Democracy Now (English)

• Headlines for March 14, 2013
• Pope Francis: First Latin American, Jesuit Pope Picked to Head Church; Praised for Work with Poor
• Pope Francis' Junta Past: Argentine Journalist on New Pontiff's Ties to Abduction of Jesuit Priests
• A Social Conservative: Pope Francis Led Effort Against Liberation Theology and Same-Sex Marriage

Download this show

• Headlines for March 13, 2013
• Over 100 Guantánamo Prisoners on Hunger Strike, Citing Threat of Return to "Darkest Days Under Bush"
• As Gitmo Prisoners Revolt, Obama Admin Challenged on Indefinite Detention at OAS Hearing
• Overturning Citizens United: Is a Constitutional Amendment the Best Path to Limit Dark Money?

Download this show

• Headlines for March 12, 2013
• Bradley Manning Speaks: In Leaked Court Recording, Army Whistleblower Tells His Story for First Time
• Daniel Ellsberg: In Hearing Bradley Manning Act Out of Conscience, Secret Tape Refutes Media Slander
• "This War is Continuing": As U.S. Prepares 2014 Pullout, No End in Sight to Afghan Occupation
• After Vowing Greater Transparency, Obama Admin Increasingly Censoring, Withholding Info from Public

Download this show

• Headlines for March 11, 2013
• Anwar al-Awlaki: NYT Details How Obama Admin Justified & Carried Out the Killing of U.S.-Born Cleric
• White House Changing Story on Anwar al-Awlaki? A Debate on NYT's Inside Account of '11 Drone Strike
• Fukushima Meltdown's 2nd Anniversary Brings Protests Against Japan's Reliance on Nuclear Power

Download this show

• Headlines for March 08, 2013
• Hugo Chávez Funeral: Derided by US Media, Venezuelan Leader Uplifted Poor from Caracas to the Bronx
• New Violence Against Women Act Includes Historic Protections for Native American and LGBT Survivors
• Vandana Shiva on Int'l Women's Day: "Capitalist Patriarchy Has Aggravated Violence Against Women"

Download this show

• Headlines for March 07, 2013
• Operation Condor Trial Tackles Coordinated Campaign by Latin American Dictatorships to Kill Leftists
• The Girl: Abbie Cornish Stars in Film About Tragic Smuggling of Immigrants Across US-Mexico Border

Download this show

• Headlines for March 06, 2013
• Hugo Chávez Dead: Transformed Venezuela & Survived U.S.-Backed Coup, Now Leaves Uncertainty Behind

Download this show

• Headlines for March 05, 2013
• Glenn Greenwald on Bradley Manning: Prosecutor Overreach Could Turn All Whistleblowing into Treason
• New Funding Group Calls for 100 More WikiLeaks to Offset Unprecedented Gov’t Secrecy
• Importing the War on Terror: Glenn Greenwald & Activist Trevor Timm on Domestic Drone Surveillance
• White House Denounces Cellphone Unlocking Ban Hours After Petition Backer Appears on Democracy Now!
• Sharing the Internet: "Commotion Wireless" Technology Lets Communities Create Free Webs of Access

Download this show

• Headlines for March 04, 2013
• "After Aaron": Late Activist's Campaign for Open Internet Continues at Freedom to Connect Conference
• GOP "Rising Star" Derek Khanna Fired After Penning Controversial Copyright Reform Memo
• 5 Years in Jail for Unlocking a Phone? Petition Led by Former GOP Staffer Prompts Probe of New Ban
• Municipal Broadband Networks Bridge the Digital Divide as Telecom Industry Tries to Block Them

Download this show

This Monday and Tuesday Democracy Now! will broadcast live from F2C: Freedom to Connect, and host a livestream of the event for both days on our website. The conference brings people together to promote internet freedom and preserve internet values such as universal connectivity. Aaron Swartz, the late Internet freedom advocate who took his own life earlier this year, gave the keynote address here in 2012. This year’s event is "dedicated to the work Aaron still had left to do."

