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Archive for the 'Prison Industry' Category


Law and Disorder August 25, 2008


 
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Arbitrary Justice: Trials of Bagram and Guantanamo in Afghanistan

Human Rights First and Sahr MuhammedAlly have come out with a powerful report detailing the transfer of Guantanamo and Bagram prisoners to be prosecuted at the Afghan National Detention Facility in Kabul known as Block D. The report is titled Arbitrary Justice: Trials of Bagram and Guantanamo in Afghanistan. Among the details, the report describes that more than 250 former Guantánamo and Bagram detainees have been transferred to Block D, a facility built by the US government to hold and prosecute former Guantanamo and Bagram prisoners.

More than 160 have been referred for prosecution. The detainees are being charged under Afghan law for crimes ranging from treason and destruction of government property to threatening the security of Afghanistan. Defendants have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from 3 to 20 years, their trials last from 30 minutes to an hour.

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Guest - Sahr MuhammedAlly, senior associate in Human Rights First’s Law & Security Program. Through research and advocacy Sahr works on U.S. counterterrorism and national security policies to ensure respect for human rights. Sahr has conducted human rights fact-finding research in Afghanistan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan.

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Teenage Detainees: Mohammed Jawad

We want to bring listeners up to date with the case of Mohammed Jawad. He was captured by Afghan police on December 17, 2002, and handed over to US forces the same day. According to his military defense lawyer, Jawad was briefly held at Bagram Air Base and transported to Guantanamo in January 2003. The same time period as portrayed in Taxi To The Dark Side.

Emi MacLean Interview Notes:

  • Mohammed Jawad is facing trial by military commissions, created by executive order.
  • Military commissions by executive order: illegal by the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v Rumsfeld.
  • In response to Hamdan v Rumsfeld, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in 2006
  • MCA 2006: Allows for secret trials / secret parts of trials /denying the accused the right to be tried by an impartial court /allows coerced testimony to be used; usually information gathered from being tortured.

Emi Maclean - “If you think the system is deeply, deeply flawed, look again, when the Dept of Defense couldn’t get what they wanted, they fired a judge. In the case of Omar Katr, the judge had ordered the government to produce information about the conditions of his detention and the conditions of which Omar’s statements were made. Even in a situation where the system is in favor of the government, the judge was replaced when that judge ruled against the government.”

Michael Ratner - “Even if Jawad is acquitted by this show trial, the (Bush) administration still says they can hold people indefinitely.”

Guest - Emi MacLean, staff attorney at the Center For Constitutional Rights and with the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative (GGJI) since June 2006. She works on issues related to Guantánamo and other forms of executive detention, including secret prisons and transfers-to-torture. She helps coordinate the pro bono attorneys representing the hundreds of men still detained at Guantánamo and supports CCR’s direct representation of a number of current detainees.

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Law and Disorder June 30, 2008


 
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The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal by J.Patrick O’Connor

J.Patrick O’Connor delivers a powerful interview for the full program. O’Connor lays out the case based on his in-depth research that Mumia Abu Jamal was framed. O’Connor argues that the former black panther journalist did not shoot Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. The real shooter says O’Connor, was Kenneth Freeman a business partner of Mumia’s brother. Freeman, was found dead in 1985, bound and cuffed in a Philadelphia parking lot after a massive police raid on the counter-culture group MOVE.

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One review writes: “In this account of the trial of controversial death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, O’Connor, editor and publisher of crimemagazine.com, clearly lays out his case that Abu-Jamal should receive at least a new trial, if not complete exoneration. O’Connor asserts that Abu-Jamal was framed for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner because of a vendetta by Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo and the police due to Abu-Jamal’s defense, as a journalist, of the group MOVE.

Review excerpt by Linn Washington Jr : Carefully citing trial proceedings, O’Connor book lists odious instances of wrongdoing by police prosecutors - accomplished with judicial complicity.

“From the beginning of this case, it was corrupt. It was a railroad job,” O’Connor said recently during a reading/book signing at a small venue on Baltimore Ave in West Philadelphia sponsored by the organization, Journalists for Abu-Jamal. “I wrote the book to show not only that Mumia did not kill Officer Faulkner but to show how and why they framed Mumia,” said O’Connor who lived in the Philadelphia area at the time of the brutal December 1981 crime at the heart of this controversial case.

Guest - J. Patrick O’Connor, editor and publisher of Crime Magazine. He has worked as a reporter for UPI, editor of Cincinnati Magazine, associate editor of TV Guide, and editor and publisher of the Kansas City New Times.

