Law and Disorder January 30, 2012: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Michael Smith visits political prisoner David Gilbert and discusses David’s book Love and Struggle.
• Genocide Bill Angers Turks – It Was Genocide Radio Documentary by Heidi Boghosian
  
• Supreme Court: GPS Tracking Device Illegal
• Lizzy Ratner Co-hosts Beyond the Pale on WBAI

—

Tariq Ali: Turning Points in the History of Imperialism

Today we’re joined by internationally renowned writer and activist Tariq Ali. Tariq is visiting from London where he is editor of the New Left Review.

A writer and filmmaker, Tariq has written more than 2 dozen books on world history and politics, including The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, The Obama Syndrome and On History. We talk specifically about several turning points in global history, the Occupy movement and US elections. .

Tariq Ali:

• The think the first World War was crucial but it wasn’t the war itself it was the consequences of that war. Here you had huge empires.
• The Russian revolution challenged capitalism frontally and its leaders said we want Europe to be with us, on our own we can’t do it. We need the Germans, we need a German revolution. That frightened the capitalist class globally.
• Woodrow Wilson, decided that the time had come to intervene. 22 countries came to intervene.
• This intervention made it impossible for the early infant Soviet Union to achieve what it wanted to achieve.
• The Second World War was an effort by the German ruling class to get its share of the world market in countries.
• The US helped rebuild Japan and Germany. They helped build France and Britain by the Marshal Plan and that has never been done by a big imperial power before.
• They managed to get the Soviet Union to implode by having an arms race. The Russians fell into their trap and decided to go for the arms race, had they not history might have been different.
• I hope the Chinese do not fall into the same trap, threatened by Obama’s puny little bases in Australia.
• People, early settlers in the United States got land totally free and they took it and that created the belief in the American psyche of private property.
• The Soviet Union imploded because the people lost faith in the system.
• The entire elite in the United States and Western Europe is wedded to the Washington consensus that emerged after the collapse of communism. The center piece of this consensus was a system which believed in market forces. I refer to it as market fundamentalism.
• We are confronting the extremism of the center and the result of this is no alternatives exist within mainstream politics. The effect that this is having is hollowing out democracy itself.
• Occupy: What we need is for these movements to call an assembly nationally and discuss a charter of demands for progressive America which need only be ten demands but something around which people can rally. I think its a movement that should be created bearing what the needs of ordinary people are.
• In order to understand the laws of motion of capital, you have to read Marx. It’s true capitalism has become much much more complex. Zombie capitalism, or fictitious capitalism, where money is used to make more money.
• It’s not money that’s creating productive goods.
• I had written a book on South American because I got very engaged in the Venezuela-Boliverian struggle and got to know Chavez very well.
• If Americans had access to Cuban medicine, the pharmaceutical companies would collapse, they would never let it happen.

Guest – Tariq Ali, writer, journalist and film-maker, born in Lahore and educated at Oxford University. He writes regularly for a range of publications including The Guardian and The London Review of Books.  He has written more than a dozen books including non-fiction as well as scripts for both stage and screen.

———————————

 Law and Disorder January 23, 2012: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Heidi Boghosian: Mumia Abu-Jamal Update
• Support Mumia Here
• Michael Smith: Occupy Chicago Tribune Lawsuit Is On
  
• Michael Ratner: Tenth Anniversary of Guantanamo Prison: Cage Prisoners
  
• Movie: Death In Camp Delta
• Iranian Scientist Murdered: Mossad, CIA, ISI
• Covert War Against Iran
• Michael Ratner Speaks At Occupy London About Bradley Manning Case
• Julian Assange Extradition
• Judge Goes Forward With Investigation Of Guantanamo Torture Cases
• UK Transferring People To Qaddafi To Be Tortured

—

Newly Launched Whistle Blower Site – Honest Appalachia

Activists in Virginia have launched a website appealing to whistleblowers wanting to reveal evidence of corporate and government wrongdoing. The site is called honestappalachia.org, it uses a security technology to protect citizens who upload documents and it keeps their identity hidden if there’s legal action. Inspired by Wikileaks, honestapplachia is a low cost model that can be adapted by others worldwide.

Jimmy Tobias:

• The site is meant to be a resource for whistle blowers, that allows them to anonymously upload documents to our site. We will take those documents and vet them, and distribute them to journalists.
• SOPA is definitely a risk to transparency and whistle blower resources on the web.
• You go on our site, and you read our submission guide which is a step by step.
• The guide will tell you to download TOR. A simple piece of software which routes your activity through servers across the world, which essentially makes your activity anonymous.
• Your IP address basically gets lost in the crowd. We will never know who you are uploading to our site.
• We also encrypt the documents we receive.
• We have information on our site where others can take our open source software and use 80 percent of it.
• Our project is focusing outreach in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, also includes Georgia and South Carolina.
• We’re really hoping to receive documents about wrongdoing at the state and local level of government, from corporations in the region.
• Appalachia is a very industrialized region but its also very rural.
• We were funded with a grant from the Sunlight Foundation.
• Generally there’s a lot of cozy relationships in the states, between industry and government.
• We’re focusing on a broad array whether they’re coal or gas companies, banks, zoning boards, state and local governments, anything that could engage in corruption at the expense of the public.

Guest - Jim Tobias, activist and direct action protester.

—-

 Law and Disorder January 16, 2012: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Update:

• Michael Smith: Newt Gingrich Attacks Capitalism

–

Occupy Wall Street Parody Papers Spark Legal Action From Big Newspapers

Occupy Wall Street Newspapers such as The Occupied Wall Street Journal or The Occupied Chicago Tribune have prompted lawyers to take Occupy protesters to court. In Chicago, a law firm is attempting to prevent the OWS movement from using The Occupied Chicago Tribune.  We’re joined today by attorney Michael Deutsch with the People’s Law Office who has been involved with this issue in Chicago.

