CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
- Commentary By Attorney Jim Lafferty: Christian Nationalism
—-
Activists Face Felony Charges In Action Denouncing Elijah McClain Murder
On September 17, 2020 at least six anti-racist activists were arrested in an action denouncing the Colorado police, notably for the murder of Elijah McClain. In the summer of 2019, three Aurora Colorado police officers put 23-year-old McClain in a chokehold and medics injected him with ketamine. The young violinist and massage therapist went into cardiac arrest, was pronounced brain dead, and died three days later.
The social justice activists now face a litany of felony charges, and possible decades in prison, on charges that include “kidnapping.” Four of those arrested — Russel Ruch, Lillian House, Joel Northam, and Eliza Lucero — are considered protest leaders and are members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Police made a spectacle of the arrests, sending what many assert is a threatening message to other activists. Police followed Russel Ruch to Home Depot where they arrested him in the parking lot; five police cars surrounded Lillian House as she was driving; and a S.W.A.T team was dispatched to Joel Northam’s home. According to the 30-page arrest affidavits, the police used livestream footage, call transcripts, and social media posts to build a case against those arrested.
Guest – Lillian House, one of the four protest leaders. More information at Denverdefense.org
—-
The Current Risk of Nuclear War And Treaty Restoration
When Donald Trump was president, the Democrats called him Putin‘s poodle. They falsely claimed that Russia influenced the election and caused Hillary Clinton to lose to Trump. Clinton famously said “all roads lead to Russia.“
But the truth of the matter was quite different. Despite Trump seemingly adoration of Vladimir Putin as a strong man, American policy towards Russia was not completely friendly. The question now is what will Biden do?
The risk of nuclear war with Russia has been a grave concern since the cold war of the 1950s. Under Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama American nuclear policies were such that the threat of war including accidental war was never reduced. With Biden as president will this change? Will there be a restoration of nuclear treaties and a de-escalation.
Guest – Ray McGovern former CIA intelligence analyst, Ray briefed President George H. W. Bush every morning on intelligence matters, particularly with respect to Russia. He is a founder of VIPS, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and a contributor to the blog Common Dreams.
———————–
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Impeachment, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Paul Robeson: Ballad of an American by Sharon Rudahl
Paul Robeson, like John Brown before him and Malcolm X after him, was an American of great courage and great accomplishments. Like John Brown and Malcolm the powers that be, vilified him and attempted to reduce him to obscurity. Robeson was born the son of a slave in Somerville, New Jersey In 1898. At Rutgers University he was a Phi Beta Kappa, graduated at the top of his class, and delivered the valedictorian speech. He won 16 letters in sports; football, baseball, track and field, and basketball. He had a beautiful bass voice and sang in the choir. He briefly played professional football and graduated from Columbia Law school.
He was an outstanding actor performing on both stage and screen in America and England. As a concert performer he traveled the world singing spirituals, labor songs, and folk songs of American Blacks. He was outspoken in support of civil rights, union struggles, anti-colonialism, and asserted himself as a socialist.
Because of this he was repressed by the reactionary forces in America in a period of time after World War II known as McCarthyism. In August 1949, a concert that he was to headline in Peekskill, New York was broken up by fascists. The next year a national concert tour had to be canceled because theaters refused to book him. His passport was taken away. He couldn’t travel. He was told he could have it back if he promised not to “ criticize the treatment of American Negroes in the US which should not be aired abroad.“
He was heard before the house un-American activities committee in 1956 and asked why he didn’t stay in Russia. He replied “because my father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I’m going to stay here.“ His films and recordings were taken out of circulation and he disappeared from textbooks and halls of fame. Of Paul Robeson, Cornell West has said that “he was an artistic genius moral titan and courageous freedom fighter whom we must never forget.“
Guest – Sharon Rudahl, author and artist who recently published graphic biography “Paul Robeson: Ballad of an American.” The book was edited by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware. Sharon Rudahl marched with Martin Luther King as a teenager and began her career as a cartoonist with anti-Vietnam war underground newspapers. She was one of the founders of the 1970s era feminist “Wimmen’s Comix.“ She is best known for her graphic biography “Emma Goldman: A Dangerous Woman.“
—-
Constitutional Scholar Stephen Rohde On Impeachment
The American people are enmeshed in and victimized by four overlapping, intertwined and perhaps irreversible crises. They are medical, economic, racial, and political. The Covid 19 virus has infected over 25 million people. It has killed at least 430,000 of us and it rages on unchecked. Half the people in the US are poor or near poor. Twenty million or more are unemployed and their numbers are growing. Hunger and homelessness are widespread. Racism has been institutionalized in our country ever since its founding as a white settler colonial state. Politically except for the scattering of a few progressives there really is no party or leadership that represents the interests of the vast majority of our people.
Former president Donald Trump has been impeached by the Democrats in the House and will stand trial in the Senate beginning the week of February 8th.
