Civil Liberties, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance
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The Young Lords: A Radical History
Protests in the streets in the wake of police killings of Black Americans have sparked a multi-faceted societal reckoning with racism. Challenges to entrenched systems of inequality and white supremacy are taking many forms, from the tearing down of confederate statues, to calls for police reform and the defunding of certain police functions, to Merriam Webster dictionary expanding its definition of racism to include structural forms of bias.
Historically, the role of street protests is so intrinsic to reform in this nation enshrines protection for mass assemblies in the Bill of Rights. Yet one vibrant and impactful group of revolutionary activists in protest history has received virtually no attention, namely the Young Lords.
The children of poor and working class Puerto Rican migrants who had been massively displaced from the Island of Puerto the US mainland after WW II, the Young Lords grew up in neighborhoods like the South Bronx and East Harlem,. They were radicalized by the civil rights and black power movements and the Vietnam War. This generation of socialist youth make it their top priority to bring about revolution in the US and on the island of Puerto Rico.
Scholar and activist Johanna Fernandez’s new book, The Young Lords: A Radical History is the definitive history of this militant group of community organizers. In a presentation at Baltimore’s Red Emma worker cooperative bookstore in early 2020 Professor Fernandez discussed the long-lasting impact of their theatrical street initiatives. The Young Lords transformed the relationship between white people and people of color in the US, and made it acceptable to questions how the US government conducts foreign policy.
Their activism has been credited for the the passage of anti-lead poisoning legislation in the city and they drafted the first known patient bill of rights–they did no in concert with nurses, doctors, and hospital workers at Lincoln Hospital which they occupied 50 years ago on July 14, 1969, to protest healthcare for profit in America and the poor conditions in the delivery of healthcare to black American and Puerto Rican patients in that Bronx hospital.
As Professor Fernandez writes in her book, “The New York Young Lords formed part of a cohort of young working-class people–and people of color among them, in particular–whose unprecedented access to higher education sharpened their latent critique of society and afford them an infrastructure for dissent…..they challenged what many believed were old, soul-slaying social norms and standards of behavior that constrained personal freedoms in the U.S. Known collectively as the New Left, these diverse movements were built by a generation whose activism radically changed the cultural and political landscape of the United States.”
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Aerial Investigation Research Pilot Program And Persistent Tracking
As the nation erupts in protests against racially-infused police violence, the Baltimore Police Department has just launched a six-month, day-time aerial surveillance experiment. A Texas billionaire has funded the project that is being operated by an Ohio-based company, Persistent Surveillance Systems. The plane flies overhead and records the movements of everyone in the city.
Michael Harrision, Baltimore Police Commissioner, has justified the nearly $4 million experiment by saying, “There is no expectation of privacy on a public street, a sidewalk.”
The Aerial Investigation Research Pilot Program is, by contract, limited to monitoring such felony crimes as robberies, car jackings, shootings and homicides. Images recorded are, in theory, to be used solely in criminal investigations and will be stored for 45 days. A first prong of the program was conducted covertly in 2016 under a different police commissioner.
The ACLU of Maryland calls this initiative the most comprehensive surveillance of a U.S. city in history. ACLU Senior Staff attorney David Rocah said, “It’s the virtual equivalent of having a police officer follow a resident every time they walk out the door, and if that happened in real life, all of us would understand the huge privacy implications in doing that.”
Guest – ACLU Senior Staff attorney David Rocah has worked on a number of significant cases involving free speech, police misconduct, privacy, election law and more. In 2011 he was an inaugural recipient of the James Baldwin Medal for Civil Rights. David previously worked as a Senior Trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division at the US Dept of Justice, focusing on police misconduct and conditions in prisons, jails and other state institutions.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Truth to Power
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People’s Law Office Files Suit To Stop Paramilitary In Chicago
With less than 100 days to go before the November election Donald Trump is afraid, with good reason, that he is going to lose. He had planned to run on the strength of the American economy. But because of the widespread and spreading COVID-19 virus and the attendant tanking of the economy he can no longer do this. Trump has switched election strategies.
He calls himself a war president and is hoping to stir up peoples’ fear of anarchists socialists, people who he says hate our country and who he falsely claims are tearing it apart in rising crime ridden Democratic party controlled major cities.
Fear is his strategy. He won the last election despite losing the popular vote by raising the specter of fear of Muslim terrorists and Mexican rapists and murderers invading our southern border.
Using the pretext of an executive order issued to protect statutes and monuments Trump has marshaled para-military troops from six different Federal organizations including Homeland Security and the Customs and Border Patrol. Two weeks ago he sent them to Portland, Oregon where are largely peaceful protests have been ongoing.
The military forces were sent out to crush the demonstrations, to dominate the streets. Dressed in camouflage uniforms without identification they plucked protesters off the street, kidnapped and interrogated them, and then released them. They used teargas, pepper spray, and fired rubber bullets. They beat people severely with batons and focused their attacks on paramedics, National Lawyers Guild legal observers and journalists.
