Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-09-18 Friday

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

Headlines for September 18, 2026; “Inequality Emergency”: Ahead of U.N. General Assembly, Oxfam Urges Action on Climate, AI & Gaza; “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers”: Rhiannon Giddens on New Album, AI, Ed Sheeran, Macklemore & Trump; “We Are the 99%”: 15 Years Later, Occupy Wall Street’s Impact Is Still Being Felt

From New York, this is Democracy Now. At the moment the world is witnessing a inequality emergency. The world is getting ripped apart. There are wars. There's this hunger. And at this moment, anger needs to play its role. Ensure that we are back to multilateralism. We are back to building a more just equal and sustainable world.

Ahead of Unger, the United Nations General Assembly, and Climate Week here in New York, we'll speak to the head of Oxfam International, Amitab Beha. Then we'll be joined by the Pulitzer Prize and Grammy-winning artist, Riannon Giddens. She's out with a new album today. Hope is the thing with feathers.

If we don't pull our struggles together, if we don't connect the struggles together and the overall larger patterns of extraction, the larger patterns, of colonialism, larger patterns of empire, larger patterns of massive money-making. If we don't connect those dots between the

struggles, we're never going to get anywhere. So for me, that's what music is for. And we look back at the legacy of Occupy Wall Street. Fifteen years ago this week, activists began an encampment in New York that sparked an international

movement and popularized the slogan, We are the 99%. Occupy Wall Street gave us a lot of things. I think it politicized thousands of people, trained, thousands of leaders, built organizations like led to a decade and a half of mass movements in the streets. But I think the biggest contribution, actually, is changing the public's common sense about class and class struggle with the 99% and the 1%.

I don't think we would be in the political moment that we're in right now. We'll speak to Yotam Marone. He helped organize the Occupy Wall Street protests and wrote the book for louder days, reaching beyond a politics of powerlessness. So all that and more coming out. Welcome to Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, a United Nations fact-finding mission on Iran, says it's found evidence. The U.S. committed war crimes and two attacks that killed at least 177 civilians, many of them children.

In a report released Thursday, experts commissioned by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council cited U.S. strikes in a school in Menab in southern Iran and a sports complex in Lamard, writing, quote, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects, unquote. The White House responded in a statement, quote, the UN Human Rights Council has accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unsurious nonsense for decades, unquote. Meanwhile, ships continue to come under fire in the Strait of Hormuz earlier today. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it struck a to goreous. flagged tanker. And several U.S. media outlets are reporting Iranian drones and missiles struck a U.S. contracted ship near the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week. That attack reportedly injured several crew members, including U.S. personnel. On Thursday, President Trump told Axios, he was nearing a

decision on whether to annihilate Iran. Trump also dismissed surging U.S. gas costs as a small price to pay for his war. Trump was speaking in North Carolina. at a rally for Republican Senate candidate Michael Watley. I have to say, you have a little higher, you have a higher. It's a very inexpensive price to pay for what we've done. Remember that it's a little more. It's even if it was, frankly, even it was a lot more. In Yemen, the United Nations warns a number of people displaced by fighting between

Houthi militias and Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces has soared to 112,000. And it's continuing to climb as a number of. both sides trade cross border strikes. On Thursday, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Huthi rejected claims by Saudi Arabia and its allies that his forces had targeted the Holy City of Mecca in a drone attack calling the claim an ugly lie. He said his fighters were focused on attacking Saudi military sites and oil infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Trump administration said Thursday it approved the sale of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, Saudi Arabia at a cost of over $24 billion, the transaction.

would require congressional approval. A coalition of Palestinian and progressive groups is urging universities, think tanks, elected officials, and others to refuse to hire or collaborate with a group of 20 former Biden officials accused of, quote, promoting lying about and covering up the Gaza genocide, unquote. The drop the genocide 20 campaign has targeted several former Biden staffers, including Anthony Blinken, who served as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan, former national security. Security Advisor and Lloyd Austin, Biden's Secretary of Defense, all of whom were pivotal in backing Israel's war on Gaza. Since this time as Secretary of State, Blinken was given a book deal with

Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House and has often participated in public speaking events, including at Harvard's Kennedy School. The campaign is also demanding the Biden staffers be banned from any future political appointments. The coalition said, quote, the culture of bipartisan elite immunity is what drives U.S. war crimes and support for war crimes. This dynamic is a key reason Biden officials knew they could arm, defend, and cover up the genocide in Gaza for 15 months, and simply move back into liberal spaces, nonprofits, and future governments, unquote. Russian strikes on Ukraine's capital region injured at least 19 people on Thursday, including two children in Odessa.

