04/18/19 04/18/19 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: f from new yorkrk, this iss democracy now! >> the decade of the e een new al, a flurry of the kicked off our social and ecological transformation to save the planetet. it was the kinind of swing f foe fence envision w we needed. fifinally, we wewere entertainin the skill of the crises we face without leading -- leaving anyone behehind. amy: a a messagegerom the future with alexandriocasio-corz,z, the ne york congressmber

collababorates with the intercet lookingy crabapple back at how the green new deal tranansform the nanation. we will bear the video and hear from naomi kleinin, molly crabapple, and avi lewis and the link between art and politics. then as attorney general william barr prepares to release the mueller report, we speak to world renowned linguist and political dissident noam chomsky. >> as far as trump collusion with the russians, that was never going to amount to anything other more than minor corruption. maybe building the trump hotel in red square for something like that, but nothing of any significance. the democrats invested .verything in this issue well, turned out there was nothing much there. they gave trump a huge gift. like they may have handed him the next election. amy: all that and more, coming up.

welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. attorney general william barr is releasing robert mueller's much-anticipated report into russian interference in the 2016 election with large portions of the more than 300 page document redacted. barr says he is withholding parts to protect the privacy of third parties. to avoid compromising intelligence sources and methods, and to protect grand jury material on ongoing investigations. he is set to hold a news conference at 9:30 a.m. ahead of the report's release, which is expected sometime after 11:00 a.m. house judiciary committee chair jerrold nadler said wednesday barr was hoping g to spin the report to paper over damning evidence of misdeeds by president trump and his associates. >> the fact the attorney general is n not releasing even the redacted reports to congresss until after his presess conferee will result in the report being presented to his own words

rather than through the words of special counsel mueller. the central concern here is that the attorney general barr is not allowing the facts of the mueller report to speak for ththemselves, but is trying to bake in the narrative about the report to the benefit of the white house. in a code that mueller reporort release comes after juststice department officials reportedly held numerous conversations with white house lawyers about the documents in recent days. barr said report shows no evidence the trump or his associates collude with russia. the justice department says it is sending congress a different version of the report with fewer redactions. democratic lawmakers are demanding the release of the full all report but said they will subpoena the entire document as early as friday. the trump administration said wednesday it is further tightening sanctions on cuba, venezuela and nicaragua. president trump's national security adviser john bolton announced the sanctions during a

belligerent speech in miami, mocking the presidents of cuba, venezuela, and nicaragua as the "three stooges of socialism.m. bolton was a addressing veterans of thehe bay of pigs invasion, s theyey marked the 58th a annivey of the failed cia plot to overthrow fidel castro. >> under this administration, we don't throw dictatorsrs lifelin. we will l take them away. today y we probably wiwill clair all to hear the monroe doctrine is alive and well. amy: the heaviest sanctions will fall on cuba. they will severely limit the amount of money people in the u.s. can remit to relatives on the island. meanwhile, u.s. citizens will be allowewed to sue companies thato business in cuba using property that was r repatriated by the cuban revolution. the sanctions drew immediate condemnation from countries around the world, with u.s. allies in europe and canada promising counter-lawsuits and a challenge at the world trade organization. this is a former cuban diplomat responding from havana. things wered states

defeated at the bay of pigs will win something, but that probably won't get anything. what i would say to cubans is, who is going to take this away from us? we are here. the properties are here. amy: north korea says it tested a new type of short-range guided weapon on wednesday in its first public acknowledgement of a weapons test since president trump walked away from a u.s.-north korea summit in hanoi in february without a deal. north korea also said it no longer wants u.s. secretary of state mike pompeo to play a role in negotiations on denuclearization. a statement by the korean central news agency said negotiators wanted someone to take the lead in talks who is "more careful and mature in communicating." north korea's moves came as the trump administration suddenly halted, without explanation, a longstanding practice of declassifying the current size of the u.s. nuclear weapons arsenal. last year, the state department declared the u.s. has 3822 nuclear warheads stockpiled.

