CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Torture
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Campaign To Release Russell Shoatz From Solitary Confinement Into General Population
Last year, the National Lawyers Guild called on Superintendent Louis Folino to support the Program Review Board’s recommendation to release Russell Maroon Shoatz into the general prison population at SCI Greene in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. As many listeners may know, Russell Maroon Shoatz has been held as a political prisoner under intense lockdown spending no more than one hour a day outside of his cell for the past 21 of those years. He was locked up in 1972 for his activity as a member of the Black Liberation Army. We follow up on the international campaign to release Shoatz. The effort was launched in New York City and London and sponsored by the Scientific Soul Sessions.
Theresa Shoatz:
- He goes before the Program Review Board every 90 days, its about 68 visits since he’s been in solitary confinement. He hasn’t had any infractions in 30 years.
- If you look at that, they don’t intend to release him into general population.
- It’s a check-off, how has response been around the guards? What’s your response when you’re taken to the shower?
- Russell had become disappointed with the Program Review Committee and said “I’m not going anymore.”
- I called the Program Review Committee at SCI Greene, and said we’re getting tired of this no-movement forward.
- They said they look down on that as not cooperating with the prison. We look at as they’re not cooperating with all the rules they set forth. There is a step down program, they don’t use it as much as they should.
- When you talk about holding one person in solitary confinement, he has to be transferred, whatever his movement, to the shower, to the one hour cage, it takes two guards.
- SCI Greene released at least 20 prisoners from solitary confinement who they had no intention of releasing but because the state budget is in jeopardy now.
- They left Daddy back there. Daddy’s approaching 70 years of age, he hasn’t had an infraction in 30 years, you would’ve thought he’d be the perfect person for this step down program, and we questioned that.
- When I talk to the staff in solitary confinement, they all say he needs to be general population.
- Superintendent Folino retires in 2 years and I think he may want to slide out without releasing him into population.
- Russell escaped in 1977, in the 80s, he was in population at SCI Pittsburgh.
- He had been voted the first black president of the Lifers Association.
- Folino states that he is a leader and he is to remain in solitary. The director of the Program Review Committee actually stated that he is a leader. Obviously Theresa, you don’t know he’s a leader?
- Outside of him being a leader, he’s been able to withstand this 23 hour a day lockdown.
- I do see there are some changes with Russell. I’m talking emotionally, he’s very distraught now.
- I’m shocked that he hasn’t totally broken down.
- He gets a lot of mail. He’s busy with letter writing.
- I found there have been a lot of suicides in SCI Greene’s solitary confinement unit. Boys in their twenties hanging themselves. You don’t hear about it.
- This is torture. In 2005, there were 80 thousand people in solitary confinement.
- Juan Mendez’s report on Russell Maroon Shoatz
- My focus is on getting Maroon into population. I’m concerned with stopping the expansion of prisons being built. It costs millions of dollars to build new prisons, instead of using that for education for prisoners being released.
- Put that money back into public schools instead of building new prisons.
- We’re being assaulted by this present day prison system and our government nor our state seems to mind locking up folks or taking away money from our public school education and putting it into prisons.
- Congressional Hearing on Solitary Confinement
- hrcoalition.org / Russell Maroon Shoatz
Guest – Theresa Shoatz, a Philadelphia-based prison justice activist and the daughter of Russell Shoatz.
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Glenn Greenwald: Challenging the Surveillance State, Breeding Conformists
Glenn Greenwald, author and contributor (columnist and blogger) to Salon.com. During his book tour for the release of With Liberty and Justice for Some, (paper back release) he gave a impactful speech in Chicago titled Challenging the Surveillance State.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, RFID, Truth to Power
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Updates:
- Supreme Court Decision on Immigration Discussion
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Supreme Court Decision on Immigration
Last week the Supreme Court delivered a split decision on Arizona’s 2010 immigration law, upholding the most controversial section of that law, “show me your papers” provision. The provision requires police officers to check the immigration status of all people stopped, detained, or arrested presumed there is “reasonable suspicion” to believe that the person is an undocumented immigrant. Reasonable suspicion can include objective factors but it also includes subjective factors, the person is nervous, doesn’t look the officer in the eyes. Despite people claiming the Supreme Court decision was a victory for immigration advocates, it wasn’t at all.
Attorney Cathy Albisa:
- My reaction is that we’re not having the right conversation.
- There was an involved technical decision regarding the federal government and the state government.
