thank you all very much and thanks for that very kind introduction i'll just ignore the hyperbole but i am very honored to have worked with amy goodman for so many years and the crew of democracy now some of whom are among us tonight aaron julie who's just come on board recently jon hamilton who's expertly videotaping this proceedings tonight  hopefully have the company of one of our fine producers later laura got his dinner and she she's working on pursuing this new stories and so is in here right now but as we're traveling the country on this twentieth anniversary tour we are doing our best to dig deeper into the stories that are impacting communities everywhere we go and it's it's just a great story i just learned moments ago that there's a competing event or it's a complementary event like this i think with peter wilcox the captain of the rainbow warrior who's downstairs and don't feel ashamed if you're here for peter well cox just get up and go it's ok  it's but this this hundred city tour that we're on we were alerted today by a coworker who had the energy and to actually count that we're at fifty now so it's  others from the crew who've joined us i first heard democracy now as i was a listener in one thousand nine hundred sixty or it was founded i had the unusual job of being a caretaker of a small private island  just before we were speaking to some folks downstairs and there was a family that had lived on an island in one of your many beautiful islands nearby and they could only hear the c b c up near the border but if they hiked to the other side of the island they could pick up a station that carried democracy now my i'm guessing that it was k g s out of bellingham but it's just a guess so anyway to that family reminded me that i too first heard democracy now on an island off the coast it was the coast of maine in penobscot bay it was the island owned by the family of buckminster fuller uncle bucky as they called him was no longer with us but his one of his domes remained in and a lot of the vestiges of his amy says the show if was first carried on nine stations one of them being are you out of blue hill maine another of those original nine stations we were reminded last night was chaos radio in a limpia washington  it's a station licensed to a public university college so i know there's there's talk afoot of making public colleges free i don't know how you all feel but thanks but certainly the the station that served scott bay was was a direct connection for me to the outside world a few years later i found myself here  helping to organize master ect action to confront corporate globalization at the world trade organization ministerial and i'm sure many of you were here for that  in that capacity i was part of what was then the direct action network an ad hoc network of activists that wanted to engage in sensual blockades to prevent the meeting from happening that succeeded despite  my role as the protests mounted was to join a small working group that no one wanted to join and that was to participate in a or to it was the media relations working group so how do you how do you have a mass action like that and do your best to help the press cover it fairly and accurately and really no one wanted to join that working group so a few of us ponied up and and we held press conferences we put up press releases we did all the formal steps needed we made experts available to discuss the reasons why we felt corporate globalization top down was bad and grassroots globalization alternative as possible and porous the corporate media did a horrible job covering those protests focusing on you know there was property damage and they focused entirely on that and as the week progressed and we  to stories of all the horrors that were happening remind me of the sheriff's name who became a congressman you know the yeah so what was happening and under his watch was at was it was literally torture people were being tortured in your jail and we couldn't get that story out i was i remember going up to the jail and if you were there twenty five hundred people circle that drumming they ran down the flag the u s flag flag pole and put up a big c on a peace sign flag and it was quite revolutionary joyous kind of experience outside but inside that jail solidarity was attempted to be broken with with extreme violence on the on the six hundred people locked up for protesting and a woman came out of she was kicked you know she was let go with a broken nose about twenty years old very slight young woman and she definitely needed to go to the hospital but i said look before you go to the hospital do you feel well enough to go over to one of the satellite trucks from one of the local networks and try to get your story out immediately because it's been impossible so we went we knocked on doors number one two three each of these million dollar satellite trucks and no one was interested in telling your story and finally a group that i met we were actually doing our work out of the indy media center on forth and it was there that i met him b goodman jeremy scahill want gonzales wonderful group of people so with that  incredible work of the citizen journalism that was emerging on this kind of new and matt maturing platform of the internet at the time with indie media dot org and citizen journalism and then the established alternative journalists among whom were really at the forefront democracy now the story did change the tide did turn and eventually you know your your district attorney was compelled to drop the charges against all those protesters and and the rest is history but that was my first direct encounter with this incredible crew of journalists i then a year