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Democracy Now! speaks with the celebrated labor organizer and writer Jane McAlevey about the historic victory for Volkswagen employees at a Chattanooga, Tennessee, factory who voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union. The plant will become the first foreign-owned car factory in the South to unionize. "This win wasn't just a win - it was what we would call a beatdown," says McAlevey, who says the UAW's recent success is a result of direct democracy and smart, strategic organizing that could lead to the unionizing of Mercedes workers in Alabama. "It'll be a massive change in the U.S. South." We also speak with McAlevey about her terminal cancer diagnosis and why she's "going to fight until the last dying minute, because that's what American workers deserve."
Fifty-six years ago today, hundreds of students at Columbia University in New York started a revolt on campus, occupying school buildings and disrupting class to protest the school's ties to the Vietnam War and racism in New York. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, who participated in the 1968 protests when hundreds of students were injured by police and arrested, speaks about the rebellion and how it compares to Columbia's crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters occupying campus today. "What really strikes me about this response is the total flouting of any kind of democratic process by the current administration compared to what happened in 1968," says González. "These students are protesting a genocide that is occurring before the eyes of the entire world and that is being funded by U.S. arms. And if anyone has the right to rebel and to stand up against injustice, these students do."
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