Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Gaza, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Trial Judge Rules Against 69 Year Old Palestinian Activist Rasmea Odeh
In 1969, when she was a 21 year old college student in Ramallah in the Israeli occupied territories on the West Bank, Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian woman, was arrested for killing two Israeli University students with a bomb placed in a supermarket. She confessed to the crime and served 10 years in prison, getting out in a prisoner swap. She came to United States 20 years ago, obtained citizenship, and settled in Chicago as a community organizer of immigrant Arab women. Odeh was criminally charged two years ago by the federal government with “unlawful procurement of naturalization.” In her application, she omitted mention of the crime for which she was convicted in Israel. In her defense, she said that she could not remember, that she had post traumatic stress disorder as a result of being tortured in jail for 25 days and forced to sign a false confession. Her expert witness was not allowed to testify as to the PSTD and the torture. The trial judge’s ruling on this was overturned by a Federal Court of Appeals. Last week she agreed to a plea arrangement where she would be stripped of her citizenship and deported rather than face a 5 to 7 year prison sentence and indefinite detention by ICE. She is 69 years old and does not know where she will be sent inasmuch as she cannot go home.
Guest – Attorney Michael Deutsch had represented Rasmea Odeh. He is a partner at the Peoples Law Office in Chicago and a former legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. After clerking for United States Court of Appeals Judge Otto Kerner, Mr. Deutsch went into private practice, joining People’s Law Office in 1970 where he has represented political activists and victims of police and government civil rights violations. His advocacy has taken him all around the world, including to hearings in the United Nations. He has tried many civil and criminal cases in federal and state courts, and has written and argued numerous appeals, including several in the United States Supreme Court.
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New York City Titanpointe National Security Agency Protest
There is a massive 550 foot tall gray granite and cement NSA spying hub hidden in plain sight in a windowless skyscraper in downtown Manhattan. At noon on April 15 an action is planned by a group called the Quiet American. It is an arts and politics journal based in Ridgewood, Queens, New York. They will perform a rite of exorcism on the building in order to, as their press release states, “to metaphysically purge the edifice of the data it hoards and to invoke a less maniacal version of citizen-government relations.”
The building is located at 33 Thomas Street where the action will take place. It is a windowless monolith that people say is “creepy as hell” and “a monument to the bottomless fear that locks us in permanent war”. The building was designed to withstand a nuclear assault and sustain its employees working there for two weeks.
Guest – Eli Smith, a musician and activist from Brooklyn, who has helped organize the event. Eli Smith is also a folklorist and music producer who organizes the annual “Brooklyn Folk Festival”, a huge weekend music gathering now in its ninth year, and coming up at the end of April.
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Lawsuit Forces EPA Head To Release More Emails Exposing Fossil Fuel Ties
Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, was recently sued by the Center for Media and Democracy to force the release of emails exposing ties with fossil fuel backers and the Oklahoma Office of Attorney General.
The suit, filed on behalf of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), seeks an emergency injunction to prevent Pruitt from destroying any documents relevant to the group’s open records requests before his confirmation hearing. Since 2015, CMD filed seven records requests with Pruitt’s office seeking communications with Koch Industries and other coal, oil, and gas corporations as well as the corporate-funded Republican Attorney General’s Association.
Pruitt has yet to turn over a single document, despite acknowledging that his office has 3,000 emails and other documents relevant to CMD’s initial request. The Oklahoma Open Records Act provides that “the people are vested with the inherent right to know and be fully informed about their government . . . so they may efficiently and intelligently exercise their inherent political power.”
The act also mandates that a public body “must provide prompt, reasonable access to its records.” With Pruitt seeking confirmation to become EPA administrator, these public records are essential for the U.S. Senate to do its job.
“There is no valid legal justification for the emails we received last night not being released prior to Pruitt’s confirmation vote other than to evade public scrutiny,” said Arn Pearson, general counsel for CMD. “There are hundreds of emails between the AG’s office, Devon Energy, and other polluters that Senators should have been permitted to review prior to their vote to assess Pruitt’s ties to the fossil fuel industry.”
