Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Iraq War, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Attorney Flint Taylor Update On The Marcus Smith Case In Greensboro, NC
Police in America kill more than 1500 citizens a year. That’s more than three a day and they’re disproportionately Black. Police killed more than 1500 people the year before the murder of George Floyd and in the year since his murder they’ve killed another 1500.
The latest outrageous case has come to the national fore in Greensboro, North Carolina where eight white cops killed Marcus Smith two years ago by hogtying him causing him to suffocate to death . Now they are being sued and they’re trying to cover it up and trying to silence the Smith family’s attorney Flint Taylor, drive him out of the state, and sanction him with heavy financial penalties.
So instead of banning hogtying, settling the case with the Smith family and issuing an apology, they are trying to silence the messenger.
Hogtying can be lethal. It’s done by handcuffing the victim behind his back, shackling his feet, and then tying the handcuffs to the feet bending him over backwards, chest first, in the street. Marcus Smith’s died of asphyxiation within a minute.
On September 8, 2018 Marcus Smith was suffering from a mental health crisis. He was brutally hogtied by the Greensboro North Carolina police officers. The family’s civil rights case is being litigated by Chicago Peoples Law Office attorneys Flint Taylor and Ben Elson, and by Greensboro lawyer Graham Holt. It is worthy of national attention.
The cops’ lawyers have been paid more than $1 million of taxpayer money to date to defend the case. They have escalated their attacks on the Smith family and are seeking to suppress all the damaging evidence that has come to light during the pretrial discovery in the case.
Guest – Flint Taylor of the Peoples Law Office. Taylor is a nationally recognized civil rights attorney. He represented the family of Fred Hampton demonstrating that the Chicago Police Department and the FBI were responsible for the assassination of the young Black Panther leader. He’s written the book “The Killing Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago”. He is one of the editors of the “Police Misconduct Law Reporter.
His recent publication The Torture Machine: Racism And Police Violence In Chicago.
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Phyllis Bennis: The Influence Of Think Tanks And IPS
With the growth of globalization on the heels of the Cold War, entities called Think Tanks grew rapidly during the late 1980s. Now, there are nearly 2,000 think tanks in the United States alone. Not surprisingly, more than 400 are located in the nation’s capital, with ready access to key policymakers. These entities play an outsized role in shaping the world we live in.
From national defense and technology, to social policy and economics, think tanks perform in-depth research on a range of topics. Some think tanks advocate for change by using this research and analytical reports to influence public opinion and help decision makers create policy agendas. It follows that many think tanks align along party lines. Funding for think tanks usually comes from endowments, government contracts, private donations, and sales of their reports.
While many think tanks are nonprofit organizations, some especially high-profile ideological ones advocate solutions that benefit their corporate donors. Often they are criticized for crossing the line between research and lobbying. Think tanks are classified according to their sources of funding and intended customers. Some think tanks, such as the Rand Corporation, receive direct government assistance; most others are funded by private individuals or corporate donors.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she is 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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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Truth to Power
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- Attorney Jim Lafferty Commentary on Solitary Confinement
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Steven Donziger Trial Set To Begin This Week
Sixty-year-old environmental lawyer Steven Donziger has been under house arrest without trial for the last 25 months on charges that normally have a max sentence of six months. To date this is the longest sentence imposed in New York on an attorney convicted of contempt. The contempt charges are from Donziger’s refusal to give his cellphone and computer to the court. We’ve been covering Chevron’s retaliation campaign against Donziger after he helped communities in Ecuador’s Amazon win a historic $9.5 billion judgment against the oil giant. His case showed how Chevron for deliberately dumped billions of gallons of carcinogenic oil water onto Indigenous ancestral lands. The multinational corporation enlisted 60 law firms and 2,000 attorneys to block Donziger’s advocacy. In the process they bankrupted his family, and intimidated environmental activists and allies internationally.
At last, Donziger’s trial is set to begin Monday, May 10. This case offers a play-by-play account of a private oil company set out to destroy an altruistic lawyer, environmental justice, corporate accountability, Indigenous rights, and free speech.
DonzigerDefense.com
ChevronToxico.com
ChevronInEcuador.com
Guest – Attorney Martin Garbus, one of three pro bono lawyers representing Donziger in an attempt to get his law license restored. Garbus has a long and distinguished career as a civil rights and first amendment litigator.
