Law and Disorder March 1, 2010: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Office of Professional Responsibility Report Confirms Need For Torture Investigations
• Torture Lawyers On Trial In Spain

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People v Bush, Charlotte Dennett

Today we talk with former Vermont Attorney General Candidate Charlotte Dennett. Listeners may remember Charlotte ran for office of Attorney General on the platform that if elected she would immediately undertake the prosecution of George W. Bush for the unnecessary deaths of Vermont soldiers in Iraq. The strategy was to establish jurisdiction in the cases for Attorneys General in each state as outlined in The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, written by former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. Charlotte Dennett didn’t get the votes to become Vermont’s new attorney general.  Now, a year later Charlotte describes from an inside perspective the “accountability movement” in her new book titled The People v. Bush.  Is impeachment or prosecution still off the table?

Charlotte Dennett:

• If we don’t act on them now, then the impunity will get worse, we have to clamour for Cheney’s prosecution. We’ve got to keep the pressure on the department of justice. We know that the Spanish prosecutors have done that.
• I’ve come to realize that Obama’s mantra that we have to move forward and not look backward is really translated into: Don’t Prosecute.
• Brennan who was involved with crafting torture policy is playing a role advising Obama not to prosecute.
• It’s up to the accountability movement to step forward.  There are going to be major events on March 20th, the anniversary of the war on Iraq.
• In my book the People v. Bush, I’ve got 10 pages in the appendix of all the different resources that people can turn to, to pressure Congress, sign petitions.
• The first half of the book is about my campaign for attorney general in Vermont, where I pledged to prosecute Bush for murder.   I also lay out the evidence of how we can still do this, we can still do this by the way.
• I became hooked on accountability, this is a struggle for democracy and the soul of our nation.
• The book also looks at how the Obama Administration deals with the crimes of its predecessors.
• I have to tell you Michael Ratner, you were one of the first people to start raising the alarms (Obama Administration). My book shows the gradual shock and disillusionment of his supporters.
• People are upset that John Yoo, is doing talk shows, he showed up on John Stewart recently (OUCH)
• Regarding Sen. Leahy of Vermont: I tracked his effort to put together a truth commission and not prosecution.  There were 37 towns in Vermont, that in their town meetings, voted for impeachment.

Guest – Charlotte Dennett, is an author and attorney who resides in Cambridge Vermont. She and her husband, Gerard Colby, have lived in Vermont since 1984. Charlotte has been practicing law since 1997, representing injured Vermonters in negligence, medical malpractice and wrongful death cases, as well as civil rights litigation and family law, and has argued before the Vermont Supreme Court.

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Lawyers You’ll Like: Center For Constitutional Rights Legal Director,  Bill Quiqley

This week, CCR Legal Director Bill Quigley joined Law and Disorder hosts during a marathon 3 hour fund raiser for Pacifica’s WBAI. Bill talked about his trip to Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, his recent trip to Haiti and his death penalty work in Louisiana.

Bill Quigley:

• I went to Gaza with activist Audrey Stewart and Kathy Kelly, an International Peace Activist.
• We went over there, a year ago January, while the bombing was still going on.  We were on the Egyptian side of the border where we could see the bombing of Gaza
• There were constant drones going over head, they had aerial balloons that were doing surveillance. It was sort of like a sociopath beating a baby. There was no defense, there was no anti-aircraft, people were literally sitting ducks.
• In my life, it compared to a time when one of my clients was being executed, in death row in Louisiana.  To see the apparatus of the state, move into action, very calm, step by step.
• Then with full force and the respect of state behind it, pull on a switch and my client was no more. (at that time) It was a surprise that anyone in the U.S. would support the Palestinians.
• Death Penalty: there really is a community of deathy penalty advocates who train themselves how to communicate with juries.  It is trending in the right direction by it still continues as a terrible tool, that the state has an opportunity to use when they choose to.
• Stop and frisk case update: New York is fighting this every step of the way. The term they use to justify this is: Furtive activity
• Culture of Intimidation: If young men don’t look at them the way they want to be looked at, if people don’t recognize their presence with the kind of respect that the police department thinks that they’re entitled to by the mere fact that they’re wearing a uniform and carrying a weapon.
• It is something that clearly could stop if the message was sent from the top.
• But clearly something has a green light from the top to engage in this. Authoritarian order that inconsistent with law and order, with the constitution.
• Endemic: If you have a society that values violence, the violence we institute around the world, the way we support Israel, the way they deal with Palestine.  If we value deep racism, then what else what would we expect from a police or a military. The police and military are tools of a violent and racist regime.
• Part of our job is to re-educate police officers. We are going to be engaged in this activity over again, in every city in the country in varying degrees.  The root problem is that we have a racist and violent criminal justice system, education system, a racist and marginalizing housing system, employment system.
• Most people don’t have the educational opportunities to know what’s going on with Haiti, Gaza, Iraq and even within our own country.  Haiti: You could travel for miles and see no indication that international community even cared about what happened in Haiti.  Most people were under a sheet or a blanket, could break some of the sun.

Guest – Bill Quigley. Bill is the Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a national legal and educational organization dedicated to advancing and defending the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Bill joined CCR on sabbatical from his position as law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. He has been an active public interest lawyer since 1977.

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 Law and Disorder Jan 25, 2010 [57:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Heidi Boghosian Speaks At Emergency Rally for Mumia Abu Jamal

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The Death Penalty Loses Support of The American Law Institute

In late 2009, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual structure for the current capital justice system for nearly 50 years, essentially announced that its project has failed. The American Law Institute or A.L.I. is made up of around 4 thousand judges, lawyers and law professors, streamlines law and model codes to provide coherence in a federal legal system that is usually taking a varied approach. In a 1962 Model Code,  the best legal minds of the institute framed a way for the death penalty to be carried out fairly, it then was re-instated in 1976. Now, the same people disavow the structure saying there is no fair system of capital punishment. The New York Times, in one article wrote (quote) the institute’s move represents a tectonic shift in legal theory. The article also points out that capital punishment was plagued by problems including racial disparities.

David Seth Michaels:

• American Law Institute, the intellectual group that tries to cobble together federal law in the United States including capital punishment.  The capital punishment rules that they invented fifty years ago,  have been the groundwork on which everything has happened since.
• So, it comes as a bit of a shock that fifty years later, they say “oh, oh.” It doesn’t work. It won’t work, we can’t make it work, so we’re going to fold up our tents. We won’t have anything else to do with it.
• Unworkable elements in the system:   They’re troubled by the racial disparity on who gets executed, there’s tremendous disparity that is regional across the U.S. The prospect of capital punishment is ridiculously expensive. There’s risk of executing innocent people and politics of appointed judges who wantonly convict.
• It’s one of these circumstances that it is irreparably falling apart, broken. Everywhere you turn you find horrendous errors, egregious discrimination.
• The murder rate is higher in places where they have the death penalty than places where they don’t have the death penalty. Public support for the death penalty has been slowly and gradually decreasing.
• In the early 70s I became concerned about conditions in the prisons and mental hospitals in Tennesee and Mississippi. This is after the restoration of the death penalty in 1976.
• I can’t wait for the day that capital punishment is abolished. This system can’t die soon enough. You got nobody supporting the death penalty on an intellectual basis.
• National Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Guest – Attorney David Seth Michaels.  David has represented clients for 30 years, clients such as prison inmates in Mississippi and Tennessee. He’s worked with Brooklyn Legal Services B and with the Federal Defenders Service Appeals. He is also a novelist, has his own practice in New York.

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Lawyers You’ll Like: Jim Lafferty Part II

We’re delighted to have back with us attorney Jim Lafferty for the second half of our Lawyers You’ll Like series.  He is the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and host of The Lawyers Guild Show, a weekly public affairs program on Pacifica radio sister station KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.