in peru, former president alan garcia died by suicide wednesday as police arrived at his home in lima to arrest him on charges of bribery and corruption. police say garcia shot himself in the neck as he faced the prospect of prison for the first time. garcia served two five-year terms as president, beginning in 1985 and again in 2006, returning to peru from exile in 2001 o only after the statue off limitatations on corruption charges stemming from his first term in office expired. he was the fifth former head of state in peru to face an investigation for alleged corrrruption. back in the united states, police in colorado said they discovered the body of a florida teenager wednesday after she allegedly threatened to mark the 20th anniversary of f the columbine high school shootings with a massacre of her own. 18-year-old sol pais was found in the mountains west of denver, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. police said pais was infatuated with the columbine massacre and

traveled to denver monday, buying a gun and ammunition before making threats that the fbi called credible tt nonspecific. the threats prompted authorities to cancel wednesday classes for more than a half million students across colorado's front range. this is john mcdonald, director of the jefferson county depapartment of school safety. >> looking at school shooters in the history of what we have seen for the last 20 years, there are summer linda kate or's we look at. the fact she was committed, purchased a plane ticket -- not only purchased a plane ticket, but made the journey, that pilgrimage to columbine. once she got into our area, purchased a gun. amy: philadelphia district attorney larry krasner said wednesday his office w will no longer oppose a bid by imprisoned former black panther mumia abu-jamal to re-argue his case. the move paves the way for abu-jamal to get a new hearing to appeal his 1981 conviction for the murder of philadelphia police officer daniel faulkner.

mumia abu-jamal is an award-winning journalist who spent nearly three decades on death row. he remains in a pennsylvania prison serving a sentence of life without parole. the new york state parole board has granted parole to prisoner judith clark, who drove a getaway car during a 1981 robbery in rockland county that left a security guard and two police officers dead. the robbery was aimed at expropriating money from a brink's armored car for the republic of new afrika. clark was sentenced to 75 years for second-degree murder and robbery, although she did not fire any shots. clark's parole comes two years after governor andrew cuomo commuted her sentence of 75 years to life, citing her exceptional strides in self-development as a model prisoner who worked tirelessly to bring education, prenatal care, and aids counseling to fellow prisoners. she's scheduled for release from prison by may 15.

president trump's daughter ivanka trump confirmeded wednesy ththat her father offered her te role of f world bank presideden, but said she turned down the offer because she's happy in her role as a senior white house adviser. last week, president trump told the atlantic m monthly he offerd s eldest dauaughter the role "because she's very good with numbers." bloomberg news is reporting that former texas republican governor rick perry is planning to leave his post as secretary of the department of energy where he worked to speed coil, oil, gas, -- coal, oil, gas, and nuclear production while slashing federal funds for r&d into renewable energy. in 2012, perry infamously forgot the name of the department of energy as he proposed abolishing three federal agencies during a republican presidential debate. he was later tapped by president trump to lead one of the agencies he wanted to do away with. at the vatican, 16-year-old swededish climate activist grera thunberg was greeted by pope francis wednesday, as she continues to lead a campaign to press european leaders to act urgently on climate change. last august, thunberg began a

series of school strikes or the -- on the climate outside the swedish parliament, which quickly grew from a quiet, one-person weekly vigil to an international protest movement involving hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. on tuesday, thunberg addressed the european parliament, where she urged lawmakers to respond as urgently to climate change as they did when much of paris's's notre dame catathedral burned on monday. >> today the world watched with despair and enormous sorrow as the notre dame burned in paris. some buildings are more than just buildings. but the notre dame will be rebuilt. i hope its foundations are strong. i hope that our foundations are even stronger, but i fear they are not. amy: in london, climate activists with the extinction rebellion group chained and superglued themselves to the home of u.k. labour leader jeremy corbyn wednesday, as part of a third day of direct action protesests aimed at spurring urgent a action on climate chan.

many of the protesters said they supported corbyn but wanted his party to declare a national climate emergency. elsewhere in london, protesters continued to occupy the busy oxford circus shopping district and superglued themselves to a train, delaying service. and in new york city, 62 climate activists with extinction rebellion were arrested after shutting down traffic and staging a die-in outside city hall on wednesday. the demonstrators partially blocked access to the brooklyn bridge, lying down in the street and scaling stoplights to demand radical action on climate change. democracy now!'s tey astudillo and libby rainey were at the -- were there. >> this is extinction rebellion. we are joining with rebels all over the world, standing up for climate change will stop we need