later was in new york city helping to organize a march  to pressure bill clinton to grant executive clemency to a political prisoner named leonard  we organized a great march i think it was the largest one ever organized in leonard's name and he was very happy with it it was on human rights day two days later active duty and retired f b i agents held their own march in front of the white house attorney peltier attorney bruce ellison said at the time it was the first arm to march in front of the white house since eight hundred fourteen so when the british burned the building down but at any rate it did you know bill clinton famously abused his power of executive comments he and and let out political campaign donors and others but didn't let leonard out and he remains in prison to this day  well and there's actually yes i was reminded that one of the most loyal friend from lawrence kansas is here tonight and i appreciate the reminder it was a true grassroots effort in organizing emerging new york city is a real a real nightmare but we did it and you know w p a i in new york was a central kind of organizing the pacifica station that amy will talk about later a fter the clemency petition was ignored you know peltier clinton didn't technically deny it he just ignored it the crew and laurence that had been you know basically two people that have been doing most of the work for years needed a break so i went out to lawrence to help shore up the leonard peltier defense committee for about six months and to keep the office going and to kind of forge a new strategy in the post clinton era the bush era and in that capacity i went and met with leonard in the prison every week leavenworth a maximum security penitentiary where he was at the time he's now in a place called coleman in florida and also maximum security which is a stupid place to hold a man of his age and i spoke with him every morning on the phone and he would call at eight in the morning after the prisoners  were finished with what they called what the warden called the an hour of recreation in this concrete walled prison yard and what leonard would first talk to me about on those phone calls was what he had just heard on democracy now because it was carried live on a great community radio station k k f i in kansas city missouri and that station hits a big it can hear it in lawrence you can hear it in leavenworth and you know it serves that it reaches the population of prisoners in that maximum security federal pen it reaches the prisoners in the u s army brig where chelsea manning is currently imprisoned and the daily broadcast of democracy now leonard wood said they own the warden only allowed a very small battery operated transistor radio and about six or eight of the these big guys would circle this tiny radio and listen intently for an hour and it guided their connection to the world that informed them it informed their discussions throughout the day it helped them to dispel the monotony of their existence the oppression of the routine they  know after we ended our call then or would have to march off to work in the eunuch or prison slave wage prison furniture factory making furniture for federal offices so in that that was a reminder of the power of community media independent radio shows like democracy now that we're serving a population of people not just ourselves if you feel if you're here tonight because kay b c s or one of the other many outlets in the state that carries democracy now does something mean something to you but also we're helping to bring content and material and services to others like those in prison like those  we just did a benefit a few days ago in atlanta georgia for another brilliant station w r f g radio free ga a true progressive voice in the deep south and that station alerted us a few years ago to a donation they got they said we got an interesting donation during our pledge drive we think you should be aware of it it was three hundred twenty five dollars a nice sized donation for any community radio station but they said this one in particular came from sixty and they they gave it to us they said because democracy now in the other public affairs programming again that that help them overcome the obstacles and every day in their everyday life certainly obtaining relevant and accurate information about what's going on in the world outside the prison walls and so we're very touched by that before embarking on this tour we got a update from a nother prison this was a prison system in the united kingdom about three or four prisons in and and there was an administrator who runs all the educational programs had set up a t v kind of a closed circuit t v system to bring programming to the cells and they asked us a year ago for permission to download and play democracy now throughout their prison and you know without hesitating we said absolutely you can run it as often as you want and so they do download the broadcast quality version every day and run it so a year went by and he gave us an update and said they had witnessed a fifty percent increase in the participation in the elective educational offerings in the prison and when polled the prisoners said it was largely because of something they had heard on democracy now so  so this just you know i think further reinforces the importance that we all have the responsibility we have to support independent media this is in part we had a benefit downstairs the town hall of course brings out an amazing array of people i just heard the litany of folks who are coming by many of whom are actually mentioned in the book democracy now twenty years covering the movements changing america so pete seeger and how he introduced