He has served as a chief officer of, and spokesperson for, various national anti-war coalitions, including the National Peace Action Coalition, the anti-Vietnam War coalition that organized the largest protests during that war; the National Coalition for Peace in the Middle East; and, the National Campaign to End U.S. Intervention in the Philippines. In the 60s and 70s, his law firm, Lafferty, Reosti, Jabara, Papakian & Smith, represented virtually all of the left political movements in and around Detroit, Michigan, during which time he became one of this nation’s leading experts on Selective Service law and military law.

In the early 80’s, Mr. Lafferty founded and chaired the largest A.C.L.U. Chapter in the State of Michigan. In New York City, in the late 80’s and early 90’s, he traveled the world organizing on behalf of the labor rights of merchant seafarers. During this time he also taught a course at the New School for Social Research, entitled, Vietnam: The War at Home and Abroad.  More recently, Jim Lafferty was the Coordinator of the L.A. Coalition to Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, as well as a member of the national steering committee of the Campaign to Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Jim Lafferty:

• The man who was presented to me as my uncle, when I was sixteen he died, my mother acknowledged that he was my father.  A friend of mine, she was a white nurse and she was married to a white school teacher and had a 3 year old daughter.
• She divorced that man and married a black surgeon. Her mother and former husband wanted custody feeling it was inappropriate for child to be raised in biracial home. George Crockett was one of the lawyers in the National Lawyers Guild in Michigan, took the case only if I clerked and read every opinion on domestic relations given down by the Michigan Supreme Court.
• We lost that case, and I continued working with that firm. They made a movie about that called “One Potato, Two Potato”
• The firm had been lawyers for UAW.  I had gone down South to work with the lawyers guild in 1963, I was taking depositions for the Freedom Democratic Party. That’s where I met Mary Robinson.
• Bill Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy / Bill Kunstler’s book (1966) Deep In My Heart
• Michael Smith:  Jeff Haas says Fred Hampton had Bill’s book, Deep In My Heart on his bed.
• When you finally take a stand, even though it leads to your incarceration and apparent lack of freedom, you’re finally free.  Anti-war movements: Some friends of mine ran as peace candidates just to bring up the question of the war. We ran the entire campaign for 3300.00.   Including 10 small billboards. Later we put together the Detroit Coalition to End the War in Vietnam Now.
• I wasn’t representing people anymore, but as the head of this coalition, you were doing public speaking, and getting an appreciation for what the power of people could do.   To the credit of those lawyers who were winning those victories, even then they were saying to younger lawyers like me, but the real important thing is what goes on in the streets.
• Los Angeles Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, – Labor Movement is vital. The anti-war movement is vibrant.  You can’t blame the young activists for not knowing history, because nobody’s bothered to teach them.  I’d like to see the movement coalesce around a meaningful left socialist third party.
• On the issue of the war, we’re worse off than we were with Bush.
• Healthcare plan: boondoggle for insurance companies, if you insure people who haven’t been insured, the profits of insurance companies aren’t gonna go down, you and I will pay more. Whereas the government should be paying more.  NY Times article: putting aside the public option, you get past it by not dealing with it.

Guest – Attorney Jim Lafferty,  Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and host of The Lawyers Guild Show, a weekly public affairs program on Pacifica radio sister station KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.

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 Law and Disorder January 11, 2010 [57:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Michael Ratner Update: GTMO 8th Anniversary / 198 People Still Detained
• Obama Stops Release of All Yemen Detainees
• Witness Against Torture: Demonstrations To Close Guantanamo Bay Prison

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Historic Win for Constitutional Rights! Injunction Granted in CCR Lawsuit on Behalf of ACORN

Recently, a federal judge blocked Congressional effort to withhold funding to the community group ACORN. In the decision, the court found that ACORN can show that the targeting by Congress in de-funding the anti-poverty group, is a violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against the Bill of Attainder. This is a legislative act which singles out a specific person or group for punishment. Jules Lobel, CCR Vice-President and Cooperating Attorney says quote “This historic decision by the Court affirms the fundamental constitutional principle that the Congress cannot be judge, jury, and executioner.”   Following the decision, Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s Executive Director, said quote  “The court’s decision is a victory not only for the many dedicated citizens who work with ACORN to improve their communities and promote responsible lending and homeownership, but for the Constitution and the rights of all Americans.”

Bertha Lewis:

• ACORN is 39 years old, started in Little Rock, Arkansas.  It grew out of the welfare rights movement, George Wiley founder of WRO.  We began to organize folks in the South first, just around bread and butter issues.
• Red-lining banks, block busting racist strategies, potholes. Most people would know us by the housing work that we did, we challenge the banks for the red-lining tactics.  I was the executive director for New York, I’ve been with ACORN for almost 20 years.
• We had an internal scandal, where the founder Wade Rasky had allowed his brother in a 2 year period of time misappropriate almost a million dollars. I was appointed CEO after that for my New York City organizing work. We’re (ACORN) the best organizers, but we’re not the best managers.
• It was fine if we stuck with soup kitchens, etc, but we started registering poor people to vote around issues. The minimum wage law passed in Florida. I think we became a threat when we actually moved those people to the polls. Now we begin to change the balance of power.
• We need to organize multi-ethnic, multi-culture, multi-issue, and build an institution where people have real power. Karl Rove leaked emails revealed : “Bring me the head of ACORN.”
• The organizing was effective because we’re not a single issue organization. We can be better managers, but I guess we had a naivete about the forces we’ve been going against all these years.
• Since 2000, the right has seen us as a growing threat, we were effective and almost immediately we were accused of voter fraud, voter registration fraud. Nothing stuck. They decided, we got to keep (ACORN) in the news, we gotta keep attacking them.
• This filmmaker – James O’Keefe made up this fantasy scenario, was racist and sexists. So, they had this series of videos, when you looked at it, it was very sensational.
• Anyone could see it was highly edited, where they had this woman say she hadn’t paid taxes, and there are these girls from Honduras we want to bring over.
• So, what you see in these tapes is some of our workers giving advice. Next thing it was online, it went viral. Funders were saying they didn’t want to be associated with us. Five hundred organizers, four hundred thousand member families.
• Three times before the Republicans tried to say ACORN was a criminal organization, no due process. In October after that video, they put in writing, no funds given to ACORN. Omnibus funding bill. The bill passed, only 7 brave senators voted against it.
• Congress (right wing) was pushed to name ACORN, because federally funded groups such as Blackwater / KBR / would be snared in broad language net. This is about the Constitution, it applies to poor people, it applies to poor people’s organizations.
• CCR lawyers – “I call them Jedi Knights for Justice”

Guest – Bertha Lewis,  Chief Executive Officer and Chief Organizer of ACORN, the largest community organization in the country. Appointed in May 2008, Ms. Lewis oversees the operations of its 400,000 strong membership, which is active in over 110 cities across the country. A 16 year veteran of the organization, Ms. Lewis was most recently the Executive Director of ACORN’s New York affiliate and is a founding Co-Chair of the New York Working Families Party.

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Why Are We in Afghanistan?

Why Are We in Afghanistan is the question many listeners still have and is the title of a film by Michael Zweig. The film examines how the reasons for the Afghanistan war have clouded since September 11, 2001. The conflict centers on geo-political positioning that holds the US in the war torn landscape.  At this stage, the Afghanistan war is a humanitarian disaster, the civilian casualities are stunning and conditions on the ground are desparate for Afghani women and children.  The film, Why Are We in Afghanistan? is an educational resource for communities, unions, veterans and active duty military, classes, and anyone who wonders why we are in Afghanistan, and what to do about it.

