which reminds me of a moment at the democratic convention this year and the first day of the democratic convention i got a text we're about to go inside and they were going to gavel it open but i get this text and it says that on a particular corner an action was going to take place so we raced over to the corner and we see the undock you bus pull up that's the bus covered with butterflies filled with undocumented immigrants who were challenging the democratic party to pass a compassionate fair rational immigration policy in this country and you know and they were inspired by the young dreamers young people who are sitting in on president obama's campaign offices and other senators and congress members offices and these young people risk more than a rest for their civil disobedience they risk deportation sometimes to countries they don't even know maybe they came here when they were six months old or a year old they might not even have known they were undocumented until they're older and they apply for a driver's license or perhaps they don't even know they think they're just a supporter sitting down but in fact they themselves are undocumented but in these offices and this wasn't lost on president obama i mean that this is the modern day civil rights movement and i think it shamed him because this summer he he conceded and he passed  he issued a kind of executive order that said that undocumented immigrants thirty years or younger who fit a certain criteria could get deferred action could get a reprieve from the threat of deportation for two years so that they could work here so they could go to school here ok they couldn't get health insurance but they could get these of the things and this inspired this new group to come to charlotte it was the young dreamers and their parents now and they pulled up in front of the convention and they got out real quickly and they were very energetic and they were chanting no papers no fear no papers no fear and i was interviewing one of the leaders rosie  recognized her because we had her on the show that morning it's often interesting to watch democracy now and see who's on and what they do so rosie got out of the bus and i was asking her why she was doing this and a a media personality came up to me a well known it's hard to call them journalists but so and he came up to me he was on his way into the network you know he was going to the convention and he said what are these you want and i said why don't you tell this gentleman what it is you want and she said i want to know what kind of legacy president obama wants to lee i want to know if he wants to be remembered as the president to deported talk to people at the heart of the story who are at the target end of policy and her husband came out of the bus and he said i have paid taxes in this country for eighteen years which is more than citibank can say and so rosie and her husband martin and their daughter they were going to get arrested and then there was this young woman who had her arm wrapped around an older woman she would not let go of her she came out of the bus they marched down the street they went to the gates  unfurled this big banner with a big butterfly on it and she and her mother sat down and i said to this young woman you know kind of look like you probably would fit into this new criterion that could get you deferred action and you could stay in this country and she said i can but my mother can't and if she gets deported i might as well go with her and then there was another young woman kneeling down in the rain whisper down the police were poor ring in and i asked her why the butterflies why these butterflies on the end occupy why this big butterfly in the spanner and she said because butterflies know no borders butterflies are free and with that nine or ten of the young people and their families got arrested these are the movements that make this country great and i want to talk about movements you know it's so much what we focus on  democracy now let's go back to december two thousand and ten the uprising in tunisia sparked by a young man named mohammad who is comes at a university has no opportunity so he goes into the mark into the  market to sell fruit and vegetables in the authorities are harassing him they steal a scale he can't take it anymore and he sets himself on fire and that ignites the frustration of a we can't say enough about how important this website is in a time when governments are cracking down on information  time especially of war when we need transparency more than ever how important it is to see these documents that have been released by  to julian assange the founder of wiki leaks is in a lot of trouble he is holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london he's been granted political asylum by ecuador he's wanted for questioning  sweden for two women who say he sexually abused them and that's serious and that should be dealt with but what the media gets wrong is they say he's been charged he hasn't and even if you're charge you have to go to trial that doesn't mean you are guilty but whatever the evidence is it hasn't even risen to the level of charges being brought against him he is wanted for questioning it's something he says he will do and the ecuadorian government has backed him up and reached out to sweden said how can he answer your questions he will do that but what he's concerned about is if he is extradited to sweden it's not being in sweden he said he would do that he wants a promise for the u s government that they will not then extradite him  that has a sealed indictment against julian assange and for treason in this country and why should he be afraid if he were extradited to this country does the name bradley manning ring a bell when