Guest – Arn Pearson, General Counsel and Policy Advisor from the Center for Media and Democracy. He previously served as the Vice President for Policy and Litigation at Common Cause. Arn has worked for more than 20 years developing federal and state policy and legal strategies around campaign finance reform, government ethics, corporate accountability, and tax reform.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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The Deep State: The Fall Of The Constitution And The Rise Of The Shadow Government
A century ago, Ferdinand Lundberg wrote the classic book “America’s 60 Families” describing them, their interconnections and the powerful role they played in American governance. This was in 1965 when the great sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote “The Power Elite” and then William Domhoff wrote “Who Rules America?” Now, Mike Lofgren has made a significant contribution in describing the workings of the American ruling elite with his book The Deep State: The Fall Of The Constitution And The Rise Of The Shadow Government.
Guest – Mike Lofgren worked in Congress for 28 years, 16 of them as a senior analyst at the House and Senate Budget Committees. He held a top security clearance. He now represents no political party, no business interest, and no ideology. His previous book The Party Is Over was a New York Times bestseller.
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The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government
As director of the CIA, from 1952 until Kennedy fired him, Allen Dulles has been said to exemplify unbridled authority at the height of the Cold War. Under his leadership the CIA became a lawless force domestically and internationally that engaged, with impunity, in covert acts such as the assassination of foreign leaders including Patrice Lumubo in the Congo and overthrowing the government led by Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.
As an attorney for the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell in the 1930s, Dulles protected and promoted Nazi-controlled cartels. He wielded his influence in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and then in the CIA to shield former Nazis from prosecution for war crimes in the ’40s and ’50s. David Talbot writes in book The Devil’s Chessboard, ” over the final months of the JFK presidency, a clear consensus took shape within the American “deep state” Kennedy was a national security threat. For the good of the country he must be removed and Dulles was the only man with the stature, connections and decisive will to make something of this enormity happen. so he could enlist them to fight communists. In addition to assisting with the assassination of Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, he organized the Bay of Pigs invasion and tried repeatedly to murder Fidel Castro.
Guest – David Talbot, the author of the New York Times bestseller Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and the acclaimed national bestseller Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love. He is the founder and former editor in chief of Salon, and was a senior editor at Mother Jones and the features editor at the San Francisco Examiner. He has written for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, The Guardian, and other major publications. Talbot lives in San Francisco, California.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Attorney Jim Lafferty, Los Angeles Protests
Last week president trump the reception of the Dakota Area Pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline, which will bring dirty tar sand oil from Canada through the USA to the Gulf of Mexico for export. According to James Hansen, the former climate expert for NASA, if this happens it will be “game over for the planet. ” We just learned that Trump is about to sign a package of executive orders threatening Muslims, Arabs, refugees, and immigrants. The women’s march last week after Trump had been in office for two days brought out some for million people across the country voted one half million in Washington DC and 750,000 in Los Angeles. We speak with Los Angeles National Lawyers Guild leader Jim Lafferty, who helped organize the demonstration.
Guest – Jim Lafferty is the former Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild and a leader of the chapter. His radio show on KPFK inspired Law and Disorder. Attorney Jim Lafferty has been active since the civil rights movement in the south in the 60s and was a leader of the movement against the war in Vietnam. In 2015, Jim Lafferty concluded 25-years as the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles, and is now that organization’s Executive Director Emeritus. For the past 26-years he has hosted a weekly public affairs radio show on Pacifica Radio, The Lawyers Guild Show. He is the Chair of the Board of the Office of the Americas; an elected fellow in the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California; was the co-founder and director of the National Peace Action Coalition during the U.S. war in Vietnam, the group that organized the largest antiwar protests during that war; was the founder and Chair of the Oakland County Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union in Oakland County, Michigan; has been featured in several documentary films, including The Corporation; was the national director of the National Lawyers Guild from 1963-1967; is the author of the afterword in Lawyers You’ll Like; and is the recipient of numerous awards, such as the National Lawyers Guild’s “Law for the People Award”, the Southern California ACLU’s “Defender of Civil Liberties Award”, and the first award from the Los Angeles Coalition to Stop LAPD Spying. As a founding partner of Lafferty, Reosti, Jabara, Papakian, James, Stickgold, Soble and Smith, Mr. Lafferty practiced civil rights, civil liberties, criminal defense, workers’ rights, and military law in Detroit, Michigan.
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Israel And The Palestinian State 2017
The colonial settler state of Israel was formed in 1948 pursuant to a declaration of the United Nations. The declaration also envisioned a Palestinian state which has so far been prevented by Israel with the support of the United States. In 1967 the Israeli Army captured the West Bank territory meant to be part of the Palestinian state and has in the last 50 years illegally ruled over a half million settlers who have been placed on the territory. Is it still possible to have a two state solution in the Middle East? Is it too late? Have the number of settlers reached a critical mass so that the two state solution is dead? Can the settlers be evacuated? If not, how can there be a Palestinian state?
