Contributing Writers

We speak with V, the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler, about “How We Do Freedom: Rising Against Fascism,” a daylong educational event to be held at New York City’s Judson Memorial Church on Saturday. V is the founder of the global activist movements V-Day and One Billion Rising that is organizing the event. “The rise of fascism, from India to Italy, from Afghanistan to U.S., [is] the most pressing concern everywhere,” says V, who ties the crisis to growing loneliness and isolation.

A federal jury in Florida has found members of the pan-Africanist group African People’s Socialist Party guilty of conspiring with the Russian government to “sow discord” and “interfere” in U.S. elections. They face up to five years in federal prison. In a major victory for the activists, however, the jury acquitted them of the more serious charge of acting as foreign agents.

Supporters of Leonard Peltier are calling on President Biden to grant clemency to the Indigenous leader and activist, who marked his 80th birthday behind bars on Thursday after nearly a half-century in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. The ailing Peltier, who uses a walker and has serious health conditions, including diabetes, has always maintained his innocence over the 1975 killing of two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

In Sudan, a recent United Nations fact-finding mission documented “harrowing” human rights violations committed by both the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, schools, hospitals, water and power supplies. Civilians have also been subjected to torture, arbitrary detention and gruesome sexual violence. Over 20,000 people have been killed and 13 million displaced over the past 16 months.

We speak with V, the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler, about “How We Do Freedom: Rising Against Fascism,” a daylong educational event to be held at New York City’s Judson Memorial Church on Saturday. V is the founder of the global activist movements V-Day and One Billion Rising that is organizing the event. “The rise of fascism, from India to Italy, from Afghanistan to U.S., [is] the most pressing concern everywhere,” says V, who ties the crisis to growing loneliness and isolation.

A federal jury in Florida has found members of the pan-Africanist group African People’s Socialist Party guilty of conspiring with the Russian government to “sow discord” and “interfere” in U.S. elections. They face up to five years in federal prison. In a major victory for the activists, however, the jury acquitted them of the more serious charge of acting as foreign agents.

Supporters of Leonard Peltier are calling on President Biden to grant clemency to the Indigenous leader and activist, who marked his 80th birthday behind bars on Thursday after nearly a half-century in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. The ailing Peltier, who uses a walker and has serious health conditions, including diabetes, has always maintained his innocence over the 1975 killing of two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

In Sudan, a recent United Nations fact-finding mission documented “harrowing” human rights violations committed by both the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, schools, hospitals, water and power supplies. Civilians have also been subjected to torture, arbitrary detention and gruesome sexual violence. Over 20,000 people have been killed and 13 million displaced over the past 16 months.

Tuesday night’s presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump focused heavily on abortion rights and the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump repeated his false claim that Democrats support infanticide, and claimed that allowing individual states to set their own laws on abortion was an improvement. Harris highlighted the risk to pregnant people now navigating a patchwork of laws and restrictions in the U.S.

We’re joined by award-winning Cherokee writer and journalist Rebecca Nagle, whose new book, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land, has just been released. By taking a look at the more than a century-long fight for tribal sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma, Nagle investigates the development and future of tribal law since the beginning of colonial relations between Indigenous peoples and European settlers, from the Trail of Tears to the “war on terror.

As the climate crisis continues to accelerate, wealthy governments in the West are clamping down on climate protest. According to a new report from Climate Rights International, demonstrators around the world are being arrested, charged, prosecuted and silenced, simply for using their rights to free expression.

At least 196 environmental defenders were killed last year, most of them Indigenous or Afro-descendant. The deadliest country was Colombia, where at least 79 land, water and climate defenders were killed.

Tuesday night’s presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump focused heavily on abortion rights and the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump repeated his false claim that Democrats support infanticide, and claimed that allowing individual states to set their own laws on abortion was an improvement. Harris highlighted the risk to pregnant people now navigating a patchwork of laws and restrictions in the U.S.

