Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Death Penalty, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture
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Largest Human Trafficking Case In The US? Workers Lured To U.S. After Hurricane Katrina And Subjected To Abusive Conditions Seek Class Certification
In what may be the largest human trafficking case in US history, Indian guest workers are suing Signal International for human trafficking ad racketeering. Several law firms filed the lawsuit on behalf of seven plaintiffs representing 500 formers guest workers lured into the US after Hurricane Katrina. The guest workers were subjected to racial discrimination, forced labor and other abuse.
Signal is a multi million dollar marine fabrication company with shipyards in Mississippi, Texas and Alabama. They repair and build oil rigs and ships and subcontract with the Dept of Defense and multinational companies. After Hurricane Katrina, Signal’s workforce scattered and they used the government’s guest worker program to import employees as welders and pipe fitters. Between 2004 and 2006 hundreds of Indian men were paid up to 20 thousand dollars each for travel, visa and other fees after being told it would lead to good jobs and permanent US residency.
When the men arrived at Signal they discovered they would not receive green cards, but instead were given 10-month guest worker visas. Signal forced the men to pay $1,050 a month to live in overcrowded, unsanitary and racially segregated labor camps with no visitors allowed. To talk more about this case, we’re joined by Chandra Bhatnagar is a Staff Attorney with the Human Rights Program and Sabulal Vijayan, a former guest worker involved in the lawsuit.
Chandra Bhatnagar:
- Signal used the opportunity of the storm to seek out new labor pools. Signal in partnership with an American labor broker, an American Immigration lawyer and an Indian recruiter, conspired to bring in a group of 500 men from India as H2B guest workers.
- The workers were promised green cards, permanent residency, and the opportunity for long term jobs.
- Sabulal Vijayan: I was working in the middle east, the United Arab Emirates, I saw the ad by Signal that said we would get permanent residency in America. I paid about 18 thousand dollars, I cut my wrists in fear, I tried to kill myself because I spent a bunch of dollars. I was in the hospital for 3 days. I couldn’t go back to my family in India with bare hands, because I spent all the money on this job. Not only me but 500 workers, sold all their land and houses for this job.
- The EEOC, brought a separate lawsuit against Signal, alleging racial and national origin discrimination and hostile work environment.
- Because Sabulal was one of the workers seeking his rights under the law, he was particularly targeted by Signal and rounded up in an early morning raid. The camp was built on a lead contaminated waste site.
- It’s not OSCHA compliant to have 24 guys jammed together in a temporary trailer.
- These are in the United States and in debt. The average income in India is 3000 dollars a year for a ship worker. To pay 20 thousand dollars, you have to sell your property, borrow money from loan sharks. You have to mortgage your whole life for the opportunity to come here. Signal also said if you file a lawsuit, we’ll send all of you back.
- Signal is a marine fabrication company, a multi-million dollar company. They repair and build oil rigs and ships. They have yards in Mississippi, Alabama and Texas. They provide services to the Department of Defense and major corporations.
- It was a conspiracy between the Immigration lawyer, the Indian recruiter, the labor broker and Signal.
- Signal got this vulnerable pool of workers who they could throw away whenever they wanted to.
- You don’t have freedom of contract as a guest worker, you’re the disposable property of the employer.
Guest – Chandra Bhatnagar, ACLU Staff Attorney with the Human Rights Program. He leads the domestic and international advocacy around racial profiling, affirmative action, and juvenile justice issues, and is engaged in federal court litigation and litigation in international tribunals involving the rights of low-wage immigrant workers, undocumented workers, and guest-workers.
Guest – Sabulal Vijayan, guest worker from India, who is involved in the case. Sabulal, a pipefitter, paid nearly 20 thousand dollars to work in the United States as a guest worker. He worked with others in slave labor-like conditions for Signal International.
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Professor John Ehrenberg: Class Warfare Update and Analysis
Returning guest, professor and author John Ehrenberg joins us in the discussion of where the last 3 years the Obama Administration has led the country. The United States is pouring trillions into multiple war theaters, unemployment continues to rise, CEOs of banks and corporations have been rewarded with taxpayer bonuses and bailouts, and a massive unequal distribution of wealth has polarize the country. Meanwhile, the very rights that protect organized labor and the benefits of workers are attacked and disassembled during one of the worst economic downturns to hit the United States. Corporations and the far right wing of the Republican Party are behind some of the union busting yet even President Obama turned his back on supporting union labor demonstrations. Most recent show with John Ehrenberg
Professor John Ehrenberg:
- The elephant in the room that nobody talks about is the role of the state and the role of the government.
- Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
- What you had since the 1980s is a policy pushed by the Republicans and acquiesced by the Democrats of undoing the Great Society. We’ve seen this in the union busting and refusing to tax the rich. It’s been happening because the Republican party is getting more radical.
- The villan in the room is governmental and fiscal policy.
- The top 1 percent of the population received more than a third of all the wealth created in the country from 1979 to the beginning of the recession. The top 1/10 of one percent, that’s one out of every thousand households, received over 20 percent of all the after tax gains between 1979 and 2005.
- It was a conscious policy. It began in the late 70s by business. If you look at the neo-conservatives of that period, their target is the Great Society.
- Basically in the late 60s and the early 70s, the traditional stimulus programs of the Democrats failed.
- Along comes Reagan and he takes on a radical restructuring of the economy.
- Which began this process of shoveling huge amounts of wealth to the rich, hoping that it would trickle down and you’d have sustained growth.
- Consider that Obama is going to raise a billion dollars for his reelection campaign. Where is he going to get it from?
- Look, anybody at this stage of the game who continues to trust the Democratic party to lead the country out of this mess, is a fool.
- The Democratic Party by itself is incapable of democratic initiative and progressive change unless forced to respond from pressure from outside.
- When do they have enough? The answer in 1100 pages of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy is it’s never enough. That the logic of capital is to reduce everybody to starvation and take everything they have.
- This is the motor of the system, this has nothing to do with the Koch Brothers.
- Hopefully people are tired of being pushed around. American exceptionalism, meant that Americans were more tolerant of inequality, than were people from a stronger labor tradition.
- That American’s didn’t care so much if other people got rich as long as they got rich too.
- If you have a situation where Americans are misinformed about the distribution of wealth and are open to appeals to redistribute wealth in the name of fairness and equity, then this is the time for a redistributus Democratic party to step forward.
- If the Democratic Party is even a modicum of sanity in America, it’s because its going to have be pushed again. Pushed and pushed and pushed from outside.
- 55 percent of Republicans want higher taxes on the rich.
- There are local manifestations of outrage and rebellion, in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ft Lauderdale, around different aspects of the mal-distribution of wealth. – but nothing has been coordinated on the national level.
- There are as yet, no forces talking about the system as a whole, as a state.
- There are a lot of indications across the board that people have had enough.
- Go out there and join something and get involved.
- UNICEF publication. The Children Left Behind. Indices: Health, Education, Material Well Being. The United States is last of the 24 countries.
- If you look at the fall of any of the world’s empires, it was a combination of the over reach and the refusal of the rich to pay their share of taxes.
Guest – John Ehrenberg, author of Servants of Wealth, The Rights Assault on Economic Justice, he’s also professor of political science at Long Island University.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Green Scare, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Court Vindicates Prisoners in Right to Challenge Federal Experimental Isolation Units Restricting Communication
Last month, the Center for Constitutional Rights won the right for prisoners to challenge a violation of their constitutional rights. Prisoners in 2 experimental federal prison units called “Communications Management Units” or CMUs, will have their claims heard in court. About 70 percent of CMU prisoners are Muslim men. Judge Urbina agreed that the prisoners raised serious constitutional questions about CMUs. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed Aref v. Holder in the D.C. District Court on behalf of current and former prisoners of the units in Terre Haute, IN and Marion, IL; two other plaintiffs are the spouses of those prisoners.
As many listeners may know, these CMUs were secretly opened under the Bush administration in 2006 and 2007. They were designed to monitor and control the communications of certain prisoners and to isolate them from other prisoners and the outside world. The five plaintiffs in Aref were designated to the two CMUs despite having relatively or totally clean disciplinary histories, and none of the plaintiffs have received any communications-related disciplinary infractions in the last decade.
In addition to heavily restricted telephone and visitation access, CMU prisoners are categorically denied any physical contact with family members and are forbidden from hugging, touching or embracing their children or spouses during visits.
Attorney Alexis Agathocleous:
- We’re very troubled about policies and conditions at these units. A number of the restrictions imposed at the CMUs are severe. They are truly cutting people off from their loved ones, they’re community and the outside world
- Blanket ban on physical contact, unparalleled to any other single unit anywhere, including Supermax.
- We feel this needlessly impinges on their right to family integrity and their need to maintain these ties to the outside world.