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International Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence in the US
As issues of violent policing nag at the American public’s consciousness, a new report finds the US guilty of crimes against humanity and other violations of international law. On April 27, the International Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence in the US Released its final Report on Racist Police Violence in the US. The report pulls together weeks of live hearings chronicling cases of people killed by police with African descent. The report also contains recommendations addressed to national and international policy makers.
The International Commission of Inquiry was organized by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and the National Lawyers Guild. A distinguished panel of international legal experts from eleven countries served as Commissioners. The full 188-page document is available at the Commission’s website as are videos and transcripts from the live hearings in 44 cases.
Guest – Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught from 1991-2016, and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She lectures, writes, and provides commentary for local, regional, national and international media outlets. Professor Cohn has served as a news consultant for CBS News and a legal analyst for Court TV, and a legal and political commentator on the BBC, CNN, NPR, and other major stations.
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
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Vaccine Passports, Privacy And Civil Liberties
New York State became the first in the country to premier a Covid-19 vaccine passport. They call it the Excelsior Pass and proponents say it’s a safe and efficient way for people to return to sporting events, concerts, Broadway theaters and other large group settings. You show a QR code proving a recent negative test or full vaccination.
The pass is voluntary and lets New Yorkers upload their official results—from a number of different vaccination sites and labs—into the system to verify that the person holding the pass meets the standards for entry. The state first used the pass at a Buffalo Bills football game in January after which they monitored attendees for 14 days after and discovered “almost negligible” transmission.
Registration in the program requires three pieces of information: Name, date of birth, and zip code. The pass is matched to vaccination and testing records using a series of questions to prevent fraud. When the person arrives at a venue, all they have to do is show a photo ID with their code, which will generate a green check mark at the venue.
New York state officials say they’ve been in close talks with surrounding states about integrating systems, but their neighbors say it’s not the priority. What are vaccine passports and who is considering implementing them? Connecticut, for example says it doesn’t have immediate plans to roll out a vaccine passport, although Governor Ned Lamont has said it’s possible to see private sector solutions if demand grows and if the technology is proven effective.
Guest – Attorney David J. McGuire, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut. McGuire also is the chair of the Connecticut Special Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, serves on the state’s Racial Profiling Prohibition Project Advisory Board, and is a member of the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System.
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Attorney Flint Taylor : Police Brutality And The Derek Chauvin Trial
The cruel and sadistic police murder of George Floyd last June on a Minneapolis sidewalk was videoed by a courageous 17 year old bystander. Her video was viewed by Americans across the country and the world. It captured Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, smirking, with one hand in his pocket as he knelt for 9 minutes and 29 seconds on George Floyd’s neck. Floyd was handcuffed behind his back and restrained by two other police officers at the time. He begged for his life, called for his mother, and repeatedly said “I can’t breathe!”
Onlookers gathered in protest as the murder progressed but their intersession was of no avail. George Floyd‘s life drained out of him. He lost his pulse. Still Chauvin persisted, kneeling on a dead man. An ambulance came to take away George Floyd’s corpse.
People responded, it was massive and sustained. In some two thousand cities across America 20 million people, white and Black , Black lead, protested in the streets. More than demanding that George Floyd’s killer be brought to justice, they demanded that police departments be defunded, that police be controlled by the community, and that ending police murders of Black people be brought to halt once and for all.
We are now in the midst of the trial of killer cop Derek Chauvin. Millions of Americans are watching the trial. It seems to them that this latest racist police outrage is the culmination of so many past murders. They are asking, what is to be done?
Guest – Attorney G. Flint Taylor is a founding partner of the People Law Office in Chicago starting out over 50 years ago representing the family of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, Who was assassinated by the Chicago Police Department with the help of the FBI. He has represented numerous police torture survivors during the past 33 years. Taylor was one of the lawyers involved in the struggle for reparations and has chronicled the decade long fight against Chicago police torture in his award-winning book “The Torture Machine : Racism and Violence in Chicago.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Impeachment, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Paul Robeson: Ballad of an American by Sharon Rudahl
Paul Robeson, like John Brown before him and Malcolm X after him, was an American of great courage and great accomplishments. Like John Brown and Malcolm the powers that be, vilified him and attempted to reduce him to obscurity. Robeson was born the son of a slave in Somerville, New Jersey In 1898. At Rutgers University he was a Phi Beta Kappa, graduated at the top of his class, and delivered the valedictorian speech. He won 16 letters in sports; football, baseball, track and field, and basketball. He had a beautiful bass voice and sang in the choir. He briefly played professional football and graduated from Columbia Law school.
