Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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Peace Plan? Biden Administration Continues Full Support Of Escalation In Ukraine War
Sixteen months ago, Russia launched an illegal invasion of Ukraine, albeit in the context of a history of threats to its security by NATO countries. It is estimated that as of February, Russia has suffered 189,500 to 223,000 casualties and Ukraine has suffered 124,500 to 131,000 casualties.
Meanwhile, the United States and its allies continue to provide Ukraine with all the weapons it requests and impose increasingly harsh sanctions on Russia. But there appears to be little appetite in the U.S. for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the bloodshed.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she is the director of the New Internationalism Project and 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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Peace In Ukraine: Peace Groups Convene In Vienna Austria To End Ukraine War
For the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, peace groups from around the world convened — on June 10 and 11 in Vienna, Austria. Their mission was to discuss creative solutions and to promote negotiations to the Russia-Ukraine war. Groups included the International Peace Bureau, CODEPINK, Europe for Peace, International Fellowship of Reconciliation, Peace in Ukraine Coalition, Campaign for Peace Disarmament and Common Security, and several Austrian peace groups. Conference attendees grappled with controversial issues related to Russia’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine.
Representatives discussed the devastating consequences of this war on their countries. The conference concluded with an urgent global appeal, the “Vienna Declaration for Peace,” calling on all sides to work toward a ceasefire and negotiations. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright noted, “For those of us in the U.S., it is important to remind our elected leaders that we want peace in our world, not war, and for them to get moving on peace talks.” The former U.S. diplomat added, “The U.S. is a belligerent in this war, just like Russia and Ukraine, and our taxes are funding the deaths of Ukrainians and Russians.”
Guest – Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the international antiwar organization CODEPINK. She is the author of several books, including, with Nicholas J.S. Davies, War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. Described as “one of America’s most committed — and most effective — fighters for human rights” by New York Newsday, and “one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement” by the Los Angeles Times, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Prison Industry
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Remembering South Dakota Senator Jim Abourezk
South Dakota senator Jim Abourezk was an important figure in American politics. He died four months ago at age 92. Abourzeck was the son of immigrants from Lebanon. He grew up on the Rosebud Sioux Indian reservation. Politically he was part of the radicalization of the 60s. He served one term in the US House of Representatives and another in the United States Senate. Elected in 1973, Abourezk fought for policies that are crucially relevant today. He was against American imperial power and opposed the war in Vietnam. He tried to rein in the murderous CIA. He attempted to break up the powerful of big oil companies. He fought for Native American rights, normalization of American relations with Cuba, a government the USA has been trying to overthrow since the Cuban revolution of 1959.
After six years, despite extreme pressure from those who supported him, he left the Senate. disgusted by the power wielded by the monied influence of big business. Jim Abourezk went back to South Dakota and back to the his law practice. Jim Abourezk founded the Arab-American anti-discrimination committee because of the oppression Arabs faced both of United States and abroad, particularly in Palestine.
Guest – Charlie Abourezk, from Rapid City, South Dakota and is a trial attorney, longtime activist and community organizer in the native American community in South Dakota. He is also a documentary film maker, his most recent is the feature length documentary “A Tattoo On My Heart: The Warriors of Wounded Knee 1973” which played on public television stations around the United States. He is the current Chief Justice of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s Supreme Court and a member of the South Dakota Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights. His client base is made up largely of Native Americans, tribal schools and Indian tribal governments, but he also represents plaintiffs in civil rights litigation.
Guest – Alya James – Architectural Designer living in New York City.
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Former San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin Teaching At Berkeley Criminal Law and Justice Center
We turn to the subject of the criminal justice system – or, as a growing number of advocates refer to it, the criminal legal system. One reason for the name change is because it’s clear that our system of policing, prosecuting, judging, and sentencing rarely brings about justice. After all, our system was born nearly 250 years ago, at a time when slavery was legal and only white men with property could participate in public life, including voting. Non-white people were thought of as less than human, and women were afforded little if any autonomy apart from the men in their lives.
