Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-11-06 Thursday

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

Democracy Now! Thursday, November 6, 2025

From New York, this is Democracy Now. Ice agents have assaulted Evanston residents, beaten people up, grabbed them, abducted them, abducted them, taking people off the street once again because of the color of their skin. It is an outrage. Our message for ICE is simple. Get the hell out of Evanston. We'll speak to the mayor of Evanston, Illinois, where agents were recently filmed repeatedly punching a man in the head

and pointing a gun at a group of bystanders. Meanwhile, federal agents raided a Spanish immersion pre-examination, school in Chicago, dragging a teacher out of the school in front of parents and kids, then taken the agents raiding communities and the people trying to stop them. A new investigation by Latino USA. The neighborhood patrols in L.A. begin before sunrise. Teachers and school psychologists warning their neighbors about armed men in unmarked cars waiting to take people. We're looking for vehicles with paper plates, ice. We'll speak to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Marianne Hosa.

Finally, to Gaza. There's every talk about ceasefire, about reconstruction, about pushing back into a peace process, but the reality is that Israel continues to kill daily with impunity, continues to restrict AIDS, and there is no effort to bring accountability to the fact that Israel has just committed a two-year genocide, and that's still ongoing. and there's no effort to either end to the genocide, bring accountability, or allow Palestinian's justice or the right to self-determination. We'll speak to the Palestinian analyst and writer Tarak Bacconi,

author of the new memoir, Fire in Every Direction. All that and more, coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Israel's militaries killed at least two Palestinians. and separate attacks in central Gaza, claiming it fired on men who approached the so-called Yellow Line that leaves more than half of the Gaza Strip under Israeli occupation. The attacks bring the number of Palestinians killed by Israel to at least 241 since the U.S.

brokered ceasefire took effect, October 10th. Separately, civil defense workers in Gaza say many Palestinians remain trapped under the rubble of a building that collapsed in Gaza City's Daraj neighborhood. The collapse followed warnings by the United Nations that tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been forced to find shelter in severely damaged and unsafe buildings. The Norwegian Refugee Council reports Israel is allowing just 100 aid trucks a day to enter Gaza, far short of the 600 trucks per day, Israel pledged under the ceasefire deal. This is Abdel Majid al-Zaiti, a Palestinian father of nine whose family joined crowds at a soup kitchen. and Kan Yunus Wednesday. Our life is difficult.

Dead people are still better than us. We eat the same food every day. Why? Because we have no other option but the soup kitchen itself. The soup kitchens all over the Gaza Strip are widespread. But this soup kitchen here, because it is in the middle of al-Mawesi, there is a big number of people. We all come here to the soup kitchen to eat and be able to live and continue living.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces carried out overnight raids on Palestinian communities killing a 15-year-old boy in the town of Al-Yamun near the city of Janine. Palestinian sources said soldiers struck 15-year-old Marad Fauzi Abu-Sathan with four bullets, then prevented ambulance crews from reaching him, leaving him to bleed to death before seizing his body. It's day 37 of what's become the longest federal government shutdown. in U.S. history. On Wednesday, the FAA said it will cut traffic by 10% at 40 U.S. airports beginning Friday, unless the shutdown ends immediately. Up to 4,000 daily flights would be affected. Some 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 transportation security administration agents have been ordered to work without pay during the shutdown. This is Nick Daniels,

President of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association speaking on CNBC. Most of these air traffic controllers right now are on six-day work weeks, 10 hours a day, only four days off at a month, balancing their work with their families. And right now they're saying, I can't continue to do this because I can't even get a second job, so I'll just resign. That's the repercussions of this prolonged shutdown. A new analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds nearly 1.2 million U.S. households, or almost 5 million people, will receive $0 in SNAP food assistance benefits this month.

That's despite two federal court rulings that the Trump administration must tap contingency funds to keep SNAP entitlements paid during the shutdown. Meanwhile, the shutdown is delaying federal funding to the low-income home energy assistance program, which helps some 6 million U.S. households pay the shutdowns. their heating or cooling bills. About one out of every six U.S. households is currently behind on their energy bills. And Sudan a drone strike killed at least 40 people at a funeral in North Kordofan. Local officials blamed the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group for the strike. North Kordofan is east of Darfur, where brutal massacre has been unfolding as the RSF took control of the city of Alfasher. The attack comes as U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez said the civil war in Sudan is spiraling out of control. The Department of Homeland Security has announced

its ending deportation protections for immigrants from South Sudan. 230 South Sudanese nationals are currently approved to live and work in the U.S. under the temporary protected status program. According to DHS, immigrants from South Sudan will now have about 60 days to leave the United States. This comes despite the fact the United Nations has warned of escalating armed conflict in South Sudan and widespread food insecurity in the region. The Trump administration also recently ended deportation protection for immigrants from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria, and Venezuela. In Chicago, a federal judge Wednesday ordered authorities to improve conditions for

