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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.

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Law and Disorder January 10, 2011

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Ohio Supermax: Hunger Strike In Long Term Solitary Confinement

In an Ohio Super Max prison, 4 prisoners facing execution are confined to permanent restrictive solitary confinement. They’re on a hunger strike,  bringing attention to their requests to simply be placed on death row. What’s the difference? Death row isn’t as restrictive as permanent solitary confinement. Jules Lobel, Vice President of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh explains in detail the differences of regular prison, death row and solitary confinement conditions.

Jules is working to defend the prisoners, he says that long term, essentially permanent and very harsh solitary confinement is both cruel and unusual punishment  that violates due process requirement of annual review.  The state of Ohio has decided to keep these four in solitary confinement permanently. It’s not only in Ohio, permanent solitary confinement is becoming a problem nationally, particularly with people convicted of terrorism related offenses, including material aid to terrorism.

Jules Lobel:

Guest – Jules Lobel, through the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights, Jules has litigated important issues regarding the application of international law in the U.S. courts. In the late 1980’s, he advised the Nicaraguan government on the development of its first democratic constitution, and has also advised the Burundi government on constitutional law issues.  Professor Lobel is editor of a text on civil rights litigation and of a collection of essays on the U.S. Constitution, A Less Than Perfect Union (Monthly Review Press, 1988). He is author of numerous articles on international law, foreign affairs, and the U.S. Constitution in publications including Yale Law Journal, Harvard International Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. He is a member of the American Society of International Law

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Defending Grand Jury Protesters

As many listeners know, last September in a nationally coordinated raid, the FBI targeted anti-war and Palestinian solidarity activists, raided their homes and subpoenaed them to appear before a grand jury. The 13 people all of whom were critical of US foreign policy, later withdrew and asserted their right to remain silent. But in early December of 2010 subpoenas were reissued against 4 of those targeted in the raids. Three women in Minneapolis, Tracy Molm, Anh Pham, and Sara Martin were sent reactivated subpoenas by Fitzgerald’s office and new Grand Jury dates.

We’re joined by Chicago based journalist and activist Maureen Murphy who also received a new subpoena. Maureen is managing editor at the website Electronic Intifada, though the site is not being targeted in the FBI probe. In a statement, the Electronic Intifada said, quote, “Although The Electronic Intifada itself has not been a target, we consider the grand jury investigation and all of the subpoenas to be part of a broad attack on the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements and a threat to all of our rights.”

We are also joined by regular guest, attorney Michael Deutsch from the People’s Law Office and is working with the defense committee.

Maureen Murphy:

  • I don’t know why its happening, we do know that no crime has been identified. There’s nothing written on my subpoena that I need to bring any documents.
  • We believe that the government is subpoenaing us so that we come before a grand jury and name names, and tell them how we organize so they can further disrupt their movement. I’m one of 23 activists now who have gotten the knock at the door. My subpoena says nothing but show up, so I think this is really a fishing expedition.
  • In one home they took everything with the word Palestine on it.
  • The government has expended a lot of resources on an investigation of a group that has always worked pubicly to advocate for a more just US policy. I was visited by the FBI on December 21, 2010.
  • A national committee that has formed around the raids and subpoenas is calling for a day of action January 25, in front of federal buildings and FBI headquarters.
  • I’ve already stated that I’m not going to testify.

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Michael Deutsch:

  • In December the FBI went out with a stack of subpoenas, and wound up subpoenaing 9 additional people in the Chicago area which then makes 23.
  • These people who are subpoenaed are all active in Palestinian support work.  Arab American Action Network, Palestinian Support Group.  This next wave of subpoenas are people who are they’re trying to gather information from.
  • I’ve never in all my experience seen so many people subpoenaed to a grand jury.
  • A lot of the Palestine support work has gone on in Chicago.
  • Originally 14 people were subpoenaed and each one through their lawyer said they weren’t not going to voluntarily come in. Now they haven’t decided to enforce the subpoena, they said well get back to you when we decide what we’re going to do.
  • There are 23 people lined up trying to figure out what the next step of the government is.
  • These prosecutors don’t seem to know who they’re dealing with. They see the grand jury as a tool of oppression.
  • I believe that the Israeli security apparatus is involved in supplying information to the US government.
  • There’s no evidence here of any type of violence or weapons. We’re dealing with advocacy and associations.
  • Despite Holder v the Humanitarian Law Project, we believe that it’s a total violation of the First Amendment.
  • The underlying tenor is going after people because of their political ideology.

