class are in every up aka the ruling ideas that is the class which is the ruling material force of society is it the same time its ruling intellectual force has inside makes a lot of common sense those individuals in corporate institution to have great economic power in the society will generally have more political power and influence as well they will be better able to control social and cultural institutions such as the media the arts sports the military education religion businesses of all sorts publishing the academy and so on all institutions that influence the narrative of what people come to think about themselves and what they think is going on around them in their society and the world the politically outspoken independent progressive journalist is the stone put it with his usual characteristic blu journalist work an ideologically hostile environments military diplomatic business where information is controlled and reporters tend to be absorbed  they take on the habits additives and even accents of the military or diplomatic corps should a reporter resist the pressure there are many ways to get rid of him and in the role that racism and in the attempts to express and develop alternative narratives about the american experience one begins to realize the monumental task ahead for any progressive independent journalistic and media voice in america so we're deeply honored and excited to have one of those lifelong courageous voices on the radical magination today as our guest he was born in ponce puerto rico and raised in these harlem not far from our barrio far house studios where we're filming he gradually coming adversity in the mid sixty's was active in the anti vietnam war movement and played a leading role as one of the three strike central representatives on the strike coordinating committee that helped shop shut down the college in spring of one thousand nine hundred sixty eight he was a member of students for democratic society and a founding member of the member of the new york city branch of the young lords serving on this first central committee as its minister of education in one nine hundred eighty one he was elected president of the national congress for puerto rican rights a political organization that concerned and registered latino voters he was has been named by hispanic business magazine as one of the america's most influential in the spandex and is earn a lifetime achievement award from the hispanic academy of media and arts and sciences and of course many of you in our audience probably are also familiar with his work as co host of the popular independent news program democracy now with amy goodman which reaches over twelve hundred radio and television state stations one of his recent books economic and military interests played in triggering an unprecedented wave of migration that is transforming our nation's culture and economic landscape here how he puts it in the documentary they never teach us in school that the huge filipino presence here is a direct result of our own government's axes in mexico the caribbean and central america over many decades actions that force ninety percent of our existence as a country we've been at war and of course many of those wars have been attempts to build and extend an empire policies aimed at promoting the political economic and cultural control of the u s government over areas beyond its boundaries it's understandably more comforting for many of us to think of america as a welcoming ground for immigrants and refugees a bastion for melting po freedom welcoming to its swords the tired and poor yearning to be free to be fair it has been that for many however america's over eight hundred official military bases around the world hurt special continues to forces in over one hundred thirty four countries are spending to fund overt and covert military forces overseas a close to a trillion dollars annually which amounts to fifty five cents for every discretionary dollar in our budget and constituting over forty percent of the world's military expenditures makes the narrative a ruling elites highly problematic to accept and justify for many once again the streets of our country were taken over by five people who don't belong to the currents come they come with a culture of criminality it's out of control they put a strain on our soul security or education or health care states the feeling was we could very easily overthrow this progressive government and make it a lot easier for the united fruit company and other american businesses to operate in central america from the very beginning the west  contributed to creates the kind of chaos and disarray that leads to more integration i believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots even though they may have entered illegally the reality is that america is changing by the end of this century a majority of the people will trace their origins not to yours but to latin america where  potential america has always been a nation in the process of becoming in process of change it is an immigrant nation your own family history and where you settled how you went to columbia college one of the elite schools of the country had come about well my my mother father came here right after world war two and because my my father and his two brothers had all served in in the military during world war two and what was then called the puerto rican regiment the sixty fifth infantry which was a group of soldiers recruited a riot of what the he called none spoke any english because they were they were basically recruited by the military to fight the nazis and in germany and that's what they did they went through with the the sixty fifth infantry through north africa up lean into germany but when all those soldiers came home they were dramatically changed in their outlook they had seen the world and fought to defend democracy and yet they returned to port which was in dire economic straits so many of them decided well we just fought for america why don't we go to live there because puerto ricans being u s citizens were able to migrate without any  was the battleground because the basically all back then all the italians were east of second avenue and the border regions were between second and fifth and african americans were fifth  lenin and over but everyone had to use the pool and so that became the big racial battleground there were always fights over the use of the jefferson pool between the different ethnic and racial groups in east harlem that the government figured the more puerto ricans that leave the fewer people they'll have to find jobs they did industrialize the island but there were many more people coming off the land than could work in the industries in puerto rico so gradually many many puerto migration exploded and so that was sort of the heyday of the rise of the puerto rican community and most started here in east harlem some in lower east side and then branched out word to other parts of the city and  to the first couple of a couple of grades in high school but everyone else had either dropped out of elementary school or junior high school and so ours was the first generation of young