Michael Zwieg:

• We started out being in Afghanistan because of the 9/11 attacks, the idea was they attacked us from a base in Afghanistan, and we’re going to get the bad guys.  Once they were there it became clear, that they weren’t interested in going to Afghanistan, they were interested in invading Iraq.
• Starting in 2002, the focus left Afghanistan, we were there, in an inactive state. Then comes the presumed resolution in Iraq, then Obama comes in and tries to be the president, running the campaign of prosecuting the good war.
• Why are we now doubling down in Afghanistan?
• Obama’s latest speech says primary reason for war escalation is Taliban, who are sheltering Al-Qaeda. To “nation-build” – stabilize Afghanistan.  Al-Qaeda is in Pakistan, though, if you were to stabilize Pakistan, Al-Qaeda would go to Somalia, etc. It’s like wack-a-mole.
• General Petraeus’s American Counterinsurgency Doctrine. 2006
• They accept in the doctrine, that counter-insurgency is 80 percent civilian work and taking care of civilian population / 20 percent military.  But if you look at the budget in place right now for 2010, it’s 6 percent civilian and 94 percent military.
• So, what’s going on? It’s not really about counterinsurgency, it’s not really about Al-Qaeda? We shouldn’t downplay the domestic and military pressure to do this.
• Sentiment about Afghanistan War changed in the US Labor movement summer of 2009
• Pipelanistan: During collapse of Soviet Union, the central asia “stan” countries came in to play.
• The US department of Energy forecasts between the year 2000 and 2025, China’s need to import oil is going to increase to 73 percent of its oil needs they will have to import.
• Pakistan’s agent in Afghanistan are the Taliban.
• Unocal – Moderate size US oil company, negotiating with Taliban and Pakistan to build pipeline.
• Unreported:  There were meetings in Turkmenistan, in 2002 with the Bush Administration and Asian development Bank to build a pipeline going to Arabian Sea.
• There was a meeting in 2001 before 9/11, with Cheney and energy executives. They issued a report on American energy strategies May 2001. They identified the Central Asia republics as a major source of oil and natural gas.
• They identified these resources, Cheney and his crew, as a source to block from the Chinese and others from getting those resources.
• We’re in Afghanistan because of both strategic interests which include the oil resources and to block others.
• What are going to do, we can’t win, but we can’t not fight it.  Obama doesn’t see a way unless there’s a mass movement in this country or military rebellion.
• Barbara Tuchman – March of Folly – Leaders of countries lead them into disasterous courses, against advice and alternative policies.
• You can’t reduce it all to simple, rational calculations because there are other courses that they could do.
• How do you make it hot for Obama on the decisions that he’s made? How do you build the social movement.
• We’ve built quite a presence in the labor movement around Iraq.
• Almost spending 100 billion dollars a year in Afghanistan.  You could create a lot of jobs, tax relief, stimulus systems.
  
• War good for economy? No. For every dollar spent on military spending, you create way fewer jobs than the same money spent on building roads, or turbines for wind farms.

Guest – Michael Zwieg,  Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he has received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. His most recent books are What’s Class Got To Do With It? American Society In the 21st Century and The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret (2000). He was executive producer and co-writer of the documentary Meeting Face to Face: The Iraq-US Labor Solidarity Tour. (Center for Study of Working Class Life, 2006).

Professor Zweig received his PhD in economics in 1967 from the University of Michigan where, as an undergraduate, he was a founding member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and as a graduate student helped found the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE).

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 Law and Disorder December 14, 2009 [57:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Veronica Jones – Mumia Witness Passes
  
• Cuban Five Resentencing Update
• Heidi Boghosian’s Father – Varujan Boghosian Gallery Opening
  
• CCR Torture Team Trading Cards Sent To Library of Congress
• (NEW) Michael Ratner – Muting Our Criticism of Obama: If We Don’t Speak Out Who Will?

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Family of Secrets:  The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America

From the Kennedy assassination to Watergate to Prescott Bush’s ties to Nazi Germany, the book Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America, digs into the hidden history of the Bush family.  Author Russ Baker takes on the Bush legacy with powerful investigative journalism. One review states that the chapter on George W Bush’s private life is worth the price of the book alone.  Baker also reveals George H Walker Bush’s connections with the CIA began in 1953, not when he publicly joined the agency in 1976.  Bush’s oil companies were used as fronts for the intelligence agencies around the world with an agenda controlled by power brokers.  Award winning investigative reporter Russ Baker also tells us why this insight into the Bush family is important to know now during the Obama administration.

Russ Baker:

• I was training investigative journalists in Yugoslavia 2002, and when I traveled Europe people were asking me what has happened to your country. I knew superficially what happened, but I didn’t know why it happened.
• From the son, I looked into the father,because had the father not been president, the son wouldn’t be president.
• George HW Bush had a secret past more than 20 years, preceding his appointment to the CIA in 1976
• George HW Bush, starts up offshore drilling companies that make no sense, very few customers, very few rigs, but he’s traveling all over the world. It’s perfect intelligence cover.
• They even put a rig in Cuba before the Bay of Pigs, they had Cuban exiles working there
• Ok, he’s working in intelligence, I assume that’s what he’s doing while he was a Congressman, an oil man, an ambassador to the UN. This is fascinating and also deeply troubling.
• I think what we’re looking at is a permanent construct of power.
• Journalists:  I don’t think they’ll say so publicly but privately they’ll tell you how scared they are, whether for their personal safety or they don’t want to lose their job.
• The Bush dynasty was the ultimate triumph of the military industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower, a formal general had warned us about.
• Harry Truman speech on the CIA: I signed the Act that created the CIA, but they never told me the kinda things that they got in to.
• The Bush Family: You see them as the ultimate operatives on behalf of the coalition of powerful Wall St. interests, military contractors, resource extraction mining interests, going all over the world to bring back the plunder essentially.
• They (Bush family) are the representatives, they are not the bosses.
• Obama:  It’s very difficult to go against these interests. Our economy runs on war, it’s very difficult to undo that.
• I, myself was naive, and I covered politics for more than 20 years, and I never understood the extent at which democracy is subverted.
• Power in America resides in pool of people about whom we’ve never even heard, the only way you find out is if you look at these Fortune 1000 lists.  This is not a conspiracy, it’s just the way things work.
• Michael Smith: When I was starting out and learning how this country works, I was reading C.Wright Mills, Ferdinand Lunberg.
• Guest host Jim Lafferty: This is a matter of commonality of interests that run this country
• Whowhatwhy.com – specialized in doing deep politics investigation – historic epics that haven’t been properly explored.
• Everybody hated Kennedy except the people.

Guest – Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative reporter with a track record for making sense of complex and little understood matters. He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire. He has also served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. Baker received a 2005 Deadline Club award for his exclusive reporting on George W. Bush’s military record. He is the founder of WhoWhatWhy/the Real News Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization, operating at whowhatwhy.com.

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MondoWeiss: The War of Ideas In the Middle East

Did the recent bombing of Gaza and killing of 1400 Palestinians create a breakdown in the traditional Jewish American support for Israel?  In the first of its kind, last month’s J Street Conference brought together 1500 people to the meeting aimed at ending the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically. The conference is a political arm of the pro-Israel pro peace movement that also lobbied more than 100 members of Congress to press forward with the peace process and two state solution.

Meanwhile the Boycott Divest and Sanction movement gains momentum and Code Pink activists continue to protest, demonstrate in and around Gaza. As many listeners may know living conditions in the Gaza Strip has deteriorated. Salt water has contaminated a large percentage of drinking water and is damaging the kidneys of Palestinian children.

