various place and even australia. you can keep up-to-date with all the news at aljazeera.com at aljazeera.com of women who stood up to speak truth to power and not just the power that crushes civil rights, but can poise an community. there is a toxic legacy of the cold war still buried between two dozen communities all around the country, the last of several hundred sites that were tied to nuclear weapons production during that tense time. one of them lik like thats in te valley in western pennsylvania outside pittsburgh where an unlikely champion stands determined to dig down to the bottom of the issue, no matter how long it takes. >> the truth is a broken record.

it may sometimes stand alone but it always stands, and here i am, still. >> how do you describe yourself? >> a mad junk yard dog, mad junk yard dog defending our the piece of god's green acre here. >> that green acre is here in the kisskey valley of pennsylvania and she has defended it for years. the local steel mill was taken over by a crow contracted to build nuclear bombs. patty grew up in the house across the street. >> i grew up on pal low. there was 104 stores in that town, had two movie theaters. it was a nice down, and then this industry came in, and we didn't know. >> people didn't know.

>> people did not know. they were clueless. >> back in the day, the work of the valley was to support america, patriotic, and unquestioning. as part of that age, patty grew up to serve her country, join the navy, trust her government but by the time she came back 20 years later, some here had begun to worry about the health risks of having a nuclear plant and its waste so close by. her father asked amino to check it out. >> i'm a diehard for our country, and i equated our government as our country, you couldn't tell me anything about, you know that there could have been any type of improprieties, missteps, wrong decisions. >> you thought that the government would do the right thing. >> i thought the government was going to do the right thing. all they had to do was be showed that there was something here,

if it existed. so i said ok, i'll look into it. >> and she did. digging up 3 million documents, mostly on her own, documents that chronicle illnesses, cancer, deaths, amino has had two brain tumors and uterine cancer herself. the anger is brought down to the twisted this isle. >> i'm tired of hearing about sick kids. >> we can only try to make it right. we can't undo what's been done. >> that's true. >> trying to make it right, she led a search for answers. neither the government nor the company that ran the site until 1967 ever acknowledged any illness was caused by bomb making org by the nuclear waste dumped in pits across the neighboring 44-acre property,

even though they contain uranium 235 and plutonium, the very same materials used in the bombs dropped on mir tshuma and nagasaki. >> people were in spitting distance of living there. there was a restaurant that abutted it. there's, i mean, there was a dairy farm that abutted it that everybody got their milk from. this has been very scary. and who cares? i do. i love this area. i love these people. this is -- this is -- this is our country. this is our home. >> all these ones that have the tabs on these are significant events, talks about burials. >> after years of documenting health problems, it took another 14 years to force the current owner of the sites, babcock and wilcox to pay $92 million in

settlement money to about 200 residents. we asked, but v.n.w. wouldn't talk to america tonight about why. petey said the answer is obvious. >> oh my goodness, yes. i mean look, a reasonable prudent person could stand in the town of apollo and see where the plant that wasn't even designed to be a nuclear plant, it's not rocket science. >> but compensation money didn't solve the underlying problem. amino kept pushing, first for a fence so that neighbors would could playing and walking their dogs and even hunting on land that may conceal tons of nuclear waste. >> there's a mine blow. this is a threat for national security. you don't need a dirty bomb, it's a mine. it has methane in it and if it

explodes, you'll have a coal mine fire and nuclear material. they have to get it out. they have to make us whole again. >> her ultimate goal is to get it all dug up and removed, although determining how much there is remains a challenge. >> the records associated with the placement of the materials into the trenches was buried i don't want to say it was poor, but it's not well documented. >> mike is the project manager for the army corps of engineers, the latest federal agency to manage the site. the bomb making started under the now defunct atomic energy commission but in the decades since, what to do about the waste has become a hot potato. >> we tried to get answers from the nuclear regulatory commission, the r.c. and the e.p.a. and the d.o.e. and the nnsa and the whole alphabet soup of state and federal agencies that have been involved since the agency began.

not a single one would go on camera to explain why dumping was allowed so close to communities and why after almost three decades of patty amino began her crusade it's still there. >> i frankly don't believe that anybody did anything wrong, but the regulations were as they were, and the material was placed there to the best of our knowledge under the rules of the atomic energy commission, so was it a good idea? i can't say. i wasn't there. >> the first cleanup attempt began in the fall of 2011 but halted after a ty weeks. the core said workers recovered unexpected complex materials at the site. >> we thank everyone for coming. >> now the core is ready to try again, but the cleanup will cost over $400 million, nearly 10

times the previous estimate. >> this is once again, it's like groundhog day. we have been having these meetings for 20 years. >> at the latest public hearing, the former mayor of the town next to the dump joined other neighbors determined he to get the cleanup finished, even if they don't live to see it themselves. >> right now, i am going through chemo theory for lymphoma and i don't want to do that all over again. it sucks. >> the fear is that the government would let this become a ghost town rather than deem with it, lock the gates, and leave the waste buried here, freezingen in time. at this point, the corps of engineers expect the cleanup to start in 2017 and take another 10 years to complete. >> we can sure as hell move forward with something good. >> do you believe theme get it done?