Seven people were injured, including two children while in Zaporica. A Russian first-person-viewed drone struck a passenger bus, injuring eight commuters. Separately, a Russian jet-powered drone hit a shopping mall, injuring one person and triggering a massive fire. This is Anna, a 32-year-old Zaporicha resident, who was out with her husband when the drone struck nearby. We went out for a while. walk and didn't hear the jet-powered Shahid drone. It's hard to hear it now. It's not like the Shahid drones used to be. The Russians are starting to threaten us, the ordinary people, in the hope that people will rise up. But that won't happen. We are strong. We are free and we will stand firm.

On Thursday, Ukrainian forces struck one of Russia's largest oil refineries in the city of Yaroslavil north of Moscow. The attack came after President Trump Sunday, told Ukrainian President Volody Merzolensky to halt attacks on Russian diesel infrastructure, and his U.S. diesel prices hit a record high of nearly $6.40 a gallon. Earlier today, Poland's Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, said in a speech to Parliament that Moscow's planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on Poland and other European countries that support Ukraine, and Slovakia's Prime Minister, Robert Fico, said Europe is closer than ever to a large-scale war with Russia. Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to approve new sanctions on Iran and Russia.

The legislation passed the Senate last month. It's named Lindsey Graham sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 after the late South Carolina Republican Senator, who was an outspoken proponent of both arming Ukraine and attacking Iran. The Kremlin said in a response that new sanctions would make it harder to reach a peace deal in Ukraine. The White House has withdrawn its nomination of Lance Schroier, a former Oklahoma State Trooper, to lead ICE. That's immigration and customs enforcement. Schroyer currently serves as advisor to Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen as no previous experience with ICE. In more immigration news, lawyers who spoke to the New York Times, say federal agencies such as U.S. citizenship and immigration services, are rejecting and heavily redacting vital documents and records needed by immigrants to prove they have permission to be. in the U.S. and fight their deportation. Federal agencies are also claiming these records do not exist.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports ICE has stopped tracking data on miscarriages in its custody as the agency detains a record number of pregnant women and teenagers. ICE recorded at least 18 miscarriages during the first nine months of the Trump administration, but no data has been recorded since October of last year. Women and girls in ICE custody have repeatedly decried medical neglect. A federal immigration agent charged with shooting a Venezuelan man appeared before a Minnesota judge Thursday following months of evading arrest. ICE officer Christian Castro faces felony assault charges and was initially arrested in Texas, but Trump ally, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, refused to extradite Castro to Minnesota. Castro also faces a separate hearing

today, Friday, in federal court for charges that he lied and attempted to cover up the January shooting of the Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa-Sales, who was wounded in the leg. This is Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. The process of holding Mr. Castro accountable for his firing a weapon through the front door, striking Julio Sosa-Sales, endangering the lives of others, and lying to law enforcement has begun. Despite the best efforts of the Texas governor to ignore both the United States Constitution and crystal clear Supreme Court precedent.

The Trump administration continues deportations to Haiti with a fourth flight arriving at the International Airport in Kapassian last week. This comes as a new report published by the Ohio Immigrant Alliance says the detention of Haitians has surged by 142% at four immigration jails in Ohio since the end of temporary protected status or TPS in late July. The group says ICE has accelerated the arrest of Haitians living in Ohio by racial profiling, community spaces, including their schools and apartment buildings, detaining people at their ICE appointments, and placing ankle monitors and collaborating with state and local police. Meanwhile, Amnesty International is calling for the release of two men deported from the U.S. and sent to Equatorial Guinea, who have been detained by local police forces and may face torture. One of them is Ahmed Soleiman, a 30-year-old gay asylum seeker from Egypt who was living in

Arizona when he was detained by ICE despite being granted protections by U.S. immigration court. The men were reportedly brutally beaten, and Amnesty believes they were arrested for speaking out about the inhumane conditions endured by U.S. deportees while confined in a decommissioned hotel in the city of Malibu. The deportees have also faced threats from armed forces. CNN is reporting more than 300 workers from South Korea who were swept up in a federal immigration raid at a Hyundai electric vehicle manufacturing plant in Georgia and deported last year have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. Last September, nearly 500 federal state and local agents descended on the plant and arrested hundreds of workers who say they were held in inhumane

conditions, not provided interpreters, were shackled and forced to sign documents. They did not understand. The plaintiff said this resulted in intentional infliction of emotional distress, humiliation, and lasting psychological trauma, unquote. And a federal judge in Washington, D.C. has ordered the Trump administration to give at least 30 days notice before making any major changes to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Thursday's emergency ruling came after President Trump said he would withhold funding for renovations to the Kennedy Center, essentially condemning it, unless he's allowed to inscribe his name on the building. On Wednesday, a New York Times photographer captured images of Trump, a board Air Force One, looking at a poster board appearing to show a building reduced to rubble along with the caption, Kennedy Center demolished. Later in the broadcast, we'll speak with the Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winning artist Riannon Giddens about the attacks on the Kennedy Center. And those are some of the headlines.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org.org. Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York with Juan Gonzalez and Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. As world leaders prepared ahead to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, known as Unga, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez has warned the world has entered, quote, an era of deep uncertainty, unquote. He identified three existential threats confronting the global community, runaway artificial intelligence, the climate crisis, and deepening inequalities. The UN General Assembly is also taking place amidst the ongoing U.S. war in Iran, which has