Philip Weiss:

• J Street is the alternative Israel lobby or alternative Jewish lobby because they identify themselves as a Jewish organization.
• They are taking on AIPAC, which has traditionally taken on the role to shape the US response to Israel.
• It was landmark moment in changing the original purpose of the Israel lobby to speak with one voice
• Here’s a lobby that says. . guess what? Jews are not going to speak with one voice, we’re going to have a lot of different voices that contend on this issue.
• Finally there’s a little bit of fragmenting of this reactionary force of AIPAC and the Israel lobby.
• 160 Congressmen were at the J Street Conference in Washington DC. You saw lefty-Jews with a spring in their step.  The conference disappointed me in a number of ways, it only had Zionists, progressive Zionists.  It condemned the Goldstone Report
• There were some bright lights at this conference. It’s not that different from AIPAC in a number of ways.
• There was a strong sense if you were to speak there (J Street Conf.) you had to be a Zionist.
• Zionist: I think it is support for a Jewish state. We need a Jewish state because we could be persecuted again and we need to go somewhere.
• Generally the rank and file of these people are old Jewish leftys. J Street represents a break in the heresy. The heresy is that we speak with one voice.  This process of colonization continues in the West Bank, unabated basically.
• One state with an apartheid system and that’s going to be the struggle. I think if you scratch any Jew in this country he has some connection to Israel. For me it was the 9/11 thing. As they say.
• My brother said, I demonstrated against the Vietnam War, as I did, but my Jewish newspaper says the Iraq War could be good for Israel.
• I couldn’t avoid the issue anymore then when I confronted the issue I became this Palestinian Solidarity person.
• The desperation is heightened by the fact there’s so little recognition of that in the United States.
• Goldstone, a Jewish Jurist from South Africa who fought apartheid and Bosnian war crimes, that he could say. . look this is persecution . . and that can be so ignored, defied and stomped on in the United States. .it’s a horror.
• Our country can affect the situation ( In Gaza / West Bank)

Guest – Peter Weiss,  longtime journalist and regular contributor to the Nation and a fellow at the Nation Institute  Philip is the author of two books a political novel, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, and American Taboo, an investigative account of a 1976 murder in the Peace Corps in the Kingdom of Tonga. His website is called Mondoweiss, it explores Middle East policy and Israel/Palestine issues. Philip attended the J Street Conference 2 months ago.

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 Law and Disorder December 07, 2009 [56:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Gregory Craig Steps Down As Whitehouse Lawyer
• Obama Adds Troops In Afghanistan (Pipelanistan)
• Illinois: MCC College Calls Off GTMO Lecture, Cites Not Prepared For Crowds?
• McHenry County College, 8900 US Hwy 14, Crystal Lake, Illinois 60012-2738 – (815) 455-3700
• WBAI Listeners Click Here For Rundown
• (NEW) Michael Ratner – Muting Our Criticism of Obama: If We Don’t Speak Out Who Will?
  

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Talking With Sartre: Conversations and Debates

Professor John Gerassi, author of the recently published book titled – Talking With Sartre: Conversations and Debates joins hosts in studio. As a child, Gerassi’s parents had become close friends with the French existentialist philosopher, playwright, and novelist, Jean Paul Sartre. Later in his life, Gerassi conducted a series of interviews in the early 70s. These interviews are now edited into book form and as one review states, – quote – it has produced this revelatory and breathtaking portrait of one of the world’s most famous intellectuals.

The brings into to focus Sartre’s thinking on the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the disintegration of colonialism, it also reveals how Sartre has wrestled with the apparent contradiction between his views on freedom and the influence of social conditions on our choices and actions.

John (Tito) Gerassi:

• My father was an artist and said ridiculous things like I don’t care if my son starves or my wife starves, first I paint.
• This appealed to Sartre who said in effect the same thing as a man of letters.
• Sartre became fascinated by my father. My father refused to join the OSS / CIA
• Gerassi to Sartre: You have a problem uniting the idea of free choice that you have in existentials because you begin with the I, to the Marxist situation which is a class derivative to which you want to align. I don’t see how you can align them.
• After a series of criticisms to this dichotomy, Sartre said, “This kid’s brilliant.” And so I became part of the family.
• Sartre always supported counterterrorism. Those who fought the establishment’s terrorism.
• Sartre’s anti-position has always been consistently correct.
• He opposed Ridgeway when Ridgeway took over NATO. Get your base out of France.
• No country is free with a foreign base on its territory. If you get rid of Ridgeway don’t put in a European general.
• During the Algerian War, the magazine that Sartre basically created called Modern Times, supported the Algerians right from the beginning.
• It supported sedition, that was a step further than any lefty in France.
• Supporting sedition is one thing, but they actually supported it in action.
• They were called the suitcase carriers, they gave medicine and ammo to Algerians in suitcases.
• The editor in chief of Modern Times assembled 120 intellectuals and produced the Declaration of 121.
• It included Sartre and existentials but also the Catholic left and notable communist intellectuals.
• That began the split in the communist party.
• In Algeria, the communist party there was in favor of the Algerian revolution.
• Sartre : Never judge the powerless by the same criteria that you judge the powerful.
• That means you support the Palestinians, and you praise the suicide bombers because you judge them with a different criteria than Israelis who have tanks, airplanes etc . .
• Sartre interpretation:  The fact that he (Ft Hood shooter) is a member of a dominated class, and he is rebelling against the dominating class. He is perfectly justified in what he’s doing.
• Sartre: The trouble with all revolutions is they give up too soon.
• He did go to all sorts of places and because he was Sartre, he got to see the leaders of Russia and China, the only influence where he was pleased with contact was Che Gueverra.
• Supporting the early action of the Palestinians: When Israel subjugates the Palestinians, takes away their lands. . I’ve always supported counterterror against established terror.
• Marxist – Group Infusion – people briefly connecting, moving from I to we.

Guest – Professor John Gerassi, once an editor at Time magazine, then at Newsweek, who obtained his PhD at LSE, is a long time civil rights and anti-war militant. He is the author or editor of ten books and scores of articles and pamphlets published on both sides of the Atlantic. He is currently Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York.

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 Law and Disorder November 30, 2009 [58:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Michael Ratner: Sartre, Existentialism and Marxism on the Question of Terror: Talking with Sartre

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THE ASSASSINATION OF FRED HAMPTON: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther

We are pleased to have with us author and National Lawyers Guild attorney Jeff Haas. His new book The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther, is a page turning true crime story chronicling the tragic murder of Fred Hampton, the young leader of the Chicago Black Panthers.  On a dark December day, Chicago police unloaded 80 rounds into Fred Hampton’s bedroom, leaving his pregnant fiancee Deborah Johnson in shock having barely survived.  The killing horrified the black community in Chicago.  As Haas describes, it took 13 years of grueling litigation from the attorneys at the People’s Law Office collective to finally convict the FBI, the Cook County States Attorney Edward Hanrahan, and the Chicago police for their summary execution Fred Hampton. He was only 21.  Today, 40 years later, the People’s Law Office still active in suing and scandalizing the Chicago police for torturing and extracting false confessions from over l00 black men in a south side police station. Jeff Haas Book Tour Dates NYC

Jeff Haas:

• Fred Hampton started in high school, he led a walk out because black girls weren’t considered for Homecoming Queen. He took on the issue of not having enough black teachers and black administrators. Wherever he saw injustice, he felt compelled to deal with it.  At ten years old, he started his own breakfast for children program.
• He came from a warm family, in Louisiana, on farms where his grandparents had been slaves.
• I came from Atlanta, GA, a middle class Jewish family. I grew up as many were somewhat raised by blacks, there was a black man who worked at our farm who I idolized. He taught me how to plow with a mule, drive a tractor, things most kids don’t know how to do.
• At school in Chicago, my classmates consisted of John Ashcroft and Bernadine Dorhn. Ashcroft didn’t have much to say in those days.  I was with Dr. King, when he marched in Chicago, the anti-war movement was at a peak, the black power movement was strong. There had been riots in the cities.
• Kennedy and King had been assassinated in 1968. It seem like things were headed for the falls, or the rapids.
• I met Fred Hampton because I was in Chicago. He was then head of the NAACP youth branch. A dynamic speaker.  Fred could talk to welfare mothers, he could talk to law students, he could talk to gang kids.
• He said basically, if you’re not going to do any revolutionary act by the time you’re 20, you’re dead already.
• The Chicago panthers grew quickly from Nov. 1968, when they started, until his death in 1969.
• Forty  years ago, my partner knocked on my door.  I opened it and he said the chairman is dead, the pigs vamped on his crib this morning.
• It took me, how the police had killed him. I went and interviewed his fiancee. She told me they entered a room where Fred was semi-conscious.
• First we and with a lot of support from the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a civil suit to find out what happened.
• Quickly we found out that the police raid was a shoot in, not a shoot-out. Ninety police shots to 1 shot from the Panthers. We also found out 3 years into the investigation that the FBI had provided a floor plan to the raiders, that showed the bed where Fred would be sleeping.
• And that bed was where the shots converged, so we pursued discovery.
• We found out that the FBI sent a letter to head of the Blackstone Rangers, a year before Fred was killed saying, dear brother, Fred has put a hit out on you. The FBI wanted someone else to do their dirty work.
• The FBI worked on creating conflict between the 2 groups. One of the objectives of the COINTELPRO program was to prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the masses.
• Fred Hampton had a slogan, you can kill the revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution.
• You can still kill a freedom fighter, but you can’t kill freedom fighting. I think losing a black leader like Fred Hampton does set back the people’s struggle. His spirit, the non-compromising pursuit of justice lives on also.