to declare a climate emergency and take swift action to change the course. we are about to get arrested. we have been blocking this road. we're here to show new york city we are serious, that we need to do something now about climate change. >> how long are we going to let [indndiscernible] >> there is an emergency with the climate and most people don't know the gravity of the situation, really. watch climate videos. >> this is the new york city police department. you are unlawfully in the roadway and obstructing vehicular traffic. >> my name is eve. we are here to get our new york city and new york state government to recognize that climate change is the most urgent issue of our time and that they need to act accordingly. the science shows we have to

make drastic reductions and do it now. --re asking them to act mayor de blasio has said it is an emergency. we want him to act like it is an emergency. we have four demeans in the u.s., the demand that the government and the media tell the truth about the urgency of climate change. we're asking for them to act now to maintain the ecosystem and get us to know zero by 2025, which is very aggressive. we are also asking for citizens assemblies. we don't trust the government to do this on their own. we need oversight from citizens. and we're asking for a just transition. harm with our extractive economy and we want something done about that. >> i am from brooklyn, new york. we're here to demand the mayor declare a climate emergency. i'm the father of two girls. i want them to have a future in the city, but it looks like the

city will be underwater. i'm prepared to get arrested so my kids will have a future. deal the way change ever happens in this country is a e-book with her bodies on the line. amy: the new york city council will vote today on legislation to drastically slash the emissions of big buildings, mandating a 40% emissions reduction by 2030 that would rise to 80% by 2050. buildings generate two-thirds of the new york city's emissions. the city is one of the first in the u.s. to heed to green new deal's call to upgrade all existing buildings to be more energy efficient. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, ththe war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. nermeen: and i'm nermeen shaikh. welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. the push for the green new deal continues to build momentum in the united states. backers of the bill are launching a nationwide tour tonight to build support for the congressional resolution which seeks to transform the u.s. economy through funding renewable energy while ending u.s. carbon dioxide emissions by

2030. two massachusetts lawmakers, democratic senator ed markey and congresswoman ayanna pressley, are launching the green new deal tour at an event tonight in boston. meanwhile, the online news outlet t the intercept has just unveiled a short illusustrated video o featuring alalexandria ocasio-cortez, t the new yorkk congressssmember who introduced the green new deal in the house. amy:y: it is titled d "a messa fromomhe future th alexandndria ocasio-cortez." it is set decades in the futuree as ocasio-cortrtez looks back at the green new deal's impactct on the country. it features stunning artwork by award-winning illustrator molly crabapple. we wilill play theideo in a moment. bufifirst, we tuturn tintercrcet senior correspondent naomi klein who helped make the film. she is the author of many books, including "this changes everything: capitalism vs. the climate." at an event celebrating the fit anniversary of the intercecept tuesday y night, naoaomi klein

discussed the making of the video. >> in n december, , the debatett the green n new deal was s starg to heatt up. it w was startining to get ugly. as you all know, for the past four months, it has been attackcked by the serious center and the e far right a and the absolutely unhinged rigight, and here and never know left with legitimamate critiquques. but for thosose of u who r realy want the g green new deaeal to succcceed, want it toto be the t it possisibly can be, see itit s our basicacally lastst hope fora lilivable planet, molly and i we thinking aboutut, how do we do n end run n around us misinformamn cacampaign and produced d some t and involve artists in the grgrn new deal itself? what we were tatalking abouout , first of a all, art is low-carb and work. these are green jobs. greeeen jobs areren't just guys

puputting up solar p panels. when we think baback to thee ororiginal newew deal in thehe', onee of ththe things that was really a amazing about it was st led to this s renaissancnce a pupublicly funded art.. hundreds of thousands of muralas fromom all of ththese incrededie films and ththeater pieces,, and artists werere treated l like workers as a any other. the ororiginal new deal wass alo under relentless attttack by the press.s. there e was a coup to try to overerthrow fdr.r. the reason why it dididn't mattr in the populararity s soared, ft of a all, was hehelping peopoplt it had it own communication. artists were alall in for the green new deal. molllly said, i would love to me a video o with aoc.. we started thinking about what that should d communicatate, whe should b be tryingo do. what we realized was that the biggesest problem w we're up agt when w we think ababout doing somethining as transfoformatives

science demanands is the senseef futility that peoplele have. they are told all of the time that it is impmpossible, that ty are just greedy, that they're justst going to spend a whwhole lilives on thehe couch watatchig walruses commit suicide on netflilix pitical thihing wash over them. it i is almost l like people d't deserve toto be saved. the intercecept just t a few das earlieier publishehed this s rey wondnderful piece by one of our fantastitic r reporters a and ws and whwho is been a reallyy importrtant there e is for thehn new deal will stop kate set this piece in the fufuture in ththe r 202045. shshe told the story of a fictional younung woman nanameda lived in the world that the grgreen new deal created. it really struck a chord with rereaders of t the intercecept. wewe realized it was because it was imaginining a fututure thats

