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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 November 18, 2019
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Labor Party’s Jeremy Corbyn For British Prime Minister: Analysis
Next month and December 12 Great Britain will hold national elections. Jeremy Corbyn, a social Democrat similar in some respects to Bernie Sanders heads the British Labor Party. He has said “I will be a very different kind of Prime Minister, not the kind of Prime Minister who believes he was born to rule.“
Working people in Great Britain are struggling like they are in the United States. The Labor Party has addressed what to do about their situation. It has grown qualitatively in recent years and has a chance of winning the election. What the Labor Party stand for and what has their leader Jeremy Corbyn done to prepare for taking power is what will be discussed.
Guest – Colin Robinson, longtime member of the Labor Party. Originally from Liverpool, he was educated in London where he was an active socialist. He moved to New York 30 years ago to work as a publisher. He splits his time between New York City and London. Robinson has written for The Guardian newspaper and the London review of books. He is the co-owner of OR Books with offices in New York City, London, and Calcutta.
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Harriet Tubman And The History Of Women Slavery
In the recently-released film “Harriet,” an active and young gun-toting Harriet Tubman jumps off bridges and faces down slaver owners. Directed by Kasi Lemmons, who calls Tubman a “completely bad ass woman,” the new film shows sides of the legendary Tubman that contrast with how she is remembered. This is the first feature film focusing on the legendary Underground Railroad leader.
The filmmakers made an effort to ensure accuracy given that many myths about Tubman have circulated over the years. The first biography about her, “Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman,” by Sarah Hopkins Bradford included many inaccuracies such as the number and nature of her rescues. That set the stage for inaccurate accounts to come.
One myth was that there was a $40,000 bounty on her head, an extremely high figure amount. As well, the number of enslaved persons she rescued through the Underground Railroad was more likely around 70 in contrast to the 300 reported in the Bradford biography.
Guest – Professor Jessica Millward, Associate Professor in the Department of History at UC Irvine. Her research focuses on slavery in early America, African American history as well as women and gender. Her first book, Finding Charity’s Folk: Enslaved and Free Black Women In Maryland was published in 2015 by the University of Georgia Press.
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Law and Disorder November 11, 2019
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Victory: Trump Administration Rescinds Planned Anti-Protest Rules
In a stunning victory for free speech, the National Park Service was recently forced to do an about face. It withdrew a proposal that would have place burdensome restrictions on protests on the Mall and other federal land in Washington, DC.
Citing feedback it had received from the public — more than 140,000 comments — the Park Service announced it was ending its effort to rewrite the regulations governing speech and demonstrations on public lands under federal jurisdiction in the nation’s capitol. The proposed new regulations made public in August 2018 by then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke would have imposed hefty and unprecedented fees on groups organizing protests on federal park lands in Washington.
The Park Service has the responsibility and the legal obligation to protect First Amendment activity, and so it is good that officials dropped this plan.
Guest – Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund in Washington, DC. Over the years, Mara and the Partnership have secured millions of dollars in settlements for police infractions of protesters’ rights at mass assemblies, from the 2000 and 2002 IMF/World Bank protests to cases where law enforcement used false arrest tactics based on political affiliation. She also successfully challenged New York City’s efforts to restrict mass assembly in Central Park.
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United States Officially Recognizes The Armenian Genocide
In a bipartisan rebuke to Turkey after its offensive into northeastern Syria, the U.S. House of Representatives recently approved two measures pushing back at its longtime NATO ally.
The first measure was a symbolic resolution labeling the deaths of roughly 1.5 to 2 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923 in the Ottoman Empire, now modern-day Turkey, as a “genocide.” It passed 405-11, with 3 members voting present. The second measure was a bipartisan bill that imposed sanctions on Turkish officials and prevents the sale of arms to Turkey for use in Syria. That passed overwhelmingly as well: 403-16.
To this day, the Republic of Turkey enforces a gag-rule against U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide, despite overwhelming evidence documenting its crimes against humanity.
Despite formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. government in 1951 and 1981, successive U.S. presidential administrations have supported the Turkish government’s revisionism. Fearful of offending Turkey they have opposed passage of Congressional Armenian Genocide resolutions and objected to the use of the word “genocide” to describe systematic destruction of the Armenian people.
A just resolution of the Armenian Genocide would decrease regional tensions, open the door to improved Armenia-Turkey relations, help reform Turkey into a pluralist and tolerant society.
Guest – Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America or ANCA. ANCA is the largest and most influential Armenian American grassroots political organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters and supporters throughout the United States and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCA actively advances the concerns of the Armenian American community on a broad range of issues.
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Law and Disorder November 4, 2019
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Kings Bay Plowshare 7 Face Sentencing After Powerful Testimony
In our society nuclear weapons that can destroy all creation are taken as a normal, even an inevitable, part of life. In a dramatic action to break what they call “the crime of silence“ seven Catholic peace activists entered the Kings Bay Trident Submarine Base in Georgia last April to perform an act of symbolic disarmament. They were arrested, tried two weeks ago and quickly convicted on October 24, 2019 in a Georgia court. They face more than 25 years in prison.
Kings Bay is home port to six ballistic missile Trident submarines, each of which deploy 16 Trident missile’s carry in four or more warheads of at least 100 kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb was 14 kilotons. Each submarine thus has the destructive power of at least 500 Hiroshima bombs.
Past interviews with Kings Bay Plowshare 7 Members:
Guest – Attorney Bill Quigley. Bill is the former legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and is currently a law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill has been an active public interest and human rights lawyer since 1977. Bill has served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including Katrina social justice issues, public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, human rights, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. Bill has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.He practices and teachers law in New Orleans.
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Potential Retrial For Imam Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown)
“His voice had power. His booming delivery was infused with rousing socio-political rhetoric. With a rhythmic cadence, tone, and inflection, his voice kept a beat. It emboldened a generation of black youth, and frightened the white establishment.”
Those words by Obaid Siddiqui for Medium describe a former Minister of Justice for the Black Panther Party, known in the 1960s and 70s as H. Rap Brown. Once the chairperson of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Imam Jamil Al-Amin was one of the original four targets of the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO program. The Bureau called for the “neutralization” of Al-Amin and other prominent black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and Stokely Carmichael. The FBI compiled enormous files on Al-Amin and his community.
Now 76 years old, he is serving a life sentence for what many claim was the wrongful conviction in 2002 for shooting two deputy sheriffs in Atlanta, Georgia on the night of March 16, 2000. This, despite a man named Otis Jackson confessing to the shooting. Investigative journalist Hamzah Raza reported on Otis Jackson and his confession that could exonerate Al-Amin.
Al-Amin was transferred from the ADX SuperMax prison in Florence, Colorado to Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He is currently being held at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona. https://www.kundnani.org/jamilalamin/
Guest – Arun Kundnani, Adjunct Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, and teaches terrorism studies at John Jay College. He is the author of The Muslims Are Coming: Islamophobia and He is the author of The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain.
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