decades interviewing Americans across the country, creating intimate portraits of everyday life and chronicling changing times through this century.

He was also a regular guest on Democracy Now. Below are links to watch or listen to our archive of interviews with Studs Terkel.

November 04, 2003
‘Hope Dies Last’–An Hour with Legendary Broadcaster and Author Studs Terkel

October 05, 2005
Legendary Broadcaster and Author Studs Terkel on President Bush, Mahalia Jackson, James Baldwin, Louis Armstrong, the Rebuilding of New Orleans and What Gives Him Hope

May 16, 2007
Studs Terkel At 95: ‘Ordinary People Are Capable of Doing Extraordinary Things, and That’s What It’s All About. They Must Count!’

November 13, 2007
Legendary Radio Broadcaster and Oral Historian Studs Terkel on the Iraq War, NSA Domestic Spy Program, the Labor Movement and His New Memoir ‘Touch and Go’

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Change is at hand. Barring a repeat of the protracted Florida recount of 2000, there will be a victor soon in the U.S. presidential election.

With the economic crisis, change is something in your pocket that you want to hold on to.

The campaigns are not dealing in small change, though. Their coffers, particularly the Democrats’, are swelling with larger and larger bundles of cash, ensuring that politicians will remain beholden to special interests and wealthy donors. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the extended television discussions of this, because it’s the broadcasters who profit the most.

Barack Obama broke records with recently announced September fundraising levels that exceeded all predictions, bringing in $150 million. Since Obama opted out of the public financing system, he can spend freely from his war chest right up to the election. John McCain accepted public financing and has limits imposed on his campaign, with $84.1 million in public money to spend in the general election. McCain is now outspent on advertising by the Obama camp by 4-to-1.

The Obama campaign has “flooded the zone” with advertising. It has a full-time “Obama Channel” on Dish Network. Ads have been inserted into video games like “Guitar Hero.” The campaign has bought a full 30 minutes of prime-time airtime on NBC, CBS and Fox, six days before the election. Fox moved the start time of the World Series to accommodate the ad buy.

Obama’s campaign is credited with receiving an unprecedented number of small donations from among its historic 3.1 million donors. Campaign manager David Plouffe says the campaign’s average donation is under $100. A Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission data shows, though, that only a quarter of this vast number of donors fall into the “small” category (under $200), which is a smaller percentage than that achieved by George Bush in his 2004 run.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks campaign contributions, the funds raised in presidential campaigns has skyrocketed. The 1976 campaign, the first campaign that included public financing, saw a total of $171 million raised (about $570 million, adjusted for inflation). The current campaign weighs in at close to $1.6 billion, and the group expects the total to reach $2.4 billion. While donations to candidates are supposed to be limited to $2,300 for the general election (an additional $2,300 is allowed for the primary season, per candidate), huge loopholes exist. Most notable are the “joint fundraising committees,” in which the presidential candidate partners with his party to form a fundraising organization. McCain and the Republican National Committee’s is called McCain Victory 2008 and can receive donations as high as $70,000, which then get distributed to the presidential campaign, the national party and to key state parties. Obama and the Democratic National Committee created the Obama Victory Fund, to which donors could give $28,500. As The Washington Post just reported, the Democrats found that sum too limiting, so they created the Committee for Change, which allows donors to give up to $65,500. That’s a helluva lot of change.

Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, told me, “What is wrong with this is, after this election, the people have bundled and put together big pots of money are going to come back to whoever is elected, and they will be looking for access and influence.”

The $2-billion presidential race also guarantees vast profits for the broadcasters, the national networks and the local television stations. Hundreds of television stations are using the public airwaves, imposing themselves between the candidates and the public.

Access to the public airwaves for political candidates should be free. Says Buzenberg: “Every local television station I have been to, I say, ‘How do you do in election years?’ They say, ‘We buy new cameras, new sets.’ It is a huge benefit to them. The commercial broadcasters are cleaning up this year like never before, and you’ll never hear them questioning the system that allows so much money to come back to them.”