- What we’re challenging is that there is no due process attached to designation to these (CMU) units.
- Without a disclosure of factual allegations that were used to designate them, without a demonstration of past abuse of communication devices, without a hearing, without an appeal. Once you’re there, no one is told how to earn their transfer to get out. Our clients have benign or in some cases perfectly clean histories.
- What is happening is that Muslim prisoners are being designated there, based on the discriminatory belief that as Muslims they inherently pose a great danger to institutional security, than do other prisoners.
- We’re very concerned also about a pattern of designation of political prisoners and specifically includes environmental and animal rights activists.
- We do believe these are acts of retaliation for protected First Amendment activity, such as speaking out on social justice issues.
- What we’ve asked for in the case is a thorough review of polices and practices in the CMUs.
- What’s next is we’re going into discovery, which is our opportunity to learn a lot more about the CMUs, about their inception, who was involved in designing them and why and about how designations are made.
- CMUs were opened quietly.
Guest – Alexis Agathocleous, staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and works on CCR’s Government Misconduct and Racial Justice docket. He is lead counsel in Aref v. Holder, challenging policies and conditions at the federal Bureau of Prisons’ Communications Management Units, and Doe v. Jindal, challenging a Louisiana law that requires individuals convicted of Crime Against Nature to register as sex offenders.
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Financial Regulators Failed: Crooks Go Unpunished
Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday charged Goldman Sachs & Co. and one of its executives with fraud in a risky offshore deal backed by subprime mortgages that cost investors more than $1 billion. The SEC also contends that Goldman allowed a client, Wall Street hedge fund Paulson & Co., to help select the securities to be sold. Paulson in turn bought insurance against the deal and when the securities sank, losing nearly all value, Paulson then made a $1 billion profit.
While these are not criminal charges, the recently released 650-page report of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Wall Street and the Financial Crisis (PDF) had exposed the deceptive and risky practices within major financial institutions, that deceived clients and the public. New Economics Perspective Blog
Professor William K. Black:
- Many people still call it the subprime crisis, it would be far better to call it, the liar’s loan crisis.
- Roughly half of all subprime loans by 2006.
- Somewhere between a quarter and 49 percent of new home loans, were in the form of liar’s loans.
- The incidence of fraud when there have been independent studies has ranged from 90 to 100 percent.
- A liar’s loan is when there is no underwriting, no verification of what’s put into the loan application.
- Overwhelmingly, it was the lenders who put the lie is liar’s loans.
- You can sell these loans in the secondary market if they appeared to have 2 characteristics that finance has told us you can’t have simultaneously.
- A premium interest rate and low risk. You could have the best of both worlds. The way to do that was to gimmick two ratios. Debt to income ratio and loan to value ratio.
- Inflating the value of homes, covered up by industry. An honest secure lender would never inflate value.
- It makes perfect sense for a fraudulent company to inflate the value of the house so they can sell the loan on the secondary market for a higher profit.
- Then Attorney General Cuomo, now governor found this as a common practice at Washington Mutual, the biggest bank failure. WAMU had a blacklist of appraisers, you were blacklisted if you refused to inflate value of property. None of these people are being prosecuted.
- In 2004, the FBI testified there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud and predicted that it would cause a financial crisis.
- The Savings and Loans debacle cost 150 billion, the current crisis is costing over 10 trillion.
- The Office of Thrift Supervision, Chainsaw James Gilleran
- Instead of being embarrassed that they were working hand in glove with the lobbyists, they were proud of this and put this in their annual report.
- Geithner and Cuomo urged there not be investigations much less prosecutions of the elite financial frauds because he thought the financial system was too fragile.
- The Justice Department ruined an FBI initiative to try and investigate the elite frauds.
- If you are powerful enough, if you have enough ties, after citizens united, and make enough political contributions, you will not be prosecuted.
- You can’t have crony-capitalism and democracy either.
- Big finance is only supposed to be a middle man, it’s supposed to help the real economy, by simply allocating most efficiently capital to the most productive uses.
- Like any middle man you want absolutely minimal profits going to the middle man.
- Under some measures, finance has 40 percent of the total profits of all American businesses.
- This is the worst group of people you can possibly imagine having power.
- We’ve turned too many of our schools into fraud factories, where we train people how to gimmick accounting.
- Citizen’s United is a fragile case, it doesn’t make much sense in terms of the law.
- What these people are, engines for destroying wealth
- They only get 10 billion, they destroy 10 trillion dollars in wealth. They cost 10 million Americans their jobs.
