CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Truth to Power
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Museum of the City of New York
The Museum of the City of New York has two terrific exhibits, one permanent, on social change activism at the Puffin Foundation gallery, the other, just up on May 1st, called “city of workers, city of struggle“, also sponsored by the Puffin Foundation.
The great American social historian Howard Zinn wrote that significant social change comes from below. These two exhibits demonstrate this.
If you live in New York or plan to visit the city you might like to check them out. And for you far away listeners you’ll get a good virtual visit by going to the museums website at mcny.org
The permanent exhibit on social change activism is most relevant in today’s dire times of climate change and threatened nuclear catastrophe. The exhibits show by way of photos, documents, and videos how 14 past struggles were conducted and the gains that were won.
They include exhibits from the movement to abolish slavery, and the civil rights movement up to Black Lives Matter. Other exhibits bring to life anti-nuclear organizing, climate change activism, and the success of the mass mobilizations that won over public opinion and ended the war in Vietnam. Although the activism exhibit is permanent it is not unchanging. Right now a new section has been put up covering the struggle of trans people.
A second gallery exhibit, which opened on May 1, examines how the labor movement transformed New York. Called “city of workers, city of struggle” the exhibit shows how New York City, after two centuries of struggle, became the most unionized large city in the United States.
Guest – Steven H. Jaffe, Ph.D. the curator who organized the labor movement exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York.
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Current Analysis Of U.S. Threats Against Iran
In late 2017 and early 2018 Iran was shaken by a wave series of protests. Economic hardships from austerity measures spawned demonstrations that spread to more than 80 cities and towns, in a public showing of discontent not seen since the 2009 presidential elections there. American policy is aimed at exacerbating the hardships.
After the signing of a historic nuclear agreement in 2015, American and Iranian diplomats grew acquainted in a departure from the past when they weren’t allowed to talk. Many were hopeful that more talks on other topics might happen, including conflicts in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and Yemen.
But then Donald Trump became president he pulled out of the nuclear deal and blamed Iran for the Middle East’s problems. He added Iran to the list of countries whose citizens would be banned from entering the United States. He designated the Iranian revolutionary guard is a terrorist organization.
He put severe economic sanctions on Iran causing terrible hardships to its citizens. He is trying to limit their sale of oil. He sent an aircraft carrier to the region and recently threatened to obliterate the country.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she works on anti-war, US foreign policy and Palestinian rights issues. She has worked as an informal adviser to several key UN officials on Palestinian issues. Her books including Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Cuba, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Venezuelan Embassy Protected Against Staged Attacks In DC
Democracy and the rule of law are being rapidly unraveled in our country by President Trump, his advisers, especially convicted war criminal Elliot Abrams, who was put in charge of policy in Venezuela, and John Bolton, who said that if the top 10 floors of United Nations building were lopped off it wouldn’t make any difference, and with the support of the rightist insurgent Republican Party.
The latest example is the American government’s failed attempt military coup in Venezuela and its support of the ongoing attack on the Venezuelan embassy here in Washington DC.
On April 30th, the United States tried and failed to overthrow the democratically elected Venezuelan president Nikolai Maduro. They fail to supplant him with Juan Guaidó, the self-proclaimed a president who’s only real power is outside of Venezuela and comes mostly from the Trump administration.
Back home in Washington DC right wing counterrevolutionaries in support of Juan Guaidó have so far failed in their attempt to take over the Venezuelan embassy. Under centuries of international law the embassy is considered the property of Venezuela itself.
Last week the Washington DC utility company, undoubtedly at the request of the US government, turned off the building’s water electricity supply. Washington DC police and the Secret Service are preventing people from bringing food and water into the embassy. A number of American citizens, acting in support of democracy in Venezuela, entered the building to protect it against an invasion by coup supporters. They are also demonstrating outside of the building. The embassy protectors are being represented by attorney Mara VerhaydenHilliard of the Washington DC Partnership For Civil Justice.
Popular Resistance, Answer Coalition, Code Pink
Guest – Attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard has in the past successfully sued both the Washington DC police department and the New York City Police Department for their abuse demonstrators. She is co-chair of the Guild’s National Mass Defense Committee. co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund in Washington, DC, she secured $13.7 million for about 700 of the 2000 IMF/World Bank protesters in Becker, et al. v. District of Columbia, et al., while also winning pledges from the District to improve police training about First Amendment issues. She won $8.25 million for approximately 400 class members in Barham, et al. v. Ramsey, et al. (alleging false arrest at the 2002 IMF/World Bank protests). She served as lead counsel in Mills, et al v. District of Columbia (obtaining a ruling that D.C.’s seizure and interrogation police checkpoint program was unconstitutional); in Bolger, et al. v. District of Columbia.
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Lawyers For The Left: In The Courts, In the Streets And On The Air
Lawyers For The Left: In The Courts, In the Streets And On The Air is the title of the just published book by our own Michael Steven Smith. It profiles the some of the nation’s most effective agents of social change. Michael discusses how he came to write this book and previews several of the lawyers profiled therein.
As Chris Hedges quotes “The lawyers in this book valiantly fought the erosion of justice and assault on the court system.”
Portside Review by Bill Ayers:
Now open Michael Steven Smith’s smart and compelling Lawyers for the Left, and you’ll find yourself plunged into the contradictions and swirling through the vortex where that question—what is the law?—is on everyone’s mind all the time. It takes on a unique urgency and a fresh vitality as it’s debated case by case and issue by issue by these committed advocates battling against a system they see as deeply and unfairly stacked against their clients—Black freedom fighters, Puerto Rican independistas, Indigenous and immigrant rights activists, women warriors, anti-war militants, water defenders, dissidents and radicals. None of the lawyers you’ll meet here holds fast to the traditional view that the law is simply a civilized mechanism for resolving disputes in an intelligent and reasoned way. They agree, rather, that any honest analysis of the law begins elsewhere, noting that in all times and in all places, the law is constructed in the service of whatever social/economic system created it. In other words, the law is a mechanism of control that works to protect and perpetuate existing social relations.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Fidelity and Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution
The U.S. Constitution is the oldest written constitution in the world. Interpreters of the Constitution are faced with the challenge of how, over time, to read a document that’s not only old but also inflexible.
