The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope (2 page)

This book is dedicated to our parents,

Patricia Moynihan, the late Michael Moynihan

and the late George and Dorrie Goodman

Acknowledgments

This book exists only thanks to the contributions and support of so many.

First, the remarkable team at
Democracy Now!
, who work day and night to give voice to the Silenced Majority. Julie Crosby, Brenda Murad, and Karen Ranucci have for many years committed themselves tirelessly, and without them our work would be impossible.

Our daily, global, grassroots news hour is produced by a remarkable team, including
Democracy Now!
’s award-winning journalist and cohost Juan Gonzalez, our incredible team of producers: Mike Burke, Renee Feltz, Aaron Maté, Steve Martinez, Nermeen Shaikh, Deena Guzder, Hany Massoud, Robby Karran, Sam Alcoff, and Amy Littlefield; and the team who pulls together the broadcast each morning, including Mike DiFilippo, Miguel Nogueira, Becca Staley, Hugh Gran, John Wallach, Vesta Goodarz, Jon Randolph, Kieran Krug-Meadows, Rah Campenni, Carlo de Jesus, Ahmed Abdel Kouddous, Jon Gerberg and Manal Khan; and the crew who helps keep the whole operation running smoothly, among whom are Neil Shibata, Isis Phillips, Angie Karran, Miriam Barnard, Rob Young, Wayne Neale, Jessica Lee, Simin Farkhondeh, Diana Sands, Sumner Rieland and Brendan Allen.

Democracy Now!
’s Spanish language team, in addition to putting out our daily headlines in text and audio for the world, also does a very careful translation of the column, along with an audio version of it. Spanning many countries, this amazing group includes Clara Ibarra, Maria Eva Blotta, Mercedes Camps, Alléne Hébert, César Gamboa, Fernanda Goméz, Andres Conteris, Oscar Benitez, Daniella Méndez, Marcela Schenck, Gonzalo Giuria, Rossana Spinelli, Fernanda Gerpe, and the inimitable Chuck Scurich.

Also, we continue to be inspired by the very talented journalists who have worked with us and moved on to continue as friends as they pursue their work around the world, including Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Anjali Kamat, Nicole Salazar, Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, John Hamilton, Jaisal Noor, Ryan Devereaux, Frank Lopez, Julie Drizin, Dan Coughlin, Rick Rowley, Jacquie Soohen and Jeremy Scahill. Allan Nairn remains a constant inspiration as both friend and journalist.

We thank Patrick Lannan, Andy Tuch, Laurie Betlach, Randall Wallace, Janet MacGillivray Wallace, Irma Weiss, Diana Cohn, Israel and Edith Taub, Len Goodman, Edith Penty, Roy Singham and the Thoughtworkers.

At King Features, Glenn Mott, the ever-patient Chris Richcreek, and Amy Anderson, and the talented team at Haymarket Books, especially Anthony Arnove, Julie Fain, Sarah Macaraeg, and Eric Kerl.

Also deep appreciation for the support of Elisabeth Benjamin, Caren Spruch, Maria Carrion, and their little and not-so-little ones, Ceci, Rory, Sara, Aliza, Gabriela, and Estrella.

Loving thanks to our family members, as always, who provide constant support, including the Goodman brothers, Dan, David and Steve, along with sisters-in-law Sue Minter and Ruth Levine, and all the incredible nieces and nephews: Jasper, Ariel, Eli, Sarah and Anna. Also the Moynihan brothers Tim, Sean and Mike, sister Deirdre, sisters-in-law Mary, Kate, and Amy, the nieces and nephews Quinn, Liam, Maren, Nora, Evan, Maeve and Fergus, and, for her support, caring, and tolerance for frequent absences, Denis’ fiancée, Trish Schoch.

July 17, 2012

Foreword by Michael Moore

I first met Amy Goodman in the first month of the First Palestinian Intifada. It’s where I usually go to meet people. You throw an intifada—I’m there! And so is Amy. In fact, if you’re in the middle of any sort of rebellion, revolution, uprising or you’re just getting the familiar everyday ass-whoopin’ by forces that seem much greater than yours, that is where you’ll find the fearless Amy Goodman. It’s safe to say that she lives by the promise Tom Joad made to his mother at the end of Steinbeck’s
Grapes of Wrath
:

“I’ll be ever’where. . . . Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.”

If there’s one thing you can trust, it’s that Amy Goodman will always be there.

The weeks we spent together in the West Bank and Gaza were, to say the least, quite harrowing, and yet they had a profound impact on both of us. It was just after Christmas 1987, and the Palestinian people had decided to rise up and resist their Israeli minders with protests, civil disobedience, and stones. Stones! Ah, remember the days of stones? Such an innocent time it was back then.

Ralph Nader had asked a group of us, mostly writers and journalists, to go over to the Occupied Territories and bring back to the American public the truth about what was really going on. Little did we know that we would be witnessing the first weeks of what, sadly, is now a twenty-five-year-long resistance.

Here’s the dominant image in my head of Amy Goodman during that month in Palestine: When the Israeli soldiers started firing their rubber bullets at us and a group of unarmed Palestinians, we would all run the other way (i.e., away from the bullets) and Amy Goodman would be running the opposite way—straight into melee. She appeared as if she were invincible, and while I do not want to imply she’s some sort of superhero with supernatural powers, I will say that I’m glad she’s on our side and leave it at that!

