Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope
We hear a talk from our own Michael Ratner who spoke at the James A Little Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was also in conversation with radio host Mary Charlotte Domandi. The event was titled – Ten Years after 9/11: War, Operation American Condor (Guantanamo) , Civil Liberties and Hope.” Michael is introduced by Mary-Charlotte Domandi producer and host of the Santa Fe Radio Cafe on KSFR 101.1 FM (Santa Fe, NM, Public Radio)
Michael Ratner is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin. Both are non-profit human rights litigation organizations. He was part of the small group of lawyers that first took on representation of the Guantánamo detainees in January 2001, a case that resulted in a victory in the Supreme Court in 2004. CCR established a network of over 600 pro-bono lawyers to represent Guantánamo detainees and continues that work.
He has filed criminal complaints in the courts of Germany, France and Spain against former US officials including Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld seeking the initiation of criminal prosecutions against them for the Abu Ghraib abuse and torture as well as for their actions at Guantánamo. Recently, CCR and ECCHR prepared papers to file in Switzerland against George W. Bush for torture. As a result Bush canceled his trip. A major area of Mr. Ratner’s litigation and writing is the enforcement of the prohibition on torture and murder against various dictators and generals who travel to the United States. He has sued on behalf of victims in Guatemala, East Timor, Haiti, Argentina, among other countries. He has also litigated numerous suits to prevent or stop illegal US wars ranging from Central America to Iraq. A constant in his work has been litigation against government spying and surveillance of activists.
Michael Ratner’s books, authored or coauthored, include the soon to be published, Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in 21st-Century America (2011) and Killing Che: How the CIA Got Away with Murder (2011). Other books include International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts, Second Edition (2008); Against War with Iraq (2003); Guantánamo: What the World Should Know (2004); and The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book (2008). Ratner has taught human rights litigation at Yale and Columbia Law Schools. A past president of the National Lawyers Guild, Ratner has received many awards including Trial Lawyer of the Year, the Columbia Law School Medal of Honor (2005), the North Star Community Frederick Douglass Award, Honorary Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2005), and The Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Prize for Creative Citizenship (2007). In 2006, the National Law Journal named Ratner one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States.
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Right-Wing Firms Train Public Servants on Terror Threats
There is a sprawling hidden world of counter-terrorism organizations growing beyond control in the United States. Twenty-four of them were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. The next year, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction and collect threat tips. By 2009, nearly 260 organizations were created as 854 thousand civil servants, military personnel and private contractors with top-secret security clearances monitor national security concerns. However, according to a report from the Public Research Associates, those same concerns have bolstered a class of self-proclaimed terrorism experts who decry Islam as an evil religion of terrorists and routinely brand Muslims as primitive, vengeful, duplicitous, and belligerent people who oppress women and gays, and have values irreconcilable with “western Judeo-Christian civilization.”
In fact, when PRA discovered earlier this year that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) had contracted with Security Solutions International to conduct a training on radical Islam, they notified the Muslim American Society, ACLU, and our other advocacy partners, who used PRA’s research to compel the MBTA to cancel the agency’s training.
Chip Berlet :
- As part of the Homeland Security Initiatives and working with the FBI in other aspects of the national security apparatus, there was a need to train thousands as part of a local state and federal counter-terrorism “experts.”
- Some of these trainings are quite good. The problem is that there are a handful of groups that train hundreds and hundreds of local, state and federal counter-terrorism experts, with rhetoric that is basically Islamophobic.
- In the late 1970s there was an attempt to restrain this illegal surveillance. I’d have to say right now it’s worse.
- What used to be done illegally and covertly is now done ostensibly legally and openly and in fact proudly by both Democrats and Republicans who should be ashamed.
- The whole strategic suspicious reporting initiative which basically is a pipeline for unverified rumor and innuendo through local police departments up through a chain of information agencies to the federal government. We know in Europe this kind of reporting is unconstitutional and bad for society.
- Now, everyone that was considered illegal and unconstitutional for which there were Congressional hearings and reforms under Jimmy Carter, now we do it.
