KENNY: When Jon Stewart 
launched The Daily Show
as a satirical fake 
news program,
and Stephen Colbert introduced 
truthiness into the lexicon,
little did they know 
they were foreshadowing
the coming 
Fakenstein monster.
[LAUGHTER]
Soon Kelly Ann Conway's 
alternative facts
would give entirely 
new meaning
to being pro-choice. 
[LAUGHTER]
This is the moment of post truth.
But really, disinformation warfare 
is as old as the hills
and we're hard wired for it.
We need to look no 
further than nature,
which wrote the 
playbook on fraud.
From orchids to octopi, 
nature is a hall of mirrors,
of lying, cheating and 
camouflaging.
[LAUGHTER]
As David Livingstone Smith observed 
in his book Why We Lie,
lying is a natural phenomenon.
The biosphere teams 
with mendacity.
Deception is widespread 
among non-human species,
perfectly normal and expectable.
“Human beings,” says Smith, 
“evolved to be natural born liars,
from the fairytales 
our parents told us
to the propaganda our 
governments feed us,
human beings spend their lives 
surrounded by pretense.
After all, humans are 
a predatory species,
and our main prey is 
our own kind.
It’s called the sting.”
From an evolutionary perspective, 
lying is a double-edged sword.
On the plus side, self-deception 
can be valuable
because we convincingly believe our 
own hokum when we're lying.
We also lie to ourselves 
to diminish stress.
As we know, we're 
all above average.
[LAUGHTER]
Research on depressives 
has found they may suffer
from a deficit 
of self-deception.
[LAUGHTER]
The predicament comes when we start 
believing our own press releases.
Nature does not gladly 
suffer fools and mistakes.
Self-deception may prove to be 
our evolutionary Achilles’ heel.
Yet some part of our brain seems to 
act as an unconscious mind reader,
sniffing out reality-based signals.
Deep inside we all possess 
a bullshit detector.
That may be what saves us.
Amy Goodman is among the 
world's greatest truth tellers
and bullshit detectors. 
[APPLAUSE]
Some people need their 
coffee in the morning,
I need my Democracy Now!
[APPLAUSE]
When Amy launched Democracy Now! 
21 years ago – yay –
it quickly became one of the world’s 
most important independent news outlets.
Amy not only speaks truth to power, 
she gives power to truth.
She goes where the silence is, 
to air the marginalized voices
and issues seldom heard 
in the corporate media.
She follows the bread crumb 
trail wherever it may lead.
Today Democracy Now! 
is on over 1400 public television
and radio stations worldwide 
and on the Web.
Amy’s reportorial chops have won her 
countless prestigious journalistic awards,
as well as the Right Livelihood 
and Gandhi Peace Awards.
But her real goal is to amplify 
progressive social change movements
through the power of insight, 
rigorous questioning and
fearless challenging of authority.
Her groundbreaking reporting 
has repeatedly influenced
the course of events from covering 
the East Timor independence movement,
when few others 
even looked,
to documenting 
Chevron Corporation's
otherwise unreported central 
role suppressing the Nigerian army’s
attacks against villagers rising 
up to halt environmental destruction.
Her reporting this past year 
from the frontlines of Standing Rock
will stand forever as some of the finest 
and most influential reporting ever done.
[APPLAUSE]
She vividly filmed security personnel 
pepper-spraying and setting attack dogs
on peaceful demonstrators, 
chillingly reminiscent of the
‘60s Civil Rights Era 
in the South.
Amy was charged first with criminal 
trespass and then with riot,
speciesist charges that 
were later dismissed.
But what the charges did do was bring 
even more public awareness to the story.
Amy's also co-authored six best sellers, 
including her latest gem,
Democracy Now! 20 Years Covering 
the Movements Changing America.
And we’re very grateful to have 
her special projects producer,
Dennis Moynihan here with 
us this weekend too.
Please join me in welcoming back 
the exception to the rulers,
our beloved 
Amy Goodman.
[APPLAUSE]
AMY: Thank you.
Hey guys, you're using up my time. 
[LAUGHTER]
Now, I want to thank and 
applaud the Bioneers
for all that they have done 
over these years
and the enlightenment they 
have brought all of us.