He received 75 million votes in the 2020 election, more than he received when he won in 2016. Even though he lost last November his power is barely diminished. He will likely be acquitted of the charge of inciting an insurrection on January 6th. With the help of most of the 50 Republican senators the Democrats won’t be able to get the 60 necessary votes to convict him and prevent him from running for president again. Thus he will continue to control the Republican Party.
There is the possibility of his running again that helps keep him as the powerful leader he has become and keeps the Republicans in line, fearful as they are of being primaried and losing their own power and privilege. Only a few Republicans have shown the integrity and courage to oppose this venal, cruel and cunning man.
Guest – Attorney Stephen Rohde is a constitutional scholar, lecturer, writer, political activist and retired civil rights lawyer. He is a founder and Chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, past President of the ACLU of Southern California, and a Past Chair of Bend the Arc: a Jewish Partnership for Justice. He is the author of two books American Words of Freedom: The Words That Define Our Nation and Freedom of Assembly and co-author of Foundations of Freedom: A Living History of Our Bill of Rights. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Truthout and American Prospect, and is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books.
———————————
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard: Law Enforcement Caught Off Guard On January 6th?
Many are saying that the police were caught off guard when rioters stormed the nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021, leaving four people dead. It was the most significant breach of Congress in more than 200 years, and pro-Trump rioters promised that it won’t be the last. In their violent and lawless efforts to upend what they called a fraudulent election, they faced minimal police resistance. Far-right mobs smashed windows and doors, stormed the Capitol behind a traitorous, terrorist Confederate flag, and broke into the Senate chamber.
Unlike Black Lives Matter protesters and legions of peaceful protesters before them, police have consistently used potentially lethal weapons to disburse and social justice mass demonstrations. But how could the Capitol be unprepared? Word on social media and in the news was that fascists planned to converge in throngs prior to the changing of presidential administrations.
Guest – Attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, that is partnering with the newly-formed Center for Protest Law and Litigation, to demand a fully public investigation into law enforcement’s handling of the riot on the Capitol Building on that day that shocked much of the nation.
—
Fred Hampton: The Fight For Truth
Fred Hampton was the young dynamic leader of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party. On December 4, 1969 he was assassinated. An assassination is a political murder. He was assassinated as part of FBI leader J. Edgar Hoover‘s Cointelpro program. Cointelpro was initiated by Hoover to disrupt, destroy and neutralize the Party and the civil rights movement. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had already been killed under suspicious circumstances.
Chicago attorney Flint Taylor of the Peoples Law Office, who along with Jeff Haas, Dennis Cunningham, and Morton Stavis of the Center for Constitutional Rights was part of a team that after 13 years of litigation were able to prove that the FBI, the Chicago police, and the Chicago States Attorney were guilty of killing Fred Hampton, his fellow Black Panther Mark Clark, and wounding several others.
The murders took place in a pre-dawn raid on Hampton‘s apartment. An FBI informer, William O’Neal, supplied the killers with a map of the apartment showing where Fred was sleeping. and drugged, probably by O’Neal, when the police opened fire with a hail of 90 bullets. A Chicago police officer fired two shots into Hampton’s head at close range as he lay in bed.
It has recently been disclosed that O’Neal’s control control agent. Roy Mitchell, was paid a bonus for his and O’Neal’s role in the assassination, and that Hoover, and his top lieutenants William Sullivan and George Moore, were aware of O’Neal’s activities and authorized this award directly after the raid. What are the lessons we can learn from this? Is the FBI still carrying on Cointelpro type operations? How do we protect ourselves?
Guest – Attorney Flint Taylor, Flint and Jeff Haas have recently written an article about the new information which can be found on Truthout and the Black Agenda Report. Flint, welcome back to Law And Disorder.
————————————–
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith interviewed some of Michael Ratner’s closest friends and colleagues as part of a special broadcast highlighting Michael Ratner’s legal work and mentorship. The special also marked the upcoming release of Michael Ratner’s autobiography Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer published by OR Books. In this one hour taken from the two hour fundraiser broadcast, we hear from attorneys including Eleanor Stein, Richard Levy, Ray Brescia, David Cole and Baher Azmy.
—
Michael Ratner’s pathbreaking legal and political work is unmatched. He provided crucial support for the Cuban Revolution and won the seminal case in the Supreme Court guaranteeing the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees. Michael also challenged U.S. policy in Iraq, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and Israel-Palestine. This book is a testament to his unflagging efforts on behalf of the poor and oppressed around the world.
– Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emerita, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Michael Ratner personified lawyering that brought both radical and human values into challenges to the use of governmental power to violate the essence of the Bill of Rights. From the torture of prisoners after 911 to the massive racial profiling by the New York Police Department, Michael’s voice and vision continue to resonate. This book provides a powerful testament to the spirit of this extraordinary man.
– Attorney Bill Goodman
Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
- Commentary On The 2020 Election By Attorney Jim Lafferty
—-
Lawyers You’ll Like: Professor Holly Maguigan
In our Lawyers You’ll Like series we’re joined by Professor Holly Maguigan, Professor of Clinical Law at the New York University School of Law, where she teaches Comparative Criminal Justice Clinic: Focus on Domestic Violence and Evidence. Professor Maguigan is an expert on the criminal trials of battered women. Her research and teaching is interdisciplinary. Professor Maguigan is a member of the Family Violence Prevention Fund’s National Advisory Committee on Cultural Considerations in Domestic Violence cases. She serves on the boards of directors of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women and the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. She is a past co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers, the largest membership organization of law professors in the U.S.
