CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Michael E. Tigar On Challenges Lawyers Currently Face
Recently on Law And Disorder we interviewed Baher Azmy, Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and National Lawyers Guild President Natasha Bannan. We were interested in their views of the challenges facing leftist lawyers and their movement clients face in these difficult times.
Attorney Jim Lafferty, the former head of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who has a program on our sister station in Los Angeles, KPFK, joins me in the studio to cohost. We are going to speak for the entire hour with human rights attorney Michael Tigar.
Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, our democracy, however restricted at the time, has been even further shrunk by the growth of the national security state and the all knowing surveillance apparatus that has been set up. Moreover, the President, as the head of the executive branch of the government, has gathered unto to himself an unprecedented amount of power over the judicial and the legislative branches of the government. tigarbytes.blogspot.com/
Guest – Michael Tigar, emeritus professor of law at Duke University and at Washington College of Law. He has been a lawyer working on social change issues since the 1960s. He has argued numerous cases in United States Supreme Court and many Circuit Courts of Appeal. His books include “Law and the Rise of Capitalism”, “ Fighting Injustice ”, and the forthcoming Mythologist of State and Monopoly Power.“
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Tompkins Square Park Police Riot 30th Anniversary Special
Thirty years ago, a singular event occurred in Manhattan’s East Village that would prove transformative to many lives for years to come. Today on Law and Disorder we bring you a special program on the August 1988 Tompkins Square Park Police Riot as recounted by several individuals who were there for the entire event. We share firsthand observations of unbridled police violence, talk about how we came to be there, and discuss how the riot marked the linchpin to transform an entire neighborhood from a mecca of creativity and political activism, to the new home of TARGET, Starbucks and other hallmarks of American gentrification.
Tompkins Square Park is bounded on the West and East by Avenues A and B, and on the North and South by 10th Street and 7th Streets. It falls in the part of that neighborhood often referred to as Alphabet City, named for its 4 Alphabet numbered avenues, that in the 1960’s and 1970’s were a haven for drug sellers and squatters and a large Puerto Rican community. The park had a history of activism as it was the site of a riot in 1874 on behalf of the city’s labor movement.
In 1988, a homeless encampment was erected in the park, attracting a wide range of activists, squatters, and homeless persons. Several local residents complained and in a controversial move, the local governing body, Community Board 3, on June 28, approved a 1 AM curfew from what had long been a 24-hour open park. The Avenue A Block Association supported the curfew as it represented the few local businesses that existed then. Many residents opposed the curfew, including those who would have to take a longer walk around the park to get home.
The New York City City Parks Department agreed to enforce the curfew, and on July 31, 1998 protesters gathered at a rally there. Police, responding to alleged noise complaints, entered the park. A skirmish ensued, and several civilians and six officers were treated for injuries. Four men were arrested on charges of reckless endangerment and inciting to riot.
Guests – Susan Howard, East Village Community Activist, John McBride, Photographer and Arthur Nersesian, East Village Writer.
Written by Attorney Heidi Boghosian and produced by Geoff Brady
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Challenges Lawyers Face As Democratic Institutions Dismantled
What are the the challenges lawyers on the left face in this historic period? That is the concern of today’s show. Since 911 we have seen the consolidation of an authoritarian state. The radical right working over the last 30 years and funded by the Koch brothers and their billionaire allies, are strategic and have been very successful.
They now hold the reins of power in 33 states, the Senate, House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, and the presidency. Their ultimate goal is to “dismantle the administrative state“, which is their formulation for taking away every social benefit that we have earned since 1930s. To prevent us from fighting back they have restricted democracy with voter suppression and gerrymandering. The right wing Supreme Court has declared that corporations are people and have the right to unlimited amounts of corporate dark money. Our access to information has also been constricted. Five major corporations own all the major media. New algorithms by Google and Facebook restrict access to people looking for alternative media, like Law And Disorder Radio.
We are also seeing the dismantling of programs that benefit people and the hollowing out of the democratic rights necessary to defend them. Racism and dehumanization are employed to divide and conquer. But at the same time we have seen the growth of social movements with our movement attorneys right in there fighting as important auxiliaries. Since 911 and the passage of the Patriot Act government surveillance of our private lives and political affiliations has become pervasive.
Guest – Attorney Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan, President of the National Lawyers Guild.
