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Red Lake Struggles to Cope with Shooting Tragedy
Phil Donahue: "We Have an Emergency in the Media and
We Have to Fix It"
Red Lake Struggles to Cope with Shooting Tragedy
Tribal and religious ceremonies are being held in the Red
Lake Native American reservation in northern Minnesota following
Monday's high school shooting that left 10 people dead. We
speak with an indigenous rights activist who grew up in a
neighboring reservation and we go to Minnesota to speak with
a Bemidji community organizer.
Tribal and religious ceremonies are being held in the Red
Lake Native American reservation in northern Minnesota following
Monday's high school shooting that left 10 people dead.
While the Red Lake community struggles to cope with the tragedy,
students and teachers are receiving counseling and the high
school is scheduled to remain closed this week and next.
The incident began Monday when police say 17-year-old Jeff
Weise went to the home of his grandfather - a longtime Red
Lake police officer. Weise shot and killed his grandfather
and his grandfather's girlfriend, then strapped on his police
gunbelt and bulletproof vest. He then grabbed his grandfather's
police .40-caliber handgun and 12-gauge shotgun and headed
off toward the high school in his squad car.
Police say Weise shot and killed the security guard and then
roamed through the school shooting dead five students and
a teacher before retreating to a classroom and shooting himself
in the head. Another 12 people were injured. Five students
remain hospitalized - at least two are listed in critical
condition.
One student - Alicia Neadeau - described the incident:
"I was in the hallway, and we heard a gunshot, and
the security guard jumped and she was like, 'get in the classroom.'
And everybody got in the classroom, then she said, 'lock the
doors' and my teacher got up to the desk and she pushed it
over to the door and we had to barricade the door."
Police say Weise had once posted messages on a neo-Nazi website,
and fellow students told papers he had professed violent and
suicidal thoughts. In 1997, Weise's father committed suicide
following a police standoff that lasted for more than a day.
Years later, his mother suffered brain damage in a car accident
after she and a friend had been drinking. Jeff Weise lived
with his grandfather ever since.
Monday's shooting took place on the reservation of the Red
Lake Chippewa Tribe. It is located in a remote area about
240 miles north of Minneapolis and about 75 miles south of
the Canadian border. It is one of the poorest reservations
in the region.
- Audrey Thayer, community organizer in Bemidji with the
Red Lake, White Earth and Leech Lake reservations. She works
with the ACLU in Minnesota as part of the Greater Minnesota
Racial Justice Project. She is an enrolled member of the
White Earth Reservation. She knows a number of the families
who have lost loved ones and has met with them.
- Mattie Harper, an indigenous rights activist and a producer
at WBAI's First Voices Indigenous Radio. She grew up in
the neighboring Leech Lake reservation.
Phil Donahue: "We Have an Emergency in the Media
and We Have to Fix It"
Phil Donahue - one of the best-known talk show hosts in
the history of television in the United States - joins us
in our firehouse studio to discuss the state of the media
in this country. Donahue's show was on the air for more than
29 years. In 2003, he was fired by MSNBC because he was allowing
antiwar voices on the air. [includes rush
transcript - partial]
Before Jerry Springer created a show that looked more like
a wrestling match than a talk show; before Oprah was a household
name and before the explosion of cable news networks and the
24 hour talk show cycle, there was a daily program that millions
tuned into every week for a national discussion on a wide
range of social, political and personal issues. The show was
simply called "Donahue" and was hosted by a bespectacled
man with silver hair who would run around the studio handing
the microphone to members of the audience to give them their
say on the issues of the day. For many people watching or
listening right now, it is probably unnecessary to say that
that man was Phil Donahue. Throughout the 1980s, he was probably
one of the most trusted personalities in this country.
Donahue first took to the airwaves in 1965. He hosted his
radio program "Conversation Piece" in Dayton, Ohio.
Two years later on November 6, The Donahue Show premiered
on television with atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair as its first
guest. During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Donahue was
credited with expanding the role of daytime television by
featuring an unprecedented debate between then-candidates
Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown. "The Donahue Show"
was on the air for 29 years. In that time, Phil Donahue hosted
more than 6,000 shows.
After years of being away from hosting that daily, national
discussion, Donahue returned to TV in 2002 as the host of
a nightly debate-style program on MSNBC. For many people,
the show was a much-needed breath of fresh air on the cable
networks, increasingly dominated by right-wing pundits and
media personalities. Antiwar voices long kept off these cable
news channels were suddenly given a seat in the forbidden
studios to take part in a national debate about the so-called
war on terror.
Here's an example - this was in the lead-up to the invasion
of Iraq.
- Phil Donahue on MSNBC interviewing Harry Belafonte.
Donahue was on in the same time slot as Fox's Bill O"Reilly.
But the show didn't last long. In fact, it didn't even last
a year, even though it was MSNBC"s top-rated program.
When Donahue was fired, the network moved to hire a string
of right-wing hosts.
Phil Donahue joins us today in our studio.
- Phil Donahue, one of the best-known talk show hosts in
the history of television in the United States. His show
was on the air for more than 29 years. In 2003, he was fired
by MSNBC because he was allowing antiwar voices on the air.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
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Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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