Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-09-07 Monday

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Democracy Now! Marks 30 Years with Angela Davis, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe & More

From New York, this is Democracy Now. And let me also thank all of you for coming out to celebrate 30 years of Democracy Now. Without Democracy Now, I do not know where we would be today. Today, a special broadcast. We air highlights from Democracy Now's 30th anniversary celebration featuring Angela Davis, Patty Smith, Masab Abu Toha, Michael Stipe, hooray, the riffraff, Juan Gonzalez, Nermin-Sheikh, and a surprise appearance by the boss, Bruce Springsteen.

Fast winter, the federal troops brought death and terror into the streets of Minneapolis. They picked the wrong city. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. In late March, over 2,000 people packed into the historic Riverside Church in New York to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Democracy Now. Today, in this special, we bring you highlights from the evening. Let's go back to that night.

It's an absolute honor to welcome you all here to Democracy Now as 30th anniversary. It is hard to contemplate a celebration. at this time. Amidst the U.S. Israeli war on Iran and other armed conflicts, rising authoritarianism, power hungry, billionaires, and the worsening climate catastrophe. But gatherings like this are essential. To remind us that the gathering storm, despite the forces of oppression, that threaten us all on the planet, there is a force more powerful. And that is all of you gathered here tonight at Riverside Church, but in all over this country and around the world,

of people joining together organizing for peace and justice. It was in this very sanctuary here in Riverside Church that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous speech beyond Vietnam, at time to break silence on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated in Memphis. King called out in that speech the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government, he said. Dr. King warned, when Mr. King warned, when Mr. King warned, when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people,

the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. How prescient he was. And you know, at the time, King was attacked viciously and publicly for opposing the war. Life magazine accused him in an editorial, of betraying the cause for which he has worked for so long, adding his speech was a demagogic slander that sounded like a script from Radio Hanoi. King, though, was unturred, and his commitment to peace despite enormous pressure to back off

should be a lesson for us all today. Bratian, not only of 30 years of democracy now, but of the resilience of people and movements we strive to cover in this country and around the world. This is such an honor to be here with you and to be with my colleagues, Juan Gonzalez, and Ramin Shah and the whole family. Let's turn to an excerpt of the speech of Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez. It has truly been a privilege and an honor to work with all these colleagues. and to be welcomed into the homes of you, our audience, for so many years.

My modest contribution, both as a part-time host and secretary-treasurer of the Board of Pacific all these years, was to shed light not so much on the who, what, where, and when of the news, but on the why and the how. The historical context and brought a framework of social forces underlying those events, All of our achievements, however, have always been bittersweet for me. For even as the show has thrived and even as platforms for news and information,

including progressive and independent ones have proliferated, the American public's consciousness has plummeted when it comes to the malevolent, destructive, and barbaric role of U.S. imperialism, whether in its neoliberal or its fascist management form in our contemporary world, morality, decency, the quest for peaceful resolution of conflict, empathy for the weak and the powerful are branded as weaknesses, while bombast, cruelty, patriarchy, the frenzy for obscene prophets, hate, torture, outright fraud and lies are celebrated as signs of strength and power. Sadly, reporting the truth is important, but it is not sufficient to make a better world possible,

especially when capitalism, with artificial intelligence and internet bots, has mastered to previously unimagined levels, the mass production of disinformation and alternative realities. In the end, only organizing resistance of working class and oppressed peoples of the world strengthened by, yes, by revolutionary analysis can bring about a better world. I want to introduce no one more appropriate. to perform after Juan Gonzalez, then hooray for the riffraff, with the Bronx-born Alinda Sagada. The band's new album has just come out. It's called Live Forever.

This song, Palante, was featured in the short New York Times documentary takeover about the young lords who took over Lincoln Hospital in 1919. Pallante means onwards or as one says right on my time be something I just want to prove my worth on the planet earth and be something I just want to fall in love and now ruin it and feel something I don't understand but I treat it as a fool understand something they tell you take your pay but stay out Go be something. They tell you, do your best.

Forget the rest. Be something. It's been mighty hard to see. Just searching for my lost. You never do you love? Leave it up about moving slow. I don't know it. Just give me.