Guest – Jeffrey Haas is an attorney and cofounder of the People’s Law Office, whose clients included the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society, community activists, and a large number of those opposed to the Vietnam War. He has handled cases involving prisoners’ rights, Puerto Rican nationalists, protesters opposed to human rights violations in Central America, police torture, and the wrongfully accused.

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The Center For Constitutional Rights:  Acorn Lawsuit

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the community group ACORN. ACORN was recently barred funding by a Congressional Resolution. The lawsuit charges that Congress unfairly targeting the organization and is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the government from reallocation funds meant for ACORN. The Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Bill Quigley says it’s an outrage to see Congress violating the Constitution and politically grandstand. Bill continues -  “With all the crimes and infractions committed by banks, pharmaceutical companies, and private government contractors, they have been rewarded with bailouts, tax credits, and billions of dollars in new contracts. Congress bowed to FOX News and joined in the scapegoating of an organization that helps average Americans going through hard times to get homes, pay their taxes, and vote. Shame on them.”

Bill Quigley:

• ACORN is an association of community organizations that has about 500 hundred thousand members across the United States. They’ve been in existence for some 35 years. They do voter registration, housing foreclosure work, issue organizing.
• In the last five years or so, they’ve registered nearly 2 million to vote. So, they’ve been the target of the right wing for some time. They do very aggressive outreach to get folks who haven’t been registered.
• Regarding sex scandal: The people in those offices, they’re low paid workers, but their goal is to help first time home buyers. So, these tricksters, they were into prostitution, the truth is the people at ACORN would try to help you whether you were a prostitute or not.
• ACORN tried to give advice and some of the people went too far concealing the nature of their work.
• Apart from the politics of punishing people for registering folks to vote, there is a specific part in the US Constitution that’s been in there since the beginning that prohibits what’s called a Bill of Attainder
• Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed.”
• We’re familiar with what happened in England, in Parliament, people in parliament would get all fired up about something and they would just have a specific bill naming a person or organization, and they were outlawed, they could receive the benefits of being a citizen.  So the Congress outlawed that.
• So, what they did here, is without any hearings before Congress, without any investigation whatsoever, just based on the rumors and the FOX news sort of stuff. They said that ACORN and any of subsidiaries, or even allies, couldn’t receive any federal funds.
• A one sentence prohibition. It impacts millions of dollars of funds, not going to big salaries.
• It effects ACORN Housing organizations around the country. A lot of the housing works stopped.
• ACORN people have come to us and say we’ve been to law firms around this country but no one can help us now, because we are so stigmatized.
• The framers of the constitution didn’t want Congress to be the prosecutor, judge jury and executioner. We have a way to do this.
• If there’s more to this than just the rumor mongering that’s been done, then there are ways to do it. HUD, Department of Justice, IRS, can say, we suspect you’re misusing the funds and set up a hearing.
• The right wingers didn’t want to go this way, they did an end run and we’re hoping that the courts are going to set that aside.

Guest – CCR Legal Directory Bill Quigley. Bill has been an active public interest lawyer since 1977 and worked with a wide range of public interest organizations on an equally wide range of issues. He has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the Advancement Project, and with the ACLU of Louisiana, for which he served as General Counsel for over 15 years.

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Film Professor Sues University for Violating Right to Academic Free Speech

In the fall of 2007, Dr. Terri Ginsberg was hired to teach a film class at the North Carolina State University focusing on the media treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2008. She was also hired to help program a Middle Eastern film series.  As Terri details in a grievance the director of the film studies program and the director of the Middle East studies program made a series of decisions that violated her academic freedom. Among the decisions was the limiting of Terri’s invovlement in the series that she had initially been hired to curate. Another was the criticism of an introduction she gave at the screening of the Palestinian film “Ticket to Jerusalem” as biased and overly political.

The grievance filed alleged violations of her First Amendment and equal opportunity rights under the University Code. Her grievance was dismissed on the grounds that it was filed too late and that she was no longer a university employee. Terri has now filed a lawsuit, one mention in the complaint states that in the views of several faculty,  Jews who question and challenge the zionist colonial project are non-conforming Jews and therefore are outsiders and dangerous.

Terri Ginsburg / Attorney Rima Kapitan

• I was given strong indication the teaching professorship would convert into a permanent tenure track position.
• That I should apply for it and that I was a shoe in for that position. So I moved down from New York City, where I lived for many years to Raleigh, NC. Not long after I got there, a number of incidents occured that led me to believe the conversion was not going to take place.
• Key people in the faculty were very unhappy with my perspectives on the Israeli – Palestinian conflict and on Zionism. I am a Jewish Anti-Zionist, and I wanted to supply a genuinely balanced perspective on the issue of Zionism and the history as it has been depicted in cinema
• I showed Israeli films, I showed Palestinian films, I showed the array of cinema on this topic.
• This is a large campus upwards to 40 thousand students.
• I was asked to resign from a middle eastern series after I gave an introduction to a film that was pro-Palestinian.
• Attorney Rima Kapitan: Right now we’re alleging they violated her North Carolina Constitutional Rights. They breached her right to academic freedom and equal protection under the law.
• Terri covered every path in North Carolina, the only thing left is a constitutional claim in North Carolina.
• Under the equal protection claim, we’re saying Terri was treated differently because of her religion.
• Terri: The atmosphere is increasingly worse not only for Jews but anyone who speaks out on this issue, especially for non-tenured and temporary labor.
• I had minimal support from the AAUP, they failed until we put out a petition that received over 500 signatures.
• Most faculty on campus were afraid to communicate with me, over email, over telephone.
• I think the Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the core issues facing the United States.
• Film is a small field and gossip travels fast. I’m unemployed. When I did my research on the holocaust, I couldn’t ignore the structural relationship between the holocaust and the Nakba.

Guest- Dr. Terri Ginsberg joins us in the studio today she has a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University and previously taught in the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College and the Cinema Studies Program at Rutgers University.  CODZ

Guest – Attorney Rima Kapitan - staff Attorney at CAIR-Chicago. She is a graduate of DePaul University College of Law and Indiana University and a partner with Amal Law Group, LLC, a general practice law firm. Her main areas of interest and specialization are plaintiff-side employment discrimination, civil rights law, workers compensation and estate planning. She is active in the National Lawyers Guild Middle East Committee.

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 Law and Disorder November 23, 2009: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Update on Lynne Stewart’s case -  Order to surrender.
• Michael Smith Review: The Assassination of Fred Hampton
  

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Economic Policy, Health Care and Historic Models: Professor John Ehrenberg

There are two US wars raging, unemployment has rocketed, and the US military has reported the highest number of recruits since 1973.  Right now, there are 67 thousand US troops in Afghanistan, and 119 thousand in Iraq. The laws, practices and policy of the Bush Administration are still in place, that push the country dangerously further into a police state. We’ve recently watched the military attack civilians with sonic weapons in Pittsburgh, and the US Justice Department recently admitted to working with AT&T to spy on its citizens. Can any model of democracy work under these conditions and what are the similar historic narratives of where the United States is at now?