destabilized the Middle East and disrupted global energy markets leading to higher fuel prices around the world. A new report by the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University has found Americans have spent over $100 billion more on fuel due to the war in Iran. The source of the source of Boring fuel prices have sparked protests in many countries, including Syria, Guatemala, Portugal, France, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. We're joined now by Amitab Behar, Executive Director of Oxfam International. You've just come in to New York for the UN General Assembly. It's also Climate Week. Your focus is the deepening inequality in the world.

Lay out what your message is, Amitab. Absolutely. Let me start on a personal note. I grew up in India and UN was all about hope, hope of a just and a peaceful future. But at the moment, what we are seeing is that the world is torn apart by the inequality emergency, the climate crisis, the wars all around. Just look at the obscenity of inequality. At the moment, 3,000 billionaires have a combined wealth of $18.3 trillion.

That's almost the GDP of China. And this is the time when the quarter of the global population actually lives with food insecurity. Almost 780 million sleep hungry. They don't get three square meals a day. But I think what is really important is that we need to reclaim our agency. We need to ensure that there are solutions and there are solutions and there are positive steps being taken at this moment.

And that's really the message to the economy. UN. That UN cannot continue to live with this fragility. It needs decisive action. It needs to give moral leadership. It needs to ensure accountability, ensure impunity is not tolerated. So there's a multiple expectations from the UN, and that's the message from us. But Amitabehar, how would you, what precisely would you expect the United Nations to do, especially given the reality that in the current U.S. government, there's more of a continued move toward unilateralism to ignoring the U.N., ignoring international agreements. So let me start by talking of, say, inequality, because it's about rebuilding our future.

And on inequality, I actually see more than the glimmers of hope. One of those big ideas that emerged from the G20 in South Africa is the idea of the international panel on inequality. And that's being backed now by several member states, Brazil, South Africa, Spain, Norway. The entire Africa Union has agreed to back this. So there are different initiatives where specific countries are coming together to fight inequality and also for a better future. And this is really the moment where we do need to look at major reforms.

So I'm glad that UN is talking about UN reforms, UN at 80. So the reforms need to look at some of those change geopolitics of the world. We live in a very different world from 1945 when we saw the UN coming. You cannot continue with the veto power, particularly the penholder power. We need to really, really change that. The realities of the world in terms of where you have a far stronger global south, that needs clearer representation. And I would say one of the most important things is we must go back to the opening lines of the UN Charter, which is about we the people. The people get often missing in these conversations.

So it's bringing the people's voice. At the moment, you're seeing a shrinking of civic space. More than the 90% of global population actually lives in closed context. So there are different challenges, but as I started, there are real possibilities of change. And let me just add that while I talked of the member states and them coming together, I also take huge inspiration for me personally. I'm hugely inspired by the movements across the world. And just, Amy, you were talking about it.

These were, you know, whether I come from India. So I've seen movements in Sri Lanka, in Bangladesh, in Nepal, changing regimes. In India, it's the first time the cockroach Jantaparteer student's movement was able to get a union minister dismissed. So let's not underestimate people's power. People's power is here, and they will certainly move towards a more just an equal society. And the key change that the UN will make very soon is the selection of a new secretary general, as Antonio Guterres, is scheduled to step down. What is Oxfam calling for in terms of a decision on who will lead the world body?

It is really odd that in all these 80 years of the UN, we have not had a woman secretary general. We must ensure that we have a woman secretary general. But let me also say it is not just having a woman secretary general. What we are talking of is feminist politics. It is a feminist worldview leading the UN. And that's a fundamental shift that we need to make. The new Secretary General is going to have an extremely full plate, starting with tackling the emergency of inequality, the climate crisis, and the wars growing everywhere.

So this is a moment pretty much of a fundamental reboot for the world, and we need that decisive, moral, normative leadership coming from the Secretary General. Oxfam is warning that artificial intelligence AI can accelerate global and quality. Talk about what you're demanding there. So I think it's very clear. And now you are seeing in the last few days, the AI companies themselves are saying that they need regulation. It is really important that there is some multilateral initiatives to govern the AI. We've seen over the years technology when it comes in, we often come say that, oh, it's going to be a huge boon for people.