This is hooray for the riffraff. We'll be back. So now's 30th anniversary celebration. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. We turn now to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian writer and poet Musab Abutthoha. He fled Gaza with his family in December 2023, after he was detained by Israeli forces for two days. He was close friends with the Palestinian poet Rafat Alarid, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in 2023. This is Masab Abu Toha speaking at Riverside Church.

Thank you so much, democracy now. Thank you, Amy, Hermine, and Juan. I mean, these are very hard-broken moments. There's no language that can describe my feelings listening to my dear friend Raffat. He's somewhere else better than this ugly world that we are trying all of us to survive. It was October 12th.

of 2020, when I had my interview with Amy, I was still in our house in Gaza. This house has been a heap of rubble since October 30th, 2023. Just two days after the interview I did with Amy on October 12th, Israel killed 30 members of my extended family, including my great uncle, Kader Abotoja, his wife, his children, the wives of his children the grandchildren the youngest was four years old that same

Khadr was the only one in my family who was interested in doing the family tree and I ended up doing his family tree after he was killed and that's something that I kept doing unfortunately

to document the genocide that Israel perpetrated not only against Palestinians but the Palestinian families. Israel has erased thousands, hundreds of families in Gaza, including some of my relatives, some of whom remain under the rubble even now. Under the rubble. She slept on her bed, never woke up again.

Her bed has become her grave, a tomb beneath the ceiling of her room, the ceiling a cenotaph, no name, no year of birth, no year of death, no epitaph, only blood and a smashed picture of Raymond ruin next to her. In Jabalia camp, a mother collects her daughter's flesh in a piggy bank, hoping to buy her a plot on a river in a faraway land. A group of mute people were talking, sign.

When a bomb fell, they fell silent. It rained again last night. The new plant looked for an umbrella in the garage. The bombing got intense And our house looked for a shelter in the neighborhood I leave the door to my room open So the words in my books, the titles And names of authors and publishers could flee

When they hear the bombs I became homeless once The rubble of my city covered the streets They could not find a stretcher to carry your body they put you on a wooden door they found under the rubble your neighbors a moving wall

the scars on our children's faces will look for you our children's amputated legs will run after you he left the house to buy some bread for his kids news of his death made at home but not the bread

no bread death sits to eat whoever remains of the kids no need for a table no need for bread. A father wakes up at night, at night, sees the random colors on the walls drawn by his four-year-old daughter.

The colors are about four feet high. Next year, they would be five. But the painter has died in an air strike. There are no colors anymore. There are no walls. I changed the order of my books on the shelves. Two days later,

the war broke out. Beware. of changing the order of your books. What are you thinking? What thinking? What? You? You? Is there still you? You there? Where should people go?

Should they build a big ladder and go up? But the heaven has been blocked by the drones and F-16s and the smoke of death? My son asks me whether when we return to Gaza I could get him a puppy. I say I promise. if we can find any. I ask my son if he wishes to become a pilot when he grows up. He says he won't wish to drop bombs on people and houses. When we die, our souls, leave our buddies,

take with them everything they loved in our bedrooms. The perfume bottles, the makeup, the necklaces, and the pens. In Gaza, our buddies and rooms get crushed. nothing remains for the soul even our souls they remain stuck under the rubble for weeks now for years

for Gaza for Rifat al-Aarir for all our loved ones those who were killed those who are surviving in the streets and tents for my three sisters who are in Gaza right now for my beloved ones

who remain under the rubble while we are speaking for a free Palestine was the palestine. Was the Palestinian writer and poet Mosulam al-Nazir was the Palestinian writer and poet Mosab Abu Toha, who just recently won a Pulitzer Prize. for his essays in the New Yorker magazine.

This is Democracy Now co-host Nermine Sheikh, speaking at Democracy Now's 30th anniversary celebration. Irrefutably, if perhaps in some instances, not irreversibly, in a time of multiplying and accelerating crises. To name only the most obvious and the most proximate, the slow and now rapid transformation of this country, into a more brutal, more unforgiving, and more exclusionary polity and society, the scale of which, as we witness it, is literally unfathomable.