Since then, we’ve tried to correct course with laws and constitutional amendments that aim to protect everyone equally from the abuse of government power. But real-world statistics show that still – in 2023 – the criminal legal system does not treat all defendants equally, and not all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Black men, for example, are arrested more, charged more, and given higher sentences than others in similar circumstances.
Guest – Chesa Boudin, founding executive director of Berkeley Law’s new Criminal Law & Justice Center is embarking on a new journey to study, brainstorm, experiment and transform for the better how the criminal legal system operates. He is uniquely suited for this new role, since he’s had experience not only in the public defender’s office representing criminal defendants, but also as the former District Attorney of San Francisco. And he’s unique in the legal profession for another reason: when he was just 14 months of age, he was separated from his parents, radical activists David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin. They were serving very long prison sentences for their part in an armored truck robbery which went astray and where three people killed. He saw firsthand the harmful impact of incarceration on those inside, as well as their families, communities, and society as a whole. These experiences informed his studies as a Rhodes scholar and as a student at Yale, his work as a lawyer, and most importantly, as a devoted husband, father and son. @berkeleylawcljc
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Supreme Court
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The SuperMajority : How the Supreme Court Divided America,
In late June 2022, a package of Supreme Court decisions drastically altered the nation’s legal landscape and divided the nation. It took just three days to roll back some of the most consequential gains for civil rights, voting, the separation of church and state, a woman’s right to choose, and more.
In his new book The SuperMajority : How the Supreme Court Divided America, Michael Waldman offers an in-depth analysis of the 2022 key rulings and the radical ways in which they were crafted. He provides historical context for how the Supreme Court has amassed power far beyond what the Framers intended, and how the current supermajority ascended to the high court. Waldman also points to previous Courts (on both the right and the left) that overreached and describes their consequences for the country. Significantly, he writes that the seizure of so much power by a few members of the Court, and their energetic wielding of it, poses a crisis for U.S. democracy.
A backlash against the Court is underway. Rather than seeking a supermajority of their own, Waldman writes that, “Liberals must fall out of love with the Supreme Court.” He recommends reform measures to curb the Court’s power while applying other pressure points – such as in the court of public opinion.
Guest – Michael Waldman is the president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, a nonpartisan law and policy institute. An expert on the Constitution and the courts, Waldman served on President Joe Biden’s commission on the Supreme Court. He is the author of The Fight to Vote and The Second Amendment: A Biography. Waldman was director of speechwriting during the Clinton administration. Sign up for newsletter – Briefing
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First Amendment Auditor: Big Nick South Florida Accountability
Most of the populace, some police officers and federal employees may not realize that its every photographers right to take photos and video of federal buildings on public property. The easing of restrictions began when the New York Civil Liberties Union had looked into several cases of people who were wrongly harassed, detained and arrested by federal agents while photographing or shooting video of federal buildings from public plazas and sidewalks.
In 2010, the NYCLU brought a suit against the US Department of Homeland Security in federal court to end this practice. In October of 2010, a judge actually signed a settlement where the US government agreed that no federal statures or regulations bar people from photographing the exterior of federal buildings.
The US government agreed to issue a directive to members of the Federal Protective Service on photographer’s rights. A decade later, the rights attained in this decision are recently being put to the test in what’s known as First Amendment audits.
Guest – Nick Freeman – First Amendment Auditor with millions in view counts joins us to talk about his work in Fort Lauderdale being part of a long emerging trend to educate local law enforcement about the right to photography and subsequent issues such as police accountability.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Racist Police Violence
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The Alliance of Families for Justice
The Alliance of Families for Justice (“AFJ”) was founded seven years ago by attorney Soffiyah Elijah. Its headquarters is in Harlem, a community heavily impacted by mass incarceration. AFJ also has satellite offices in Albany and Ithaca.