- The one thing that was lost except for a couple of lines, was the people at the heart of this problem.
- The people who’ve been displaced from their home countries through the global economy, and stripped of legal person hood, and now living in a constant state of fear. It’s a reflection of what a degraded state of politics we’re in.
- That if you pass a law that shocks the conscience, the fact that you got rid of some of it or most of it becomes a victory.
- The claims of victory are in themselves very troubling signs.
- Our expectations have become so low, that we consider it a step forward.
- At the heart of the law is an intent, to treat this group of people differently from other groups of people in the state of Arizona.
- What does that kind of racism do, what does that kind of living under constant threat do to a community, to a person and to a set of human rights, that we all should be defending?
- Immigration has always been a divide and conquer from the xenophobic side of the isle.
- If we assessed it that we live in a global economy, that rights cross borders. If people and capital can cross borders, protection can cross borders.
- Why are they here? If you look at the reason they cross borders, it’s economic.
- They’re displaced for economic reasons. We don’t look at the grinding poverty that displaces people as a rights question.
- The ones that want to hold are organizing and demanding their rights.
- www.nesri.org
- There are sheriffs across the country that object to these policies and refuse to implement these policies who say this does not keep our community safe.
- They (ICE) can literally create a life of ongoing terror for people, because they know they can be deported at any time.
Guest – Attorney Cathy Albisa, constitutional and human rights lawyer with a background on the right to health. Ms. Albisa also has significant experience working in partnership with community organizers in the use of human rights standards to strengthen advocacy in the United States. She co-founded NESRI along with Sharda Sekaran and Liz Sullivan in order to build legitimacy for human rights in general, and economic and social rights in particular, in the United States. She is committed to a community-centered and participatory human rights approach that is locally anchored, but universal and global in its vision. Ms. Albisa clerked for the Honorable Mitchell Cohen in the District of New Jersey. She received a BA from the University of Miami and is a graduate of Columbia Law School
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RFID: Microchips and US Soldiers / Search Engine Privacy
Today we get an update on the extent to which RFID technology is intruding in our daily lives. As many listeners may know, RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. In past shows we’ve discussed how big companies are embedding, or plan to embed, the so-called “Spychip” into clothes, credit cards, shoes and even into human flesh, all in the name of convenience, safety and commerce. The breach of civil liberties from spychip implantation is wide-reaching. Now, however, plans to develop implantable microchips for use in U.S. soldiers has taken a step forward. The U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has confirmed plans to create nano-sensors to monitor the health of soldiers on battlefields.
Dr. Katherine Albrecht:
- What I discovered in 2003, some of the largest corporations, 500 of them had gotten together to come up with a plan to replace the barcode with tiny microchips hooked with tiny antennas.
- Now this initially was the brainchild of Proctor and Gamble to take the universal product code or the bar code and turn it into the EBC, the Electronic Bar Code. Their concept is that we would create, or the manufacturers and retailers of the world would create an internet of things.
- I was once going off to give a speech on RFID and I stopped and made an inventory of all the things I was wearing and carrying in their vision of the future, that would have an RFID tag. It was my shoes, the underwear, my stockings, my skirt, my purse, my briefcase, my notebook.
- Proctor and Gamble came up with an idea we detailed in our book to equip your refrigerator to the coming smart grid with RFID readers. They describe that – we would know when the consumer drank the last Pepsi and as if by magic ads on their TV would appear for Coke. The idea is that they would monitor what you’re eating.
- Monitor what you would run out of. There definitely are patents and plans, some of them creepier than others.
- I actually worked closely with the Associated Press to release the information that the microchip the implantable Verichip, you can take this microchip antenna and encapsulate in glass, and inject it into people.
- It’s the identical technology they put in to dogs and cats nowadays.
- There is a company that keeps changing its name – Verichip / Applied Digital Solutions / Digital Angel /
- They are trying to market this product for use in human beings. We did a 6 month investigation that revealed that these implantable microchips were causing cancer.
- We’ve got communities all around the country that have been mandated the use of microchips in dogs. There have been a number of dogs that have died from the microchip causing a cancerous tumor.
- ChipMeNot.com
- Privacy is not an ends. It’s a means. Privacy is a way of you maintaining control over your own information.
- Don’t put anything on facebook that you wouldn’t want put up on a billboard in Times Square.
- Where I get concerned is places where your privacy is invaded, that you don’t know what’s happening and you don’t have control over it.
- That’s not facebook, that’s getting in to Google.
