Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-11-10 Monday

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Democracy Now! Monday, November 10, 2025

From New York, this is Democracy Now. The climate convention returns to the country where it was born. Today, the eyes of the world turned to Belém, with immense. expectation. For the first time in history, a climate cop will take place in the heart of the Amazon. In the global imagination, there is no greater symbol of the environmental cause than the Amazon rainforest. The UN Climate Summit opens in Berlin, Brazil, as the Caribbean still recovering from Hurricane Melissa, and as the Philippines is hit by back-to-back typhoons, we'll speak with Yebs Sanya, the Philippines' former climate negotiators, the Philippines' former

climate negotiator, now a leading climate activist. He's in Berlin, and the Guardian's Nina Lekani, who's uncovered how thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists got access to UN climate talks over the years and then kept drilling. Finally, Jelani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism. His new collection of essays is titled, Three or More is a Riot, Notes on How We Got Here. that unites the book is democracy and its challenges. And, you know, the subtitle of the book is notes on how we got here. And that's like the perennial question. You know, how do we get here?

How did this happen? Or how do we arrive at a moment where we're having to consider this thing or that thing? All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. President Trump has issued sweeping and unconditional pardons to his top allies who aided him in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. That's according to the Justice Department's pardon attorney. Among those pardoned are Rudy Giuliani, who tried to pressure state legislatures to reject Joe Biden's victory in key swing states.

Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff in 2020. John Eastman and Kenneth Cheesebro, two attorneys who conspired to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results on January 6th, Boris Epstein, an advisor to Trump, and Sidney Powell, who filed lawsuits challenging election results. in key swing states. The pardons only apply to federal charges. They don't include state charges. Both Powell and Cheesboro had pleaded guilty to state charges.

Giuliani's been indicted in Georgia and Arizona. On Sunday, Trump also pardoned dozens of other Republicans who were involved in the plan to organize fake electors and promote conspiracies of alleged voter fraud during the 2020 election. Earlier this year, Trump had pardoned more than 1,000 January 6th. rioters. The U.S. federal government shutdown has entered its 41st day. On Sunday night, seven Democratic senators broke away from their party to vote alongside Republicans on a key bill to end the shutdown and fund most government agencies until January 30th. The Democratic

senators include Tim Kaine of Virginia, Catherine Cortez-Mastow, and Jackie Rosen of Nevada, John Federman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan, and Jean Shaheen of New Hamas. and Dick Durbin of Illinois, as well as Maine's independent Senator Angus King. The measure does not include an extension of the expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits. The bill still needs to pass the House before the government can be reopened, and that would require Speaker Mike Johnson to call a House session and finally swear in Representative elect Adelita Grachalva of Arizona. She would be the final vote on a discharge petition to release the Epstein files.

It comes as the Supreme Court Friday granted the Trump administration's request to temporarily block full payment of food benefits through SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The decision means SNAP recipients will receive only partial benefits. The U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered states that were filling in the gap to stop providing full benefits to SNAP recipients, stating they should immediately undo the distribution. Meanwhile, transportation secretary Sean Duffy warned air travel would be, quote, reduced to a trickle if the shutdown continues. U.S. airlines canceled more than 3,500 flights over the weekend impacting tens of thousands of travelers nationwide. Travelers expressed outrage over the delays. I'm shocked, and I'm shocked, and it is definitely a Republican shutdown. It's not the Democrats.

I understand why they don't want to take all those people off. you know, health and wellness and insurance. It's just, it's ridiculous. Israeli air raids and drone attacks continue in Gaza, despite the U.S. brokered ceasefire that went into effect a month ago. Al Jazeera reports two people, including a child, were killed in southern Gaza today. This is Nid al-Abu Arcoub from Khan Yunus.

The future is bleak and uncertain. Given our current situation, things remain as they are. A truce, no truce, we do not see a truce. The war is ongoing and the horizon is dark. We see the country's situation is very difficult. Meanwhile, Hamas handed over the body of Hadar Golden, an Israeli soldier who was killed in the 2014 war in Gaza. It comes as Reuters reports U.S. officials gathered intelligence that Israeli military lawyers warned there was evidence that war crimes charges could be brought against Israel for its war.