[APPLAUSE]
But I want to go back just a few weeks 
to the beginning of September.
The beginning of September when 
Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston,
inundated the petro metro,
the heart of the fossil fuel
industry in this country,
and millions of people 
who live there,
a number of them along 
the fenceline communities,
people like Bryan Parras of t.e.j.a.s. 
took Democracy Now!
on that Labor Day weekend on a 
toxic tour of those communities.
They don't call them frontline 
communities but fenceline,
living on the fenceline of—
well, for example, in Baytown,
ExxonMobil refinery, the second 
largest refinery in this country,
the Latino community that 
lives along the fence.
When the companies shut down 
and the company reopens,
the most dangerous times 
for people living there
because of the toxins 
that are released.
Who knows what 
was released.
Companies taking advantage of 
these chaotic, catastrophic moments.
So Hurricane Harvey had made landfall, 
inundated a major American city,
and hurricane Irma was 
decimating the Caribbean,
moving in for landfall 
in the United States.
In between these two moments 
on September 6, 2017,
President Trump took a stand.
In Mandan, North Dakota, 
in front of an oil refinery there,
boasting that he had pulled the United States 
out of the US Paris Climate Accord,
the UN Climate Accord,
and further boasting
that he had green-lighted 
the Keystone XL pipeline,
killed years before by activists 
all over this country
and Canada and
Latin America
deeply concerned about a 
sustainable world and building that.
And he said he green-lighted 
the Dakota Access Pipeline.
That was his statement on September 6th 
in between these two hurricanes,
in Mandan, North Dakota,
just down the road 
from the Mandan jail
where so many hundreds of 
Native Americans had been jailed
for sending out smoke signals 
to all of us about the danger
of reliance on these pipelines 
crisscrossing this country
as they protested the building 
of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
I want to go back more than one 
year ago to this remarkable,
historic gathering that took 
place in North Dakota –
the standoff at Standing Rock, 
April 1st, 2016,
the unofficial historian of the 
Standing Rock Sioux tribe,
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard.
She opens up her property 
along the Cannonball River
to the resistance.
The resistance? To the $3.8 billion 
Dakota Access Pipeline that would—
Well, they call it the black snake, 
snake its way from North Dakota
through South Dakota, taking 
fracked oil from the Bakken oil fields
from North Dakota to 
South Dakota,
through Iowa, Illinois, 
then hook up with a pipeline
to the Gulf of Mexico.
And the Standing 
Rock Sioux said no.
I mean, they weren't alone.
The people of Bismarck and 
the capital had said no,
and their wishes 
were respected.
The people of Mandan, 
where the jail and the courthouse is,
had said no. Their wishes 
were respected.
But the Standing Rock Sioux 
were not so lucky.
And so they took their stand.
When that first resistance camp, 
called Sacred Stone Camp,
was opened, scores 
of people came.
Then hundreds of people. 
Then thousands of people.
Soon more and more 
resistance camps were set up
like the 
Red Warrior Camp,
and it became 
the largest unification
of Native American tribes 
in decades in our country.
Native Americans 
from Latin America,
from the United States, 
the First Nations of Canada,
gathering to fight 
for all of us,
deeply disturbed that the pipeline 
would go under the Missouri River,
the longest river 
in North America,
and endanger the clean water 
of 17 million people downstream.
The people did not call 
themselves protesters.
They called themselves 
water protectors.
Now let's talk this period – 
April 2016, May, June, July.
This is the presidential 
election year.
This is the time when the 
critical issues of the day
are discussed and debated 
in town halls, on television, everywhere.
We went to North Dakota 
Labor Day weekend of 2016,
a year before President Trump 
stood in front of the Mandan oil refinery.
Now, we were 
even late to it.
We were covering it before, 
but from afar.
And we went to cover 
these remarkable gatherings.
The protests there 
were astounding.
You had people gathered 
on these rural back roads.
They’d start with a water ceremony, 
holding glasses of water,
and they would, Native American 
women elders and children,
they would be met by a fully 
militarized sheriff's department.
The back roads 
of North Dakota.
They had MRAPs, 
they had tanks,
they had missile launchers, 
they had automatic weapons.