actually n not apocalyptic, that it did not take e the apopocalye for granted -- like e most every big-budget hollylywood film we haveve ever seen a jujust imagis the e future as mad maxax tryino protecect your k kids from, you know, c cannibals a and warlord, right?t? inspiredat is what this film. i'm going to stop talking and let the film talk. >> t t bullet train from n york too d.c. it always brings be back to when i first t started making this commute. 2019, i was a freshman in the most diverse congrgress in histy up to that point. it was a critical time. i will never f forget the childn and our community. they were so inspired to see this new class of politicians who reflected them, navigating the halls of power. it is often saidou can't be what you can't see. for the rsrst timime, they saww

themseselves. i think there wawas somethingg similar with the green new deal. we knew we needed to save the planet and that we h had all the technology to do it, but people were scared. they said itit was toooo big, to fast, not praractical. i think that is because they could not picture it yeyet. anyway, , i'm getttting ahead of myself. let's start withth how we got here. 1977, new york, a senior madetist named jameses b black a a presentationon about how b g fossil fuels could eventually lead to global tempeperatures rirising four r degrees or f fie degreeees fahrenheit.. within two years, one e of the biggggest supertankers was outfitted with a state-of-the-art lab to measure co2 in the ocean, gathering more data about global warming. guess who is doing t this research? exxonmobil. oh, yeah, they y knew this whwhe time.. as didur politicians. 10 yearsrs later, james hansen, sa's top climate scicientist, totold congress s he was 99%9% n

ththat global warming was happening and caused by human iat was 198988, the year before was even born.n. so didxxon listen toto the science, including their own? do they change business models, invest in rewables?? no, the opposite. they knew and a double down. they and o others spentt millios setting up the network of think tanks to create doubt and denial about, change. it was an effort designed to attack the very kind of science they themselves s had been doing and it works. politicians w would do that forr fossil fueuels and thesese masse cocorporations kepep diggingng, journaliling, and fracking lilie there was s no tomorrow.w. america became the biggest producer and consumer of oil in the world. fossil fuel companieses made hundndreds of billions s while e public paid the e line share t o clea up ththr disisasters.

we lost a a neration of time we will neveret back stst of the entire species will never get back. natural wonders gone forevever. and enjoy , hurricice mararia destroyed ththe place wherere my familyly was from, or dodoe go. it w like a a imate bomb. livesook a as many american as 9/11. and in the next year when i was elected to congress, the world leading climimate scientistst declared another ememeency. theyey told us wewe had 12 years left to cucut our emissisions in halflf or hundredsds of millionf people wouould be more likikelyo face food and wate shortages, poverty,y, and death.. everything.ange how we got around, how we set ourselves, how w we made our stf, how w wlived andd worked -- everything. the onlyly way to do it wawas to transfororour economy, whicich e alreadyy knew was broken since

the vast majority of wealth was going to just t a small handfulf pele. and most folks were falling further and further r behind. itit was a truee turningngoint. lolots of people gaveve up. they s said we were e doomed. bubut some of us r remembereds a nanation, we hadad been in pepel beforere. the greaeat depepression, wororr ii, , we knew fromom our htoryrw to pulull together to overcome impossible odds. and d at the vy least, we owed ito our childrdren to try. the wave began when democrats took b back the h hse in 2018. in the senate and the whwhite house in 2020, and launched thee decade of f the green n deal. a flurry of legislatn n that kicked off our social and ecological transformation to save the planet. it was the k kind of swingng foe fence ambitionon we neededd. finally, we were entertataining solulutions on the scale oththe cres we faced withoutut leavivig anyone b behind.