Attorney Michael Deutsch:

• The Chicago Tribune contacted some of the OWS people and threatened to shut down their website and facebook page and to go into federal court and sue them for trademark infringement.
• They said the word “Chicago Tribune” is a trademark that belongs solely to the Chicago Tribune and no one else can use it for any purpose or any way.
• Even if they do sue them I think the publicity not be good for the tribune and good for the occupy people.
• There is the Lanham Trademark Act that protects them from people appropriating them.
• There’s also this Dilution Act which prevents people from using or diluting their trademark by using it some unnecessary or dismissive way.
• When the people of Occupy were first contacted they were fearful of being sued by the Chicago Tribune.
• They offered to change it to the Occupy Chicago Times but they turned it down and said you can’t use any name that references a newspaper.
• With Peter Weiss’s help we realized this is a classic parody case, that’s basic First Amendment rights.
• The law isn’t that clear but the courts usually balance whether there will confusion of the name against First Amendment rights.
• In their masthead they’re now saying they’re not affiliated with the Chicago Tribune Corporation.
• Their website is still up, facebook is still up, they haven’t gone to court, so maybe they realize for us its a win / win situation.
• If we go to court we’re going to win on the legal grounds, plus we’re going to get a lot of publicity.

Guest - Attorney Michael Deutsch, partner with the Peoples Law Office.

—–

Inside the CIA Black Site in Bucharest

Reporters for German network ARD’s Panorama news magazine and the Associated Press have pieced together key details surrounding the CIA’s operation of a black site in Bucharest, Romania. AP’s Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo write:
In northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from the center of Romania’s capital city, is a secret that the Romanian government has tried for years to protect. For years, the CIA used a government building — codenamed Bright Light — as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There, it held Al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11, and others in a basement prison until 2006, the year some were sent to Guantánamo Bay, according to former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the location and inner workings of the prison.

John Goetz:

• We’ve had a description of the CIA site, which is where one of the secret prisons were located.
• We had a description from some that worked there.
• The prison we’re talking about was used by the CIA in 2004 / 2005.
• The CIA secret prison was held in a Romanian government organization which gets called either ORNSS or NSA.
• It’s an organization that is used to get Romania up to speed on NATO classification rules.
• It’s a building that has a big NATO flag on top of it.
• In the back section of the building is where the secret prison was located.
• What I understand is that in Poland, when Bush came over, right after  the beginning of the Iraq War.
• When they didn’t find weapons of mass destruction, he was there in May and early June 2003.
• We know that Al-Nashiri in his various times in CIA prisons, that his family members, I believe his mother was threatened with rape. He was water boarded, a drill was used on him.
• There was a mock execution, things like that. We’re not exactly sure what happened in Poland and Bucharest.
• There’s a little known site in Bosnia, that was used in days and weeks, right after 9-11.
• In Bagram, there’s a military prison there and there’s a CIA prison.
• I do know that in Africa there are prisons that run under a new model, where the state runs the prison and is quarterbacked, is the expression that’s used by the CIA who asks questions through others.
• It makes it easier to deny.  Many people think . . .oh, the secret prison story is over.
• The facts are that outside of flight logs and some locations of prisons, no one really knows what happens inside these places.
• No one knows how they were run, no one knows perimeter security, how food was brought in, it remains a real black box in American history.

Guest – John Goetz, reporter with the German network ARD’s Panorama news magazine.

—–

70th Anniversary of the First Smith Act Prosecution: Proto-Thought Crime Legislation

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the first Smith Act trial of revolutionaries accused of wanting to overthrow the government. The law was intended to destroy the 100,000-strong American Communist Party however, the Smith Act was first used against the much smaller, revolutionary rival to the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party.  Our returning guest, author and activist Joe Allen writes about this 70th anniversary.  The Alien Registration Act of 1940 is also known as the Smith Act after its sponsor Rep. Howard Smith of Virginia, a Democrat and leader of the anti-labor bloc in the House of Representatives. The Smith Act became the legal weapon against critics of the government and stipulates that:

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof–

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

Joe Allen:

• For many people in the United States, the defense of civil liberties, has always been an important and constant feature of our history and most of that time the defense of civil liberties has not been primarily against vigilantism, or rogue elements of the government or corrupt public officials. While that’s an important part of that, it has always been dealing with the actual laws that have been attempting to undermine civil liberties most of the time they’ve been federal laws.
• You can go back to the Alien Sedition Act of the Adams Administration, the Espionage Act of WWI. They were always used against opponents of the government and not spies as they were sold to people.
• James Canon was one of the most important figures in American Socialist history, his life traverse the history of the American far left.
• He began in the IWW. The radical militant trade union that organized the most oppressed sector of American workers.
• He was a founding member and later a national chair of the American Communist Party.  Like many Wobblies and members of the Communist Party he was very concerned of the civil liberties of radicals and trade union organizers and was the head organizer of International Labor Defense in the 1920s.
• Canon developing a criticism of and his descent within the American Communist Party as the ILD moved away from its original mission and Canon himself to begin along with a number of significant figures of the American Communist Party and other people who sided with Trotsky in the dispute with Stalin over not only the Soviet Union also the International Communist Movement. He was the founder of early American Trotskyism in the 1920s and 1930s.
• It was the broad layer of people who were ultimately indicted under the Smith Act in 1941 primarily for advocating the overthrow of the United States government.
• Smith Act – Proto-Thought Crime Legislation
• It’s also in a sense a response to a dispute inside the labor movement.
• The first that a prosecutor tries to do is get a jury that is predisposed of the prosecution and not the defense.
• That’s one of the great travesties of the Smith Act, not only can you be indicted by the things you do but by the things you say.
• In that sense it really is a thought-control crime.
• The most important part of the Smith Act in this country is it effectively destroyed the left in this country during the late 1940s and the early 1950s.

Guest – Joe Allen, a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review and a long-standing activist, based in Chicago.

——————————————

 Law and Disorder January 9, 2012: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ten Year Anniversary of Guantanamo Bay Prison

Co-host Michael Ratner and president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights gives listeners an overview of the habeas corpus legal battles to close Guantanamo Bay prison and an in depth look at the corrosive effect the offshore prison has had on civil rights, and the U.S. Constitution. Despite the fact that the U.S. government has itself cleared more than half of these men for release, and despite President Obama’s promise on his second day in office to close Guantánamo within a year, it has been almost twelve months since anyone has been released.