It was truly astounding.
I mean, you have come to be 
familiar with these scenes.
Right? Remember Ferguson. 
The horror of Ferguson.
August 9th, 2014, a young 
African American man,
Michael Brown, is gunned down 
by a white police officer, Darren Wilson,
and his corpse is left to bake in the 
hot August sun hour after hour after hour.
The people rise up 
in the community,
and this uprising is met by fully 
militarized police departments
from all through the 
greater St. Louis area.
This is recycling in 
America today?
You take the weapons from 
Afghanistan and Iraq,
and you give them to the police 
departments of the United States?
I mean, there are a number 
of even top police officials
who are raising deep concern 
about what we are doing to—
what the police departments 
of our country are becoming.
So let's go back to that 
scene in North Dakota.
People walking through the streets, 
demanding a sustainable economy.
Sometimes they would say – 
and we would be recording all of this –
to the police that were 
facing off with them,
You're protecting the 
Dakota Access Pipeline,
but what about us, 
your neighbors?
On September 3rd, 2016, 
Saturday of Labor Day weekend,
we went to cover Native Americans 
about to plant their tribal flags,
an area they called their 
sacred burial ground.
And this was a disputed area. 
A judge was going to rule
the next week on the tribe, 
and he said if you say
this is your sacred ground, 
prove it, make a map.
And they did. And they gave it 
to the judge and he gave it
to Energy Transfer Partners which owns 
the Dakota Access Pipeline, as judges do.
And when the people walked 
up on this property,
they thought that the 
Dakota Access Pipeline –
it was a holiday weekend – 
that it wouldn’t be being built that weekend,
but they saw the bulldozers 
operating at full tilt, to their horror,
excavating the very land they 
had designated on the map.
And they wondered—
I mean, that's not where 
the bulldozers were before.
Did they use the map that the 
Standing Rock Sioux had made
for the judge, leapfrog from where 
they were to actually change the facts
on the ground before the judge rules, 
making it a moot point?
They were furious. And they went 
up in front of the bulldozers.
And it is a terrifying and 
unbelievably brave act to do.
Older Native women, 
girls, boys, teenagers,
standing in front of these massive 
machines that are churning the earth.
As we were filming, I was 
thinking about March 16th, 2003,
three days before the 
U.S. invaded Iraq,
another part of 
the Middle East, Gaza,
and a young American woman from
Evergreen College in Washington.
Her name was 
Rachel Corrie.
She had gone to Gaza as part of the 
international solidarity movement.
[APPLAUSE]
And she had befriended a 
Palestinian pharmacist’s family.
And Israeli military bulldozers were 
about to demolish his home.
And she and other activists 
stood in front of it.
They donned those orange construction 
vests, the fluorescent ones,
and they stood in 
front of the bulldozers
made by Caterpillar
here in the United States,
and Rachel was 
crushed to death.
Back to North Dakota.
The women and the girls standing 
in front of these bulldozers.
Unbelievable bravery, but this 
time they prevailed.
The bulldozers started 
to pull back.
One, two, three, four, 
five, six of them, pulling back.
And more and more people 
came from the resistance camps
as they heard what was happening, 
and people were moving up on the land.
And that was when the 
Dakota Access Pipeline guards
unleashed the attack dogs 
on the Native Americans.
We were filming this.
We filmed a dog with its mouth 
and nose dripping with blood.
They were biting the 
Native Americans’ horses,
they were biting the 
Native Americans.
We were interviewing people 
who were just bitten.
The people were maced, 
they were beaten,
they were bitten, 
but they prevailed,
and the guards moved back into 
their pickup trucks, cars.
The bulldozers pulled back at 
an unbelievably high price,
but they won that day.
We posted this video 
online that night,
and within 24/48 hours there were 
something like 14 million views.
14 million! 
[APPLAUSE]
I want to go back to the fact that 
this is the presidential election year.
Why wasn't the media raising 
the questions about climate change,
let alone the standoff 
at Standing Rock?
Just last week I was on a panel 
that was moderated by Bob Schieffer
of CBS Evening News. 
He just recently retired.
And I raised this 
question with him.
