Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Truth to Power
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Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism In America
In recent years, our guest, Attorney Jeffery Robinson has traveled the country speaking about the hidden history of race in America. It is a history he maintains that has been stolen from all of us. He will be speaking on this stolen history on June 19 at Townhall in New York City. His talk will be the basis for a feature documentary on the history of racism in America.
Guest – Attorney Jeffery Robinson, since graduating from Harvard Law School, Jeff has three decades of experience working on criminal and racial justice and reform issues. First, as a public defender representing indigent clients in state and then federal court in Seattle. Then, in private practice in Seattle at Schroeter, Goldmark & Bender where he represented a broad range of clients on charges ranging from shoplifting to securities fraud and first degree murder. He has tried over 200 criminal cases to verdict and more than a dozen civil cases representing plaintiffs suing corporate and government entities. Jeff was one of the original members of the John Adams Project, enabling him to work on behalf of one of five men held at Guantanamo Bay charged with the 9-11 attacks. Jeff is also a respected teacher of trial advocacy. He has lectured on trial skills all over the United States. Since 2012, Jeff has done work to educate himself and others about little known facts of the history of America’s practice of white supremacy related to African Americans. He speaks to diverse audiences across the country on the role of race in the criminal justice system and beyond. In 2015, Jeff joined the ACLU National office in New York where he continues this important work.
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Ironies and Complications of Free Speech: News and Commentary From the Free Expression Policy Project, 2001-2017
The Free Expression Policy Project was a little think tank that delved into the problem of censorship in our society. Until 2017 it was headed up by civil liberties lawyer and author Marjorie Heins. The First Amendment ostensibly protects free speech and free expression. But there are exceptions. It also separates church from state, but here too there are exceptions. We speak with attorney Marjorie Heins about this. Her book Ironies and Complications of Free Speech: News and Commentary From the Free Expression Policy Project, 2001-2017 has just been published.
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Heins, is a civil liberties lawyer, writer, and teacher, and the founding director of the Free Expression Policy Project. Her previous book, Not in Front of the Children, won the American Library Association’s 2002 Eli Oboler Award for best published work in the field of intellectual freedom. Other books include Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to America’s Censorship Wars; Cutting the Mustard: Affirmative Action and the Nature of Excellence; and Strictly Ghetto Property: The Story of Los Siete de la Raza. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iran, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Political Analysis: United States Attacks On Syria
The recent American cruise missile attack on alleged chemical war infrastructure in Douma, Syria have been defended as legitimate, if not legal. Trump called Syrian president Assad “ an animal“ who gassed his own people and had to be deterred from further attacks on them.
Critics of the attack have said that it violated both American and international law and risked nuclear warfare. They argued that our Constitution states that only Congress can declare war, that there was no question of self-defense, that the United States was under attack, and that in any case The United Nations charter, to which the United States is a signatory, precludes what United States did. The UN charter is a treaty which binds America and is part of American law.
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former NLG president. My book, ‘Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues,’ was recently published in a second, updated edition. marjoriecohn.com.
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Inside Iran: The Real History And Politics Of The Islamic Republic Of Iran
Medea Benjamin presented a powerful book talk at the A.J Muste Memorial Institute. Medea was introduced by our own Heidi Boghosian.
Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK and the co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. Described as “one of America’s most committed — and most effective — fighters for human rights” by New York Newsday, and “one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement” by the Los Angeles Times, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide. She received numerous prices, including: the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Peace Prize by the US Peace Memorial, the Gandhi Peace Award, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Award. She is a former economist and nutritionist with the United Nations and World Health Organization.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry
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Kisela vs Hughes: Qualified Immunity
All too often government officials including law-enforcement agencies get away with gross abuses of power because they invoke the doctrine of qualified immunity. This is a doctrine which protects police who kill civilians.
In the United States, 2,934 civilians were shot and killed by police since 2015. That is nearly 1000 people a year. In most European countries the number of people killed by the police is zero.
The doctrine of qualified immunity prevents government agents from being held personally responsible for constitutional violations unless the violation was of clearly established law. This is something nearly impossible to prove.
A Supreme Court decision two weeks ago in the Kisela vs Hughes case decided against the plaintiff victim of police abuse by a 7 to 2 majority two liberal justices Sotomayor and Ginsberg dissented. They opined that the majority of supreme court judges have established what they called an absolute shield protecting police from what they labeled palpably unreasonable action that will go unpunished.
Guest – Attorney G.Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern Law School, is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, an office which has been dedicated to litigating civil rights, police violence, government misconduct, and death penalty cases for more than 40 years.
Guest – Attorney Ben Elson is a partner at the People’s Law Office. His practice focuses on representing victims of police and other governmental misconduct in civil rights cases, including people who have been wrongfully convicted, subjected to police brutality, and denied medical attention. He has obtained tens of millions of dollars in compensation for his clients through verdicts and settlements.
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Lawyers You’ll Like: Cathleen Caron – Justice In Motion
Attorneys who represent migrant workers face a host of challenges in transnational employment litigation. Some of these challenges range from not being able to obtain a visa for clients posed to begin trial but are physically back at home in Guatemala or another country, and cannot return to testify. Or clients may be entitled to past wages but their US lawyers are unable to find them once they have left the States.