martin luther king to the song we shall overcome at the highlander center you know we write about that the protests against extraction by tend to christopher and terry tempest williams amy was actually rounded up she was arrested with terry tempest williams she was interviewing terry tempest williams on march eighth ninth two thousand and three which  was and show probably talk about it but it was international women's day where women strike for peace and it was outside the white house i was there witnessing this protest alice walker and others and amy was interviewing them as they refused to abide by the police dictate to leave and as they arrested those prominent women amy was interviewing them and was trying to follow their arbitrary instructions and was arrested as well and so we spent the rest of the day getting her out of that but i know terry tempest williams will be here and i just i know she she gave up her professorship at the university of utah this week which she taught her classes out in the desert landscapes that she evokes in her writing and they are insisting that she now teach in a in a sterile classroom so she want to abide by that so that's another one of those amazing people that we talk about the book thank you know there are just no words to explain just what a talent what a friend what an inspiration a mentor amy goodman is to me and so many she saw her reporting on that first night as the police riot unfolded in the streets of seattle we were all huddled in the independent media center we had successfully barricaded the door because the riot police had tried to barge in and they actually inserted something i've never seen before it was a pepper spray hose it was like a high pressure fire hose almost that just coated the inner lobby with with pepper spray but we to see it doesn't seattle riot police trying to force their way in and a bunch of fuzzy hippies pushing back and keeping them out and i  guys and it was beautiful and we won but  but in the midst of that police riot there was a figure out in the kind of your imagined sodium vapor street lights and clouds of tear gas and flash bang grenades and these kind of running battles with riot police marching in lockstep and and people running around with banners and turtles and teamsters and it was dark and chaotic and behind the right near the police line there was a small figure with an arm upraised who is that what is going on out there and it was amy goodman with a microphone getting into the but you know she as is described in the books epilogue herself survived a terrible massacre and in east timor and at a younger age twenty five years ago this year actually and to think where would we be without amy goodman i can imagine  so we were in olympia last night and i was just reminded of that you get courageous women and so we were we visited briefly with the parents of and so is as the coworkers i mentioned earlier and i can attest there's really no one harder working then amy goodman and if you read the epilogue to our book  amy's experience surviving a massacre where over two hundred fifty people were pretty brutally slaughtered by the indonesian army with us weapons i think you get the sense and we understand to those of us who work closely with her that she works very hard and she demands that of us all but it is we're just so fortunate to have her i think those of us who work with the public at large  and so i'd ask you to join me in welcoming amy goodman media k b c s based and bellevue and as well as town hall itself and to be here with you know independent bookstores independent media this wonderful space i consider all sanctuaries of dissent a very special thank you to dennis moynihan without whom along with my brother journalist david goodman this book would never have been written and this hundred city tour would never have been undertaken he is a tour guide extraordinaire it was his birthday this week and i decided after we came back through california twice after going to sarasota florida and new orleans and georgia and now here we are in washington state we're in arizona and new mexico heading to minneapolis and cambridge massachusetts back to new york then heading to chicago that i'm going to get him a map for his birthday  dennis is an incredibly talented writer and i call him the johnny appleseed of independent media democracy now began twenty years ago as the only daily election show in public  would come on board soon after that we've been together for sixteen years which is truly  amazing and we thought the show would wrap up right after election day it was nine years nine months later this was the election one thousand nine hundred six of bill clinton and reelection he was running clemency to scores of people leonard peltier not among them but i remember getting a chance to ask a previous president that question about tell two year yes it was election day two thousand and maybe some of you heard this conversation this unexpected conversation on the air so it was election day two thousand in the morning and at that time we had two producers and my colleagues had just flew in from madrid she was one of our producers as well as brad and they had and which reminds me how much i appreciate deeply the weekend escapades journalism investigations last week with mike burke our senior producer in the week before that with amy littlefield john hamilton our former colleague and out of our lives to cover all the u n climate summit as well as the conventions and he's over there busily filming and a special welcome to aaron dewey our new director of development who has joined us for the first time this week and we're so honored to have her with us but this morning