Guest – William K. Black, a professor of law at University of Missouri, Kansas City who has criticized the absence of any criminal referrals or national task force to effectively punish the elite fraudsters. Professor Black teaches White-Collar Crime, Public Finance, Antitrust, Law & Economics.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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The Muslim Peace Coalition and the United National Antiwar Coalition
Last week, activists took to the streets in a mass anti-war demonstration in the streets of New York and around the country. We talk with one of the organizers. Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, founder of the Muslim Peace Coalition who joins us to discuss his work as executive producer of Chicago’s Radio Islam. He’s among the most well-known Muslim activists in the country and has recently completed a 3 state tour having addressed dozens of mosques demanding an end to the ongoing attacks and spying on Muslim communities.
Malik Mujahid:
- 700 thousand Muslims have been interviewed by the FBI. Most of the mosques have been checked out for atomic bombs. What they think is a Muslim could be a brown skinned guy, who is Hindu, or could be Latino.
- Once you start doing injustice in one group, it doesn’t stay in one group. At this moment there’s quite a bit of inhumanity toward undocumented workers which are in larger numbers.
- The personal cost is very high. A Yale University research, says that 50 percent of Arab Americans have clinical signs of depression. Muslims are last to hired and first to be fired.
- People can get out of this when they realize there’s a criminalization in the inner city.
- Latinos the largest minority in this country lives in a state of fear, becaust they may be mistaken for undocumented and green card holder.
- 75 Pecent of Latinos stopped or arrested for suspect of documentation actually are quite legal citizens from several generations.
- The whole thing is based on a myth that Muslims were responsible for 911 and the continued terrorist attacks.
- War and terrorism are connected through occupation. We say that the hate in the country is rising, we’re becoming an unwelcoming nation. I visited the 1199 in New York and I was surprised how welcoming they were.
- 2.5 million Americans became new gun owners last year.
Guest – Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid is founding Chairman of Sound Vision Foundation, the leading producer of educational content on Islam and Muslims. He is also executive producer of the daily Radio Islam talk show on WCEV 1450 AM in Chicago. Imam Mujahid serves as Chair of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, the premiere interfaith organization in the world. He is former Chairperson of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago.
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Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States
We’re joined today by two of the three authors of book titled Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. Joey Mogul, director of the DePaul Civil Rights Clinic and partner with the People’s Law Office, and Andrea Ritchie, a Police Misconduct Attorney. The criminalization of LGBT people is explained in the book with acute detail and historical research. The book reveals that continual targeting of queers by law enforcement is not an accident but part of a larger systemic issue. The cases covered in this searing book show how the legal system routinely discriminates against those identified as queers. But there’s more to it than that, other factors such as poverty, race and class also make them a target. We learn more about the book and how this discrimination is viewed within the mainstream gay community.
Attorneys Joey Mogul / Andrea Ritchie:
- The term trans-gender is an umbrella term, that is inclusive of gender identities. It encompasses people who are born with a particular genitalia, but whose gender expression or identity is different from their anatomy.
- We use the term criminal legal system because the system has produced anything but justice for people who fall under the umbrella of LGB or T.
- Sometimes its a cop writing you a ticket for disorderly conduct, because they perceive your expression in a public space to be disorderly.
- Once they get to the police precinct and they don’t know which box to check, that can result in being searched. Not for any lawful purpose as contraband, weapons but to determine what your anatomy is because they feel like that’s relevant in which box to check for you.
- What we’re seeing nationwide is police officers unsure of someone’s identity, police stations nationwide have no guidelines in determining someones gender. What we’re seeing is these genital checks.
- There have been transgender women who’ve been searched in San Francisco, who’ve not only experienced these humiliating strip searches but then have been forced to dance or masterbate, in front of these officers.
- They want to humiliate and punish based on their gender identity.
- Really things are getting better for a small minority of LGTB and the vast majority end up facing these patterns of criminalization. In the court systems, we’re seeing individuals whose sexual orientations or gender identity is being used against them.
- Archetype of queers as a security threat. We talk about prisons as queer spaces in that, we see prisons being used as a tool to say that gay people are the predators.
- My home is the People’s Law Office. The work I do is police and government misconduct cases and I do death penalty cases. But I’m queer. I do hold myself out to the queer community and I do get these cases.
- Walking While Trans. One encounter with a cop can change your whole life.
- It’s really important for us to reach out to Guild Members, this is state sponsored homophobia and trans-phobia.
