Civil Liberties, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Election Aftermath Analysis: What Is To Be Done?
How should you live your life? There’s a joke going around that you should live your life in such a way that if you lose your job millions of people don’t go out dancing in the streets. What does the future hold? Are we really free of Trump and Trumpism? What will Biden do? And for us: The perennial question: what is to be done?
The head of Biden’s transition team has already told the press that “the cupboard is bare”. That is to say, the kind of social democratic programs that cost money, healthcare for all, a $15 an hour minimum wage, old age retirement, free education through college, all programs that have been secured in Europe for their populations, have been put beyond the pale. Centrist Democrats like Biden have since the remaking of the Democratic Party beginning with neo-liberal Clinton have not vigorously defended the social gains secured in the 1930s with the Rooseveltian New Deal. Even Social Security is on the table.
About 60% of the disposable federal budget goes to the military. The heads of the weapons manufacturers, corporations like Raytheon and Northrop Gruman are pleased with Biden’s election. They were interviewed in the Washington Post and stated that they have worked with Biden for 30 years and do not anticipate cuts in their arms contracts for new ships, supersonic weapons, nuclear bombs, and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Some 74 million people voted for Biden. More people than ever before voted in the election. It was Black people in major cities in Georgia and Pennsylvania, Latinx and Native Americans in Nevada and Arizona that give Biden the edge. This time Trump lost the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin and Michigan because he do not fulfill his promise of bringing jobs back. But Trump got 70 million votes. This was a record. White people in small towns and rural areas fear they’re becoming a minority and voted for Trump hoping to “make America white again.”
Guest – Attorney Jim Lafferty. He is the director emeritus of the largest National Lawyers Guild chapter in the country in Los Angeles and the former Executive Director of the organization.
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Jerome Wright Talks About His Friend David Gilbert: An Interview By KPFA Producer Ken Yale
We hear part of an interview with Jerome Wright, hosted and produced by Ken Yale at KPFA in Berkeley California. This powerful and moving interview with Jerome Wright offers harrowing insights into the trauma of long-term imprisonment during our era of global pandemics. But it is also an inspiring story of the potential for deep personal transformation. And it is an urgent demand to end the paradigm of punishment that threatens the life of every prisoner as COVID-19 rages on.
Jerome Wright spent over 30 years in New York prisons and in solitary confinement for a crime he committed as a teenager. During his incarceration, he befriended David Gilbert, one of the longest held political prisoners in the U.S. They reached across differences in race, class, and age to develop a pioneering AIDS peer education program that has since become a model throughout New York prisons.
Jerome and David’s friendship, and their organizing work together, were transformational. Jerome was paroled 12 years ago. Today he is the statewide organizer for the Campaign For Alternatives to Isolated Confinement, the chief sponsor of a pending bill to end solitary confinement in New York. Jerome is also the founder and director of the Mentoring And Nurturing (MAN) Program, which supports released prisoners and at-risk youth to live productive lives.
Meanwhile, David Gilbert is serving his 40th year of a life sentence. In 1981, he participated with a Black liberation group in a robbery that turned tragically fatal. David was unarmed and did not shoot anyone. But he was convicted for his role as a getaway driver under New York’s felony murder law. Now his only paths to freedom are a governor’s clemency or passage of the proposed Elder Parole bill.
But this interview is much more than just the story of Jerome and David. Jerome Wright is eloquent in describing the terrifying conditions faced by thousands of Jeromes and Davids of all genders who are incarcerated during this deadly pandemic. He also discusses his time in prison with revolutionary musician Gil Scott Heron, whose inspirational songs are woven throughout the interview.
This interview was conducted by Ken Yale, a radio journalist for Pacifica’s KPFA, and a producer for the national radio program, “Covid, Race, and Democracy.” He has been a K-12 and university educator for over 30 years, and is a lifetime social justice activist. To support David Gilbert’s campaign for clemency, please go to friendsofdavidgilbert.org. To reach Jerome Wright or learn more about the campaign to halt solitary confinement, go to NYCAIC.org. That’s the New York Campaign For Alternatives To Isolated Confinement. Jerome also encourages people to get involved with elder parole and other decarceration campaigns. He especially recommends Releasing Aging People In Prison, at rappcampaign.com, and Justice Roadmap at justiceroadmapny.org.
Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Democrats, Republicans, Vote Counts And The Green Party
We are recording this interview with Margaret Kimberley on November 4th, the day after the election. Over 90 million people voted early. Their ballots are still being counted. Trump doesn’t want them counted and is relying on the Supreme Court to back him up just like the Supreme Court in the year 2000 stopped the counting of ballots in Dade County Florida, thus allowing George W. Bush to steal the election. Trump wants to be able to say, as former Nicaraguan dictator Somoza bragged, “It is true you won the voting. But I won the counting.” The overwhelming consensus on the left was to hold your nose, vote for Biden, and then attempt to influence him when he takes office. Biden kept a low profile during the campaign. He didn’t have much to say programmatically. His strongest appeal was that he was not Trump, whom Noam Chomsky called the most.
The eco-socialist Green Party led by Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker got very little attention from neither the main stream press nor the left of center media. His campaign was vilified with critics stating that a vote for the Greens was tantamount to a vote for Trump. The Democratic Party in Wisconsin went so far as to help successfully prevent Hawkins and Walker from staying on the ballot in that state after Walker changed her home address after her papers were filed. Regardless of how people on the left voted, the immediate question, which is always the key political question, is what are we to do next?
Guest – Green Party supporter Margaret Kimberley, senior editor at the Black Agenda Report and the author of the widely read book ”Prejudential”.
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Pre-Election Unrest and Aftermath
Days before last week’s November 3 presidential election, businesses across the nation boarded up storefronts in anticipation of violent protests. Cities prepared for election-related unrest as activists get ready for what could be weeks of sustained street actions, depending on how the vote count goes and how President Donald Trump acts after his repeated refusals to say if he will accept election results.
At the time of this recording, not surprisingly, results from several states were still pending.
We can be sure, however, that even if Joe Biden is declared the winner, Donald Trump will challenge the results as fraudulent, laying the groundwork for a series of protracted legal battles. But a larger issue remains: While mass uprisings in the streets have altered the social discourse around racism, several larger issues are still at play, determined to keep Donald Trump in office.
Guest – Mara Verheyden-Hilliard with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. Mara is one of the nation’s pre-eminent authorities on the policing of First Amendment protected activities including the right to peaceably assemble and associate.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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The Federalist Society, Charles Koch, The Bradley Foundation and The U.S. Supreme Court
Despite the clear language of the constitution that Congress shall have no religious test for the office of judge last week every Republican in the Senate except one put Amy Coney Barrett on an already packed right wing Supreme Court.
Barrett is a leader of the charismatic Christian cult called “ People of Promise.” It is a group of Protestant and Catholic evangelicals who reportedly speak in tongues. They believe in the subjugation of women, oppose their right to choose, oppose gay marriage, and are authoritarian and pro corporate in the extreme.
Garrett earned her bones by first clerking for the now dead Justice Antonin Scalia. She was part of the legal team along with John Roberts who helped republican George W. Bush steal the presidency by stopping the the recount of ballots in Florida in the year 2000.
The Federalist Society, led by Leonard Leo, has been responsible for packing the federal courts with over 200 largely unqualified young ideologues who serve for life. Leo, like the 6 of 9 Supreme Court justices, is an ultra right wing Catholic. For 20 years he has guided the Federalist Society. He is a member of Opus Dei, Latin for God’s work. It was founded on 1928 by a Spanish priest who was also a lawyer and supporter of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.
Ultra right wing billionaire Charles Koch and the Bradley foundation have contributed to the efforts of the Federalist Society. Dark money is behind the appointments of the over 200 judges to the federal judiciary. Organizations funded by dark money find and encourage plaintiffs to bring cases challenging laws they don’t like and write the briefs to submit to the judges they helped appoint.
Guest – Attorney Lisa Graves, created True North Research and is it executive director and editor-in-chief. Her research and analysis has been cited by every major paper in the country. Attorney Graves has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of government. She has served as chief counsel for nominations for the US Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy. She was a career deputy assistant attorney general at the US Department of Justice. Graves has spent the past 10 years investigating the impact of dark money on judicial selection.
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The Future of Academic Freedom and Big Tech Intrusion
Big tech companies rather than leaders of academic institutions, it seems, are fast becoming an arbiter of academic speech.
Two weeks ago Zoom shut down a New York University-organized webinar; ironically it was on the issue of censorship by tech platforms. The webinar was going to take up the censorship of an earlier open classroom session at San Francisco State University, featuring Palestinian rights advocate Leila Khaled. It was part of a so-called “Day of Action Against the Criminalization and Censorship of Campus Political Speech.”