In the general presidential debates, 
there was not one question asked
about climate change. 
Not one.
Bob Schieffer said, 
"We were wrong."
"We should have raised the 
question of climate change."
Now the corporate executives 
on these networks,
they're looking for eyeballs and 
they say, climate change,
the eyeballs go away. 
People aren't interested.
This gives the lie to that – 
14 million views.
Any corporate network executive would 
have drooled for that kind of response.
Okay.
We go back to New York and we're 
continuing to cover it from New York.
The judge is going to 
rule on Friday.
On Thursday, the governor of 
North Dakota calls out
the National Guard.
It doesn't look 
good for the tribe.
Oh, and the authorities also quietly 
issued an arrest warrant for me.
I didn't know that 
at the time,
so on Friday we 
do our show,
and we head off to 
Toronto, to Canada.
I wasn't fleeing. 
[LAUGHTER]
We were invited to speak at the 
Toronto International Film Festival.
The judge ruled that night 
a routing of the tribe,
a terrible decision 
of the tribe.
And then 15 minutes later 
something unprecedented happen.
See, President Obama had 
been in Asia that week
and his final stop was Laos, 
the first sitting president to go to Laos,
and he held a democracy forum 
to teach young people around Asia
about democracy.
And young people came 
from all over Asia.
Last question, a young woman from 
Malaysia raised her hand and said,
President Obama, what about 
the Dakota Access Pipeline?
[APPLAUSE]
She asked the question of the president 
that no journalist dared to ask him,
and he held forth on the oppression 
of Native Americans over centuries,
held forth eloquently, but when it 
came to the Dakota Access Pipeline
he said, I have to get 
back to you on that;
I have to consult my team.
He came back to Washington and 
he reportedly consulted his team,
and he reportedly saw the 
video of the dogs,
and it wasn't lost on the first 
African-American president of this country.
There’s significance. 
[APPLAUSE]
You know, on the 
day of the dogs,
we interviewed Winona LaDuke 
of the White Earth Reservation
in Northern Minnesota, 
and she said,
addressing the governor 
of North Dakota,
"You are not George Wallace. 
This is not Alabama.
This is not 1965. 
We are through."
So the judge rules for 
Obama's justice department
against the tribe, but 
then 15 minutes later—
I mean, the tribe was 
now suffering from whiplash.
A three-agency letter is issued, 
unprecedented, from Justice,
the ones who beat the tribe, 
Army Corps of Engineers and Interior
saying they’re going 
to pull back;
they’re going to evaluate: Was an
environmental impact statement done?
Were the Native Americans consulted? 
Terrible decision, then amazing moment,
and the tribe doesn’t know 
what hit them,
but they know they have 
made this moment happen.
So, we're in Canada, right.
We’re at the Toronto International
Film Festival to speak after a film
that was made 
about IF Stone,
the great muckraking journalist, 
who said to young journalists and students,
"If you can remember two words, 
remember governments lie."
[LAUGHTER]
"If you can remember three words," 
he said, "remember all governments lie."
[LAUGHTER]
And that's the name of the film. 
And they also, in addition to
talking about his life, 
talk about the journalistic organizations
that are following in this 
muckraker’s footsteps, Isi Stone.
And so, Matt Taibbi was there 
with Rolling Stone,
and Nermeen Shaikh and I 
were there from Democracy Now!
And I felt it was important 
to be there to talk about
what we just witnessed 
in North Dakota,
because people in Canada 
care about First Nations.
And the next day we’re at 
the University of Toronto.
Hundreds of people are 
there to speak.
And as I'm 
giving my speech,
I get a text 
on my phone,
and it says you're under arrest. 
Actually it said something like--
[LAUGHTER]
It said like there's an 
arrest warrant for you.
And I didn’t know. 
Is this some kind of scam?
Did someone send this to 
me from the audience?
[LAUGHTER]
But I'm thinking fast and I’m 
speaking in a very different way,
and I’m trying to think: 
I should not say this right now out loud,
because if it's true, I'm not 
going to get arrested on the stage,
but if I have interaction with police, 
FBI, or border guards,
if the arrest warrant 
is in the system,
I will be taken, 
and I was in Canada
and I had to get 
over the border.