But often we see how it ends up actually accentuating inequalities. We saw during COVID. It was really heartbreaking to see that you actually had vaccine apartheid. Even for something of the scale of the COVID pandemic, there were pharmaceutical companies who wanted to make profits out of that pandemic. So it is really important that we take a decisive multilateral action. in terms of the AI. But you know, the story goes bigger. This is also about who owns these AI companies. It's those tech billioners who are pretty much now, you know, I report earlier this

year at DaVos talked of now the super rich are not just happy being wealthy. This is about buying political power. So we are shifting from this extreme inequality to oligarchies. It's the same people who own AI are the people who are buying political power. These are oligarchies. They're the ones who also control media. They're the ones who have full control of narratives. And then you have essentially state capture by these oligarchs. So it is AI. It is about our future. It is about the future of democracy. And this needs decisive action. I also wanted to ask you about the issue of Palestine and Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinians. You recently released a statement title,

Palestinians should lead the rebuilding of Gaza. How would you compare how Oxfam views what needs to be done versus President Trump's so-called Board of Peace? The Board of Peace came into existence in November 25. And it has a lot of legislative powers, executive powers, but what do you see? The continued killing of civilians over the last one year so, even after the peace vote has been created, you're at the moment seeing in Gaza 90% of the people being water insecure. 66% of the people do not even get the basic minimum standard of 6 liters of drinking water. This is not what we expected from any kind of a new executive body.

What we really need is the Palestinian people rebuilding and leading their own future. Finally, this last minute climate, we are moving into climate. week this week in New York, and then, of course, the UN Climate Summit, which will be taking place in Turkey. What are the immediate demands? You spend much of your time in Nairobi, in India. We see the devastating effect of the breaking way of the glacier, the melting of the glacier in Nepal, and they have thousands. Yeah. The pictures from Nepal, I'm sure everybody has seen them, heart-wrenching. And what we need to recognize is, that the burden of climate crisis is born by the most vulnerable and marginalized people.

It's the poorest of the poor. It's women who are the ones who are actually facing the burden of this climate crisis. We again need serious action, not just empty words. As a look at the question of climate financing, even according to the estimates made by G.S. 77 and China. What we actually have, it's not even 10% of their expectations. So we need decisive action. But let me also further add. Again, this is about the actions that the states need to take, but this is also linked to inequality. It's the super rich. Let me just give you another interesting data point. The 0.1% of the top in terms of the wealth emit carbon in one day, which is

more than 50% of the bottom. So that's, you know, in one day they're able to emit that carbon, which is more than anybody living in the bottom 50%. This is about the inequality crisis. We need to understand that the inequality crisis, the climate crisis, the crisis of democracy, they are interlinked, the different dimensions of the same fundamental problem of an unequal political economy that we have created.

I'm Tad Behar. Oxfam International Executive Director here for the UN General Assembly next week. Coming up, the Pulitzer Prize and Grammy-winning artist, Rianne Giddens. She's out with a new album today. Hope is the thing with feathers. She'll talk about McElmore being kicked off Ed Shearin's tour. She'll talk about what's happening with the arts in the United States and her own work. Stay with us.

Walk with me, walk with me, walk with me. Walk with me. A duet by Riannon Giddens and her sister, Lelena Harrington, from Riannon's latest album, released today. Hope is The Thing with Feathers. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. We turn now to the Pulitzer Prize winning two-time Grammy winning multi-instrumentalist Riannon Giddens. In 2023, she won the Pulitzer Prize for music for her opera, Omar, about Omar, Ibn Saeed, a Muslim scholar in Africa, who was sold into slavery in the 1800s.

Riannon has had a remarkable career with her time with the Carolina Chocolate Drops an old-time black string band who are work as a musical consultant on Ryan Kugler's landmark film Sinners. Rianning Giddens recently launched the Biscuits and Banjos Foundation, which celebrates the African diaspora's role in shaping American identity and culture through music, literature, food, and community. Rianning Giddens' new album is out today. Hope is a thing with feathers.

On Thursday, we sat down together in our studio, and Riannon performed her song Wish in Vain with Dirk Powell. I wish I wish I wish in vain. To joy, sorry. I wish my heart were made of. grass. I wish, I wish I wish in vain.

For then I let you go at glass. And likewise to you do the same. I wish we're on some shady I wish, I wish I wish it. Writing was for peaceful once a wish that you and I'm my love. Riannon Giddens and Derek Powell performing Wish in vain in our studio. After they performed, I spoke to Riannon Giddens.

In wish in vain that you've just performed in the studio, what was the inspiration for it? Can you talk about the world we're living in now, the world refugee crisis? Oh, yeah. It's really hard to know what to do, you know. As an artist, as a musician, I feel really grateful to be able to use the art that I was given to try to deal with these emotionally huge and complex issues that have been, you know, part of humanity for generations for millennia, right? the idea of having to move from one place to another under no fault of your own, whether it's environmental disaster, whether it's nationalism, or whether it's, you know, all of these things that are happening all over the world. But at the center of it are human beings. And we all miss and love the same things. You know, we all miss each other. We love each other. We love our food. We love our music. You know, we have the same loves and hates. And I think part of the

job of folk music, folk music idiom, is to connect, connect those things emotionally to each other because like that's really the only way forward is to is to recognize ourselves in that other person. So that's just thinking about like if I was in that situation, what would I be thinking? You know, like, what would I be missing my family? I'd be missing my friends. Be missing, you know, like, will I ever see you again? You know, will I ever get to talk to you again? Will I ever hear my language again? You know, all of those things. Talk about collaborating with your sister with the song Walk With Me. My sister is my first, you know, kind of my first everything.