thatat included memedicare for , the momost popular s social prom in amecan history. we also introduced d the federal bs guarantee, public option cluding diifified ling wages. fufunnily enough,h,he biggestst oblem ththose early yeyearsas the labobor shortage.. we were e building a n national smart grid, retrofitting every building in ameri and traits like this onone all across the cocountry. we needed more workekers. that groroup of kids from my neigighborhood werere in the mie of it t l, especiaially this one girlrl. heher first job b out of collels withth ameriricorps climate, restoring wetlanands and bususen coastatal louisiana.a. most of f her frienends were inr union, including somome oil workers in n transition.. the jirga part old pipipelines d gogot to work k planting mangros with the samame salarar and bebenefits. of course, when it came to healing the land, w we had huge gaps in our knoedge. ckily, indigenous communitity's offered gegeneratial e expertise toto help guide e the way mostsf

she gototestless, tried her hand as a solarar plant enginineer fa while but eventually made her career and raising the nexext neration a aa part of the univerersal chilarare initiativ. as it tuturns out, cararing for otothers is viable, low-carb and work. we starteded paying realal moneo folks li t teachers, , domestic workers, and home heal a aides. ose were years of maive change. and not alall of it was s good. when hurricane shelled and hit southernrnlorida, paparts of mii went underwater for the last timeme. that a as we battled the floods, fires, and droughts, we knew how lucky we were to have started acting when we d did. and wewe did not just change the frastrucucre. we c changed how we e did thing. we b became a sociciety that wat only mododern and wealy, but dignified a a humane, t too. by comommitting to u universal rirights like hehealth carare ad meaningfulul work foalall, we stoppebeing so scared of thehe future.

we stopppped being scacared of h othe we f found our shaharedurpose. iliyananaeard the call and in 2028, she n for office in the first cycle of publicly fundedd campai. iw she occupies the seat tha once held. i could not be more proud of her.r. a true child off the new deal. en i thihink of my first term in congress writing that old school and d track, all o of this was l ahead of us. in t t first bigig step was juju closining our eyes and d imaging it. we canan be whatever we havthe kurds to see. we can be whatever we have the courage to see. " the message from the future with alexandria ocasio-cortez presented by the intercept and gnomic line and illustrated by molly crabapple. it was cowritten by alexandria ocasio-cortez and avi lewis.

after the break, w we will be bk with molly crabapple and avi lewis.

amy:y: "green new deal" by phihl and the osophers. this is democracy now!, i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh.

imagining a futur shaped bthe green new deal. the film is calle"a message fromom the future e with alendna ocasio-c-cortez." amy: it was cowritten by alexexdria ocasicortez along .ith avi lewis he joins us that from rutgers university, along with artist molly crabapple, who is here in our new york studio. we welcome you both. the film has been seen since you released it on intercept yesterday, by means of people. it is a magnificent piece. explain, especially for a radio audience who does not see the images, but here's alexandria ocasio-cortez speaking this fantastical piece that is looking back at when she introduced the green new deal decades before. somethinged to create that fought against this tendency toward the apocalypse. me and know me and abi and kim

and jim and alexandria, we wanted to create a vision of a hopeful, before future, a future we wanted to live in. so we made this animation with the idea that alexandria ocasio-cortez was rolling at a washington on the new train at some point in the future and thinking about how she had series ofre and how a climate disasters, including puerto rico, led to the green new deal being adopted and led to the country beingng made betr and more beaututiful in a more dignified face. and who your father is from puerto rico. >> yes. i think one of the reasons this project was so meaningful is because both me and alexandria and probably over a million other new yorkers, we saw what climate change looks like in real life. we sought wasn't just some theory, something far off that might happen in 20 years or 100 years. we saw climate change tear through puerto rico and killed

2000 americans. i think probably i favorite piece, the part that was most moving for me to draw, was this in thef a house mountains that had been themated by maria but puerto rican flag is still there. nermeen: alexandria ocasio-cortez's family is also from puerto rico. she refers in the narration to what happened in puerto rico, hurricane maria, as a climate balm. -- bomb. can you talk about the significance for you, as for her, i'm making this, as you say, extremely moving visualization of what occurred? >> i think a lot of people when a look at the magnitude of changes that have to be made to properly fight against climate change, they're like, oh, my

god, that is too big, too extreme. but for me, and i think for alexandria and many other people who saw what happened in puerto rico, the other option is unimaginable. the other option is just submitting to having hurricanes to radically kill grandparents or having wildfires periodically burn down houses forever. i think it was very important to us to communicate the urgency but the other thing that puerto rico taught me after maria was the incredible resilience of people. the way people who are being completely not just neglected, but sat upon by the federal government and fina, joined together to create centers that clear the roads, that fed their neighbors, kept old people alive. when me and kim and jim and omixandria, avi, and na conceived of thihis, we wanted o