people who had an opportunity not only finish high school but then to go to college and so i was actually the first person not just in my immediate family but my extended family to go to college i managed to get a scholarship to full scholarship to columbia  because well radicalize well there was a period when there was a lot of ramen my senior year in high school malcolm x and evelyn and he led the huge public school boycott of african american latino students over the racism in the public schools that eventually led to the school desegregation movement and ocean hope brownsville i used to a one here in east harlem right and of course the lower east side those with the three demonstration school did you became caught up and that right i was involved in that i was very much involved with the i a stool one effort here and in east harlem and and then at columbia as well there was the vietnam war was raging there was there was a whole battle of the local community against the gymnasium that columbia was building a gymnasium for its students and roma columbia's a private university but they were building it in morningside park which is a public park and they really were not going to allow the community use the park except on a few limited hours so the we the students at columbia started protesting against the building of the gym on public land and against the university's involvement in comes about there is a takeover of buildings there's a space of a spontaneous well not spontaneous it was organizing that took place or period many years and and the campus explodes there's a general strike and  find yourself in the middle of this how did you become one of the three strike well there were actually two more people on the strike court in committee but i was under strike or not in committee because i guess because i was very friendly that some of the african american students who had their own component of the strike as well as the some of the s d s students i was not a member of s d s at the time i later did become a member and so i was basically acceptable to all sides as a as a as a leader of the strike and and that the columbia strike sort of really helped to radicalize me dramatically in terms of my understand i really didn't i had not considered myself  a radical or revolutionary before that but as i got to know a lot of the s d s people and and started to do further readings and and i increasingly became more radical during that period of time so by the time to strike was over i had already sort of changed my whole view of what i wanted to do in society so i gave up i said no more journalism not interested in that no more i just wanted to do community organizing so about a year later  a group of young puerto ricans approached me that they were trying to start an organization in east harlem which was my old neighborhood and they came to me and asked me to join and that eventually became in july of one nine hundred sixty nine let's also point out that you were one of very few latino students on the comedy campus correct yeah there was i would say in my class class of sixty eight at columbia there were maybe two or two or three puerto it was and you and and there was a guy from cleveland who out in november well but there were a few more latinos in the graduate schools but they were basically wealthy latin americans right where the children student african american afro american society but it was small it had about thirty forty members and many of them were sons of middle class african americans  those small number of african americans there were only a few of that were from working class and poor backgrounds back then and now of course it's dramatically changed and i think columbia is like i don't know forty percent of people of color these days place and there's lots of what out why was there the kind of what you're going to do about all that and also that the the the concerns and the interests of my fellow students were not my concerns or interest for the most part interesting engine so that it was a  natural understanding our connection with what was going on with s d s there at the time was also the community struggle against a gem i got very involved with the local community organizations fighting against colombia so in a way this this book we just talked about is that the framework really starts here to a columbia in the sense you're sort of awareness of how economic and political elites play around with working class poor people and and also when i wrote horrors of empire it actually was the first edition came out almost twenty years ago and but when i first started working on it in the early ninety's there was very little about the latino community in the united states very few books or studies those that were had been written had been written by outsiders who really didn't know the communities and they hadn't really explored the the wide expanse of the community because  really understand and there's a growing there's a there's a development in the united states of a new phenomenon which i call the latino in america because it's the situation where a puerto rican and a dominican  in miami a colombian and a cuban marry and they have mixed nationality because these kids they have relationships to both their parents but they have this new identity which is a mixture not only of their own culture or from their parents but then african american and white culture that they take up when they come to united states so they are this new thing with the latino in america is being played out in the sense that you know it is authentic but what i try to show is that there's a lot more substantial differences between the different latino nationalities and there is something that binds us all together and we all speak the same language ok spanish or by name when the children don't necessarily speak that well but they understand that but there's a richness of the culture that often anglos looking from the outside to see oh they're all hispanics all set my sights at the same and the reasons why people calm the times th calm the class distinctions in the migration and they bring the similar feuds and gripes from the old country from the old country here so that for instance when i discovered the colombian migration to the united states initially was a very middle class migration it was not working class and poor people as it was with mexicans and puerto ricans the cuban migration the colombian migration were much more middle class migrations educated people who came here with their own skills that they had developed in their own country and therefore they had a different attitude to how they were going to make it in america then did people who came as laborers or who came as agricultural workers and who didn't have education and more conservative politically i would say hopefully early in the in the pew been situation because many were fleeing a revolution there in the colombian situation not so much they were not as conservative because they were coming because of the social dislocation that occurred in their country and done but then the dominican migration was a highly politicized migration the americans