Guest – Phil Weiss, founder of Mondoweiss, the well read and influential blog. In the past Weiss worked as a mainstream journalist for the Minneapolis Star and the New York Observer, the newspaper owned by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law who when told that Phil Weiss was not a Zionist, fired him.
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U.S. Drug Policy 2017
With the election of Donald Trump and his selection of the deeply reactionary former prosecutor and Senator from Alabama Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions as the new Attorney General and chief law-enforcement officer in America the progress in drug policy reform we have had over the last several decades is likely to be reversed. 28 states have legalized some form of medical marijuana and a number states including Washington, Colorado, and most recently California and Massachusetts have legalized it’s recreational use. But an aggressive attorney general could reverse this. “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” said Sessions last year. He also said that he thought that the KKK was “OK until I found out that they smoke pot.” Federal law puts marijuana in the same schedule one category as heroin. At his Senate confirmation hearing Sessions would not promise to defer to the states the decision to prosecute people using medical marijuana sanctioned by state law. He also supports mandatory minimum sentences which fuels mass incarceration and disproportionately targets people of color.
Guest – Ethan Nadelmann the founder and Executive Director of the drug policy alliance joins us today. It is a national advocacy organization for drug law reform that is grounded in science, compassion, and health and human rights.
Ethan was described by Rolling Stone as “the point man” for drug policy reform efforts and “the real drug czar,” Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad.Ethan is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs.
Censorship, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, War Resister
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US Intelligence Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims
The major media has been filled daily with stories about how Russia and its Chief of State Vladimir Putin sought to and did influence the American election in favor of Donald Trump. It is alleged by the CIA and other American intelligence agencies, the Russians hacked into the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and of Hillary Rodham Clinton. This conclusion, it is reported, is based on “overwhelming circumstantial evidence.” American public opinion is been shaped to support aggression against Russia. Despite a promise made to Russia that they would not do it, the promise was broken and NATO now has troops and weapons on the Russian border where military exercises have been carried out. Tensions have been a ratcheted up to an extreme level not known since the heights of the Cold War.
Guest – Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst who briefed President George Bush daily. He broke with the government under George W. Bush over the cooked intelligence used to rationalize America’s illegal war of aggression against Iraq and helped form the organization Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Last week his group issued a memorandum to President Obama which demonstrated that the Russians did not hack into the computers of the Democratic Party or Hillary Clinton and did not therefore influence the American election. They asserted that information that came out about the corruption of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party was leaked by an insider, not hacked.
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Civil Justice And The Trump Administration
Donald Trump has been critical of the U.S. intelligence community, both as a presidential candidate and as president-elect. He recently said he does not need to receive the presidential intelligence briefing every day, suggesting that such briefings are repetitive and that he is content to rely on those around him on matters of intelligence and national security. Trump’s infrequent briefings to-date are a departure from every modern president except Richard Nixon, who was so skeptical of intelligence agencies that he refused to accept briefings offered by President Johnson, even returning unopened envelopes containing classified material to the CIA.
In Washington DC, the public interest organization the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has a new message on its website. It reads, in part: “At the PCJF, we stand with all those who are taking those steps forward – steps together – to face down what is coming, to protect those who are most vulnerable, and to make it clear that the people themselves are the force to be reckoned with.”
The PCJF has litigated First Amendment and other cases of constitutional import that have helped preserve and even expand the protections afforded individuals in different jurisdictions.
Guest – Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-chair of the Guild’s National Mass Defense Committee. co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund in Washington, DC, she secured $13.7 million for about 700 of the 2000 IMF/World Bank protesters in Becker, et al. v. District of Columbia, et al., while also winning pledges from the District to improve police training about First Amendment issues. She won $8.25 million for approximately 400 class members in Barham, et al. v. Ramsey, et al. (alleging false arrest at the 2002 IMF/World Bank protests). She served as lead counsel in Mills, et al v. District of Columbia (obtaining a ruling that D.C.’s seizure and interrogation police checkpoint program was unconstitutional); in Bolger, et al. v. District of Columbia (involving targeting of political activists and false arrest by law enforcement based on political affiliation); and in National Council of Arab Americans, et al. v. City of New York, et al. (successfully challenging the city’s efforts to discriminatorily restrict mass assembly in Central Park’s Great Lawn stemming from the 2004 RNC protests.)