capture the idea that, yes, we can do great things. we can be resilient. we can come together. nermeen: talk about how your art can convey what perhaps script cannot because your art is just incredible list of and what you're able to represent, both in terms of what is occurring now and the possible future is very different from what people have ever seen. >> i often think we live in this incredibly image-satururated moment where there is this almost jaded nests to photography. i think more photos are taken in a year or than the first 100 years of the history of photography. drawing can short-circuit that jadedness, get around that numbness. what we do with this message from the future was we both hat thehembolic way pathth of climate e change had k

like, what thehe research have been, whwhat present w was but w were also able to show w in t ts very c concretely whwhat the fue would lolook like. one of my favorite things to draw for it was i did a picictue of grain on the concoursee as it would be in 2028 under the green new deal. it kept all of the beautiful old things. i d don'wawant our f future to k likeke dubai. i donate to me we get rid of our history and culture. but he showed them surrounded with new things like solar and bullet trains and rooftops that had been converted to community gardens. you have the people playing because i people doing guarding on rooftops. amy: avi lewis, you worked with alexandria ocasio-cortez on the script. talk about that and how this fits into -- we just heard naomi klein introducing the film and talking about the actual new deal and the money that was put into artists.

in a moment, we will hear noam chomsky talk about with the green new deal can learn from the new deal. your comments? >> first of all, it's so great to be on democracy now! and to share this work. it took about four months. i checked the numbers this morning and it has been seen by more than 4 million people in less than 24 hours. so it is really striking a deep nerve with people. the number of responses we have heard and received about people who are kind of weeping while imagininghis visual of a more hopeful future i think is striking. listen, as a storyteller and a film and television maker for almost 30 years, i have learned there is owes a huge community of people making work, most of whom are on scene. in this case i feel we should of had a producer credit for the movement that produced this political moment that this piece is emerging from.

decades of environmental justice work and organizing, particularly in communities that historically and are currently excluded, organizations and networks like climate justice alliance but also the bernie campaign of 2016 that at least big organizing and the justice democrats and the brand-new congress and the extraordinary sunrise movement -- all of this building of movements on movements created this political moment from which this work of topian fiction could emerge strike the imagination of people will stop art accesses a different part of us. even watching headlines this morning, the fight or flight panic that is evidenced in greta'a's unleashing of the climate strike movement of the m people, the extinction rebellion folks. we're living in terrifying times . for those who are committed to vast and rapid change, we're living in a state of engagement that is not fun a lot of the

time. when i see people's responses to this work and the amount of emotion that is unleashed, i'm struck by how much we need -- not just hope, which is obama and the politicians like justin trudeau reveal can be a shallow buteasily row -- leveraged, a vision. for a articulated, beautiful vision of a world we are fighting for. we n nd it. it orients us. it reminds us what we are doing all of this work for. it unleashes political potential as well. this piece has struck a chord for reason. getting to work with aoc was next turn your opportunity. having my phone ring and a certain point weeks into the process when i was waiting for reaction to the first draft of the script and having the deal call on flash and suddenly be talking to her in her office in congress, and having a major restructuring of the first draft

and then two full-line that is where she sat down with the script and did an intensive rewrite and a very colollaborate process and recording the narration where i think we heard a different side of this remarkable, electrifying politician and we have heard. a more internal, dreamlike state that she was able to locate in conjunction with the art and the ideaeas. i think we're living in an extraordinary moment. full of carol and promise. promised nerve to be touched. nermeen: molly crabapple, this work give done for the intercept on climate change follows on another remarkable film you illustrated on the war on drugs with jay-z. can you talk about how that was received and how you -- what you hope audiences will learn from this film? >> i've been lucky enough to spend about nine years creating films like these.