Is public financing of campaigns dead? A year ago, Sen. Obama said, “I have been a longtime advocate for public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests.” Regardless of who the winner is, the next president will enter the White House with a long list of major donors to thank.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

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The 2008 presidential election may see the highest participation in U.S. history. Voter registration organizations and local election boards have been overwhelmed by enthusiastic people eager to vote. But not everyone is happy about this blossoming of democracy.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has become a lightning rod for the right wing. ACORN’s Web site notes that “the electorate does not reflect the citizenry of the United States of America. It skews whiter, older, more educated and more affluent than the citizenry as a whole.” Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s lead organizer, told me: “We organize low- and moderate-income people, usually folks who are minorities—African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and working-class white people. And most of these folks have always been disenfranchised out of the electoral process. … We’ve registered 1.3 million new voters across the country over an 18-month period of time. We had over 13,000 hard-working voter registration workers. And we may have had a few bad apples, but I don’t know any organization that didn’t.”

Barack Obama himself was questioned about ACORN’s problematic registrations. He said: “Having run a voter registration drive, I know how problems arise. This is typically a situation where ACORN probably paid people to get registrations, and these folks, not wanting to actually register people, because that’s actually hard work, just went into a phone book or made up names and submitted false registrations to get paid. So there’s been fraud perpetrated on probably ACORN, if they paid these individuals and they actually didn’t do registrations. But this isn’t a situation where there’s actually people who are going to try to vote, because these are phony names.”

ACORN has seen some clearly fraudulent registrations submitted, with names like “Mickey Mouse” turned in. ACORN says it reviews all the registration forms. However, it does not serve as the ultimate arbiter of which registrations are fraudulent. In fact, ACORN cannot legally throw away any voter registration cards. It flags suspicious cards and submits them to the appropriate state election authority to make the judgment.

Republicans are increasingly alarmed at the shifting demographics of the United States. Minorities tend to vote Democratic, and the United States is slowly becoming a majority minority country—by 2050, whites will no longer represent a majority in the U.S.

As right-wing commentator Patrick Buchanan lamented in 2004: “In 1960, when JFK defeated Nixon, America was a nation of 160 million, 90 percent white and 10 percent black, with a few million Hispanics and Asians sprinkled among us. We were one nation, one people. We worshipped the same God, spoke the same English language.” Buchanan’s xenophobia highlights a political reality: Immigration and mobilization of the urban poor are shifting the electorate to the Democrats, especially in key swing states like New Mexico, Colorado, Florida and Ohio.

The federal Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002 in response to the electoral crisis of 2000. But it requires new voters to present identification at the polling place, which critics allege is a modern-day Jim Crow law. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (the son of the assassinated 1968 presidential candidate) said recently: “I have an ID, and most Americans have an ID. But one out of every 10 Americans don’t have a government-issued ID, because they don’t travel abroad, so they don’t have passports, and they don’t drive a car, so they don’t have driver’s licenses. The number rises to one in five when you’re dealing with the African-American community.”

The online Michigan Messenger revealed that Michigan Republicans were planning to use a list of people with foreclosed homes to purge voter rolls. And a federal judge in Detroit has just ordered that 1,500 people be restored to the Michigan voter rolls, based on “voter caging”—purging people if mail to them is returned as undeliverable. The scandal around the firing of U.S. attorneys, which ultimately led to the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, was based largely on the refusal of the Republican prosecutors to pursue unfounded voter fraud cases.

Citizen groups like Election Protection and Video the Vote are organizing to document and report problems at the polls on Nov. 4. It is more likely that they will see honest people denied the right to vote, purged from the voter rolls, than an attempt by Mickey Mouse to vote Obama.

Denis Moynihan contributed to this column.

The reviews are in, and the latest U.S. presidential debate, the “town hall” from Nashville, Tenn., was a snore. One problem is that in a debate it is important for the debaters to actually disagree. Yet Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain substantively agree on many issues. That is one major reason that the debates should be open, and that major third-party or independent candidates should be included.

Take the global financial meltdown. Both senators voted for the controversial bailout bill that first failed in the U.S. House of Representatives. It passed resoundingly in the Senate and, larded with financial favors to woo uncooperative House members, finally passed the House. The news each day suggests that the bailout hasn’t solved the problem. Rather, the economic contagion is going global, with European and Asian banks teetering on the brink of collapse. Iceland—not just its banks, but the country—faces financial ruin.

