In their new book, Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan provide a vivid record of the events, conflicts, and social movements shaping our society today. They give voice to ordinary people standing up to corporate and government power across the country and around the world. Their writing and daily work at the grassroots public TV/radio news hour Democracy Now!, carried on more than a thousand stations globally and at democracynow.org, casts in stark relief the stories of the silenced majority. These stories are set against the backdrop of the mainstream media’s abject failure, with its small circle of pundits who know so little about so much, attempting to explain the world to us and getting it so wrong.
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Tags:Hope,Majority,Occupations,Resistance,Silenced,Stories,Uprisings
Recent History in the Act of Being Forgotten Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan are touring the country with a new book that everyone should have and read. “The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope” is a history of the Obama Years in the form of a thematically organized collection of columns — columns that grew out of the reporting done by the most useful show on our airwaves: Democracy Now!How quickly we forget, or even never knew, this recent history — history that will never make it into school-approved history books. Reading this book, I was reminded of watching, for the first time, the movie Fahrenheit 911 by Michael Moore who wrote this book’s introduction. That movie recounted basic facts about recent years, many of them familiar to anyone who’d been paying attention, and yet the information came as a shock to most moviegoers. This book would come as a shock to most readers.A column from November 10, 2010, included in the book, begins, “If a volcano kills civilians in Indonesia, it’s news. When the government does the killing, sadly, it’s just business as usual, especially if an American president tacitly endorses the killing, as President Barack Obama just did with his visit to Indonesia.” Who recalls that episode now? Who remembers the crises that jump in and out of our media: the cruelties imposed on Honduras or Haiti? This book brings together a full four years and moves us to ask where each story has now gone.Here we read a history of teasing: There’s going to be accountability for foreclosure fraud very soon. No, really. Any day now. Any month now. We’ve launched a new study into, um, an investigation of a review procedure capability program. No, seriously. Investigations are underway into the crimes of Rupert Murdoch. Really, we mean it.Too many of these columns end with references to pretended federal efforts of law enforcement that were never heard from again. There is no doubt an office somewhere in the FBI in which people are paid to calculate the ideal timing for pretending to pursue justice in one cause or another, and the ideal timing for switching over to silence and forgetting. But it all looks laughable and offensive if you read four years’ worth of it all strung together.This book encourages placing events in context and practices that habit. “Just before this Sunday’s election in Haiti,” Goodman and Moynihan wrote on March 23, 2011, “President Rene Preval gave Aristide the diplomatic passport he had long promised him. Earlier, on January 19, then U.S. State Department spokesman PJ Crowley tweeted, referring to Aristide: ‘today Haiti needs to focus on its future, not its past.’ [Aristide's wife] Mildred was incensed. She said the U.S. had been saying that since they forced him out of the country. Sitting in a plane a few minutes before landing in Haiti, she repeated the words of an African leader who criticized abuses of colonial powers by saying, ‘I would stop talking about the past, if it weren’t so present.’”Part of the recent history reviewed here is the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement. As our government/media work to rewrite those stories, Goodman and Moynihan remind us of the days when people in Cairo held up a sign that read “To: America. From: the Egyptian People. Stop supporting Mubarak. It’s over!” This collection takes us through the occupy movement and numerous other stories that are ongoing and developing, serving as an ideal primer for those now getting or staying involved.The current crisis in Syria, for its coverage of which Democracy Now has been criticized, is too new and does not appear in the book.Enough is included in this book for disturbing patterns to emerge without comment from the authors. Here, for example, are four years of empty threats to our government from our people. Many have probably forgotten Bill McKibben’s statement in August 2001: “Our hope is to send a Richter 8 tremor through the political system on the day Barack Obama says no to Big Oil and reminds us all why we were so happy when he got elected. The tar sands pipeline is his test.” Apparently there was no plan for what to do on the day (after day after day) on which Obama did not remind them why they were so happy. There was no contingency plan for his failing the test. There was no comprehension of how this guaranteed that he would choose to fail the test. And there is now forgetfulness of the growing ludicrousness of past promises and past pseudo-threats to power. Move the goal posts. Declare a new showdown. Avoid reading this book.The themes of the book include many that never entered the recent Obama-Romney debates. Among them: race, and the death penalty. The themes of the book are not presented in isolation, but in interconnectedness. A Chicago police officer, Jon Burge, goes on a torture spree. “Where did it all begin?” ask Goodman and…
A must read! If you appreciate great journalism about the real issues, this is just the book for you. A compilation of her weekly essays, this book is well organized and extremely moving. Amy Goodman is an incredible journalist and writer, always investigating very side and looking out for the little guy in this money driven, corporate world. She is an incredible lady, and this book perfectly captures her many experiences and her intelligence. It’s a fast read and a must read for anyone who wants to learn the full story about American politics, and not just the stories the mainstream media or the parties deem important.
Incisive, intelligent voice Outstanding book. It’s a collection of her columns, so you needn’t read it all at one go.It’s an odd thing in our society; one hears much denigration and resentment of government, yet very little in the way of substantive, fact-based criticism. It’s as if we are meant to be diverted by the “circus sideshow” of Reps v. Dems, and never notice the actual policies that affect our lives, and how much the two teams have in common. Nor are we meant to notice that the “leadership” may reflect very poorly what is thought or felt by their constituents. Ms. Goodman’s book, with it’s case studies, brings these questions into focus. Bravo, her!