John Ehrenberg:

• My part of the panel was Marx’s political journalism from the 1840s when he’s talking about France.
• He’s observing the class struggle and revolution in France. How a dysfunctional political system was incapable of dealing with objective needs.
• Comparing where we are today, specifically health care, the president says if we don’t address this we will bankrupt the states
• One of the major drivers of the collapse of auto industry is the cost of health care.
• The political apparatus is so dysfunctional and paralyzed, and so beholden to a particular set of “special interests” that it can’t move forward.
• This is only the first of several instances that are coming down the road
• Another part of this is structural in the part of the system. This system was consciously designed to allow special interest to penetrate the political apparatus. Structured so that it is way more difficult to get anything done, anything comprehensive, than it is to block reform.
• The history of the country is filled with failed attempts to pass anything comprehensive. So it has made pieces of the state to be almost colonized by these special interests. Obama has big plans, but they’re systemic, trying to change an entrenched system. Unlike FDR who came into office as a tinkerer.
• It’s more than the role of the republican party, its bigger, the Republican party is shrunken into this southern male, undereducated white Christian.
• Elections don’t settle anything, they give a sense of the mood of the country but 65 percent of the country when polled wanted a public option, and we ain’t going to get it!
• We look to Obama to mobilize and he ain’t gonna do it. We have a structural crisis.
• The official structures of the state are increasingly unresponsive, political polarization.
• Political polarization is almost in direct proportion to levels of economic inequality.
• The more unequal in distribution of wealth, the more polarized and institutional dysfunction. Since 1980 Congress hasn’t gotten anything important done.
• We are the most unequal advanced country on the planet.
• It doesn’t matter what the president wants, there are these deep structures in the state that impose their imperatives on elected political leaders.
• Nobel Peace Prize not given to Obama but really to the American voter.

Guest – John Ehrenberg,  author of Servants of Wealth, The Rights Assault on Economic Justice, he’s also professor of political science at Long Island University.

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William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

We are excited to welcome Sarah and Emily Kunstler, daughters of the late radical civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, and the directors of a biographical documentary about their father, titled  William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe.  The movie has been described as a sensitive, truthful and insightful film about a man who stood at the center of a confrontational movement and became the public spokesperson for communities standing up to injustice. The story of this radical attorney is told by his daughters in an intimate narrative, from the Chicago 7 to the Attica trials, then the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee. By this time Bill Kunstler was famous. He later polarized the people by starting to choose high profile cases. He defended Mafia boss John Gotti, and Omar Abdel-Rahman for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. We are grateful to have a comprehensive personal history of this great man, friend, mentor and colleague preserved now in this film.  Click here for screenings

Emily and Sarah:

• This is Emily, Sarah and I worked on this for 4 years but we think about it as if we started in our infancy. Really 30 years. We’ve been collecting footage and materials since we were children.
• Emily and I when we were children, when he was representing El-Said Nosir, when he was representing Larry Davis or Yusef Salem, one of the Central Park jogger defendants.
• We felt that he had a choice and we couldn’t understand why he was choosing those cases.
• He could have aligned himself with anybody, why did he want to stand next to people who were accused of such horrible crimes?
• We would answer the phone and people would say nasty things. My Dad had bullets sent to him in the mail.
• His work were our bedtime stories, he was a comic book hero to us.
• I don’t think he thought that he was inconsistent, it was the people around him that thought he was inconsistent.
• Our father thought that to align himself with the most unpopular people in society was important civil rights work because those were the moments where people’s civil rights were most likely to be violated.
• I think a defining moment for Emily and I was when we went to Tulia, Texas and made a documentary about a drug bust that netted over 20 percent of the African American population of a small town.
• By sharing that documentary with world, that’s when Emily and I understood documentary film as a tool for social justice.
• The title comes from the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The protagonist of that poem is struggling with action, whether or not to take action. Do I dare, Do I dare disturb the universe? Do I dare eat a peach?
• Do I rise up and do something or do I quietly go about and do normal things?
• For our father, he was obsessed with that moment. He thought everyone was faced with that moment to stand up and take principled action or do nothing.
• We saw him go out on the front stoop of our house and hold press conferences.
• It’s about Bill’s transformation, it’s about our transformation. It’s about people being transformed having witnessed government power and oppression.
• Dad really believed in people’s humanity and that goes to the heart of the criminal justice system, in the jury system.
• It was frightening for us to share the film with the world. The first 10 times we sat with the audience clenched our fists, couldn’t even look.

Guests – Emily and Sarah Kunstler, producers and directors who run the Off Center Media production company. Emily, a film major and former video producer for Democracy Now, and Sarah, a criminal defense attorney practicing in the Eastern and Southern districts of New York. They recently won the L’Oreal Women of Worth Vision Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize for Best New Filmmakers at the Traverse City Film Festival.

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 Law and Disorder October 19, 2009 [57:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• Len Weinglass Cuban Five – The Re-sentencing of Antonio Guerrero
• Goldstone Report Update
  
• (Goldstone report)Protest in Chicago during former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s speech.

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Gaza Update: Code Pink Member Kitt Kittredge

Last month, the United Nations commission released the Goldstone Report, a scathing six hundred page account detailing how Israel committed war crimes against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.  South African Judge Richard Goldstone who headed the report says the Israeli Defense Force and Israeli commanders must stand trial for war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead earlier this year.   Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would never allow any Israel’s leaders or soldiers to be put on trial for war crimes. He called the Goldstone report a kangaroo court against Israel. War crimes are war crimes as many see it.

Meanwhile, living conditions in the Gaza Strip deteriorate, salt water has contaminated a large percentage of drinking water, damaging kidney function among the Palestinian children. Many who can afford it are trying to leave the region. To give us an update on the living conditions, we catch up with Code Pink member Kitt Kittredge, who has recently returned from Gaza.

Kitt Kittredge:

• It turned my stomach to think that we were handing off a less better world to our children
• So I thought I should step into the more active role of a concerned citizen and I found Code Pink.
• The conditions are deteriorating, it is a place under siege as you know, I consider it a very slow, deliberate strangulation of Palestine. Because it is a slow strangulation, it doesn’t make the news as would a total annihilation
• The biggest thing is they’re demoralized, depressed and diminished sense of hope.
• Unemployment is up more than it was in March, and women are bearing the burden of that.
• Goods are less available, and they are extremely expensive, Israel determines what goes in and when.
• Less than 15 percent of what is really needed.
• The water out of the tap is salty, the showers are cold. The salt water is coming into the wells, the desalinization plant was destroyed, and now the children are drinking the salt water, and they have severe kidney damage.
• It was very exciting to go to Gaza in September and work with the Palestinians on the Gaza Freedom March scheduled for December 31, 2009
• International Surge To End the Siege – GazaFreedomMarch.org

Guest – Kitt Kittredge – Code Pink member, recently returned from the Gaza Strip.

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Decriminalization of Drug Possession

Decriminalization of drug possession has now gone into effect for 150 million Latin Americans.  Earlier this month, Mexico decriminalized the possession of a small amount of all drugs and days later, the Argentine Supreme Court declared unconstitutional their own law that criminalized drug possession. Embedded in the recent legislation, Mexico’s decriminalization laws also allow for state and local authorities to arrest and prosecute drug offenders and allows them to make undercover drug buys.

“What’s happened in Mexico and now Argentina is very consistent with the broader trend in Europe and Latin America in terms of decriminalizing small amounts of drugs and promoting alternatives to incarceration and a public health approach for people struggling with drug addiction,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.  International Drup Policy Reform Conference Nov 12 – 14, 2009.