She's been there for me since I was born. She's seven years older. And through all the ups and downs of childhood and family strife and all that stuff, we've been rocks for each other. And she's the first person I sang with and has shaped how I think about even singing harmony. So to have that so prominently highlighted on the record feels really good. And it's also sibling harmony, which is very special. And it's also a tradition in North Carolina of sibling gospel harmony, you know, that we're also pulling from.

Walk with me, oh, Lord. You know, Fannie Lou Hamer is part of the story of that song. And so these things... Tell us about Fannie Lou Hamer. Well, Fannie Lou Hamer was an amazing act. activists, a woman who like lived her life, lived her convictions in her life and, you know, really didn't get her flowers in her lifetime. You know what I mean? Like, and it just, it just makes me so distraught thinking about like what that woman went through, you know,

but can you tell us what you? Well, I mean, she's like, and just in trying to get rights for her people, just, you know, like coming from from such a hard background and just being just completely laser focused on what she was trying to do while her body is taking all of this abuse like physical abuse but also the emotional abuse of how she had to had to go through walk through life the the weight that that life particularly when she was when she was alive the weight and the and the tear that that does on black bodies and just for her to have to go through all that And to not really be able to see, you know, the, the, well, I don't even know where we are right now. I mean, it's really hard to talk about the civil rights movement and think about where we are right now.

I'm going to be honest with you, you know, because, you know, what a deal with, what they've went through. You know, what Fannie Lou of Human went through. Like, she was like, beat and like, her life, just that we can vote, you know? beat by prison guards in jail. Yeah, absolutely. And like, was trying to do something for her people, you know? And like the selflessness of that

and like here we are, like where are, like it's just I can't even really be articulate about it because it's just so distressing to think about what folks went through and here we are with our voting rights being challenged and you know

the whole system being destabilized kind of day by day by day. And it's just like, what was it for? You know, if we don't, if we don't figure out a way to stop what's happening, I don't know. I don't know. But what it does when I think of what's happening now is, boy, it just puts a whole other light on what those folks were doing and the strength that they had, you know.

And we just have to figure out how to draw from that and find that again in this fractured landscape. Rianne and Giddens, you talk about having this conversation today and coming back to the United States. I mean, you go back and forth, North Carolina, Ireland, where you also live. And it makes me think about what is happening right now as we speak. You know, the Ed Sheeran musical tour through the stadiums of the United States, all these bands and his own backup band. And now he's asked McElmore not to be a part of the act. because he says free Palestine. He sings a song called Hins Hall about Rajab Hinde, a five-year-old girl who israeli soldiers killed in Gaza, along with many members of her family.

I'm wondering, you coming from Ireland, you have Ed Sheeran, not only the musical acts he's with have quit the tour, but his own backup band, the Irish folk band, Bayoga. And the Irish musician Aaron Rowe dropped out as well. And Rowe said in a social media post, as Irish people, we know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation. I cannot stand by and allow billionaires to use their position of power to silence the rightful voices of those who speak up against Israeli genocide and who highlight the savage murder of children. Your thoughts. I mean, it's been really interesting to watch the fallout. I've been really thinking a lot about celebrity and a lot about like multi-millionaire musicians

and what does it all mean? You know, because I think we have a really unhealthy relationship with who we lionize and who we put out in the world. And I just think this is a crossroads, right? I mean, because, like, Ed Shearing is a guitar player. You know, he writes songs and he's a lovely musician, and I'm sure he's a lovely person and he's like, you know, contributed a lot to charity and I'm sure he treats his people well. None of that is at issue here.

What at issue for me is that when you hire somebody like Macklemore who's been very pro-Palestinian and his, I mean, this is not a surprise, right? It shouldn't be a surprise. And when you hire Irish musicians, Ireland has been one of the only steadfast, like, Palestinian-informed countries, like, you know, that I know of. You know, and look, I'm also just banjo player, but from what I see, and I'm like, to hire... Just a banjo player. Well, you are a just banjo player. I like that. I'm going to get a shirt made.

I'll give you credit. But like, but I'm still just like, we're, like, these people are not gods. You know what I mean? And they're fallible human beings. And it's like he hires all these Irish people and then Maclemore. And then it's like, I don't know. It's just like, well, I don't know what he was expecting, you know. So this is the thing that really disturbs me is, you know, as a musician, you have to think about what you're doing in the world.