immigrants detained at the Broadview Ice Jail. Mountain court testimony detailed dangerously overcrowded cells at times holding up to 150 people with overflowing toilets, no access to beds, and drinking water that one detainee said, quote, tasted like sewer, unquote. The judge's order requires officials to provide detainees with a clean bedding mat and sufficient space to sleep, soap, towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes, toothpaste, menstrual products, and prescribed medications. Prisoners will also be allowed to shower at least every other day and will have three full meals and bottled water upon request. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Oregon has once again

barred the Trump administration from sending National Guard troops to quell anti-ice protests in Portland. We'll have more on this story later in the broadcast. In more immigration news, federal agents arrested a teacher at a daycare center in Chicago in front of parents and children. Alderperson Matt Martin told NBC News, the educator was followed inside by ICE and violently taken away in one video of the incident. The educator can be heard telling authorities in Spanish that she had papers. Democratic Congress member Mike Quigley said the teacher was a trusted member of the community with a work permit. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, federal immigration agents arrested a U.S. citizen during a raid on Home Depot, then drove off

in his car with his one-year-old daughter still in the back seat as onlooker, shouted in protest. There's a baby in the back. The man's mother told reporters she later received a call from an unknown number to pick up the girl. Both she and her granddaughter are U.S. citizens. We'll be speaking with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria and Ejosa of Latino USA. Mexico's president, Claudia Schaenbaum, was groped by a man as she was interacting with citizens on the streets of Mexico City. Video of the incident shows. is a visibly drunk man trying to kiss her neck and embrace her from behind as she removes his hands and turns to face him.

The man was later arrested. This is President Schaembaum explaining why she's decided to press charges. And no, I repeat, this is not about being the president. Although if this happens to a president walking down the street, then what happens to other young women? So we cannot let it go as if it were nothing. So, yes, I filed the complaint. It's a written petition submitted to the Attorney General of Mexico City, and I will meet

with her to sign it formally before the public prosecutor without privileges, because we cannot let this pass. This is about women's dignity and the recognition of our rights. California Republicans have filed the lawsuit challenging the state's new congressional maps. On Tuesday, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50 to counter Texas' redistricting effort earlier this year to garner five additional house seats for Republicans. In a social media post, President Trump said, quote, the unconstitutional redistricting vote in California is a giant

scam in that the entire process, in particular, the voting itself is rigged, Trump said. In response to the lawsuit, Governor Newsom's spokesperson said, quote, good luck losers. The Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in a major case, challenging President Trump's authority to impose sweeping tariffs on foreign goods. On Wednesday, Solicitor General John Sauer argued Trump has the power to unilaterally impose the tariffs under a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or AEPA, which grants the president the authority to regulate commerce during wartime or other national emergencies. A majority of the Supreme Court justices

appeared skeptical of that argument, siding with states and businesses who argued that the Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the power to impose taxes and regulate foreign commerce. This is Justice Sonia Sotomayor. It's a congressional power, not a presidential power, to tax.

And you want to say tariffs are not taxes, but that's exactly what they are. degenerating money from American citizens. The Supreme Court's agreed to an expedited schedule in the tariff's case, meaning a decision could come as soon as later this year. The U.S. is proposing that the United Nations Security Council lifts sanctions on Syria's president, Ahmad al-Shara, and members of his government before their visit to the White House next week. That's according to a draft U.S. resolution obtained by the Associated Press.

Al-S. Shahra was the leader of the Islamist insurgent group, H-T. or Hyatt Tahrir al-Shamp, which was formerly al-Qaeda's official wing in Syria before breaking off in 2016. Since 2014, HDS and its leaders were on the UN Security Council sanctions list. In Minneapolis, incumbent Democratic Mayor Jacob Frye has defeated Democratic Socialist Challenger Omar Fata in the city's ranked choice voting election. And in New York, mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani unveiled his all-february. female transition team in Queens Wednesday, which includes Lena Khan, the former FTC commissioner

under President Biden. Democracy now asked Mayor-elect Mamdani for his message to ICE agents, abducting immigrants from 26 federal plaza for the last several months. This is Mamdani's response. My message to ICE agents and to everyone across this city is that everyone will be held to the same standard of the law. If you violate the law, you must be held accountable. And, And there is sadly a sense that is growing across this country that certain people are allowed to violate that law, whether they be the president or whether they be the agents themselves. And what New Yorkers are looking for is an era of consistency, an era of clarity, an era of conviction.

And that is what we will deliver to them. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. And I'm Narmine Sheikh. Welcome to our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. Federal agents continue to carry out raids across the Chicago area. On Wednesday, armed ICE agents in black vests chased a teacher into a Spanish-language daycare

and preschool in front of children and parents. In video of the incident, the teacher can be heard screaming as the agents dragged her out of the school. Democratic Congressman Mike Quigley said the teacher was a trusted member of the community with a work permit. Chicago alderman Matt Martin denounced the ice raid saying, quote, if they can do this at a daycare where children are, where will they not go? This comes just days after a federal agent in Evanston, Illinois, was filmed repeatedly punching a man in the head while he was pinned to the pavement. Moments earlier, an agent had pointed a gun at a group of bystanders. Here, put the gun away.