it was just the awesome to it was election day two thousand eight already run into the studio to begin the show and i was quickly coming in behind but i heard the phone ring now how often would someone call right before the show almost never unless it was a breaking story and i really left that phone ring as music began to swell in the studio this is just when it was a radio show before we started in the first t v station and his picked up the phone really fast night said hello democracy now and they said white house communications and i thought they said white horse communications you see there's a famous tavern in the village where dylan thomas drank himself to death and and they said the president would like to speak to you and i said the president what i mean the president of a tavern calling at nine in the morning and nothing made sense and even that they had a p r company whitehurst communications and the producers were yelling at me you've got to come in right now they said the president of the united states of america i said president clinton white house communications oh listen i've got to go on the air i didn't know if it was real probably it was a hoax i thought and so i gave them the internal number though and hung up the phone ran in the music was there from pacifica this is democracy now and as we went as we played the first clip i said to muddy and brad hey the president i called definitely pick up the phone think in this next hour  questions you'd like to ask him i actually don't think this is going to happen there you had three to one all that and more coming  and you know i think the students at bellevue college got a little taste of this a small inning amazing crew they were our crew this morning we broadcast live on fourteen hundred stations from and they made that crew call that we didn't even make at three o'clock this morning you know we broadcast today in the morning live in new york and it's five o'clock here it was pretty inspiring when people ask what gives me hope well those students gave me enormous so anyway back to the story two thousand we start the show and it's a packed show the president and call i didn't really think much of it and figured it was not real and we were racing out for coffee after you know this was election day it would be a very long day we'd probably find out who is president after midnight hardly this was bush v gore it would take five weeks and a selection turned of music show latino music show that morning shouting the president is on the phone get in here now we run into the control room he is paralyzed he's over the audio board all the music faders are off and the little salsa music is blaring all the microphones are down and you hear president clinton shouting sort of being drowned out by the music is anyone there is anyone there so he had one producer i had to i threw myself over the board i pushed up all of the microphones in the room i don't know which was which but the faders for them all the salsa music down every music fader down and then we sat down and i said can salo this is going to be quite a ride think of some questions you get to ask and i said hello mr president i understand you'd like to talk to people about getting out the vote and i hadn't said that they said that he wanted to talk about this you know this was the year that hillary clinton was running for senator of new york and of course al gore was running for president he said that's right i said what do you say to those who are deeply concerned who feel that both the democratic and republican parties are captured by corporations and and we asked about the two u n assistant secretary generals who had quit over the sanctions regime against iraq you know five hundred thousand children had died calling that regime genocid al the sanctions regime against iraq and i asked him what he thought about this and continued to ask questions about war and the death penalty then i asked him a question about ralph nader and i you know i asked him if maybe did he think that you could attribute ralph nader success running for president to president clinton himself for taking the democratic party to the right and then and then he got annoyed and and he said i find you hostile combative and times disrespectful so i said they're just critical questions and i just have a few more so i then asked him you know i said that vice president gore said if he became president he would his first action would be an executive order banning racial profiling which sounded like a very good thing and i said but you guys have been in office for eight years why haven't you done that yet anyway it was a  conversation that went on for about half an hour and then he said he had to go and that was the alternative latino music show that day so the next day we ran it on democracy now and then i got a call you know it got all these headlines and everything and i got a call from a reporter from new york newsday a big paper at the time in new york and he was saying you know had this happened i was talking to him but then the other phone rang and so in this is when he had wired phones you know so i said oh just one minute place and they said white house communications and i knew it was the white house then and i said and they said you're being banned from the white house i said i said i'm being banned he called me i didn't call him just one second please i said peter i have to go because the white house is on the line he said you just put the phone down don't put me on hold i'll be just fine so it's ok so i put the phone down i said ok this is unfair why would you ban me and they said we told you broke every rule of journalism we set up a framework and you broke