This week on CounterSpin:

The website of the Kairos Democracy Project has a quote from John Lewis, reminding us, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.” Our guest Tanya Clay House is board chair at Kairos and a longtime advocate for the multiracial democracy that the Trump White House seeks to denounce and derail — in part by erasing the history of Black people in this country. As part of that, she’s part of an ongoing project called Freedom to Learn and its present campaign, called #HandsOffOurHistory.

Corporate news media evince lofty principles about the First Amendment, but when people actually use it, the response is more telling. When USA Today covered activism in Seattle around the WTO, it reported that, “Little noticed by the public, the upcoming World Trade Organization summit has energized protesters around the world.” You see how that works: If you’re the little-noticing “public,” you’re cool; but if you band together with other people and speak out, well, now you’re a “protester,” and that’s different — and marginal. Whatever they say in their Martin Luther King Day editorials, elite media’s day-to-day message is, “Normal people don’t protest.” In 2025, there’s an ominous addendum: “Or else.”

We hear from Danaka Katovich, co-director of the feminist grassroots anti-war organization CODEPINK, currently, but not for the first time, at the sharp end of state efforts to silence activists and activism.

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