We're going to shoot people? Evanston's mayor, Daniel Biss, has launched two investigations into the actions of the federal agents. Biss has harshly criticized Trump's immigration crackdown has taken part in protests outside the Broadview Ice Jail. On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered improvements at Broadview after reports of inhumane conditions. During a protest outside the ICE jail in Broadview in September, this was hit by tear gas. Biss joins us now from Evanston, where he served as mayor since 2021. He's now running for Congress to fill the seat held by Democratic Congress member, Jan Chikowski, who's retiring. Mayor Biss, thanks so much for being with us.

Why don't we start off? I mean, there are so many stories right now in Chicago, but you're the mayor of Evanston. Talk about the two investigations that you've launched. Well, on Friday, which was, by the way, Halloween, ICE and CBP were all over Evanston. It was a terrifying day. I couldn't go two minutes without a notification coming up on my phone. They're at this corner, they're at this corner, they're grabbing this landscaper and so forth. And they were doing what they usually do these days, which is drive around town, looking for someone working on a lawn whose skin is not white, and grab that person and abduct. them. And so the rapid responders were out in force and there was a lot of activity and I was

driving around trying to do what I could. And then in the early afternoon, the following thing happened. The vehicle, which was driven by a CBP agent for whatever that's worth, that had been driving around the region and was being followed by residents, which is what happens all the time, because our community is rising up against this invasion. They decided they don't want to scrutiny, they don't want to be followed, they don't want to be observed, they don't want to be videotaped, and most of all, they don't want to be criticized. They appear to have acted deliberately to cause an accident. They jammed on the brakes right after going through an intersection and to force the car following them to rerend them, which of course created

a scene and there were people who gathered who were watching and who were yelling at them and blowing their whistles and screaming. And then they appear to have just started beating people up for no reason. And folks may have seen these videos that have gotten a lot of attention, including one where they've got this young man on the ground and his head is on the asphalt and they're literally punching him in the head. And then after a while of this, they jammed three people into their vehicle, abducted them, drove them around and eventually later on released them. So if you think about it, and I very much appreciated the quotes that you played from Mayor Electnamdani a few minutes ago, if you think about it,

the idea that people would come into our town, beat our residents up, force a car accident, take them away. If that was anybody except for a federal agent, they would be under arrest. And so our approach has been understanding that there's a lot of constraints relative to interactions between local government and federal law enforcement to nonetheless do what we can to treat these situations like we would any other. And so we've launched investigations both into the traffic incident as well as into the violence that occurred on the scene. And we're in the process of going through that and figuring out the appropriate place to refer those investigations. But I feel that our residents have been attacked by a lawless entity. And we can't just

stand by and pretend this is acceptable. And Mayor Biss, what do you know about where people are being taken? As you said, people are being abducted and where are they going? Well, it's important to be clear. There are two different things happening here, each of which is awful, but they're different. The first is this, what they're kind of presenting as though it were immigration enforcement, what they would claim to people who don't live here and don't know better, that is about going after, quote, the worst of the worst, where what they're actually doing is, as I said, driving around town, looking, whether it's at a Home Depot where day laborers gather or on a lawn where people are working in a garden or, as you heard, in a daycare center, they're looking for people who they've decided based on the color of their skin and the job that they have might be here without documentation and they're just grabbing them.

That's one, that's most of what they do. And then on Halloween, they took another step in the other front of their battle against our community, which is that they now understand, that the resistance and the rapid response efforts are effective and are impeding their efforts to terrorize immigrants, and so they're now going after dissenters as well. So the first category, people who they are claiming are here without documentation, I think, are typically taken to the Broadview Center, and then ultimately, you know, many of course are deported, some are eventually released, some have some semblance of due process, some seem not to. Those who they're going after not for immigration-related reasons, but rather for

essentially for being dissenters, seemed, at least on Friday, on Halloween, those three individuals were driven downtown Chicago to the FBI. They were brought in. One of them, at least, was handcuffed to a bar. And then after a while, they were released without charges, without any formal arrest, and just sent off on their way. Ask Mayor Biss about the Broadway, Broadview ICE facility that you mentioned. But first, we want to turn to one of the three U.S. citizens detained during the violent immigration raid in Evanston on Halloween. This is Jennifer Moriarty. We were all taken to the FBI facility down on Roosevelt and kept there for a while and then release.

We were never arrested. We were never charged. there was no paperwork involved in any of this. It was surreal. And the young man who was in the car who was injured repeatedly requested medical attention and they refused to provide any type of medical attention to him. So, Mayor Biss, she was, Jennifer Moriarty was in conversation with you. We don't hear your voice there.

So if you could talk about what she told you and how representative her experience is. Well, her experience from my standpoint is somewhat miraculous because I haven't had the opportunity to have eyewitness reports of these interactions for the completely heart-wrenching reason that most people, these monsters interact with, then wind up deported. And so we don't hear from them. But her experience was kind of extraordinary. It was a combination of grotesque authoritarianism and almost comical incompetence. She told this story of how they weren't paying attention, and so they allowed her to, while cuffed, get her phone, and call a friend and just leave the phone running so that her friend was able to record what was going on inside the van.