you think about what has happened to this young man this u s soldier who is in iraq who has been charged with apparently i mean it's amazing to think it could be in the desert in iraq and he could bring in c d s that he labeled lady g and download millions of pages of top u s government secret government documents on iraq and afghanistan secret state department cables and why are these documents so important well i think if known they could save lives let's use one example february two thousand and seven in iraq one of the and this is why this is so important you know this all and if he wrote the documents it would be and we should know all about him but no one refutes no one can test the authenticity of these documents written by lobel soldiers low level soldiers and officers written by state department officials ambassadors in the case of state department documents so the ones in iraq february two thousand and seven this incident where an apache helicopter unit is hovering over two men who iraqis who put up their hands and a surrender sign and the soldiers in the helicopter are in a road they call back to base and they say what should we do these iraqis look like they're surrendering to us and the lawyer on the base says to them this is according to the documents the military documents that were released says to them you cannot surrender to a helicopter and so they blow them away and you gasp and i think people all over would gasp and i think if we knew that at the time that there would have been an investigation and you know there would have been an outcry an investigation and so what happened six months later may not have happened and that was july twelfth two thousand and seven it was in an area of baghdad called new baghdad the same apache helicopter unit is hovering overhead and  they see and this is video released by wiki leaks that wiki leaks called collateral murder this is video of iraqis on the ground or peace activists this is the video made by the apache helicopter unit and it is filled with the soldiers laughing and cursing they call back to base again you know they're not out of line they are always calling back for permission and they're calling back for permission to open fire on what they see below which is a group of men who were actually touring around two reuters employees an up and coming videographer named i think it was about twenty two years old and his driver side and they were there because the area had just been bombed the day before and they were being shown around his driver saying but you know drivers in wartime  not just drivers he was beloved by the reuters community he's forty years old a father of four because when western journalists helicopter in parachute in somewhere for a week they need to get a lay of the land fast and it's these drivers who are fixers who are telling them what the area is about who the people are bringing them they're really like reporters themselves and so walking through this area the helicopter unit above calls back to base ask for permission to open fire and they opened fire on this group of residents below with the with the journalist and his driver and they kill almost all say critically wounded he's dragging himself away and a white van pulls up from the neighborhood to help the wounded it's got two little kids in it it's got others in it and the helicopter unit namir they'd be alive today that's why information is important and it can save lives that's why wiki leaks i think is so important so how does that relate to tunisia well you know the state department documents that came out showed that you know ben ali the dictator of tunisia was corrupt and he was brutal it's not like the tunisians didn't know that already but what they saw in the documents was that the u s government knew it and yet they continued to shore him up to the tune of millions of dollars every year and it just increased their rage and then the tunisian revolution fueled the egyptian revolution and how many of you experienced the egyptian revolution at eleven saying it was his friends it was family it was people saying i'm going to die for my country he said no these are not political people you know what is happening in my country he said it's changing and he flew directly into by way of the cairo airport but he hardly left for the next eighteen days you know when he got there mubarak had plunged the country into digital darkness turned off the internet well mubarak couldn't do that but he used a u s company california company to turn off the air net and there was such an outcry when they flip the switch that they issued a press release saying we were only following orders but we've heard that before so but sharif got around the digital blockade and he became one of the top tweeters in the world you know from the beginning democracy now has very has always been very scrappy relied on the internet from the beginning to be able to transmit our broadcast quality radio at the time that wasn't even a podcast that was that word wasn't around then but the m p three so that radio stations could take it and then went on television september two thousand and one and we're sending out those video cassettes we pioneered a way to send broadcast quality video through the internet and necessity is the mother of invention we weren't able quite to use we couldn't afford to use the satellites and we use them sometimes now but when the internet went back up the thugs took down the satellites for the major networks broke into the us news offices and the international t v offices and broke down the satellites and so i remember seeing anderson cooper in his hotel room in a sort of old democracy now sort of very fuzzy sky the look with a lower third that said reporting from an