So I just simply said, 
Could someone call me a cab?
[LAUGHTER]
So I raced to the airport
and I actually made it back 
into the United States.
And when I got 
back to New York,
I didn't take this arrest 
warrant personally.
I felt it was a message 
to all journalists:
Do not come to North Dakota, 
which is exactly why we all had to be there.
And also so critical for young 
journalists to know.
You know, they don't have 
the institutional backing
or the resources but they 
want to cover this historic gathering
of Native Americans, they should 
know they don't have to wind up in jail.
You should not have to get a record 
when you put things on the record.
[APPLAUSE]
So we went back a year ago 
this week in October of 2016,
and as we landed in 
Bismarck, North Dakota,
the prosecutors announced they 
were dropping the charges against me,
quashing the arrest warrant, 
which was a good thing.
But they announced they would 
bring more serious charges against me,
charges of riot. Riot? 
Like I'm a one-woman riot?
[LAUGHTER]
And I called my North Dakota lawyer, 
not that I had one before, and I--
[LAUGHTER]
I said, I don't understand, 
what does this mean?
And he said—I mean, 
I said, What do I face?
And he said, I mean 
the worst scenario,
he says, a year in jail. 
[LAUGHTER]
I said, a year in jail? 
And I said, How much time do I have?
And he said, Well, you'll be 
arraigned Monday at 1:30
in the afternoon.
And I said, Is this 
a done deal?
Absolutely, the judge signs off 
and this rubber stamps over the weekend,
and then you’ll be arraigned. 
I said, Judge?
When I hear the word judge, 
I hear the word discretion.
And he said, No, no, no. 
It doesn’t work like that.
Rubber stamp on these charges 
but then they use their discretion after.
I said, Well, what's the 
name of the judge?
And that weekend we put 
a press release out.
We named the judge, 
and we said he would be
making a decision by Monday 
whether I would be arraigned.
And we continued to cover. 
He said, two and a half days
before the arraignment, 
we could then continue to cover
the protests that weekend. 
And on Monday morning, well,
the show must go on. 
Democracy Now! airs 8
in the morning Eastern Standard 
Time in New York,
and so that would be 7 in the 
morning North Dakota time.
And so my colleague, Dennis Moynihan, 
got a satellite truck up from Minnesota,
and we broadcast in front of the 
Mandan courthouse and jail,
where I would have to 
turn myself in.
That was our backdrop. 
The courthouse, the jail,
and the 10 Commandments 
in between.
[LAUGHTER]
We interviewed the chair of the 
Standing Rock Sioux at the time –
Dave Archambault, the 45th chairman 
of the Standing Rock Sioux.
I said to him, Have you 
ever been arrested? Yes.
He had been arrested 
for civil disobedience,
a low-level misdemeanor. 
I said, What happened to you?
He said, I was stripped searched, 
I was put in an orange jumpsuit,
I was jailed.
Interviewed Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle, 
the pediatrician of the tribe.
Of course she was one of the 
first to be arrested concerned
about the health of the kids. 
I said, What happened to you?
Low-level misdemeanor, strip searched, 
put in an orange jumpsuit and jailed.
How much humiliation 
can a people take?
And so, we did the show, 
and now so much of the media
was paying attention in the 
way they hadn't before.
The New York Times was covering this, 
the Los Angeles Times.
It was on the BBC 
International home page.
Al Jazeera was covering this. 
Vogue magazine was covering
this protest. 
[LAUGHTER]
Now hundreds of Native Americans 
had come to express solidarity,
and right before the 1:30 arraignment, 
we got word that the judge
would not sign off 
on the charges.
And in addition to that for me, 
that Native Americans who were facing
felony and misdemeanor 
charges that day,
a number of them had 
their charges dropped.
This is what happens when the media 
shines a spotlight in the right direction.
[APPLAUSE]
This is the kind of reality TV 
that we must all support.
Now I only have a couple of 
minutes before my time is up,
but I want to talk about 
this issue of climate change.
You know that the media has become 
fiercely critical of the president.
I'm not talking about FOX, 
but MSNBC and CNN.