Guest – Attorney Baher Azmy, the litigation director at the center for constitutional rights National Lawyers Guild – Chicago 1937 as an alternative to the all white American Bar Association. It’s gotten principle was announced: human rights over property rights. The center for constitutional rights was founded by civil rights attorneys who had been active in the south in 1966 including William Kunstler, the attorney for Martin Luther King.
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Julian Assange And Political Asylum In Danger
WikiLeaks founder the truth telling publisher Julian Assange is in certain and imminent danger of being sent from England to America where he would likely be tried for espionage, a crime that carries the death penalty.
Assange and WikiLeaks have revealed American war crimes in the middle east, CIA global machinations , and the work of Clinton Democrats in preventing the popular Bernie Sanders from heading up the party ticket.
Assange is presently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he was granted political asylum six years ago by past leftist president Rafael Correa. But now, with the change of presidents in Ecuador, Assange has been cut off from the outside world. He has no phone, no computer, and no visitors.
The fresh offensive against him occurred the day after American General Joseph DiSalvo, the head of the US Southern Command, the Pentagon’s arm in Latin America, visited the new right wing Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno. Irene was told that if he did not cooperate he would not get an International Monetary Fund loan. Moreno has said that Assange is “an inherited problem” and is seeking s better relationship with the United States government, to whom he has already granted a military base.
Guest -Attorney Renata Avila has represented International human rights lawyer and digital rights advocate. In her practice, she represented indigenous victims of genocide and other human rights abuses, including the prominent indigenous leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum. She also represented awarded journalist Julian Assange and Wikileaks since 2009. Avila sits on the
Board of Creative Commons, is a trustee of the Courage Foundation, – an organisation set up to assist whistleblowers at risk – and is an advisory board member of Diem25, a movement to democratise Europe launched by Yanis Varoufakis. Her book Women, Whistleblowing Wikileaks” was published by OR Books. She is currently writing a book on Digital Colonialism and regularly writes for several international newspapers.
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Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Prison Industry, Supreme Court
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Update:
- Climate Activists Win in Minnesota Supreme Court, Setting Stage for Historic Climate Necessity Trial
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NARSOL: Sex Offender Laws
Tayler Boncal was a 22-year-old student teacher and track coach at Conrad High School in West Hartford. She was arrested this past February and charged with three counts of second-degree sexual assault for having a consensual relationship with an 18-year-old male student. The young man initiated the relationship and was not a member of the track team. If convicted of sexual assault Ms. Boncal will have to register as a sex offender. Doing so will most likely alter the course of her life.
NARSOL, a nationally recognized non-profit dedicated to restoring the civil and constitutional rights of registered sex offenders, believes that criminal charges in this instance are unwarranted. The group contends that any law that allows an adult to be criminally prosecuted for having a consensual relationship with another adult should be abolished.
Guest – Brenda Jones, has been involved in this cause since September of 2009. She has been executive director of state affiliate FAIR (Families Advocating Intelligent Registries) since its inception in 2010 and in 2012 became the first executive director of NARSOL.
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The Federalist Society: Shifting the U.S. Legal Landscape to the Right
With the recent nomination of conservative attorney Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, the United States Supreme Court will have a majority of authoritarian anti-democratic jurists who support a powerful executive. At the same time, Donald Trump has wasted no time in appointing more conservatives to federal judgeships.
More and more we’re hearing that the once little-known Federalist Society is behind these appointments. But it’s now a new development. The Society was formed at Yale University in 1981, and has steadily and quietly been placing its lawyer members in positions of power in the government and judiciary.
In their 2013 book, The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals, attorneys Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin track the movements of this small group of conservative law students and lawyers and their increasing influence. The Federalist Society has lawyer chapters in every major city in the United States and student chapters in every accredited law school. Members include economic conservatives, social conservatives, Christian conservatives, and libertarians. One of the things that has made the Federalist Society so very effective is their big picture agenda. While they may have differences of opinion on a range of issues, they have successfully put those aside to advance a far-reaching, long-lasting, and broad conservative agenda. Their agenda is chipping away at social gains made since the 1930s. Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are on the block. So is Roe v. Wage. Citizen United, holding that corporations are persons and money is free speech, and the union-breaking Janus decision are just the beginning. Other attacks on democracy include voter suppression, voter ID laws, and gerrymandering.
Guest – Attorney Michael Avery, the former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and is an expert in the areas of constitutional law and police misconduct.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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The Fall Of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest Of A Progressive Bastion And The Future Of American Politics.