on Gaza. The former U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters said the material was not broadly circulated within the U.S. government until laid in the Biden administration. Lawyers with the State Department also reportedly flagged to U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that Israel might be committing war crimes. In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed Palestinian men in the Farah refugee camp. It comes as Israeli settlers attacked a group of Palestinian villagers, activists, and journalists on Saturday who gathered during an attempt to harvest olives near a settler outpost. Two Reuters journalists, including the photographer Renin Sawafda, were injured in the attack

in an area close to the Palestinian village of Baita. This is Mohamed Al-Atrash, a journalist with Al Jazeera, who recounted the attack by the Israeli settlers. found myself alone and all the farmers walked down, so I decided to leave the area, and during that, they hurled stones towards us, like nothing I've witnessed before. In Oregon, a federal judge has permanently blocked the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops to Portland. In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Karen Imbergat, a Trump appointee, said the president, quote, did not have a lawful basis to federalize the National Guard,

and that, quote, there was neither a rebellion or danger of a rebellion in Portland as claimed by the federal government. The ruling is the latest legal blow to the Trump administration as it attempts to crack down on protests against immigration raids nationwide. In related news, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is calling on the United Nations to investigate the U.S. federal government over its, quote, abusive immigration crack. lockdowns, unquote, in the city. Johnson addressed members of the UN Human Rights Council Friday. I call on this council to hold the federal government of the United States to the same standards of accountability you apply elsewhere in the world. No country should be above international law. Human rights are universal or they are meaningless. Chicago has long been a part of this struggle. I invite the UN's individual.

experts, to visit Chicago, to witness both our challenges and our progress firsthand. And I urge the Human Rights Council to consider additional measures of accountability, including a special session to examine the worsening human rights crisis in the United States. In Massachusetts, a video obtained by the Boston Globe shows a man having what appears to be a seizure after federal immigration agents pushed, hit, and pressed, on his neck when the man attempted to hold on to his wife and crying child after the agents ambushed their car. Carlos Zapata, who's from Ecuador, reportedly lost consciousness. As a bystander is heard saying on the video, they're trying to rip the baby out of his

hands. Unquote, his wife was taken into custody by federal agents in front of their daughter who's one and a half years old. The Homeland Security Department later mocked the video of Zapata and his family, saying he faked a seizure to try to stop his wife's arrest. She now faces deportation. Two top executives at the BBC Sunday abruptly resigned following the backlash over the public broadcasters' edit of a speech made by President Trump, January 6, 2021, before a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The resignation of BBC Director General, Tim Davy, and news CEO, Deborah Turneris, came just days after the Daily Telegraph published details of a leaked

internal memo that said a BBC documentary edited Trump's remarks in a way that it appeared he explicitly encouraged the capital insurrection. The BBC's reportedly planning to formally apologize to Trump, who celebrated the resignation saying on truth, social, quote, these are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a presidential election, what a terrible thing for democracy, Trump wrote. Trump's repeatedly defended unfounded claims that his 2020 loss to Joe Biden was rigged. President Trump says the United States is boycotting the G20 summit

hosted by South Africa over what he claims is the persecution of white farmers. Trump's repeatedly accused the government of the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa of failing to protect Afrikaners, the white mother. minority that ruled the country during apartheid and has falsely stated a white genocide is taking place in South Africa. Trump said on truth social the U.S. would be hosting the 2026 G20 summit in Miami. This year's G20 summit is the first time a G20 summit was held in Africa. And the U.N. climate summit opens today in Berlin, Brazil, where the United States will be notably absent after the Trump administration declined to send a high-level delegation.

The U.S. is still expected to influence the climate talks as Trump officials use lobbyists and economic threats to attempt to sabotage environmental initiatives and efforts to cut emissions proposed by representatives from around the world. The United States is one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters, while Trump has called the climate crisis a con job. Meanwhile, representatives from the Alliance of Small Island States are, again, urging leaders of the Global North to commit to stronger action in order to prevent the worst impacts of global warming, including the phase-out of fossil fuels. This is Tuvalu's Environment Minister, speaking in Belen Friday. We had high hopes that this new agreement

would give us the necessary legal measures to protect Tuvalu from the worst impact of climate change related sea level rights. Ten years on from Paris, we have greatly and gravely concerned about the slow progress in delivering significant emissions reductions to ensure our survival. Democracy Now will be broadcasting from COP 30 in Berlin, Brazil, all next year. week. And after headlines, we go to Belen to speak with a leading climate justice activist, Yvesaño. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. Coming up, we look at the opening of the UN Climate Summit in Brazil. Stay with us. I'm going to be able to be.

I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. The 30th U.N. Climate Summit is beginning today in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belen and the mouth of the Amazon River. Last week, many world leaders gathered in advance for a two-day summit. This is Brazilian President, Luisina Sia Lula de Silva. The climate convention returns to the country where it was born. Today, the eyes of the world turn to Belem with immense expectation.