undisclosed location and there was sharif in the middle of talk rior saying exactly where he was saying it was the safest place to be in all of egypt and he was bringing you the voices of the networks are showing you that bird's eye view which was very impressive but there was sharif on the ground and he was with honey  and the while saddam way the seventy nine year old former presidential candidate or psychiatry imprisoned under saddam exiled under mubarak she was holding salons for young people before talk rear when they were so dispirited and disillusioned and saying we will win she would say we will win and sharif was interviewing the young high school student who was publishing a broadsheet voices of top gear in the shadow of the state media building that had spewed lies for so long and how many would video these interviews and then he would well jump over burning barricades he would get around the camels that were brought in to trounce the protesters and he would make his way to sharif family's house and he would put together these twenty twenty five minute reports of these interviews and because the satellites were down because now we can use them to but because they were down he would then send these reports through the internet and we would broadcast them on democracy now the next day and and then egypt i think the arab spring partly inspired wisconsin the largest uprising wisconsin's ever seen ok so did governor scott walker inspire the wisconsin uprising but i mean democracy now of course flew directly to madison because this is a huge grassroots movement i mean it was a cross section of wisconsin society when they took over the state capitol building i mean i went in there and i saw some of the biggest guys i had ever seen the osh kosh prison guards and i went up to them and said who did you vote for and they said governor walker of course so i said so what are you doing here and they said protesting governor walker of course and i said what why and they said he didn't say he was going to go after our wives the teachers he didn't say you should go after our neighbors our community and then outside freezing cold hundred fifty people marching i go up to this older gentleman with white hair and glasses he's sloshing through the snow with a sign that says i r s auditor's against walker and you knew the governor was in trouble i mean i never saw such scenes as you know governor walker assured the police and the fire fighters he would not go after them i mean he was what he was trying to do is a vis the collective bargaining unit the collective bargaining rights of look unions but he told the police and firefighters it not them just the nurses and the teachers but the firefighters and the police said if you're going after them you're going after us and so the scenes in front of the scenes in front of the governor's office amazing you have the young people with dreads who were drumming outside the governor's office and you have the police next to them rocking out and then let's move forward to august and september right the thousands of people went to washington to form a ring around the rose garden to get president obama to stop the keystone pipeline from alberta to the gulf of mexico and twelve twelve hundred people got arrested there and then people headed up to new york and well september seventeenth two thousand and eleven thousands of people marched to wall street and ended up at zuccotti park and form the first to occupy wall street and count men and made history i remember how the corporate media dealt with it nothing not the first day not the second  not the third day they didn't mention it i mean here they were under their noses right this is the media metropolis of the world new york and they're down the street and these media personalities just don't talk about it and then the second week well they have to say something and so they start ridiculing them i remember watching one of the morning talk shows and they're saying who are these people they can't get it together enough i mean everyone's got a different sign they can't even get it together enough to choose a spokesperson because if they did we'd have  right here in the studio but what do they want what are their demands and i thought really any madison avenue p r exec would be would drool to be the one credited with perhaps the most famous slogan in u s history we are the ninety nine percent whether you agree or disagree with it this is a slogan a motto that resonated across this country the word occupy occupied the language not only the english language but languages all over the country and then i want to talk about the pizza you know egyptians were calling into the local new york pizza rhea's ordering pizzas to be sent to zuccotti park to feed the occupiers wisconsinites were calling into the local pizzerias feed the occupiers so these pizzas were flying into zuccotti park at such a rate and of course the occupiers called them occupies and and and they were so much pizza coming in there where they would hold these huge buffets hundreds of people would line up and you know this was right next to wall street i saw bankers on line they heard there was a free lunch so and then they were conservationists the occupiers if nothing else they would use every aspect of that they would eat the pies and then they would use the the lids of the pizza boxes to make signs i remember this freak snowstorm in october right and everyone goes under the tarps they clear up all the signs because they don't want them to get soggy but they have one sign now hello snow we won't go they had other signs too like i'll believe a corporation is a person when texas executes one and now i want to talk about occupy seventeen four days later troy and tony