- When you log on to Google, you think you’re logging on to a search engine that’s a helpful tool that’s going answer a question that you have.
- Google doesn’t view the google.com search box as a helpful tool for you.
- They’re not your Mom, they’re not your Dad, Google is a company that is in business to make money.
- The reality is if they came at us with guns and tanks, and laws and regulations forcing us to do that, we’d all say heck no,
- When Google gives us a little window that we type in what’s in our minds, we voluntarily do it and we thank them for it.
- Google is a multi-billion dollar corporation. When is the last time a multi-billion dollar corporation gave you all of its products for free? The answer is never, because those aren’t products they’re bait. You are the product.
- Every Gmail that you receive is read and copied and keywords are placed into the profile from both the sender and the recipient of every email. You’re not doing anything wrong but you certainly don’t that information out there in a giant database.
- If you’re using a Gmail account, if your client is using a Gmail account, and you don’t. If you are transmitting sensitive information I believe you’re not only in violation of attorney-client privileges but potentially even violation of the law.
- In exchange for that (free email service) you are allowing them to copy everything that you send.
- We recently ran across a (DARPA) proposal, a request for contractors to develop a system to inject micro-nano- chips into the bloodstream of soldiers that would allow them to remotely monitor the physiological processes of the soldier. Websites.
Guest – Dr. Katherine Albrecht, who along with Liz McIntyre authored “Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID. We talk about DARPA and microchips and we’ll also get a preview about Katherine Albrecht’s research into exposing how Google email is a threat to privacy between attorney / client correspondence. www.startpage.com
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Hydraulic Fracturing, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, Uncategorized, War Resister
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Updates:
- Occupy Chicago Tribune Getting Sued Under World Property Intellectual Organization
- Julian Assange Applies For Political Asylum – Twitter @justleft / @wlcentral
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Austerity and Coalition Government in Greece
Last week we discussed the popularity of the Syriza Party, Greece’s skyrocketed unemployment and the huge military contracts Greece is locked into with France and Germany. In part two of our interview with Greek-American National Lawyers Guild attorney Eric Poulos we discuss the assembling of the coalition government in Greece and the economic implication.
Attorney Eric Poulos:
- New Democracy and Syriza’s the left wing coalition opposed to the bailout got the most votes. New Democracy got about 2 percent more which is the conservative center right party.
- Syriza got 27 percent. The Social Democrats did terribly and got only 14 percent.
- The fascist party the Golden Dawn unfortunately kept the same percentage. The one part that lost a lot of votes was the Communist Party.
- Almost 40 percent of the voters did not vote. I think people are just worn out.
- Everybody across the board has taken a 15 percent reduction in pay.
- New Democracy Party will be appointed Prime Minister.
- Fifty percent of the cops voted for the fascist party – Golden Dawn
- Greece is a country that was occupied by Hitler and caused untold loss and devastation.
- This coalition that ran Syriza is a coalition which is 12 or 13 different groups.
- The election is incredible in that it changed nothing, it changed everything, because the same parties will be ruling.
- The people of Greece continue to suffer, it doesn’t create one job. It doesn’t help to pay for one prescription.
- It’s not just Greece, it’s Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland too.
- I think the only hope is that they can hook up with other countries with united action to fight against the European Union policies.
- There has to be an upsurge in the fight against the fascists in Greece.
Guest – Attorney Eric Poulos, writer and National Lawyers Guild member.
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Reverend Billy and the Spectra Pipeline Protest Event
The plans to bring a 30 inch gas pipeline through the West Village of Manhattan is on the fast track with the support of Mayor Bloomberg. Spectra Pipeline is the company that will deliver the high pressure natural gas hydrofracked from the Marcellus Shale deposits. A heavily protested and contentious process itself. According to an expert radioactive waste this natural gas can contain radon 70 times above normal. Radon is a tasteless odorless gas created naturally during radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and radium. The EPA reports radon causes 21 thousand deaths from lung cancer each year. NO PIPELINE AT THE HIGHLINE – JULY 1, 2012 worship service and political rally
Reverend Billy:
- Our basic mission statement . . .stop shopping children. Our basic mission statement has remain the same over 10 years now. The project of Guiliani and Bloomberg to turn our great city into a suburb.
- It was WBAI project, Cornell West, Chris Hedges, we sang and were the house choir. The jury of those great peers found Goldman Sachs guilty of robbing from us and charged them with 87 billion dollars I believe.