- In proper training that is actually looking for criminal activity, not people of color who wear garb that we’re scared of. What’s going on here is untrained, badly trained officers are reporting the names of people up into a huge infrastructure of information data storage, based on bias they’ve not been trained to resist or confront within themselves.
- We described this whole process as a platform for prejudice in a report by Tom Cincotta
- Tom has on his wall a wall chart of all the agencies of this information reporting system and it has 150 dots so inter-connected, no one can control this.
- I’m urging people to form broad coalitions across the political spectrum.
Guest – Chip Berlet, (senior analyst) is a veteran freelance writer and photographer who specializes in investigating right-wing social movements, apocalyptic scapegoating and conspiracism, and authoritarianism. A PRA staffer since 1982, he has written, edited and co-authored numerous articles on right-wing activity and government repression for publications as varied as the Boston Globe, the New York Times, The Progressive, The Nation, The Humanist, and the St. Louis Journalism Review.
Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Chicago Torture Cases and Jon Burge’s Deposition
Torture has cast a long shadow over Chicago and its past administrations. Yet in the past year, with the conviction and sentencing of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, Chicago has been a beacon of light in the fight against torture. Many are waiting to see how the city’s new administration will handle the ongoing torture cases of African American men that number in the hundreds. Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was sentenced to 4 and a half years in prison for obstruction of justice and lying about torturing prisoners in the 1960s to obtain coerced confessions. Attorney Flint Taylor and the People’s Law Office in Chicago fought for decades to get prosecutions, and sentencing while the city poured millions of dollars to fund private lawyers for Burge’s defense.
Attorney Flint Taylor:
- We’ve been working on these cases since 1986. Deposing Jon Burge: We were reaffirming to the African American community that he was in prison and he is a prisoner.
- He was complaining about the lack of medical care and the kind of treatment he felt he should be getting.
- The struggle to put him behind bars has come to fruition. Pin stripe patronage, the city funding Burge’s defense. Rahm Emanuel needs to change course, he’s very close to Daly.
- Daly’s policy was not to settle these cases, not to apologize to the victims.
- There’s another issue about Burge getting his pension even though he’s in the joint.
- When you’re convicted you’re supposed to lose your pension.
- There’s eight people on the pension board, 4 of them are former cops.
- Several of the men who were responsible for Burge going to the penitentiary don’t have a claim civilly, never got a penny for the torture they suffered.
- There are about 20 men still in jail, still in the prisons, based on tortured confessions by Burge and his men.
- There is a demand to challenge these confessions, its been happening on a piece-meal basis.
- You most often find that torture does not lead to information that is useful. In the situation here it is to punish African American people.
- It’s a very racist type of torture in this city. There’s linkage here in what happened in Guantanamo, what happened in Abu Ghraib.
- The Fraternal Order of Police: They’re a very reactionary force when reforming the police department generally. In the early nineties when they fired Burge, the FOP stood up and paid for his defense.
- In case that has gotten him to prison now, the FOP paid a million dollars for 3 lawyers of his choice. Now, the same lawyers have switched hats, and the city is now paying them in the civil cases that we talked about.
- When it gets to a point where the city can’t pay for his defense, the FOP steps in.
- Burge deposition: I set up a series of questions for 3 hours where he consistently took the fifth amendment to all questions that would have implicated him if he answered truthfully.
Guest – Attorney Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern University School of Law and a founding partner of the Peoples Law Office. More bio
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California Inmate Reductions
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling had ordered California to release 46,000 of its 143,435 inmates which has the state trying to figure out what happens next. The SCOTUS ruling affirmed a lower court order that required California to reduce its inmate population to 137% capacity. The state’s prisons are now at about 180% capacity and one cause of overcrowding problems is the state’s “three strikes law” which puts third time offenders in jail for life. Meanwhile, under Governor Brown’s current “re-alignment” program, the tens of thousands convicted of non violent, non-serious, non-sex crimes will serve sentences under county instead of state supervision. Our guest Professor Ruth Gilmore said to one media source, quote – “County jail expansion does not solve the underlying problems,” – -These are goals we can achieve now if we take this opportunity to shrink prisons and jails. Building bigger jails to ease prison numbers is the same as rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic: wasting the same dollars in different jurisdictions.
Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore:
- California is out of line with the rest of country when it comes to parole policy. California sends twice the number of people back to prisons than other jurisdictions, when the person has committed a technical violation, late for a meeting, that kind of thing.
- For that reason, California prisons have been bulging.
- We see that numbers are kept up by this one category, parole violation return to custody. They have to start over and over and over again.
- The Supreme Court ordered the Department of Corrections to reduce the number of people in its custody in its current physical plant. In the 33 prisons, prison camps and dozens of facilities.
- One method to thin the prison population is shipping about 10 thousand prisoners out of the state of California, renting space in other jurisdictions. They’ve been shipping prisoners out of California for 2 and a half years.
- Cost does not seem to have an important effect on the kinds of political decisions, that have been made about prison expansion throughout the United States for the last 30 years.
- A year and a half ago the state presented a plan to the Ninth District court saying here are the changes that we will make to meet the 3 judges’ order that we reduce the number of people in the California State Authority Physical Plant.
- Then, the 3 judges agreed to let California delay in implementing the plan, while they appealed to the Supreme Court.
- California is the proving ground for a new relationship between the state and society. California is a place that started turning its back on public education.
- For some time, the union of California prison guards were a political force and continue to be quite powerful.
- There are many alternatives to locking somebody in a cage for part or all of their life. We should be cautious in thinking GPS tracking is the answer, because one of the huge barriers, that people convicted of a felony face in their lives, is the impossibility of them reintegrating into society.
- My colleague Michelle Alexander has put out a call in a campaign to end The New Jim Crow.
- Criticalresistance.org / Curbprisonspending.org
Guest – Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Professor Gilmore has examined how political and economic forces produced California’s prison boom in Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (University of California Press, 2007), which was recognized by ASA with its Lora Romero First Book Award. Gilmore’s wide-ranging research interests also include race and gender, labor and social movements, uneven development, and the African diaspora. She comes to the Graduate Center from the University of Southern California, where she taught courses in race and ethnicity, economic geography, and political geography, was the founding chair of the department of American studies and ethnicity, and won the USC-Mellon Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring. She also works regularly with community groups and grassroots organizations and is known for the broad accessibility of her research. She holds a Ph.D. in economic geography and social theory from Rutgers University.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Green Scare, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Guantánamo Leaks Must Be Met By Release of Obama Task Force Assessments
The 759 Guantanamo files that were classified “secret” cover nearly every inmate since the camp opened in 2002. The documents obtained by the New York Times and the Guardian last month, reveal how children, the elderly and mentally ill were wrongfully held. The documents also reveal that many prisoners were sent to Guantanamo for nearly nothing or to be interrogated. What did these documents reveal?
Attorney Shane Kadidal:
- These stories started on Monday morning, because administration officials gave out a briefing saying that the nickname of Osama’s couriers was given out by one of the detainees.
- Assuming information taken from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
- We do know it took eight months from the time they identified this compound to the point they decided to strike at it. I think its clear, they relied on a whole slew of information from a variety of sources.
- We already know the true name of the courier, which is more important than a nickname came from agents on the ground and electronic surveillance.
- 172 detainees, 90 cleared from release, 2/3 of those from Yemen have been indefinitely suspended for repatriation because of the “underwear bomber.”
- The problem is so much of (media) attention is focused on the ones that will never be released.
- WikiLeaks – 2400 pages of documents almost all risk assessments of about 740 detainees who’ve been to Guantanamo
- They represent the Defense Departments best case for detaining someone.
- You have these long analysis of very shady facts, not detailing where allegations are coming from.
- If you look at the documents as a whole, it shows that most of the detainees were held on flimsy, unreliable information.
