A Peace Warrior: Poet, Civights ActivA Peace Warrior: Poet, Civil Rights Activist Maya Angelou Remembered by Sonia Sanchez | Democracy Now!ist Maya Angelou

A Peace Warrior: Poet, Civil Rights Activist Maya Angelou Remembered by Sonia Sanchez | Democracy Now!

Spies of Mississippi: On the State-Sponsored Campaign to Defeat the Civil Rights Movement

Spies of Mississippi: New Film on the State-Sponsored Campaign to Defeat the Civil Rights Movement | Democracy Now!

The Shadow Lobbying Complex: How Corporations Are Hiding Vast Influence, Peddling Efforts

The Shadow Lobbying Complex: How Corporations Are Hiding Vast Influence, Peddling Efforts | Democracy Now!

Interview with Vandana Shiva and Jane Goodall

VIDEO: Extended Interview with Vandana Shiva and Jane Goodall

Cornel West on Obama’s Response to Trayvon Martin

Cornel West response to President Obama’s comments on the acquittal of George Zimmerman and racism in the United States.
On Obama’s remarks comparing himself to Trayvon Martin, Cornel West says: "Will that identification hide and conceal the fact there’s a criminal justice system in place that has nearly destroyed two generations of precious, poor black and brown brothers?  Obama hasn’t said a word until now — five years in office and can’t say a word about a 'new Jim Crow.' … Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder — will they come through at the federal level for Trayvon Martin? 

Glenn Greenwald: Obama Makes "False" Surveillance Claims

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the NSA surveillance story, joins Democracy Now one day after both President Obama and whistleblower Edward Snowden gave extensive interviews on the surveillance programs Snowden exposed and Obama is now forced to defend.  Speaking to PBS, Obama distinguished his surveillance efforts from those of the Bush administration and reaffirmed his insistence that no Americans’ phone calls or emails are being directly monitored without court orders. Greenwald calls Obama’s statements "outright false" for omitting the warrantless spying on phone calls between Americans and callers outside the United States.  "It is true that the NSA can’t deliberately target U.S. citizens for [warrantless] surveillance, but it is also the case they are frequently engaged in surveillance of exactly that kind of invasive technique involving U.S. persons," Greenwald says. After moderating Snowden’s online Q&A with Guardian readers, Greenwald says of the whistleblower: "I think what you see here is a person who was very disturbed by this massive surveillance apparatus built in the U.S. that spies not only on American citizens, but the world, with very little checks, very little oversight. He’s making clear his intention was to inform citizens even at the expense of his own liberty or even life."

Influence & Massive Growth of Surveillance, Cyberwar

James Bamford on NSA Secrets

James Bamford discusses the National Security Agency’s secret expansion of government surveillance and cyberwarfare.  In his latest reporting for Wired magazine, Bamford profiles NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and connects the dots on PRISM, phone surveillance and the NSA’s massive spy center in Bluffdale, Utah. Says Bamford of Alexander: "Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign or the depth of his secrecy." The author of "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America," Bamford has covered the National Security Agency for the last three decades, after helping expose its existence in the 1980s.

Central Park Five -New Film On How Police Abuse, Media Frenzy Led to Jailing of Innocent Teens

An explosive new documentary looks at a case once referred to as "the crime of the century”: the Central Park Five. Many people have heard about the case — but far too few know that innocent men were imprisoned as a result. The film tells the story of how five black and Latino teenagers were arrested in 1989 for beating and raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. Media coverage at the time portrayed the teens as guilty, and used racially coded terms like "wolf pack" to refer to the group of boys accused in the attack. Donald Trump took out full-page ads in four city newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty so they could be executed. However, the convictions of the five were vacated in 2002 when the real rapist came forward and confessed to the crime, after the five defendants had already served sentences of almost seven to 13 years. New York City is refusing to settle a decade-long civil lawsuit brought by the men. And now, lawyers for the city are seeking access to footage gathered for the new film.  

Chris Hayes on How the Powerful Rig the System

Amidst a series of recent scandals that have rocked the global banking system, journalist Chris Hayes discusses his new book, "Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy."   The book examines how Wall Street and other major institutions, from Congress to the Catholic Church to Major League Baseball, have been crippled by corruption and incompetence.  Hayes is host of the MSNBC weekend show, "Up with Chris Hayes," and is editor-at-large of The Nation magazine.  "One of the most insidious aspects of the current distribution of resources in this country and the current inequality we have isn’t just that it’s bad for people on the bottom of the social pyramid but that it makes people at the top worse,"  Hayes says. "It conditions them to be incompetent and corrupt."
The Obama administration has defended its failure to prosecute any senior financial executives by saying their behavior wasn’t actually illegal. 
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/17/twilight_of_the_elites_chris_hayes

"We Don’t Live in a Free Country": Jacob Appelbaum

Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security researcher who has volunteered with WikiLeaks. He is a developer and advocate for the Tor Project, a network enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the internet.

May Day Special -Chris Hedges

"No Work, No Shopping, Occupy Everywhere": May Day Special on OWS, Immigration, Labor Protests

Redefining Black Power

Fannie Lou Hamer got involved in the civil rights movement when she volunteered to attempt to register to vote in 1962. By then, 45 years old and a mother, Hamer lost her job and continually risked her life because of her civil rights activism. Hamer recounts her beating at the hands of two other black prisoners on the orders of her white jailers.

Glenn Greenwald on Occupy Wall Street

Knowledge is power

Cornel West and Tavis Smiley on the Debt Ceiling Agreement

A declaration of war on the poor

Naomi Klein on Anti-Union Bills, Climate Justice, and the 'Shock Doctrine' American-Style

Those in power use times of crisis to push through undemocratic and extreme free market economic policies.

"Oil and gas companies privatize the profits from their resource extraction but externalize the costs. They have no intention of paying that cost."

Amazon Watch

Ecuadorian Court Orders Chevron to Pay $17 Billion for Oil Pollution in Amazon

Democracy Now!

Egypt: The Rebellion Grows Stronger

Naomi Wolf vs. Jaclyn Friedman: Feminists Debate the Sexual Allegations Against Julian Assange

Prisoner Advocate Elaine Brown

“Repression Breeds Resistance”

The Food Bubble: How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It

the role Goldman played in the food crisis of 2008 when the ranks of the world’s hungry increased by 250 million.