suspicious fire and a white power symbol i don't legendary leadership school in the u s and a brutal backlash to a women's rights march in pakistan this week we're talking about persisting in the face of violence with the co executive directors of the highlander center in tennessee and attorney and activist nigga dad that's coming up on the laura flanders show the place where the people who say it cannot be done take a backseat to the people who are doing it suspicious fire destroyed one of the main buildings of the highland a center in late march an almost century old civil rights school in tennessee that once housed the likes of rosa parks and dr king we featured highlander's newest co directors show just days after the midterms what has happened since and what do we need to know about the white power symbol that was found spray painted on the premises at highland highland as co executive directors are back ashley now take us back a little bit alan take us to that morning it was a friday morning what happened well what we learned we woke up early that morning was that we were your reports of the office being a primary reason to bring people together was so that people could learn each other songs and everybody could go home with lots of songs and it was a way to share around the south a lot of the music i mean that just speaks to the long jav of the i want to get back to a sense of outrage about the fire but before we go back there tell us a bit about the work that you've been doing you know up to and including the weekend of the fire and ever since and the message that i've heard from both of you very strongly over the last few weeks which is the for the better and so we decided that we were our safety very seriously we would give people the option about whether or not we want to still college that we still face in the dear everyone's like not one program has been canceled with a bit of a question about the context in which this is all happening you know in the immediate wake of your fire we saw for louisiana black churches set alight and then i mean as i'm talking to you this talking to you now i have in front of me the new york times coverage of the horrendous northwood blaze and paris which has literally i think like to do double spreads on what happened i mean  historic artifact for sure going back centuries but a little bitty story about what happened in louisiana how do you think about this going to compare and contrast and and how do we carry the knowledge that you guys are still up against what you're up against in your institution and this work and it still has a hard time kind of surfacing in our in our consciousness wonder you know we understand there's moments of be ongoing communications stream going forward it's a pleasure to talk with you and keep up the great work pakistani attorney an activist we got dad is the executive director of the digital rights foundation which strives to educate that country's internet users particularly women to protect themselves from cyber harassment she was recently a the two thousand and nineteen march th women's march in la who are for her efforts she received a massive backlash clued in death threats but that is not stopping the guard she is here in new york to fill us in on the new women and girls rights movement that is emerging in her country it's not the st but it is different in interesting ways from what's gone before and technology is playing a big part of it and i got welcome to the program thanks for making a and lots and lots woman who started using technology mobile technology wasn't that big and people who had access to information and communication technologies were mostly men  women who were using technology that time they faced a lot of discrimination and bad leisure in the sense that men were bugging them or sending them unsolicited messages and stalking and harassment so as a lawyer one started reaching out to me that do we have any legal remedies around this kind of fire previously and when i started looking into the laws and policies i couldn't find any and i was like so you know like what what what should be doing because this is going to be the space where women are you know like exercising their right to free speech exercising their access to information and given how pakistan is in terms of you know like  conservative society not many women has access to public spaces so technology basically gives them the space where they can show solidarity to each other to it's like an economic  empowerment to them as well what proportion of women have techno access to technology or when we swing technology we're talking about cell phones basically mobile phones and why is that so so when we say technology i meant to say online spaces as  but also social media platform and internet so pakistan is a country of more than two hundred million people and how for the population is there a woman but we have no data then how many women has even have of so i mean my personal experience when i was a law student in two thousand and two i was going to the university and it was also a time or your brother the we are we just back up there for one second so the phone is not accessible to you if you don't have an approval from your male guardian if you're a student or if you're anyone i mean yes i mean back then  you you cannot have it without their permission and that was the case with me so when i ah i couldn't get permission so i used to go to the university without having any access to the  members in my family members had access to mobile phones things have changed by the way of a lot but it's not because it's our right like equal right to access to technology it's because the security situation where families want that if women are going out or they are going to the universities or colleges or schools or to the work of workplaces they can get in touch with them in case of a security situation you've made the point i sort of  talked about digital rights human rights women's rights freedom language that we don't always associate with our access to cell phones this sort of agenda or this part of the story became very visible at these women for rights marches this year to talk a bit about how the marches and demonstrations of today and the women's movement of today is different from what went before so i racial were mostly on the roads and in the public spaces and showing different acts of resistance and of course bag then there was no technology or if there was like people didn't have much access to it but now what i have seen one thing that we feel we face the criticism from our older feminist movement is that ovary came out on roads and we did resistance and we're more solid than the new generation who are sitting on their couches and doing clickthrough ism but now what i have seen is that people who have access to technology they are making difference in a sense that they are doing activism in the online space however i strongly feel that that activism needs to be connected with the offline activism as well and that's something that we have seen in this recent or that march or that is the word will they were pleasantly surprised and they were like we are these are not very optimistic that our future is bright that lots of women and including man they came out on the road and they were also the people who provocative and that's where you know like we face a lot of backlash and those play because basically when talking about a woman's personal agency their agency over their body their sexuality drives and this personal politics have never come out in the public space in pakistan in the past and i think that's where when women especially young woman t they basically revealed what they what they feel about their personal spaces so one difference that i saw in this march and if we look back the past marches and said that this march was actually not on woman in parliament or around the international women's day but actually it's a western agenda to spread obscenity and  hurting family values in pakistan about the world homosexuality got you usually so how are you reacting when you've been facing death threats i don't want to overstate things you're here doing your work  the women organizers they are out there in the online space debris because we have been doing a lot of lobbying and i'd walk see all of them started getting raped threats that threats woman marchers were getting these play cards people stalk them