Guest – Attorney Andrea Ritchie, is a police misconduct attorney and organizer in New York City.
Guest – Attorney Joey Mogul, a partner at the People’s Law Office in Chicago and director of the Civil Rights Clinic at DePaul University’s College of Law. She focuses on civil rights cases involving police misconduct, criminal cases brought against individuals engaged in street demonstrations and other forms of First Amendment expression, and capital defense cases.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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In Memory of Attorney Leonard Weinglass
Hosts remember one of the great civil rights attorneys, Leonard Weinglass from his early years as a lawyer in the Air Force to his big cases. Michael Smith shares a great anecdote. Len vigorously defended a black soldier and upset the Air Force brass. They sent him to Iceland for 2 years. Much later in the late fifties, he moved to Newark, NJ, set up a one man office and represented black people in police abuse cases.
The remarkable and heroic progressive lawyer Len Weinglass died on March 23. Among his cases were the Chicago 8, the Ellsberg case and the Cuban 5. He was our close comrade and will be missed by his friends and all those seeking a better world. – Michael Ratner.
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A Poem for Len Weinglass by Linda Backiel
Almost Ready
“I have everything almost ready for the spring,”
you said. Brush cut, brambles cleared, new trees
planted. A lop-sided smile flit across your silver
stubble beard, a late winter field momentarily lit
by a break in a fleet of migrating clouds.
click for more
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Universal Jurisdiction: Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck
Co-host Michael Ratner interviews attorney Wolfgang Kaleck, German civil rights attorney and General Secretary for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. They discuss the effectiveness of Universal Jurisdiction cases. The cases that helped international human rights prosecutions. Specifically the cases in Argentina against corporations that profited from dictatorships and human rights abuses and how Argentina can be used as a model to bring cases against other powerful leaders or corporations. Optimism overcomes cynicism, Wolfgang says its not easy, it’s work bringing cases against the powerful of the world.
Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck:
- I have the privilege to work on behalf of Germans and Argentinian victims of the Dirty War between 1976 and 1983 in Argentina.
- The Argentinian cases and the Chilean cases were the most important phase in universal jurisdiction.
- We filed cases in Germany, Italy and France.
- The idea to file Argentinian and Chilean cases in European courts was not to try Argentinians and Chileans in Europe but to impose accountability in Chile and Argentina.
- That’s what people call the Pinochet Effect.
- In 2005 and 2006 when the amnesty laws were abolished. If you go to Buenos Aries now you will observe military junta tribes from Monday to Friday and you will police officers, military leaders, torturers, guards.
- At this point, special prosecutors and parts of the civil society are demanding an investigation and prosecution into crimes committed by corporations who aided and abetted the dictatorship, or who profited from the dictatorship.
- The history in Argentina, 30 thousand people disappeared, 100 thousand were tortured.
- The human rights movement in Argentina was so strong, that they maintained a certain presence, a certain public attention.
- For us, Argentina is like the blue print. They inspired the human rights movement not only in Europe
- I filed a case at Mercy Dispense because in Buenos Aires, 15 trade unionists were disappeared. We filed the criminal case in Germany against a German-Argentinian manager who had duel citizenship which allowed us to bring the case in Germany. Then we filed a case in the US, an alien tort claims which is still pending. We filed a case in Argentina which is still pending.
- One line is to blame the torturers and the torturer leaders, we want to talk about why these human rights violations have been committed. Why the Argentinian military took the decision to oppress their populations and our explanation is that they wanted to install a political and economic system which needed the extermination of the trade unionists.
- Actually to demand accountability and do these investigations is trauma work. Society that hasn’t dealt with its past has some problems in the present. Argentina is worth studying as an example.
- Universal Jurisdiction is showing its limits. So far it was very difficult to bring cases against the powerful of the world.
- The suspicion that the criminal justice system is just another tool of the powerful against the powerless,
- We have to try to bring cases against the powerful, Russian, China, the US, or Sri Lanka or Israel, who all undertake actions to avoid prosecution.
- We are very optimistic that some investigation will be carried out in Spain but some people are over-pessimistic, because even now, we achieved that several former US officials, or from the CIA or from the Army, or politicians can’t travel anymore, without running the risk to be arrested.
- We achieved something, I’m also not satisfied from it but still its more than we thought possible.
- President Bush wanted to go to Switzerland.
- It’s always an argument against those cynical people who say nothing is possible. Yes there is, something is possible. We do have to struggle to maintain this, the whole international criminal justice system is at stake.