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2016 Political Prisoner Pardons
President of United States under the constitution has the authority to pardon or grant clemency to people after their conviction or even before. This does not include people convicted in state courts, only federal court. Although the United States denies it, it holds many people as political prisoners.
1. Leonard Peltier – We urge President Obama to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier on humanitarian grounds and in the interest of justice. Peltier was a leader of the American Indian movement in the 1970s. At a confrontation at wounded knee South Dakota between AIM and the FBI two FBI agents were killed. The FBI had worked with a corrupt tribal leadership to suppress the American Indian movement. At his trial, the prosecution withheld evidence including potential key ballistic evidence. Leonard has served 40 years in prison and is not eligible for hid parole hearing until 2024. His son recently died and he was not allowed to go to the funeral. He is in very poor shape and his health is deteriorating. Please sign a petition to President Obama at this site.
2. Ethel Rosenberg was electrocuted at Sing Sing prison in 1953 after being convicted of being an atomic bomb spy and part of a ring that gave the secret of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. At that time the government knew she was not a spy. She left two boys ages six and 10. There was no secret to the atomic bomb, it was a matter of industrial capacity. The famous Rosenberg case was used to stir up the stereo against Russia. A huge body of evidence demonstrates that Ethel Rosenberg was innocent. Donald Trumps mentor, friend, and attorney Roy Cohn was one of the prosecutors who ruthlessly attacked Ethel and colluded with the judge to have her executed. Listeners can call the Whitehouse at 202-456-1111 or visit this website – Exonerate Ethel, Our Mother
3. Army Sergeant Chelsea Manning has been in Fort Leavenworth prison for six years now, a record for whistleblowers. He was convicted of leaking what has become known as the Iraqi war logs to WikiLeaks, which published them showing the truth about US war crimes in Iraq. Chelsea is a transgendered person whose confinement in an all male prison at Fort Leavenworth has been unusually harsh. This included 11 months of solitary confinement. She has twice attempted suicide. Her sentence is 35 years, the longest ever given to a whistleblower. She has already served more time in prison that any individual in US history who has disclosed information in the public interest. Write or call the Whitehouse.
4. Oscar Lopez, a Puerto Rican political prisoner has served 30 years in prison, convicted of seditious conspiracy – a thought crime involving no actual act – because of his commitment to the independence of Puerto Rico. He was not accused or convicted of causing harm or taking a life. He was sentenced to 70 years and is one of the longest held political prisoners in the world. Oscar served in Vietnam, Was a wooded a bronze star, and came home to Chicago where he became a talented community organizer. He served 12 years in isolation in a Supermax prison. He comes up for parole when he will be 83 years old. A petition asking President Obama to commute Oscar’s sentence can be found at: Oscar’s Story Here boricuahumanrights.org
5. Edward Snowden blew the whistle about the USA’s illegal global master valence system. This scandalized the American government and caused it to partially rein in its surveillance for the first time in four decades. This would not have happened but for Snowdens courageous act, a public service as former Attorney General Eric Holder has admitted. Snowden is facing charges under the espionage act, a world war one law that put another great American hero Eugene Debs in prison for making a speech in opposition to the war. Snowden should be honored for his action, not forced into exile in Russia. The entire establishment favors prosecuting him. President Obama has wrongly stated that he can’t do anything to help Snowden until he has returned to this country and gone on trial. A petition urging the president to pardon Snowden can be found here: pardonsnowden.org
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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The Trump Administration And The Current Police State Apparatus
The movement for social change in the United States has been growing and accelerating in the last five years with the Occupy Movement, Black Lives Matter and now the large encampment and protest of Native Americans and their allies protecting our water in North Dakota. Half of American young people under the age of 29 say they would prefer Socialism. Bernie Sanders, running as a democratic socialist, had received more than 13 million votes. It is a time of great possibilities and simultaneously a time of great danger with the election of Donald Trump. What is the state of democratic rights as we go into the Trump era? Because of the policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama Americans are the most spied upon people in the history of the world with government surveilling every keystroke on their computers, social media, and every email they send. The ancient right of habeas corpus has been compromised allowing for indefinite detention of American citizens, military commission trials, and imprisonment offshore in Guantánamo Cuba. Extra- judicial assassinations are a regular practice, with American citizens being targeted and killed by drone strikes. Torture carried out by the CIA and private contractors has gone unpunished. The Posse Comitatus Act has been abolished and now the US military will be allowed to perform police functions inside United States. The police force itself has been militarized and given military grade weapons. What can the movement for social change expect from the Trump administration?
