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The January 6 Report
The January 6 Report” by the House January 6 Committee has just been published by Harpercollins. It is a page turner. Most strikingly, the report documents the multi-pronged attack that Trump plotted. The crucial point made by the January 6 Committee report is demonstrating the profound misconception to view the January 6 invasion of the Capitol as merely a group of Trump supporters gone wild. The plot was not limited to the January 6 violence at the Capitol.
Rather, as the report documents, January 6 was a culmination of months of plotting by Trump to overthrow a lawful election and stay in power. He came very close to accomplishing a coup d’état, a blow against the state. Democracy in the United States, however limited, would’ve ended.
The American constitution was written in Philadelphia in 1787. Benjamin Franklin was there. When they concluded Franklin famously said “we have a republic, if we can keep it.“ Can we keep it? Will Trump be indicted by the Department of Justice and convicted for the criminal activity he orchestrated in order to keep himself in power, after losing the election two years ago by seven million votes? If he is not indicted, what will be the impact on the future of democracy in the United States?
Guest – attorney Stephen Rohde who recently reviewed The January 6 Report with a forward by the author Ari Melber. Rohde’s review appeared in “ Truthdig” and in the LA Progressive“. Attorney Stephen Rohde is a constitutional scholar, past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of California, an author of books on the Constitution, who frequently reviews books for the Los Angeles Review of Books. And Mr. Rohde is a leader in the national campaign to free the imprisoned investigative journalist Julian Assange.
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Martin Luther King Jr. : A Dream Realized
We take a look at where the long struggle to end racial injustice stands in the United States today. Oh, some progress has surely been made, but to say we’ve a very long way to go before Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream can be considered “realized” is both true and also a sad and gross understatement; a sad commentary on the role that white privilege and racial hatred continue to play in the United States, hundreds of years since our founding.
Guest – Attorney Sharon Kyle is the publisher and co-founder of the LA Progressive on-line newsletter and a former president of the Peoples College of Law, a law school in Los Angeles established by the National Lawyers Guild and other minority bar associations. Sharon Kyle is a member of the board of the ACLU Affiliate of Southern California and is its representative to the national board of the ACLU. Sharon Kyle is also an active member of the Los Angeles area Julian Assange Defense Committee; a member of the editorial board of the Black Commentator.com. Years before immersing herself in the law and social justice, Sharon Kyle was a member of several space flight teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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