the protocol i said what do you talk about and i talk to them for all of three seconds before the show and half of the time it was a tavern i was talking to was what are you talking about i broke all the rules of good journalism and they said we told you that he wanted to encourage people to get out the vote and that's what you could ask about us question one four and seven they glee about that but nothing else related and then i had three questions about what the president wanted to talk about i'm really falling down on the job i said but it does sound like you have a transcript you know one four and seven if you could send it to us we always post our interviews on line would be great to get it right up and volunteers do it for us so you could be our volunteer for the day  and then they said i said to them how many journalists did you call this morning you know new york radio stations they said like over forty i said really and they only asked about getting out the vote and they said that's right and i said that's a very sad comment on american journalism today so they also said they said we told you he had two or three minutes you spent more than a half an hour on the phone with oh my god i mean he's the leader of the free world is the most powerful person on earth you can hang up if he wants to they did admit well he did have a very good time but so when so i was finished with them i hung up the phone and i realized that reporters on the phone so i picked up need but you know reporters shouldn't go on bended knee to those in power there there is a reason why our profession is the only one explicitly protected by the us constitution because we're supposed to be a check and balance on power we have a very special  role the first book i wrote with my brother david was called the exception to the rulers and that's what all the media should be it shouldn't just be the motto of democracy now the exception to the rulers the second one was called static and the reason we called it that is even in this high tech digital age of high def television and digital radio all we get is static that veil of distortions and misrepresentations and half truths that obscure reality when what we need the media to give us is the dictionary definition of static criticism opposition unwanted interference we need a media that covers power not covers for power we need a media that is the fourth the state not for the state and we need a media that covers the movements that create static and make history now i can talk about these twenty years of democracy now growing from nine stations to now over fourteen hundred public radio and television stations around the united states and around the world also headlines translated into spanish and transcript and audio form if you're trying to learn spanish but the headlines in english up against the headlines in spanish it's a great way to do it if you're trying to learn english do the same thing and you can listen to the spanish and english  d teachers use it all over the world but i can't talk about this last twenty years of democracy now without talking about my co host for all that time it's one who started out as a young lord you know one of the founders of this sort of the puerto rican equivalent of the black panthers and he was in new york they would hijack tuberculosis vans and bring them to places and need like the south bronx you never had so many willing hostage drivers thankful that they could go to the places that they had originally got involved with medicine for he they would occupy churches in the south bronx in fact bernie sanders just had a rally a few weeks ago at st mary's in st ann's park and i was talking to one about it i went there just before this insane hundred city tour and i'll talk more about that  moment and so when i came back to the studio the next day i said klein you know he said oh my god that's the park right next to the church that we occupied and they would occupy these churches to ensure that young poor children latino children would get hot lunches and w get breakfast before they went to school and they would serve them right there so then one would become one of the leading journalists in this country he worked at the philadelphia daily news then he came to new york where he was recruited by the publisher editor to be a columnist for the new york daily news and one for the next twenty nine years would write for when the largest city papers in this country how many of you heard democracy now or watch democracy now this week when we played w so a few months ago the whole team of democracy now went to midtown manhattan to sardi's never been there before because ron was the first latino journalist being inducted into the new york journalism hall of fame and you know all the they all the big media had bought tables you know there's a table for c v s table i think for the new york times definitely for the new york daily but let me read you a little of what he had to say commenting on his quarter of a century as a columnist at the daily news he said i figured my modest contributions would be not writing outcast neighborhoods but from them not simply to entertain but to change not after the fact but before it when courage could still make a difference i've tried to use as many of my columns as possible to probe the injustices visited upon the powerless yes the rich and famous are also victims on occasion but they have so many politicians lobbyists lawyers gossip columnists even editorial writers ready to jump to their defense that they'll always do fine without my h said i prefer the desperate unknown reader who comes to me because he or she has gone everywhere else and no one will listen more