Guest – Attorney Baher Azmy, Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He directs all litigation and advocacy around issues related to the promotion of civil and human rights. At CCR, he has litigated cases related to discriminatory policing practices (stop and frisk), government surveillance, the rights of Guantanamo detainees, and accountability for victims of torture. Baher is currently on leave from his faculty position at Seton Hall University School of Law, where he taught Constitutional Law and directed the Civil Rights and Constitutional Litigation Clinic.
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DAPL Protests Attacks: Oceti Sakowin Encampment
A week ago Sunday the water protectors numbering in the thousands including members of more than 100 Native American tribes at Standing Rock, North Dakota were brutally attacked for over six hours by police and private security. They have been camped in the freezing North Dakota weather attempting to halt the construction of a 1200 mile oil pipeline that is scheduled to go through sacred Indian lands and beneath the Missouri River and then through South Dakota, Iowa, and into Illinois. Pipelines frequently break and if and when this one does it will contaminate the water supply of some 15 million people. Water from the river was sprayed on the protesters in 26° weather causing many of them to get life threatening hypothermia. Rubber bullets were also shot at the protesters. A long-range sound cannon was employed to disorient them and mace was sprayed in their faces. Several hundred people were injured and more than 100 were arrested. Although President Obama could stop the pipeline he has so far put off ruling on it’s legality or safety. The 3.8 billion-dollar pipeline is owned by the energy transfer partners company, an outfit in which Donald Trump has a large investment. The Norwegian government bank has recently pulled out of the project and if the pipeline is not completed soon other investors may bail jeopardizing the entire project. Oectisakowincamp.org
Guest – Angela Bibens, an attorney from Denver, Colorado, Angela practices criminal, juvenile and family law with a specialty in the Indian Child Welfare Act. She earned her law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 2006. She is a wife and mother of three. Angela has been the ground coordinator for the Water Protector Legal Collective at Oceti Sakowin Camp near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe for the past three months.
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Campaign to Bring Home Mumia Abu-Jamal & Inside the Activist Studio
The New York-Based activist group, the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, is filming the second episode of an innovative project, Inside the Activist Studio on December 6 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Inspired by the popular television series, Inside the Actors Studio, its inaugural show featured a profile of Sekou Odinga.
The second episode features an interview with longtime activist Ramona Africa, of the MOVE Organization. Ramona was the only adult survivor of the police bombing of the MOVE home in West Philadelphia on May 13, 1985. The bombing caused a fire that the fire department initially allowed to burn and that killed 11 MOVE members, including five children. It devastated the 6200 block of Osage Avenue, destroying 61 homes and damaging many others.
Guest – Professor Johanna Fernandez, is a native New Yorker. She received a PhD in History from Columbia University and a BA in Literature and American Civilization from Brown University. Professor Fernández teaches 20th Century U.S. History, the history of social movements, the political economy of American cities, and African-American history. She has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, PA and Trinity College in Hartford, CT and is, most recently, the recipient of a Fulbright Scholars grant to the Middle East and North Africa that will take her to Jordan in spring 2011, where she will teach graduate courses in American History.
Guest – Ramona Africa, Minister of Communication for the MOVE organization.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, War Resister
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UPDATE: Police Attack Unarmed Standing Rock Water Protectors in Freezing Temperatures
San Francisco Lawsuit Against Cash Bail System
The purpose of a criminal defendant being forced by the state to post bail in order to be released prior to his or her trial is to ensure that the defendant show up for the trial. This is the only purpose of bail. The importance of securing pretrial release is that it allows for the criminal defendant to help prepare his or her defense; something that is difficult to do if a person is behind bars. This is an inherently discriminatory situation with respect to poor people who do not have the money to post cash bail or even the ten percent fee necessary to borrow it from a bail bonds agent.
Guest – Attorney Chesa Boudin, Chesa completed his J.D. at Yale Law School. A Rhodes Scholar, he earned two master’s degrees from Oxford University in 2006 and 2004. In 2003 he graduated summa cum laude from Yale College. Chesa has translated, edited, and authored several books. His scholarly law articles cover a range of topics such as direct democracy, immigration, institution building, the rights of children with incarcerated parents, and prison visitation policies. Chesa Boudin is currently a trial attorney at the San Francisco Public Defender.
