Democracy Now! February 8, 2002

9:01-9:06 HEADLINES 9:06-9:07 ONE-MINUTE MUSIC BREAK COHOST JUAN GONZALEZ 9:07-9:20 CREATING COMMUNITY IN VIOLENT TIMES: AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR LUIS RODRIGUEZ The Bush administration has kicked off a flashy media blitz that links illegal drug use with acts of terror. Full-page ads ran in major U.S. newspapers this week bearing the message, "drug money helps support terrorism." The ads followed a series of television commercials that aired during Sunday's Super Bowl, the biggest advertising day of the year. In the past, government anti-drug ads have focused largely on the impact of drugs on the people using them. However, tactics have changed in the wake of September 11. In one of the newspaper ads, a young person says, "Last weekend washed my car, hung out with a few friends and helped murder a family in Colombia." The message suggests that buying drugs helps fund so-called terrorism. The ads are part of an annual $180 million media campaign to reduce drug use among young people in America. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy spent almost $3.5 million to place the two 30-second ads during the widely watched Fox television broadcast. That's over $50,000 a second, by far the largest single-event advertising buy in U.S. government history. "Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for" affirms Luis Rodriguez in his most recent book "Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times." In his book "Hearts and Hands" Rodriguez takes us into the troubled homes these kids are born into, the tough neighborhoods where they grow up, the courtrooms where they are judged, the prison cells where they are locked up, the cemeteries where they are buried. GUEST: LUIS RODRIGUEZ, community activist, poet and author of the award-winning memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. and, most recently,Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Dangerous Times. He founded the Tia Chucha Press, which publishes young socially-engaged poets, and is also a founder/board member of Youth Struggling for Survival, a Chicago-based youth community organization. IN STUDIO CONTACT:www.lrna.org LINKS: www.theantidrug.com 9:20-9:21 ONE-MINUTE MUSIC BREAK 9:21-9:40 REPORTERS ON THE FRONT LINES: AS WALL STREET JOURNAL CORRESPONDENT DANIEL PEARL REMAINS MISSING IN PAKISTAN, JOURNALIST ROBERT FISK MAKES A PLEA TO OSAMA BIN LADEN TO RELEASE HIS FRIEND CBS News is reporting that the first attempt to rescue journalist Daniel Pearl from his captors has ended in disappointment. After zeroing in on prime kidnapping suspect, Sheik Omar Saeed, Pakistani police reportedly called him on Wednesday and attempted to negotiate. They told him that they had arrested members of his family and that they would release his loved ones if he would give up Pearl. Well, Saeed appeared to agree to these conditions, promising to release his journalist-captive within hours. But Pearl was never freed. Instead, Saeed used those hours to make his own getaway. Now police are admitting their investigation has faltered and the trail has once again run dry. Meanwhile, just days before this botched attempt at bargain-chip diplomacy, London Independent correspondent, Robert Fisk, wrote an article that doubled as an open letter to Osama bin Laden, asking him to help secure his reporter-friends release. The letter reads like this: "Daniel Pearl should not be a hostage. The photograph released by his kidnappers, manacled and awaiting execution, was profoundly shocking for me, because he and his young French wife were the last Westerners I saw in Islamabad before I returned to Beirut last December. I had just been beaten by an Afghan crowd and arrived, still bruised and very bloody, at the guest house on China Road, which has been home to many journalists over the past months." Independent filmmaker Jon Alpert recently returned from the village of Chokur, Afghanistan where he produced a documentary that will air on PBS stations nationally tonight, on Now, with Bill Moyers. Alpert and his crew from Downtown Community Television traveled with Afghan-American Masuda sultan, who had 19 family members killed on October 22nd during the US attack. GUEST: ROBERT FISK, Middle East correspondent for the London Independent newspaper www.independent.co.uk GUEST: JON ALPERT, independent filmmaker and founder of Downtown Community Television CONTACT: www.dctvny.org www.pbs.org 9:40-9:41 ONE-MINUTE MUSIC BREAK 9:41-9:58 A PLUNDERED NETWORK: THE PACIFICA FOUNDATION RELEASES THE RESULTS OF AN INDEPENDENT AUDIT Pacifica's old administration left the network saddled with $4.8 million in debt, according to independent auditors who have examined the books since dissidents regained control of the network last month. In the last two and a half years, Pacifica has incurred millions of dollars in expenditures, due to high fees paid to corporate attorneys, public relations companies, and security firms. Pacifica's finances have not been disclosed to either board members or donors in over a year. Almost two months ago, a historic agreement was reached between all plaintiffs in four lawsuits against the five-station Pacifica Radio network and the Pacifica foundation's board of directors. The agreement returns official control of the Pacifica network, the nation's oldest public broadcaster, to community radio advocates. The settlement called for an interim board, controlled by the current minority, to serve for fifteen months while new, democratic structures are implemented for an elected national Pacifica board. The agreement brought to an end two and a half years of legal, political, and community struggle following an illegal change in the method of selecting Pacifica's directors, who had traditionally been elected by the local station boards. GUEST: DAN COUGHLIN, Interim executive director, Pacifica foundation CONTACT: www.pacifica.org 9:58-9:59 OUTRO AND CREDITS