often than not i come across some expected gems human beings whose tragedies illuminates the landscape and who courage hopefully inspires the reader to believe that there is indeed some greater good served by a free press than just chronicling or influencing the ouster of one group of politicians by another those the words of  quote him in the introduction and end that introduction by saying this book celebrates some of the people in movements who've been making history during our first twenty years it's not an exhaustive history nor is it intended as a greatest hits of democracy now this book is just our way of giving back by celebrating some of the ordinary heroes who have done extraordinary things to make the world about place and i speak to you today on the day that i could be with you to talk about dan and phil father dan the jesuit priest and well he was father phil josephite priest his brother until he met liz mcallister a nun that was still very again and while the rest is history and their three children but then barragan such an important figure in history spokane we left salt lake city and before that we had flown in from sarasota so we were making our way desperately trying to fine wireless on the plane it seems to me lot of my time is spent looking activists went to the cape ville draft office and pulled out the a one draft files hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them and took them outside and burned them with homemade napalm father dan as people affectionately called him just before this action was giving a talk up in portland maine where we're headed this weekend and found a little quiet place in the airport to write up his statement he didn't know if he'd ever get out of jail after they did this and part of his statement explaining his action he said our apologies good friends for the fracture of good order the burning of paper instead of children we could not so help us do otherwise he said he would be convicted along with the other eight he would go underground the f b i was looking for him everywhere he would actually surface it different places and the f b i would surround the place like at cornell dennis went to cornell at i think it was bartlett hall and the f b i was waiting they don't want to take him off on the stage they wait till he came off the stage and then some bread and puppet puppets came out and he was secret into them and taken out in a puppet parade he would eventually be found on block island rhode island and you see this famous picture of him with a big fought for peace and love life denis and i went to visit him a few years ago up at fordham at a retirement home for elderly priests and dan was the still with a twinkle in his eye though getting frail he was ninety three he died this year at ninety four we brought him his favorite food ice cream legend has it or at least germy scahill told me but now i'm sure if it's true though you should believe everything jeremy does when he does his reporting right blackwater and dirty wars and now his most recent book the assassination complex with the team at the intercept but he said that ben and jerry's named a flavor after him raz barragan i don't know if it's the if that's true so don't tweet it don't quote me on it but it is pretty cute by the way speaking of  quoting and if you'd like to sign up for our daily digest sign up list they're going around we have wonderful volunteers that are passing them out i think dennis's two it's a great way to keep up on our daily headlines   or if you want to go paperless you can just text from your phone the word democracy now one word and you text it to six six eight six six you'll get a request for your e mail back you'll your e mail and then the e mail will come to you and you can just grant permission and you'll be getting those news headlines in your e mail box and if you tweet anything any photographs any comments use the hash tag covering the movements that's what we're doing on this hundred city tour but when we went up today and it was so wonderful to see him to bring him his ice cream ben and jerry's also gave him and all the catholic workers a lifetime supply of ice cream so when his niece for example phil's daughter frieda who we just had on democracy now monday remembering diane she could walk into any ben and jerry's and demand her favorite flavor and would always get it but yes dan berrigan how important he was who said we have chosen to be powerless criminals in a time of criminal power we have chosen to be branded as peace criminals by war criminals i want to talk about movements the movements are what give us hope in the face of terrible calamities that the fall us that happen that actually can be prevented so i want to go back to last june what happened in charleston south carolina the massacre that took place of nine parishioners well eight and they were the love it pastor reverend clemente pinkney who also was a south carolina state senator for many years it was mid week in june and he raced back from the state legislature just because he wanted to do bible study with those that wanted to gather to study and they were in the mother emmanuel church a young white man came and they welcomed him though they didn't know him he sat with them for an hour and then blew them away he saved the life he did not kill one woman telling her as he stood over her you can tell the world what you saw this young white supremacist who wrapped himself in the confederate flag a few days later the survivors and the loved ones of the victims put this country to shame when dylan storm roof was arraigned and they for him i think dylan roof unwittingly blew the roof off of the confederacy so what would happen