- We sat down and lock arms in the old civil rights position. A nice circle of locked arms.
- Out of the 15 that got arrested, I was about the 8th to leave the fold. I think that eight of them will be the Blankfein 8. It’s a lifestyle change, if you’re really gonna go all the way with these . . . we weren’t blocking anybody. . it was symbolic.
- Those ziplock handcuffs they have, they yank on them. In the precinct house an hour later your hand is purple and I had a numb thumb for six months.
- Sometimes shopping is a chain store that buys sweat shop goods, and sometimes its our consumption of power. How do we heat? How do we use electricity?
- That of course is decisive in terms of climate change, which has increasingly become everybody’s politics.
- We’ve kept fracking out of upstate New York to some degree, but Cuomo is going to let it in to some degree.
- They want to come from the Far Rockaways with a pipe called the Constitution and they’re coming under the Hudson River and appearing into the Meat Packing district.
- It’s mysterious Cheney was able to keep the report of what those chemicals are from the American people.
- We have a 700 seat house there and we’re going to take the audience over two blocks to where the pipeline is to surface.
- I don’t think the consumer society makes prosperity.
- A lot of the communities in our country where people are watching television all day, eating sugar and fat and unable to operate, where the kids go into the pipeline of jail. . .needs the energetic compassion of change.
- We’re becoming our own third world here, we need to pay attention to our communities. Get those Wall Street companies out of our communities and ask ourselves what do we have that makes value here? Right under foot, right in my neighborhood.
- It begins with living on less money, but begins with finding value in what we do with our lives.
- You go up the counties where Cuomo is exploding their aquifers, this just makes it worse.
- Some people are going to get a 100 thousand dollar check. It reminds me of the wrong person winning the lottery.
- NO PIPELINE AT THE HIGHLINE – JULY 1, 2012 worship service and political rally
Guest – Reverend Billy, (Bill Talen) A student of the writers Charles Gaines and Kurt Vonnegut, Talen has staged experimental plays, published essays and poems in Philadelphia, New York and California. At Life On the Water, a theater in San Francisco’s Fort Mason Theater, Talen presented artists such as Spalding Gray, Mabou Mines, David Cale, B. D. Wong, Holly Hughes, William Yellow Robe, the Red Eye Collective, Reno, John Trudeau, and Danny Glover reciting the works of Langston Hughes. This experience in producing led him to the confessional monologue. After studying with the cleric Reverend Sidney Lanier, Talen invented “a new kind of American preacher.” Lanier, the cousin of Tennessee Williams and subject of the work Night of the Iguana, was familiar with the re-staging of biblical narratives
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Lawyers You’ll Like: Attorney Nancy Hollander
In this week’s Lawyers You’ll Like series, we’re joined by attorney Nancy Hollander. Nancy has been a member and partner with Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A. since the early 80s. Her practice is devoted to mostly criminal cases including those involved with national security. Ms. Hollander has also argued and won a religious freedom case in the US Supreme Court. She’s served as a consultant to the defense in a high profile terrorism case in Ireland – and she represents 2 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
Attorney Nancy Hollander:
- I was a community organizer with JOIN, Jobs or income now.
- We organized Appalachian migrants to Chicago. I wrote a book that I co-authored with Todd Gitlin called Uptown.
- I became a photographer, I learned how to develop film in the basement of Jessie Jackson’s church. I was in Cleveland for a time and then came to New Mexico, became the Executive Director of the New Mexico Civil Liberties Union, then went to law school.
- I worked as a riveter in a football equipment factory.
- It looked like that whole began when I met with Vietnamese women in Indonesia 1964. I met with women from North and South Vietnam.
- We all met at the embassy, and I thought, that was odd meeting, and that was the beginning of my CIA file.
- I represent 2 people (in Guantanamo Prison) one is Mohamado Ould Slahi, he’s a Mauratanian citizen, he was there from almost the beginning.
- We won his habeas case, the judge ordered him almost immediately released.
- After ten years, the government said they didn’t have the preponderance of evidence to keep him.
- The government appealed, the case got remanded, and we’re essentially starting over.
- They changed what they accused him of continuously. He’s never been tried, he was tortured.
- The rule of law has become the law of changing rules.
- I got a security clearance and learned about SEPA and OFAC, the Office Of Foreign Asset Controls.
- We originally represented the Holy Land Foundation in its fight against the designated and some other civil litigation.
- They were charged and convicted of providing charity.