She talked about how they kind of kept driving around looking for a refuge where they wouldn't be jeered and yelled at and potentially impeded by angry residents who were protesting them, but they couldn't find anywhere in the Chicago area where they weren't being vocally criticized and followed because, as I said, the resistance that it's grown around this nightmare is actually meaningful and effective and is saving people. But most of all, she said there was no professionalism, no clarity, no indication. of why she was taken. They violently took her from the street where she lives, handcuffed her, drove her around town, brought her to the FBI, and then released her hours later, claiming that she was never under arrest. She was just, you know, having her freedoms and liberties taken essentially on a whim by angry agents who didn't like the fact that she was there on the scene criticizing them. Mayor, we're going to end with this clip of President Trump. He was speaking on 60 Minutes to CBS's Nora O'Donnell, who questioned him about federal immigration agents using violent tactics.

More recently, Americans have been watching videos of ICE, tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far? No, I think they haven't gone far enough because we've been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama. You're okay with those tactics. Yeah, because you have to get the people out. So he says they haven't gone far enough, Mayor Biss, and this last

30 seconds, your response. I'm just completely unsurprised because what we have seen here is a constant escalation. It is clear that in their view, no amount of violence is enough. They are going to be as brutal and violent as possible, and that's why we have to resist.

I feel as though my community is under invasion from our own federal government, it has got to stop. Mayor Daniel Biss, Democratic Mayor of Evanston, in Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago who is running for Congress. We thank you so much for being with us.

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Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Nirmid Shea. As we continue to look at the Trump administration's federal immigration raids, we turn to a new investigation, radio investigation by Latino USA, Futuro Media, and CalMatters. It's called Taken, the agents raiding communities and the people trying to stop them. This is a trailer for the special report. The neighborhood patrols in L.A. begin before sunrise. Teachers and school psychologists warning their neighbors about armed men in unmarked cars, waiting to take people.

We're looking for vehicles with paper plates. Ice. In Chicago, a father killed during one of the first raids. In Mexico, no we're not in this form of the president calls it psychological terror. And at the center of it all, Border Patrol's Gregory Bovino.

But most of the people being detained have no criminal records. Some are even picked up during appointments. Taken. The raids, the man behind them, and the people trying to stop them. We're joined now by Maria Najosa, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, founder of Futuro Media. She's the host of Latino USA. Futura's new investigation is titled Taken, the agents raiding communities and the people trying to stop them, produced in special collaboration with CalMatters, Independent Media Group in California.

Maria, welcome back to Democracy Now. On the one hand, you have these brutal attacks on people from Chicago to Los Angeles. On the other hand, you have people fighting back. Can you talk about the journeys you took with these community groups that are taking observation of what these agents are doing into their own hands? Yeah, I mean, it's great to be back with you and thank you for having me. You know, we first started in L.A., and we were on the ground with Marios Unidos, which does basically tracking on the streets of what we were there, Central, you have teachers, L.A. teachers, who before they go work on their job as a teacher, are in cars going through neighborhoods and peering into cars to make sure that they

are not ice vehicles. And then alerting the community, if there is someone there that is ice, if there isn't. In the time that we were there, they didn't spot anyone, but there were many close calls. You know, they are very expert in seeing the tinted windows, strange cars that are appearing. But I have to say, I just, again, and the mayor just said it, it feels surreal. It felt so surreal to be on the streets of L.A. Having to patrol your own communities to defend them from the government and the federal agents.

But this is, as the community member said, it would be worse if we weren't doing this by doing this, at least we feel like we have some power to respond. And in Chicago, I mean, I'm a Chicago girl, you know, but this, when we first got there, the assaults were happening in the suburbs of Chicago, in West Chicago, and communities were pouring out onto the streets. I mean, one moment that stands out for me is actually a family of white people from West Chicago, a mom, her kids, the father, and they were all wearing shirts that, said, Jesus was an undocumented immigrants, and they were carrying a huge Mexican flag. And I was like, what's happening? But this is what it looks like. And I have to say, this is

extraordinarily, I mean, I can't even find the word because it is a response. It's not that it's heartwarming. It is a natural response that citizens are having to feeling assaulted in their own communities. And in that sense, witnessing that was powerful and empowering. Well, let's go to a clip from a taken. This is of a 31-year-old Mexican man named Mauricio, who was chased and detained by immigration agents while waiting for the bus in Los Angeles on June 8th after work. Mauricio was first taken to a detention camp, an hour south of Los Angeles. Then, at 5 a.m. that next morning, he was put on a plane. He was shackled. He had absolutely no idea where he was going. They were taken to an ice tent camp.

Mauricio's knee was causing him a lot of pain, making it almost impossible for him to walk. Three days passed since Mauricio had been up. Taken. Kidnapped. A word that in Mexico has a heavy significance. This is the term used for cartel-related kidnappings or state sanctions. disappearances. And Mauricio knows this. It's precisely why he's using that term.