they are stop motion films that take sometimes 30 hours to film and 100 more hours to edit. in 2015 or 2016, our collaboration with jay-z entering hampton came out which is about the disparities and with black people and white people are treated around drugs. it traded worldwide. it was something that is used in was part of i think actually changing how people spoke about the sentencing disparities and how people spoke about creating not just marijuana legalization, but justice for all of these people who have been locked up in cages because of racist laws. i think our video get a small part of that. the thing i think these videos can do that is very important is many people, they look at a bunch of graphs, tables, data

and they're like, this is so overwhelming. they basically stop brooding after the headline -- reading after the headline. when you're watching my hand dry out this path of the future, it makes people listen. amy: and the role of art and politics, that idea of what you been doing all of this time. for too long art has been segregated from the rest of the world. it has been locked up in museums the way you lock a butterfly in a glass cage, the way you lock that is nong longer relevant. i think it is terrible art has been cut off from life. it needs to be in the streets. it needs to be in people's minds. the art world is too small of a place. for me, doing work that is held up atn walls or

protests or chronicle some of the struggles and conflicts of our times, that is part of breaking art out of the cage of the art world. amy: molly crabapple, thanank yu for doing just that. molly crabapple is an award-winning artist and writer. , they give for joining us co-writer and co-producer of , the intercept's animated film "a message from the future with alexandria ocasio-cortez." presented by the intercept and naomi klein. when we come back, we hear noam chomsky on both the green new deal and lessons from the past, as well as what isapappening today on the mueller report. we will talk about russiagate. stay with us. ♪ [music breaeak]

amy: "one person" by deanna mullins. this is democracy now!, i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. with noamay show chomsky. i spoke dam last week at the old south church in boston. in a moment, we will hear noam chomsky talk about russian

meddling and the 2016 election and what the mueller report found and did not find, which is been released today. first, i asked him to tatalk abt the green new deal and the lessons of the old new deal. >> first of all, i think the green new deal is exactly the right idea. you can raise questions about the specific form in which ocasio-cortez and markey introduced. maybe it shouldn't exactly be this way, should be a little differently, but the general idea is quite right. and there is very solid work explaining, developing in detail, exactly how it could work. economist -- a very fine economist at umamass amhert has written extensively, in extensive detail with close analysis of how you could implement policies of this kind

in a very effective way, which would actually make a better society. he would not be that you lose from it, you'd gain from it will stop the cost of renewable sharply.e declining if you limited the massive subsidies given of fossil fuels, they probably already surpassed them. means that t can be implemented and d carried out to overcocome, certainly mitigate, maybe to overcome, the serious crisis. so the basic ideas i think is completely defensible. in fact, essential. a lot of the media commentary ridiculing this and that aspect of it are essentially beside the point. you can change the dates from 2030 to 2040, you could do a couple of other manipulations,

but the basic idea is correct. what is the difference from the 1930's? several things. one thing that is different is large-scale labor action. the 1930's were the period of the organization of the cio. in the 1920's, the u.s. labor movement had been virtually destroyed. remember some of this is very much a business-run society. violent.tory is very quite unlike comparable countries. by the 1920's, quite effective labor movement had pretty much crushed one of the great works of labor history by david montgomery a labor historian, called the rise and fall of the american labor movement. he was talking about the 1920's.

revived.s it it revived with large-scale organizing activities, cio organizing began, the strike actions were quite militant. they led to sit down strikes. is a real signke of warning to the business classes because there is a step beyond the sit down strike. the next step is let's start the factory running by ourselves. we don't need the bosses. we can run it ourselves. so get rid of them, ok? that is a real revolution, the kind that t should take place. the participants would run it by themselves instead of being the slaves of the private owners who

control their lives. a step awaytrike is from that. [applause] among theed real fear ownership classes. wassecond element was thehere a sympathetic administration, which is very critical. you look at the history of labor --ions over the cecenturies there is a very good book on this, incidentatally am a by erk historyalled "american and 10 strikes kmco or some similar name. he runs s through ththe militant labor actions ever since the early 19thth century. es an interesting point. he says every successful labor action has had at least tacit

support of the government. if the government and the ownership classes are unified in crushing labor action, they have always succeeded. very significant observation. in the 1930's, there was a sympathetic administration for many reasons. that combination of militant -- was a very lively political period and many sympathetic in the administration, led to the green new deal, which changed people's lives. amy: share your analysis of president trump. you have lived through so many presidents. explain president trump to us and assess the massive response to him.

thinkmp is -- you know, i there are a number of allusions about trump. if you take a look at the trump phenomenon, it is not very surprising. think back for the last 10 or 15 years over republican party primaries. remember what happened during the primaries. , when somey candidate rose from the base, they were so outlandish that the republican establishment tried to crush them and succeeded in doing it. cain,e bachmann, herman rick santorum -- anyone who is coming out of the base was totally unacceptable to the establishment. the change in 2016 is they could not crush it.

