From RefuseFascism.org:

To Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now Team…

November 3, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

October 24, 2017

To Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now Team:

For over a year, with the exception of a quote in a Democracy Now! piece after Milo Yiannopoulos’s Berkeley appearance in February was shut down, DN! has consistently avoided covering RefuseFascism.org’s actions and teach-ins, and has never interviewed our leaders. Without rehashing the past year, right now RefuseFascism.org is in a sharp and intense political battle which we detailed in a press advisory yesterday that has been whited out of the mainstream media. We expect different from Democracy Now!

In 11 days, on November 4 RefuseFascism.org launches a sustained, mass movement of nonviolent political protest aimed at creating a political situation where the Trump/Pence Regime could be removed from power.  The organization and its supporters have come under sharp attack from the fascist “Alt-Right.” And yet, not a word from DN!, despite your stated mission which includes providing your audience with “access to people and perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media.”

Our members around the country consistently ask, “Why doesn’t Democracy Now! interview a spokesperson from RefuseFascism.org to get into our understanding of how this regime that is bringing fascism to the U.S. and why, therefore, only the people acting outside normal political channels through nonviolent protest can remove the regime?”

Why indeed?

Right now, RefuseFascism.org is confronted by a serious and growing fascist campaign of lies, intimidation tactics, the doxxing of thousands of supporters, and credible threats of violence.  These lies—that we are “initiating a violent civil war on Nov 4”—are being issued by white supremacists and fascists with direct ties to Donald Trump and have unleashed many thousands of vile, unhinged, and violent threats.  Additionally, in New York and San Francisco RefuseFascism.org is engaged in a political battle for permits which are being denied for the November 4th protests.

The situation now is that people can learn more about November 4th from the fascists and even the mainstream media than they can from DN!—a show people rightly value for reporting what the mainstream won’t. Why?

Just last week, RefuseFascism.org’s Carl Dix and Linda Solotaire politically confronted Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, in the luxury Conrad Hotel where the NFL owners meeting was being held.  Video of this political confrontation has been seen more than half a million times and this story was featured in the NY Daily News, The Root, New York Post, Dallas Observer, CBS Sports, ESPN and many other outlets.

Yet, you chose to keep this story about RefuseFascism.org’s work from your audience, why?

Over the course of ten months: we led nightly protests in DC leading up to Trump’s inauguration, placed full page ads in both the New York Times and the Washington Post signed by major luminaries and public figures, spearheaded dozens of other political actions and mobilizations, consistently developed, published, and held teach-in’s with unique political analysis of the biggest question now facing humanity—how to understand and stop the nightmare being imposed on humanity by the Trump/Pence Regime. This past July 15, we organized the first national protest to explicitly demand that the whole Trump/Pence Regime be removed from power in which thousands participated. Yet none of this has been covered by DN! Why?

If you have ignored RefuseFascism.org because members and supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party were involved in co-initiating and work with Refuse Fascism, then, we refer to the famous quote from Pastor Martin Niemöller (“First they came for the communists…”) and to the McCarthy period and ask, how does anti-communism help resistance.

Your mission includes the following: “Democracy Now!’s War and Peace Report provides our audience with access to people and perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media, including independent and international journalists, ordinary people from around the world who are directly affected by U.S. foreign policy, grassroots leaders and peace activists, artists, academics and independent analysts.”

We believe your omission of RefuseFascism.org in your coverage for nearly a year in which the whole political landscape has been jolted repeatedly by the shock of the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime which RefuseFascism.org has uniquely analyzed and mobilized against, does an incredible disservice to the people across this country and around the world who are agonizing about how this whole nightmare can be ended and fails to live up to your stated mission.

Therefore, we urge you to break with this pattern by having RefuseFascism.org on your program this week so that people can learn the truth about the major political battle that is shaping up around our November 4th mobilizations that is being suppressed by almost all progressive media. Your audience needs to know that this mobilization is going forward as originally envisioned—as a mass, nonviolent, political protest movement aimed at driving the Trump/Pence Regime from power—and your audience needs to hear why it is so important to defy this campaign of fascist intimidation and terror.

We would like to hear from you within the next 48 hours about scheduling an interview with our spokespeople and some of our prominent supporters.

Signed,

Herb Boyd, activist, author, journalist and teacher, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org

Isabel Cardenas, Salvadoran-American activist, National Steering Committee of RefuseFascism.org

Coco Das, writer, National Steering Committee of RefuseFascism.org

Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org

Rev. Gregg Greer, President, Freedom First International

Perry Hoberman, USC Professor of Media Studies, National Steering Committee of RefuseFascism.org

Ted Jennings, Professor Emeritus of Biblical and Constructive Theology at Chicago Theological Seminary

PZ Myers, evolutionary biologist, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org

Arturo O’Farrill, composer and musician, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org

Peter Phillips Ph.D., Professor Political Sociology, Sonoma State University

Ted Sirota, musician, National Steering Committee of RefuseFascism.org

Sunsara Taylor, writer RevCom.us, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org

Jay W. Walker, NY Steering Committee of RefuseFascism.org, Gays Against Guns, Rise and Resist

Andy Zee, spokesperson for Revolution Books, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org

David Zeiger, director of Sir, No Sir!, Advisory Board of RefuseFascism.org

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