I was picked up by people in plain clothes, he tells us. No uniforms, no badges, no arrest order. And in this other clip from Taken, Maria Hinojosa, you interview Mexican President Claudia Shanebaum. Can you please respond to this question of psychological terror? that is being unleashed on Latinos and Latinas. We do not agree with this treatment, nor with the raids that have been carried out. These raids, in fact, cause fear and anxiety among Mexicans living there.

So Maria Inosa, obviously, you narrated both the clips that we played. So if you could respond, elaborate on these two. Right, and also I want to give a big shout out to my team. Tutu Investigates, Fernanda Echavari, our managing editor, Sergio Olmos from CalMatters. I mean, the situation with Claudia Seambaum, when we were able to get into the morning press conference, what are the things I ended up asking her, which, frankly, all of the journalists in the room were surprised? Because I said to her, I'm a Mexican woman, you're a Mexican woman. This is affecting my heart. How are you feeling this emotionally?

All the journalists were like, we don't ask Claudia Shainbaum about her emotions, but she was But this is deeply upsetting, and it was important to see her reaction to say, I've talked to Marco Rubio, and yet it falls on deaf ears. For me, the fact that Mauricio uses this word, Levantados, which means taken, it is the term that is used in Mexico for actual kidnappings. He was, in fact, kidnapped. I mean, what we break in this documentary is the fact that when they are taken, they are then denied basic due process, but in Mauricio's case, we were able to document for five days,

not one single phone call. And the only way that he was able to get a phone call was he was coerced into signing his own removal. And that's when he was able to make the phone call. And in fact, they also asked them to give the name and number and address of the person that they're going to call in another way to go and find that person and take that person who they're calling. This is big news, the fact that we are actually witnessing the denial of due process and coercion and having to sign your own removal just to get a phone call. And what about the responses from the governor, Governor Newsom or Mayor Karen Bass? Well, Mayor Karen Bass said this is the hunting of Latinos and Latinas.

And this, we know, we are watching it. The situation with Newsom and Karen Bass is that they also admit pretty clearly that there is a limit to what they can do against this federal assault. Nonetheless, they are both committed to standing up and saying and doing as much as they can, but actually what can they do legally is there is a limit to what they can do. I mean, it's amazing all the big sports news this past week, not that I focus on this myself, but, you know, the Dodger win. You have federal agents seen staging at the Dodger Stadium parking lot Tuesday morning,

a day after the team celebrated their back-to-back championships with thousands of fans in downtown L.A. I mean, this is amazing. And then you have groups that are calling for the boycott of Home Depot because they're using their parking lots. Right. What I came

away from this journey of being in Chicago, being in L.A., then being in Mexico, it's what I asked the president. This is psychological terror. There is no way that you can explain it except for that. It's not that you actually have tens of thousands of troops and agents. No, you have enough to create a sense of instability

and fear and terror. And what we do know is that people, little girls, little boys are afraid to leave their homes. They are experiencing this emotional horror. How do you explain psychological terror that is being unleashed by the federal government against its people, especially those of us in New York after 9-11 when we actually felt that there was some element of terror. The terror now is coming from our own government. And your response to President Trump on 60 Minutes, response to Nora O'Donnell saying we haven't gone far enough when she talked about the violence of the attacks, we just watched in Chicago a preschool Spanish immersion teacher

being dragged out as parents and the kids, the preschoolers watched in high schoolers. horror as agents took her out of the school. Right. And in Chicago, it all began with the murder of Silberio Villegas, a 38-year-old father. When Trump says this, I mean, he's showing his true colors. I don't like to use these terms. They are very difficult terms. I mean, clearly Trump is saying, we should have ethnic cleansing against Latinos and Latinas. If it hasn't gone far enough, when you're pulling, screaming people, separating, breaking windows, and he's saying we haven't gone far enough. He, in his mind, believes that all of us, me included, I wasn't born in this country, are therefore a problem for this country? It's horrible. I just, what really,

what I can't sit with is the number of people who are frankly just sitting by and watching this, letting this happen, and believing that they are taking the worst of the worst. It's exactly what the mayor of Evanston said. They are not taking the worst of the worst. In fact, we know the data shows that immigrants, undocumented immigrants, commit fewer crimes than American citizens. And in fact, just to let you know, I was in the emergency room on Tuesday night, had a little asthma attack, all of this talk about New York being overrun by immigrant criminals. Who was the only person who I saw that had a police sitting outside his bed, a young white teenager?