- The law is very fluid and lawyers have a lot of power. Our power is to make change and to create miracles in some cases. There have been something like 100 terrorism cases tried in New York alone since 9/11
Guest – Attorney Nancy Hollander has been a member of the firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan, P.A. since 1980 and a partner since 1983. Her practice is largely devoted to criminal cases, including those involving national security issues. She has also been counsel in numerous civil cases, forfeitures and administrative hearings, and has argued and won a case involving religious freedom in the United States Supreme Court. (see decision) Ms. Hollander also served as a consultant to the defense in a high profile terrorism case in Ireland, has assisted counsel in other international cases and represents two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Nancy is co-author of WestGroup’s Everytrial Criminal Defense Resource Book, Wharton’s Criminal Evidence, 15th Edition, and Wharton’s Criminal Procedure, 14th Edition. She has appeared on national television programs as PBS Now, Burden of Proof, the Today Show, Oprah Winfrey, CourtTV, and the MacNeill/Lehrer News Hour.
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The Moral Challenge of ‘Kill Lists’ by Ray McGovern
The Obama Administration has conducted hundreds of drone strikes in several countries, killing civilians and a US citizen. Critics point out that as the Obama Administration assassinates its’ suspects, it also avoids the legal complications of detention. In last week’s New York Times, authors Jo Becker and Scott Shane expose the priest-like role of counter terrorist adviser John Brennan as he provides Mr. Obama with the moral justification for extrajudicial murder. The framing of John Brennan’s role of priestly adviser caught Ray McGovern’s attention. His recent article The Moral Challenge of Kill Lists, dissects the New York Times story.
Ray McGovern:
- There has been a geometric increase in the number of drone strikes against Pakistan and of course Somalia and Yemen.
- London based bureau for investigative journalism estimates that about 830 civilians including women and children may have been killed by drone attacks in Pakistan. 138 in Yemen, and 57 in Somalia. It’s incredibly naive to think that this helps in any way in the war on terrorism.
- This wonderfully insightful and dangerous New York Times article a week ago talked about the conundrum of aligning these activities with US legal and moral principles. Conundrum? That’s an impossibility.
- The Fifth Amendment prevents this sort of thing if you take the interpretation we’ve always had.
- As the New York Times article mentions 1 out of 30 assassinations that are known about just one escaped assassination and was brought before a court. It’s much easier to kill them.
- If you wanted to learn about al-Qaeda, don’t you think Osama Bin Laden could’ve told us some stuff about al-Qaeda?
- Any military aged male in the area of a “bad guy” is fair game.
- Maybe I can draw from my own experience in the CIA, I know about lists. I know that when there was a coup attempt in Indonesia in 1965, that there were lists given to the Indonesian authorities of communists. How many communists on that list? A million. How many were killed, were murdered? 500 thousand plus. How many were put in prison? The other 500 thousand.
- The drones are really accurate but the target information is notoriously inaccurate.
- I love Fordham and I hate to see the administration and the very wealthy trustees who have lots of money to give to Fordham, determine who comes in to give the commencement address.
- I think that you have to have some kind of personal involvement with innocent suffering. I think that you have to have some sense of the injustice others suffer to let your heart be touched by this direct experience.
- Obama’s fallen in with a rough crowd.
- I was attracted to getting outside of my Catholic walls. There’s a small church down in Washington DC called the Church of the Savior.
- I found out they were doing wonderful things like preventing housing from being gentrified so poor people can still live there. Healthcare, jobs, addictions, a hospice for people to sick to be on the street.
- There’s been one major change for the good in this country. That is Occupy.
- When you look for proof that Occupy has incredible potential, look no farther than what the president and the top senators thought necessary to inject into the NDAA on New Year’s Eve, which allows them to use the US Army of all things to wrap us all up without charge, without court proceedings.