This is the longest period of time that has elapsed since the prison’s opening without a single person being set free.The Obama administration has also extended some of the worst aspects of the Guantánamo system by continuing indefinite detentions without charge or trial, employing illegitimate military commissions to try some suspects, and blocking accountability for torture.

—-

International People’s Tribunal on “War Crimes and Other Violations of International Law

International People’s Tribunal on “War Crimes and Other Violations of International Law” to be held on January 14, 2012 at 12 pm at Columbia Law School.  The event will provide an excellent opportunity for students interested in  gaining an understanding the theory and the practical application of international law in the real world.

Attorney Roger Wareham:

• The genesis of the tribunal began during the intervention in Libya.
• Back in May the December 12th movement always has a celebration of Malcolm X’s birthday, May 19.
• This is part an ongoing campaign to re-colonize the African continent.
• Libya was important to that for a number reasons. Libya has some of the best crude oil in the world that requires the least amount of production in terms of transforming it into gasoline.
• Col. Gaddafi stood for the proposition that there would be a United States of Africa.
• Libya had the highest standard of living on the African continent.
• What we hope to come out of this is fashion a petition to take before the International Criminal Court.
• The plan is we’ll going to take at least a 400 people strong delegation to the Hague in June to present a petition to the prosecutor, requesting they prosecute the heads of NATO, Britain, Canada, Italy, for war crimes.
• Saturday January 14, 2012 / Columbia University Law School / 435 West 116th Street / 718-398-1766 / iptribunal2012@gmail.com

Guest – Roger Wareham, lawyer and political activist of over four decades. He is a member of the December 12th Movement, an organization of African people which organizes in the Black and Latino community around human rights violations, particularly police terror. Wareham is also the International Secretary-General of the International Association Against Torture (AICT), a non-governmental organization that has consultative status before the United Nations.

—-

Cornell and The Technion of Israel To Build Campus On Governor’s Island

As many listeners may know, Cornell University is joining with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in a plan to build a campus in New York City.  Critics however, point out Technion’s involvement with the Israeli Defense Force in the development of repressive technology that would further perpetuate crimes against Palestinians. Through cooperative research with Israeli defense companies such as Elbit, Rafael, McGill and Concordia, Technion is involved in asymmetrical robotic warfare with faceless human targets who can be killed by remote control.

To talk more about this, we’re joined today by David Klein,  a professor at California State University in Northridge and a member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Professor David Klein:

• It is a collaboration between Cornell University and Technion which is like Israel’s MIT.
• There’s a 350 million dollar grant from a philanthropist, which has been supplemented with 100 million dollars in public money.
• I’m a member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. 
• The demands that we have are ending the occupation and colonization all Arab lands and dismantling the apartheid wall.
• Recognizing the fundamental rights of Arab / Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.
• Respecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and property as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
• Technion is deeply complicit with Israel’s military and provides the military with technology to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
• Participants in a joint military and university program for science students, who will later be integrated into the Army’s research and development units, wear uniforms throughout their years of study.
• It’s particularly strong in developing robotic weapons systems, which include aerial drones, and unmanned combat vehicle technology.
• I think Bloomberg is supportive of the apartheid system in Israel. He wouldn’t view this as a problem like much of the rest of the world does.
• The crime of apartheid is an international crime against humanity.
• In addition to aerial drones, Technion makes the Black D9 Bulldozer, it makes the Stealth UVA Drone, which is a drone that can fly almost 3000km without refueling.
• It’s making something called the Dragonfly UVA mini-drone, which is a tiny drone with a 9 inch wingspan. It can fly into people’s bedroom windows and kill em.
• Technion is involved in asymmetrical robotic warfare with faceless human targets who can be killed by remote control.
• Israel is arguably the most racist country at this time, due to the apartheid system that it has.

Guest – David Klein, member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (www.usacbi.org), and is a professor of mathematics at California State University, Northridge (CSUN).  He received  his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University. His professional interests include mathematical physics, climate science, and mathematics education in the public schools.  He is the faculty advisor for the campus student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and the CSUN Green Party.  David Klein’s website

——

CCR Lawsuit: Stop and Frisk NYC

Last year, a federal judge rejected a move by the City of New York to stop a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the New York City Police Department’s Stop and Frisk policy. Judge Shir Scheindlin pointed out the seriousness of numerous claims that the NYPD disproportionately and illegally targeting communities of color.   In 2009 New York City, a record 576,394 people were stopped, 84 percent of whom were Black and Latino residents — although they comprise only about 26 percent and 27 percent of New York City’s total population respectively. The year 2009 was not an anomaly. Ten years of raw data obtained by court order from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) show that stop-and-frisks result in a minimal yield of weapons and contraband.

Attorney Darius Charney:

• Stop and Frisk is a city wide epidemic.  We’ve gone from 90 thousand in 2002 to 700 thousand this year. They’re stopping 2000 people a day, primarily young males of color but also females of color.
• There are really know criteria as far as we can tell. There are guidelines that have been laid out by the courts in the last forty years. The police don’t follow those guidelines. They’re suppose to reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
• They’re stopping people for what’s called “furtive movements” whatever that means.
• The other one is “high crime neighborhood.” The court had ruled that this is unconstitional, you can’t use the basis of a high crime neighborhood to stop and search them.
• Yet again, the police are doing that hundreds of thousands of times a year.
• The two allegations we made is that the NYPD has a widespread policy and practice of stopping and frisking New Yorkers without reasonable suspicion which violates the fourth Amendment of the Constitution and then on the basis of race which violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
• The blacker or browner that neighborhood is, the more stops that are going to be done in that neighborhood.
• The other part is the weapon recovery rate, the police department justifies this program by saying, we’re trying to get guns off the street.
• Last year in 2010, they stopped over 600 thousand people. The number of guns recovered in those 600 thousand stops was 1200 guns.
• Relief sought in class action suit: Outside independent oversight of the police department.