Can the Media Continue to Ignore “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal”?

Law and Disorder May 12, 2008


 
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Taking Back The Right To Dissent: The Case of the Bangor Six

Recently, jurors in the Case of the ‘Bangor Six’ brought back a decisive verdict of ‘not guilty.’ The six veterans for peace, anti war protesters were arrested in March of last year after refusing to leave the federal building where their senator, Republican Susan Collins has her office. The six activists were among 12 that say they were protesting Bush’s proposal to increase troops in Iraq to support a military strategy known s the surge and also urged Collins to vote against continued funding for the war. Collins did not vote against funding for the war and did not meet with activists. Six of the activists were later arrested. (Collins Watch)

Now, during this trial, the jury was allowed by the judge to decide whether the defendants believed that they were not guilty in making a conscious choice to break Maine law because they thought international law was being violated. The jurors decided unanimously that the protesters did believe they had the ‘license and privilege’ to act as they did, in rendering the ‘not guilty’ verdict.

Guest - Bar Harbor attorney Lynne Williams, also with Maine Lawyers for Democracy a group of 65 Maine lawyers, calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

List of Bangor Six - Jonathan Kreps, 57, of Appleton, Henry Braun, 77, of Wells, James Freeman, 59, of Verona, Dudley F. Hendrick, 66, of Deer Isle, Douglas Rawlings, 61, of Chesterville, and Robert Shetterly, 61, of Brooksville,
chose to go to trial. The other six pleaded guilty and paid fines.

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2008 Left Forum Opening Plenary: Adam Hochschild and Naomi Klein

We go now to hear two speeches from this year’s Left Forum Opening Plenary from author/ professor Adam Hochschild and writer/ filmmaker Naomi Klein author of The Shock Doctrine. The Left Forum was titled Cracks In The Edifice. The many panels at the 2008 Left Forum addressed and challenged the current economic and political catastrophes in the United States and discussed possibilities for social movements to build better world in its place.

We’ve interviewed Adam previously on Law and Disorder about his books, King Leopold’s Ghost and Bury The Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves. He’s the co-founder of Mother Jones magazine and teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California Berkeley. In his speech Hochschild uses the ideas of early activism to abolish slavery as models for the current civil rights movement.

In her speech, Naomi Klein discusses how the lack of response in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are intentional strategies she calls “disaster capitalism.” At the 2008 Left Forum Naomi suggests that many in the United States have woken up to roughshod profiteering of disaster capitalism.

A special thank you to Lisa Rudman with Making Contact for recording the Left Forum Opening Plenary

Law and Disorder March 3, 2008


 
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Civil Rights Attorney Lynne Stewart Describes Larry Davis Case

Today we welcome back civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart to discuss the recent stabbing death of Larry Davis in an upstate New York prison. Davis became known in the 80s when he was suspected of murdering drug dealers in the city. When police raided his apartment, Davis fired a pistol and shotgun from a darkened room and fled.

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After more than a two week NYPD manhunt, Davis was captured. Davis’ legal defense included Lynne Stewart and prominent civil rights attorney Bill Kunstler who provided evidence of a frame up. In a recent New York Times article chronicling Davis’ story, it was written that Davis’ defense was quote made up of assertions without evidence.

Guest - Lynne Stewart

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Film Documentary: Taxi To The Dark Side

Alex Gibney’s Taxi To The Dark Side examines the use of torture by the United States. The horrors of Abu Ghraib , Guantanamo and Bagram prisons are revealed in this movie with disturbing and ugly clarity. Law and Disorder hosts talk about the film with Al McCoy, author of A Question of Torture “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror” Professor McCoy tells listeners about how medieval water torture exploits the Mammalian diving reflex a “death” experience hard wired into human biology. U.S. Army and CIA interrogation manuals

Guest - Al McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Author of “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror” and also “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.”

Law and Disorder December 31, 2007


 
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On this last day of 2007, Law and Disorder will look at the stories that have taken civil liberties in this country many steps in the wrong direction. We start with the question of impeachment, what happened, why it stalled, we’ll look at damaging supreme court decisions and draconian legislation that took large bite out of the right to free speech and dissent in this country.

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We begin by checking in with John Nirenberg, he’s marching from Boston to Washington DC. His goal, to walk 485 miles to deliver his message of impeachment to Nancy Pelosi. Nirenberg explains to hosts how after reading The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. One slogan from www.marchinmyname.org reads. . . “when voting isn’t enough, when letter writing isn’t enough, when signing petitions isn’t enough, when outrage isn’t enough.”