Earlier Tuesday, before the debate, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced that it would for the first time ever begin buying up the debt of private companies to help them meet short-term cash needs for things like payroll. Shortly after the debate ended, major central banks around the world, again for the first time ever, cut their prime lending rates in unison. Yet on the debate floor, there was no sense that the global financial system needed more than a tax cut here, a voucher there. The major thing lacking from the debate was, well, debate.

Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, reacted to the debate, writing: “Sen. McCain, Sen. Barack Obama and the other members of Congress who have supported one bailout after another have turned fiscal responsibility into a sucker’s game. … There’s no meaningful difference between the two major parties.” The independent campaign of Ralph Nader put out a debate-watching e-mail, asking supporters to listen for key words and phrases, among them: “working class,” “Taft-Hartley Act,” “labor unions,” “military-industrial complex,” “single-payer health care,” “impeachment,” “carbon tax” and “corporate power.” None of these was mentioned.

Obama supporters noted that McCain did not mention “middle class” once. Yet neither candidate mentioned poverty.

Obama and McCain fought to prove who was more sympathetic to the nuclear-power industry. They each bowed to the coal industry, with its controversial “clean coal” gambit. They split hairs over who would more cagily bomb Pakistan.

At the core of the problem with U.S. presidential debates is that they are run by a private corporation, the Commission on Presidential Debates, founded in 1987 by the Republican and Democratic parties. The CPD took over the debate process from the League of Women Voters. Just once since then has a third-party candidate made it into the debate—Ross Perot in 1992. After he did well, he was excluded in 1996. The CPD requires contenders to poll at 15 percent before they qualify for any debate.

Nader calls the 15 percent threshold “a Catch-22 level of support that is almost impossible for any third-party candidate to reach without first getting in the debates.”

George Farah directs Open Debates, a group that works “to ensure that the presidential debates serve the American people first.” He told me that “historically, it has been third parties, not the major parties, that have supported and are responsible for the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, public schools, public power, unemployment compensation, minimum wage, child labor laws. The list goes on and on. The two parties fail to address a particular issue; a third party rises up, and it’s supported by tens of millions of Americans, forcing the Republican and Democratic parties to co-opt that issue, or the third party rises and succeeds, which is why the Republican Party jumped from being a third party to being a major party of the United States of America.”

There is a move to organize a third-party debate, in New York City, a day or so after the final McCain-Obama debate on Oct. 15. The CPD could still liven its last debate, and serve the electorate and history, by opening up that debate to all candidates who have at least obtained significant ballot access. Both Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are on the ballot in close to 45 states, Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party is on the ballot in 30 states, and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin is on in more than 35 states. Let’s open the debates and have a vigorous and honest discussion about where this country needs to go. It will not only make for better television, it will make for better democracy.

International Herald Tribute: ‘Alternative Nobels’ go to journalist, activists

Editor & Publisher: King Features Columnist Among ‘Alternative Nobel’ Winners

Associated Press: ‘Alternative Nobels’ go to journalist, activists

Common Dreams: ‘Alternative Nobels’ go to journalist, activists

The Local (Sweden): ‘Alternative Nobel’ to Indian, US, Somali and German activists

USA Today: ‘Alternative Nobels’ go to journalist, activists

The Star (South Africa): Women sweep ‘alternative Nobels’

The Hindu (India): ‘Alternative Nobels’ go to activists, journalist

One World (UK): Four named in ‘Alternative Nobel’ awards

Deutsche Welle (Germany): Peace and Social Justice Workers Receive Alternative Nobel Prize

Swedish radio: ‘Arbete för fattiga och utsatta belönas’

Uppsala Nya Tidning (Sweden): ‘Alternativa Nobelpriset’ delas på fyra’

German main television news website links to a number of radio interviews

German second TV channel website: ‘Alternativer Nobelpreis für Monika Hauser’

Spiegel Online (Germany): ‘Ich möchte, dass die Welt für Frauen anders wird’