For the first time in history, a climate cop will take place in the heart of the Amazon. In the global imagination, there is no greater symbol of the environmental cause than the Amazon rainforest. Barbados, Prime Minister Mia Motley, said the world needs to do far more to help countries most impacted by the climate crisis, including those hit by Hurricane Melissa. Because all of us should hold our heads down in shame, because having established this fund a few years ago in Sharma al-Shake, its capital base is still under $800 million, while Jamaica reels from damage in excess of $7 billion, U.S., not to mention Cuba, Haiti, or the Bahamas. Tuvalu's Home Affairs and Environment Minister Maina Vacufua Talia criticized the Trump administration for not sending a high-level delegation to the climate summit. Tragically, the world-largest historical emitter of greenhouse gas emission has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. I was at the UN General Assembly when President Trump spent a considerable amount of his address to world leaders. disparaging renewable energy sources and challenging the scientific consensus on climate change.

Mr. President, this is a shameful disregard for the rest of the world. We only need to reflect on the recent impact of Hurricane Melissa that wrecked havoc on Jamaica and Cuba and Typhoonino that hit the Philippines to understand that climate change is here. The Trump administrations defended its decision to skip the climate summit. A White House spokesperson said, quote, President Trump will not jeopardize our country's economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries, unquote.

In one of his first acts in office, Trump began the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the landmark Paris Climate Agreement. We begin today's show in Berlin with Yvesanya, the former chief climate negotiator for the Philippines. Over the weekend, a major typhoon hit the Philippines, killing at least eight people and displacing more than 1.4 million others. Typhoon Fongwang hit, as the Philippines was still recovering from another typhoon, which killed at least 224 people just last week.

week. The Philippines has been hit by 21 major storms this year. For Yeb Sanyo, this marks at least the third time he's seen the Philippines hit by a deadly storm during the UN Climate Summit. This is Sanya, speaking in 2012. After a typhoon hit the Philippines, the storm killed almost 2,000 people. I appeal to ministers. The outcome of our work is not about what our political masters want. It is about what is demanded of us by 7 billion people. I appeal

to all. Please, no more delays, no more excuses. Please let Doha be remembered as the place where we found the political will to turn things around. And let 2012 be remembered as the year the world found the courage to do so, to find

the courage to take responsibility for the future we want. I ask of all of us here, if not us, then who? If not now, then when. If not here, then where? Thank you, Madam Chair. In 2013, another typhoon hit the Philippines as Yebs Sanyu appeared, attended at the UN Climate Summit in Warsaw. What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is.

madness. The climate crisis is madness. Mr. President, we can stop this madness right here in Warsaw. At that summit, Yebs Sanyo engaged in a hunger strike, again, a Filipino negotiator. Yvesanyo joins us now from Belen, Brazil. He's now the chair of the Laudato Sea movement, which was formerly known as the global Catholic climate movement. We welcome you back to Democracy Now, Yeb. If you can talk about what has happened so far and why you're there, why you're and the gateway of the Amazon at this 30th summit, what the significance of this summit is, and the significance of one of the leading climate, one of the leading carbon gas emitters, the United States, States not attending.

Thank you, Amy. It's a pleasure to be on the show again, but always under difficult circumstances, as you have described. It is, of course, sobering to be here with the backdrop of another catastrophic event back home, a back-to-back typhoons. striking the Philippines, which, as you have just mentioned, has happened a couple of times before, and one is just too many. Now, it is important for us to be here as a part of civil society. I think we cannot afford not to engage in a process which endeavors to find lasting solutions to avert a deepening crisis,

a crisis that is being felt by many people and communities around the world, crisis that is real, that is profoundly unfair, and that disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable and who had the least contribution in creating this problem. And what is starkly unfair, of course, is not just the absence of the biggest historical emitter in the room, but also the disregard, as we have heard from the Minister of Tuvalu, shameful disregard of the lives of people around the world and I would say the unethical dismissal of the voices of people around the world who are clamoring for world leaders to actually do something about this crisis and that we find ourselves in the country where

the climate convention was born 30 years ago at the gateway of the Amazon I agree that this is a not just a symbolic part of the context of why COP 30 is being held here. But I think the strength of the voices from indigenous communities, from local communities that are impacted by the climate crisis, as well as for me the context of the strength of faith communities. I consider this, Amy, being now chair of the Laudato Sea movement, as a critical juncture in our work to bring in all of the faith communities, considering that countries are dismally putting forward their nationally determined contributions that should spell out the ambition that is needed to confront the climate crisis.