who came to united states in the sixty's and seventy's were many were educated but they goal they were actually being pushed out of the dominican republic by the united states and the conservative government that wanted to get rid of its radicals they wanted to ease the political tensions in the country so you the sixty five revolution in the dominican republic that and the invasion of the united states into the dominican republic that created a whole different dynamic so they were fleeing a failed revolution but  so what i try to do is i try to show that there's a lot more richness within the latino community that you really unless you tried to delve into it and understand how each group came and what brought them here you really don't understand the dynamic of how the communities were being built in this country a groundbreaking work and it's you were saying hundreds of colleges you have been shocked by i think something like two hundred colleges use it now as a required text and and and it's still united states certain states you know one of the points i try to make and this is it's and it's so important and so timely because immigration continues to be such a volatile and emotional issue not only in the united states but around the world  d one of the points i make in the book is that we're not alone you know right in france france isn't constant convulsion over the fact that there are so many algerians tunisians and morocc ns who are dramatically changing the nature of french society in england they are in constantly grappling with the fact that the influx over the last forty fifty years of indians pakistanis and jamaicans has dramatically transformed the united kingdom in germany they're constantly dealing with the massive influx of turks that came into germany in the in the sixty's seventy's and eighty's well what do all of these have in common the reason there are so many algerians tunisians and moroccans in france is because that was the colonial empire of france the reason there are so many indians pakistanis and jamaicans in england because that was the colonial empire of england and the reason there are so many turks in germany is because germany attempted after world war one to pick up the pieces of the old austrian garin empire and delve into the middle east and could begin a new colonizing attempt so in effect all of the advance countries of the west are dealing with the unintended harvest of their empires they went to the asia africa and latin america to extract wealth and resources they never expected that they would create the communication systems and the transportation systems and the consciousness that would eventually draw the people of those countries and what they did often is that they impressed the colonial soldiers into their armies the french drafted algerians and tunisians and moroccans to fight the nazis the british drafted indians and pakistanis and jamaicans to fight the nazis so when all of these soldiers came home as my for parents did they were colonial soldiers when they came home they now one were militarily trained had a much more aggressive sense of themselves in the world and demanded equal rights and so you had the vast explosion of the independence movements in africa and asia after world war two but you also had the migrations to the metropolis from these colonial countries and so in essence it what europe is facing and what the united states is facing today is the harvest of its nineteenth and early twentieth century empires only the harvest came p in people that they never expected will come in such numbers to their shores and rather than really dealing with the issues it becomes more convenient by ruling elites to push back in racist ways and blame the victim they become scapegoats they're terrorists they're rapists or states sixty five percent of all the undocumented migration to the it states come from one country mexico two thirds come from one country so is it really a worldwide problem or is it really a problem of the bi national relations between united states and mexico all first of all half of mexico was taken by the united states to create a huge portion of the united states  acquiring it so that really there's been a systematic exploitation of mexican resources and and labor by the united states since the early one thousand nine hundred so to think that you can continue to maintain desperate poverty right on your border and while you are a country living in absolute wealth it's not it's it's not realistic conventionally the people are going to move and i think that's what's increasing happened and because it's one economy maybe two nations but it's one economy now your most recent book reclaiming gotham makes a point that's soon very soon seventy percent of people in the world will be the latino community has a world i think will say oh now what you have is that in what is happening the cities are not only where more and more people are gravitating toward they're also the most racially and ethnically diverse they're generally the most open and inclusive and and and they're still the centers of economic activity so the problem is we have a situation in this country where our national and regional politics are controlled by rule and conservative forces because of the the way the political structure of the united states igs exists small states electoral system  electoral system have disproportionate fower at the national level the way that districts are gerrymandered at the state level means that the rural and upstate areas of every state have much more power than the cities and so you have a situation where the cities the major cities provide the most economic growth and vitality but they are constantly under the thumb of the rural and conservative forces but the problem is that the cit keep growing in size of the world and the rule areas of the country are not growing in size the shrinking in size and population and so you're increasingly having this major divide and it's not just again i don't think it's exceptional to the united mayor carmen julian crews in san juan the major city of water rickles so they get up to trump she's the one who set up the cup that no one knew her until she stood up the job i had right i started writing about her in my book you know she only became famous after after a hurricane by y which is sort of the trunk so that basically what's happening is that the big cities of the advanced world are growing and becoming more and more radical in their political orientation whereas the national governments the regional and state governments are more conservative and right wing in the orientation so i believe we're heading toward a calash you know between the cities and the right wing states and governments and you're seeing in things like  so i noticed trump never holds rallies in big cities right never it's always in some like small suburban or suburban area or some small town where he doesn't go into any of the big cities because ever since that huge near riot during his campaign in chicago when the whole his whole rally was completely disrupted they can't figure out a way to control a big crowd in a big city so