but the interesting question is, why was this happening? why in election after election was the voting base producing a candidate utterly intolerable to the establishment? is, if answer to that you think about that, the answer is not very hard to discover. since the 1970's, during this neoliberal period, both of the political parties have shifted to the right. 1970'0's,ats by the they pretty much had abandoned the working class. the last gasp of more or less progressive democratic party theslative proposals was humphrey-hawkins full employment act in 1978, which carter

watered down so that it had no teeth, just became voluntary. with the democrats have pretty much abandoned the working class. they became pretty much what used to be called moderate republicans. meanwhile, the republicans shifted so far to the right that they went completely off the spectrum. political leading analysts of the american enterprise institute, thomas mann, norman ornstein, five or 10 years ago, described the republican party as what they called the radical insurgencncy that has abandoned parliamentary politics. well, why did that happen? it happened because the republicans face a different goal -- if cult problem. they have a real constituency. extreme wealth, corporate power.

that is who they have to serve. that is their constituency. you can't get votes that way. so you have to do something else to get votes. what you do? this was begun by richard nixon with a strategy to try to pick up racists in the south. the mid-1970's, one of the democrat -- through public and strategists hit on a brilliant idea. northern catholics voted democratic, tended to vote democratic. a lot of them were working class. the republicans could pick up that vote by pretending crucially, intending to be opposed to abortion. -- pretending to be opposed to abortion. they could also then pick up the evangelical vote. those were big votes,

evangelical and northern catholics. notice the word "pretense." you go back to the 1960's. every leading republican figure was strongly what we call now pro-choice. the republican party position was that ronald reagan, george h.w. bush come all of the wasership, their position abortion is not the government's business. it is a private business and government has nothing to say about it. they turned almost on a time in order to try to pick up a voting base on what are called cultural issues. same with gun rights. the gun rights become a matter of holy writ because you can pickup part of the population that way. in fact what they have done, is put together a coalition of that t aresed on issues

sically -- tolerable to the establishment, but they don't like it. those twoto hold constituencies together. the real constituency of wealth and corporate power, they are taking care of the actual legislation. so if you look at the legislation under trump, it is to the wealthfts and the corporate sector. the tax bill of the deregulation come you know, every case in point. that is kind of the job of mitch mcconnell, paul ryan, those guys. they serve the real constituency. meanwhile, trump has to maintain with oneg constituency outrageous position after another that appeals to some sector of the voting base.

and he is doing it very skillfully. just days of political manipulation, it is skillful. work for the rich and a powerful, shaft everybody else, but get their votes. .hat is not an easy trek he is carrying it off. i should say the democrats are helping him. they are. take the focus on russia gay russiagate. it was pretty obvious in the beginning you're not going to find anything very serious about russian interference and elections. for one thing, it is .ndetectable in the 2016 election, the senate and house with the same way as the executive, but nobody claims it was russian interference. in fact, russian interference in the election, , if it existed, s

very slight. interferencen the by, say, israel. israel, the prime minister netanyahu, that goes to congress and talks to a joint session of congress without even informing the white house, to attack obama's policies. that is dramatic interference with elections. whatever the russians tried, nothing like that. in fact, there i is no interference in elections that begins to compare with campaign funding. remember, campaign funding alone gives you a very high prediction of election, electoral outcome. whichrguson's major work, has shown us persuasively, that

is massive interference anand electitions. anything the russians might have done is going to be, you know, peanuts in comparison. as far as trump collusion with the russians, that was never going to amount to anything more than minor corruption. maybe building a trump hotel in red square or something like that, but nothing of anything said -- of any significance. the democrats invested everything in this issue. well, turned out there was nothing much there. they gave trump a huge gift. in fact, they may have handed him the next election. that is a matter of being unwilling to deal with fundamental issues that they're looking for something on the side that will somehow give political success. the real issues are different things. they are things like climate change, like global warming,

like the nuclear posture review, deregulation. these are real issues, but the democrats are not going after those. they're looking for something else, the democratic establishment -- i'm not talking about the young group coming in that is quite different. just all of that has to be shifted significantly if it is going to be a legitimate political opposition to the right-wing drift taking place. and it can happen. it can definitely happen, but it is going to take work. the world-renowned linguist and political dissident noam chomsky speaking of the old south church in boston last thursday night. go to democracynow.org to see more of the interview and to see his speech. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013.

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