Professor Holly Maguigan:
- I was doing medieval history and I was at Berkeley. It was 1967 and Oakland stopped the draft.
- I got very interested in the anti-war politics.
- I hated lawyers. I really hated lawyers. They were boring. They talked about themselves all the time. They only had stories about their cases and how great they were and they would never post bail when people got arrested.
- The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia is where I stayed for 17 years.
- First I started out as a public defender. I loved being a public defender, it was the beginning and end of everything I hoped it would be.
- That’s where I met David Rudovsky and David Kairys. They were then defenders while I was a student.
- After they went out on their own, they kept inviting me to join them. I kept putting it off because I loved being a defender so much.
- In Philadelphia there was much more actual litigation, not just motion litigation there’s a lot of that here in New York City but actual trials.
- You had a sense, there was an analysis that people were doing life on the installment plan and you needed to do what you could to kick them loose any particular time.
- It was a community in its own odd way and I found it difficult to leave it.
- I was doing major felonies within a couple of years.
- David Kairys was very focused on constitutional litigation and government misconduct. He did the Camden 28 which was a big draft resistance case.
- My interest was more into criminal defense.
- Grand juries (all over the country) convened to investigate the alleged transportation of Patty Hearst by the SLA from California where she had been captured.
- He was a killer. (Frank Rizzo) There was no question. More people died in police actions before or since.
- I don’t mean to suggest that all the police started out as homocidal. This was a situation which from the top down came the message if you’re a good cop then you’re going to take people out however you think you need to.
- I knew about race and class bias in the court room as much as a white woman who was middle class could know.
- I was just blown away by what happens when you add hatred of women to hatred of black people and hatred of poor people.
- Judges would go by me in the hall and say Maguigan, ahem, you didn’t give me anything this Christmas, not even one lousy bottle, you’re not getting any assignments.
- Judges would do things, like open the drawer in their chambers, and there would be wads of bills, and they’d let you know.
- I developed a specialty on women who kill men.
- In the early eighties a group in Philadelphia called Women Against Abuse began working and they did advocacy for battered women accused of crime and meant a huge difference.
- The battered women cases I was working on were quite consuming because people then didn’t know very much in how to try these cases.
- The judges expected you to plead insanity or guilty. Reasonable doubt was a consideration at sentencing not at trial.
- There were cases that did require teams. There was no question.
- I wanted to be in court. I wanted to be in the presence of that conflict between the authorities and regular people.
- I went to NYU where I taught in the criminal defense clinic for many years.
- To see students react to the great stories their clients have is just amazing.
- SALT (Society of American Law Teachers) is about who gets into law school, what they learn and who teaches them. It’s about access to justice. It’s about relating to law school as a place where you train people to do social justice. SALT’s focus is on students and teaching.
- Holly Maguigan to be honored by Society of American Law Teachers.
Guest – Professor Holly Maguigan teaches a criminal defense clinic and one in comparative criminal justice as well as a seminar in global public service lawyering and a course in evidence. She is an expert on the criminal trials of battered women. Her research and teaching are interdisciplinary. Of particular importance in her litigation and scholarship are the obstacles to fair trials experienced by people accused of crimes who are not part of the dominant culture. Professor Maguigan is a member of the Family Violence Prevention Fund’s National Advisory Committee on Cultural Considerations in Domestic Violence cases. She serves on the boards of directors of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women and the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. She is a past co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers, the largest membership organization of law professors in the U.S.
Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
- Commentary On Julian Assange’s Case By Attorney Jim Lafferty
—
Capital Punishment: Mumia Abu-Jamal And Heidi Boghosian
Journalist and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal spent 40 years on death row in Pennsylvania. As listeners will recall, in 2012 his death penalty sentence was overturned by a Federal Court and he entered general population. While on death row he published 13 books and numerous commentaries on issues of social justice and the carceral state. In a special interview, Mumia joins us to reflect on capital punishment and its relationship to our modern society.
—-
CCR: A Rights Based Vision for the First 100 Days
Some political skeptics , distrusting of the incoming Biden administration, are saying that it’s “ out with the old in with the older.“ That is that the old neo-liberal crew from the Obama/Clinton days are back in power and that little will change, nothing fundamental.
They are especially concerned about the impending climate catastrophe, systemic racism, the threat of nuclear war, the shifting of wealth from the bottom to the top, and the never ending forever wars. The Center for Constitution Rights has developed a comprehensive program to challenge this. It is called A Rights Based Vision for the First 100 Days.
Guest – Center for Constitutional Rights Advocacy Director attorney Nadia Ben-Youssef, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Boston College of Law. She has worked with the Adalah Justice Project for Palestinian rights In the Negev in southern Israel.