next a few days later reverend clemente pinkney state senator pinckney would lay in state in the capitol rotunda in columbia south carolina where he had worked and stream by to pay tribute and where did they see before they came into the rotunda they had to pass outside the confederate flag that we all the flags o south carolina of course were at half mast for the beautiful nine but this one the confederate flag on the grounds of the state capitol building could not be brought down and mast why well it was put up at the beginning of the one nine hundred sixty s in response to the civil rights movement on top of the state capitol building then in two thousand the end and some sports franchises said that they would boycott if they didn't take it down so the compromise of the legislature is they took it off the state capitol put it on the capitol grounds but there were rules there were strings attached it could never fly at anything but full mass and if anyone dared to deface it or tried to take it down they would face an increase fine they would face increase prison time so that's the scene a few days after reverend clemente pinkney lay in state there was the mass funeral for the nine victims at the college of charleston arena you know democracy now raced down we broadcast outside mother emmanuel went to the arena thousands where their president obama sang amazing grace and the next day the funerals continued one by one but we left there because we heard something remarkable had taken place that next morning it was five thirty in the morning june twenty seventh two thousand and fifteen ten days after the massacre at the a manual a m e church you know i think if most people were asked today who ultimately took down the confederate flag off the state capitol grounds you know the legislature timidly would vote to take it down but if you asked if one person was responsible most people would probably say the south carolina governor nikki haley sort of led the charge  but that's not who first took down the flag it was a thirty year old african american woman named brain so it was june twenty seventh two thousand and fifteen a south carolina state house glowed in the morning light bring was from charlotte north carolina she walked toward the main entrance of the building she was accompanied by jimmy tyson a young white man from north carolina and others who scouted the grounds they observed the scene around the state house waiting until there were no guards visible and after about thirty minutes tyson and newsome made their move they walks with fleet toward the confederate monument which stands directly in front of the main steps the tall monument topped with the heroic image of a confederate soldier pays tribute to those who have glorified a fall and cause slavery the two activists proceeded to the thirty foot high flagpole that stood directly behind the monument the confederate battle flag flap blazingly at the top bring newsome donned her climbing gear which she had learned how to use a few days before and she made her way to the top of the flagpole guards notice and began shouting at her to come down reaching the top of the flagpole she grabbed the confederate flag and hooked it she declared you come against me with hatred and oppression and violence i come against you in the name of god she clutched the symbol of the confederacy and said this flag comes down today she lowered herself slowly along with the flag as soon as she reached the ground bree and jimmy were arrested video of the protests went viral was seen around the world her bella fun quickly raised more than one hundred twenty five thousand dollars ava du vernay director of the oscar nominated film so my wish you all should see was among the many to hail her tweeting i hope i get the call to direct the motion picture about a black superhero i admired her name is pretty new some within about an hour or two state house workers raised a new confederate flag on the capitol grounds could you imagine how the state could engage in this conscious act i didn't say act of conscience but this conscious act the day after the mass funeral for the beautiful nine the few days after the massacre that they would actually raise the confederate flag once again this on the same day that the funerals were continuing in bodies were being lowered into the groom the state raised the confederate flag again we were going to cover the funerals but instead we raced to columbia to the jailhouse where brayan jimmy were taken we didn't know if we could get in but we ended up getting into the arraignment room the arraignment cell and they're bringing the sim and jimmy tyson were charged with the facing state property facing a penalty of up to three years in prison and a five thousand dollar fine we then went to the lobby where people were gathering to greet the activists if they were let out and i interviewed a young woman named to make a louis she'd come with bree from north carolina to help with the action she said to see the flag actually come down and all the things that represents being taken down by a strong black woman was one of the greatest symbolic images one person could ever witness then they have another young woman named carol parker who lived in columbia didn't know bree at all but knew the indignity of walking past that confederate flag every day of her growing up said three has done what our governor has and have the courage to do what our general assembly house and had the courage to do she went up there and did what had to be done when it needed to be done let it be told from the rooftops it was bring a new system that took down who took down the symbol of the confederacy in columbia south carolina