ZEIT (Germany): ‘Kölner Frauenärztin ausgezeichnet’

Deutschlandradio: ‘Es geht wirklich um Demütigung und Zerstörung der Frauen’

Sindh Today (Pakistan): ‘Indians working for social justice get Alternate Nobel Prize’

Ultimo Segundo (Brazil): ‘Nobel Alternativo premia defesa de direitos femininos e idéias de Gandhi’

Monsters and Critics (Europe): ‘PROFILE: Free speech award winner sees journalism as tool for peace’_

Women’s E-news: ‘Women Do Right’

The China Post (Taiwan): ‘Democracy Now host wins Right Livelihood Award’

The force will be called the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force. Its acronym, CCMRF, is pronounced “sea-smurf.” These “sea-smurfs,” Cavallaro reports, have “spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle,” in a combat zone, and now will spend their 20-month “dwell time”—time troops are required to spend to “reset and regenerate after a deployment”—armed and ready to hit the U.S. streets.

The Army Times piece includes a correction stating that the forces would not use nonlethal weaponry domestically. I called Air Force Lt. Col. Jamie Goodpaster, a public-affairs officer for Northern Command. She told me that the overall mission was humanitarian, to save lives and help communities recover from catastrophic events. Nevertheless, the military forces would have weapons on-site, “containerized,” she said—that is, stored in containers—including both lethal and so-called nonlethal weapons. They would have mostly wheeled vehicles, but would also, she said, have access to tanks. She said that any decision to use weapons would be made at a higher level, perhaps at the secretary-of-defense level.

Talk of trouble on U.S. streets is omnipresent now, with the juxtaposition of Wall Street and Main Street. The financial crisis we face remains obscure to most people; titans of business and government officials assure us that the financial system is “on the brink,” that a massive bailout is necessary, immediately, to prevent a disaster. Conservative and progressive members of Congress, at the insistence of constituents, blocked the initial plan. If the economy does collapse, if people can’t go down to the bank to withdraw their savings, or get cash from an ATM, there may be serious “civil unrest,” and the “sea-smurfs” may be called upon sooner than we imagine to assist with “crowd control.”

The political and financial establishments seem completely galled that people would actually oppose their massive bailout, which rewards financiers for gambling. Normal people worry about paying their bills, buying groceries and gas, and paying rent or a mortgage in increasingly uncertain times. No one ever offers to bail them out. Wall Street’s house of cards has collapsed, and the rich bankers are getting little sympathy from working people.

That’s where the sea-smurfs come in. Officially formed to respond to major disasters, like a nuclear or biological attack, this combat brigade falls under the U.S. Northern Command, a military structure formed on Oct, 1, 2002, to “provide command and control of Department of Defense homeland defense efforts.” Military participation in domestic operations was originally outlawed with the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, however, included a section that allowed the president to deploy the armed forces to “restore public order” or to suppress “any insurrection.” While a later bill repealed this, President Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal.

We are in a time of increasing economic disparity, with the largest gap between rich and poor of any wealthy industrialized country. We are witnessing a crackdown on dissent, most recently with $100 million spent on “security” at the Democratic and Republican national conventions. The massive paramilitary police forces deployed at the RNC in St. Paul, Minn., were complete overkill, discouraging protests and conducting mass arrests (National Guard troops just back from Fallujah were there). The arrest there of almost 50 journalists (myself included) showed a clear escalation in attempting to control the message (akin to the ban on photos of flag-draped coffins of soldiers). There are two ongoing, unpopular wars that are costing lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Nobel-winning economist Joe Stiglitz estimates that Iraq alone will cost more than $3 trillion.

In December 2001, in the midst of restricted access to bank accounts due to a financial crisis, respectable, middle-class Argentines rose up, took to the streets, smashed bank windows and ultimately forced the government out of power, despite a massive police crackdown and a failed attempt to control the media. Here in the U.S., with the prospect of a complete failure of our financial system, the people have spoken and do not want an unprecedented act of corporate welfare. We don’t know how close the system is to collapse, nor do we know how close the people are to taking to the streets. The creation of an active-duty military force, the sea-smurfs, that could be used to suppress public protest here at home is a very bad sign.