In his new book Fidelity & Constraint, by Oxford University Press, Lawrence Lessig, one of the nation’s leading legal minds, explains that a fundamental approaches to interpreting the constitution is a process he calls translation. In fact, some of the most significant shifts in constitutional doctrine are products of the evolution of the translation process over time. In each new era, judges understand their translations as instances of “interpretive fidelity,” framed within each new temporal context.
Throughout American history, there has been a second fidelity in addition to interpretive fidelity: what Lessig calls “fidelity to role.”
In each of the cycles of translation the role of the judge — the ultimate translator – has also evolved. Old ways of interpreting the text now become illegitimate because they don’t match up with the judge’s perceived role.
When that conflict occurs, the practice of judges within our tradition has been to follow the guidance of a fidelity to role. Ultimately, Lessig not only shows us how important the concept of translation is to constitutional interpretation, but also exposes the institutional limits on this practice.
The first work of both constitutional and foundational theory by one of America’s leading legal minds, Fidelity & Constraint maps strategies that both help judges understand the fundamental conflict at the heart of interpretation whenever it arises and work around the limits it inevitably creates.
Guest – Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. Lessig serves on the Board of the AXA Research Fund, and on the advisory boards of Creative Commons and the Sunlight Foundation.
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Free Range Kids
You may have heard about the shaming of parents who let their son or daughter walk to school by themselves, or ride public transportation alone. They’re often ridiculed on social media and cast as neglectful. But in some instances, the consequences have gone beyond public shaming.
In 2015 parents in Silver Spring, Maryland made national headlines they were investigated for child neglect for letting their children, ages 6 and 10, walk home from a park by themselves.
In another case Lenore Skenazy, a former New York Daily News columnist was called America’s worst mom after writing a column in 2008 about why she let her 9-year-old son ride the subway by himself.
Last year, Utah passed a law making it not a crime for parents to let their children play in a park without supervision or walk home alone from school. This is hopeful news for our guest Lenore Skenazy who has been advocating for so-called free range parenting laws for many years.
Under the law, neglect does not include allowing a child, whose basic needs are met and who is of sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm, to engage in independent activities such as going to and from school by walking, running or bicycling, going to nearby stores or recreational facilities and playing outside.
A recent U.S. Census showed that 7 million of the nation’s 38 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are left home alone on a regular basis, while the average time spent alone is six hours per week. Only a few states legislate an age under which kids may not be home alone.
Guest – Lenore Skenazy – New York City columnist-turned-reality TV show host got that title after letting her 9-year-old son take the subway, alone. In response to the enormous media blowback, she founded the book and blog, “Free-Range Kids,” which launched the anti-helicopter parenting movement. She has lectured internationally, including talks at Microsoft Headquarters and the Sydney Opera House, and has written for everyone from The Wall Street Journal to Mad Magazine. Yep. The Mad Magazine. And she’s a graduate of Yale.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights
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Roe v Wade And Recent State Abortion Legislation
In 1973 in the famous Roe versus Wade case the US Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s right to obtain an abortion was protected under the US Constitution.
The core holding in Roe, which remains the law today, is that the government may not prohibit a woman from obtaining an abortion prior to fetal viability and may do so after viability as long as abortion may be available to protect a woman’s life and health.
A woman’s right to make childbearing decisions is in essential part of women’s overall equality. Recent legislation in Ohio bans abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant. Kentucky and Mississippi have similar laws and 10 other states are considering them.
Will the Supreme Court take the Ohio case as an opportunity and use it to overturn the 45-year-old Roe versus Wade decision?
Guest – Dr. Vicki Breitbart in the last 40 years, Dr. Breitbart has worked as an educator, researcher, and activist, dedicated to sexual and reproductive justice. Presently, she is an Associate Professor at NYU Silver School of Social Work. Previously, she served as the Director of the graduate program in Health Advocacy at Sarah Lawrence College and has taught at Columbia and CUNY Schools of Public Health. She worked at Planned Parenthood of New York City for over 15 years in various roles including Senior Vice President and Director of the Clinician Training Initiative.
Guest – Lizzy Watson is a staff attorney at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project at the ACLU’s national office in New York. She litigates cases to defend the right to abortion and contraception for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, economic status, gender identity, or geographic location. Prior to joining the ACLU she provided legal services to low income individuals at the Homeless Action Center in Berkeley, CA.
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Recent United States Aggression Toward Cuba
The United States of America has ratcheted up its ongoing 60 year effort to overthrow the elected government of Cuba and restore an American dominated corporate capitalism to the island. This effort was relaxed a bit under the Obama Administration. That all has changed, dollar remittances from Cubans living in the U.S. to their relatives in Cuba have been drastically cut. Travel to Cuba by Americans which has been considerable is virtually banned.
The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 which was meant to strangle the Cuban economy wasn’t fully enforced until recently. Under the guidance of the ultra-right wing National Security Adviser John Bolton. A 23 year old dormant version of the Helms Burton Act has been invoked. It now allows Cubans who live in America to sue the government of Cuba in American courts to get back their estates, businesses and property holdings which were legally nationalized under the 1959 revolution.
This new aggression is meant to cause such severe hardship to the Cuban people that they will be willing to allow their government to be overthrown.
Guest – Walter Lippmann, editor of the Cuba News Yahoo News Group.
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