We speak with consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz about Tuesday’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Stiglitz says Trump’s policies, including a plan for major new tariffs, would result in “more inflation and slower growth” and wreak havoc on the U.S. economy.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump had their first and only scheduled debate Tuesday, providing a stark contrast between the two candidates with just eight weeks to go before the November 5 election. Harris repeatedly put Trump on the defensive as they debated abortion, immigration, Israel’s war on Gaza, race, January 6 and other issues.

Tuesday night’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris focused heavily on immigration, with the Republican nominee attacking the current administration for not closing the border, and spreading xenophobic and racist conspiracy theories about asylum seekers. “Donald Trump resorted to the same deranged and despicable rhetoric that is meant to divide people.

Israel is continuing its military assault across the occupied West Bank, with soldiers storming the Palestinian city of Tulkarm after midnight Monday, just days after Israeli forces withdrew from Tulkarm and Jenin following a brutal incursion that lasted over one week.

Former presidential candidate and celebrated consumer advocate Ralph Nader discusses Israel’s war on Gaza, the U.S. presidential election and more. Nader’s latest article, “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount,” can be read in the Capitol Hill Citizen, which he also founded. The official death toll in Gaza has been suspended at around 40,000 for months, as Israel’s devastation of the territory makes it increasingly difficult to properly recover and identify the dead.

The legendary actor James Earl Jones has died at the age of 93. Across a career that spanned film and stage, he won numerous acting awards and gave voice to iconic characters including Star Wars’ Darth Vader and The Lion King’s Mufasa. In tribute to Jones, we play an excerpt of his reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” from a performance of Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

We speak to acclaimed historian, activist and filmmaker Tariq Ali about Western governments’ support for Israel’s war on Gaza and popular protest in support of Palestine, which Ali calls the “biggest divide we’ve seen in politics almost since the Vietnam War.” He argues that this division is “challenging the very nature of democracy” and the international rule of law.

Democracy Now! is joined by the nephew of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has endorsed Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Fred Trump III’s new memoir, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, shares fresh insights into the Trump family and acts as a platform to advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities. Fred Trump’s own son William has a rare genetic disorder that causes severe developmental and intellectual disabilities.

Israel is continuing its military assault across the occupied West Bank, with soldiers storming the Palestinian city of Tulkarm after midnight Monday, just days after Israeli forces withdrew from Tulkarm and Jenin following a brutal incursion that lasted over one week.

As friends and family mourn the killing of Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, we speak with the parents of Rachel Corrie, another American killed while volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement to protect Palestinians from attacks and displacement.

A funeral is being held today in the occupied West Bank for Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot dead Friday by Israeli forces while taking part in a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita. The 26-year-old recent graduate of the University of Washington was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. Witnesses say she was fatally shot in the head by an Israeli sniper after the demonstration had already dispersed.

Democracy Now! is joined by the nephew of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has endorsed Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Fred Trump III’s new memoir, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, shares fresh insights into the Trump family and acts as a platform to advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities. Fred Trump’s own son William has a rare genetic disorder that causes severe developmental and intellectual disabilities.

The United Nations is warning the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains “beyond catastrophic” as more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza did not receive any food rations in August amid Israel’s relentless assault. Israel’s 11-month campaign has killed more than 15,000 children and enabled the besieged territory’s first polio outbreak in a quarter-century.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has announced more U.S. aid for Ukraine just days after the country was hit by one of the deadliest airstrikes since Russia’s invasion in early 2022. On Tuesday, a pair of Russian missiles struck a military academy and hospital in the central Ukrainian city of Poltava, killing at least 51 people and injuring more than 270. “The sense … is that the U.S.

As the fall term gets underway for students across the United States, we speak with journalist and academic Natasha Lennard about how college administrators are attempting to quash Gaza solidarity actions following mass protests at campuses across the country in the spring. One example is New York University, which recently updated its student policy to make criticisms of Zionism potentially punishable under its anti-discrimination rules.