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Inauguration Lawsuit: Legal Challenge To Parade Route
How close will protesters be allowed to get to the inaugural parade in DC this January 20? Two months before Donald Trump is sworn in as president, First Amendment advocates appeared in federal court to urge that demonstrators have access to the sidewalk in front of Trump’s luxury hotel and nearby Freedom Plaza. The case was filed long before Trump was elected and continues ongoing litigation over National Park Service regulations that determine the location of Inauguration Day demonstrations.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund recently argued the case for the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). As protesters converge across the country, thousands of individuals –deemed by Trump to be “professional protesters”–have taken to the streets. It is likely that an unprecedented number will converge on the nation’s capitol for the inauguration.
Government lawyers told the court that the Park Service has long set aside space on the parade route for the incoming president’s organization to plan a day of “national celebration” and that protesters will have “ample prime alternatives” to engage in First Amendment activities along Pennsylvania Avenue. The government estimates that 84 percent of the sidewalks along the parade route are not off-limits for protest. The Presidential Inaugural Committee is a private entity controlled by the president-elect and responsible for planning most of the inaugural celebration activities, including selling tickets to the parade.
Guest – Brian Becker is the National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition and a leader of the Part for Socialism and Liberation. Becker has been a central organizer of the mass anti-war demonstrations that have taken place in Washington, D.C. in the past decade.
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Dakota Access Pipeline: Dispatch #6 – Food and Water Watch
UPDATE: Police Attack Unarmed Standing Rock Water Protectors in Freezing Temperatures
Concerned members of the public are strongly encouraged to call local and federal agencies to demand (1) immediate end to the construction of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, (2) a full investigation into abuses by law enforcement, and (3) dropping the felony charges against Water Protectors arising from the October 27 police raid on the camp.
PLEASE DON’T LET THIS LIST DISAPPEAR! ADD: JUSTICE DEPT. Community Relations Service – Tribal Relations: 202-305-2935…..please say: “Lives are endangered at Standing Rock – at this point, people could die from the police actions being taken….”
SENATOR KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND : 202-224-4451. She is taking a talley of opposition to DAPL & atrocities against Protectors in order to oppose propaganda now being put out by police and media.
UPDATED LIST OF NUMBERS TO CALL:
424-353-2016 NBC wants you to text them your opinion. Tele. #s won’t be recorded.
701-333-2006 National Guard Public Affairs
701-328-2200 North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple
701-667-3330 Sheriff’s office in charge of the police on site
202-456-1111 White House
202-456-9431 White House Situation Room
701-328-4726 North Dakota Attorney General: object to the illegal
sale of farmland to a corporation….
202-353-1555 Dept. of Justice comment line
202-514-2000 Dept of Justice switchboard: Tell them you are watching and to have the police stand down
The Dakota Access Pine Line DAPL , which would cross unceded Indigenous territory
is a direct violation of the sovereign rights and culture of the Standing Rock Sioux.
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The Dakota Access Pipeline construction is near completion. It is designed to bring shale oil from North Dakota and South Dakota through Iowa into Illinois. The energy transfer partnership is the company building the pipeline at a cost of $3.8 billion which it borrowed from some of the major banks in the world. The pipeline is stalled at the banks of the Missouri River under which it intends to tunnel. Opponents of the pipeline oppose it contending that pipelines break and that if it does so it threatens the water supply of over 15 million people. Moreover it has been dug through sacred Souix Indian lands in violation of two treaties. And last, the burning of the oil will further increase global warming and irreversibly change our climate.
In the last several months thousands of people including over 100 Native American tribes have camped out at sacred stone in North Dakota attempting to prevent the completion of the pipeline. The Obama administration has ordered a review of the process by which consultations with Native American tribes are held concerning the pipeline. This has put a temporary hold on construction. The company and the government of North Dakota have sought to viciously suppress the protest using dogs , rubber bullets, sound cannons, beatings, and mass arrests. Food and Water Watch Petition
Guest – Eleanor Bravo just returned from the encampment. She’s a Senior Organizer for Food & Water Watch based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She works with local communities and groups throughout New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. Eleanor also works with lawmakers in New Mexico on fracking and food safety issues. With more than 30 years of experience as a social activist and political organizer, she managed the top performing field office in the nation during the 2008 presidential campaign to elect Barack Obama.
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