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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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Political Prisoner, War Resister
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Speaking In Turkish: Denying the Armenian Genocide
Around the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th century.
The unspeakable and gruesome nature of the killings—beheadings of groups of babies, dismemberments, mass burnings, mass drownings, use of toxic gas, lethal injections of morphine or injections with the blood of typhoid fever patients—render oral histories particularly difficult for survivors of the victims.
Why did this happen? Despite being deemed inferior to Turkish Muslims, the Armenian community had attained a prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire and the central authorities there grew apprehensive of their power and longing for a homeland. The concerted plan of deportation and extermination was effected, in large part, because World War I demanded the involvement and concern of potential allied countries. As the writer Grigoris Balakian wrote, the war provided the Turkish government “their sole opportunity, one unprecedented” to exploit the chaos of war in order to carry out their extermination plan.
As Armenians escaped to several countries, including the United States, a number came to New Britain, Connecticut in 1892 to work in the factories of what was then known as the hardware capital of the world. By 1940 nearly 3,000 Armenians lived there in a tight-knit community.
Pope Frances calls it a duty not to forget “the senseless slaughter” of an estimated one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. “Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,” the Pope said just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race.
Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.
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Censorship, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Iraq War, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Attorney James Goodale On Julian Assange Arrest
Last week, at the behest of the U.S. government, police entered the Ecuadorian Embassy and arrested Julian Assange on charges of espionage. This case promises to threaten the First Amendment rights of all journalists. We’re honored to have one of the nation’s foremost authorities on First Amendment law, Attorney James Goodale. In the April edition of the Atlantic, he wrote an article titled, Why Julian Assange deserves First Amendment Protection.
Listeners may recall that last fall, a court filing inadvertently suggested that the Justice Department had indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other outlets reported soon after that Assange had likely been secretly indicted for conspiring with his sources to publish classified government material and hacked documents belonging to the Democratic National Committee, among other things.
Assange started WikiLeaks in 2006 to provide a place for newsworthy information to be confidentially released. The site came gained prominence when Assange obtained thousands of classified documents relating to the Iraq War from US Army soldier Chelsea (born Bradley) Manning.
Guest – Attorney James C. Goodale has represented The New York Times in four of its cases to go to the Supreme Court: the Pentagon Papers case (The New York Times Co. v. The U.S.), The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (libel), Branzburg v. Hayes (see below) and The New York Times Co. v. Tasini, (digital rights). He developed the argument that the Espionage Act does not apply to publishers or the press.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the U.S. Government could not stop the Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, holding that prior restraints were barred by the First Amendment unless the publication “will surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our Nation or its people.” He became known as the “father of the reporter’s privilege.” A prolific writer, he has written two books on the First Amendment, The New York Times v. The U.S. and All About Cable, and approximately 200 articles, particularly on the role of the press in the Information Revolution.
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Al Otro Lado and the Border Crisis
United States President Donald Trump said that we have a “crisis” on the border. He called it an “infestation” and said that “These aren’t people. These are animals.” Last week he fired Kirstjen Nielsen who as the head of the Department for Homeland Security pursued the most aggressive enforcement strategy of any secretary in the history of the organization. Nielsen and the Trump administration has separated children from their parents and instituted an illegal turn back policy using tactics to restrict the numbers of asylum-seekers who want to access the asylum process at points of entry like Tijuana and El Paso.
Tactics used by the administration include lies, intimidating coercion, verbal abuse, physical force, out right denial of access, unreasonable delay, threats, and family separation. The Center for Constitution Rights is currently representing Al Otro Lado, a legal and human rights organization that helps migrants at the border. They are challenging the U S. Customs and Border Patrol on its turnaround policy in a pending lawsuit.
Last month CCR’s chairwoman of the board and Columbia Law Professor Katherine Franke met six students in Tijuana Mexico, across the border from San Diego, California, to advise migrants on what they will face in the hands of US legal authorities.
- Al Otro Lado provides essential legal support to migrants to prepare them for the asylum process in the U.S. You can support here.
- Santa Fe Dreamers also provides free legal support to immigrants, with a particular focus on transgender immigrants.
- Please visit this site if you are interested in contributing to the parole/bail fund for detainees.
- If you are interested in serving as a sponsor for an asylum seeker.
- This video offers a very good portrait of the situation at Chaparral where La Lista is maintained and asylum seekers wait for their number to be called.
Guest – Attorney Katherine Franke, is the Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Columbia University, where she also directs the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and is the faculty director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project (Formerly the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project). She is a member of the Executive Committee for the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, and the Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation’s leading scholars writing on law, religion and rights, drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory.
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Civil Liberties, Crony Capitalism, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Truth to Power
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Updates:
Attorney Chesa Boudin: Prison and Cash Bail Reform
Recently we have seen people who are progressives run for the office of prosecutor in cities across the country. This is an office which many people associate with police departments with whom they closely work. The new crop of reform minded prosecutors are saying that the criminal justice system is broken, that it is costly, classist, and racist. They say it is ineffective in keeping people safe and that 2/3 of the people convicted wind up back in prison in a few years.
Guest – Attorney Chesa Boudin who is currently an Assistant Public Defender in San Francisco. He is running for the office of district attorney in that city. The ideas for reform in the criminal justice system that he has put forward in his campaign are receiving wide attention and considerable support. Boudin was instrumental in getting the discriminatory practice of cash bail eliminated in San Francisco.
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OxyContin Epidemic And the Sackler Family
In March, the maker of OxyContin and the family that owns the company, reached a $270 million settlement with the state of Oklahoma over the painkiller’s role in the nation’s opioid crisis. Purdue Pharma is based in Stamford, CT and is controlled by the Sackler Family.
The money will go toward creating a National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa. The deal comes two months before Oklahoma’s lawsuit against Purdue and other pharmaceuticals blamed for the crisis was set to go to trial.
Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin more than two decades ago, marketing the highly addictive drug aggressively to physicians. It has made billions of dollars from the drug but faces approximately 2,000 lawsuits from state and local governments trying to hold the company responsible for deadly epidemic.
The Centers for Disease Control reports the prescription opioids like OxyContin were a factor in a record 48,000 deaths across the U.S. in 2017.
Purdue Pharma has settled other lawsuits over the years, and three executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges in 2007. But this is the first settlement to come out of the current coast-to-coast wave of litigation that focuses on the company’s more recent conduct and threatens to drive it to bankruptcy.
Guest – Liz Whyte, an award-winning reporter for the investigation news organization the Center for Public Integrity. Politics of Pain Report. She is a reporter for the Consider the Source state politics team, where her investigative work has won awards from the National Press Club, Editor & Publisher, the Association of Health Care Journalists, the New York Press Club and local chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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