Welcome to Law and Disorder Radio
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 March 5, 2018
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If you’ve attended NYC protests over the past few years you might have seen a group of women that stand out from the crowd. A lot of credit is given to younger generations for their increasing presence in marches and protests, but this group is made up of women who have been protesting for decades. They call themselves the Granny Peace Brigade. The name is fitting in every way as the group is comprised of all older women who have been at the forefront of many anti-war, anti-military and counter recruitment movements.
After a group of them were arrested at the Times Square recruitment center in 2005, they made their official debut as the Granny Peace Brigade to defend their civil rights in court. In the next 13 years as new members joined, their message only grew louder. In conjunction with other groups over time, such as Code Pink and the Raging Grannies, the Granny Peace Brigade has worked to denounce and resist both local and global militarism, war and endless devastation to civilian life. Granny Peace Brigade Blog
Guests – Joan Plune and Barbara Harris, two longstanding members of the Granny Peace Brigade.
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In 1989, an exhibition at the American Craft Museum offered a new appraisal of quilts in this country suggesting that quilting derives from African design, and even reflects the improvisational nature of the music of Africa.
Historians Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard claim that African American slaves may have used a quilt code to navigate the Underground Railroad. Such patterns as the “wagon wheel,” “tumbling blocks,” and “bear’s paw” were passed down from one generation to another, and seem to have held secret messages to assist in guiding slaves to freedom.
Sara Trail began sewing at age four and by 11 she was teaching others to sew. In 2012, Treyvon Martin was murdered in Florida. They were the same age, 17, and his death stirred in her a need to do something on behalf of social justice. She created an oversize portrait quilt of Treyvon and gave it to his mother at a Black Lives Matters event.
Sara began to study ways to apply her talent at sewing to social justice given its importance as a tradition during slavery. She saw the potential in quilting to encourage discussions about current social issues.
A grant from UC Berkeley for a 6-week summer program serving high school students of color from the Bay Area, helped her create the Social Justice Sewing Academy.
Guest – Sara Trail, Sara dedicates her art practice to social justice reform and created SJSA in efforts to engage students and activists across the United States who share a common vision of equity and justice. She uses art as a vehicle for motivation and awareness while providing people a platform to create activist art through fabric textiles. She encourages people to become artivists [art + activist] and designs community social justice quilts as a tool for social critique and action.
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Law and Disorder February 26, 2018
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The Freedom Fast and Time’s Up Wendy’s March
Immokalee, Florida was the site of some of the most brutal human rights atrocities in the United States. One third of all the nation’s tomatoes are grown there. Since 1997, the Justice Department has prosecuted seven slavery cases in Florida, four involving tomato harvesters. More than 1,200 persons have been freed from agricultural slavery rings in Florida during the last 10 to 15 years.
Workers report brutal beatings, being shackled in chains at night, not receiving regular pay, and having to share small quarters with dozens of others in a mobile home for $200.00 a month. They work without breaks, in the beating sun for 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
In 1993 a small group of workers who had been meeting in a church founded the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Their mission was to improve the lives of tomato pickers in Southern Florida. After years of organizing in Immokalee, the Coalition launched its first boycott of a national of a fast food company—Taco Bell—in 2001. Four years later, the company agreed to support wage increases and workplace protections for tomato pickers. Since then, food corporations, including McDonald’s, Burger King, Whole Foods, Subway, and Walmart have followed suit. Today, 14 of the world’s largest food retailers and restaurants have signed fair food agreements with the CIW.
In May the Coalition will receive the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives and/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism for their continued efforts to protect the rights of agricultural workers, prevent involuntary servitude, and create a food supply chain that is fair from bottom to top.
Guest – Lupe Gonzalo is a senior staff member and leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). She has worked in the agricultural fields of the United States for the last 12 years as a migrant farmworker, including in the harvesting of tomatoes, citrus, peppers, and many other vegetables and fruits. As part of the Fair Food Program education team, Lupe and her colleagues conduct workers’ rights education in seven states along the East Coast throughout the year
Guest – Patricia Cipollitti, Patricia organizes alongside faith communities as part of her staff role within the Alliance for Fair Food. The Alliance for Fair Food is a national network of people working in partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for farmworker justice.
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The Prometheus Radio Project And LPFM
Where do you turn on your radio dial to hear diverse viewpoints, community voices, or even local musicians? If you’re like thousands across the country you might tune into Low Power FM or LPFM noncommercial broadcast stations. They operate at a lower transmission power and serve smaller areas than full power stations.