Guest – Maureen Murphy is a journalist and Palestine solidarity activist from Chicago. She spent a few years living and traveling throughout the Middle East, interning for the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in the occupied West Bank in 2004-06 before she was denied entry and deported by the Israeli government. She also lived in Lebanon in 2007, learning about the human rights situation for Palestine refugees and the impact of U.S. foreign policy there.

Guest – Michael Deutsch, attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago.

Law and Disorder January 3, 2011

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No More Deaths: Jake Ratner and Elena Stein

Hundreds of immigrants are pulled from their families and bused to Nogales, Mexico every day. The families are broken apart as deportees most of whom have been working in the US without a criminal charge, are left in limbo in this foreign city. No More Deaths, the humanitarian organization is also stationed in Nogales to provide basic first reponse aid to deportees. Many immigrants arrive in Nogales after serving months in jail.  Jake Ratner and Elena Stein volunteered with No More Deaths and witnessed the sentencing process called Operation Streamline. A system that funnels 75 immigrants every day through a mass court proceeding where they are sentenced up to 6 months in jail. Very few are allowed to explain their situation in court.

Jake Ratner / Elena Stein:

  • We were living in Patagonia, Arizona, which is near Nogales, Arizona. There’s a wall in Nogales separating the US and Mexico. The wall is about 15-20 feet high. It was built by the same company contracted to the build the wall in Israel / Palestine.
  • It’s right down the middle of the city, so there’s Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico.
  • In the morning we drive 20 minutes to Nogales Arizona. We push our way through a turnstile gate. As we walk in we pass a very long line of those waiting to come in from Mexico.
  • No More Deaths provides phone calls to recently deported people so they can have that first phone call to their families. We provide them with property recovery, items that were confiscated can be recovered to them.
  • Most the people who we come across have been living the US for a long time. Most have families living in the US.  More men than women.
  • Some people are found by being pulled over by the police with a broken tail light. They get handed to ICE and then to Border Patrol. Others will get a knock on the door, because there is belief that someone doesn’t have papers.
  • This is a new phenomena, that people living in the United States 15 – 20 years are being deported.
  • There was a campaign put on by (correction) United Farm Workers saying “Here take our jobs.” (picking tomatos) You want our jobs? Take our jobs.  They ran a 2 month campaign. No one. No one wanted those jobs.
  • One or two people a day are dying making the trek from Mexico and crossing the desert to the US. The change that we’ve seen is that more people are dying. Streamlining is the process where they take the 75 of the 300 people crossing the border everyday and put them on trial together.
  • Corrections Corporation of America wrote this law. This private company sat down with legislators and wrote of Operation Streamline.
  • They’re getting money from the tax payers to fill these jails and profit off of Mexican citizens. Operation Streamline has not proven to be a deterrent.  The Dream Act / Secure Communities.
  • I think there is a responsibility as Americans for us to first understand the realities that people are experiencing everyday as a result of actions that were taken by our country and have a responsibility after understanding it to try and do something about it.
  • We have an obligation to have good relationships with our neighbor. It’s Mexico, our neighbor.  The more we try to understand the system we’ve become part of, the more we become repulsed at our own participation.
  • Corrections sent in from a volunteer at No More Deaths, monitoring Operation Streamline: “the Border Patrol sends up to 70 (never more) of those whom they have apprehended to OS in Tucson, daily, Monday through Friday.  The majority are sentenced to “time served” (most have been held 3 or 4 days), given a permanent criminal record and deported.  Those who have been deported previously (usually between 20 and 30 people) are charged with the felony of “reentry after deportation” and are sentenced to prison for anywhere from 30 to 180 days.  The magistrates always ask the detainees if they want to say anything in court, but few ever do. “

Guest – Jake Ratner -son of co-host Michael Ratner. Jake graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He’s traveled and studied in Cuba and Bolivia, South America.

Guest – Elena Stein – has worked with recent deportees on the Arizona-Mexico border. She graduated last year from the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked with human rights groups in the US and Central America, specifically with children.