So it doesn't jive with what's really happening. And Donald Trump is showing his true colors. He wants us all to leave. but I don't I'm not going and finally before we end if you could talk about the role of Border Patrol chief

Gregory Bovino so I like to say that before all of this happened Gregory Bovino was a big nobody nobody knew his name Gregory Bovino was in charge of the Border Patrol in the southern sector of California and he has taken this moment to become the man on the scene

and he likes to dress up actually like a Nazi SS agent. He's using the long, dark coat, making that salute. And he is unleashing this terror and having a great time. And in fact, then using our tax dollars to produce these social media videos that make it seem like there is a war going on in Chicago, in L.A., Portland, Next, New York. It's not true, but they are portraying this to scare other Americans from the fact that, yeah,

Immigrants are not a threat, but they have to produce these highly produced videos in order to do that. And before we go on another issue, you did get to question the Mexican president, Shane Baum. Now she is in the news because as she was talking to people on the streets of Mexico City, a man came up behind her, groped her, trying to kiss her neck. And she ultimately brought charges saying this is attack on all women of Mexico. You know, I get triggered every time I see that video. I was raped when I was 16 in Mexico. and so actually seeing the president saying I'm going to press charges,

I'm just like, you know what, it makes me feel like I should go back and press charges against the man who did this to me in Mexico when I was just 16. I think the fact that she's saying, if this can happen to me as a female president, it can happen to any woman. And so the fact that she's actually pressing charges, I think it's extraordinary. I think there are many women in Mexico

who will take the step of going and pressing charges. Unlike me, I won't be able to. to do that. But it is a horror, and it is the sense that this man could do this while being filmed, touching a woman trying to get to the president's chest is horrible. I want to thank you so much for being with us. Mariana Hosa, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, founder of Futura Media, host of Latino USA. We will link to Futura's new radio investigation taken, the agents, raiding communities and the people trying to stop them, produced in special collaboration with Cal Matters.

Coming up, the Palestinian analyst, writer, Tariq Bakoni. He's out with a new memoir, Fire in Every Direction. Stay with us. I'm I'm going to I'm and I'm I'm

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This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Mimi Goodman with Narmine Scheer. We turn now to Gaza, where Israel's military has killed at least two Palestinians in separate attacks. Israel claimed the men had approached the so-called yellow line that leaves more than half of the Gaza Strip under Israeli occupation. Israel has now killed at least 241 Palestinians since a U.S. brokered ceasefire took effect on October 10th. This comes as the Norwegian Refugee Council reports Israel is allowing just 100 aid trucks a day to enter Gaza, far short of the 600 trucks per day Israel had pledged under the ceasefire deal. This is Um Amir Mukat, a displaced Palestinian in Gaza City.

here. We've lost all hope. We return to a pile of rubble. We have no water. We have no food. We came back to rubble. We hoped our house would still be there, but there's no suitable place for us to live. We need a tent to live in for us and for our children and to have our lives back to the way it was before. We're joined now by the Palestinian analyst and writer Tariq Bakoni. He's author of a new memoir, fire in every direction. He's the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa, grew up between Amman Jordan and Beir Lebanon. He's the president of the board of Al-Shabaqa, the Palestinian Policy Network. He's also author of Hamas contained the rise in pacification of Palestinian resistance. His award-winning short film is titled One Like Him.

It is a queer love story set in Jordan. He's a former senior analyst for the International Crisis Group on Israel, Palestine. Welcome back to Democracy Now. It's great to have you with us. Congratulations on the publication of your book, Fire in Every Direction. Before we get to that, though, the latest. You are also an expert on Hamas looking at, I mean, not even one-sixth of the aid is getting through that was promised by Israel since the ceasefire and the killing. continue, both in Gaza and the occupied West Bank?

Listen, historically, every ceasefire that was negotiated between Hamas and Israel had adopted a phased approach. There would be the first phase where there would be the ostensible cessation of hostilities. And then after that, the idea was always that the negotiators would propel the parties to move into reconstruction, to move into lifting the blockade, to move into other aspects that would make life in Gaza livable. And the reality is that historically, every ceasefire got stuck in the first phase. There was never a real push to get Israel to adopt or to respect the second and third phases of the ceasefire.

The parties would get stuck in the first phase. And so when this was negotiated, that was, I think, on the Palestinian side, always the fear that Hamas would release the captives. It would release the bodies of the captives. and then nothing would happen in terms of forcing Israel to respect the commitments that it had made under the ceasefire. And lo and behold, this is exactly where we're at. When the ceasefire or the so-called ceasefire was negotiated, the idea was that the U.S. would act as a guarantor and that it would compel Israel to abide by its commitments. The reality is that the killing hasn't stopped.

This is not a ceasefire. The killing hasn't stopped. The starvation continues. The aid that's going in is nowhere near what is needed. there's no ability to allow Palestinians to go back to any semblance of a dignified life. And so the reality is that the narrative is of a ceasefire. The reality is of the continuation of the genocide. And what do you think, I mean, even if they were to move on to the second phase of the ceasefire deal,

I mean, your assessment of the deal overall? Listen, the assessment of the deal overall is that it's a horrific deal. It doesn't give the Palestinians any space for actual self-governance. It also gets to, it brings Israel off the hook entirely. The Israeli regime has committed a genocide for two years, live-streamed for everyone to see. And the narrative of the ceasefire is that now we just go back into this language of reconstruction and peace.