Guest - John Nirenberg former Professor of Organizational Behavior. He started his career as a Social Studies and American History teacher.

Impeachment?

Hosts discuss the “magnificent failure on impeachment followed by the continued approval for war funding in Iraq and Afghanistan and connect it with the Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq.

Co-host Michael Ratner enumerates several key stories of torture in 2007, including the destruction of the CIA videotapes, the Mahar Arar case, and the confirmation of Attorney General Michael Mukasey who says he’s not certain if water-boarding is torture.

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Law and Disorder hosts then talk about the recent Supreme Court arguments regarding the remaining Guantanamo Bay Cuba detainees and the horrible failure to restore habeas corpus. This case may determine once and for all whether there is a constitutional right to habeas corpus - that is, a fair hearing before a real court - for everyone detained by the U.S. government at Guantánamo.

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Increases in surveillance powers were also on the list of wrong-turn stories this year, co-host Heidi Boghosian points out the legislation that extends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In the wake of Congress approving a dramatic expansion of U.S. warrant-less wiretapping powers, the Center for Constitutional Rights has argued that the NSA’s program is unconstitutional and should be struck down. The argument in CCR v. Bush comes after Congress and the Bush administration passed the Protect America Act of 2007 which broadly expands the government’s power to spy on Americans without getting court approval.

Hosts also examine the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. Legislation that appears an effort to re-create the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was a standing commission in the fifties and sixties to root out “un-American” ideas among political activists. This, with the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2007 is key to installing the police state apparatus and declaring martial law.

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The New Supreme Court: The Trifecta 2007

  • The 5-4 ruling that race cannot be a factor in the assignment of children to public schools. Free speech not an option for students regarding (Bong Hits For Jesus).
  • Campaign Finance Reform - The Supreme Court has thrown out part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that placed restrictions on corporations and unions from buying television ads close to elections
  • The citizens’ ability to challenge government violations of the separation of church and state, Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation 5-4, the Justices ruled that taxpayers do not have standing to challenge the White House program on federal aid to faith-based organizations.
  • On a lighter note, Supreme Court justices overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that judges cannot hand down a lighter punishment because they disagree with wide disparities for crack and powder cocaine sentences. Blacks account for about 80 percent of the federal crack cocaine convictions.

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Michael Ratner’s Acceptance Speech

We end this year-end program with an acceptance speech delivered by co-host, attorney, author and Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner. Michael received the 2007 Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.

“One of the country’s foremost defenders of human rights and civil liberties, Michael Ratner has led the fight to demand due process for Guantánamo detainees, adequate safeguards against intrusive government surveillance, and an end to torture and extraordinary rendition.”

Law and Disorder August 20, 2007


 
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Prison Legal News Settlement

When we think of doctor closing a wound many things come to mind - sutures, staples, band aids or the like. It might astound many to learn that some doctors use Krazy glue on inmate patients. During a time when government transparency is nearly obsolete, we find the few that act as beacons of hope. When he first requested the records for medical malpractice cases involving inmates in 2000, Paul Wright never imagined how much trouble it would be.

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After six years of legal battles over alterations to original documents and failure to produce crucial records in a timely fashion, Mr. Wright finally has his records, a story and the biggest public records related settlement in Washington state history of $541,000.

Guest - Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, a publication that looks into our correctional facilities and reports on prisoner’s rights. Paul is also on the board of the National Lawyers Guild.


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Police Brutality - Dr. Catherine Wilkerson Case

Police used excessive force when they attacked peaceful protestors who rallied at a University of Michigan event sponsored by the American Movement for Israel. As the senior medical professional on scene, Dr. Catherine Wilkerson took responsibility for the well-being of a middle-aged man who claimed he couldn’t breath and lost consciousness. She exhorted the police to get off of him, and was allowed to check his pulse and breathing.

Wilkerson later protested when Emergency Medical Service (EMS) personnel breached ethical medical practices by forcing ammonia into the man’s nostrils and face. It was at this time that she was physically assaulted and detained by Ann Arbor police.

No charges were filed until after Dr. Wilkerson wrote a complaint to authorities about the actions of the police officers. A week since writing the letter, Dr. Wilkerson was charged by the Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brian Mackie’s office, at the request of the UM police, with two attempted felonies—one against Officer Warner and one against the EMS personnel.