Guest -  Darius Charney,  senior staff attorney in the Racial Justice/Government Misconduct Docket.  He is currently lead counsel on Floyd v. City of New York, a federal civil rights class action lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department’s unconstitutional and racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices, and Vulcan Society Inc. v. the City of New York, a Title VII class action lawsuit on behalf of African-American applicants to the New York City Fire Department which challenges the racially discriminatory hiring practices of the FDNY.

——————————————-

 Law and Disorder January 2, 2012: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Michael Smith: Obama Balance Sheet 2011

—

Year End Look Back 2011 – Jim Lafferty

Looking back on 2011, amid the colossal economic failure and compounded erosion of civil liberties, there were slivers of bright light to note, such as the wonderful activism and momentum of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  The subsequent pulling together of activists, unions and lawyers marked this year in launching the foundation of a vital movement. Will this emerging movement continue to build and hold together to counter and restructure a corrupt and crumbling edifice of democracy?

Attorney Jim Lafferty:

• I’m now 73, I’ve not been as excited and optimistic about a movement since the sixties as I am around the occupation movement.
• It’s very exciting, it’s very broad and a lot deeper than the 1 percent would like to acknowledge.
• We don’t have a great sense of history in this country, we certainly don’t learn it in our high schools.
• Many of the young people that are at the heart and soul of this new movement are not the beneficiaries of a historical context of which to organize ourselves.
• It’s proven that you don’t need that to make a splash.
• When you go to the heart of capitalism itself which is what this movement does, its not surprising that they were met with fierce and brutal police reaction.
• They were ignored by the press in the first week or two, much of the press has been a distortion of it since.
• Reading the picket signs alone would tell you damn well what they want.
• This is an economic injustice movement. Capitalism can’t produce the type of economic justice that these tens of thousands are demanding.
• When Bonnie and I were arrested in New York at OWS, we even had cops saying to us, we’re part of the 99 percent.
• People aren’t making it and can’t make it in this country given the skewed and unjust economic system that capitalism represents.
• The US Census Bureau acknowledges that 100 million people are living in poverty or are in danger of slipping into poverty.
• When a presidential election cycle comes up, anti-war movements, civil rights movements, womens’ rights movements, tend to leave the streets.
• Don’t fall for the trap of electoral politics.
• Phase 2: I don’t know if that (encampments) are a sustainable way of operating a movement in this country.
• Here in L.A., one of the unions SIEU offered an indoor space to the movement where they can organize.
• Last week we shut down a number of home foreclosure auction sales.

Guest – Jim Lafferty, Executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and host of The Lawyers Guild Show on Pacifica’s KPFK 90. 7 FM to reflect back on 2011 and a look ahead.

——-

Occupy Wall St and the Brecht Forum

Kazembe Balagun,  an activist and cultural organizer from the Bronx discusses the activism within the Occupy Wall Street movement through the Education and Empowerment Committee.  Kazembe is also the program director at the Brecht Forum.

 Kazembe Balagun:

• When I went down to Zuccotti, what I found was a vibrant community that had already started.
• It did really speak to the frustration of the current economic and political climate.
• As a public educator at the Brecht Forum you want to provide a context for these demonstrations.
• You want to have a conversation with them, in that this is not the first time this happened.
• We brought our comrade, Rick Wolff down there, and had a talk with almost 300 people.  All great movements have great literacies.
• We have a movement where people are not only learning to speak in public but we’re all listening to each other.
• Wall Street has been the site of oppression for all people. Primarily because the wall that was built outside Wall Street was built to keep the Native Americans outside the business district.
• Black and brown communities have been the hardest hit in terms of foreclosure rates, stop and frisk. So what we have now is Occupy the Bronx, Occupy Sunset Park.
• We can occupy ourselves, that we can step into a new way of public life.

Guest – Kazembe Balagun, program director at the Brecht Forum.

——

Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012

Continuing the look back and now ahead to 2012, we’re glad to have back with us, Jim Petras,  author and former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York to discuss his latest article published on Global Research   Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012.  In this article Petras enumerates key events that will inevitably shape the next 12 months. He starts with – The Collapse of the European Union, then the recession deepens in United States, new wars erupt in the midst of this crisis.

These events, will lead to coming wars that will end America as we know it, meanwhile Europe sinks deep into austerity and class warfare intensifies.  Petras says, that in response mass movements will continue to build, recede and re-emerge. Protests and rebellions, social revolutions and political power across the globe will be important catalysts.

Jim Petras:

• The economy has never really recovered from the recession. All the trends from the early Spring have been on the negative side. Instead of take off in 2012, we see the opposite taking place, slow down in investment, slow down in overall exports, slow down in financing the employment.
• What we do see is a big profit for the speculators. The speculators are back with a vengence. Carlyle has reported over 12 billion dollars in profits for the first 11 months.
• The speculators are working, the housing market is terrible.
• The debt has skyrocketed so much, so much was thrown at the bank bailouts, that there arent’ enough resources to pull us out of this recession.
• The Democrats are making deals with the Republicans to actually cut back on federal spending because of the deficit. I see us moving into recession by the end of Spring and heading toward worse a depression by the end of the year.
• This is all going to be exacerbated by a move toward a war with Iran, which will push oil prices up over 150 USD/barrel. The powers that are moving toward that war particularly, the Zionist power configuration.
• The consequences will be very very catastrophic for the economy of the United States.
• Speculators are back in power, the housing market is negative, the job employment is negative, 2011 trends are moving down toward recession, I don’t see any counter moves.
• Cumulative debt payments are negative, I don’t see any possibility of a injection of major public spending of which would turn this around or at least ameliorate it. Keep it at zero growth.
• Keep us at stagnation, rather then negative territory.
• Obama did nothing to stimulate a new structure in America which could take government support and move forward. What he did is pour the money into the people who caused the crisis on Wall Street.
• After Obama gets elected you’re going to see the most horrendous attack on the social security programs, medicaid, medicare. He’s holding back because he wants to get elected.
• He’s looking to slash and burn the only social programs that sustain American living standards for millions of workers who paid into this fund.
• This isn’t an entitlement program, this social insurance that has been paid for by American workers.
• He’s going to go into Iran, because he told the reformed Jews, all options are on the table, and he stationed an armada of Air Force smack facing Tehran. That’s a move toward war.
• Read Netanyahu and Barack, the defense minister of Israel and the Prime Minister of Israel, then the message gets transmitted to the New York Times, then it gets transmitted to Washington, you get a third hand.
• Why not look at the press releases coming out of Tel Aviv, if you want to know what tomorrow’s news is going to be.
• I think we’re going to see something new coming out of this great discontent.