Birgit Jaeckel, Right Livelihood Foundation
T: +46 8 70 20 339
E: press@rightlivelihood.org

AMY GOODMAN, HOST OF DEMOCRACY NOW!, FIRST JOURNALIST TO RECEIVE RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARD

New York City, NY – Award-winning journalist and host of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely recognized as the world’s premier award for personal courage and social transformation. The annual prize, also known as the Alternative Nobel, will be awarded in the Swedish Parliament on December 8, 2008.

The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honor and support those “offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”. Goodman has been selected for “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.”

Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the country, Democracy Now! is a daily grassroots, global TV/radio/internet news hour airing on more than 750 public radio and television stations and at democracynow.org.

Goodman said, “I am deeply honored that grassroots, independent journalism and the hard work of my colleagues at Democracy Now! are being recognized in these critical times. I strongly believe that media can be a force for peace. It is the responsibility of journalists to give voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken and beaten down by the powerful. It is the best reason I know to carry our pens, cameras and microphones out into the world. The media should be a sanctuary for dissent. It is our job to go to where the silence is.”

Goodman and two Democracy Now! producers were arrested last month at the Republican National Convention while reporting on street demonstrations. Charges were dropped after widespread public outcry. The video of Goodman’s arrest was among the most watched YouTube video’s during the convention week. It has now been viewed over 860,000 times.

Amy Goodman writes a weekly syndicated column with King Features which runs in major newspapers throughout North and South America. She is co-author with her brother, journalist David Goodman, of three New York Times bestsellers: Standing Up To the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times; Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back; and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them.

Goodman’s reporting on East Timor and Nigeria won the George Polk Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award. Her other awards include the first ever Communication for Peace Award presented by the World Association of Christian Communication, the Puffin/Nation Institute Award for Creative Citizenship, The Paley Center for Media “She Made It” Award, and the Gracie Award for American Women in Radio and Television Public Broadcasting. Goodman has also received awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Goodman shares the 2008 Right Livelihood Award with Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan of India, and their organisation, Land for the Tillers’ Freedom, for their work dedicated to realising in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development; Asha Hagi of Somalia “for continuing to lead at great personal risk the female participation in the peace and reconciliation process in her war-ravaged country.”; and Monika Hauser of Germany, gynaecologist and founder of medica mondiale, “for her tireless commitment to working with women who have experienced the most horrific sexualised violence in some of the most dangerous countries in the world, and campaigning for them to receive social recognition and compensation.”

For more information about the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, please visit rightlivelihood.org.

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International Herald Tribune Article

Editor and Publisher Article

Right Livelihood Press Release

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Video of Goodman Arrest at RNC

For full transcript and audio, visit their site here

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Troy Anthony Davis was scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday. Two hours before the state of Georgia was to execute him, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay until Monday. It had earlier agreed to hear Davis’ case on Sept. 29, but Georgia set his execution date six days before the hearing.

Davis was charged with killing Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, in Savannah, Ga., in 1989. Davis had gone to the aid of a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped in a parking lot. Seeing the gun, he said he fled. MacPhail, working security nearby, intervened next, and was killed. Davis, an African-American, claimed his innocence, but was found guilty and sentenced to death. Since his conviction, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony, alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining their testimony. By coming forward and recanting, they face serious repercussions, possibly jail time. Some have identified a different man as the shooter. This man is one of Davis’ remaining accusers.

In July 2007, Davis faced his first execution date. Just a day before he was to be executed, the Georgia Pardons Board granted a stay of execution for up to 90 days. Then, Davis’ attorneys argued before the Georgia Supreme Court for a retrial or for a hearing to present new evidence. The requests were denied, by a 4-to-3 vote. In the same period, the U.S. Supreme Court was weighing whether death by lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment (the court ultimately allowed its use).

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Monday whether it will take on Davis’ case. If it decides not to, he very likely will be executed.