Guest – Raymond L. McGovern, retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents in the past 27 years. Ray’s opinion pieces have appeared in many leading newspapers here and abroad. His website writings are posted first on consortiumnews.com, and are usually carried on other websites as well. He has debated at the Oxford Forum and appeared on Charlie Rose, The Newshour, CNN, and numerous other TV & radio programs and documentaries. Ray has lectured to a wide variety of audiences here and abroad. Ray studied theology and philosophy (as well as his major, Russian) at Fordham University, from which he holds two degrees. He also holds a Certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University. A Catholic, Mr. McGovern has been worshipping for over a decade with the ecumenical Church of the Saviour and teaching at its Servant Leadership School. He was co-director of the school from 1998 to 2004. Ray came from his native New York to Washington in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
- Law and Disorder Tip of the Hat Award – EPIC – DHS Words
- Julian Assange Case Update – Extradition In Sweden – Hillary Clinton Going To Sweden
- Bradley Manning Support Committee
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Wisconsin Governor Recall Election
As many listeners may know, it’s a crucial week for Wisconsin and perhaps the country. Since February of last year, Wisconsin’s left leaning capitol city has been filled with demonstrations, mass mobilization, and amazing citizen activism that has led up to the Governor’s recall election this week. This also comes after 30 thousand volunteers throughout the state gathered more than a million signatures on recall petitions. It’s been framed by United Wisconsin, the group who organized the recall, as the ability of the people in Wisconsin to control their own destiny versus money from millionaires outside the state. Governor Walker has made deep cuts to public education, he’s taken away public worker bargaining rights, and has moved to take away state legislature open meetings.
Ruth Conniff:
- What’s going on here is a grassroots rebellion of a corporate take over of our state.
- It’s been a really dramatic time here beginning Walker in his own words, dropped the bomb by ending public employees collective bargaining rights, etc.
- It’s been out and out war on society here.
- What we’ve seen in response to this very right wing radical take over is a democratic movement that is almost unprecedented. Hundreds of thousands of people in these mass rallies a year ago and now this grass roots petition drive
- There was so much pressure from grassroots volunteers and neighbors to gather signatures, to recall our governor and now we’re going to have an election.
- Governor Walker actually wrote a piece of legislation for pharmacists to decide whether to dispense birth control to women.
- He’s pushed through a variety of his agenda items that include closing Planned Parenthood clinics across our state which provide basic healthcare, very often the only healthcare provider to rural women in Wisconsin.
- He’s criminalized abortion doctors whose patients fail to jump through some onerous hoops which has made medical abortion a thing of the past in Wisconsin.
- He rolled back our pay equity law here.
- I think women in particular have been hurt by Walker’s agenda, and have led a lot of the rebellion against Walker.
- A lot of these are ALEC American Legislative Exchange Council bills that are being pushed nationally and in states across the country. Walker himself was a member of ALEC, where we have a number of state legislators who are members of ALEC so its been quite aggressive.
- There’s a sense that the grassroots is really dragging the leadership along on this.
- This is really about a fight over democracy and whether citizens have a voice in their democracy.
- We’re expecting a turnout on par with a presidential election on this recall race.
- It’s a battle between the citizen uprising and the incredible power of all this money. It’s a multi-front attack, the electoral part is a piece of it.
- There was a really spontaneous thing that happened, it wasn’t such a coordinated, planned event and it was incredibly thrilling to be part of it with my kids and their teachers.
- By re-opening the Las Vegas loophole in Wisconsin which allows corporations to hide their profits out of state and pay no corporate income tax, our state has lost the same amount of money that Walker took out of our technical college system.
- We (Wisconsin) are transferring wealth to corporations. Undoing the damage in Wisconsin is going to take a lot of time.
Guest – Ruth Conniff, Political Editor of the Progressive Magazine, a native of Madison, WIsconsin, she first joined the magazine when she was hired as a summer intern by the late Erwin Knoll after her sophomore year at Yale. Shortly after graduating from college in 1990, she came to work as Associate Editor for the Progressive, becoming Washington Editor and opening the Progressive’s Washington, DC, office in 1997. During the 1990s, Conniff covered welfare reform in Wisconsin and around the country, as well as the drug war in Colombia, and other topics, including women’s sports (an avid runner, Conniff coached her old high school track and cross-country teams at Madison East High School for many years).
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ACLU Tries To Halt Single-Sex Classes In Maine
Single-gender classes may violate federal law by relying on gender stereotypes. That’s what the ACLU is saying in several states, including Massachusetts, Indiana, Idaho, Washington, Illinois and Maine. The Maine ACLU is calling for the Sanford school district to stop offering single gender classes which they say may violate Title IX, the federal law that addresses gender equity in federally funded education programs.
Examples of improper gender stereotypes include sixth-grade girls discussing current events over cocoa while boys create an exercise area in the classroom and earning points toward prizes from the National Football League.
The ACLU has asked for public request requests public records requests and is reviewing records or has pending requests in other states, including Alabama, Wisconsin, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
Zachary Heiden:
- All children are entitled to equal access to education regardless of their sex, that’s what the law says, that’s what the Constitution says.