DEFEND CATHERINE WILKERSON


Guest - Buck Davis, he’s a National Lawyer’s Guild attorney with the Police Accountability Project working on this case.

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Hear and watch video of incident

Law and Disorder - August 13, 2007


 
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Children In Conflict With The Law: The U.S. Leads The World In Sentencing Children To Life Without Parole.

There are more than 2000 child offenders serving life without parole sentences in U.S. prisons for crimes committed before they reached the age of 18. The United States is one of few countries in the world that permit children to serve a life sentence without parole. Forty-two states currently have laws allowing children to receive life without parole sentences. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every country in the world except the United States and Somalia, forbids this practice, and at least 132 countries have rejected the sentence altogether.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have published a 130 page report on this topic called The Rest of Their Lives (PDF). The statistics are staggering and includes four juvenile offenders in South Africa, one in Tanzania and five in Israel. It is based on self-reported cases found in these countries’ reports to the U.N. International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). While many of the child offenders are now adults, 16 percent were between 13 and 15 years old at the time they committed their crimes. An estimated 59 percent were sentenced to life without parole for their first-ever criminal conviction.

Alison Parker historically references where these laws came from. In the United Kingdom the sentence was known as “Detention During Her Majesty’s Pleasure”, the only sentence available to the courts for a person convicted of murder who was aged over 10 but under 18 at the time of the offence.

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Guest - Alison Parker, Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch. Alison says she is among many helping to change the legislation that incarcerate children permanently without rehabilitative options.


Guest - David Berger, attorney with O’Melveny & Myers. David is a former researcher for the Amnesty International report.

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Bernadine Dohrn

Bernadine Dohrn joins Law and Disorder to discuss juvenile justice and the development of Draconian laws for children in conflict with the law. Bernadine is a clinical professor at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University in Chicago. Bernadine is also the former leader of the Weathermen. She now serves on the board of numerous human rights committees and teaches comparative law. Since 2002, she has served as a Visiting Law Faculty at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

Law and Disorder July 2, 2007


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Help Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

Troy Davis was sentenced to death in Georgia, for the murder of a police officer. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimonies that were full of inconsistencies, even at the time of trial. Since then, all but two of the states’ nine non-police witnesses from the trial have recanted their testimony. Many state in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against Troy Davis. There is no physical evidence linking Troy Davis to the crime and no murder weapon has ever been found. With his appeals exhausted and courts refusing to consider the recanted testimony, Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed later this month. The only thing that stands between him and execution is the Georgia Parole Board.

UPDATE: The Georgia Parole Board has scheduled Troy Davis to be executed on July 17th at 7pm. The first available day of a schedule window set from July 17-24.

Take Action Through Amnesty International


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Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International said “The Supreme Court decision is proof-positive that justice truly is blind — blind to coerced and recanted testimony, blind to the lack of a murder weapon or physical evidence and blind to the extremely dubious circumstances that led to this man’s conviction. At times there are cases that are emblematic of the dysfunctional application of justice in this country. By refusing to review serious claims of innocence, the Supreme Court has revealed catastrophic flaws in the U.S. death penalty machine.”

Where is the justice for me? The case of Troy Davis facing execution in Georgia

Guest - Martina Correia, activist and sister of Troy Anthony Davis.

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Drug Policy Reform

Nearly 2.1 million Americans are currently serving time in prison. One out of every six of these inmates is in federal prison on marijuana.-related charges. Astonishingly, according to the laws in 15 U.S. states, one can receive a life sentence for non-violent marijuana infractions.

Compare that to the national average sentence of 6 years for homicide. One out of every six of these inmates is in federal prison on marijuana-related charges.In large cities such as New York law enforcement officers have markedly stepped up their efforts to target low-level drug offenders, mostly for marijuana. Watch dog organizations claim that this is also a means to build a database on inner city youth, data shared and networked globally by several multi-national security agencies. In response to these sentencing disparities and the growing prison population, a drug policy reform movement is gaining momentum says Ethan Nadelman.

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Guest - Ethan Nadelman, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance
 
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Law and Disorder June 4, 2007


 
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Guantanamo Bay Detainee Dies : Alleged Suicide

Law and Disorder hosts Dalia Hashad, Michael Ratner and Michael Smith discuss the recent alleged suicide at Guantanamo Bay Prison in Cuba. The Saudi Arabian detainee died last Wednesday at Guantanamo Bay prison. The U.S. military says he apparently committed suicide.