davis was scheduled to die so democracy now flew from zuccotti park to jackson georgia where the death row prison was and i want to read an excerpt from the column to honest and i wrote troy davis in the machinery of death yes on september twenty first at seven pm troy and twenty days this was scheduled to die we were reporting live from outside georgia's death row in jackson awaiting news about whether the supreme court would spare his life davis was sentenced to death for the murder of off duty savannah police officer mark macphail in one thousand nine hundred nine seven of the nine non police witnesses in his trial later recanted or changed their testimony some alleging police intimidation for their original false statements no physical evidence linked davis to the shooting davis was one of more than thirty two hundred prisoners on death row in the united states he'd face three prior execution dates with each one global awareness grew and all sorts of groups took up his cause amnesty international the the pope called for clemency for troy anthony davis so did william sessions the former i director so did bob barr the former republican georgia congress member so did allen all the former death row prison warden this person and five other prison wardens like penalty but they were against it in the case of troy davis they said as jeannie woodard said yesterday morning too much doubt and this is particularly significant as california november sixth whether to overturn the death penalty in california which will have such repr questions for the rest of the country but we raced to jackson church or if we could have been in the execution chamber broadcasting we would have been i really do believe we must show the images most people in this country do not understand how in the united states the only industrialized country in the end the only country in the industrialized world to execute the death penalty we should show exactly what the execution protocol is show the prisoner strapped down on a cross like gurney with a needle injected in his arm and at the last minute the window that overlooks his gurney opens and you see the curtains are pulled back the family of the murder victim and and the prisoners g if they're allowed in the reporters there we should show this whole scene where we couldn't be there but we were on the person grounds the partment corrections immediately said when we were going over to the protest pen that they arrested on the grounds that would allow one hundred fifty protesters there but of course there were more than a thousand so they were held across the street they the students from the historically black colleges to morehouse and spelman holding candles and on the grounds with the human rights leaders heads of and the family of troy anthony davis people from around the world now they said that we as journalists could not go near them we would have to stay on the outskirts of the property and i looked over at the elite journalists and i thought why aren't they pushing back i mean if we're going to broadcast for hours i'm not going to talk the whole time i mean it's our job is journalists to go to where the silence is to interview the people who have come here to make a statement these journalists though i guess the reason they were in fighting back i mean if they're going to be broadcasting for thirty or sixty seconds it's not that hard to fill the time but then our broadcast truck pulled up you know like one fox would get the next day c n n would get the day before and we needed to brust castra how many of you watched our broadcast that night from death row or the next morning when we played the highlights same courage every one to go to democracy now dot org it was a stone going to be this witness to history that night if journalism is the first draft of history it's critical that we as journalists be in these places to demobbed document what happens in all of our names so when the broadcast truck pulled up i saw the power of big i mean the guy in the truck were bigger than the osh kosh person guards they pulled  the window and they said to me where do i want the truck and i'm looking nervously at the prison guards i said well they're saying they said mr goodman you're paying for the truck where do you want it i said wow it's actually thinking about that protest pen if and they barrel the struck over to the pen this is what they do for c n n than they do for fox and then they drive over to the truck and then they say where do you want to stand and i said well i was  thinking of just standing against the ropes so i could interview the people they hand me the microphone they say start broadcasting and so we did it now we had been given  department of corrections the press pack it was thin and it described how try anthony davis would spend the last day of his life it said his schedule was nine to three he could see family then at three o'clock they would have to clear out for a routine physical routine physical you know what happened to a texas man a while ago he was on death row he attempted suicide they raced into the hospital they got him better and then they executed him and then another of the pages in this press packet described what troy davis would have for dinner he'd already turned down the special meal the press kit described the standard tray davis would be offered in detail it said he would get grilled cheese burgers been brown potatoes baked beans coleslaw cookies and a grape beverage then there was the next page which listed the lethal cocktail that would follow it was like when you go to your eye doctor's office big letters four lines to see you know what you can read and see the first line said  heart the only two things davis had a say over whether he take the