In 1999, the Federal Communications Commission launched the low power FM radio service, opening up an opportunity for community radio broadcasting in more than two decades. LPFM’s broadcast from 10 to 100 watts and are run by non-profit organizations, unions, schools, churches, and other local, non-commercial organizations. Today there are more than 800 low power radio stations on the air, committing to giving 8 hours a day of air time to local voices.
Law and Disorder is thrilled to be carried on several LPFM stations but it hasn’t been an easy road. Early on, corporate sponsored big broadcasters have pushed Congress to limit low power radio as soon as it started. Fortunately, The Prometheus Radio Project fought for years to support the Local Community Radio Act that would return authority to the FCC, and allow them to license low power stations in cities for the first time.
Guest – Paul Bane got hooked on Grassroots Radio by listening to Boulder’s KGNU in the mid 90’s. That also led him into activism for global economic dignity in the “Seattle-era” street movement. Along the way he also stood against police brutality, for an end of racism toward Native Americans and others, an end of media bias including that at NPR, of discrimination and dehumanization aimed at women, LGBT, and undocumented immigrants. When he co-founded Grassroots Radio station KRFC between 1997 and 2003, he also co-founded its news collective. After chatting with Prometheus at Grassroots Radio Coalition conferences for a decade or so and leaving his Fortune 100 R&D job, Paul volunteered at Prometheus in 2010 and is currently our nerdiest engineer. His electrical engineering degree and ham radio experience comes in handy for FCC application engineering, station design, construction and troubleshooting. Paul also created and maintains the free-to-use RFree software to make application engineering easier.
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Law and Disorder February 19, 2018
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Update:
- Attorney Heidi Boghosian and Professor Johanna Fernandez Discuss Potential New Trial For Mumia Abu-Jamal
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Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment
In her engaging new book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz chronicles the history of American gun culture and its casualties. From Andrew Jackson, the slave trade, the extermination of indigenous populations, domestic terrorist organizations such as the KKK to serial killings, U.S. history is rife with violence. What is the underpinning for such violence?
Dunbar-Ortiz argues that it is the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution and the resulting gun culture that it spawned. She lays out an array of historical facts and figures that will be new information for many readers. In doing so she provokes questions about the American ethos to help inform pressing issues confronting the nation, from mass shootings in schools to police killings with impunity.
In her meticulously researched book, Dunbar-Ortiz investigates the dynamics of armed struggle within the U.S., their motivations and their contemporary relevance.
Publishers Weekly writes: “In her trenchant analysis of the Second Amendment, Dunbar-Ortiz avoids a legalistic approach and eschews the traditional view that links the amendment to citizens” need to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. Instead, she argues that the Second Amendment was passed to facilitate the genocide of Native Americans in order to steal their land and to provide a means for slaveholders to control their human property.”
Guest – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, historian, author, memoirist, and speaker who researches Western Hemisphere history and international human rights. Her 1977 book The Great Sioux Nation was the fundamental document at the First United Nations Conference on Indians in the Americas, held at the United Nations’ headquarters in Geneva. Her other books include Outlaw Woman, and the acclaimed An Indigenous People’s History of the United States. Her newest book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, is published by City Lights.
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Bearing Faith: The Limits of Catholic Health Care for Women of Color
Catholic affiliated hospitals set strict guidelines that prohibit doctors from providing contraceptives, sterilization, abortion, and fertility services regardless of their patients wishes or their doctors’ medical judgment or the standard of care in the medical profession.
A just released report titled Bearing Faith: The Limits of Catholic Health Care for Women of Color by the Columbia Law School’s Public Rights/Private Conscience Project in partnership with Public Health Solutions shows that in many states women of color are far more likely than white women to give birth at Catholic hospitals. These women are at greater risk of having their health needs undermined because these health needs have been determined by the religious beliefs of male bishops rather than the medical judgment of their doctors.
This religious overreach undermines fundamental rights to equality and liberty and violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment which seeks to separate church from state.
Guest – Attorney Elizabeth Reiner Platt. Director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School. Before joining Columbia, she was a Staff Attorney at MFY Legal Services Mental Health Law Project.
Guest – Kira Shepherd, Director of the Racial Justice Program at the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School. Before joining Columbia Law School she was the Executive Director and Director of Campaigns at The Black Institute (TBI), an action think tank that leads advocacy work in the areas of immigration, education, the environment, and economic justice.
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