Guest – James Petras, author and former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York.

 Law and Disorder December 26, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Mumia Abu-Jamal Re-location Update
• Bradley Manning Case and Erasing Computer Harddrives

—-

National Defense Authorization Act Update

Co-host Michael Ratner expounds on National Defense Authorization Act.  The Act has passed both houses, despite Obama threatening to veto the Act. Obama thought that various provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act concerning detentions, might impinge on his authority as the executive.  Obama was more concerned about Congress telling the President how to treat those captured or kidnapped in “war on terror.”

—-

UPDATE: Political Prisoner Lynne Stewart

Political prisoner and good friend, Lynne Stewart continues to uplift people around her while serving a 10 year sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth Texas.  Lynne, as many listeners know, was prosecuted for representing her client the blind Egyptian Sheik,  Omar Abdel Rahman. In trying to negotiate a return to Egypt out of solitary confinement, she made a press release public.  She was tried and found guilty for materially aiding “terrorism.”  She received a 2 and half year sentence, instead of 30 years that the government wanted. Then, the Second Circuit Court sent the case back to the Judge.  Judge John G Koeltl sentenced defendant, Lynne Stewart: 120 months incarceration on five counts to be served concurrently.  Lynne Stewart is now 72 years old, she’s a breast cancer survivor with other pending health issues.  She’s called them the usual brush fires of aging, yet many are concerned.  SAVE THE DATE FEBRUARY 28-29

Ralph Poynter:

• She is looking forward to her attorney Herald Price Fahringer to presenting to the court once again testing the law.  We are planning a Occupy the Court Room and the park, the night before on February 28 through to the 29.
• The lawyer will be talking about the laws used to extend Lynne’s sentence. He said any lawyer that wouldn’t want this case, doesn’t understand law. He looked forward to doing it.  He went for a one hour visit with Lynne at MCC and stayed all day.
• No matter what happens, Lynne will continue to fight for her license.
• She’s is Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Big airbase there. It’s an enormous prison, but she’s in the hospital ward.
• Even though I’d been on the list visiting her (in New York prison) I was not on the list (Texas prison)
• I just went down there, and she said, you’re not on the list but I’m going to go to floor supervisor and she says, you just come.
• That Saturday morning I was in front of the prison and they told me I was not eligible to go in. They said it was like an airbase, so I walked outside the gate and stood there. The guard came over and said what are doing here? I said, I’m waiting.
• Around 10:30 an official car came down and said you’re denied admission.
• I said, I understand, but I’m going to wait.
• Around Noon, the woman came back and she says, fill out an application.
• She said I knew if you fought from the outside I was going to fight from the inside and it only took 4 hours.
• You can’t imagine after sleeping on a 2 inch exercise mat on a steel platform for a year, and they showed me the hospital bed.
• She is Miss S, in the prison. Everybody brings her their papers.
• She heard noise outside her room at 5 o’clock in the morning, they were lined up some with papers stacked 3 feet high.
• There is an oxymoron – prison health care. There is no such thing.
• She’s lost about 45 pounds.
• She’s very sick, she can’t sit down. In the visiting room she has to sit sideways.
• Thanks again for all of the people sending bucks for me to go see Lynne.
• Write her a letter. The letters pick her up.
• They gave her medicine and she couldn’t get out of bed. We have a system now when they give her medicine she calls me up. I call my daughter the doctor and she tells me whether Lynne should take it or not take it.

Guest – Ralph Poynter, Lynne’s husband, father, activist. Please write to Lynne Stewart - LYNNE STEWART / 53504-054 FMC CARSWELL / FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTER / P.O. BOX 27137 / FORT WORTH, TX 76127

—–
Photo by flickr user G20Voice

 Law and Disorder December 5, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Chilean Judge Indicts US Military Official in 1973 Killings – CCR Case
• Newt Gingrich: “Water Boarding Is By Every Technical Rule, Not Torture.”
• Michael Ratner: S.1867 — National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

—–

Occupy Albany: Undisturbed By City Officials

The collusion among mayors and police departments around the country to raid and take down Occupy Wall Street movements by force has revealed a particular hierarchy of control.  However, as listeners may know there is a unique situation with the Occupy Wall St solidarity movement in Albany, New York. Despite the request of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Albany mayor to shut the encampment down at Academy Park, the police refused, then the State Troopers refused.  In a memo obtained by the The Times Union, Albany Police Deputy Chief Steven Krofoff stated “At this time I have no intention of assigning officers to monitor, watch, videotape or influence any behavior that is conducted by our citizens peacefully demonstrating in Academy Park.

Attorney Mark Mishler:

• The Governor a few days before the occupation started met with the city of Albany office and as best as we can figure out at that meeting sort of all agreed that this wasn’t going to be permitted.
• It seemed to be permitted that people would not be able to stay past the 11PM curfew at the park.
• We have two very independent minded folks in law enforcement here.
• They took a different view. We have a District Attorney David Soares, who was independently elected as an opponent to the Albany County machine and with a lot of grassroots support.
• David Soares say he wasn’t interested in using his office to prosecute peaceful protesters.
• In correlation with that our police chief in the city of Albany, who also came into office as result from a grassroots movement for improved police / community relations. He also said he didn’t want to use the resources of his department to arrest peaceful protesters.
• The mayor who we believe really wanted to carry out the governor’s direction was really boxed into a corner and couldn’t do that.
• The park is really 2 parks, half of the park is city owned, the other half is state owned.
• We’re now in the sixth week, there are now about 50 tents.
• Essentially completely undisturbed by city officials.