sedative or the last supper he refused by seven pm the u s supreme court was reportedly reviewing davis plea for a stay th case was referred to supreme court justice clarence thomas thomas hails from pinpoint georgia a community founded by freed slaves that's near savannah where davis had lived the eyewitness the supreme court denied the play davis execution began at ten fifty three pm the person spokes person delivered the news to the reporters outside time of death eleven o eight p the eyewitnesses to the execution stepped out according to an associated press reporter who was there these were troy davis final words he said i'd like to address the macphail family let you know i'm not the one who killed your son your father your brother i am innocent i did not have a gun all i can ask is you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth i asked my family and friends to continue to fight  and then he turned to his execution and said for those about to take my life god have mercy on your souls and god bless your souls the state of georgia took davis body to atlanta for an autopsy charging his family for the transportation entre davis death certificate the cause of death is listed simply as homicide as we stood on the grounds of the prison just after troy davis was executed the department of corrections threatened to pull the plug on our broadcast the show was over and i was reminded of what gandhi reportedly answered  asked what he thought of western civilization he responded i think it would be a good idea one of the movements that fueled the occupy movement and such a significant movement it was and i want to talk for a moment about something that i've been deeply concerned about in these years and that is the militarization of police and the crackdown on dissent in this country  we have something in this country called the posse comitatus act and i think most people think it's a good idea the idea that soldiers shouldn't march through the streets of the united states but i feel the way that the authorities are getting around this is by militarizing the police and this is a very serious issue this crackdown on dissent because dissent is what will save us i mean since nine eleven billions of dollars have been poor and into local police departments they are buying tanks they are buying drones i understand that right here in seattle there's a controversy around this the level of surveillance is unprecedented we have been focusing on a series that the a p the associated press did this year for which they won the pulitzer prize on one police department the new york police department and the level of surveillance they have been gauged in over the years working with the central intelligence agency of the arab american and must community in the greater new york area i say greater new york area because the new york police are going beyond the boundaries of new york they're going into new jersey they're going into connecticut the yale university president was so enraged by this he issued a statement saying you have no right to come and surve our students in new jersey officials said the same thing one of the ways this case was cracked was a new jersey landlord discovered all the surveillance equipment in one of his apartments he got so nervous he called the police but it was the police and i mean we had on a cuny student city university of new york a muslim student whose name appeared in the police documents and his parents didn't want him to come and didn't want to do any media they were afraid but he said no we're already identified our only protection is if i speak out so he went on democracy now and he talked about how the documents described a camping trip he took one weekend with his friends all the details of this camping trip from beginning to end obviously one of the people in the trip was an infiltrator the thing that drove him one guy they didn't know as well and yet you know young people it's good not to be in cliques to be welcoming to people who want to join you and yet this is what happened and this student said that the police documents said these students were so extraordinary that they prayed four times a day he said the sinful traitor was so stupid he didn't know we pray five times a day but what happens when this happens what happens when communities feel under siege fuel they're targeted this doesn't increase our national security in fact it makes things much more dangerous because when you're in a targeted community and you're afraid you see something and you should say something you're not going to say it to the people who are targeting you this only decreases our national security i was invited on one of the networks recently and the reporter said to me  interviewer said but you know nine eleven happened and we have to be very vigilant and i said that's true but we have to have a uniform standard of justice i mean think about when timothy mcveigh blew up the oklahoma city federal building right he's charged he's tried and he was convicted after he did this and killed more than one hundred sixty people did police departments around the country infiltrate surveil and monitor all white christian communities hardly we have to have a uniform standard of justice and this kind of targeting only leads to bigotry and stereotyping that old timidly will make us less safe and on the issue of police violence against protesters i mean we saw it so much of occupy i mean some of the largest mass arrests in u s history i mean the brooklyn bridge arrest of more than seven hundred people the students at u davis who were pepper sprayed point blank range protesting budget cuts now they won something like thirty thousand dollars apiece but you know to talk about this and seattle is so significant