- These same sex classrooms have a danger of reinforcing stereotypes about learning. They separate kids out by sex, and then apply these outmoded stereotypes.
- In terms of how they conduct those classes, and that does a terrible disservice to both boys and girls.
- In the boys program, the boys have signed up for this exercise program called NFL experience where the boys could do exercise in the morning and earn different points, depending on how much exercise they do. In the girls class, no NFL experience the girls have hot cocoa, read the local newspaper and discuss current events.
- There’s a national organization that’s been promoting these same sex programs around the country. They have this totally unscientific idea about how their brains develop and the scientific literature is very clear, that same sex classes don’t actually connect well with the physiology of boys or girls.
- We’re seeing it play out across the country, where people object to these program, because they are being excluded, and that’s what Title IX says – you can’t exclude students from educational programs on the basis of sex.
- I think what we are seeing, the large trajectory of public education in this country has been toward breaking down these stereotypes, of more opportunities for girls who have been traditionally excluded because of these stereotypes.
- In Wood County WV, for example, the girls sit in their class room in circular tables and the boys sit in rows – then you look at the reasoning why they do that.
- Boys apparently if they have to look at each other in the eyes, they will become aggressive.
- Girls don’t learn well under pressure, they don’t respond well to deadlines.
- You start telling girls from a young age you don’t respond well under pressure, guess what they’re not going to learn how to deal with pressure as well, and that is dangerous.
- ACLU – Women’s Rights Project
Guest – Zachary Heiden, Legal Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union Foundation, the Maine state affiliate of the ACLU. He received his A.B. from Bowdoin College, his M.A. in English from the University of Florida, and his J.D. from Boston College Law School, where he was the managing editor of the International and Comparative Law Review.
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Quebec Students Protest Against Tuition Hikes and Bill 78
Austerity is taking its toll in many countries, as public services are cut, federal jobs are slashed and tuition hikes are pushed onto the younger generations. Canada is no exception. For the past 3 months, students in Montreal, Quebec, Canada have poured into the streets waging a massive strike against rising college tuition fees. Last week, the government proposed an offer to end the strike but student leaders have so far refused to recommend the deal to students.
Meanwhile, the Quebec government introduced an emergency legislation Bill 78 – the bill would suspend the academic year and make demonstrations of more than 50 people illegal unless police had been served with an itinerary 8 hours in advance. The new law, however hasn’t stopped the unpredictable pots and pans demonstrations as protesters on balconies around the city make noise to express solidarity in opposing tuition hikes.
Guest – Beatrice Vaugrante, Amnesty International Canada, Francophone Branch Director.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Death Penalty, Human Rights, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
- Chris Hedges – NDAA
- Grant Of Review In The Supreme Court On Warrantless Wiretapping ACLU Case
- CCR Bradley Manning Case Update
- Palestinian Prisoner Hunger Strike Update
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Police Entrapment of the NATO 3
Last week, as many listeners may know, more than 100 protesters were arrested at the NATO summit in Chicago. Five activists were charged with terror related crimes, two were accused of attempted possession of explosives, 3 were accused of conspiracy to commit terrorism, material support for terrorism and possession of explosives. Sarah Gelsomino, with the People’s Law Office says three of these activists were set up by government informants who had planted the explosives.
Attorney Sarah Gelsomino:
- The National Lawyers Guild of Chicago learned that at 11:30 at night, a home in the Bridgeport area of Chicago had been raided by the Chicago Police Department.
- People were concerned because several people had gone missing, and we couldn’t find them.
- This raid was completely unprofessional from the beginning.
- Three other apartment units were just neighbors. Police removed them from their apartment, detained them, interrogated them, and then without consent or a warrant, went in and searched their home.
- The city refused to acknowledge that they had them in custody (their clients) that they had any arrests and also refused to acknowledge that that had a raid in that neighborhood.
- Over the next day or so, 6 of the 9 were released without any charges, after being held for over 30 hours. A good part of that time shackled at their feet and hand cuffed to a wall.
- There 2 additional people that were also arrested, and those are the 2 people that haven’t been seen since they were arrested in the raid and who we now believe were working for the police department as a part of this investigation.
- We believe they infiltrated Occupy Chicago a month ago.
- As a criminal defense attorney, we have a duty to vigorously defend our client.
- Members of Occupy Chicago have been coming forward very concerned about the 2 people who had been working for the police department – passing information to the police department.