Among Davis’ defenders is former President Jimmy Carter. He said: “This case illustrates the deep flaws in the application of the death penalty in this country. Executing Troy Davis without a real examination of potentially exonerating evidence risks taking the life of an innocent man and would be a grave miscarriage of justice.” Georgia Congressman John Lewis also supports Davis. I spoke with Lewis at Invesco Field in Denver, just before Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. It was 45 years to the date after the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Lewis recalled that historic day: “We were in Washington, more than 250,000 of us, black and white, Protestant, Catholic, Jews, people of different background, rich and poor. … In many parts of the South, people could not register to vote, simply because of the color of their skin. And we changed that.”

Yet this week, in light of Davis’ plight, Lewis told me: “In spite of all of the progress that we’ve made as a nation and as a people, we still have so far to go. The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in every corner, in every aspect of the American society.” He went on to say, when I pointed out that Sen. Obama himself supports the death penalty: “It is troublesome. You know … someplace along the way, some of us must have the courage to say—and I’m moving closer and closer to this point—that in good conscience, I cannot and will not support people who support the death penalty. I think it’s barbaric, and it represents the Dark Ages. …. I don’t think as human beings, I don’t think as a nation, I don’t think as a state, we have the right to take the life of another person. That should be left for the Almighty to do.”

The death penalty is a noxious and racist practice. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, of more than 3,300 people on death row in the U.S., over 41 percent are African-American—more than three times their representation in the general population. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973 there have been 130 people exonerated—people wrongly sentenced to death—in 26 different states, including five exonerated on death row in Georgia. Evidence even suggests that at least four innocent people have been executed in recent years. There is no physical evidence in the Troy Davis case. After the stay was announced, Davis asked his mother to have people pray for the MacPhail family, and to keep working to dismantle this unjust system. He told her he wouldn’t be fighting this hard for his life if he were guilty. This is a case of reasonable doubt. Troy Davis deserves a new trial.

Both announcements come two weeks after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention where over 40 journalists were arrested while reporting on protests taking place outside the convention center.

Upon learning of the news, Democracy Now! Host, Amy Goodman said, “It’s good that these false charges have finally been dropped, but we never should have been arrested to begin with. These violent and unlawful arrests disrupted our work and had a chilling effect on the reporting of dissent. Freedom of the press is also about the public’s right to know what is happening on their streets. There needs to be a full investigation of law enforcement activities during the convention.”

Goodman was arrested while asking police to release Kouddous and Salazar who had been violently arrested while reporting on street demonstrations. After being handcuffed and pushed to the ground, Goodman reiterated that she was was a credentialed reporter. Secret Service then ripped the credential from around her neck.

During demonstrations on the first day of the convention police used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were arrested, as was a photographer for the Associated Press.

John Lundquist, attorney for the Democracy Now! journalists, said, “The most notable lapse by law enforcement during the RNC was the record-breaking number of journalists indiscriminately arrested and detained for doing nothing more than performing in the best tradition of reporters who gather the news.”

In the weeks after the journalist arrests, tens of thousands of members of the public contacted St. Paul officials to protest the unlawful arrests of working journalists. Goodman said, “We were deeply moved by the outpouring of support. We thank everyone who called and wrote first to have us freed and then to have the charges dropped. We thank everyone who stood up for press freedom and the First Amendment.”

The YouTube video of Goodman’s arrest was the most watched YouTube video during the convention week. It has now been viewed over 830,000 times. Salazar’s video of her own violent arrest is also available on YouTube.

CONTACT:
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Media coverage of RNC arrests

Amy Goodman Arrest

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By CHRIS WILLIAMS , Associated Press

September 19, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn.–Charges will be dropped against journalists who were arrested during the Republican National Convention protests and cited with unlawful assembly.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman said Friday that the city attorney’s office recommended against prosecuting reporters for the misdemeanor charge.

“This decision reflects the values we have in St. Paul to protect and promote our First Amendment rights to freedom of the press,” Coleman said in a prepared statement.

He added, “At the scene, the police did their duty in protecting public safety. In this decision, we are serving the public’s interest to maintain the integrity of our democracy, system of justice and freedom of the press.”

He said the city doesn’t know yet how many cases the decision will affect, and he said the city will use a broad definition of journalists caught up in mass arrests.