because i mean let's go back to the battle of seattle you know democracy now is there was we're first broadcasting on t v as well as radio and i mean the level of violence that was directed at the peaceful protesters i think there's no one who describes it better than your former police chief norm stamper i mean at the time he tried to stamp out all the scent effectively that's what he tried to do and he met these peaceful protesters you know high school students with their teachers environmentalist union activists french farmers doctors nurses who were concerned about the world trade organization that was having its meeting here concerned that this supra national organization could overturn the laws of democratically elected legislatures like in california they're trying to pass some people are trying to pass the g m o labeling act or write a proposition that would label jammo proof just let me use that as an example so if they that the concern is that a country could file a complaint with the world trade organization that says california has now introduced an obstacle a barrier to trade that's w t o illegal the idea that this organization unaccountable largely accountable to corporations could then overturn the laws that are passed by the population of a state this is what concerned people this is just an example now norm stamper who was really forced out because of what he did has become one of the most eloquent spokespeople against the militarization of police saying he made a magic error at that time he had the police separate from the protesters from these peaceful protesters meeting them with a level of force i mean within the first two days they were going out to other states to find more what pepper spray and gas whatever it was that they were using because they'd used it all up the mass arrests that were taking place hitting the protesters with these rubber bullets at first seattle was denying they were using rubber bullets this is really when indian media or it came into its own because they were showing the photographs of the rubber bullets c n n dot com was repeating the words of power saying they weren't doing it and indeed media dot org was getting more hits than c n n dot com just showing the evidence on the ground we had chief stand for and democracy now along with the police spokesperson for the police foundation this was not so long ago who had organized a call of eighteen police chiefs and how they would deal with the occupying countenance and tragic mistake and this is a stream really serious for the police to separate themselves like this i mean they have not only face shields they have full body shields they move in as a war on these protesters that's if you're lucky if they're not using horses and dogs as so often happens now you know we had our own experience with the police four years ago at democracy now when we were covering the republican convention in st paul and i'll just briefly describe this it's not dissimilar from the experience a lot of journalists and others have had but it was the first day of the republican convention we come from denver there were masterpiece protests there we flew into st paul it was labor day september first two thousand and eight the convention was going to begin in the afternoon it was the pale and mccain convention and ten thousand people marched on the spirit of full blue sky day for peace it was like ten in the morning they marched from same poll city hall to the excel center we were covering the protest interviewing people was led by soldiers so men full military regalia which is very brave i mean they face consequences for this some were refusing to go to iraq or afghanistan some were still going but felt it was wrong somewhere had never gone had said no and there were thousands of civilians and then i went to the convention floor to interview delegates as the convention began delegates from the hottest state from alaska and and my colleague called salazar a multimedia producer went to the t v station to start preparing the show for the next day and i get a call on the floor of the convention from mike burke our senior producer who says come quickly to seventh and jackson nicole and sharif of them bloodied and beaten by the police and arrested so what are you talking about there in the t v studio that's where we had just left them he said get to seventh and jackson fast so we raced off the floor of the convention i was working with ric rapidly a great filmmaker who did firth fourth world war empire the film i hope you could screen it here at town hall or at a film festival here is called harvest of empire the untold story of latinos in america is very important to see it casts an entirely different stills a different story about why immigrants come to this country particularly focusing on u s military intervention as well as u s economic policies in central america it opened in new york and los angeles to sold out audiences held over now opening in san francisco and washington get that film harvest of empire to seattle so rick and i raced off the floor of the convention we went to seventh in jackson and there we see riot police have fully contained the area i've got the credentials of allow me to interview presidents and vice presidents you know the tops a curate he credentials and the police see that these are the credentials they recognize and i came up to him i said i've just come from the convention two of our reporters are inside they have the same credentials i do can i speak to your commanding officer we need to have them released it wasn't seconds before they written me through the police line twisted my arms back slap the handcuffs on pushed me up against a car on against the wall and on to the ground charging me with