For decades Wisconsin was known as a laboratory of democracy, the birthplace of labor and environmental movements, and home to the cherished “Wisconsin idea“, which championed expertise in the service of the public good. All this has changed under Republican Governor Scott Walker and the Republican state legislature.
There are two themes central to Walker’s success. He turned public opinion against well meaning public servants through absurd caricatures and trumpeted that far and wide through the almost limitless financial backing of right wing zealots like the Koch brothers. He also divided the labor movement, conquering it by splitting some workers from others. First he broke the public sector unions, and then, over a weakened opposition, passed a Right To Work law crippling the private sector unions. Huge amounts of dark money, gerrymandering legislative districts, voter suppression, and voter ID laws made this all possible. Over time, big money wrote legislation which was enacted into law. Eventually Donald Trump won Wisconsin’s electoral votes, making him the president.
Guest – Dan Kaufman, is a Wisconsin native and the author of The Fall Of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest Of A Progressive Bastion And The Future Of American Politics. He has written for The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker.
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Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council
With it’s Janus versus AFSME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council) decision the Supreme Court’s activist rightist majority has overturned a 40 year old precedent that allowed public-sector unions, like private sector unions, to charge non-members – who they are required by law to represent – a fee for that representation.
A strategic campaign organized by the State Policy Network(SNP) think tanks nationwide included a multi-state effort to reach 5 million teachers, librarians and other public sector workers affected by the Janus decision.
In Texas the State Policy Network is funded by the Koch brothers, Koch industries, AT&T, Verizon, Exxon mobile, Coca-Cola, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. The Texas SPN like others across the country is leveraging the Supreme Court decision as a means of starving unions of funds and eventually disbanding them all together.
They recently sent out a mailing, claiming government unions have undue political influence and stating that “by 2020 SPN aims to empower our interstate freedom network to rescue nearly 1,000,000 people from forced government union musician. This strategy could remove one billion dollars per election cycle from union budgets.”
Guest – Attorney Dean Hubbard, has been an attorney, organizer, educator and artist for workers’ rights and environmental and racial justice for more than three decades. Dean is the longtime Chair of the National Lawyers Guild Labor and Employment Committee. He is currently a strategic consultant to unions and social justice organizations. Among other movement gigs, he was Director of the Labor and Economic Justice Program at the Sierra Club, he was Senior Counsel to the Transport Workers Union of America and its NYC Local 100, he held the Joanne Woodward Chair in Public Policy and Advocacy at Sarah Lawrence College, and he co-founded the progressive workers’ rights law firm Eisner & Hubbard, P.C. He has published widely, and has organized and led investigations, tribunals and delegations on labor and human rights issues worldwide.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Targeting Muslims, War Resister
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First Amendment: Separation of Church and State
On the final day of the Supreme Court term last week, Justice Elena Kagan said that conservatives are “weaponizing the First Amendment” and turning it into a sword.”
Many on the left who once held absolutist views on free speech are realizing that certain court victories may actually bring harm to women, or gay and lesbian couples and others, rather than advancing their causes. The same is true with some cases involving religious freedom.
The Washington DC-based group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State reads, in part on its website that: “Religion is often uses as an excuse to discriminate against LGBTQ people, women, religious minorities, non-believers and others. Some want to use their religious beliefs as as excuse to deny health care, refuse to provide goods and services, and disobey laws protecting Americans from discrimination.”
Guest – Attorney Richard Katskee, Legal Director at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Richard has litigated First Amendment cases in appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including challenging creationism in the public schools, religiously based discrimination against same-sex couples and much more.
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Alternative 4th of July celebration in NYC commemorated Frederick Douglass
Last week an Alternative 4th of July celebration in NYC commemorated Frederick Douglass an his Independence Day Speech at the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-slavery Society in 1852.
The event was organized by poet Raymond Nat Turner, who has been a guest on Law and Disorder, and held at the NY Chapter of the National Writers Union on July 3, 2018.
The celebration included performances by UpSurge! NYC, solidarity poems, and Frederick Douglass readers Ralph Poynter of the Lynne Stewart Organization and the New Abolitionist Movement, Margaret Kimberly from the Black Agenda Report, Diane Ward form the NWU Steering Committee and our own Heidi Boghosian. We are pleased to bring you some of the music, poetry and the readings.
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