Tune in to see Democracy Now! from 8-9am ET onsite at the conference for our regular show each day, which will feature guests at Freedom to Connect. Afterward we will livestream the panels and speeches, including an address by Aaron’s partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. On Tuesday Glenn Greenwald gives the keynote address.

• Headlines for March 01, 2013
• WikiLeaks Whistleblower Bradley Manning Says He Wanted to Show the Public the "True Costs of War"
• Salt Sugar Fat: NY Times Reporter Michael Moss on How the Food Giants Hooked America on Junk Food
• Pandora's Lunchbox: Pulling Back the Curtain on How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal

Download this show

• Headlines for February 28, 2013
• A Racial Entitlement? Supreme Court Threatens Voting Rights Act, One of Civil Rights Era's Key Gains
• Fascism in the Church: Ex-Priest on "The Pope's War," Clergy Abuse and Quelling Liberation Theology
• After 40 Years in Solitary, Angola 3 Prisoner Albert Woodfox Ordered Freed for 3rd Time in Louisiana

Download this show

• Headlines for February 27, 2013
• ACLU Blasts Supreme Court Rejection of Challenge to Warrantless Spying Without Proof of Surveillance
• Obama's Chilling Secrecy, from Denying Drone Program's Existence to Stonewalling on Legal Memos
• Selling the White House? Obama-Linked Group Promises Top Donors Access to President
• Behind the Brands: On Food Justice, Oxfam Gives Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, Nestlé & Pepsi Failing Grades

Download this show

• Headlines for February 26, 2013
• Billionaires for Austerity: With Cuts Looming, Wall Street Roots of "Fix the Debt" Campaign Exposed
• "Makers: Women Who Make America": New Film Chronicles Past 50 Years of Feminist Movement
• United by Loss, Israeli & Palestinian Dads Call for a Joint Nonviolent Intifada Against Occupation

Download this show

• Headlines for February 25, 2013
• EXCLUSIVE: Rarely Seen Film "King: A Filmed Record" Traces MLK's Struggle from Montgomery to Memphis

Download this show

• Headlines for February 22, 2013
• Torture at Guantánamo: Lt. Col. Stuart Couch on His Refusal to Prosecute Abused Prisoner
• "The Terror Courts": An Inside Look at Rough Justice, Torture at Guantánamo Bay

Download this show

• Headlines for February 21, 2013
• Sharif Abdel Kouddous: 2 Years into Uprising, Bahrain Feels Like a "Nation Under Occupation"
• An Interrogation Center at Yale? Proposed Pentagon Special Ops Training Facility Sparks Protests
• Sequestration: What Do the Automatic Spending Cuts Mean for the Poor, Unemployed and Children?
• Bowman v. Monsanto: Indiana Farmer's Supreme Court Challenge to Corporate Control of Food Supply

Download this show

We speak with filmmaker Cecilia Peck about her father Gregory Peck’s legacy of work that raises important social issues, including his films To Kill a Mockingbird and The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, which landed him on Nixon’s enemies list. "He just had so much decency and integrity that he managed to transcend politics, and people loved him in his films, no matter what their political beliefs were," says Peck, whose own work is inspired by her father. "I’ve always hoped that I could do that, too."

Watch the full interview with Cecilia Peck about her new film, Brave Miss World. Her other films include the Academy Award short-listed Shut Up & Sing and A Conversation with Gregory Peck, about her legendary father.

AMY GOODMAN: I’d like to talk about your father, Gregory Peck, and his influence on you, the decisions you have made, his remarkable life’s work, his starring role as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won the Oscar, and what that film meant in your life.

CECILIA PECK: I’ve always been so interested in how my dad managed to be such a big movie star but also take on controversial issues, like racism in To Kill a Mockingbird and anti-Semitism in Gentleman’s Agreement. And I think that he just had so much decency and integrity that he managed to transcend politics, and people loved him in his films, no matter what their political beliefs were. So, I’ve always hoped that I could do that, too, even in a small measure. But growing up as his daughter, I think I, you know, come from a legacy of the importance of doing work that has meaning and that raises important social issues.

AMY GOODMAN: For people who aren’t familiar, especially young people, with To Kill a Mockingbird, which everyone should see, tell us that story and his role in it.