“It’s conceivable he (the detainee) was murdered.” - - Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“This death demonstrates the urgent need to close Guantanamo Bay Prison.” - - Dalia Hashad, Amnesty International USA Program Director .

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Listen to the Pacifica National Special - The War on Immigrants - Co-hosted by our own Dalia Hashad.

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“War on Terror” Prisoners and Secret Detentions Update

Michael Ratner describes how the Bush Administration has been pushing coercive interrogations with limited resistance in Congress. He also points out the new laws that apply to prisoners in US military custody. Ratner says they are now required to obey the Army Field Manual on detainee treatment FM 34-52 that include almost 20 interrogation techniques that do not constitute torture. Those prisoners, alleged enemy combatants citizen or non-citizen in the custody of the CIA (secret prisons) are not subject to the Army Field Manual.

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Anti-Torture Movement in Chicago Police Torture Case Gains Traction

The City Council will hold hearings on a special prosecutor’s “whitewash” report into police torture by former Chicago Police Lt. Jon Burge, thanks to a resolution co-signed today by 26 aldermen

The case includes a four-year investigation focused on allegations that 148 black men were tortured in Chicago police interrogation rooms in the 1970s and ’80s. The men say detectives under the command of Lt. Jon Burge beat them, used electric shocks, played mock Russian roulette and started to smother at least one to force confessions. Prosecutors described this type of criminal justice system where top officials in a position to put a stop to police torture appeared blind to the abuse. Among them, Mayor Richard Daley, when he served as Cook County state’s attorney.

Guest - Flint Taylor - Attorney with the People’s Law Office, leading the fight against covering up torture by the Chicago Police Department.

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Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine

Last month we heard author Joel Kovel discuss his book at the Brecht Forum. He recently joined Law and Disorder in the studio for a riveting interview that also looked into Kovel’s personal changes that led him to write Overcoming Zionism. Toward the end of the interview, co-host Dalia Hashad asks why Joel Kovel chose the word “overcoming” in his title.

“This book is absolutely fundamental for those who reject the unfortunate confusion between Jews, Judaism, Zionism and the State of Israel — a confusion which is the basis for systematic manipulation by the imperialist power system. It convincingly argues in favour of a single secular state for Israelis and Palestinians as the only democratic solution for the region.” Samir Amin, Director of the Third World Forum.

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Guest - Joel Kovel author of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, has been engaged in struggles for peace and justice since the Vietnam War era. He has worked within the antiwar and antinuclear movements, the solidarity movements in Central America and the Caribbean, the movements for democratic media, and, increasingly, for ecological transformation. He lived in Nicaragua for a period in 1986, and accompanied Pastors for Peace as they broke the US blockade on Cuba in their 1994 Friendshipment. He has acted in films, worked frequently with the Bread and Puppet theatre, and lectured on four continents. Kovel joined the Green Party since 1990. In 1998, he was the Green Party candidate for US Senator from New York, and in 2000 sought their Presidential nomination.

Law and Disorder May 7, 2007


 
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The Shaquanda Cotton Story

Last year in Paris, Texas a 14-year-old black freshman shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun. Shaquanda Cotton was sentenced to 7 years in prison. She had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor was not seriously injured. Just three months earlier, another Texas teenager of the same age was sentenced to probation for burning down her family’s house. She was white.

Joining us on Law and Disorder to discuss this case and the issue of juvenile justice in Texas on Law and Disorder is Will Harrell. Will is a former NVP and Director of the National Police Accountability Project of the National Lawyers Guild. He’s currently the Executive Director of the Texas ACLU and co-chair of the Texas Coalition Advocating Justice for Juveniles. He’s a primary advocate advancing an omnibus bill in the Texas legislature to reform the Texas Youth Commission. He was also appointed to a panel which is currently reviewing cases where a kid’s length of stay was extended in TYC and making recommendations regarding release. He successfully advocated for Shaquanda Cotton’s release.

Guest - Will Harrell, Executive Director of the Texas ACLUUpdate :  Will Harrell was recently named Ombudsman for the Texas Youth Commission.

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Left Forum 2007: Deborah Small

The panel is titled, Prisons, Prisoners and Political Prisoners and chaired by our own Michael Smith. Deborah Small is the founder of Break the Chains. An organization that seeks to build a national movement within communities of color against punitive drug policies.

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Brecht Forum: Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism

We go now to hear an excerpt from a speech given by author Joel Kovel. He spoke at the Brecht Forum recently about the release of his new book Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, published by Pluto Press.

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