He was an outstanding actor performing on both stage and screen in America and England. As a concert performer he traveled the world singing spirituals, labor songs, and folk songs of American Blacks. He was outspoken in support of civil rights, union struggles, anti-colonialism, and asserted himself as a socialist.
Because of this he was repressed by the reactionary forces in America in a period of time after World War II known as McCarthyism. In August 1949, a concert that he was to headline in Peekskill, New York was broken up by fascists. The next year a national concert tour had to be canceled because theaters refused to book him. His passport was taken away. He couldn’t travel. He was told he could have it back if he promised not to “ criticize the treatment of American Negroes in the US which should not be aired abroad.“
He was heard before the house un-American activities committee in 1956 and asked why he didn’t stay in Russia. He replied “because my father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I’m going to stay here.“ His films and recordings were taken out of circulation and he disappeared from textbooks and halls of fame. Of Paul Robeson, Cornell West has said that “he was an artistic genius moral titan and courageous freedom fighter whom we must never forget.“
Guest – Sharon Rudahl, author and artist who recently published graphic biography “Paul Robeson: Ballad of an American.” The book was edited by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware. Sharon Rudahl marched with Martin Luther King as a teenager and began her career as a cartoonist with anti-Vietnam war underground newspapers. She was one of the founders of the 1970s era feminist “Wimmen’s Comix.“ She is best known for her graphic biography “Emma Goldman: A Dangerous Woman.“
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Constitutional Scholar Stephen Rohde On Impeachment
The American people are enmeshed in and victimized by four overlapping, intertwined and perhaps irreversible crises. They are medical, economic, racial, and political. The Covid 19 virus has infected over 25 million people. It has killed at least 430,000 of us and it rages on unchecked. Half the people in the US are poor or near poor. Twenty million or more are unemployed and their numbers are growing. Hunger and homelessness are widespread. Racism has been institutionalized in our country ever since its founding as a white settler colonial state. Politically except for the scattering of a few progressives there really is no party or leadership that represents the interests of the vast majority of our people.
Former president Donald Trump has been impeached by the Democrats in the House and will stand trial in the Senate beginning the week of February 8th.
He received 75 million votes in the 2020 election, more than he received when he won in 2016. Even though he lost last November his power is barely diminished. He will likely be acquitted of the charge of inciting an insurrection on January 6th. With the help of most of the 50 Republican senators the Democrats won’t be able to get the 60 necessary votes to convict him and prevent him from running for president again. Thus he will continue to control the Republican Party.
There is the possibility of his running again that helps keep him as the powerful leader he has become and keeps the Republicans in line, fearful as they are of being primaried and losing their own power and privilege. Only a few Republicans have shown the integrity and courage to oppose this venal, cruel and cunning man.
Guest – Attorney Stephen Rohde is a constitutional scholar, lecturer, writer, political activist and retired civil rights lawyer. He is a founder and Chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, past President of the ACLU of Southern California, and a Past Chair of Bend the Arc: a Jewish Partnership for Justice. He is the author of two books American Words of Freedom: The Words That Define Our Nation and Freedom of Assembly and co-author of Foundations of Freedom: A Living History of Our Bill of Rights. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Truthout and American Prospect, and is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, War Resister
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- GTMO Commentary By Lawyers Guild Show Host Jim Lafferty
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Brian Becker on Inauguration Protests, Security and Reform
Americans have protested incoming presidents throughout history, starting in the 19th century. Four years ago, thousands descended on the nation’s capital this to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration, and more than 200 were arrested. The day before President Woodrow Wilson took office in 1913, up to 8,000 women marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in what one historian says was likely the first large-scale inauguration protest. The suffragists, who’d gotten a parade permit, were pushed, spat upon, and beaten. Many women were hospitalized, and the treatment of the women led to the firing of the capital’s police chief.
In 1969, anti-war protesters threw burning miniature flags and stones at police during Richard Nixon’s inauguration. During Nixon’s 1973 inauguration, a ‘massive anti-war protest was staged at the Lincoln Memorial, with an estimated 100,000 people were present and participated in a “March against Death.” 80 Congressmen joined the demonstrations and boycotted the inaugural ceremonies.