So this is a very important gathering, of course, like before, but for us this is a reckoning. It is a moral reckoning, COP 30, it is. What has changed since that 2013 speech we played a clip of when you were chief climate negotiator for the Philippines at the Warsaw Summit? You went on a hunger strike then. This was 12 years ago. Well, a lot has changed, and more particularly, the impacts that are being felt in many places around the world, especially people who are already struggling to make ends meet. A lot of, you know, radical things have changed in terms of their circumstances, in terms of our circumstances where typhoons have become more intense and the scientific basis for saying that, The typhoons is driven by a warmer world, has become a lot more clearer now. And there's, of course, a lot of things that have changed in terms of the global political

leadership, if you can put it that way, if you can consider that as part of the worrying change in how many political leaders have abandoned their duty to have a higher ambition on climate. Now, when we asked what else has changed around the regime on climate change, I can say that there are, of course, little steps that have been taken in the UNFCCC, in the Climate Convention. But if you ask me, honestly, I think these are little steps and steps that are too little and probably too late. As we can see that the Paris Agreement implementation has become very difficult and has hit a lot of roadblocks along the way. The can is being kicked down the road every year.

There's so much watering down of commitments. And, you know, there's just a lot of room to be improved in terms of how countries are working together to affect what President Lula has said. is the imperative to strengthen multilateralism. Watering down is an interesting term to use in this case. In addition to Yebs Sanyo, speaking to us from the 30th UN Climate Summit in Belen, Brazil, we're joined here in New York by the UN climate, by Nina Lakhani, a senior climate justice reporter for the Guardian U.S.

Her latest piece out today, climate disasters displaced 250 million people in the past 10 years, UN reports fines. She's also been reporting on the role of fossil fuel lobbyists at the climate summit. Nina Likani, thanks so much for being back with us. We've spoken you at climate summits in the past. But you have this explosive piece, how thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists got access to UN climate talks, then kept drilling. You say more than 5,000 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to UN climate summits

over the past four years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, an adequate climate action, and record oil and gas expansion. Explain exactly what you found. So this is research that's conducted by the KIC Big Polluters Act Coalition, which is a coalition of hundreds of organizations

around the world. And what they found is in the last four years, more than 5,350 lobbyists representing fossil fuel companies, trade associations and other organisations representing oil, gas and coal, have been given access to the climate talks. This far outnumbers the negotiators and the delegations that are present for most countries, right? And it also excludes all of the lobbyists sent to represent other big polluting or industries or industries that benefit from fossil fuel extraction, like big agriculture, like mining, big tech, finance, and also excludes the fossil fuel lobbyists, or the executives who are on official delegations. So why does this matter? So these companies have long said, and the UNF, Triple C, has been, has agreed that they

need a seat at the table, that they're part of the solution, they're there with technology. They want to make a transition. This research shows that is just absolutely not true. Just 90 of the oil gas and coal companies that sent lobbyists in the last four years are responsible for almost 60% of the oil and gas that was drilled last year. And responsible for almost two thirds of the short-term oil and gas expansion projects that are about to start extracting an exploration. And on that second figure, if they all go and,

ahead, they will drill the equivalent of enough oil to coat the landmass of seven European countries entirely, including France, Germany and Denmark. So, you know, these companies are sending lobbyists in order to block climate action. This is climate obstruction at work. They're there to delay meaningful climate action, which every country in the world is obliged to do under international law. And they're there to promote false solutions, false solutions like carbon-based, carbon markets, carbon capture and storage, these market-based solutions which are not going to save the planet. We know from all the science out there, and we now know that under international law, every single country in the world, whether they're a member of the

Paris Agreement or not, are obliged under law to stop fossil fuel extraction, to stop licenses to stop subsidies, and every country has a legal obligation to regulate these private companies that are operating within their borders. And the failure to do so is a breach of international law. And you say the true reach of fossil fuel tentacles is undoubtedly deeper, as the lobbyist state excludes executives and other company representatives on official country delegations. You particularly single out United Arab Emirates, Russia, and Azerbaijan, explain. Yeah, I mean, a whole bunch of countries will include in their official delegations,

executives from some of the biggest corporations. So they are there in these secret country-to-country, state-to-state-level negotiations, making climate policy. You know, we have, this is the 30th year of these climate talks. And, you know, we have, you know, countries have absolutely failed to take the climate action necessary that science tells us that we need to take. And that indigenous people and front-line communities have been telling us that we need to take for decades now, right? We need to stop fossil fuel extraction. We need to phase out fossil fuels. We need to cut subsidies. We need

to cut consumption. And these executives having a seat at the table when actually climate vulnerable countries, sorry, cannot actually attend in big numbers because of the huge costs and other barriers involved. It's completely outrageous. And they do it. it because it enables them to keep drilling. It enables them to block climate action that we need to take in order to come off fossil fuels. And two of those countries, in the case of UAE and Azerbaijan, they hosted the COP summits. Yeah, absolutely. In Azerbaijan last year, there was more than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists present.