For some lawyers, it’s cost-prohibitive to keep in contact or to track down clients when the case goes to trial and forgo representing them entirely.
This is where the organization Justice in Motion comes in. Their unique cross-borer model helps advocates and migrants overcome these barriers to what they call portable justice. Their mission is to ensure that migrants who suffered exploitation abroad are able to access justice even if they have returned to their home countries. They connect advocates and defenders, and support the development of cases to ensure that transnational litigation is working effectively and smoothly on behalf of migrants. They play a pivotal role in persuading attorneys to work on cases with a transnational dimension, and to not forgo them because of legal or logistical obstacles. This has led to a significant increase in the number of advocates in the region providing transnational legal services to migrants. Justice In Motion 2017 Brochure
Guest – Attorney Cathleen Caron, National Lawyers Guild member, Cathleen is the founding executive director of Justice in Motion, and she’s also one of our Lawyers You’ll Like. Cathleen has more than twenty years of human rights experience in the United States and abroad. Prior to launching Justice in Motion (formerly known as Global Workers Justice Alliance), she was in East Timor where she directed a national needs assessment of the human trafficking situation for the Alola Foundation, chaired by East Timor’s First Lady.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Iraq War, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Mass Support Needed For Julian Assange
Two weeks ago, WikiLeaks founder and internet publisher Julian Assange , who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, had his Internet access cut off due to pressure by the British and American governments on Ecuador. Ecuador had granted him political asylum in their embassy where he has been living in two small sunless rooms for five years. Ecuador gave him political asylum after he sought refuge in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, which would have sent him to the US. Assange was under protracted investigation for a rape claim, made up by the Swedish police and Swedish prosecutor and denied by the purported women victim. Sweden finally dropped the case, but Assange remains subject to arrest in Britain jumping bail.
Assange and WikiLeaks had been steadily revealing the war crimes and illegalities of the American government since it first published the Iraq war logs eight years ago. The war logs included video footage of American soldiers assassinating Iraqi civilians and a Reuters journalist. Chelsea Manning, who was recently released after seven years in prison, furnished WikiLeaks with the war logs.
The United States government is seeking to capture Assange and bring him back to the United States to stand trial for espionage, a crime which carries the death penalty.
Guest – John Pilger, an Australian-British journalist based in London. John has worked in many facets of journalism, including a correspondent in the Vietnam War, the Middle East Desk for Reuters in London, a documentary film maker, and a producer for the Independent Television Network in London. Pilger is known for his conscience, bravery and acute historical insight. His articles appear worldwide in newspapers such as the Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times.
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You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice: Intellectual Property
Laws protecting artwork and intellectual property are increasingly being put to the test amid claims from rising artists marketing their work online whose work is being copied by others.
Art piracy can include music posters, clothing design, book cover art, signage, record sleeve art, and typography. Under copyright law, one artist using another artist’s idea is generally legal, while one artist using another’s expression of that idea is generally illegal. Only a fact-intensive analysis can provide a bit of clarity, and even that is subject to a judge’s or jury’s review.
Sometimes copyright cases expand into major litigation. A New York judge recently ruled that graffiti, or aerosol artists, were entitled to a $6.7 million verdict after New York developer Gerald Wolkoff destroyed their well-known public work. The claim in the so-called FivePointz case arose under the Visual Artists’ Rights Act, or VARA. It’s the kind of case that attorney Scott Burroughs says rarely goes to trial. Several artists created aerosol art pieces on the walls of an abandoned development in the once downtrodden and now gentrified neighborhood of Long Island City, Queens. Wolkoff destroyed their art as part of a development plan. Read Scott’s Column Above The Law.
Guest – Attorney Scott Burroughs, an advocate for artists’ rights who curates the art law blog You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice and has a weekly copyright law column on legal website Above the Law.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Torture, Truth to Power
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Herman Bell Granted Parole After Serving 45 Years In Prison
A respected elder, Herman Bell, was granted parole having met all the criteria for release according to his sentence. The parole commissioners recognized his progress after serving nearly 45 years in prison and granted his parole application. He is looking forward to being reunited with his family and friends. Today we talk about some of the opposition, from politicians and the police union, to this decision. Support Herman Bell
Herman Bell – Twitter – #BringHermanHome
Guest – Laura Whitehorn , a former political prisoner who served 14 years for the distruction of government property in connection with a 1983 bombing at the US Capitol where no one was injured. She was released in 1999. Laura Whitehorn is a leader in the Release Aging People in Prison Organization and has been active in challenging the New York state parole board’s intransigence.
Check the RAPP Events Page
Guest – Jose Saldana, joins hosts and Laura Whitehorn to talk about Herman Bell. Jose was recently released from prison after serving 38 years. He’s worked with parole reform organizations and RAPP.