Guest -  Mark Mishler, attorney and National Lawyers Guild member.
————–

Occupy Los Angeles Legal Action

Occupy Los Angeles and Occupy Philadelphia were among the encampments forcibly removed last week. Occupy LA demonstrators had expected to be evicted after the mayor announced that the park would be closed at 12:01 a.m. on Monday last week. Late the following night, police in riot gear stormed the encampment and dozens were arrested as protesters chanted and stood defiant through the raid. The more than 500 tents have been taken down. The encampment at Philadelphia’s Occupy Wall Street movement was also raided after demonstrators marched to protest their eviction. Up to 40 protesters were arrested.

Hours after the Occupy Los Angeles eviction deadline protesters filed for a federal injunction that would prevent the police from dismantling the occupation in Oakland Park. The city, mayor and chief of police are named in the lawsuit as defendants. The complaint also says the city engaged in “arbitrary and capricious action in violation of the 1st and 14 Amendments by first approving the Occupy presence for 56 days before suddenly revoking permission through the unilateral action of defendants.

Attorney Carol Sobel:

• We filed papers, we argued that the mayor’s actions were unlawful because the City Council of Los Angeles passed a resolution saying that they could stay there.
• The Council, only the Council has the authority to do that.
• Once that Council acts, he could veto it, he chose not to at the time, back in October, or he could get it rescinded. He chose not to.
• Our position is, the Mayor can’t make up the rules as he goes along.
• This is a public forum, we’ve had anti-war marches here, marches to protest the Pope when he came.
• The mayor used to be friend. The Mayor went to the same Guild law school that I did.
• I think that the Mayor is bought and paid for by the developers in Los Angeles. Somebody said to me last night, he’s lost his soul.
• He’s not progressive by any definition of that term. He is the head of the US Conference of Mayors.
• It looks bad for him I guess to have the largest Occupy in the country, in his city, at his doorstep.
• They (LAPD) have agreed that they will not come out with a show of force, unless and until it’s needed.
• If you can’t close the park after the fact, then these arrests were all unlawful.

Guest – Civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, a legal advisor for Occupy protests across the country. Carol Sobel is listed as the attorney on the new complaint.

—

Collusion in the Defense of the 1% is No Vice

As mayors of cities across the country colluded to crackdown on the OWS encampments, an international non-governmental organization had coordinated with police chiefs and mayors behind the scenes. The group is called the Police Executive Research Forum, it is an influential private membership based organization that is marketed to heads of major metropolitan areas as specialists with mass demonstrations.  The group has ties to the US Department of Homeland Security and their general membership in the group is exclusive to former executives leading a state or county funded agency that provided police services.

Geov Parrish:

• The Occupy Seattle movement is community college property.
• The community college let them stay there but at first it was a public square and it was a cat and mouse game with the police.
• From November 4-10, there were conference calls. Much of the local media coverage was very coordinated.
• This smacks of the operations of some of the high ranking people the PERF has been associated with.
• The PERF actually does research on less then lethal weaponry, such as the pepper spray that has been used in lots of different cities.
• Charles Ramsey, Philadelphia Police Commissioner and the chair of PERF’s board of directors is also on the Homeland Security Advisory Council as are a couple of other board members from PERF.
• There’s an entire industry that has sprung up around the militarization of the police forces. The routine use of SWAT teams now for even non threatening situations.

Guest -  Geov Parrish, a Seattle-based columnist and reporter. He writes the Straight Shot column for WorkingForChange.  Parrish also wrote the article Collusion in the Defense of the 1% is No Vice.

——————————————

• b/w_occupyLAphoto-bymikeywally
• occupyAlbanyphoto – byDylanBoyce

 Law and Disorder November 21, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• What Does OWS Mean? – Michael Steven Smith
• Liberty Square Symbolic, At The Foot Of Capitalism
• Redistribution of Money and Power
• Nationally Coordinated Bust: Oakland Mayor Says She Was On Conference Call With 18 Mayors
• Michael Smith’s Story Of Liberty Square Police Raid
• NYTimes Candid With Spoils Of Libya Invasion
• Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder

—

Legal Fallout From OWS Raid In New York City

Very early last Tuesday morning, teams of New York City Police in full riot gear descended upon the 2 acre park known by protesters as Liberty Square, home of Occupy Wall Street.  Hundreds were arrested as police and bulldozers dismantled and tore down tents, confiscated gear, computers and clothes.  Plain clothes construction workers assisted in filling large dump trucks with personal belongings and equipment from the encampment.  The massive eviction is one of many reported across the country in past weeks.

Attorney Danny Alterman:

• There’s been a core group of 20 or 30 people working on issues that effect the occupiers down on Wall Street.
• We talked strategy, we created a document that would decide and get us into court in the morning.
• We are arranged to meet Judge Billings at 6AM
• We wanted to judge to issue a temporary restraining order which means that the police could not continue to evict people and order them back into the park with their belongings.
• We got a signed order from the judge to let our clients back in.
• We served Brookfield Properties which is the owner of the park, the city of New York through the corporation council, and the police department by fax with a copy of the order.
• What this reminded me of is was what had happened precisely in 1971 when the Attica Massacre happened. When we got a court order to go in because people were dying and getting shot, inside and the prison authorities refused to open up for medics and lawyers, causing the death of other people.
• Finally I said to one guy who was getting on me and getting on another lawyer that was there. I said listen, this reminds me of Attica, he said I’ve never been to Attica, I said we can make those arrangements.
• I said, you realize you’re violating a court order, and in contempt of court.
• Mayor Bloomberg in the course of us getting an order and finding out about it, had decided to close the park, which was the complete opposite of what the court said which was to re-open the park.
• Homeland Security was definitely there, you can tell by the crew cuts and the shoes.
• There was a temporary restraining order issued at 6:30 AM. We didn’t think Judge Billings would stay on the case. She didn’t. We went back at 11:30AM, and once a judge was assigned had about a 2 hour argument.
• We received papers as we walked into court from the city which contained a affidavit which is a legal document swearing to issues of public safety, health issues, other kinds of issues, that was clearly prepared before they evicted the protesters 10 hours before.
• What this means is that the city knew in preparing these papers that there was going to be a legal challenge.
• Brookfield Properties a descendant from US Steel. This is direct descendant from US Steel.
• We may be looking at 21st century speech assembling petitioning.
• Its a privilege and an honor to represent these people and I think the people have the pulse of the country and its happening.