That was more, like many more than 10 of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world had in their delegations, right? I mean, every year it's getting worse rather than better. And honestly, the response from the UN is absolutely like it's, it's bonkers, you know. I mean, they said to me, we can't change, we can't, you know, we can't solve this problem overnight, just like we can't solve the climate crisis overnight. Well, actually, they could. They could just ban fossil fuel lobbyists and all other lobbyists from polluting industries attending the UN climate summit. That's not a hard thing to do. You know, we have more information about who's going. There's more, you know, but that's not enough. Like it's, they need to just,

they just need to get these polluters out of the negotiation so that climate action can actually be taken. You've also written a really important piece, existential and urgent. What impact will ICJ, the International Court of Justice, climate ruling, have on COP 30? This also goes to the issue of loss and damage, which will bring us back to Yebs Sanyo, because the Philippines is the host of who's in charge of loss and damage. Explain it all. Yeah, so the loss and damage fund, which is a fund that some of the island nations and other vulnerable countries have been campaigning for for decades now,

but the wealthy polluting countries have blocked was finally two years ago created. And this is a fund that is being managed out of the Philippines, which is an extremely climate vulnerable country, as we've heard already. And the agreement was that, you know, the wealthy polluting nations would contribute to this fund to help pay for the irreversible loss and damage that countries are already experiencing. Two years on, only $750 million has been actually agreed or has been pledged to that fund. we need hundreds of billions of dollars every single year.

I mean, look at Melissa, you know, in the Caribbean. I mean, huge swathes of mountains in Jamaica have had all of their tree, all of the trees sweat, you know, like just knocked down by the heavy winds. I mean, it's billions of dollars of damage just in Jamaica. We had a Jamaican, British Jamaican activist on after Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica. And she said they shouldn't be named after women and men like, Hurricane Melissa, which sounds so innocent. These hurricanes

should be named for oil companies. Yeah, Hurricane Exxon, Hurricane Chevron, Hurricane Petrobas. Absolutely. You know, it's, I mean, these are, you know, these storms, and, you know, we've seen the one in Philippines over the weekend, Melissa, but so many more, they are absolutely being

turbocharged by the increasing temperatures in the atmosphere and the ocean. There is no doubt about that, right? And coming back to the ICJ ruling, so the ICJ, in July issued a landmark advisory opinion, which made it abundantly clear that every single state in the world is legally bound to take climate action to issue with due diligence, to do everything in their powers, to mitigate, to remedy and to prevent the climate crisis,

which they said presents an urgent and existential threat to the planet and therefore humanity. This is a universal obligation. So the US leaving the Paris Agreement, I'm sorry, it doesn't make a difference. It doesn't make the US not unbound under international law to take meaningful climate action. And it went really far. It was the furthest any sort of court has ever gone on fossil fuels. that every single, you know, the states have a legal obligation under international national law to stop fossil fuel extraction,

consumption, licenses and subsidies, and that duty, that legal duty, extends to the regulation of corporations that are operating within their borders. A failure to do so amounts to an international wrongful act that could be subject to legal consequences. And so why does this matter, right? So every time you hear of a fossil fuel expansion plan, we had one just recently in Brazil by Petrobas,

which is a majority state-owned oil company. They're going to start exploring off the, in the ocean, in Brazil, right? That is a violation of international law, right? The law is very clear that fossil fuel expansion has to stop, right? And so it's up to Brazil. as a state to regulate the companies operating in their boundaries. Now, what Petrobas said to me is that we go to COP. Petrobas have sent dozens of lobbyists, by the way, to COP in the last few years.

We want to be there. We want to be following energy policy. We want to be part of the solution. And how is this a solution? You know, starting drilling close to the mouth of the Amazon, which is home to 10% of the world's biodiversity. As we begin to wrap up, Yebs Sanyu in Berlin, where the UN COP is happening, COP 30. Global emissions have nearly doubled in the last 33 years.

Your country, the Philippines, is the home of the loss and damage fund, which has hardly been funded. You are the former chief climate negotiator for the Philippines. Now you're a leading climate activist. What gives you hope and what does it mean to say that this, summit, is an action summit. I like that you refer to the word hope. I think that something that I wake up every morning with, which is not a choice, but to carry hope. And that's what I wish I could bring into the conversation here, including many faith communities that have come here to Belém.