a misdemeanor interfering with a peace officer if only there was a peace officer in the vicinity and from my vantage point on the ground i'm still desperately looking for sharif in a color i see sharif across the parking lot his hands are behind his back i demand to be brought to him finally the police do we're standing next to each other his arm is bleeding he's handcuffed to we've both got our credentials around our neck and the secret service come and rip those credentials from around our necks then i'm brought into the police van and that's when the call is her face is bleeding she has credentials on i said nicole what am i what happened and i said i thought you were in the t v station and she said we were but we heard this commotion outside so we grabbed camera microphone we race downstairs and we saw some protesters but we mainly saw police she said i was in the parking lot against the parked cars and all of a sudden this fowling piece of police came at me this formation of police of riot police she said she was filming and she was holding up a press pass she didn't plan to film her own violent arrest the police are shouting on your face on your face whatever that means and she is shouting back press press and she didn't know what hit her they hit her from behind and in front of her and they took her down on her face they had near buton her back they were pulling on her leg so they're dragging her face to the gravel the first thing to go down is her camera it tumbles down and they pull the battery out of  camera if you're wondering what it was they wanted to stop happening now sharif is a very cool guy rate two years later he covered the egyptian revolution and he doesn't get arrested in mubarak's egypt but he gets arrested in the streets of the united states covering what's supposed to be a celebration of democracy the democrat the republican convention so he goes up to the riot police and he says calm down and they take him they throw up against the wall they kick him twice in the chest and they take him down and nicole and sharif face p c felony riot charge that's probable cause felony riot so i am taken to the police garage where they've erected cages to put the liberating because within a few hours we were liberated i mean the thousands of people who wrote in called in fact tweeted in the twin city authorities it freed me and then nicole and sharif sharif was in jail with an a p photographer in the same cell sharif was released before the a p photographer there were more than forty reporters who were arrested that week so then i am taken back to the convention center it's late at night the convention is over for the first night because the networks want to interview me like what happened and i'm in the n b c sky box and after the interview an n b c reporter comes up to me and he says well i did not get arrested and i said i don't know were you out there covering the protests he said no so i said well i don't get arrested in the sky box either and you know says ninety percent of life is just showing up you got to get out there i mean you know it's our job to interview people on the convention floor to try to get into the corporate suites to see who's funding these conventions but also to get out into the streets where the uninvited guests are sometimes thousands of them you know democracy is a messy thing and it's our job to capture it all and we shouldn't have to get a record when we put things on the record so the next day police chief harrington the police chief of same paul hold a news conference to announce how successful the first day of the police operation had be and i went to the news conference and the officer who opened the door of the news conference was my processing officer the night before and i said to him you not only have to let me into this news conference you have to let me out when it's done so i raised my hand and i asked chief harrington i describe what happened to us and said what have you instructed your officers to do and how do you expect us to operate in this environment and he said we could embed with the mobile field force embed with the police mobile field force embed i mean the next day i saw a report of the baseball cap in the middle of this moving police organism going down the streets of st paul  ed like reporters in bed in the front lines of troops in iraq and afghanistan i'm not saying those reporters who do that aren't brave but i think the embedding process has brought the media to an all time low the the  pentagon calls it a spectacular success which is why it's a total failure i mean as my colleague journalist allan nairn says what are you going to get when you are covering the war from the trigger end of the gun you are sleeping with the troops you're eating with the troops your life is in their hands how do you expect you're going to cooperate if you're going to do that you have to embed with the rocky in rocky hospitals and afghan communities in the peace movement around the world to understand the full effect of war and the problem isn't only embedding with soldiers it's i'm betting with the establishment in washington i mean my brother david and i wrote a book called exception to the rulers and that should be the motto of all the media we should be the exception to the rulers and the second book we wrote was called static and the reason we call it that is that's what the media should give us 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 so so we sued the twin city authorities and the secret service and this took about three years and we felt it was absolutely critical for none of us to get used to this to send a message last year a minneapolis judge called us back to minneapolis sharif flew back from egypt nicole and i came in and we