he basically stays away from the city and what kind of president doesn't go to any of the major cities of the country that he's president of but you've also pointed out that there's a real danger that he would lose the use troops and actually arrest or try to arrest local officials trying to pass more police accountability laws whereas and even electing radical a progressive prosecutors now we're seeing that many many places and and they're going completely against the grain of what's happening at the national and the and the regional state levels so you're painting a picture of even more intense polarization i think we're heading into more and more polarization i think that there is a growing fascist and right wing movement not just in the united states but obviously we've seen it across the united kingdom and all of europe and i think we are heading toward a much more  intense polarization over the next few years and you know i'm afraid it's going to get really nasty even on election times are going to you know we used to joke that in puerto rico in the sixty's every election there be five or six people killed the the rhetoric and the and the attacks have been intensified especially through social media between those who are opposed politically what about the role of independent progressive politicians and policy the new parties are even the talk will be for i know your admiration for reverend barber poor people's campaign fusion politics trying to see the connections pointing out what you've been point when you pointed out in harvest of empire there how we're all sort of pitted against each other and why fight against each other let's unite against the forces that are creating the misery for us all what about those we're tired of politics what is very crucial importance at this point in specially in terms of assuring a more progressive direction and not allowing the democratic party to be increasingly go to the right in efforts to maintain some people in office so i think that that the independent politics is important and critical and the pressure from the grassroots on all elected officials the matter who they are is critical but i think that we may increasingly be facing a danger and it always happens in times of upsurge of right when movements of ultra left politics of people who are so furious about what is happening in the system that they don't want to make any compromises and they don't want to huge mistake for many of the bernie sanders supporters once bernie sanders had lost his race for and understanding all of them that occur within democratic party but very sanders had made it clear from the beginning that if he didn't win the nomination he was going to support whoever the nominee of the democratic party was what happened is a section of the bernie sanders supporters would not accept would not go along with it and they said no we will mistake and i believe that was a mistake and i and i've said i said before the election and i say that from my own experience when i was an s d s in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight and we in that movement  a good portion of the anti war movement had back eugene mccarthy for president and then after after lyndon johnson decided that he wasn't going to run again for bobby kennedy they s supported bobby kennedy when bobby kennedy was assassinated then the democratic party brokered a deal to put hubert humphrey as the democratic party candidate and he was a liberal democrat but a a conservative wave in america that went on for really with a short interruption award again and it went on for by the time that that revolution was over even the democrats were right  what you believe to be true in principle that you can make an ultra left strategic mistake and end up hurting your movement even more right now in new york city build and and i say you say and i say to them count the mayors of new york city going back with michael bloomberg rudy giuliani david a wider variety of things as bill de blasio now has he done everything that people expected of him no has he screwed up on a bunch of occasions yes but if you look at the overall record and the transfer we and so when you look at all of the mayors of new york city the fact that the blasio has accomplished what what he's managed to accomplish should be counted as he was responding to the progressive movement  the upsurge that had occurred in in the city post occupy and post the great recession and where the latino voters in this in the city in new york city today on all of this how would you describe their possible involvement in put think here in in the city there are a lot more progressive than people give them credit for you know and i think that that there's a lot more independence from the party  won the african american latino communities even though the entire leadership of the city was not with him and so i you know i think that that there is african americans and latinos do respond to who is best meeting their needs and interests in terms of their policies and they don't get as much caught up in you know in the what i call the glitz and scandal of you know individual actions of a specific particular political leader they say what's this political leader done policy to help our community and make our lives better so that it's more the points in my career but largely i've been for the for certainly for the last forty years a working journalist trying to report the news and i what i say is i were i've had the the opportunity to work in what i called the three great streams of american journalism and i wrote about this in the book news for all the people which is first to corporate and commercial press which is what most people understand to  be to be the press in america it's the corporate commercial press which has its own long history some of it good most of it terrible going back to you know the the the patriot prin huge commercial social media platforms of you know all of facebook and twitter and that's the commercial press has its own history some some great journalism has occurred in it a lot of bad journalism occurred in so i've been i've worked in the commercial press for forty years also though have worked in what i call the dissident or alternative press which has its own separate of the sixty's and the seventy's to shows like democracy now and alter net and common dreams and all the other existing dissident press which has always presented a different perspective to the american people than the corporate the commercial press we try to do that here and as always our challenge to the allens the existing media rustam but there's a third stream of the press in america which i've also had the opportunity to work in which is the press by people of color because for over two hundred years both the commercial press and the dissidents press systematically excluded african americans and latinos and native americans from there from being a part of the press so they had to press of the borderlands in new york city so the people of color had to create their own narrative in fact the first editorial in john russell arms freedoms journal was we wish to plead our own cause too long