You know, COPS, and now we're on the 30th edition of this, I see a lot of young people here. And world leaders have been negotiating on climate change longer than these young people have been alive. That's very striking, that's very telling in how this process has been for three decades. I have no illusion, Amy. I have no illusion that the 30th edition of the COP could deliver something groundbreaking and something that would change the landscape of climate action just because we are in Brazil, just because we are in Bilem, the gateway of the Amazon. But this is a place where, you know, I can say, you earlier asked what has changed over the course of the past decade. I can say that the movement

has evolved and has become much stronger, and this is where the international climate movement converges every year and this is where we could show the power of people show the power of communities of indigenous communities of young people of women of faith communities who are doing a lot on the ground at the grassroots in many parts of the world so I have firm believe that hope is possible and that we can drive ambition and push political leaders by mobilizing the necessary political pressure that can overcome as you have just, we have just been hearing the fossil fuel lobby, the influence,

the conflict of interest and the vested interests that are almost always at play in these negotiations. Yab Sanyo, I want to thank you very much for being with us, former chief climate negotiator for the Philippines, now chair of the Laudato Sea Movement, formerly known as the Global Catholic Climate Movement, also Executive Director of SICOT, a grassroots environmental community development organization in the Philippines. Finally, we just have 30 seconds, Nina Lacani. Your latest piece talks about the hundreds of millions of refugees, climate refugees around the world as Europe and the United States shuts down their borders, the country's most responsible for climate change, stopping refugees from fleeing. the effects of climate change, the intense typhoons and hurricanes and more. Yeah, the UN Refugee Agency's new report shows that there's been an approximate,

on average of 70,000 displacements every single day due to climate disasters over the last 10 years. And many of the countries that are hosting climate displaced people are also countries who are facing conflict, right? So just to bring this back to the COP 30, you know, a 25 UN special rapporteur was a release in a statement this morning that will basically say that a failure to take really strong action towards the, you know, the end of fossil fuels and banning fossil fuel lobbyists will absolutely be the end of the credibility of this process that has really failed for the last 30 years to do what it needs to do to prevent climate disasters that are causing, you know, huge amounts of displacement. man in the world now. Nina Lecani, senior climate justice reporter for the Guardian U.S. will link to your recent articles at DemocracyNow.org. Democracy Now will be reporting from the UN Climate Summit in Berlin, Brazil throughout next week. Coming up, Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School. He has a new book out. It's called Three or More is a Riot. Notes on

how we got here. Stay with us. And any man who knows The thing knows, he knows not a damn damn thing at all And every time I felt the hurt And I felt the giving me up off the wall I'm just gonna take a minute and let it ride I'm just gonna take a minute and let it breeze I'm just gonna take a minute and let it ride

I'm just going to take a minute How did Mandela get the will of surpassed the every day When injustice had him caged and trapped in every way How did Gandhi ever withstand the hunger strikes and all Didn't do it to gain power or money If I recall, it's the gift I guess I pass it on Mother things to lift the stress of Babylon

Mother knows My mother, she suffered blows I don't know how we survive Such violent episodes I was so worried They hurt to see you bleed But as soon as you came out the hospital You gave me sweets

Yeah They tried to take you from me But you still only gave them Some prayers and sympathy Dear Mama You helped me write this By showing me to give It's priceless

And any man who knows A thing knows He knows not a damn Damn thing at all And every time I felt the hurt And I felt the giving Getting me I'm off the wall I'm just going to take a minute and let it ride.

I'm just going to take a minute and let it breathe. I'm just going to take a minute and let it ride. I'm just going to take a minute. All I can say is the worst is open. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now. Dot org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. Three or more is a riot, notes on how we got here.

That's the name of a new collection of essays by Jelani Cobb, the acclaimed journalist, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School. The book collects essays beginning in 2012 with the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida. It traces the rise of Donald Trump and the rights growing embrace of white nationalism, as well as the historic racial justice protests after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. Tanaasi Coates writes, quote, we live in a time when writers like Cobb are being targeted by the highest, powers in this nation. Read this book to understand why. Jelani Cobb, thanks so much for being with us. Congratulations on the release of your book. Why don't we just start off with the title? Three or more is a riot. Notes on how we got here. How did we get here? And where are we? So, you know, there's an interesting kind of dynamic here. I wrote about this recently

in that, you know, in the summer of 1965, well, summer fall, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed two pieces of legislation that are really at the center of the kind of volatile politics that we're dealing with now. In August, he signed early August of 1965. He signed, you know, famously the Voting Rights Act. And then in early October of that same year, he signed the Immigration Heartseller's Immigration Reform Act. The Immigration Reform Act transformed the face of American immigration. It opened the doors for immigration from places like

