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Law and Disorder is a weekly independent civil liberties radio program airing on more than 150 stations and on Apple podcast. Law and Disorder provides timely legal perspectives on issues concerning civil liberties, privacy, right to dissent and practices of torture exercised by the US government and private corporations.
Law and Disorder August 3, 2020
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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.
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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Law and Disorder July 27, 2020
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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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Law and Disorder July 20, 2020
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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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