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, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
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U.S. Quits UN Human Rights Body
Last week the United States of America became the first country to voluntarily quit the United Nations 47 member main human rights body, primarily over Washington’s claim that the Human Rights Council is biased against Israel.
This was the Trump administration‘s latest snub of the international community. The Human Rights Council is tasked with spotlighting and approving investigations of suspected rights abuses. Never before has a member dropped out voluntarily. Diplomats and activists say that US ambassador Nikki Haley was the driving force behind the decision.
Efforts by the United Nations ambassador Haley to end or water down the routine scrutiny of Israel has failed in recent months at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The Human Rights Council addresses and array of concerns including discrimination, freedom of expression, the rights of women, LGBT people, and people with disabilities.
Haley declared that “We are withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council, an organization which is not worthy of its name.“
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she works on anti-war, US foreign policy and Palestinian rights issues. She has worked as an informal adviser to several key UN officials on Palestinian issues. Her books including Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
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Mark Crispin Miller – Julian Assange, Voter Fraud and Fake News
WikiLeaks founder the truth telling publisher Julian Assange is in escalating 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. 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 – Mark Crispin Miller who is a professor of media studies at New York University. Professor Miller has frequently spoken about media propaganda, the engineering of consent for empire, fake news, and the destruction of the independent press. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the humanities and is a vigorous defender of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Lawyers You’ll Like: Attorney Nancy Stearns
In 1970, an unusual legal team came together in what would become a landmark case challenging New York’s restrictive abortion ban. The case was Abramowicz v. Lefkowitz, and the team consisted of all women, many of whom had just a few years of legal practice. The premise was equally unusual at the time: its critical testimony came directly from women who had had illegal abortions, lack of contraceptive access, and painful experiences either from adoption or forced motherhood.
One of those attorneys included Nancy Stearns. After the Abramowicz case influenced the state’s passage of the nation’s most liberal abortion law before Roe v. Wade, Nancy would go on to bring successful challenges to abortion laws in NJ, CT, RI and MA.
Nancy attended law school after working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Atlanta. For 12 years at the Center for Constitutional Rights she worked on a number of significant civil rights cases, including challenging New York City’s mandatory pregnancy leave policy in Monell v. Department of Social Services that resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that municipalities are liable for damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983. She represented members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in a federal criminal conspiracy prosecution arising from anti-war protests, and she litigated to reunite families separated by the Babylift, in which Vietnamese infants and young children were brought to the U.S. for adoption at the close of the Vietnam War, despite having living parents.
Nancy is also an accomplished cabaret singer, making the circuit in New York City. She is a longtime member of the National Lawyers Guild; in fact the Guild’s Chapter is honoring Nancy and her exemplary career at its annual Spring Fling on June 8, 2018.
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Cryptocurrencies
In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin, the first and most prominent cryptocurrency, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. While cryptocurrencies have become an international phenomenon, and many are aware of their importance, yet they are still not completely understood by large financial institutions, governments and much of the public. There are currently more than 1,500 cryptocurrencies, and the list continues to grow.
The general definition of cryptocurrencies are digital currencies using encryption techniques, hence the prefix crypto, to regulate the generation of unites of currency and verify the transfer of funds. This system operates independently of a central bank to create and outlet for personal wealth beyond restriction and confiscation. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently announced that it will be requiring digital asset exchanges to registers with the agency.
Guest – Professor Angela Walch teaches at St. Mary’s University School of Law. Her research focuses on money and the law, blockchain technologies, governance of emerging technologies and financial stability. She is a Research Fellow of the Centre for Blockchain Technologies of University College London. Walch was nominated for “Blockchain Person of the Year” for 2016 by Crypto Coins News for her work on the governance of blockchain technologies and her influential article in American Banker arguing that the coders and miners of public blockchains should be treated as fiduciaries.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights, Iran, Iraq War, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Middle East Round Up: Brian Becker
Iran and Gaza are at both at critical and potentially catastrophic junctures. Iran faces new challenges due to because of Donald Trump’s denunciation of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and the re-imposition of sweeping sanctions. As well, recent elections in Iraq pushed Iran’s allies in Iraq’s Shia militias–the Popular Mobilization Forces—into second place by nationalist Moqtada al-Sadr.
The element within the Republican Party with deep pockets is the Republican Jewish Committee. They support Netanyahu and his Likud party. The RJC supported both the blowing up of the Iran deal and the move of the Embassy to Jerusalem. Now they support Netanyahu’s crushing of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Iran also risks being diplomatically out-maneuvered. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Moscow recently, aligning his interests in Syria with Vladimir Putin’s. In what is becoming routine coordination, Israel forewarned Russia of its attacks on Iran. Viewed from Tehran, Russia, Iran’s ostensible brother-in-arms in Syria, is more and more unreliable. Its Saudi foes are greatly encouraged by Trump’s offensive.
Guest – Brian Becker, the National Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition and a leader of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Brian has been a central organizer of the mass anti-war demonstrations that have taken place in Washington, D.C. in the past decade.
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Stories From Trailblazing Women Lawyers
Before the Civil War there were six women lawyers in the entire United States of America. By 1890 there were about 200 and by 1900 about 1000. Women then could not even vote.
It was nearly impossible for a woman to get admitted to a law school or find a job when she graduated. Things did not qualitatively change until the late 1960s and 1970s.
By then, as a consequence of a number of factors including the great civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the empty law school seats created by drafting men to serve in the Vietnam War, women were able to fight discrimination and win law school admission first by protesting in the streets and then through legislation, court decisions, and the actions of a few forward looking politicians.
Now half of the students in American law schools are women. They are professors in those very same places, indeed, the deans of the two most prestigious law schools in America, Harvard and Yale, are women. They are partners in law firms, hold important positions and governmental agencies, and are judges on the bench.
They have made a difference in the measure of social justice obtained by people in this country by advancing peoples’ and women’s rights in education, healthcare, employment, discrimination, family life, and violence against women.
Guest –Jill Norgren, the author of the just published book Stories From Trailblazing Women Lawyers. Ms. Norgren is Professor Emerita of Political Science at John Jay College and the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. She is the author of several books including Rebels at the Bar.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Supreme Court, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Speaking In Turkish: Denying the Armenian Genocide
Around the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th century.
The unspeakable and gruesome nature of the killings—beheadings of groups of babies, dismemberments, mass burnings, mass drownings, use of toxic gas, lethal injections of morphine or injections with the blood of typhoid fever patients—render oral histories particularly difficult for survivors of the victims.
Why did this happen? Despite being deemed inferior to Turkish Muslims, the Armenian community had attained a prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire and the central authorities there grew apprehensive of their power and longing for a homeland. The concerted plan of deportation and extermination was effected, in large part, because World War I demanded the involvement and concern of potential allied countries. As the writer Grigoris Balakian wrote, the war provided the Turkish government “their sole opportunity, one unprecedented” to exploit the chaos of war in order to carry out their extermination plan.
As Armenians escaped to several countries, including the United States, a number came to New Britain, Connecticut in 1892 to work in the factories of what was then known as the hardware capital of the world. By 1940 nearly 3,000 Armenians lived there in a tight-knit community.
Pope Frances calls it a duty not to forget “the senseless slaughter” of an estimated one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. “Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,” the Pope said just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race.
Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.
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