Africa, from India, from the Caribbean, from Latin America, places that had been widely prohibited from people from immigrating from in earlier versions of American immigration law. And the Voting Rights Act changed the face of the American electorate. What we're seeing and what I didn't understand when I first started writing these essays and I couldn't because some of this history hadn't played out yet, what we're seeing is a kind of retrograde push or reactionary push to try to return the nation to the status quo ante, to undo the kind of demographic change, literally at gunpoint, we see. And at the same time as we are pushing people of color out of the country, you know,

by force, we are making space for specifically white South Africans, not just South Africans, but specifically white South Africans. And we see these cases being brought to try to diminish, if not completely eviscerate the Voting Rights Act. And so it's trying to return to a kind of the old demography or the demography of old. And, you know, as I was started writing for The New Yorker in 2012, the first thing I wrote about was Trayvon Martin, who becomes, you know, this kind of almost inciting incident. Black Lives Matter emerges out of that. And a, to a strange degree, a great deal of radicalization on the right comes out of that as well. Because just a few years later, we see the horrific murder of nine African-Americans in the church in Emmanuel AME Church

in South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina. The person who was responsible for those homicides, Dylan Roof, said that he did it as a call to arms for white people, that he wanted white people to reassert their place and their primary position in American society, and that he had been radicalized by, of all things, the Trayvon Martin incident. And so these things have kind of unfolded in a kind of tree diagram almost since then. I remember we interviewed you first in Ferguson after the killing of Mike Brown. Maybe we have that clip. But you have an essay in the book, What I Saw in Ferguson.

You open it by quoting Richard Wright's poem between the world and me about. a lynching and how history is an animate force. You write, the dry bones stirred, rattled, lifted, melting themselves into my bones and the gray ashes formed flesh firm and black entering into my flesh. And then you write, I spent eight days in Ferguson. And in that time, I developed a kind of between the world and Ferguson view of events surrounding Brown's death. I was once a linebacker-sized 18-year-old, too. When I saw then what black people have been required to know is that there are few things more dangerous than the perception that one is a danger. Yeah.

Take it from there. Yeah. So what we saw, even in Ferguson, which was like another stair step, you know, in this kind of ratcheting intensification of these dynamics. And this is happening in the Obama era. and the Obama DOJ is being, people are seeking, you know, some sort of assistance from the Obama DOJ in these instances, or will this be different? Will the fact that there's a black president mean that this will be handled differently? And at the same time, there is this kind of growing white allergic reaction to these social demonstrations. Now, Michael Brown was killed, his body lay in the street for almost four hours in an August day, kind of blazing hot August afternoon, and there is an entire community traumatized by there being a dead body, a person whom they know, who's laying in the street for hour after hour after hour.

And out of that, there was another kind of step that we saw, and that was where kind of Black Lives Matter came into full fruition, and you began to see that movement grow and develop. On the other side of it, you know, we're kind of moving toward the reaction that enables Trumpism, that enables, you know, when he comes down the escalator in Trump Tower in 2015, June of 2015, coincidentally, he does this, comes down the escalator and announces his candidacy the day before the incident in which the nine people are killed in Charleston. So those things happen 24 hours apart, not that there's a causal relationship between these and anything like that. but it's just this common response to the zeitgeist in the belief that somehow white people have been pushed out of their ordained position in American society. There's a great deal of solidarity between African American human rights movement and the Palestinian human rights movement and also the Jewish human rights movement. You are the dean of the prestigious school of journalism at Columbia University.

You were there during the encampments and Columbia calling in the police several times. I'm wondering if you can talk about both situations, one, the journalists and a number of them from your own school. I mean, journalists were seeing your school as a shelter. You even had a showdown with police, telling them to stop arresting journalists. If you can talk about the students at WKCR, Columbia Spectator, your own students, graduate students in your school being attacked by police or arrested by police and the response of your university, Colombia. I'll just tell you, I have been doing this for a long time.