Ethan Nadelmann:

• I think people understood that this was a good idea all along, sensible re-prioritization of police resources, treat addiction as a health issue, not a criminal issue.
• Many people who are getting away with drug possession don’t really have a drug problem and shouldn’t be a concern of the state.
• It doesn’t require people to be tossed into rehab regardless if whether or not they have a drug problem
• This applies to any drug (Mexico law)
• It’s part of that human rights, civil liberties tradition that exists in various languages in many parts of the world.
• Two thirds of Americans say, someone who’s been picked up on possession of drugs and clearly has an addiction, should not be sent to jail,
• More than 70 percent of the American people say that a small amount of marijuana possession should be decriminalized
• My job is to mentor and hand off the baton to the second and third generation,
• I look at drug policy reform as a movement for individual freedom and social justice
• New York City, marijuana arrest capital of the world / 40,000 marijuana arrests per year / Targeting young black and brown men
• Easy arrests, easy overtime pay, not contributing to public safety in any way even as its really screwing with hundreds and thousands of peoples lives.

Guest – Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance says that the global consensus on drug policy is changing as countries seek to counteract prison overcrowding, rise in organized crime and drug violence.

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Food Not Bombs Surveillance: Criminalizing Lawful Non-violent Protest

Since 9/11, the government has stepped up its surveillance of a range of individuals and organizations, including volunteer-based groups. After providing free vegetarian food in hundreds of communities worldwide, Food Not Bombs has found itself a part of the domestic terrorism dragnet. Co-founded by Keith McHenry and seven friends, the group is dedicated to non-violent social change, and recovers food that would otherwise be discarded to serve hot free meals to the homeless, disaster survivors, rescue workers and others.

Keith McHenry – Food Not Bombs:

• We started out in Cambridge, MA. I was a produce worker and I was throwing out a lot of produce every morning.  It occurred to us that we could take some of that produce and give it to battered women shelters and homeless shelters.
• We could also promote vegetarian eating and animal rights.
• We now share vegetarian meals in a thousand cities every week. We’re in Iceland, Poland has 12 chapters.
• I got arrested in 1988 for serving food without a permit. I ended up facing 25 to life under California’s 3 strikes law. They didn’t mind that we were feeding people, but we were making a political statement and that’s not allowed.
• Political Statement:  Money and resources can go more toward feeding the hungry, healthcare and education. Diverting some of the money from the military to domestic human needs.
• Anonymous people would go to the state government, or city officials in different communities and file complaints against us.
• In Albuquerque, New Mexico, we started to get fined 500.00 a day, everyday we served, because of this anonymous complaint.
• We found out that it was military personnel who objected to our statement.
• In Flagstaff, Arizona, you can serve the food but you can’t have the Food Not Bombs banner and literature.
• Last week in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, similar complaints. Turned out the anonymous tipster was the manufacturer of landmines. This was a quarter mile away from where we were sharing free meals.
• A Lancaster health department official came by, without a thermometer to test the pH of the food, and said it was fine we were feeding people we had to get rid of the literature.
• We’re seeing this all over, including letters from the state of New Mexico, ordering me to stop all chapters serving free food.
• In Connecticut, I started getting emails ordering to stop all chapters.
• I think its the federal government, Homeland Security, and the intelligence unit of Chevron Oil, have all been involved in harrasing Food Not Bombs.
• We were first declared a terrorist organization in 1988.
• I’ve been under intense stress for a number of years, with informants trying to force me out of Food Not Bombs.
• I lost a couple of friends, who had committed suicide, as a result of this tension created in San Francisco, Food Not Bombs in particular.
• When I was facing the 3 strikes case in California, there was a man who turned out to be an FBI agent, was hanging out with my wife.
• He was hanging out at the California street bus stop, and he became friends with my wife, and ended up having an affair with her, during the time I was incarcerated and we had no idea whether I would get out of prison.
• Everything that we were saying in our house was being monitored.
• In one case, my home phone had become a pay phone. The Food Not Bombs hotline. To dial out, he was asked to deposit 35 cents. I would dial 611 Pacific Bell phone repair and they would tell me it was a pay phone.
• We’ve had a huge number of informants joining Food Not Bombs.
• When someone at a Food Not Bombs meeting is joking about violence, you have to distance yourself from that person. You don’t need to call them out and say you’re an infiltrator.

Guest – Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs.  Keith has been arrested more than 100 times for making a political statement of sharing free food in San Francisco and he has spent more than 500 nights in jail for peaceful protest.

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 Law and Disorder October 12, 2009 [57:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• The L Magazine Votes co-host Heidi Boghosian among New York City’s top 10 Heroes
• Che Guevarra Anniversary
• Michael Ratner and Michael Smith Announce Book Project: Hidden History of Che Guevarra
• Italian Prosecutors Urge Prison for Americans in CIA Case
• Assistant US Secretary of State Michael Posner Criticizes Goldstone Report
• General Moshe Yaalon Cancels London Trip After Arrest Fears From Gaza Bombing

Elliot Madison: Activist Arrested for Using Twitter To Communicate With G20 Protesters.

Elliot Madison, a social worker and activist was arrested in Pittsburgh last month during the G20 Summit and was charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. The Pennsylvania State Police say he was found in a hotel room with police scanners and computers while using the social networking site Twitter to communicate police movements to protesters. Madison recently said “They arrested me for doing the same thing everybody else was doing, which was perfectly legal,” he said. “It was crucial for people to have the information we were sending.” Madison’s laywer Martin Stolar told the New York Times   “He and a friend were part of a communications network among people protesting the G-20,” Mr. Madison’s lawyer, Martin Stolar, said. “There’s absolutely nothing that he’s done that should subject him to any criminal liability.”

Attorney Martin Stolar:

• It seems it would be helping out the police in a way. They’re saying disperse, don’t go here, don’t go there.
• They selected him for some reason amid all the various people posting things on twitter boards
• They got a search warrant for his hotel room, rousted he and a colleague who was there, arrested Elliot and he was held on a 30 thousand dollar bail.
• Unfortunately, agents of the FBI, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, showed up at his home in Queens, with a search warrant issued by a Federal Court in Brooklyn, seeking evidence of violating the federal anti-rioting laws. (H.Rap Brown Act) Think about the Chicago 8.
• They spent 16 hours  searching his home, grabbing everything in sight, it was terribly unclear what would violate this law.  So they took pictures of Lenin, his writings, computers, material from producing a documentary film.
• The warrants seemed properly issued, until I can see the affidavits that underlie the warrant.
• I whipped up some legal papers to show cause and a motion under Federal rules of criminal procedure 41G. A motion for the return of property illegally seized.
• He is accused of posting stuff that is publicly available, that is a police scanner that is posted on the internet, such as a police order to disperse.
• That information is passed on through the Twitter board and that constitutes the crime that he is charged with.
• Law enforcement is targeting those who provide support for lawful demonstrations.
• This case is a first in Pennsylvania and a real stretch in criminal law to penalize what is essentially speech
• In New York, there is potentially a separate investigation in which Elliot is a target
• The so-called Green Revolution in Iran, the demonstrators were using Twitter, in exactly the same way the folks in the G20 used it. When the oppressive government came down on the Iranian students using Twitter, the US State Dept said, wait a minute there are free speech issues here.

Guest – Attorney Martin Stolar, president of the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

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Supreme Court To Argue Life Without Parole Cases For Children

The Supreme Court will address whether it’s constitutional to sentence a child to be imprisoned for life without parole for an offense committed during adolescence. There will be two main cases the Supreme Court will argue.  One is the case involving Joe Sullivan. Joe, at the time, was a mentally disabled 13 year old child living in a home where he was physically and sexually abused. He was convinced to participate in a burglary of a home. The elderly home owner was sexually abused, though she didn’t see her attacker. Joe was tried in an adult court, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  He was fourteen when he was sent to an adult prison, there he was abused and later diagnosed with MS.  That is a summary of one of the cases.