Guest – Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck, a German civil rights attorney. He is also the General Secretary for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. On November 14, 2006, Kaleck sought criminal prosecution charges in German court against a number of US officials and military personnel in connection with alleged human rights abuses at the prison facilities at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay on behalf of eleven plaintiffs. Approximately 30 human rights activists and organizations participated as co-plaintiffs
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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In Memory:
The remarkable and heroic progressive lawyer Len Weinglass died on March 23. Among his cases were the Chicago 8, the Ellsberg case and the Cuban 5. Listen to the 4 interviews Law and Disorder did with him over the last 4 years. He was our close comrade and will be missed by his friends and all those seeking a better world. – Michael Ratner.
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Death Penalty Abolished In Illinois
Last week, Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois signed into law SB3539, which repeals the death penalty in that state. This development is yet another in what appears to be signal a trend of moving away from capital punishment. Early last year we covered the American Law Institute’s declaration that the death penalty in this country has been a failure. Listeners may recall that the A.L.I. created the intellectual framework and justification for the current capital justice system. The movement away from this most final form of punishment seems to be due in large part to the public’s increased awareness about its inherent flaws such as great racial disparity on who gets executed and for what reason. Publicity around exonerations stemming from DNA evidence has also added to general awareness of procedural errors in the system.
Attorney Charles Hoffman:
- In 2003, Governor Ryan cleared out death row, he granted to the 167 men and women on death row and pardoned four.
- that prompted the legislature to pass a modicum of reform. The governor afterward assembled a commission that recommended 85 reforms.
- The legislature passed five or six. The legislature also created a death penalty reform study commission.
- One of the reforms was that all confessions in police custody had to be videotaped in murder cases.
- No matter what safeguards you implement, there’s no system that can prevent the conviction and condemning of an innocent person.
- Prosecutors around the state were asking for the death penalty in cases that weren’t death penalty prosecutions just so the state would bear the costs rather than the county.
- The legislature is cash-strapped and we were wasting millions and millions of dollars prosecuting capital cases when here in Illinois we have the very strict alternative of life without parole.
- Final Report: Death Penalty Legislative Study Committee. Illinois Death Penalty Reform Study Commission PDF
- After Governor Ryan cleared out death row in 2003, Illinois put 17 men on death row. 2 had committed suicide, which left 15 on death row when Governor Quinn signed the abolition bill and also granted sentence commutation to all 15. He commuted their death sentences to life without parole.
- As the problems with the death penalty have been exposed, the arbitrariness, the racism, as mistakes have gone into public consciousness, juries have been rejecting the death penalty.
- Illinois has become the 16th state to abolish the death penalty, following on the heels of New Mexico, New Jersey and New York. The federal government and the military do have it.
- The “deathbelt” in this country is in the South and Texas, and is just a legacy of slavery in this country.
- Most executions occur in former slave states. One obvious flaw of the death penalty, studies have shown the death penalty is most likely to be inflicted in a case when the victim is white and the odds go up even further if the defendant is black or Hispanic.
- Its very gratifying to get rid of this barbaric practice. I represented 35 men and women who were sentenced to death. I do the direct appeals. I’ve had one client executed, I’ve had one client go home.
- Some states have made illegal purchases of the drug. (lethal injection drug shortage)
- Some states are using just one drug, a massive overdose of a barbiturate.
- Life without parole is very draconian, it means there’s no prospect for rehabilitation.
Guest – Assistant Defender in the Supreme Court Unit at the Office of the State Appellate Defender, and member of the board of directors of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
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Communities Battle Against Gas Drilling To Protect Water, Way of Life
Environmental community groups from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania continue to band together and try to protect the Marcellus Shale watershed from natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing. The EPA has stated it will investigate how hydraulic fracturing impacts water supplies and water quality in New York State yet the drilling moratorium ends this June. The shale is believed to hold some of the world’s largest deposits of natural gas, and those that want to mine this resource say it will reduce dependence on foreign oil and boost the economy. However, many have shown this statement to be false as the natural gas from the United States is being sold to foreign countries such as Norway and France.
Ninety percent of the New York City’s drinking water comes from ground zero of where various oil companies want to drill into the Marcelle Shale for natural gas. Environmental and public health costs are enormous for each well. Every time a well is drilled, the companies use an estimate of 5 to 9 million gallons of water. Each time a well is fractured, it’s another 5-9 million gallons of water, a well can be fractured multiple times. Up to 275 different toxic chemicals are used in the process and after the well is drilled, there are millions of gallons of industrial waste, it’s essentially radioactive water. 40-70 percent of this water stays underground. The hydro-fracturing process has no federal regulating body. Some of the companies involved are Halliburton, Chesapeake Energy, Fortuna, and Talisman Hess.