Two years later, in 1990, Amy Goodman and fellow journalist Allan Nairn traveled to East Timor to cover their independence movement. And it was there that she personally witnessed the murder and massacre of 270 Timorese civilians by the Indonesian army. And for bearing witness to this horrific event, she and Allan were beaten by the army officials. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be present while 270 people are being killed. But there was Amy, again, on the front lines, searching out the truth, and at great personal risk.

Amy is a serious journalist who has won many of the nation’s top journalism honors, including the George Polk Award, the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, among others.

Amy’s daily television and radio show,
Democracy Now!
, is currently in its sixteenth year. How on earth she and her remarkable team pull this together, day after day, is beyond me. (When I did a weekly TV show I wanted to throw myself into the East River at the end of every week.) I have been on her show many times and I have seen backstage the incredible, professional operation they have over there in downtown Manhattan. I don’t know if they give tours like they do at NBC, but I would put the
Democracy Now!
headquarters on any intelligent tourist’s must-see list.  

This book, produced in cooperation with the incomparable Denis Moynihan, contains many of Amy’s commentaries and columns over the past years. It is fascinating reading, a true chronicle of our times, and a real head shaker as you read it and wonder: “How is it we’re still here?”

Back in early 1988, as we traveled the back roads of the West Bank, going from one village to another, there was much that we saw that would make even the most committed among us give up hope, beset with the knowledge that true justice seemed like a faraway destination. After all, this was a struggle between a massive military machine that had nuclear weapons and children with slingshots. Who wins that fight? Well, there was a day a long, long time ago that an oppressed people had a young boy with a slingshot, and that boy used that slingshot, and for that his people would be free. So, we didn’t leave Palestine in total despair. In fact, we were deeply inspired by the will and determination of the people we met, people who had nothing, people who were in it for the long haul and had no intention of giving up. It was a good lesson for us to learn.

It would be another two years before I would release my first film,
Roger & Me
, and it would be eight more years before
Democracy Now!
would go on the air. We became committed to doing our best with the slingshots we have.

Introduction: Occupy the Media

Journalism for (and by) the 99 Percent

The media conglomerates are not the only industry whose owners have become monopolistic in the American economy. But media products are unique in one vital respect. They do not manufacture nuts and bolts: they manufacture a social and political world.

—Ben Bagdikian,
The New Media Monopoly

Media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement and of the Arab Spring challenged much of the traditional corporate media around the world. Whether broadcasting from Tahrir Square, under the yoke of a U.S.-backed military dictatorship, or from Liberty Square, being beaten and harassed by the NYPD, a vibrant independent media emerged, a media that let people speak for themselves.

We need a media that covers grassroots movements, that seeks to understand and explain the complex forces that shape our society, a media that empowers people with information to make sound decisions on the most vital issues of the day: war and peace, life and death. Instead, the media system in the United States, increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer multinational corporations, spews a relentless stream of base “reality” shows (which depict anything but reality), hollow excuses for local news that highlight car accidents and convenience store robberies larded with ads, and the obsessive coverage of traffic, sports, and extreme weather (never linked to another two words:
climate change
). Perhaps most harmful of all, we get the same small circle of pundits who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong.

The corporate media came late to Occupy Wall Street, offered superficial, often derogatory coverage, and, with a few exceptions, still haven’t gotten it right.
Democracy Now!
was on the story before it began. Justin Wedes, one of the organizers, told our team the day before OWS started, “More than having any specific demand per se, I think the purpose of September seventeenth, for many of us who are helping to organize it and people who are coming out, is to begin a conversation, as citizens, as people affected by this financial system in collapse, as to how we’re going to fix it, as to what we’re going to do in order to make it work for us again.”

As the protest unfolded on its first day, organizer Lorenzo Serna told
Democracy Now!
, “The idea is to have an encampment . . . this isn’t a one-day event. We’re hoping that people come prepared to stay as long as they can and that we’re there to support each other.” Another participant explained, “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 of the money went to Wall Street, and none of it went to Main Street.”

The gross disparity in coverage between independent, noncommercial news organizations like
Democracy Now!
and most of the corporate entities was part of the problem that drove the OWS movement in the first place. Among the grievances against corporations detailed in the first major statement of OWS, the September 29, 2011, Declaration of the Occupation of New York City, was “They purposely keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.”

True to OWS’s accusations, corporate media descended on Zuccotti Park, complaining that the movement had no identifiable leaders and no clear, concise list of demands. Freshly hired by CNN, Erin Burnett, known for her fawning interviews with corporate CEOs at her prior position on the financial channel CNBC, produced, for her first show on CNN, a mocking segment called “Seriously?!” She opened with a clichéd video montage, mischaracterizing protesters as dirty, unemployed layabouts seeking handouts who were universally ignorant of the very financial industry they were protesting:

ERIN BURNETT: Seriously, it’s a mixed bag. But they were happy to take some time from their books, banjos, bongos, sports drinks, catered lunch. Yes, there was catered lunch, designer yoga clothing—that’s a little lemon logo—computers, lots of MacBooks, and phones to help us get to the bottom of it. This is unemployed software developer Dan. . . . So do you know that taxpayers actually made money on the Wall Street bailout?

DAN: I was unaware of that.

ERIN BURNETT: They did. They made—not on GM, but they did on the Wall Street part of the bailout.

DAN: Okay.

ERIN BURNETT: Does that make you feel any differently?

DAN: Well, I would have to do more research about it, but um—

ERIN BURNETT: If I were right it might?

DAN: Oh, sure.

[END VIDEO CLIP]

ERIN BURNETT: Seriously?! That’s all it would take to put an end to the unrest?