And he has every right to do whatever he wants. But and people will pile on as they will. But I just, I really think that there's two things. One, he can do whatever he wants, right? doesn't mean that we don't take him to account for that. We have the right to take him to account for that because that's what being in the public eye means, you know, and you have the benefits and the detractions from that.

But number two, okay, like, let's talk about that. As a musician, I'm like, I'm very interested in, you know, in that, because I'm like, you have power there. Why are you not using that power, right? He's folding. And I'm just like. And folding, too, let's talk about Robert Cramp. who's the owner of the New England Patriots, also Gillette Stadium.

And he said he has organized a boycott of other stadium owners. So if Ed Shearren wants to continue through his tour, McElmore can't be a part of it. Right. And so that's the pressure that's on Ed Shearant. And like, I sympathize with him. He's got all these people who have their jobs depending on these stadium shows. Many of them have now quit. Right.

And I understood that that was a difficult to see. decision, but for me it wasn't a difficult decision. You know what I mean? I'm like, you're a multimillionaire. But anyway, look, the second thing is, is just what you said. I'm like, okay, Ed Shear and whatever, but if it doesn't direct the attention to Robert Kraft and if it doesn't direct the attention to the people who actually have the power who are doing these things, that's, then it's for not, you know? So like, we have to, we have to be informed. We have to inform ourselves and stop expecting celebrities to do it for us. Like, we have to go what do we stand for?

What are we putting our money towards? What are we putting our time towards? The entertainment complex is massive. It's too big. There's too many people out there. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, put me out of a job. Pick up a banjo.

Play some music. Write your own song. Not to perform for other people, but to just like process the emotions that are going on right now. People need art to do that, but they need to do it themselves. And like, be inspired by somebody

who's a really good songwriter or whatever. I'm not saying that. there's there's room for both. In 2024, you led the Silk Road Ensemble and releasing Palestinian lullabies. Yeah. It's like, you know, one of our, whatever our members is Lebanese, like, you know, the, the, being in, in a group that includes somebody from the Congo, right? That includes somebody from the Armenian diaspora, right?

That includes somebody from India. Like being in a group where people are bringing the histories with them and telling personal stories, telling what this means. You know what I mean? It puts it all in a different light. And you're just like, if I can't do something like this, you know, what am I doing? What am I doing? Like we now do wayna Aramala in our show, you know, and I've interpolated, whatever. I've written verses about Tulsa, Oklahoma and Wilmington.

1898 into and it's like if we don't pull our struggles together if we don't connect the struggles together and the overall larger patterns of extraction the larger patterns of colonialism larger patterns of empire larger patterns of massive money making if we don't connect those dots between the the struggles we're never going to get anywhere so for me that's what music is for That's what art is for. And that's why we have to make music with people from different backgrounds because then we have that conversation. And then it turns into a song and then it turns to a performance. As you talk about what's happening today, the final question is about President Trump saying he may well rip down the JFK Center for the performing arts, which many take as a metaphor for the performing arts for the role of arts in our culture.

Yeah. Unless he gets his name in scrambling. in the marble in the building. The new normal is insane. You know what I mean? Like, just consider what we're talking about, you know, the tantrums of a person who has unbelievable amounts of power. I don't really know.

It's really hard to articulate. But I will say it's also tied to generative AI. because generative AI is controllable and artists are not. Just look at the McElmore thing, right? Why people want generative AI to make the music is because they can make it do whatever they want. And this is tied to taking the Kennedy Center down because, like, artists like our job, and this is, you know, there is no apolitical stances, right? Because our artists job.

Now, I'm not talking about, you know, I think part of the problem is that we have a commercial music industry where music is a commodified product, you know, and artists survive in that framework, but in spite of not because of, right? So you sell what you got to sell in order to make the statement that you're trying to make, right? But I think that artist's job is to push on these fissures in society, is to make people uncomfortable, is to make people think about what they're doing, is to make people think, who are we morally? Right? So people who are in power only want the things that are going to keep them in power

and that are going to not challenge them. So artists are going to challenge them because that's what we do. So, yeah, let's take it down. take down the Kennedy Center, take down, you know, 40% of new music on Spotify is AI. Like, you see, it's happening. It's happening. People don't even know that they're listening to AI music, you know?

Like the Grammy, the Grammys, like, they're not making a stand on how much of music is AI. We have to label. It should be labeled. It should be regulated. It should be, you know, so people can choose whether they opt in to air or not, but this idea, this myth of inevitability. Well, it's going to happen anyways. We've got to get in front of it. No, nobody agreed on this.

Just the people with the money and the power agreed on this. You know what I mean? So we deserve the opportunity to say no. Riannon Giddens, Pulitzer Prize and Grammy-winning artist. Her new album is out today. hope is the thing with feathers. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Mimi Goodman.

