Democracy Now! Audio

A recent mysterious nuclear accident in Russia is drawing comparisons to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. As Kashmir enters its fourth week of lockdowns, we speak with a leading feminist activist about her recent fact-finding visit in the territory.

We speak with Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, a leading critic of the Trump administration's immigration policy; Fires in the Amazon rainforest continue to devastate indigenous communities and wildlife.

World leaders are calling for the protection of the Amazon as massive fires continue to scorch the world’s largest rainforest, which produces about 20% of the oxygen on the planet. Andrew Miller, advocacy director for the conservation organization Amazon Watch, says the fires are worse now than in previous years as a direct result of far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s policies, which encourage exploitation of the Amazon for mining, logging and agricultural activity.

Eleven presidential candidates attended the Native American Presidential Forum in Sioux City, Iowa, this week. We convene a roundtable to discuss how indigenous issues are impacting the 2020 race.

Kashmir remains under tight restrictions after India revoked the special status of the Indian-controlled part of the Muslim-majority region. India imposed a curfew, cut off all communications and reportedly arrested more than 4,000 people, including many political leaders. We speak with Kavita Krishnan, a leading women’s rights activist in India who just returned from a fact-finding mission to Kashmir. She is the secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association and a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). “We felt that the whole of Kashmir was one big jail,” Krishnan says.

We return to the border with Alvaro Enciso, an artist who builds and places crosses in the sites where migrants have died in the Sonoran Desert. New York's Child Victims Act has allowed hundreds of victims to file cases since its enactment last week.

Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who killed Eric Garner in 2014, has been fired. We speak with Garner's daughter Emerald; Right-wing protesters are outnumbered by counterprotesters in Portland; A mass suicide bombing at a wedding in Kabul kills 63.

A special broadcast from Arizona, speaking with activists leaving water and other aid for migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert and a local organization working to identify human remains near the U.S.-Mexico border.

With Trump's urging, Israel bars entry to Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib; Atlantic staff writer Vann Newkirk talks about the racist policies that dispossessed black Americans in the "great land robbery" of the 20th century.

Sister Helen Prejean reflects on her decades of fighting the death penalty and why she has met multiple times with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted in the Boston Marathon bombing case.

Horror at Metropolitan Correctional Center. How Jeffrey Epstein's death is exposing decades of abuse at the NYC jail; With Epstein gone, survivors are going after his accomplices and estate; The Child Victims Act goes into effect in New York this week.

Part 2 of our conversation with two New York state legislators, Senator Alessandra Biaggi and Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou, who helped pass the Child Victims Act. The state law, which went into effect Wednesday, extends the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse and includes a “lookback period,” giving survivors of any age a year to take legal action even if their cases had expired under the old statute of limitations. Hundreds of cases have already been filed. Both Biaggi and Niou are sexual abuse survivors, and they have spoken about the importance of the Child Victims Act in personal terms. “It is a remarkable thing, it is a privilege, to be able to transform trauma into real action that will help … hundreds, if not thousands, of people across the state of New York,” Biaggi says.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sonia Nazario explains how crime and corruption in Honduras fuel migration north; Sister Helen Prejean, famous anti-death penalty activist, reacts to the Trump administration reinstating the federal death penalty.

We continue our conversation with Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University and author of “How to Be an Antiracist.” In his new book, Kendi examines race and racism in the United States, including how he personally navigated these issues as a young man. “I didn’t realize it until later just how many racist ideas I had internalized,” Kendi says. “I didn’t realize until later that internalized racism is the real black-on-black crime.”

We spend the hour with award-winning author and academic Ibram X. Kendi, whose new book, "How to Be an Antiracist," comes out Tuesday.