And if you take encouragement from that—
I mean, I really do feel it's because
he's directly attacking them. 
Failing New York Times, fake news CNN.
And so they're 
defending themselves.
But don't feel 
that encouraged.
I mean, they should be 
defending themselves.
They sound sometimes like 
Democracy Now! Right?
The media is essential to the 
functioning of a Democratic society.
But when you look at the coverage 
of these climate catastrophes,
from Hurricane Harvey 
to Irma
to Maria that has 
devastated Puerto Rico,
and the thought that President Trump, 
in the midst of their catastrophe,
goes after the Puerto Rican Mayor 
of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz,
who you came to know in the media 
as the woman who’s standing
in chest-high water with a bullhorn 
trying to save and evacuate people,
trying to save 
their lives.
He goes after her and 
says Puerto Ricans
want other people to do 
things for them,
calling these officials lazy.
He eventually goes to Puerto Rico 
and he starts hurling rolls of paper towels
at the hurricane survivors.
Yes, Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz
has called President Trump 
the hater-in-chief.
And when he just made this 
remarkable statement in a tweet:
We cannot keep FEMA, the military, 
and the first responders in PR forever.
She responded, Trump is 
threatening to condemn us
to a slow death of 
non-drinkable water,
lack of food, 
lack of medicine.
The mayor appealed to the 
United Nations, UNICEF,
the world, to “stand with 
the people of Puerto Rico,
stop the genocide that will result 
from the lack of appropriate action
of a president that just does 
not get it because he's been incapable
of looking in our eyes and seeing the pride 
that burns fiercely in our hearts and souls.”
[APPLAUSE]
The people of Puerto Rico—
One month ago, Maria made landfall.
More than 80% of them don't 
have electricity from the grid,
a third of them don't 
have drinkable water.
This is a climate catastrophe.
President Trump has promised 
a fortune to Florida and Texas.
Both states voted for him.
The people of Puerto Rico can't vote for 
the President of the United States,
and he can't come 
to Northern California
where the fires have raged. 
Maybe is it because the people
of Northern California did not 
vote for him either?
[APPLAUSE]
But it is absolutely critical that 
the media express the truth
about what connects seemingly disparate 
climate events from the floods,
the hurricanes, to these fierce, 
uncontrollable wildfires in the
north of California.
We need a media that 
makes those connections,
meteorologists that do their jobs.
There's 24 hours a day of 
coverage of the hurricanes,
except for when it 
comes to Puerto Rico.
But they almost never—
I’m not talking FOX,
I’m talking MSNBC and CNN—
they flash the words 
severe weather, extreme weather,
what about another two words? 
Global warming and climate change
and climate chaos so that you know there is 
something you can do something about.
[APPLAUSE]
So that is the issue 
of climate change.
And as Robert Jay Lifton,
the great psychiatrist,
talks about the twin—
the twin apocalypses,
climate change and 
nuclear war.
We have a president that just asked 
his generals on July 20th,
If we have nuclear weapons 
why don't we use them?
Something like three 
times in an hour.
NBC reported, it was then that Rex Tillerson, 
the former head of ExxonMobil,
the largest oil company in the world, 
now our secretary of state,
it was then that he called 
him an f’ing moron.
Now we don’t know 
if that’s true.
NBC reported it, but what we 
do know is that Rex Tillerson
has now been asked repeatedly about it 
and he will not confirm or deny.
[LAUGHTER]
But why is this 
so terribly serious,
as he imperils the 
Iran nuclear deal
and goes after North Korea?
Why is this so terrible,
escalating these threats?
Because—and this is where I don't
understand what Trump is doing.
If he just stopped attacking
the media for a week -
I don’t even want 
to say this publicly,
but I really do believe this –
they would wrap 
themselves around him.
Why? Because the establishment 
media tends to embrace the establishment.
We still see it 
on climate change.
And if, you know, you have 
to ask in this case,
if we had state media, how would 
they do it any differently?
And that comes 
to war as well.
And the proof of it is a few weeks 
into President Trump’s presidency,
when he bombed the Syrian airfield with, 
what was it, 59 tomahawk cruise missiles?
I came home, 
I turn on MSNBC.
