Democracy Now!

1 month ago | democracynow.org | Amy Goodman |Denis Moynihan

By Amy Goodman & Denis MoynihanMay Day, May 1st, has long been a day of protest, and this year is no exception. Protests are happening across the country, against President Donald Trump and his attack on the social safety net, on immigrants, on people of color and the LGBTQ community, and more. On May 1st, 1971, massive protests against the Vietnam war engulfed Washington, DC.

1 month ago | democracynow.org

Organizers across the United States are planning a massive day of May Day protests against the Trump administration. Organizers say that they have broad support from groups targeted by the administration, including immigrants, federal workers and more. “Instead of attacking only one community … they are attacking everybody at the same time, and that enabled us to gather a really broad coalition,” says Jorge Mújica, strategic organizer for Arise Chicago. In New York, organizers are calling on people to march alongside them in Foley Square. “We need to fight this corporate takeover,” says Nisha Tabassum, lead organizer for worker issues at Make the Road New York. “We are the many; they are the few.” Los Angeles organizers are expecting hundreds of thousands of protesters to join them in opposition to Trump’s policies. “We are taking our power back,” says Georgia Flowers Lee, National Education Association vice president for United Teachers Los Angeles.

1 month ago | democracynow.org | Amy Goodman |Denis Moynihan

By Amy Goodman & Denis MoynihanPresident Donald Trump hates the press perhaps as much as he loves it. Since his 2015 embrace of electoral politics, though, his lifelong craving for headlines has been at odds with adversarial journalism that holds him to account. Thus, he attacks the press as the “enemy of the people,” insults journalists and even incites violence against them.

1 month ago | democracynow.org

Two advocacy groups working along the U.S.-Mexico border are accusing Customs and Border Protection of human rights abuses and violating international law over the agency’s practice of detaining immigrants and asylum seekers in open-air sites, where they’re exposed to extreme weather and other dangerous conditions. The Southern Border Communities Coalition and Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law have warned the Trump administration may expand its use of open-air detention in New Mexico, Arizona and California by having the U.S. military seize control of a buffer zone along a sprawling stretch of the southern border. The groups are urging the United Nations Human Rights Council to review the practice.

1 month ago | democracynow.org

As the Vatican prepares the funeral for Pope Francis and church leaders begin to consider his replacement, we look at the late pontiff’s environmental legacy. Pope Francis frequently called for action on the climate crisis and urged his followers to be good stewards of the Earth. He also openly criticized the role of wealthy nations and capitalism in causing the climate crisis. “He brought together the riches of Christian and Catholic tradition to bear with the prophetic work of social movements around the world in confronting a global crisis,” says Nathan Schneider, professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Schneider is also a contributing writer at America, a national Catholic monthly magazine published by the Jesuits, where he has been covering Catholic engagement with climate change and the economy. Pope Francis argued that “our relationship with the Earth depends on justice among people, and that in order to address this environmental crisis, we need to also address the crisis of disposability, of treating not only the planet, but each other, as disposable,” says Schneider.