CECILIA PECK: He plays a lawyer in the South in the 1930s who is asked by the local sheriff to defend a black man accused of assaulting a white woman. And Atticus is a single dad to his two young children, and he realizes that it will draw a lot of attention to him and his family to take on this controversial case in that small town. And there’s a moment in the film when he considers the request, and he says, "I’ll do it." And you watch their lives transform by the anger of the townspeople for a white lawyer daring to defend a black man. And I think that had my dad been that lawyer in that town, he would have done the same thing.

AMY GOODMAN: The book on which the film is based is by Harper Lee, and you named your son Harper?

CECILIA PECK: I did. I was a very tiny little girl on the set of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I’ve known Harper my whole life and named my firstborn after her. And he—my son was born in New York City, and Harper used to come and read to him, read him bedtime stories. And she’s been and always will be a lifelong part of our family.

AMY GOODMAN: Your father was a famous film star in the 1940s, in the 1950s and the ’60s, so this is during the McCarthy era. There was the blacklist. Talk about how he took that on.

CECILIA PECK: My father wasn’t at the center of the blacklist, but he did end up on Nixon’s enemies list. He made a film called The Trial of the Catonsville Nine about his protest against the war in Vietnam. He did not believe in the U.S. invasion of Vietnam and made a film about it, about the Berrigan brothers burning draft cards in that era. And for that, he ended up on Nixon’s enemies list.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did he say about that?

CECILIA PECK: Well, I remember my grandmother saying, "Gregory, you’re an enemy of the president?" And he said, "It’s alright, Ma. It’s—it’ll be OK." But I think it may have affected his career. I know that was what Nixon wanted to do, is ruin the lives of the people who opposed his policies. But again, my dad was able to overcome and transcend that. But I—you know, it took a lot of courage to do what he did. And even when he made To Kill a Mockingbird, I think he was asked, "Why would you want to do this story? You’re such a big movie star; you don’t have to take on these kinds of issues." But that’s just who he was.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the film you made about him with Barbara Kopple.

CECILIA PECK: Well, when my dad was in his eighties, he was doing a stage show around the country, an evening of storytelling and showing film clips about his life and career. And Barbara and I had gone to see one of the shows. And he was so charming and so funny, and the audience was full of young people all relating to him, and a lot of people had named their sons Atticus or Gregory or become lawyers because of him. And Barbara and I looked at each other and said, "We’ve got to do a film." So we got on the phone that night and made a couple calls to see if we could raise money, and ended up following him for a year as he did this show. And it turned out to be a very personal film about his life. And my mother is in it, and his friends and his great film clips. It’s called A Conversation with Gregory Peck.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, what it was like for you to go from being behind the scenes, like a kid on the set of To Kill a Mockingbird, to being an actress yourself, for example, in Wall Street, to then going behind the camera?

CECILIA PECK: I also did a film in Israel, one of my first films, called Torn Apart, where I played a Palestinian woman in love with an Israeli soldier. So, I think, from that time, I had this incredibly powerful memory of Israel, and it’s so interesting that this film is taking me back there. But I think I—you know, my dad had felt like maybe I had in me what it took to be an actress, and I got to do some work that I was very proud of. But I had always wanted to make films behind the camera. So, I was able to go and work with Barbara Kopple here in New York at Cabin Creek and learn filmmaking, and she let me believe that I could have a voice as a filmmaker. And, you know, I think I found what I always really wanted to do.

• Headlines for February 20, 2013
• Prisoner X: Doubts Grow on Jailhouse Suicide Claims for Australian Israeli Linked to Mossad
• Throwaways: Recruited by Police & Thrown into Danger, Young Informants are Drug War's Latest Victims

Download this show

• Headlines for February 19, 2013
• Donors Trust: Little-Known Group Helps Wealthy Backers Fund Right-Wing Agenda in Secret
• The ATM for Climate Denial: Secretive Donors Trust Funds Vast Network of Global Warming Skeptics
• "Brave Miss World": Raped Before Winning '98 Title, Linor Abargil Campaigns Against Sexual Violence

Download this show