Guest – Civil rights attorney Danny Alterman, Danny is part of the  Liberty Park Legal Working Group.

———–

Global Capitalist Crisis and Long Term US Unemployment

Thousands around the country continue to stand in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. The movement claims to defend the 99 percent of Americans against the wealthiest 1 percent who control 50 percent of the wealth in the United States.  Meanwhile, long term US unemployment is taking a heavy toll socially. The social costs are high, the stress, tension and anxiety within families, the costs of counseling, and much more. We discuss these topics with returning guest, economics professor Rick Wolff  who says, enormous wealth could be produced right now with the unused tools and raw materials put together with the nation’s unemployed people, we could rebuild our cities and infrastructure.

Professor Rick Wolff:

• Debt is always a sign of something else. You go into debt because you see a need or opportunity for which you don’t have the money and so you either forego the need or opportunity or borrow.
• If you see off the chart increases of debt like you do in the case of individuals in the last 30 years, or corporations and in the case of governments at a slow rate over the last 30 years, then you have to ask the question why?
• The 1970s come along and that period of 150 years of rising wages is over. It’s over because the computer replaces large numbers of people they don’t need to be hired. Production is moving out of the United States.
• Immigrants are flowing into the United States because the uneven development of the world economy, makes them poorer and the United States look more attractive.
• Suddenly employers have the greatest of all possibilities, they don’t have to raise wages anymore.
• Employers: If you’re not happy here, there’s a lot of other people that will be.
• Meanwhile you’re drumming into the American people, you should live better, everybody should have more. . .
• You put the American people into an impossible situation.  You might have been able to handle it by having a real political leadership in America. We didn’t have that conversation, no politician wanted to be the bearer of that bad news.
• What can the American people do?  They did more work. You borrow money. Whenever there’s a debt, there’s a lender and a borrower. This is a strange game to blame the borrower.
• Greece, now you have a situation that invites all kinds of corporations to make a decision.
• When the Greek Drachma, their old currency disappears to be replaced by the Euro, all kinds of business decisions became different.
• There was no border, you couldn’t have a tariff as you could before. Once you have a uniform currency you can’t do that. It’s like Tennessee erecting a tariff against products from Kentucky.
• Who lent to the Greek government? Above all, the French and German banks.
• It’s the banks that are making money because of the concentration of production in their country, with which they came to the poor countries and said hey, we got a lot of money you got a lot of need.
• A lot of money has been made off of Greek debt. It’s not some gift to the folks in Greece.
• As usual its a partnership and deciding that its all the fault of the Greeks as if the French and German banks didn’t make a fortune off of this.
• Italy is now where Greece was approximately six to eight months ago.
• The debt of Italy is four to five times the debt of Greece. Italy is the eight largest economy on this planet. They have over 2 trillion dollars of debt outstanding.  We sell a very important part of our output to the Europeans.
• I would demand now, an immediate government employment program. A commitment by the United States government.

Guest -  Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
————————

 Law and Disorder October 24, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Al-Awlaki’s Family members also killed and US Citizens.
• Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder
• New York Times: A Right To Sleep In Tents – Michael Ratner

—-

Occupy Wall St. – Think Tanks and Organizing

Like many protesters down at Liberty Plaza, Tim Weldon has been under employed for years. He’s got a Masters Degree, one in economic development and 10 years experience in international business.  He’s now part of Occupy Wall St working with the think tank group.  The first step is taking all the ideas and solutions generated from the movement and collating them into a more accessible format.

Tim Weldon:

• The food is hit or miss, you cycle through, get in line, whatever is there at the time, that’s what you get.
• There’s sanitation, first aid, media press, PR. The group that I’m specifically on is the think tank.
• Similar to a lot of people, said, how do I fit in and what exactly is going on? Like most people I got down there and thought how do I fit in to where I most belong?  So, I walked around for most of the day, I got to the stage to where I thought, what I would be good at and what could fit in here.
• Then I found some very like minded people who were thinking the same thing, to sort of create an opportunity for all of the ideas to be collected, organized and collated together. The think tank, we’re going to have four different receptacles for information.
• One will be from the park where we’ll have discussion groups on topics. We’re trying to develop a web platform within the NYCGA.net .
• We’re getting all walks of life, one of the best participants was a disabled man.
• The discussions have been so positive and energetic and we’re saying how can we take both of these ideas and forget about the established dichotomies and all this dogma that people are working with.
• Let’s go straight to us right here, let’s create a productive use of this information where everybody is happy.
• I found that everybody I’m working with open and wants to listen, wants to learn, the way most of the groups work is there’s no leaders. I like to draw differentiation between leaders and leadership.
• People are coming here after they’ve been setup and more streamline or coming here to get things more streamline. Take a step back, try to envision something different.
• Everybody seemed united around, well, they want it clean, lets get things clean.
• People were doing what had to be done and getting things done, but there was a subtle apprehension there, what’s going to happen tomorrow? How serious is it going to be? How much are we going to have to fight, not in a physical sense but in all sort of senses for this space?
• Most of the country can get behind the fact, whether your left or right, whatever it is, you’ve got some apprehension about what’s going on in the country right now and that’s what we’re trying to voice.
• Holding that space is really important to the movement.
• Maintaining that park is very important because it is the symbol.  You control us in every other aspect of our lives perhaps, but you don’t control us here.
• I left my job last week, this to me is the movement of our generation.