Brian Williams, the host, is saying, 
"We see these beautiful pictures at night
from the decks of these two US Navy 
vessels in the eastern Mediterranean.
I am tempted to quote 
the great Leonard Cohen,
I am guided by the beauty 
of our weapons."
And he said, "And they're beautiful 
pictures of fearsome armaments
making what is for them a brief 
flight over to this airfield."
And the next day Fareed Zakaria 
on CNN talked about Donald Trump
becoming president that night. 
And then Trump drops the
largest non-nuclear bomb in the 
history of the world on Afghanistan,
inexplicably. And the same is 
said -- the Moab,
what the Pentagon calls 
the mother of all bombs.
What could he do next? 
Actually though he occupies
the most powerful position on Earth, 
there is a force more powerful,
and it is all of you.
Everywhere from this room all 
over this country,
united with people 
around the world.
And I just want 
to end with this.
You know, I come 
from Pacifica Radio.
All of our beloved KPFA in Berkeley. 
I want to give a shout out to
Robin Pressman, who used to run, 
the program director at KRCB,
whose home was burned to the 
ground in Santa Rosa,
and to all those who 
have suffered.
I know this place was a place of 
hundreds of evacuees just a few days ago.
But I want to just end with this thought. 
Pacifica, five stations, KPFT in Houston,
was blown up twice by the Ku Klux Klan, 
only station in the country.
I can’t remember if it was 
the grand dragon or the exalted cyclops.
I often confuse their titles. 
[LAUGHTER]
But he said it was his proudest act 
because he understood how dangerous
independent media can be.
Dangerous because it allows 
people to speak for themselves.
And whether it's a Palestinian child 
or an Israeli grandmother,
a Native elder from 
Standing Rock Sioux,
or an uncle in Afghanistan 
or Somalia or Niger,
when you hear someone speaking 
from their own experience,
it breaks down the barriers, 
the caricatures, the stereotypes
that fuel the hate groups.
I'm not saying you'll agree 
with what you hear.
How often do we even agree 
with our family members?
But you begin to understand 
where they're coming from.
It makes it much less likely that 
you will want to destroy someone.
I think that understanding 
is the beginning of peace.
I think the media can be the 
greatest force for peace on Earth.
Instead all too often it’s wielded 
as a weapon of war,
which is why we have to 
take the media back.
[CHEERS]
As I just told you the story in 1970 
of the klan attacking KPFT.
How is it possible—
that was decades ago—
that we're talking about 
the Ku Klux Klan today?
How is it possible the Charlottesville 
violent rally that ended in the death
of a beautiful young woman, 
Heather Heyer, who on her
Facebook page said, If you are not 
outraged, you are not paying attention.
And President Trump talks about 
the very fine people among the klan
and the white supremacists and 
the self-proclaimed fascists.
And then when there's a second rally 
doesn't say a word about them,
goes after the black athletes 
who are taking a knee.
Who as, Reverend Barbara said it, 
reminds her of Dr. Martin Luther King
in that form of prayer, showing the 
highest form of patriotism.
Dissent is what will make 
this country great.
[APPLAUSE]
I just want to end as we talk about 
the Nazis back in that time
with a brother and sister in 
Nazi Germany who were not Jewish.
They were German Christians 
but they thought,
What can we do in the 
face of the Nazi atrocity?
Hans and Sophie Scholl. 
He was a medical student
at the University of Munich. 
She was an undergrad.
And together with their professor, 
Karl [Kurt] Huber,
and other students and workers, 
they formed the White Rose Collective,
and they thought, What can we 
do in the face of the Nazi atrocity?
Put out pamphlets so the Germans will 
never be able to say we didn't know.
And on one of those pamphlets 
were written the words:
We will not be silent.
Those pamphlets they distributed 
everywhere under cover of night
in alleyways, in school yards, 
in marketplaces,
and then they were
captured by the Nazis,
by the Gestapo.
They were charged,
they were tried,
they were convicted,
and they were beheaded.
But that philosophy, that motto, 
should be the Hippocratic oath
of the media today,
should be the Hippocratic 
oath of us all today.
We will not be silent. 
Democracy Now!
[APPLAUSE]