The cruelty of the current administration is everywhere in evidence. It would take the remainder of this evening, and indeed well beyond it, to rehearse the litany of horrors to which we're daily confronted. What then is our orientation, our vision, as this administration continues unleashing its violence both within and without the borders of this country? What possibilities exist as we report on what appears an imminent threat of world war, and crucially of those suffering in its midst, of course in Iran, but also elsewhere, or when we speak of the calamitous and ongoing lethal effects on the world's very poorest of the staggering cuts in U.S. aid, or as we tell the stories of those brutalized while protesting ICE,

or the stories of the tens of millions enduring merciless wars from Palestine to Ukraine to the DRC and Sudan, the latter African countries to our collective shame, almost totally absent from the public sphere. The only gesture, of course, the only gesture possible, of course, is resistance. A resistance whose source and agency must find expression in the media. It is my honor to bring up on the stage, Michael Stipe, the singer-songwriter, artist and activist, and Aaron Dessner,

Grammy Award-winning musician and producer, founding member of the National, and a close collaborator with Taylor Swift. They're singing, no time for love like now. Thank you, Amy. This evening feels a clarion call. A voice. a voice of courage of optimism and resilience and community in the face in the midst of system collapse. We are honored to be here and to be a part of this community. Thank you. No time for breezy, no time for arguments. There's no time for love like now. There's no time in the barto

No time in the end between No time for love Like now Where did this all begin to change The lockdown memories can't sustain This glistening hanging free Fogne is like me died I turn my head

Whatever waiting means in this new place There's no time for dancing, no time for undecided, no time for love like now. There's no time for honey, no time for songs and thresholds, whisper a sweet prayer sigh. Where did this all begin to change? The lockdown memories can't sustain. There's glistening hanging. free fall. I turned away

from the glorious light. I turned my names in this new place. Voices echo. I hear it. Yes, I means in this new place. Yes, I am waiting for

We have a very, very special guest. Angela Davis. Angela, it is such an honor to be with you tonight. Congratulations, Amy, Nermine and won on the occasion of the 30th, can you believe it? 30th anniversary of Democracy Now. Without Democracy Now, I do not know where we would be today. I can remember when we felt unseen and unacknowledged, when we had no legitimate place or space. in the established media.

And so before I say anything else, I just really want to say thank you on behalf of all of the progressive and radical movements in this country and the world. Stored in Birmingham, Alabama, and what it meant to grow up in Dynamite Hill and then take us on a short trajectory of your remarkable life.

Really? You know, that was over 80 years ago. I was born in 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama, at a time when the government of the city and of the state were literally in the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. And I often point out some of my earliest memories are of hearing the sound of dynamite.

Because when my family moved into that area, black people were allowed to live on one side of the street, center street, which was the dividing line, but not on the other side. And one of the stories I never tire, of telling is that as kids, we knew that a Ku Klux Klanmen lived right across the street from us. And to cross that street, black people weren't allowed to cross that street unless they worked for white people in the neighborhood. And so, you know, sometimes instead of playing,

hide and go seek or all of the other children's games that we used to play we used to dare each other to run across the street and and if you were you know really courageous you would not only run across the street you would run up the steps of the clans in his house and ring the doorbell and try to make it back across the street before they came to answer. So, I mean, I say that because I know the theme of this evening is resistance. And as I look at, as I see Palestinian children throwing rocks at the Israeli military, I realize that, you know, in some communities, resistance, is the only possibility of living a life of significance.