>> i believe they have to have incentive. >> what is incentive? >> incentive is a mad young yard dog at their heels. >> that mad junk yard dog, patty will stay on them to get the job done. next we remember an extraordinary moment when the rights of indigenous americans first came front and center in hollywood. shasheen little feather speaks again, next.

this award season, it was leonardo dicaprio who spoke of indigenous americans. forty years ago, native americans had a starring role in cinematic controversy, a short speech given by a young woman hollywood won't soon forget. >> the winner is marlon brando in the godfather. >> i am the first woman of color, first native american indian woman who ever utilized the academy awards as a platform to make a political statement on behalf of marlon brando and also on behalf of native american indian people. >> accepting the award for

marlon brown dough in the godfather. miss sacheen little feather. i'm apache and yaki, activist and educator and an elder. >> i was given 60 seconds or less to make that presentation or i would have been arrested and put in handcuffs and that john wayne was on the side backstage and he had to be held back by six security men from coming on stage and assaulting me and removing me off the stage that night because he was so enraged by what i had to say so there was a lot of pressure on me that night, a lot of things going on that people were not aware of.

>> he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award, and the reasons for this being are the treatment of american indians today by that the as i will that industry -- excuse me. [ applause ] >> i had to take a lot of beating for that, if you will, in the press, a lot of malicious gossip that followed that, but when i heard from the widow of martin luther king, coretta king, that i had done the right thing, when i heard that from caesar chavez, congratulating me, when i heard back from these two people and other native american indian leaders, i knew

that i had done the right thing and all the rest didn't matter. i really think that marlon was always shocked by the lack of compassion of dominant society people. i always think that he always had his own private sorrow about the behavior of other people that tore at him rewarding racism and he was ashamed of that. >> there i am as a little girl, half indian and half white. i hold people that i was half indian and half savage. >> i had a grandmother who was very racially prejudice, a great grandmother i should say. she was from holland and she didn't want to sleep next to me because she said i was dirty, and i didn't understand why.

she used to hurt my feelings, and i didn't understand why, but she was very, very, very racially prejudiced and i didn't know what that was all about, because i was too young. >> thank you on behalf of marrone brando. >> for 36 years, that piece of film that's seen on you tube today was put under wraps by the academy. the same academy that jada pinkett-smith is boycotting right now is the same academy that boycotted that piece of film. then it became public domain and it went all over you tube. now we have a group of people who are born after 1973 that have seen that piece of film and they are realizing that i am the first woman of color, native

american indian to ever use that academy awards platform to make a political statement. it's like being rosa parks, the first black woman to sit in the front of the bus. somebody has to pay that price of admission, and i'm that person to pay that price of admission. many of my friends, like russell means have passed away. john tradell passed away, charlie hill, a great indian comedian who made us laugh during very rough times, he passed away. even though i had cancer, i survived it, the crater was good to me and i'm still here. i'm still here. yes, i am alive to say my piece, because i'm almost 70, between here and dirt and i am talking,

and i am telling my story. >> next year another woman who dared to speak and force a difficult dialogue, tough talk, that's back in the news as we take on sex crimes on campus.

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viewed in our country. more than 40 years after the book was first published, she spoke with america tonight. >> would you like to respond? >> the role that you have selected for women is degrading, because you choose to see women as sex objects, not as human beings. >> it was the moment susan brown miller has been waiting for. >> the day that you were willing out here with a cottontail attached to your rear end. >> the chance to tell wh hugh hefner on national television what she thought. >> you make them look like animals. women are not bunnies, rabbits, they are human beings. >> with that, a feminist icon was born. >> my shining moment. >> he has made the degradation of women a condition of employment. >> things were happening so fast in the movement that nothing was surprising. seemed reasonable that i'd get a chance to confront hugh hefner.