AFJ seeks to heal families and individuals who suffer from their own imprisonment or that of a loved one. It seeks moreover to organize and empower them to challenge and change the system of mass incarceration. AFJ’s legal support unit provides free legal representation to incarcerated people and their families. AFJ holds weekly community organizing meetings and family empowerment circles, and monthly healing circles for formerly incarcerated people. Its organizing and advocacy unit spearheads various campaigns including one to #Shutdown Attica and another to end felony disenfranchisement. AFJ’s Youth Empowerment Project has serviced over 400 NYC young people ages 16-24 in its 3yr tenure. All of AFJ’s services are free.
In New York State and most places nationwide incarcerated people lose their voting rights. This is both un-democratic and, because most incarcerated people are Black or Latinix, it is a racist policy and a vestige of Jim Crow laws that permeated New York and most states. The loss of voting rights remains a significant obstacle to criminal justice reform.
Guest – Attorney Soffiyah Elijah, knows intimately what happens to families whose loved ones are put in prison. She has been able through AFJ to support, motivate and educate these families to become advocates for civil rights and justice reform. Attorney Elijah has headed legal clinics at the City University of New York School of Law and has served as the Deputy Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University, under Professor Charles Ogletree. She was the first woman and first Black Executive Director of the 170yr old Correctional Association of New York where she helped expose and bring to justice several Attica prison guards for brutally beating a man almost to death.
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Dark Money And Conservative Courts
When Donald Trump became president in 2016, one of the most terrifying prospects was that he could signal a new era for the Supreme Court of the United States – where vacancies would be strategically filled to create one of the most conservative courts in nearly a century, which could roll back constitutional rights and liberties we’ve been taking for granted. Indeed, even though Donald Trump was not re-elected in 2020, the conservative 6-3 majority that exists, and the havoc they are wreaking, could last for decades. While I’m sure Donald Trump would like to take all the credit, the battle to buy Supreme Court influence and push votes to the right long precedes his tenure as president.
Guest – Andrew Perez, has devoted his life and career to exposing the money, influence and secret transactions made among the most powerful people in the world to control the United States laws, government and people. He is an investigative reporter and senior editor for The Lever, which was just awarded the 2023 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in the independent media by Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College for its relentless work “exposing the corrupting influence of corporate power on government and both major parties.” In announcing the award, the Center for Independent Media highlighted Andrew’s work for exposing the largest known political donation in U.S. history — Chicago businessman Barre Seid’s $1.6 billion dark money transfer to conservative operative Leonard Leo who served as Donald Trump’s judicial advisor – and guess who Leonard Leo appears to ready to back now … Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, War Resister
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The Nakba Didn’t End in 1948, It Continues to Impact Palestinians Daily
On May 15, Palestinians marked the 75th anniversary of al-Nakba, which means “the catastrophe” in Arabic. On that date in 1948, Israelis ethnically cleansed nearly 750,000 Palestinians from their lands and destroyed more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages. In addition, on May 15, for the first time ever, the UN General Assembly officially condemned the Nakba.
May 15 was also the day that Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Egypt to stop the violence that resulted in the deaths of 33 Palestinians and 2 Israelis. The Israeli assault on Gaza was the sixth such attack since 2007, when Israel imposed a permanent siege on Gaza, controlling the ingress and egress of Palestinians.
Israel maintains an illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. And the United States enables this occupation by providing $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel each year.
Guest – Michel Moushabeck, is a Palestinian American writer, editor, translator and musician. He is the founder and publisher of Interlink Publishing, a 36-year-old, Massachusetts-based, independent publishing house. Michel wrote the article titled, “The Nakba Didn’t End in 1948, It Continues to Impact Palestinians Daily,” which was recently published by Truthout.
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Junior ROTC In High Schools: Pressure To Join
On her first day of high school, Andreya Thomas and several other freshmen at Detroit’s Pershing High School learned they were enrolled in a class called J.R.O.T.C., or Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. School administrators told them the program was mandatory.