- The documents show that people were interrogated in GTMO about nothing to do with terrorist attacks in the United States. You had Samuel Hodge interrogated about the inner workings of Al-Jazzera
- Everyone ended up with the categorization of high or medium risk
- When you see a leak of this magnitude, the only corrective is to release more information and that’s what we’ve called for at CCR.
- The government quickly emailed us – They said consistent with the security clearances you signed on for, you have to treat this information as classified (leaked documents) even though its been scattered to the winds on every newspaper on Earth.
Guest – Attorney Shane Kadidal, senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and a former law clerk to Judge Kermit Lipez of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In his eight years at the Center, he has worked on a number of significant cases in the wake of 9/11, including the Center’s challenges to the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay (among them torture victim Mohammed al Qahtani and former CIA ghost detainee Majid Khan), which have twice reached the Supreme Court, and several cases arising out of the post-9/11 domestic immigration sweeps.
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Green Is The New Red: An Insiders Account of A Social Movement Under Siege
We welcome Will Potter award-winning independent journalist and now the leading authority on “eco-terrorism.” He’s the author of the new book ,Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege, and it reveals a complex environmental movement emerging amid police state pressure. As we’ve reported here on Law and Disorder, environmental activism have been labeled terrorism under certain interpretation of the Patriot Act, essentially criminalizing dissent and chilling free speech in this country at a critical time. Our guest was an FBI target for merely leafleting against animal testing, and he was threatened to be put on the domestic terrorist watch list if didn’t comply with FBI demands. We talk more about that, the environmentalist movements and his new book.
Will Potter:
- My background is in mainstream newspapers. As I was working as a reporter at the Chicago Tribune, about 9 months after 9/11. I was covering breaking news, blood and guts.
- I decided to go out leafleting on a campaign I became aware of against a controversial animal testing company.
- Couple weeks later the FBI knocks on my door telling me I need to become a government informant and help infiltrate animal rights and environmental groups and if I didn’t they’d put me on the domestic terrorist list.
- It scared the tar out of me. I wish I could say it didn’t.
- Afterward it really lit a fire under me to figure out what was going on.
- One of the reasons I started the website was because of this new law being considered called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.
- What I decided to do with the book is tell the personal stories of the people involved.
- I followed Daniel McGowan a few days before his sentence to how he ended up in this facility, his own journey as an activist. Daniel was convicted of serious crimes, two arsonists that didn’t harm anyone and he was labeled a terrorist.
- The book looks at the wide range of activity being labeled “eco-terrorism”
- The FBI has labeled the environmental and animal rights movement the number one domestic terrorism threat.
- These corporate campaigns were pushed for so long through the courts, politicians, and the press that over time they began to dovetail with government policy.
- The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act is so broad it can even wrap up non-violent civil disobedience as terrorism, only if its directed at what is called animal enterprises.
- The real power of this is fear.
- The activists who are really effective and pushing the boundary are the ones being labeled eco-terrorists.
- I recently wrote about 3 bills that are under consideration for the Huffington Post. What Is Big Ag Trying To Hide.
Guest – Will Potter, award-winning independent journalist based in Washington, D.C., who focuses on “eco-terrorism,” the animal rights and environmental movements, and civil liberties post-9/11. Will’s work has appeared in publications including the Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, and the Vermont Law Review, and he has testified before the U.S. Congress about his reporting. He is the author of Green Is The New Red: An insider’s account of a social movement under siege forthcoming from City Lights Books.
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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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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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights
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Updates:
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Brandworkers Defeats Anti-Speech Legal Action from the Flaum Appetizing Corp.
Workers of the Campaign for Justice at Flaum Appetizing Corporation stand up. Immigrants for Mexico and Ecuador challenged sweatshop conditions at a New York City processor and distributor of kosher foods. The workers used innovative legal advocacy and organizing tools to win justice at the company. The company Flaum Appetizing illegally withheld hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation owed to the workers and used anti-immigrant retailiation when workers stood up for their rights.
Attorney Daniel Gross:
- Brandworkers work on a joint campaign called Focus on the Food Chain.