Professor Stephen Harper:

• 2400 Kids in jail serving life sentences without parole in the US. 120 of those kids didn’t commit homicides.
• The United States is the only country in the world that sentences children to life, without the possibility of parole
• Part of this sentencing of kids was an accident, they were getting tougher on adults in the early 80s and 90s.
• There should be an opportunity, Sullivan’s lawyer argued that at some point they could be granted parole
• Florida is the number one state that puts children in prison for life without the possibility of parole

Guest – Stephen Harper, Adjunct professor of  Juvenile Justice University of Miami school of Law.

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National Lawyers Guild Observes Improper Use of Force by Law Enforcement at the G-20

Many listeners have probably seen the videos of the G20 protesters going up against hundreds of riot police. Some of the most compelling footage were of reckless use of LRAD, the sonic weapons, and the surge of riot police onto the University of  Pittsburgh campus. Many students who were not protesting were rounded up, knocked down, tear gassed and beaten by police. We reported last month on the blatant violations of first amendment rights as local police engaged in patterns of harassment on activists such as the group Seeds for Peace. Today we hear first hand accounts of police abuse from our own Heidi Boghosian who was at the marches and demonstrations as a legal observer and we’ll be joined by attorney Joel Kupferman, who was also at the also a legal observer with National Lawyers Guild at the G20 Summit.     Read Heidi’s G20 Blog Entry Here

Heidi Boghosian / Joel Kupferman

• LRAD Sonic Weapons combined with order to disperse.  You had to cover your ears, some stayed still, paralyzed.  We think it’s illegal, it’s and invasion, it’s a weapon.
• One of the legal angles, we’re looking into is the fifth amendment, where we charged Christine Todd Whitman after 9/11 for violating our fifth amendment rights of bodily integrity and in this case, that sound pierced that bodily integrity.
• The manufacturer of the device (LRAD) filed in their SEC filings of Sept 2008 that the device is capable of sufficient acoustic output to cause damage to human hearing or human health, expressing concern that the  misuse could lead to lawsuits.
• Private security police forces were employed. They went up the hill, onto the campus and students were just coming out of their dorms, hearing this noise, the helicopters, they didn’t know whether they should stay in their buildings. They started to arrest people who didn’t know what was going on.
• This is the highest police per protester ratio I’ve ever seen, definitely a radicalizing experience for these students, definitely no cause for arrests. Wantonly arresting people in a violent fashion.
• When we spoke to shop owners downtown, there was a hatred, I’ve never seen before. The sympathy came from the neighborhoods of color, it was a climate of fear, they were basically saying, you can’t assemble.
• It almost seemed like it was a police convention. The Pittsburgh Police Department wore military fatigues.  I saw more Canine Units there then any other demonstration.

Guest – Attorney Joel Kupferman, National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer /New York Environmental Law and Justice Project

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 Law and Disorder October 5, 2009 [53:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Lawsuit Brought Against Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft

Last month, a major decision written by a federal judge gives a lawsuit standing that was brought against former US Attorney General John Ashcroft for the illegal and unconstitutional detention of American Muslims. The lawsuit was brought by Abdullah al-Kidd, an American citizen and African American who had coverted to Islam.  In 2003 Al-Kidd was arrested, and detained under abusive conditions without evidence that he did anything wrong. The lawsuit points at the way John Ashcroft abused the material witness statute to “preventively detain” American Muslims.  Ashcroft uses the statute as a pretext to arrest American Muslims without sufficient evidence to establish probable cause. This suit will be a key lawsuit when President Obama presents a proposal for a “preventive detention system.”

Lee Gelernt:

• Federal Appeals court recognized the abuse of the material witness statute under Ashcroft.
• Material witness statute, rarely used, limited purpose before 9/11.  If the witness would not testify and needed testimony, they would arrest witness get testimony then release person.
• If its taking too long, get the person’s deposition, because you simply cannot hold a witness for a long time, because they’re completely innocent.
• After 9/11 the government used the material witness statute on Muslim men who were suspicious and no probable cause. Probable cause is the bedrock of this country. Mere suspicion is not enough.
• It turned out that dozens and dozens of men were arrested as mere witnesses, held for months under the most harsh conditions. They have to be unwilling to be a witness, you don’t simply arrest a witness, obstensibly.
• Abdullah al-Kidd, born in Kansas, spent some time in Los Angeles, and mostly in Seattle. African American born in the United States. His father is a supervisor at the Chino Correctional Institute in California. His mother has done work for IBM for the last thirty years.
• He was a football player, went to University of Idaho on a football scholarship. Right before 9/11 he converted to Islam, and started working for charitable organizations. After 9/11 he was under surveillance, then arrested, held for 16 days under the very abusive conditions. Restricted for 14 months.
• FBI agents went to magistrate saying Al-Kidd had a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia, it turns out after spending time in detention, that it was a round-trip coach ticket.
• The agents also did not tell the magistrate that he cooperated with the FBI and a native born citizen.
• Lawsuit is against Attorney General in a personal capacity and two FBI agents who submitted an affadavit, the United States and 3 Wardens. Settled lawsuit against the 3 wardens.
• FBI Director Mueller, went before Congress to report on the recent successes of the terrorism fight. The first person Mueller mentions is Kalik Sheikh Mohammed, the second person is Abdullah al-Kidd.
• Bedrock principle: You’re innocent unless the government has probable cause (objective reasonable belief) not law enforcement acting under suspicion. In other countries, people can be arrested on suspicion.

Guest – ACLU Attorney Lee Gelernt, the Deputy Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project. He has litigated many cases including the Detroit Free Press v. Ashcroft and North Jersey Media Group v. Ashcroft, which involved challenges to the government’s post-September 11 policy of holding secret deportation hearings.

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FOIA Lawsuit to Make Public the FBI’s Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines

Last month, a Muslim civil rights group filed a lawsuit against the FBI’s refusal to make public its surveillance guidelines of civic and religious organizations in connection with criminal investigations. The group Muslim Advocates, a national legal and educational organization filed a Freedom of Information Act suit against the Department of Justice. The lawsuit is seeking the text of the Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines. The quote DIOGs which went into effect last December are practical manual interpreting revised surveillance guidelines. The interesting part of this story is that civil rights groups including Muslim Advocates were shown drafts of the FBI surveillance guidelines but were not given a copy.

Farhana Khera:

• Agent are provocateurs sent into mosques. Muslim Americans should not have to look over their shoulders while they’re praying.
• Suspicion based on not wrongdoing and criminality, but religion. What concerns us is the set of guidelines issued during the waning days of the Bush Administration, that further and potentially expand FBI powers.
• We were able to see those guidelines in a meeting with the FBI, but not keep a copy of the guidelines. Those guidelines went into effect 1-2 weeks after that meeting.
• We sought formal channels to get a copy of those guidelines then filed a FOIA request.
• It’s been almost a year later, and we still have not got a copy of the guidelines.
• We would hope that the FBI would be working in consistence with the President’s committment to greater transparency
• The FBI said our request is under review and may be redacting or blacking out sections of the guidelines.
• We think the public has a right to know how the powers of the FBI have been expanded and are wielded in our name.  What we saw in the draft guidelines were “gathering data about racial and ethnic communities”  Geo-mapping of communities.
• Changes made to FBI guidelines under former Attorney General Ashcroft allow line agent FBI to make decisions based on limited evidence of criminality. One example, a prominent Pakistani physician made pro-democracy comments for Pakistan in a US newspaper. Days later he was visited by the FBI who wanted to ask him general political questions about Pakistan and Pakistani leaders.
• Check out Muslim Advocates “Got Rights?” Video.

Guest – Farhana Khera, first Executive Director of Muslim Advocates and the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML). Prior to joining Muslim Advocates and NAML in 2005, Ms. Khera was Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights. In the Senate, she worked for six years directly for Senator Russell D. Feingold (D_WI), the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee. Ms. Khera focused substantially on the USA PATRIOT Act, racial and religious profiling, and other civil liberties issues raised by the government’s anti_terrorism policies since September 11, 2001. She was the Senator’s lead staff member in developing anti_racial profiling legislation and organizing subcommittee hearings on racial profiling.