A small ad in the City Paper reminded me that Amy Goodman, the driving force behind Democracy Now!, was going to be speaking at the Enoch Pratt Free Library this Friday evening. I first discovered Democracy Now! on Link and Free Speech, the best channels on DirectTV. Now I watch it online. WEAA-88.9 FM, which carries the show in Baltimore, sponsored her appearance. I looked forward to seeing her live, and daydreamed about engaging her in witty conversation, but had to settle with watching her on a live feed in the Poe Room a floor below Wheeler Auditorium. I saw her briefly at the book signing table right afterwards, but she realized she had no pen to sign books and rushed back down the hall. I would have given her mine.

Goodman's demeanor on DN is a lot like Brian Lamb on CSPAN - she asks intelligent questions, but is very restrained on air. She lets the news talk for itself. About the only time I ever saw her get worked up was a few years ago when she and coanchor Juan Gonzalez were trying to get a straight answer out of a very surly Lou Dobbs.

On Friday, Goodman sat at a small table between WEAA hosts Marc Steiner and Anthony McCarthy, who each have daily political talk and interview shows. I listened to Steiner all the time until WYPR-88.1 FM abruptly canned him.

Steiner wanted to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and management didn't. Steiner enjoyed emceeing local events and star turns in local magazines, but management resented his dominating the spotlight. Steiner wanted the station to spend money developing its membership roster, but management was more interested in seeking corporate underwriters.

He seems to have found a new home. He's a very earnest fellow, and one day an environmentally-minded caller started attacking all the corporate interests. Steiner tried to reason with the caller, who then criticized him as well. "Wait. You're attacking me?" Steiner asked, bewildered that anyone could question his progressive credentials. Larry David couldn't write stuff that funny. I'm not familiar with McCarthy, but the pair got a lot of laughs as they warmed up the crowd.

Out came Amy Goodman. They kept saying she needed no introduction, but mentioned a few of her many achievements, most notably the 900 stations that carry her non-corporate show. Goodman launched into an ode to librarians as the keepers of our privacy, relating the story of a CT librarian visited by two agents from the FBI. They wanted info on who was researching what at the library, and delivered a National Security Letter (NSL) both demanding the information and swearing him to silence about the request and the letter itself. All this as John Ashcroft was swearing that he wasn't going after librarians. I began to realize that Amy Goodman speaking her mind was a lot more interesting than the character she plays on Democracy Now! At times she read from one of her books, and the monotone crept back in to her delivery, but she kept the readings short.

She noted that intrusions to our privacy have only increased under Obama, but observed that after November 4th, Democrats seemed to step back to let the new president do all the work. She lectured us that, "It's not just up to him, it's up to all of us." She recounted candidate Obama quoting FDR, who once listened to Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organizer A Philip Randolph complain about Pullman, then said, "I don't disagree with you, but you have to make me do it." That sure sounds like Obama. (Randolph later threatened a march on Washington and FDR later issued the Fair Employment Act.)

Goodman's niece was there with her class, so Amy offered them a story about Frederick Douglass, who was a troublesome slave. He was sent to a slavebreaker at a house called Mt Misery, in St Michaels MD, where he was punished and tortured, but not broken. Douglass eventually escaped and made his way North. Goodman read on the internet that Mt Misery was now owned by none other than Donald Rumsfeld, who was noted for torture himself. She advised us not to believe everything we read on the internet, and drove to St Michaels to verify the story. Some people in a coffeehouse told her exactly how to find the Rumsfelds. "Just go up that road and stay off Mt Pleasant. Turn right on Mt Misery Road, turn right again and you'll see it." She figured there'd be a lot of turning to the right. Anyway the Secret Service was in front of Rumsfeld's house and so was a small plaque which said, Mt Misery.

Douglass is buried in Mt Hope cemetery near Rochester NY. Someone dragged her there even though she was late for a flight. She saw his tombstone, then they dragged her to another tombstone, that of Susan B Anthony. Seems that Douglass was also a feminist and Anthony was also an abolitionist. And they were strong friends. "Obama is just one man," she said, "Movements are what is important." She missed her flight, but found herself in an airport with a Frederick Douglass concourse and a Susan B Anthony concourse.

Speaking of movements, Goodman complained about the undercoverage of the One Nation march. She feels there is an untold story of opposition to the war within the military and advised us to pay close attention to the 400,000 documents being released by Wikileaks.

The first question was about her interview of David Cornwell aka John Le Carre' about money laundering. I feel bad here because I've been missing her show too often. Cornwell had reminded us how massively unpopular Tony Blair is in the UK for going to war.

A second questioner tried to equate our desire for privacy with the current secrecy of campaign contributions. Goodman wasn't having any of that.

A third questioner talked and talked. "You sound like a teacher," Goodman said and was right, but the woman had some first hand knowledge of the current union dispute here in Baltimore City. She was trying to replace No Child Left Behind with Race to the Top. Goodman cited Juan Gonzalez's recent piece in the Daily News about associating teachers with test scores, feeling that it had to make teachers less willing to teach problem students. She had seen Waiting For Superman, and came out feeling that the film very expertly portrayed teachers as the new terrorists, bent on hurting our children. She called charter schools a new kind of voucher movement.

She finished with a story of two high school girls out of the 300 sent to meet GW Bush for strong academic performance. These two gave Bush a letter complaining about torture. He said, "We don't torture" and one asked, would you unsign the signing statement you added to the McCain Anti-Torture Bill? They stopped letting high school students visit the President after that.

There was of course more to it than the bits I jotted and remembered, but if you get the chance to see her, do it. She apparently doesn't want to be an editorialist on her show, but she has a lot to say on her road tours.