Democracy Now! (8/17/17)

As President Trump faces growing outrage over his response to the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, we bring you an exclusive: an interview with the great-great-grandsons of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. At least 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy can be found in public spaces across the country. But now a number of the monuments are coming down. Calls for the removal of the statues are even coming from the descendants of the leaders of the Confederacy.

We speak with two of the great-great-grandsons of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Jack and Warren Christian have just written an open letter to the mayor of Richmond calling for the removal of the Stonewall Jackson statue in Richmond. They write, “Our sense of justice leads us to believe that removing the Stonewall statue and other monuments should be part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities that hundreds of years of white supremacy have wrought.”

Link to Story, Transcript and 27-Minute Video

• Read the text of the full letter from the great, great grandsons of Gen. Stonewall Jackson calling for the removal of the Stonewall Jackson monument in Richmond, Virginia HERE.

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“Vile, Hateful & Racist”: A Fargo Family Disowns White Supremacist Relative After Charlottesville

Democracy Now! (8/17/17)

One of the participants in the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville was a man named Peter Tefft. He was outed by the Twitter group “Yes, You’re Racist,” which had been posting screenshots of participants in an effort to expose them. His father, Pearce Tefft, has come out and publicly denounced his white supremacist son in an open letter published in The Forum, a newspaper in Fargo. The letter read, in part, “I, along with all of his siblings and his entire family, wish to loudly repudiate my son’s vile, hateful and racist rhetoric and actions. We do not know specifically where he learned these beliefs. He did not learn them at home.” We speak with Jacob Scott, the nephew of Peter Tefft.

Link to Story and 5-Minute Video

Nephew of Fascist Who Marched in Charlottesville & Former Neo-Nazi on Confronting Racists

Democarcy Now! (8/17/18)

We feature Part 2 of our discussion with a former neo-Nazi and the nephew of a white supremacist who marched in the Charlottesville, Virginia, protest. Christian Picciolini is co-founder of Life After Hate, a nonprofit helping people disengage from hate and violent extremism. He was a leading neo-Nazi skinhead gang member and far-right extremist in the 1980s and 1990s. We also speak with Jacob Scott, the nephew of Peter Tefft, who was disowned by his father, Pearce Tefft, in a letter published in a local newspaper. Scott discusses what it means for the family to speak out.

Link to Story and 22-Minute Video

• Why Do You Hate Me? A Brown Woman Talks To A Former White Nationalist – New York (CNN)Everybody’s writing about white nationalists. But nobody’s asking them the things I really want to know, as a woman of color and a mom of two kids. I reached out to Arno Michaelis, a former activist in the white power movement, to better understand how their world might affect mine. He is the author of “My Life After Hate” and details his journey in this CNN Opinion piece. Our phone conversation, lightly edited for flow … Link to Story and 5-Minute Video

 

• Tina Fey Absolutely Destroys Nazis, Trump And Paul Ryan While Eating A Sheet Cake – “Sheet caking” is now officially a thing. Link to Story and 7-Minute Video