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Lawyers You’ll Like – Azadeh Shahshahani

For our Lawyers You’ll Like series, Azadeh Shahshahani joins us.  Azadeh is the Director of the National Security /Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU of Georgia. That’s a project aimed at bringing Georgia into compliance with international human rights and constitutional standards in treatment of refugee and immigrant communities. This also included immigrant detainees. She is the editor of two human rights reports one on racial profiling: “Terror and Isolation in Cobb: How Unchecked Police Power under (federal law) 287G Has Torn Families Apart and Threatened Public Safety” and “The Persistence of Racial Profiling in Gwinnett: Time for Accountability, Transparency, and an End to 287G.” Azadeh also serves as Executive Vice President and International Committee Co-chair for the National Lawyers Guild.

Azadeh Shahshahani:

  • I work on immigrants’ rights and post 9/11 security issues with the ACLU of Georgia
  • 287g turns law enforcement into immigration officials.
  • There are four counties in Georgia that have 287g. These are counties with long and documented racial discrimination. The numbers (of those picked up and processed through 287g) have gone up tremendously in one county, 2 thousand plus people in Cobb County.
  • A lot of them have ties to the community, have US citizen spouses or children.
  • Sometimes it’s not clear why people get pulled over, there’s no moving violation on the ticket.  Georgia doesn’t have an anti-racial profiling law on the books so there’s no way to hold the police accountable.
  • Detention Centers: Some are run by the government, others are run by counties, jails, then private corporations.
  • In Georgia, you have 2 operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, then you have City of Atlanta jail that rents space to ICE.
  • The Obama administration boasted that it deported 400 thousand people.
  • Lawsuit against ICE, seeking safeguards that US citizens aren’t deported and people with disabilities are afforded a measure of due process.  Georgia Detention Watch
  • Stuart Detention Center Report: 16 men per one toilet. No contact visits.
  • I came to US when I was 16. I went to law school in Michigan. After law school I knew that I wanted to do human rights work. I approached the ACLU of North Carolina and proposed a project focusing on empowerment, know your rights presentations at the mosques. Also putting together an anti-racial profiling campaign.
  • State Must Enact Anti-Profiling Laws

Guest – Azadeh Shahshahani,  the Director of the National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU of Georgia. The project is aimed at bringing Georgia and its localities into compliance with international human rights and constitutional standards in treatment of refugee and immigrant communities, including immigrant detainees. To that end, a variety of strategies are employed, including the development of impact litigation, legislative advocacy, providing training to attorneys, human rights documentation and the publishing of reports, public education, and coalition and movement building. The current focus areas of the project include: immigration detention, racial profiling and local enforcement of immigration laws, governmental surveillance, discrimination faced by Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities, immigrant access to higher education, and language access in the court setting.  Azadeh’s opinion pieces have appeared in print and online publications such as the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Fulton County Daily Report, and the Huffington Post.

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Law and Disorder December 27, 2010

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Economic Recovery? Austerity in the US and Abroad

In our previous interview with Professor of Economics, Rick Wolff, we talked about austerity, that is imposing on society a severe regimen of rising taxes, or cut government spending to please and satisfy creditors.  Massive protests erupt against austerity in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and soon maybe Spain, as governments raise college tuition, taxes, retirement ages plus cutting worker benefits and wages. These austerity measures are about to hit the United States. Veiled in the recent tax deal with the Republicans is a decision Americans will need to make. Higher taxes or cut services? With growing debts made worse by Obama’s tax deal, the US moves quickly toward austerity while the political establishment and the media mostly pretend all is well says Rick Wolff.

Professor Rick Wolff:

  • In order to get anything through, the President had to accomodate the richest people in the United States and the biggest corporations.  I’m going to allow you to pass even more wealth to your children or the people who inherit your estate. Here’s an extra gift, the estate tax.
  • These are the people who did the best over the last 30 years. Wage earners and salary earners went nowhere, but people rich enough to own shares in the stock market made out like bandits.
  • Estate tax, you can earn money for the state to run services we all need by taxing the super-rich so they’re not quite so far ahead. What this last bill does . . rich people in America were already allowed to leave 3.5 million dollars for each person (husband/wife) to their children or anyone else and the federal government wouldn’t touch it.
  • Less than one half percent of Americans who even have this amount of money.
  • This new law raises the amount from 7 million per couple to 10 million per couple. The new tax law also reduces the amount to pay from 45 to 35 percent.  A gift in the millions for the super-rich.
  • Translating into billions of dollars that are now going to be saved by the richest people in the United States.  We’re going to be talking about the difficulties the government has in doing things because it doesn’t have money. The government just gave away the store to richest one half of one percent.
  • What the rich do when they get a break like this, and when you turn to Wall Street, the hottest investments are in other parts of the world. Funding economic development in other parts of the world.
  • Unemployment is as high as it was a year ago. Foreclosures are running at a multi-million dollar clip per year.
  • Last month the Federal Reserve decided to print another 600 million dollars. My view is we’ve got years of unemployment ahead of us, years of a disasterous housing market, very few signs of recovery.
  • The worst has yet to hit. It takes time for states to crumble.
  • The municipal bond market, the debts of cities and towns are going to see significant default.
  • You need organization to act in historic moments that moments where people need action.
  • The flow of jobs from the United States to other parts of the world is continuing. American corporations don’t see the US as a “growth area.” They’re focused elsewhere.
  • We’re becoming a society where large numbers of people are living on the margins. It’s a new experience in this country after a century of being a little different from that.