It's hard for me to believe, but I have been teaching for almost 30 years. I have never been more proud of a group of students than I was of those students who went out and reported. There were students who, and I didn't encourage them to do it. As a matter of fact, I encouraged them to do the opposite, but there were students who were out doing 24-hour shifts reporting on what was happening, you know, filming, documenting. One student, which was, it was amazing because it was the exact right answer, but someone from the New York Times called me on my cell phone, and I was in the middle of doing a bunch of

things, and I'm kind of running around, and they said, can someone give me, like, just some color about what's going on on the campus? And I hand the phone to a student, and I was like, this is someone from the Times, they just want to know what's going on. And the student said, yeah, I have my own story to work on. And I thought that was great. That was the perfect response. But they were really out there pursuing those stories. And, you know, in instances, you know, I did have to come out and, you know, intervene

because they were police officers in my PD once they got to the campus. And they were not making, you know, any distinctions. They were just kind of arresting people. And I was like, these are students. These are, you know, kind of people. at one point someone threatened to arrest me and was just kind of like, my job as dean to work on behalf of my students.

And so on the Columbia side, a lot of that is kind of privileged, but what I'll say is that, you know, our interactions, in our interactions with everyone from the outside community to inside to the leadership, our kind of marching orders were to defend the freedom of the press

and defend the First Amendment and academic freedom. And our students' ability to report, that was the students from KCR, who weren't even students at the Graduate School of Journalism, but students from The Spectator, which is the student paper, and the students who were enrolled at Columbia Journalism School. And that was what we articulated to the best of our ability. And overall, as you talk about notes on how we got here, President Trump's attack on universities from Colombia to schools all over the country. So here's a thing.

And the connection between DEI and what he calls anti-Semitism? Sure. So on the first thing, one of the things that, you know, few people have noticed, or maybe people have noticed, but it hasn't gotten a ton of attention, is that in all of these incursions into the autonomy of these institutions, one of the main things that the administration has demanded is that they, there's some language about reducing the number of international students on their campuses. And this has been done because very often acceptance into an American university, acceptance into American graduate

school is the first step in someone ultimately becoming a citizen. They may graduate, they'll get, you know, sponsored for a work visa, and then, you know, green card and then, you know, become a citizen or perhaps they marry someone. That's the first step. And they are attempting to foreclose that route. They're attempting to reduce the number of people who are becoming naturalized citizens, and they're using the pressures that they're exerting on American universities in order to do so. And it was convenient, I think, to use these kinds of canards about DEI as a means of, as a wedge issue to kind of, like, well, are you opposed to anti-Semitism, or are you in favor of DEI?

as if a person couldn't hold both of those views. And there was no natural reason that you couldn't hold both of those views. But for a moment, this is kind of the rhetoric that we were receiving, the kind of propaganda we were receiving. And you would actually believe that these things are opposed or oppositional. And if you can comment on just Friday, the Trump administration reaching a multi-million dollar deal with Cornell University to restore more than $250 million in federal finance. for the school, the education secretary, saying the Trump administration secured another transformative commitment from an Ivy League institution to end divisive DEI policies. Yeah, I mean, I think that this is ultimately an attempt. So it begins with the kind of belief

that no one who holds a position, unless apparently they are white men, is actually qualified are entitled to be in that position. And that DEI, which has been an effort to look beyond the normal parameters or what have been natural, what have become routine parameters, to hire the same people who had been in the same positions from the start of time virtually, and to say we want our institutions to be inclusive of everyone who can possibly contribute to the institution. That's not a radical idea. but it has been reframed in such a way as a kind of zero-sum game in which white men are being

denied the positions that they should rightfully hold. And, you know, that's what's at stake here. And you have Cornell, rather Columbia, your institutional pay a $200 million settlement over three years to the federal government, also agreeing to settle Colombia, investigations brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Do you see this as a huge concession? Are you critical of this? I see a lot of that is kind of like privileged because I'm a dean. What I'll say is that I wasn't happy with the situation at all. And what I tended to do was that I could exert my energy being kind of internally critical or I can exert my energy about the fact that we should

never have had to make those decisions in the first place. And so, you know, my, my criticism has been that, you know, this is an unprecedented incursion into the autonomy of an institution of higher education. And it sets a terrible precedent. And so academic freedom, you know, has been infringed upon the ability of even kind of, even kind of, to the point of making demands about particular, you know, departments and programs at a university. And this is, you know, unheard of. This is not something we've seen before outside of the McCarthy period, which is the closest thing that we've seen when, you know,

the great historian Ellen Shrekker has done her work on McCarthyism and higher education. And all of a sudden, we're looking at, you know, these books about the 1950s in American universities and seeing templates for what's happening in the 2020s in American University. Well, Jelani Kav, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School staff writer at the New Yorker magazine. His new book, Three or More is a Riot, notes on how we got here, 2012 to 2025. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.