- Much of the food that we consume at markets and restaurants is distributed by a corridor of sweatshops that line southern Queens and northern Brooklyn.
- Overtime is hardly ever paid, no retirement benefits, no health care, extreme discrimination, extremely heavy work without appropriate health and safety standards.
- The company owes them 260 thousand in this labor board case after a full trial.
- The employer had the chance to make their case, call their witnesses, they lost. That order has been enforced, but Flaum is still resisting. They’re resisting for one reason. Immigration.
- We’ve had members there at Flaum, no question where they’re from, say no to abuse, say no to conditions where Latino workers are called cockroaches.
- It’s despicable, we need to put all our energy and all our heart into opposing this type of discrimination.
- Brandworkers: We’re very pleased to report we stared down their Taft-Hartley charges at the board.
- December 8th, 2010 at the Labor Board of Brooklyn / 2 Metro Tech Center / Brooklyn, NY /
- Focus On The Food Chain / Facebook
Guest – Daniel Gross, attorney, co-founder and executive director of Brandworkers International, a non-profit organization protecting and advancing the rights of retail and food employees.
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Human Rights Groups File Legal Petition on Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Camps for Displaced in Haiti
It’s been almost a year since Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake took the lives of nearly 200 thousand people and left 1.5 million homeless. Now, women and girls living in the camps have lived in fear of the constant threat of rape and violence.
Groups of attorneys and advocates for displaced women in Haiti are calling for urgent action to confront an epidemic of sexual violence in the camps. On-the-ground investigations have revealed a shocking pattern of rape, beatings and threats against the lives of Haitan women and girls. A petition submitted by the groups to the the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights calls for the IACHR to require the Haitian government to take action such as installing lighting in the camps and provide housing.
Bill Quigley, Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said “The ultimate solution here is permanent, safe housing for Haitians. Unfortunately, the international community has reneged on its commitment to provide essential funds for rebuilding and the U.S., in particular, has not delivered even one cent of the reconstruction funding it pledged. Women are being forced to live in extremely unsafe conditions for the foreseeable future and it is a deplorable failure on the part of those who made such a show about standing with the Haitian people in their greatest hour of need.”
Attorney Bill Quigley:
- I was in Haiti, and visited a number of the camps with some grass roots womens’ organizations.
- I really was shocked by how terrible things were there. Still over a million people who are homeless. They’re really not camps. Every park, every school yard, every backyard, every churchyard has people living in it. Over 1300 hundred of these camps.
- None of these camps have running water or electricity or proper sanitation or food availability.
- Women and children are much more vulnerable when chaos hits.
- In one community, tens of thousands line up in the morning and afternoon just to get water. If you go to the bathroom at night, you run a real risk of being assaulted or raped.
- The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
- They don’t want the UN to be the security down there, by and large they’re considered occupiers by the people of Haiti.
- They’re preserving order but the order is that 90 percent of the people are disenfranchised.
- Somebody with a gun or machete is empowered when all you have for protection is a plastic sheet.
- A few people can terrorize thousands and thousands of folks. Every single day is a survival day.
- Only 2 percent of the rubble has been removed.
- You can’t depend only on volunteers. Volunteers can’t build hospitals.
- The legal action filed is asking to hold the United Nations and the international community in the way the aid is being spent that is not prioritizing the safety of women and girls.
- We included in that dozens of reports of kidnapping, starving and women having to sell themselves to survive.
- I’m not sure I could live that way for a month, less than a month. Toilet facilities used by thousands of people that’s far away to get to. Mario Joseph, Haitian human rights lawyer.
- Three sources of power in Haiti, the Haitian government, the US-UN and the NGO community.
- Five cents out of every dollar actually goes to the Haitian government. Bill Clinton has more power than anybody else in Haiti.
Guest – Bill Quigley, Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a national legal and educational organization dedicated to advancing and defending the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Bill joined CCR on sabbatical from his position as law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. He has been an active public interest lawyer since 1977.
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