Funded by the U.S. military, the program required students to wear military uniforms in class, recite patriotic declarations, and obey orders from an instructor who often yelled at them. When several tried to drop the class, school officials refused permission, even though the Pentagon says that requiring students to take the programs runs counter to its guidelines. The New York Times recently learned that thousands of public-school students were enrolled in J.R.O.T.C. either as a requirement or through automatic enrollment. Most of the schools with high enrollment numbers were attended largely by nonwhite students and those from low-income households.
Critics of Junior ROTC say that the program’s militaristic discipline prioritizes obedience over independence and critical thinking. And as we reported earlier on Law and Disorder, and now noted by the Times, the program’s textbooks often rewrite or downplay the failings of the U.S. government. With its concentration in schools with low-income and nonwhite students, some claim J.R.O.T.C. encourages students to enlist in the military rather than explore other routes to college or jobs in the civilian economy.
Guest – Rick Jahnkow works for two San Diego-based anti-militarist organizations, the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, or YANO, and the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft. We spoke earlier with Rick about YANO’s J.R.O.T.C. textbook review project.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom
America was not founded as a Christian nation. Church and state were separated. The founding fathers were mostly deists, not Christians. They did not believe in a personal all powerful God that knew everything and intervened in human affairs
They separated church and state because they understood from European history that bad and bloody results resulted when the government acted in the name of God.
All this is changing in America now under the thumb of a right wing activist politicized majority on our Supreme Court. They were put there by an extremely well funded well organized conglomeration of ultra right wing figures and organizations. They have an agenda and they are carrying it out.
The newest Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett had a message for new lawyers. She said being a lawyer “is but it means to an end. … and the end is building the kingdom of God.“ This ascendant ultra-right wing can best be described as white Christian nationalists. These white Christian nationalists have won significant victories and are on roll. Taking away a woman’s right to control their own bodies in the recent overturn of Roe versus Wade is just the latest example. They have stacked the federal courts and particularly the Supreme Court where they have a 6 to 3 majority.
Guest – Andrew Seidel, author of American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom. He is a constitutional attorney with more than a decade of experience arguing about religion and law as a vice president at Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a director at the Freedom From Religion Foundation He is the author of “The Founding Myth” the definitive book which demonstrates that America’s not founded by Christians as a Christian country.
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John Pilger: The Coming War With China
Is China a threat to (the United States)? Is the fear being stirred up about China legitimate? We speak with 83-year-old renowned journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker John Pilger from his home in Australia about his most recent article The Coming War With China.
China has the second largest economy in the world. It will soon be the first. In response to China’s commercial threat the United States of America has responded militarily by surrounding the Chinese industrial heartland with 400 bases in what has been called “a noose“. The USA has some 1100 bases around the world, China has six.
President Obama initiated a multi trillion dollar vast nuclear buildup. This was coordinated with what he termed “a pivot towards Asia.” Most of the U.S. Navy now patrols the waters off of China. Tensions have been exacerbated with respect to who governs Taiwan.
The US Government has shored up it’s military alliances with the surrounding countries around China of South Korea, Japan the Philippines, and Australia, The USA is selling billions of dollars worth of nuclear submarines to Australia.
We live in a country whose government has been in a perpetual war the last 3/4 of a century, except with a brief interlude after its 20 year old war Vietnam ended in defeat. 3 million Vietnamese died in the American war.
Guest – John Pilger covered that war as a young reporter and understood that it was based on the lie that Lyndon Johnson told falsely stating that the North Vietnamese had attacked an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Another 1 million people died in the Iraq war That war was based on the now well known lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was going to use against us and that he was responsible for 911. A similar campaign of fear mongering is going on now about China. The major news media parrot the government’s fact free line that China is our enemy. In his article “The Coming War With China” John Pilger wrote “a US war against China beckons and we have a responsibility to speak out. We know what is coming. Silence must be broken.”
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Maria Hall
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