Where is accountability? Netanyahu is a wanted war criminal. The people around him are war criminals. How do we deal with the fact that this live-stream genoceney. side is now being normalized and we just are expected to go back into a reality where we talk about peace and reconstruction. Before we do any of that, there has to be accountability and Palestinians are the ones that have to govern Palestinian territory, not this international force that comes in, that takes any kind of sovereignty or agency away from the Palestinian

people. And you've also, of course, written a book, as we mentioned, on Hamas. What about the requirement, the provision of Hamas having to disarm and relinquish political power in Gaza? Hamas has always been consistent that it would be part of a Palestinian polity that would be inclusive, that brings other Palestinian factions in, that collectively are able to determine what future Palestinians might have. The requirement for disarmament has always been a tool that Israel has used and the U.S. has used to justify continued acts of oppression and violence against the Palestinian people. I've always said the same thing. if Hamas were to disappear tomorrow, if all of its weapons were to disappear tomorrow, the blockade will not end, the genocide will not end. This is not about Hamas. This is an Israeli war against the Palestinian people. It's a demographic war aimed at exterminating as many Palestinians

as possible. And finally, before we go to your book, of course, you've been in New York the last few days and you've witnessed the victory of Zohran Mamdani. So if you could, a couple of things, first say, you know, what you think that indicates in terms of a possible change in the U.S. I mean, not that New York City is necessarily representative, but a change in the position among the people on Israel-Palestine and also the response in Israel-Palestine to his victory. Listen, I think it's an incredible moment, and I think it really shows the potential for real politics. that is representing what people, the general population feels around these key issues. I think in the past few years we've seen institutions of media, we've seen institutions of government

being complicit in genocide, manufacturing consent for genocide, and people feel deceived. They feel like they've been lied to. And here we have a politician who's speaking to people's politics, who's speaking to people's desires, not just on Palestine, of course, but cost of living on economic issues, real leftist values. And he's coming in and saying, actually, we understand what this is. This is all a narrative that's fabricated. It's a facade. We really have to deal with this reality.

And we have to push forward a politics that represents our people. And actually, I think Palestine is central to this. And he understands that Palestine is central to this. And I don't think that if the Gaza genocide hadn't happened in the past two years, it wouldn't have mobilized the base in such a way here that would have propelled his victory. I really think Palestine is central to Mamdani's election victory. I want to turn to your book, Fire in Every Direction, a Memoir, and your comments about putting out a memoir at this time, and yet the power of this magnificent book, talking about your life, your family's life, from Amman to London to Palestine, fire in every direction. Why the title? Well, the title is actually a phrase that I used to describe my mom in the book.

My mom is an incredible activist, an incredible woman, and had in her university years in Lebanon been active on Palestine. This is before the Lebanese civil war. My grandparents had been expelled in the Nakpa in 1948 to Lebanon. And not a lot of people know this, but between 48 and a few years after 48 to 51, I believe, Christian Palestinian refugees were getting down. because the Lebanese government was playing with the demographics of the country. And so my grandparents were naturalized. They were not in refugee camps.

They got citizenship. And they became Lebanese citizens. So my parents were born and raised in Lebanon as Lebanese citizens. And my mom was very active on Palestine. And during the Civil War, fled to Jordan, where I was born. And she carried a lot of rage. I think it was rage that moved down to her from her own parents, from the Nakhba, from the inability to achieve justice.

And so I describe her rage in the book as fire burning in every direction. And so that's really where the title comes from. So, Thadik, I mean, talk about the decision to write a memoir. When did you start writing it? And did you always know you would write a memoir? You've said in another context that it's, quote, either the bravest or the stupidest thing I've done. Yes, I mean, listen, I always knew that, well, I always knew that I had an impulse to write this book.

Even when I was writing Hamas Contained, I knew that that wasn't the book that I really wanted to be writing. And I started writing this book properly. I feel like I've been writing it my entire life in some ways, but I started writing it properly in 2017. And I just could not have imagined it coming out at a moment of genocide. It was a really difficult reality to sit with, understanding that, you know, there would be this memoir at a moment of genocide when I feel like our collective gaze should be on Gaza. Every effort is trying to move us to look away from Gaza, and we should keep talking about Gaza. And the more I sat with this, the more I realized that actually this is a book about the Nekba.

This is a book about, you know, the genocide is the continuation of the Nekba in other ways. And this book is about the Nekba, about my grandparents, about my parents, about these structures of violence that have dispossessed and continue to dispossess Palestinians. And so in some ways, I think that this is just one facet of our collective story as Palestinians. I think one of the things that's extraordinary about the book, though, because it's true. There is. The whole story is told in the context of the politics of Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. But what you do, and I'll just read the comments of the acclaimed Palestinian writer, Isabella Hamad, commenting on your book. She said, in the memoir, you refuse, quote, to separate the story of sexual identity from the story of political commitment, and in so doing, model a way to see our personal struggles as intertwined with our collective ones. So if you could elaborate, on that, the many decisions you took in the writing of the book, what was included, what was excluded, and how you came to, I don't know, bring the two together. So the political and the