Trump has indicated that he plans to send his para- military forces to Chicago. Black Lives Matter in that city and several other activist organizations have banded together and sued Trump to prevent this.
Guest – Attorney Flint Taylor, founding partner of the Peoples Law Office. Taylor has litigated against police abuse in Chicago for over 50 years. He started out successfully representing the family of assassinated Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. He has represented many victims of police torture and has written the award winning book The Torture Machine: Racism and Violence in Chicago.
Guest – Attorney Christian Snow, associate of the Chicago civil rights law firm the Peoples Law Office. She is a leader of the prison abolitionist group Assata’s Daughters and has been active in the Black Lives Matter movement in Chicago protesting the racist murder of George Floyd.
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USPS Crisis During Pandemic: Update
In late May we reported that the United States Postal Service was projected to fun out of funds by September 2020. New forecasts give the USPS a few more months. But it can still run out of cash before the end of 2021 without long-term reform from Congress.
Former Postmaster General Megan Brennan in April asked the House Oversight and Reform Committee for a $75 billion relief package based on the earlier forecasts. The request was approved, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, package volume has actually increased. But experts say it’s not a matter of if the USPS will deplete its funds, but when.
Since we recorded this interview, the American Post Workers Union’s president has warned that recently enacted Postal Service procedures — which have led to nationwide delays in mail delivery — could affect mail-in voting for the November election.
Mark Dimondstein told CNN that postal workers and customers are reporting that mail delivery has slowed and “degraded.” The Union leader says it’s been “demoralizing and upsetting” to workers who have worked through the pandemic.
The new procedures, including cutting overtime, come from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a longtime Donald Trump supporter and fundraiser. Bins of mail ready for delivery have been left sitting in post offices due to scheduling and route changes, and carriers are sorting more mail themselves, increasing delivery times.
As Trump trails Joe Biden in the polls, he now claims that delays processing mail-in votes would undermine the legitimacy of the November election and has suggested delaying it.
Dimondstein expressed concern that the mail service is being politicized. He also criticized the Treasury Department’s agreement with USPS on the “terms and conditions” for $10 billion in the form of loans. He says the loan pushes the USPS further into debt.
APWU.org
Help save the USPS – USMailIsNotForSale.org / NationalRuralOrganizing
Guest – Chuck Zlatkin. Chuck is the legislative director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Democracy, If We Can Keep Keep It: The ACLU’s 100 Year Fight For Rights In America
The American Civil Liberties Union was formed 100 years ago in 1920 in a climate of fear in our country not unlike what exists today. Anarchists and socialists were scapegoated. They were rounded up, tried under the newly passed espionage act, and hundreds were deported or imprisoned, Eugene V Debs being the most prominent.
To mark a century of defense of the first amendment and the Bill of Rights, Ellis Close has written an important history of the ACLU titled Democracy, If We Can Keep Keep It: The ACLU’s 100 year fight for rights in America. The Los Angeles review of books recently featured an extensive appreciation of Closs’ book written by constitutional lawyer Stephen Rhode.
Guest – Attorney Stephen Rohde has been on the board of the southern California ACLU over 25 years. He has taught constitutional law and has written a number of books on civil liberties.
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Dakota Access Pipeline: Update
July has been a legal roller coaster ride with respect to efforts to shut down the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines. First, a judge invalidated federal permits saying that the Army Corps of Engineers failed to address the potential damage from oil spills in the Dakota pipeline. He ordered the company Energy Transfer to stop pumping crude oil through South Dakota. On the heels of that order, a federal appellate court temporarily blocked that shutdown.
As for KXL, which would carry tar sands oil from Alberta Canada through Montana and South Dakota before reaching Nebraska, the Supreme Court in early July rejected the Trump administration’s request to allow construction of the KXL Pipeline by TC Energy. A Montana court ruling halting construction therefore still stands.
As listeners will recall, protesters and lawsuits against both pipelines cite the devastation that pipeline leaks would cause to the environment. In the case of tar sands oil, it is thicker, highly volatile, and more corrosive than conventional crude oil. This increases the likelihood of a leak. That renders it far more difficult, if not impossible, to clean up such a spill.
https://www.wecaninternational.org/divest-invest-protect
Guest – Attorney Natali Segovia is the Staff Attorney for the Water Protector Legal Collective – the organization that grew out of the legal tent at Oceti Sakowin camp in the Standing Rock resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. She chairs the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Committee of the National Lawyers Guild and serves on the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Global Justice. She also serves on the Indian Law Section Executive Council of the Arizona State Bar.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
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Attorney Marjorie Cohn: Trump, Assange, Democracy And Rule of Law
Without democracy and the rule of law there can be no significant social change. However, much democracy was constricted by race and class before the attacks on September 11, 2001 and before Trump, democracy and the rule of law are now facing lethal attacks on many fronts.