- The state’s case will never be as strong as it is right now, when they have not yet come forward with any evidence whatsoever, all they’ve made is allegations that have yet to be substantiated.
- People are very afraid, particularly people in the occupy movement because they now feel so violated.
- It is an alarming pattern that states are turning to terrorism charges in these types of cases.
Guest – Sarah Gelsomino joined People’s Law Office in the Fall of 2008. She concentrates her practice on police misconduct, wrongful conviction, representation of political activists and criminal defense cases. During law school, Sarah clerked with the Cook County Public Defenders’ Office and was the recipient of various awards, including the Sonnenschein Scholar Award which funded Sarah’s pro-bono public interest work. She is a current board member of the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and is the co-founder of the NLG Chicago Next Gen Committee. Sarah also sits on the Advisory Board of the Irwin W. Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning at DePaul University.
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Lawyers You’ll Like: Anne O’Berry
As part of our Lawyers You’ll Like series we’re joined by attorney Anne O’Berry, she’s the Vice President of the Southern Region of the National Lawyers Guild and the author of The Law Only As An Enemy: The Legitimization of Racial Powerlessness Through the Colonial and Antebellum Criminal Laws of Virginia. While in law school, she served as Director of the Women in Prison Project at Rikers Island, where she taught incarcerated women how to prevent termination of their parental rights.
Anne clerked for federal judges in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, with whom she co-authored an article on the law as a tool of oppression against slaves and free blacks in pre-Civil War Virginia and taught civil rights and South African apartheid law at the University of Pennsylvania. She later taught Race and the Law at St. Thomas University Law School in Miami, Florida.
In the last 12 years, Anne has served as counsel at a Florida law firm that specializes in class action litigation, particularly in the areas of securities, consumer and economic fraud, as well as some environmental and privacy rights litigation.
Attorney Anne O’Berry:
- We did a lot of historical research in terms of racism and the law back in pre-civil war Virginia.
- We focused on Virginia because it was a paradigm for slavery basically in the slave laws that were in place.
- We wrote an article for publication, it was published in the University of North Carolina law review. The Law Only As An Enemy:’ The Legitimization of Racial Powerlessness Through the Colonial and Antebellum Criminal Laws of Virginia.
- Depending on your status, if you were a free white person or a slave, you were treated differently by the law.
- As an overall theme, depending on the race of the victim was that would effect what your sentence would be.
- For example, if a black woman was raped, that was not considered a crime. If you were a black person and you stole something, you would be put to death.
- It was ironic for the slave owner because if their slave was put to death, they would have to be compensated by the state.
- If the victim was black, the crime was treated less seriously than if the victim was white.
- I started out working at a firm in New York, a large prominent, Wall Street type.
- Among some people I was known as the pro-bono queen.
- I was there for 2 and a half years and the first pro-bono case was a death penalty case.
- The court ruled back then (1990s) that it was ok to execute the mentally retarded.
- I was so moved by that experience that I gave up my cushy job in New York and go do death penalty work full time.
- I ended up at the Federal Resource Center doing death penalty work in Tallahassee Florida.
- I worked for the Battered Women’s Clemency Project in Florida.
- More recently the Supreme Court did rule that it is unconstitutional to execute people who were juveniles at the time of the offense and unconstitutional to execute people who are mentally retarded.
- I believe in my lifetime we will see the end of the death penalty in this country.
- It’s just an amazing system that we have where the courts will say – yes you’ve got compelling evidence of innocence but we’re not going to hear your case.
- I would say what got me through was the victories.
- Presently, I’m working with an attorney Jim Green, who’s a prominent civil rights attorney in West Palm Beach, kind of a legend down here.
- I also some volunteer work with El Sol. It’s a day laborer center in Jupiter, Florida.
Guest – Anne O’Berry, National Lawyers Guild’s Regional Vice President for the Southern Region and a member of the Guild’s South Florida chapter. She obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 and her law degree from New York University Law School in 1986. While in law school, she served as Director of the Women in Prison Project at Rikers Island, where she taught incarcerated women how to prevent termination of their parental rights. She was a member of the law school’s civil rights clinic and an editor on one of the law school’s journals, and authored a law review article on prisoners’ rights. During and after law school, she clerked for federal judges in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, with whom she co-authored an article on the law as a tool of oppression against slaves and free blacks in pre-Civil War Virginia and taught civil rights and South African apartheid law at the University of Pennsylvania. She later taught Race and the Law at St. Thomas University Law School in Miami, Florida.
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