Censored Zoom Video
Canceling a campus event violates the principle of academic freedom that universities must observe. Allowing Zoom to override this bedrock principle, at the behest of organized, politically motivated groups, is a grave error for any university administration to make, and it should not escape censure from faculty
Sifting and Winnowing
Guest – Professor Henry Reichman, former vice president of the American Association of University Professors and longtime chair of its committee on academic freedom and tenure. Reichman is especially qualified to discuss the issue. Professor emeritus of history at California State University at East Bay, Professor Reichman devotes nearly 300 pages doing so in his new book by Johns Hopkins University Press.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Attorney Michael Tigar: Sensing Justice
Democracy and the rule of law have been in decline long before the Trump administration came at the office. The decline is accelerating. We can trace it back at least 19 years to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The Patriot Act resulted and put in place the surveillance state making Americans the most spied on people in history.
The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United allowed for dark money guided by the right wing Federalist Society to pack the federal judiciary with 200+ Trump appointed right wing judges, Amy Comey Barrett being the latest. Local police forces have been militarized and we have seen the results of this in the Black Lives Matter uprisings since June.
The attack on democracy has been bipartisan. The Obama administration claimed the right to assassinate anyone without due process including American citizens, even children. They put more whistleblowers in prison than ever before. Trump initiated the unprecedented prosecution of Julian Assange, a whistleblowing publisher who exposed US war crimes. Now Trump, with the backing of the Republican Party and gun toting militias have promised not to honor the results of the upcoming election if he loses.
Guest – Constitutional attorney Michael Tigar, professor emeritus from The Washington College of Law and has taught at the University of Texas and Duke University. He is the author of Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power. He has practice before the Supreme Court, arguing his first case when he was 24 years old. Tigar has written or edited more than a dozen of important books including “Law and the Rise of Capitalism.“ Since 1996 he has practiced law with his wife Jane B. Tigar. Michael Tigar’s blog Tigarbytes.
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The Chicago Seven: Attorney Bill Kunstler At Carolines Comedy Club
We hear part of the presentation by William Kunstler at Carolines Comedy Club in 1995.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Socialist Perspective of Pre-Election Society In The United States
The word “chaos” best describes the current American public health, economic, race, and political situation. America leads the world in the number of COVID-19 cases and in the number of deaths which are now approaching 200,000. President Trump lies when he promises the quick development of a vaccine. He attacks the head of the Center for Disease Control and advises not to wear masks and leads huge rallies of maskless supporters.
The economy is a disaster. Perhaps 20 million people are unemployed. Small businesses are shuttered. The economic stimulus package has run out. Millions face eviction. Hunger is rampant especially among children. Democracy and rule of law are being trashed.
President Trump has cast doubt on the efficacy of the upcoming election first suggesting that it be postponed, then advising his supporters to vote twice, and assuring people that unless he won the election would be fraudulent. He has indicated that if he loses the election he will not vacate the White House in January 20, 2021.
Despite the unprecedented mass demonstrations of perhaps 20 million people in the streets since June, cops continue to murder people, especially black people, with impunity. The Republican convention put forward no platform to address the catastrophe. President Trump spoke at all for nights presenting himself as the solution for all of America’s problems.
The best that could be said about Joe Biden is that he’s not Trump. He has run a lackluster campaign and now finds himself neck and neck with Trump who got 60 million votes in the last election and whose popularity seems undiminished.
Guest – Doug Henwood, an economic, finance, and political analyst. He is host of the radio show Behind the News. He is a contributor to Jacobin magazine and a contributing editor to the Nation magazine. His latest book on Hillary Clinton is called My Turn.
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President Trump And The 2020 Election
What if President Donald Trump is voted out of office on November 3, 2020 but on January 20, 2021 when he is scheduled to vacate the White House he refuses to go. His lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen predicted this in his congressional testimony before he went off to prison.
President Trump is already casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election which is less than two months away. He says there will be massive voter fraud, that absentee balloting, which will be widely prevalent because of the Covid crisis, is easily open the fraud.
Can Trump send federal troops to Washington DC, or other cities? Can he deploy the National Guard of the various states? Can he suspend habeas corpus, arbitrarily detained people, or declare martial law? Can he investigate opponents, freeze their assets, control communications, initiate a foreign crisis, or get help from attorney general William Barr? What can we do about it?
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, the past president of the National Lawyers Guild and former professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.
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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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