ultimately settled with the police in the secret service a secret service were furious they wanted to be severed from the case but we had figured out who it was who was involved in our arrests and it's very hard to do this in these what are called national special security events every level of authority is joined together but it's critical to figure out who is involved and who was involved with this overall crackdown of dissent and so we ultimately got unprecedented settlement a six figure settlement along with an agreement by the st paul police that they would develop a protocol for how to deal with reporters and when we settled we wanted to send this message to police where would be the largest gathering of police that we could address so we flew back to new york and held a news conference at  occupy wall street we knew there would be many hundreds of police there and it's not only about the unlawful arrests of journalists but the unlawful arrests of people everywhere this all must be challenge because dissent is what will save us i just wanted to end with two stories and i know i've told this before but this issue of movements is so important right now as people way to elect to be the most powerful person on earth the president of the united states what matters most is movements and the kinds of demands you make before and after elections and that's why i wanted to very quickly tell the story of rosa parks and quickly because you all know the story but the reason i tell it is because the media gets it wrong every time you know rosa parks down the bus december first one nine hundred fifty five among refuses to get up for a white passenger in so doing she launches the modern day civil rights movement a few days later she goes to court in the monkey improvement association holds their meeting to elect a leader that will lead the bus boycott that will lead to the desegregation of the transportation system and they elect  young minister who just come into town dr martin luther king dr martin luther king was rosa parks helped to launch dr king and when she died democracy now race to washington she was the first african american woman to lay in in the capitol rotunda then her body was brought to washington church thousands came out oprah was inside cicely tyson was inside they erected these loud speakers so the people outside could hear what's happening inside we were interviewing a young woman outside said why are you here she said i e mailed my for festers i said i won't be in class today i'm going to get an education and i remember c n n that day they said rosa parks was a tired seamstress she was no trouble maker no that's where they got it wrong rosa parks was a first class troublemaker she knew she knew exactly what she was doing she was the secretary of the local and she worked with nixon he came out a radical labor politics he was the president he worked with a philip randolph who together they had helped organize the brotherhood of sleeping car porters right the the black train conductor some of them had been enslaved themselves and their fathers had been they were all called george for george pullman who owned the trains which shows you why they need to be organized in a philip randolph went on to organize the one nine hundred sixty three march on washington the greatest organizer of all time e d nixon worked with him and nixon work with rosa parks and they were working to most effectively strategize to change the laws she trained at highlander center as dr king had been there also black and white together to change the south to change this country you know rosa parks sat down on the bus before and refused to get up as had other young women you never know when the magic moment will come but if you are involved with social change you will help to build a foundation that will determine the future that will make history and to show how brave rosa parks was i mean the media denigrates activism but what can be more noble than dedicating your life to making the world a better place to show rosa parks bravery just go back a few months before to an incident that deeply affected her and that was the murder of emmett till the summer of one nine hundred fifty five fourteen year old african american boy his mother mamie till wanted him out of chicago for the summer sent him to be with us and uncle and cousins and money mississippi and he was asleep in their house at night and a white mob came and ripped him out of bed they said he wolf whistled at a white woman emmett till was a stutterer and his mother mamie taught him when you start  whistle he ended up in the bottom of the tallahatchie river when his body was dredged up his mother mamie till did something incredibly courageous she said she wanted his casket opened for the wake in the funeral thousands stream by his casket and saw and then jet magazine and other black publications took photographs of his distended mutilated head and they were actually published and they were seared into the history and consciousness of this country mamie till had something very important to teach the press of today show the pictures show the image of us on this eleventh anniversary of the longest war in u s history the war in afghanistan could you imagine for just one week if we showed the images of war above the fold of every surviving newspaper a photograph and a story about a baby dead on the ground the top news story of every radio and t v newscast about a soldier dead and dying in the un everyone's facebook wall every email every tweet talked about a woman with their legs blown off by cluster bombs or a family killed in a drone attack for just one week americans are a compassionate people they would say no war is not the answer to conflict in the twenty first