>> it didn't stop there. from a march outside the miss america page thattant to a sit in at the ladies home journal, the founders of the women's liberation movement saw the media as both a tarts and a tool. >> i said we really ought to do something against these women's magazines that are promoting such a false concept of who women are and what they want, what they want, you know, like 12 ways to make jell-o. >> did you realize at the time how big a deal it was to do something like that? >> i reads tell the how nervy it was. it was scary. it was scary on 18 different levels. you know, my biggest fear that morning was that not enough people would show up. it was a slow news day, i guess, because we sure had a lot of journalists there. >> one event in particular would change her life forever, a rape speak out in 1971, a time when people didn't talk about sexual

violence and it was still legal for husbands to rape their wives. >> my job at that speak out was that take the tickets at the door, but everybody there was stunned by the spectrum of rape and sexual assault that 12 brave women got up and testified about from their own experience. the politics of rape indeed unfolded before us. i knew with certainty that i was going to write a book about rape, not just about present day rape, but i was going to give rape a history. i spent the next four years researching and writing my book. >> living off small grants and a local from friend, she spent those years in the new york public library which had more entries for rape seed than rape. against our will was a best seller winning her a place on the cover of time magazine. suddenly rape was no longer such

a taboo topic and the laws good morning rape began to change. over time, it became easier to prosecute rapists and rape within a marriage became a crime in every state. >> what were you hoping to achieve with the book? >> i was hoping to change everybody's mind about rape, the same way my mind had been changed. >> do you feel you achieved that? >> well, the new york public library honored it by calling it one of the 100 most significant books of the 20th century. i'll go with that. ok. wwe have single rape. >> now 80 years old, susan brown miller teaches women's studies at pace university, passing her work on to a new generation of college students who have come all too familiar with rape. >> when women talk about issues that men have controlled the dialogue on for veneries, a very

different story emerges. >> a lot of attention is on college campuses when we talk about the subject of rape. do you think we're at a turning point. >> i think what is happening today can be called a fourth wave of feminism. it's very heart warming to me to see college students organizing now. >> do you think that drinking plays a role with rape on college campus? >> yes, i always stress the warning signs about rape, don't get yourself into a situation. women are still in denial. they don't want to feel that special restrictions apply to them. they are also imbued with the idea of a hook up culture. i think women have trouble with that, quite frankly. >> there are some women today might be surprised to hear you say that, because they want to feel very empowered and feel like they can do whatever they want to do. >> then i would say that women have a false sense of empowerment because the truth is

they can't do everything that men can do, because there are predators out there. >> the case from rolling stolen, when that story started to fall apart, what was your reaction? >> my reaction was the same as it has been with other celebrity cases, and highly. ized cases falling apart. we have a tendency in this country to get most of our news about an issue through a celebrity case of some sort or another. that's not good for the anti rape movement. we can talk about bill cosby. you know, there are people who keep saying alleged rape, and would rape, 30 women? what are they some sort of, you know, satanic cult where they're just accusing innocent sweet bill cosby? you know, 30 women. women don't gain anything from talking about a rape. years later especially, if the accused person is a celebrity. that's tough.

that's tough. we live in a culture where we like our celebrities. >> it's also a culture that still enjoys seeing sex on a big screen. with the erotic drama 50 shades of gray breaking world records. >> what is your reaction to 50 shades of gray? >> it's the worst kind of anti female propaganda. >> how so? >> because it creates a good school experience through bondage. i mean no. it's frightening to me. i do remember that when i was a kid in public school, boys used to say to me i can grow up to be president, but you can't. >> they would actually say that? >> yes! >> when you look back, do you feel satisfied when everything that the movement was able to accomplish. >> we accomplished more than any other movement in my lifetime. i think we've changed more lives

for the good, positively, yes. >> but more than 40 years after susan brown miller began annual tating for change, she said there is still much more work to be done. >> women get so many conflicting messages beamed at them every day. it's not enough to be an achiever, it's not enough to be a mother, you also have to look like a babe. abortion rights are currently being threatened, equal play is a continual battle. men have not stopped using their 50s against their intimate partners. there are parts of the world where rape is not yet an issue. they don't see it. it's part of the way men function. >> what is it going to take to empower women around the world? >> in those countries? they'll have to start it themselves. you can't export feminism.

it has to be a movement that comes from the women within those cultures, within those societies. >> what's one piece of advice that you would give today's young females? >> i hope you're in it for the long haul. i hope you can see that the issues that you are raising now, that we raised then are eternal. they haven't gone away, because there are always going to be people out a there who want to take away your rights. >> she hopes that there will always be those to fight to keep them. al jazeera, new york. >> that's america tonight. please come back. we'll have more of america tonight tomorrow. >> our american story is written everyday. it's not always pretty, but it's real... and we show you like no-one else can.

this is our american story. this is america tonight. >> i'm ali velshi."on target" tl divide. the battle to bring high speed internet to people that want i.t. and the laws that get in the way leaving you the customer in the middle. the battle for economic prosperity in the 21st century has convinced many americans cities that they will be left in the dust if they don't offer businesses and entrepreneurs superhigh speed internet service. that's why the holy grail has become the gigabit. tech in other words know that