The demonstrations at Bush’s inauguration in 2001 were the first major protests at a presidential inauguration since the protests against Nixon in 1969 and 1973. At least 20,000 people demonstrated in the capital and along the inaugural parade route in defiance of the Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore. “Selected not elected” and “Hail to the thief” were some of the slogans on signs at the protest. Four years later, more than 1,000 demonstrators were at Bush’s inauguration, largely to protest the Iraq war, as the president was sworn in for his second term.
Two weeks before the Biden inauguration, Trump-loving lawbreakers ransacked the Capitol building. Combined with the COVID pandemic, last week’s inauguration was pared down, and a ring of law enforcement encircled the metropolis.
Guest – Brian Becker, director of the ANSWER Coalition and host of The Socialist Program podcast.
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A Path Forward: Professor Jack Rasmus
The word “chaos“ best describes the current American situation. Public health, an economic disaster, institutional racism, and political turbulence were rampant as Trump vacated the White House. America leads the world in the number of COVID-19 cases. The number of deaths, which are now over 400,000, are mounting rapidly.
The economy is in terrible shape.. Perhaps 20 million people are unemployed. Small businesses are shuttered. Millions face eviction. Hunger is rampant, especially among children. What does the future hold? Are we really free of Trump and Trumpism? What will Biden do?
Centrist Democrats like Biden, since the remaking of the Democratic Party beginning with neo-liberal Clinton, have not vigorously defended the social gains secured in the 1930s with the Roosevelt New Deal. Will Biden defend these? Will he extend them?
Can he do this by governing from the center?What does his proposed $1.9 trillion rescue package consist of? Will Bidens proposals hold up in Congress? Is there more needed?
Guest – Dr. Jack Rasmus, he holds a PhD in political economy and teaches at Saint Mary’s College in California. Professor Rasmus has written numerous books and articles on economics and is the host of the weekly radio show “ Alternative Visions“ on the Progressive Radio Network.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court
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Christian Nationalism Vs The U.S. Constituton
Two weeks ago the United States Supreme Court made a 5 to 4 decision in the case of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agadith Israel of America versus Governor Mario Cuomo which reversed a precedent and crashed through the wall separating church and state.
The men who wrote United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights,which separated church and state, were mostly non-Christians. America was not created as a Christian country. That is a myth. Nor was it founded on Judeo Christian principles. This is another myth. The founding fathers were deists. They were products of the enlightenment. They did not believe in a god that played any role in human affairs. They understood from European history the terrible consequences of not separating church and state.
Today’s Christian nationalists and evangelicals, mostly Trump supporters, are relentless in their attempts to tear down the wall of separation. These people have substantial political power. They are much of Trump’s base. They succeeded in getting Amy Comey Barrett appointed to the Supreme Court.
Two weeks ago she along with four reactionary Catholic judges, Alito, Kavanaugh ,Thomas and Gorsuch, prevented Governor Cuomo and his scientific advisors from limiting the number of people who attend Roman Catholic and ultra Orthodox Jewish services in Brooklyn. This decision will cost lives in New York and nationally as it ties the hands of governments trying to limit the human toll of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Guest – Attorney Andrew Seidel, a Constitutional litigator with the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the author of the just published book The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American.
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Matt Meyer: Movement Building Post-Trump
In a 2018 Gallup poll half of Americans called the state of moral values in the United States “poor,” and 37 percent say moral values are “only fair.” Over the past four years, a perfect storm of incompetence, misinformation, and reckless decisions by Donald Trump have left a stain not just on moral values but also on democratic institutions and the rule of law. In a chillingly politicized decision, for example, the new overtly right-wing Supreme Court has signaled its preference for religion over public health in its first opinion limiting states’ rights to protect residents from the Covid-19 virus.
As we transition from what no doubt will go down in history as the worst presidential administration in American history, much of the nation is plagued by widespread depression and hopelessness. But bad times for the country provide new opportunities for social justice organizing.
Longtime activist and writer Matt Meyer’s recent blog for Waging NonViolence is called “6 ways to stay focused on movement-building amid the post-election chaos.” He offers concrete suggestions—in effect a moral assignment for the masses– for surviving, and acting—in the wake of four exhausting years under a divisive narcissist.
For more information on David Gilbert
Guest – Matt Meyer, author of several books on resistance and social change chiefly published by PM Press and Africa World Press. He is the Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association, a long-time leader of both the War Resisters League and Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Senior Research Scholar of the Resistance Studies Initiative, and an advisory board member of Waging Nonviolence. He is also on the board of the New York-based A.J. Muste Institute, funding grassroots activist initiatives for half a century.
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