Coming up with Juan Gonzalez, we look at the legacy of Occupy Wall Street 15 years ago this week. Activists began an encampment in New York that sparked an international movement and popularized the slogan, we are the 99%. I wish I was stuck. I wish I wish in vain And in a fall To join A sad refrain

I wish my heart were made of breath I wish I wish I wish I wish in vain For then I let you go at that And likewise to you do the same. I wish we're on some shady rock. I wish, I wish, I wish in vain. We're performed by Riannon Giddens and Dirk Powell in our Democracy Now studio. Today is the release of Riannon's new album, Hope is the Thing with Feathers.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We end today's show looking back at Occupy Wall Street. 15 years ago this week, September 17, 2011, thousands of activists marched on the Financial District here in New York, then formed an encampment in Zuccotti Park, launching a movement that shifted the conversation on economic inequality. Protesters would go on to sleep in Zucati Park for nearly two months before the New York police raided the encampment. The Occupy Movement spread across the nation and the globe. Under the slogan, we are the 99%. The impact of the Occupy Movement is still being felt today.

Democracy Now is one of the only national outlets to report on the first day of the action. This is our producer, Sam Alcoff, filing this report. On Saturday, thousands of protesters took to the streets of downtown Manhattan for what was described as an action to occupy Wall Street. Inspired by the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring and the European anti-austerity movements, Ad Busters, a Vancouver-based culture jamming magazine, put out a call for Saturday's protest on Wall Street in July. The goals were various, from limiting corporate contributions to political campaigns, to auditing the Federal Reserve, to challenging all of global capitalism. Protesters included 71-year-old Mary Ellen Marino of Princeton, New Jersey.

I came because I'm upset with the fact that the bailout of Wall Street didn't help any of the people holding mortgages. All the money went to Wall Street and none of it went to Main Street. And we've just learned that Geithner was actually asked to split up the city bank and he didn't do it. And Obama didn't do anything about it. The plan wasn't simply for a one-day protest, but an ongoing and creative occupation of the financial district itself. Organizer Lorenzo Serna. The idea is to have an encampment. Like, this isn't a one-day event.

Like, we're hoping that people come prepared to stay as long as they can. And then we're there to support each other. But on Saturday, after hundreds arrived, the NYPD shut Wall Street down itself, barricading activists off from Wall Street and forcing a move to the nearby Zucati Park. Despite sometimes tense standoffs with the police, hundreds slept in the park and have maintained that they will stay until their demands are met. That report by Democracy Now, Sam Alcoff. You can see the whole thing online at DemocracyNow.org. But this is 15 years later. And we're joined in studio by Yotam Arom, New York-based political organizer, educator and writer, the author of the new book, For Louder Days, Reaching Beyond a Politics of Powerlessness. Yotam helped organize the Occupy Wall Street protests here in New York. Pick it up where Sam left off. You were there that day. Talk about the significance of this moment. 15 years ago? You know, it's hard to track how, the impact that movements have when they're happening.

And Occupy is a complicated one. I remember, actually, in the immediate aftermath, wondering, what did we accomplish? Did we win anything? And feeling, you know, a lot of loss and despair. But it's really clear to see now 15 years back, I mean, how much of an impact it's made. I think obvious things like, you know, thousands of people get politicized in these big movement moments, and that definitely happened with Occupy Wall Street, and then

training of lots of leaders and building of lots of organizational infrastructure that movements really didn't have at that time. But I think the biggest impact, I think the biggest contribution, is the 99% and the 1% this sort of intervention in the language of this, of the public. I think this is what movements

often do really well when they're successful. They change the public's common sense about something. And Occupy Wall Street changed the public's common sense about class and class struggle and inequality in this country. And I mean, I think when you, I think it's hard to see how you get a Bernie Sanders 2016 run without the public shifting its relationship to that story. Bernie's been saying the same thing for decades, you know, bless him. And, and, but suddenly it was popular. And that's because movements came around and made it a thing. And then, you know,

effective organizations and good politicians can can support that and turn it into something durable. how you get, you know, Bernie and AOC and the squad and so on. And yeah, I think that's a huge impact. And you'll talk, you talk about the, the international inspirations to occupy because clearly about a year earlier, the Arid Spring had broken out in May of 2011, the indignados in Spain. To what degree the activists in New York and across the United States were aware or inspired by those movements? Yeah, I think we were hugely, I think a lot of the people in the sort of heart of Occupy Wall Street were hugely inspired by those movements by Arab Spring. Yeah, I mean, the indignados in Spain and, you know, movements kind of all across.

And, yeah, and really saw ourselves as part of a lineage of mass movements in the streets, you know, taking life into their own hands. I think we were, and I think even the form, this sort of like decentralized taking over public squares were deeply inspired. On September 19th, 2001, two days after the start of Occupy, Democracy now interviewed the late activist and anthropologist David Graber, who's been credited with hoping to coin Occupy's defining rallying call. We are the 99%. He talked about who showed up on the first day of the protest. It was mostly young people, and most of them were people who'd gone through the educational system who were deeply in debt and who found it completely impossible to get jobs. I mean, these people have really felt really feel very strongly that they did the right thing. They did exactly what they were supposed to. The system has completely failed them. And they're not going to be saved by the people in charge.