Guest – Tim Weldon is from upstate New York. He quit his job to dedicate his time to help the Occupy Wall Street movement. Specifically, Tim is working with the think tank group, pulling together ideas and solutions pouring in from around the country and making them more accessible to media and others. Tim has a Master’s Degrees in economic development. He also has 10 years experience in international business.

—

Occupy Wall Street: Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunstler Part 2

We continue the “know your rights”  discussion on the Occupy Wall St protests, encampments and demonstrations. Last week we talked about how the NYPD collected intelligence data from protesters.  When more than 800 people on the Brooklyn Bridge were arrested a few weeks ago,  that event was more about getting protester names and pedigree information into databases says attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunstler with the National Lawyers Guild.  Meanwhile students from 90 colleges and universities are protesting the price of education, being saddled with student loan debt and more. There are many aspects to knowing your rights as a demonstrator and we’ll discuss more details today with returning guest attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler.

Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunslter:

• You can be anywhere to express your first amendment rights. I think occupation is a new first amendment right.
• The occupation movement is relatively new and we haven’t really tested it in the federal courts or state courts and I think we have a good opportunity to do that.  They haven’t got people out of the park because when they threatened to do so, the number of people swelled from about 1000 to 6000.
• I think it was a question of mass support for the demonstration that prevented the police from clearing the park.
• Seattle was a successful protest (1999) it interfered with delegates going to the convention center and it was a very embarrassing thing for the police because it was an international conference.
• Kettling is those big iron fences, they put people in these fenced areas to keep them separated so they can be crowd control.
• By the time Michael and I finished this book, we were saying, oh, they’re never going to be able to demonstrate again. But lo and behold, a new form of demonstrations is upon us, and its just thrilling.
• The police officer who pepper sprayed the young woman, lost ten vacation days.
• That was the immediate result after Seattle, there were fusion centers. Those are centers where the FBI and local police get together and collect information.
• Every time they hear of a demonstration, they try to prevent it, they have many ways to dissuade people from coming to demonstrations.
• Militarization of the police: It was no longer a family occupation to protest against the war, it was a dangerous thing to do. You got stuck in a pen and you couldn’t get out.

Guest – Magaret Ratner-Kunstler, an attorney in private practice. As education director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, she originated the Movement Support Network and authored “If an Agent Knocks.” Margaret is the President of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, a foundation established in 1995 in the memory of her late husband to combat racism in the criminal justice system.

——————————-

 Law and Disorder October 17, 2011: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Jose Couso Murdered By US Military In Iraq:
• Sami al-Hajj – Former Guantanamo Prisoner, Now Al-Jazeera Correspondent
• 44th Anniversary of Che Guevara’s Murder
• Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder
• Groups Follow Former U.S. President George W. Bush’s Path to Canada
• UK Protects Israeli War Criminal
• Anwar al-Awlaki’s Extrajudicial Murder – Michael Ratner
• Richard Falk – Afghanistan War

—-

Occupy Wall Street: Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunstler

There is a North America-wide strategy to take away the right to mass protest. We’ve talked about the book Hell No: Your Right To Dissent in 21 Century America, but today we have both authors of this book in the studio, attorney Magaret Ratner Kunstler and our own co-host Michael Ratner.

In Hell No, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the country’s leading public interest law organization, offers a timely report on government attacks on dissent and protest in the United States, along with a readable and essential guide for activists, teachers, grandmothers, and anyone else who wants to oppose government policies and actions. Hell No explores the current situation of attacks upon and criminalization of dissent and protest, from the surveillance of activists to the disruption of demonstrations, from the labeling of protestors as “terrorists,” to the jailing of those the government claims are giving “material support” to its perceived enemies. Offering detailed, hands-on advice on everything from “Sneak and Peak” searches to “Can the Government Monitor My Text Messages?” and what to do “If an Agent Knocks,” Hell No lays out several key responses that every person should know in order to protect themselves from government surveillance and interference with their rights.
Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunslter:

• This is a time that we don’t know the return dates are because they weren’t put throught the system, they were given desk appearance tickets or summons, people arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge and elsewhere.
• Politically what do you make of the fact that they let these people stay in the park? Perhaps Michael they had an opportunity to do something about it if they did something quickly.
• In Boston, they closed it down much more quickly. Each Lawyers Guild office has a hotline.
• They (the NYPD) actually led people down to the bridge walkway. There’s a law in New York that says you can’t block roadways, but you can march on sidewalks.
• They led people down to the roadway, then announced with a bull horn that not everybody could hear of the more than 800 people on the bridge – - you’re now doing something illegally and we’re going to disperse immediately or we’re going to arrest you. Most people were chanting, nobody could hear that announcement.
• Why do this? There was no place to put these 800 people. To get their names, to get their pedigree information, to do intelligence work.
• Early on with the RNC arrests, they had a sheet of paper asking what political affiliations they had. We stopped that quickly. The police department in New York City has a tremendous intelligence division.
• Some people we have no idea why they were arrested.
• Yesterday morning a young woman was chalking on the sidewalk, “good morning NYPD.” Not only was she arrested, but the people photographing her arrest, were arrested.
• Much of the planning on how to stop demonstrators, happened after Seattle 1999. At that point there was this training program that began with all of these local police forces across the country and the FBI.  It wasn’t til 9/11 that they were fully funded.
• When Michael Ratner and I wrote this, we were totally depressed because we thought that demonstrations were over. There were so many ways of preventing demonstrations and people were penned.
• You can film the police in NYC. The law may be on your side, but the police don’t follow the law.
• If you’re recording audio, and only one party knows you’re recording, that’s ok in New York.
• The cop doesn’t have to give you his name, or badge number. If you ask a cop his badge number, he’ll give you the wrong number.
• I’d like to last through winter, I’m worried about these children.  The demand for justice and equality is the demand basically all over the world.
• How can we say this is too abstract for us, isn’t this what we all want?

Guest – Magaret Ratner-Kunstler, an attorney in private practice. As education director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, she originated the Movement Support Network and authored “If an Agent Knocks.” Margaret is the President of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, a foundation established in 1995 in the memory of her late husband to combat racism in the criminal justice system.

———