Guest – Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.

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Two Year Evaluation of  the Obama Administration

There is a long list of items progressive Americans had hoped to accomplish through the Obama Administration. In our interview with Roger Hodge, author of The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism, Hodge says Obama didn’t fight for anything worth fighting for. With corporate backers such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citi-Group,  the Obama Administration has been severely compromised. These corporations expect something in return. The Obama Administration has been criticized for expanded the wars abroad from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, criticized for continuing the Guantanamo detention policies, the Wall Street bailouts and bargaining with the Healthcare bill as a bailout for insurance companies. In this aftermath of 2010 and we look  back to 2008.

Nellie Hester Bailey:

  • A browner hue of imperialism. The policy of the US government at home and abroad would remain the same. When we look at the platform of then presidential candidate Barack Obama, he made very clear that he was a centrist candidate. In many instances to the right of Hillary Clinton, if one can imagine that.
  • We were never taken in, mesmerized, blinded . . we knew very well who he was.
  • He has proven to be much worse than anticipated. Not for me but for my colleagues who were cautiously optimistic.
  • On January 20th, President Obama is going to deliver his State of the Union Address. Everyone expects this is going to be the prelude for another deadly compromise for the working class.
  • There was a study done in the Guardian newspaper and amazingly African Americans were more optimistic about their economic situation and felt much more secure under Barack Obama’s administration than ever before.  When in fact just the opposite is true.
  • African Americans have lost trillions of dollars in the housing crisis, the mortgage scam.
  • We have to remember it was President Barack Obama that gave the banks a free ride.
  • We have added 9 billion dollars to the deficit with this tax cut deal, that is extending the tax cuts to the 2 percent of the wealthy. We are supposed to believe that he did this for us? The poor and the working class?
  • Unlike the right wing, I believe he will be a one term president.
  • What we need for the working poor and African Americans is the blinders to be pulled off, so people can see what it is that we are dealing with.  When you look at the report from the CDC where have a 50 percent increase in the number of people that are uninsured.
  • The work force is being reduced, we are expected to work longer hours, we are expected to retire later in life, we are being worked to death.  These are the undeniable realities.
  • You can no longer herd the people like sheep into this nightmare of compromise.
  • After 2 years, I think progressives for Obama need to step back and realize their responsibility for building a working class people, multi-racial movement.
  • You have to commit to a movement, you don’t do that as an individual.
  • Open Letter to encourage self-proclaimed left leaders such as Bill Fletcher, Tom Hayden and Barbara Ehrenreich to move from critical support into active opposition of the administrations agenda.
  • I co-host a program with Glen Ford who is the Executive editor of Black Agenda Report.
  • Black Agenda Report, we air on Mondays at 5 PM.

Guest – Nellie Hester Bailey, human rights activist who has worked in peace and justice movements for over forty years. From her early organizing with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, to tenant rights and anti-war struggles, to advocacy on behalf of women Bailey has been at the forefront of social justice and social change organizing.   Bailey co-founded the Harlem Tenants Council (HTC) in 1994. She currently serves as Director of the tenant led grassroots organization based on the self-determination tradition of radical activism that provides anti-displacement organizing for poor and working class families primarily in Central Harlem

Bailey is co-founder of Blacks in Solidarity Against the War that in 2005 help stage the largest anti-war demonstration in Harlem since the invasion of Iraq.  A founding member of Cuba Solidarity New York,  Bailey traveled to Cuba on three separate occasions.

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