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10th Annual Brooklyn Folk Festival
The Brooklyn Folk Festival is coming up April 6-8 at historic St. Anne’s church in downtown Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn Folk Festival celebrates and presents the best in American and world folk music with more than performances, workshops, film screenings, jam sessions, vocal and instrumental workshops, a square dance, and their famous banjo toss contest. The festival was started nine years ago by Eli Smith, the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music. Its a substantial and unique community event.
Folk or old time music runs counter to the commercial establishment music scene. It is truly a people’s music. It is non-commercial, non-corporate, and not a generator of huge profits. As a result this music, which should be central to American culture, has been down played and sidelined.
We know of some of its famous proponents – Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan . . but there are many great unknown folk musicians whose art is perpetuated and expanded on at the Brooklyn Folk Festival.
Guest – Eli Smith, the founder and main organizer along with the Jalopy Theatre and School Music, of the Brooklyn Folk Festival. Eli Smith is a banjo player and folk musician. He plays with the band called the Downhill Strugglers. He is a Folkways recording artist and has played around the country including the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Uncategorized, War Resister
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Gina Haspel, Rule of Law And Torture
Nazi generals and Nazi leaders were prosecuted at the end of World War II for war crimes and crimes against humanity and genocide. These crimes were incorporated into international law.
The chief prosecutor was Robert Jackson, a Supreme Court judge. The Nazis defended themselves by arguing that they were just following orders. This defense was deemed unavailing. In many cases, they were found guilty and sentenced to lengthy prison terms or hung. He said that the war crimes tribunal at Nirenberg was not merely victors’ justice. But that the principles it followed would be universal and applied in the future, to all countries including the USA. And indeed, the United States signed on to the Geneva Conventions and Convention Against Torture and incorporate both the crimes and the concept of universal jurisdiction into its law.
Gina Haspel has been nominated by President Donald Trump to head the CIA. She is a war criminal. She violated both international and national law by running a black site secret detention center in Thailand where men were tortured. Although there were several court orders that the evidence be preserved, Gina Haspel had the videotapes of torture destroyed.
John Brennan, Obama’s ex head of the CIA, who was involved in the torture program, recently came to her defense, stating that she was just following orders: The Nazi defense.
Trump supports torture. He believes that torture works. This is both immoral and untrue. He says he is for waterboarding and worse. He now has a subordinate with whom he is in agreement.
Obama refused to prosecute the lawbreakers. Instead he threw CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou in prison for two years for disclosing American torture. He said we must look forward, not backward. This greenlighted what is going on now with Haspel.
Michael Ratner warned us about this eventuality. The European Center for Human and Constitutional Rights may seek Haspel’s arrest if she goes to Germany.
Such is the irony of history that the German fascist government that perpetrated the greatest crimes against humanity has been superseded by an American government which condones and is perpetuating them as well.
Guest – John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent, he is the author of Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison. He spent 15 years working for the CIA including the period following September 11 2001. The next year he was invited to be certified in enhanced interrogation techniques and said no, rightly recognizing it as sanctioned torture. He was privy to all the details of the American torture program and personally knew Gina Haspel. In 2007 when ABC News asked him to rebut charges that he tortured and Al Qaeda prisoner he went on the air and disclose details about American torture policy. For this the CIA had him tried and convicted. He spent 23 months in prison.
Guest – Katherine Gallagher is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She works on universal jurisdiction and international criminal law cases involving U.S. and foreign officials and torture and other war crimes, and cases involving private military corporations and torture at Abu Ghraib. Her major cases include Al Shimari v. CACI, the international U.S. torture accountability cases, andSurvivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) v. Vatican, seeking accountability for the crimes against humanity of sexual violence by clergy and cover-up.
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The National Immigration Project And Protecting Haitian Refugees
The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild filed a lawsuit in Brooklyn on March 15 to block President Trump’s cancellation of temporary protected status which had been granted to more than 50,000 Haitian refugees because of the terrible conditions in that country since the hurricane in 2010. The National Immigration Project declared President Trump’s actions to be unlawful, racially motivated, and evidence of a complete lack of knowledge of immigration law.
The TPS program exempts from deportation people from countries in turmoil due to war, natural disasters, and other extraordinary conditions.
The suit alleges that the federal government was arbitrary and capricious in his decision to end the program and was motivated by Donald Trump’s “racial and national origin animus towards patients.” The suit cites Trump’s demeaning remarks towards Haitians and Haiti. He has said that Haitians have AIDS and Haiti is a “s&*t hole” country. The Trump administration‘s position is that protecting Haitians is no longer necessary because conditions in Haiti have improved.
Guest – National Lawyers Guild Attorney Sejal Zota is the Legal Director of the National Immigration Project of the Guild. Sejal works on issues of removal defense, post-conviction, enforcement, and immigration consequences of crimes through litigation, education, and technical assistance. Previously, Sejal taught and wrote about the impacts of immigration on state and local government at University of North Carolina’s School of Government. She also regularly trained and advised defense attorneys throughout North Carolina on the immigration consequences of crime, and is the lead author of Immigration Consequences of a Criminal Conviction in North Carolina.
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Brooklyn Folk Festival 2018
Co-host Michael Smith reminds listeners of this year’s Brooklyn Folk Festival.
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