personal. Absolutely. I mean, listen, when I started writing this book, for me, this book at its core is a love story between two boys and Amman. That's what this book is. And that's what it had always been. When I wanted to write it, that's what the initial impetus for the writing, the creative impulse, was to write a love story that I felt couldn't be narrated when I I was growing up. And I didn't even consciously think that Palestine or even the story of my grandparents or the Nekba would be a part of it. And the more I wrote, the more I realize that there's no story to be told here without telling the story of who I am as a person. And that's a story of my grandparents. And that's a story of my parents. And so obviously that became a very

political book. And in some ways, I can understand that now in retrospect, but I can't say that it was a conscious decision at the time. I also know that intellectually, a lot of my work has come to understand Palestine through queer theory as well, understanding how, you know, queerness is demonized. It's certainly where I was coming from. And in many ways, Palestine is demonized here. And this is not a story of East, West. This is a story of silences of how, you know, these structures of oppression or these

structures of violence allow certain things to be said and not to be said. And so the way that I came into my queer identity unraveled this whole idea of normative discourse that we have to accept and abide by and push me to think about, you know, what can you challenge? What's not being said? What are the silences that we're comfortable with and to poke? Talk about what you've described as a complicated and unresolved relationship with the word gay. At one point, you even call it revulsion. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a common. complicated history. I think many people have written on this, you know, the most, the most

famous book on this is obviously Joseph Masad's desiring Arabs. This idea that the LGBTQ plus labels have also been used by the West as part of empire, that this is, they go into these uncivilized barbaric spaces and they civilize. You know, they bring, they have a savior complex that they're bringing in to save women or to save minorities or to save LGBT folk. this is all a recipe for empire and for violence. And Israel does that exceedingly well. You know, this Tel Aviv is the capital of gay life, this pinkwashing, where, you know, if you're gay or if you're not gay,

if you're Palestinian, you're living under apartheid, it doesn't matter. But this is a civilizational discourse that's embedded in these terms. And so being someone who grew up in Amman, you can't really adopt this language without falling into the trap of then being seen as part of empire or part of this. this foreign invasion into one's lands. And I think there's a beautiful effort and movement among queer communities in the region to reclaim that language, to not accept it as part of that liberal discourse of the West,

which is often a very violent discourse of empire, and to bring it back to a discourse of democracy and decolonization and freedom. So I identify as a queer man today as part of a political project. It's not just a sexual identity. It expands beyond that. and reject Zionism and rejects authoritarianism, and that's part of my queerness. I mean, you said earlier that the book, it's about silences, you know, both, I mean, East and West, not exclusively one or the other,

about Palestinianness in the West and about queerness in Jordan and the broader Middle East. I mean, in a way, your decision to write this as a memoir rather than fiction is another way in which you subvert that silence by fully assuming your voice. voice. Yes, and it was a difficult decision. That's why I said it was either the stupidest or the bravest thing I've done, because it was a difficult decision. I think there is literature coming out of the Middle East, certainly, fictional, but also some nonfiction that's engaging with questions of queerness. But for me, I always felt that I could write this as fiction. I could also write it as a pseudonym, and I think that would be a very important contribution. But

I just knew that this wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to, whatever it means for me socially and politically, it was important for me to say there is space for these narratives. We're not a monolith. And there is space for these stories. And we need to be able to hold this. If we're talking about liberation and we're talking about emancipation and Palestine, what is that?

That's inclusive of everything. Obviously, it's dismantling Zionism. But it's also dismantling the patriarchy and homophobia and other forms of social oppression. And so it felt to me that this was something that I needed to own. Before we end, toward the end of your book, you talk about your decision to go to Palestine. Describe that journey. So I grew up in Jordan and I was never allowed to go to Palestine because for Jordanian men specifically, it's very difficult to get visas to go to Palestine.

And so I had worked on Hamas-contained as part of my doctoral thesis for years before I had ever visited Palestine. And then when I naturalized as a UK citizen in 2014, that was my opportunity to go back. You know, as I joke in the book, the colonial masters of my grandparents giving me permission to go into Palestine, which is now under the Sutter colony of Israel.

And so that was the first trip that I did that I made with my UK passport. And it was incredibly powerful because it felt like I had grown up there. had never been, but it felt like I had grown up there, the stories of my grandparents, my parents. And it was really important for me to go to Gaza. I didn't spend enough time in Gaza. I wish I had been given more permission to do that. Tell us what years when this was in 2015, 2015. So a few years after the Israeli military

assault in the 2014 war, the devastation was extreme. I mean, now it seems relatively not as extreme as what we're seeing today, but even then it was shocking to see how the Israeli military assaults sort of devastates neighborhoods in Gaza. We want to thank you so much for being with us. Tarek Bakoni, Palestinian analyst and writer. His memoir is just out. It's called Fire in Every Direction. The president of the board of al-Shabaqa, the Palestinian Policy Network,

author also of the Bakhamas contained the rise and pacification of Palestinian resistance. That does it for our show. birthday to Emily Anderson and John Hamilton. I'll be in St. Louis Friday night with Q&As and two movie theaters following. Steal this story. Please check out our website at DemocracyNow.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Nirmine Sheik. Thanks for joining us.