If there's going to be any kind of society like we're worth living in, we're going to have to have to create it ourselves. That's the late David Graber. Of course, he was talking about that. There was two days after September 19, 2011. And then Occupy that mass protest in October in Times Square. Talk about the scene and looking up and seeing the ticker. Yeah. So this is a story in my book, too, that I helped, you know, played a bunch of roles to occupy Wall Street,

and one of them was helping to pull off this October 15th action, which was our biggest day of action. And, you know, we're sort of tearing through the streets of New York and shutting down banks and blocking traffic. And it was also the day that I think 100, 150 occupation started in other cities around the country. And not just big cities, but also like, you know, a parking lot in Idaho and, you know, the state lawn and whatever. And, you know, really became, you know, a significant political force. And that day ended in Times Square with like 80,000 people. And I remember this moment standing on a track.

can in Times Square. And you know, Times Square has these massive buildings and the ABC building has a ticker, a rolling ticker that pumps out the news. And we're standing there and the ticker goes, Occupy Wall Street goes worldwide while we're there. And it's this like time stops kind of moment. And I look back at that as actually as a pretty transformative moment for me. And I think, I think in a way Occupy was very transformative for a whole generation of us. for me what that moment was was a first feeling that we could build movements that

were powerful, that were popular. I think I had grown up in movements that had lost and were used to losing and I think we over time sort of accepted the idea that we were going to be on the margins. We were going to be the righteous few, but we weren't going to win.

And Occupy Wall Street was this first glimmer of oh, we could be we could be powerful. We could be something that the public is paying attention to. We could potentially win. And of course, that's not exactly how Occupy played out. But when you look at, you know, that is an important prerequisite to movements.

It's the sense that we could be powerful. But movements that don't believe that they can win tend to take on, you know, hard dynamics internally. You know, Tom, and you mentioned your book for a lot of, for louder days, reaching beyond the politics of powerlessness. But clearly, as you also mentioned, a lot of what the protesters were hoping for did not occur. And you also deal with the conflicts and divisions that develop within the movement. I'm wondering if you could talk about that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think, look, I think Occupy Wall Street brought us a lot, and I think there's a lot to be grateful for. But I also think in some ways it was an embodiment of this thing

that I call the politics of powerlessness, which is when movements and organizations internalize the sense that they belong on the margins and that they're always going to be on the margins, whether because out of bad habit or having lost for a very long time, we're feeling despair in the face of the climate crisis or this towering opponent, when movements don't believe that they can win, they tend to turn away from our opponent, we turn to turn away from the public we're supposed to be organizing, and we turn towards each other and often against each other because that's what we can control. We don't like to feel powerless in the face of this big, wide world.

So we sort of enact power on each other, and that often looks like tearing down leaders. It looks like, you know, forming these sort of tight clubs that are really hard for everyday people to join. It looks like, you know, battles over identity and things like that, and a kind of conflict avoidance that that makes all that possible. So the book is really about, you know, Occupy was in a way a case. in that, where I learned a lot of that. And then the book is stories from my work as a movement facilitator and strategist for social movement organizations, supporting them to work through that thing and watching them break through those patterns over the course of the last 10, 15 years.

Yeah, that's what I mean by the politics of powerlessness. I'll stop there. And to what degree do you think the decentralized, autonomous, anti-harrowing? approach of the Occupy protesters made it more difficult for them to actually, once the protest ended, build national organizations that could actually exercise power? Have you thought about that? Totally. Yeah, it's another good question. I think, you know, all the things that made Occupy magical were also its sort of self-destruct mechanism. You know, the sort of leaderlessness this was a thing that invited people to join and take agency and be creative. And movements

often are decentralized and that's how they go to scale. But it also made it impossible to figure out, to craft a strategy, to build long-term organization, to really absorb all these thousands of people who are being politicized. In some ways, that is just part of what happens in movement moments. And it's our responsibility as movements to be building organizations and parties and things that can capture that kind of momentum. But I do think, that, yeah, we got it wrong on a lot of things. We had a ton of internal conflict that really, I think, you know, jeopardized the project. Well, you write all about it for louder days, reaching beyond a politics of powerlessness as we talk about Yotam Marum's book out on the 15th

anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. That does it for our show. On the 22nd, on Tuesday, We'll be at IFC here in New York for the screening of Steal the Story, please. Then to London beginning Friday, September 25th. And over the weekend, as well, we'll be at the Picture House Hackney. And then we'll be in Copenhagen on the 29th at the Grand Theater. And then to Berlin, Germany. On the 1st of October, we'll be at Shepore. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez for another edition of Democracy Now.