Trump has successfully put 198 young, reactionary, and some ignorant judges on the federal bench. He has illegally called out troops to violently disperse peaceful protesters in the park in front of the White House. Trump has threatened the personnel of the International Criminal Court who are attempting to investigate US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. These include the crime of torture. These crimes, perpetrated under the Bush administration, went unprosecuted by President Obama who infamously said “we must look forward not backward.”
Trump’s Justice Department is pursuing and attempting to extradite truth telling whistle blowing journalist Julian Assange who 10 years ago released the “collateral murder” video showing the commission of American war crimes in Iraq, among other embarrassing information. Assange is confined in London’s Belmarsh prison. He is sick, in solitary, and has been psychologically tortured. He faces 175 years in prison in the United States if convicted under the old Espionage Act for activities protected by the first amendment.
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught for 25 years. She is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, a criminal defense attorney, a legal scholar, and a political analyst. She writes books and articles and lectures throughout the world about human rights, US foreign policy, and the contradiction between the two. She has testified before Congress and debated at the prestigious Oxford Union.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Police Unions Are Racist Power Brokers in Opposition to Movement for Black Lives
When they commit violence against civilians, abusive police in the United States are protected in various ways. The power elite, whose property police protect, have given them almost complete legal immunity from successful lawsuits for damages under the doctrine of qualified immunity. When a cop has illegally hurt someone he or she can count on what’s known as – the blue wall of silence – knowing that a fellow officer will not contradict their defense.
What is the role of police unions regarding the protection of police who have abused and even murdered citizens? Police unions act as power brokers in opposition to the rights of victimized citizens. They provide legal defense funds, public relations, and political pressure in defense of abusive cops. And they are a very powerful force in these respects.
The US Congressman from Chicago Bobby Rush has recently said that the Chicago police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, is “the number one cause that prevents police accountability, that protects police corruption, that protects police lawlessness. They are the organized guardians of continuous police lawlessness, police murder, and police brutality. They are the most rabid, racist body of criminal lawlessness in the land and stand shoulder to shoulder with the KKK then and the KKK now.”
Guest – Attorney G. Flint Taylor is a founding partner of the People Law Office in Chicago starting out over 50 years ago representing the family of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, Who was assassinated by the Chicago Police Department with the help of the FBI. He has represented numerous police torture survivors during the past 33 years. Taylor was one of the lawyers involved in the struggle for reparations and has chronicled the decade long fight against Chicago police torture in his award-winning book “The Torture Machine : Racism and Violence in Chicago.
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First Amendment Auditor: Big Nick South Florida Accountability
Most of the populace, some police officers and federal employees may not realize that its every photographers right to take photos and video of federal buildings on public property. The easing of restrictions began when the New York Civil Liberties Union had looked into several cases of people who were wrongly harassed, detained and arrested by federal agents while photographing or shooting video of federal buildings from public plazas and sidewalks.
In 2010, the NYCLU brought a suit against the US Department of Homeland Security in federal court to end this practice. In October of 2010, a judge actually signed a settlement where the US government agreed that no federal statures or regulations bar people from photographing the exterior of federal buildings.
The US government agreed to issue a directive to members of the Federal Protective Service on photographer’s rights. A decade later, the rights attained in this decision are recently being put to the test in what’s known as First Amendment audits.
Guest – Nick Freeman – First Amendment Auditor with millions in view counts joins us to talk about his work in Fort Lauderdale being part of a long emerging trend to educate local law enforcement about the right to photography and subsequent issues such as police accountability.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Attorney Marjorie Cohn: Trump, Assange, Democracy And Rule of Law
Without democracy and the rule of law there can be no significant social change. However, much democracy was constricted by race and class before the attacks on September 11, 2001 and before Trump, democracy and the rule of law are now facing lethal attacks on many fronts.
Trump has successfully put 198 young, reactionary, and some ignorant judges on the federal bench. He has illegally called out troops to violently disperse peaceful protesters in the park in front of the White House. Trump has threatened the personnel of the International Criminal Court who are attempting to investigate US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. These include the crime of torture. These crimes, perpetrated under the Bush administration, went unprosecuted by President Obama who infamously said “we must look forward not backward.”
Trump’s Justice Department is pursuing and attempting to extradite truth telling whistle blowing journalist Julian Assange who 10 years ago released the “collateral murder” video showing the commission of American war crimes in Iraq, among other embarrassing information. Assange is confined in London’s Belmarsh prison. He is sick, in solitary, and has been psychologically tortured. He faces 175 years in prison in the United States if convicted under the old Espionage Act for activities protected by the first amendment.
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught for 25 years. She is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, a criminal defense attorney, a legal scholar, and a political analyst. She writes books and articles and lectures throughout the world about human rights, US foreign policy, and the contradiction between the two. She has testified before Congress and debated at the prestigious Oxford Union.
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