City Attorney John Choi it would take a while for his office to review each case, do the paperwork and notify everyone involved.

More than 800 people were arrested in St. Paul and Minneapolis during the convention. Journalists among them included Associated Press reporters Amy Forliti and Jon Krawczynski.

City spokesman James Lockwood said charges against them will be dropped.

Dave Tomlin, associate general counsel for the AP, said, “It’s always good to learn that a bogus charge against you has been dropped. We’re still waiting for police to account for the unprovoked smackdowns of two of our photographers.”

The AP has sent the Police Department a letter asking for an accounting of police treatment of photographers Matt Rourke and Evan Vucci while they were covering violent protests during the convention.

Amy Goodman, host of the syndicated radio and television program Democracy Now!, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing the legal process during the protests. Two producers of the show were also arrested.

Choy said the city would also drop charges against the three of them.

After two of her producers were arrested while covering protests in St. Paul, program anchor Goodman (pictured) sought their release and was taken into custody, too. (Image: Democracy Now!, posted on YouTube.)

Journos arrested in St. Paul aren’t ‘willing to let this go’

Originally published in Current, Sept. 15, 2008
By Karen Everhart

Videos of the Sept. 1 arrests of Democracy Now! producers in St. Paul, Minn., spread chilling evidence that police were making no distinction between the protestors outside the Republican National Convention and working journalists covering their activities.

Among approximately 40 reporters and other media-makers caught up in police sweeps during the convention were Nicole Salazar, a multimedia producer for the daily progressive news program, and her colleague Sharif Abdel Kouddous. Salazar was filming a protest when riot police rushed up and knocked her down as she called out, “Press! Press!” She screamed as the police roughed her up.

Amy Goodman, host and e.p of Democracy Now!, was arrested shortly after when she rushed up to a line of riot police to demand that they release her producers.

Videos of both arrests, quickly posted on YouTube, stirred objections to the police tactic of rounding up credentialed journalists as they worked to clear the streets of rowdy protestors.

Salazar and Kouddous face felony charges of probable cause riot — meaning that police had a reasonable suspicion that they had participated in rioting — and Goodman, a misdemeanor of obstructing a legal process. Attorneys for the city of St. Paul and Ramsey County are weighing requests to have the charges dropped, according to John Lundquist of the Minneapolis law firm of Fredrikson & Byron, who represents the Democracy Now! trio.

“There have been a number of journalists swept up and charged with unlawful assembly, but the charge is not applicable to journalists,” Lundquist said. “It’s not as if they were parading without a permit. They were trying to gather the news of those who were.”

Journalists arrested during the RNC included Associated Press reporters Amy Forliti and Jon Krawczynski, AP photographer Matt Rourke, Variety Managing Editor Ted Johnson, photographers for two Twin Cities TV stations and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and representatives of several indie media organizations, according to the Minnesota Independent. Its list of 42 journalists arrested included college journalism students and documentarians with I-Witness Video, a group that videotaped police misconduct during the 2004 RNC in New York.

By the time the convention closed Sept. 4, some 60,000 people had signed online petitions calling on St. Paul officials to drop charges against the arrested journalists. Local media advocates delivered the petitions to City Hall Sept. 5.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman appointed two former federal prosecutors Sept. 9 to lead an independent investigation of public-safety planning and law enforcement tactics for the convention. The first tasks of former U.S. attorney Thomas Heffelfinger and former assistant U.S. attorney Andy Luger are to “complete the review team and set the scope of their work,” Coleman announced Sept. 8.

The Minnesota chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, which objected to the arrests during the RNC, is continuing to press the issue. SPJ scheduled a Sept. 22 panel discussion among law enforcement officials, city leaders and journalists. Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute will moderate the forum at the University of Minnesota.

“We’re going to talk about what happened and how journalists can do their job without fear,” said Nicole Garrison-Sprenger, Minnesota SPJ president and a reporter with the Pioneer Press. “We don’t want this to happen again.”

“Journalists aren’t willing to let this go and let police think they can treat working journalists the way they did,” said Art Hughes, a former Minnesota Public Radio reporter and board member for the Minnesota SPJ chapter. Hughes was among the journalists arrested Sept. 4, the closing night of the Republican convention.