Tracy Carluccio:
- My organization has been working on the issue for a few years to try to keep gas drilling from moving ahead.
- Right now there is a moratorium in place on the Delaware River Watershed. It took a year and a half to get that into place. Regulatory measures that are in place now for gas drilling are not doing their job.
- The bottom line is we’re facing an industry that wants to move ahead.
- The industry is very strong. There are international concerns.
- They’re backed by the government in many ways, they enjoy subsidies.
- This industry is going to move like heck to drill everyplace gas can be gotten.
- The Delaware River Watershed has its origins in the Catskill region of New York State.
- The east and west branches come together in Hancock, New York.
- 330 miles from Hancock to the Atlantic Ocean.
- The watershed is 13 thousand square miles and includes four states. It’s overseen by an agency that was born out of water wars.
- Back in the 1950s, all the states were suing each other about who would get water for development.
- In 1961, there was a Supreme Court decree and compact and President Kennedy signed a document that began the Delaware River Basin Commission. As a result of this compact, a large part of the Delaware River goes to New York City.
- There have been regulations federally (Represented by the Army Corp of Engineers) and regionally laid out by the Delaware River Basin Commission
- New York moratorium on gas drilling is tied to late June when there is supposed to be a new draft of the Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on high volume hydraulic fracturing.
- In order to crack the rock to get at the gas is intrinsically polluting and there’s no way out of that.
- The question of how to stop it is tied to the scientific analysis free from bias.
- Without that bottom up movement, without that cry for government regulators, the industry would be moving ahead exactly as planned.
Guest – Tracy Carluccio, deputy director with Delaware Riverkeeper Network. Delaware Riverkeeper – a watershed wide advocacy program, Delaware Riverkeeper Network takes a strong stance on regional and local issues that threaten water quality and the ecosystems of the Delaware River and its watershed. In fact, Delaware Riverkeeper Network is the only advocacy organization working throughout the entire Delaware River Watershed.
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Farmworkers, Consumers Protest Trader Joe’s Demanding Fair Labor Standards for Farmworkers
Late last month, a busload of farm workers from Florida joined members of the NYC Community Farm worker Alliance at Trader Joe’s Upper West Side store. Men and women who pick tomatoes under very harsh conditions demand to be treated more humanely and with improved farm labor wages. Our own Michael Ratner was at the demonstration, we hear some of the interviews.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Updates:
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Wisconsin Labor Demonstrations Update
Organized labor is in the cross-hairs to be taken apart by the American elite. Last month, 10 thousand people continued a multi- day occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol building while tens of thousands chanted outside. Meanwhile the country is gripped by the drama unfolding in Wisconsin and it has inspired unions in other states to move in solidarity. Among those states are Montana, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Listeners may remember that Wisconsin trade unions have already conceded to wage and benefit cuts. Now the state is voting to repeal Section 11170, the Public Employee Bargaining Chapter. Update: Wisconsin GOP Allows State To Fire Employees For Strikes, Walkouts
Attorney Lester Pines:
- Governor Walker is clearly a stocking horse for the far right wing of the Republican Party.
- I’m not surprised at his behavior, he behaved this way as a Milwaukee County executive.
- I told people he was going to try to repeal section 11170 which is the Public Employee Bargaining Chapter
- What’s at stake is an attempt by the governor and the legislature to strike at the heart of the Wisconsin tradition of organized labor.
- Public employee bargaining has been in Wisconsin for 50 years. This is an attempt to tear apart generations of how Wisconsin operated.
- On a federal level, this is an attempt to wipe away outside groups that democratic and progressive candidates.
- Wisconsin has a bi-annual budget. The legislation is part of budget repair bill. In that legislation is a bill to eliminate all collective bargaining for all municipal and school district employees as well as for state employees.
- There will be no bargaining if this bill passes. The only thing that can be bargained with is wages.
- The bill also imposes a cap on wages. These are designed to essentially make it impossible for public employee unions to function in any meaningful way.
- Scott Walker didn’t talk about what he would actually do.
- If we look at the mass demonstrations in Madison. These are the biggest demonstrations I’ve ever seen here.