And what is so exciting about this moment is that we've struggled so long for Palestine's solidarity to be a part of the larger social, justice agenda in this country, for so it appeared as if Zionism was so powerful that we would never achieve that goal. And so people who worked around issues of Palestine solidarity had to do it in a kind of marginalized fashion. Not in a kind of marginalized fashion. Not in a very, connection with what we consider to be the main issues of social justice. But I can say now that I am really thankful that I've managed to live as long as I have. I also see myself as a

witness for all of those who struggle for Palestine and Palestine in connection with feminism, Palestine in connection with the struggle against racism. Palestine in relation to our anti-war movements. Anja, I'd like to ask you about those grand forms of resistance. We were politically formed during the same period of time, and you first came to national fame or national or international notoriety as a member of the Black Panther Party. And I'm wondering if you could, you could, you could, share, especially for the young people here, what drew you to revolutionary struggle, to the Panther Party, and what kinds of lessons, good and bad, have you drawn from that experience that might help other folks who are organizing resistance and seeking to build a better world

today? I think I've always been connected with some kind of collective. And I suppose I would say that is because it became clear that despite the individualism that is promoted, and especially in relation to and by capitalism, that nothing that we do as individuals is, ever going to really make a major difference. We always have to be connected with community. And so when the Black Panther Party was organizing in Los Angeles for the very first time, I was, as a matter of fact, teaching at UCLA, and I asked, well, how can I be of assistance? What can I do? So I began to work with a political education program

that John Huggins, Erica Huggins' husband at the time, was working on. So John and I worked on political education for the Black Panther Party until he was killed at UCLA. And it's a long and very complicated story. But the fact is that I think I've always felt more comfortable in environments where I could resist, where I could say no and not be by myself saying no, being with others who recognize that we need a different kind of world. a world without racism, a world without heteropatriarchy, a world without economic exploitation, a world without colonialism, a world without genocide.

And the only way to do that is together. I have an enormous pleasure to introduce our next guest. A special guest is coming later. This is also an extremely special guest, who I can name at this moment, Patty Smith. Singer, writer, poet, author, widely known as the Grandmother of Punk. And we want to welcome Patty Smith, her daughter, Jesse Smith, and Tony Shanahan to the stage. On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corey, a young non-violence activist, was protesting the Israeli demolition of homes in the Gaza Strip. Bulldozers had already destroyed surrounding houses in Rafa, where she was based.

They targeted the family home of Professor Nasrallah, where she was staying. Corey, wearing an orange vest, bullhorn in hand, called for them to cease. She stood on a raised mound in the public. path of an Israeli bulldozer, but it kept going. Her fellow activists cried out, and the Nassarala children watched in horror as she was crushed to death. The loss of Corey, a bright, altruistic force, just two years older than my own son, haunted me. At the same time, on the first day of spring, it was obvious that all the marches, please and protests of millions of people worldwide, were not going to halt the Bush administration's plan to attack Baghdad.

That was 23 years ago when Tony Shanahan and I wrote the song. We wrote it to comfort the family of Rachel Corey and to send a small, a small message of hope to the Palestinian people. Yesterday I saw you standing there with your hands against the pain looking out the window your tears were not in vain I guess we both the same

this is Patty Smith we'll be back in a minute Inside will be strong back again. The volcano of an ass-affair and my sleeping. It was broken, but my dream, it lingered near. In the farm of shining valleys, where the pure air of fire and my senses, newly a

Cozal weekend to the cry that the people Jesse Paris Smith Tony Shanahanan. Thank you. That was Patty Smith performing at Democracy Now's

30th anniversary. Yes, this is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. As we go back now to the Riverside Church celebration. To end tonight,

but then I saw someone in the audience and I realized this is how we give thanks. Let's bring on the boss, Bruce Springs. Federal troops brought death and terror into the streets of Minneapolis. They picked the wrong city. In the solidarity of the people of Minneapolis was an inspiration to the entire country. their strength and their commitment told us that this is still

the nation of an American city will not stand their strength gave us hope that gave us courage and for those who gave their lives Renee Good mother of three brutally murder Alex Prettie B.A. nurse

executed shot in the back by ice in the street left to die. Their bravery their sacrifice and their names will not be forgotten. This is treats me. Nathan Anki.

We're still there's still. Smoking. It is still. Streets of. For coming out. Have the power. Performed by Patty herself. Bruce Springsteen, Michael Steife,

Aaron Destner, and Alinda Sigara together at Democracy Now's 30th anniversary at Riverside Church. To see the full event, go to DemocracyNow.org. And that does it for today's show.

Special thanks to Julie Crosby. Trina Nudura and Mike Burr. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.