Hughes was recording sound and photographing protestors who were marching and disrupting traffic after their permit had expired, but he moved to a nearby parking lot to observe the police action from a distance. He was caught in a police line that pushed him and other peaceful observers toward the protestors.

“I had my RNC credentials on me the whole time,” Hughes said. “It made no more difference to them than a driver’s license.” Hughes received a citation for unlawful assembly.
His foot on her back

Salazar’s video provides some particulars of her arrest. As officers approached, she can be heard asking, “Where do I go? Press! Press!” She continues filming even as the police knock her over. Salazar starts screaming, and the video ends.

In an appearance on Democracy Now! after her release, Salazar said one officer stomped on her back while another pulled her by the leg. All the while, she was being ordered to keep her face to the ground. Kouddous, whose arrest occurred off-camera, told Current that he was kicked in the chest, and his arm was scraped.

“The arrest itself was chaotic,” Kouddous said. “I was screaming ‘Press!’ the whole time and ‘Look at my credentials!’”

Goodman and Kouddous said their credentials were confiscated by a plainclothes officer. They said police told them he was from the Secret Service.

The video of Goodman’s arrest shows her approaching the police line as an officer points to direct her to step back. As someone shouts “Release the accredited journalists!” the officer grabs Goodman, pulls her behind the police line and takes her into custody as she objects, “Don’t arrest me!”

During the 2004 RNC in New York, Goodman had been able to talk to police and get her producers out of a similar situation, she told Current. That was her objective in St. Paul. She had been interviewing Republican delegates inside the convention site when she heard about the arrests and raced to the scene.

“If there was some confusion, I came to vouch for them and to say, ‘They are accredited journalists,’” Goodman said. “I was making sure that they were okay.”

The whole episode was frightening, she recalled, because she and other journalists were prevented from doing their jobs. “Our job is to be there to chronicle and monitor what is happening and to present that,” Goodman said. “We have to be able to put things on the record without getting a record.”

Hughes, now a freelance journalist, said the St. Paul convention arrests have put reporters on notice that police have changed their treatment of reporters covering street protests.

“There was a time when journalists would get into the thick of things, and there was recognition that they weren’t there to do harm and weren’t a threat to anything,” Hughes said. The ground began to shift after the 1999 street protests of the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle and the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., he said. In recent years it’s become increasingly difficult to distinguish professional reporters from citizen journalists or media activists who bring cameras and political agendas to protests.

Link to article

Associated Press: ‘Reporters arrested at GOP convention: No charges’

Current: ‘Journos arrested in St. Paul aren’t ‘willing to let this go’’

Washington Post: ‘Democracy Now! Host and Producers Arrested at Republican Convention’

Los Angeles Times: ‘Amy Goodman, One of Four Journalists Arrested At An Anti-RNC Protest, Tells Her Story’

Pioneer Press: ‘Journalist Amy Goodman Confronts Police Chief Over Her Arrest’

Star Tribune: ‘Democracy Now! Host Back At Work Day After Arrest’

Committee To Protect Journalists: ‘Four Arrested Covering Protest at GOP Convention’

Associated Press: ‘AP Photog Arrested While Covering Anti-War protest’

The Nation: ‘Amy Goodman, Others Detained Outside RNC’

Huffington Post: ‘Amy Goodman Arrested At RNC’

Salon.com: ‘Scenes from St. Paul—Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman Arrested’

Fox9: ‘Democracy Now Journalists, AP Photog Released After Protest Arrests’

Denver Post: ‘Arrests of journalists questioned’

Hartford Courant: ‘Amy Goodman Arrested’

Editor and Publisher: ‘RNC Arrests Slammed as Goodman Arrest Video is Seen 500,000-Plus Times’

The Real News: ‘On Amy Goodman’s arrest’

St. Petersburg Times: ‘Reporters’ arrest hurts democracy ’

Philadelphia Daily News: ‘For journalists & photogs, it’s a rough convention’

PRESS TV: ‘Arrested journalists at RNC protest freed’

NY Daily News: ‘Amy Goodman busted covering RNC protest’

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