- Impeachment is impossible because Republicans control the legislature and Senate, however he can be recalled.
- The Democrats can’t be arrested in a criminal sense,
- Governor Scott Walker has reignited the progressive movement in Wisconsin.
- Until you get these Republicans out of office they’re going to do a lot of damage. They’re nihilists. They care nothing for public services. They care only for what their corporate puppeteers want them to do.
- It looks like this whole anti-public union movement was actually planned out amongst all these new governors.
Guest – Labor attorney Lester Pines, in practice since 1975, he leads the Litigation area, concentrating in civil trials, criminal defense, labor & employment, and business. A Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, Mr. Pines is a highly respected civil and criminal litigator who has appeared in courts throughout Wisconsin and litigated federal matters in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio and New York.
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Human Rights Crisis Continues In Puerto Rico
More than a year ago nearly 100 thousand people took to the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico to protest the lay off of about 17 thousand public employees. The demonstration shut down all state-owned enterprises including the island’s schools and colleges. Two days before that strike the governor passed a bill aimed at dismantling the Bar Association. Protesters were warned that if they stopped commerce, particularly the docks and airports, that action would be sanctionable to federal law. Now, as human rights violations continue, as students and faculty demonstrate against dismantling of progressive curriculum and tuition hikes. ACLU of Puerto Rico, “Human Rights Crisis in Puerto Rico: First Amendment Under Siege.” Law and Disorder Interview with Judy Berkan October 2009
Attorney Judy Berkan:
- Wholesale attack on institutions of Puerto Rican society where any dissent could be lodged.
- The Puerto Rican Bar Association, a real forum for those without a voice. Attacks have come to the Bar Association, elimination of mandatory Bar membership and imposed draconian restrictions upon the Bar Association. They took away a great deal of our funding.
- The president of the Puerto Rican Bar Association was jailed for speaking out against a lawsuit that could take away life insurance from poor lawyers.
- There’s a one month prohibition on leafleting and expression in the University of Puerto Rico.
- The closing of the legislative chambers. Right now there is a US Department of Justice investigation and talk of a trusteeship of the police department here.
- The use of the tactical operations of the police to repress dissent has been intensified.
- All of our public spaces are being closed off to legitimate dissent, while people engaged in peaceful dissent are being attacked.
- Austerity: Part of the remedy of the economic crisis there was an increase in tuition of 800.00. But much more at stake.
- More than that there is question of the vision the University of Puerto Rico will take in the future.
- The emphasis appears to be on privatization as it is throughout the government. We been suffering these programs since 2009.
- We were the guinea pigs. There’s more violence here, if we occupied the state house here, we would’ve been met with pepper spray, gas and beatings as we were when we attempted to demonstrate outside the state house last June.
- The economic programs are really the model that’s being used by Republican governors in the US
- The University situation is really wallowing in the wind without a real solution.
- The Bar Association and their presence is very crucial to public debate in Puerto Rico.
- I think people are getting tired, we do have 2 more years left of this administration.
- The police department is still in the hands of a former FBI agent who has openly encouraged violence against protesters. We have a raging crime rate.
- What’s distressing for all of us here who care about these matters is the media black out in the United States.
- Are we training people to be managers at McDonald’s or are we training people to think about the future of Puerto Rico?
Guest – Attorney Judith Berkan, is a partner in the San Juan law firm of Berkan/Mendez. She specializes in government misconduct litigation and employment discrimination cases. Berkan worked as an attorney in New Haven, Connecticut before going to Puerto Rico as the staff attorney for the Puerto Rico Legal Project of the National Lawyers Guild, now the Puerto Rico Civil Rights Institute. For twenty-seven years, she has been teaching, primarily in the Constitutional Law area, at the Inter American University Law School in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
A frequent speaker and author of many articles on civil rights issues, she was the President of the Human Rights Commission of the Puerto Rico Bar Association in the mid-1990?s and a member of the Commonwealth Supreme Court’s task force on gender discrimination.
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Left Forum 2011
The 2011 Left Forum convenes this Spring, March the 18 to the 20th. This is the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public. Conference participants come together to engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the world, to discuss differences, commonalities, and alternatives to current predicaments, and to share ideas for understanding and transforming the world.
Guest – Stanley Aronowitz Distinguished Professor of Sociology at CUNY Graduate Center, where he is Director of The Center for the Study of Culture, Technology and Work. He has taught at Staten Island Community College, University of California-Irvine, University of Paris, Columbia University, and University of Wisconsin.
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