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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 January 6, 2024
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We Are the Union: How Worker to Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big.
The bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. He famously replied, “because that’s where the money is.” We’re interested in the labor movement not only for humanitarian reasons but because that’s where the power is. Union members can withhold their labor and bring the economy to a standstill.
Unionized workers gained ground in 2024. Union workers in the private sector saw a 6% rise in real wages last year. But overall, the working class has not had an increase in their real wages in 50 years. The cost of rent, groceries, health care and other basic needs are becoming more and more out of reach, even for those working full-time jobs.
As Donald Trump takes office on January 20th, many are preparing for a real threat to our standard of living and democratic rights. After all, his cabinet includes architects of the controversial Project 2025 initiative – the conservative blueprint that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees calls, “a radical attack on working people and their unions.” How will the battle for workers’ rights unfold this year and beyond?
Guest – Professor Blanc teaches Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University, and he’s an organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. He’s the author of Red State Revolt: the Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics, and his research has appeared in the Nation, the Guardian and Jacobin, among other publications. His latest book is We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big. Laborpolitics.com
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The Power Of Labor And A Workers’ Party
The forces of the gathering authoritarian storm in our country are evident in many ways. It is manifesting itself in powerful and continuing nationalism, in disdain for human rights, in the entwinement of government and religion, in a controlled mass media, in the protection of corporate power and the suppression of labor power and in the encouragement of violence.
The power of labor has been channeled into the Democratic and Republican Party, the twin parties of capitalism. We need a workers ‘ party, but we don’t even have the nucleus of one. Race and gender are formative in the building of authoritarian regimes. We see this in the United States. Haitians, who are Black, have been accused of eating cats and dogs. Women’s right to control their own bodies is under attack from the Supreme Court on down and women are marked as “childless cat ladies” and told to stay home and bear children.
Guest – Dianne Feeley is an editor of the magazine Against the Current. She is a leader of Solidarity, a socialist feminist organization. Dianne lives in Detroit where she has been an activist for many years in the United Automobile Workers union.
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Law and Disorder December 30, 2024
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Taxpayers Against Genocide: Lawsuit Against Congress Members For Approving $26.38B In Military Aid To Israel
On December 19, 2024, a coalition of human rights activists and organizations filed a class action lawsuit against California Congress members Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman. The lawsuit alleges that the representatives misused their authority by approving $26.38 billion in military aid to Israel, despite evidence that these funds contribute to ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Supported by more than 500 plaintiffs across Northern California, the case highlights growing public demands for accountability in U.S. foreign policy. It was filed by the group Taxpayers Against Genocide.
At the core of the lawsuit is the argument that Thompson and Huffman ignored clear evidence of war crimes committed with U.S.-provided weapons, effectively forcing their constituents into moral complicity. Plaintiffs describe profound emotional and moral injuries resulting from their representatives’ actions, emphasizing the ethical responsibility to prevent taxpayer dollars from funding human rights violations.
Sign up to the TAG mailing list: classactionagainstgenocide@proton.me
The lawsuit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, aiming to halt military aid to Israel and secure accountability for decisions made in Congress. With plaintiffs ranging from seasoned activists to ordinary constituents, the case represents a significant legal challenge to U.S. military support for Israel amid increasing scrutiny over its devastating consequences for Palestinian civilians.
Guest – Seth Donnelly, a Sonoma County resident, former Bay Area high school teacher, human rights advocate, and one of the founders of Taxpayers Against Genocide.
Guest – Maria Barakat, a Lebanese Palestinian antiwar activist, sociologist of law and society, and public policy expert specializing in equity from UC Berkeley. Both Seth and Maria are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
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Judges Who Issued ICC Arrest Warrants Against Netanyahu Accused Of Being Anti-Semitic
On November 1, when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Netanyhu accused the judges of “anti-Semitic hatred toward Israel.”
When Donald Trump vowed to crack down on campus protests by invoking the Insurrection Act to enlist the US military, he warned American colleges and universities that if they do not “end antisemitic propaganda,” they would lose accreditation and federal financial support.
Today, one of the oldest and most virulent forms of hatred – antisemitism – is being weaponized as a cudgel to silence opposition to Israel’s war against the Palestinians. If you criticize Israel, you are an “antisemite.” If you condemn Zionism, you are an “antisemite.” If an international court, with 125 member countries, dedicated to what Kofi Annan called “the cause of all humanity,” accuses Israel (and it is important to note, also Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif) of war crimes, the judges (from France, Benin, and Slovenia) are guilty of “antisemitism.”
The founders of Israel willingly took on a known risk when they established a Jewish state, choosing sacred religious symbols, the Star of David (Magen David) as the official state insignia on the nation’s flag, the menorah as the official state emblem, and Hebrew as the state’s official language. In 2018, the Knesset doubled down by passing a law designating Israel the “Nation-State of the Jewish people.” The chairman of the special legislative committee that drafted the law, described it as simply confirming “the founding principle on which the state was established,” that “everyone has human rights, but national rights in Israel belong only to the Jewish people.” The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel said the law “contains key elements of apartheid.”
During the highly contested debate over Zionism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anti-Zionists and non-Zionists repeatedly warned that establishing a Jewish state would pose grave dangers not only to indigenous Arab inhabitants, but to Jews around the world. Today that complex history has been largely replaced by an official, sanitized version that doggedly erases the many Jewish voices that have sounded well-grounded alarms over the establishment of a militarized theocracy.
Guest – Professor Marjorie Feld is the author of a new, groundbreaking book, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism. She is a professor of history at Babson College and the author of Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle Over Apartheid.
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Law and Disorder December 23, 2024
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Charting A Way Forward: A Billionaire President, Economies and Policies
The corporate media has been working to normalize Trump and his cabinet nominees who are waiting in to take the reins of the US government on January 20, 2025. Trump won the popular vote by less than his three predecessors Biden, Obama, and Bush. He lost in 2020 and attempted to stay in power by a coup that failed. But last month he succeeded in staging a comeback. He will be more focused, organized, and more brutal than he was the last time.
During his campaign he took full advantage of peoples’ disgust with the neoliberal capitalist Democratic Party and Biden and Harris. Her campaign emphasized joy but put forward no real program to address their situation. 70 million people voted against her.
Real wages in America have not risen in 50 years. The minimum wage has stayed the same – $7.50 an hour-for 15 years under both Democratic and Republican administration. Half the country is poor or near poor. Most people don’t have enough money in the bank to survive a crisis.
For profit health care Is so arbitrary and cruel that Luigi Mangione has become a popular hero, like Robin Hood, even though he shot someone in the back.
Food prices have skyrocketed. Rent is too high. Home purchases are impossible for the average person. So is paying college tuition without going into debt. And the final insult was that Trump, the adjudicated rapist, has been named man of the year by Time Magazine which put his photo on the cover and wrote about his ringing the bell opening the New York Stock Exchange surrounded by his repellent family.
On January 20 he will be, in his words, dictator for the day. He’ll begin his program of massive deportations and retribution against his opponents in the press and in the government. Who are the people he has chosen to support this effort? What might we expect?
Guest – Patrick Martin, senior editor at the world socialist web site where he covers a range of political issues in the United States.
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CCR Landmark Verdict Brings 42 Million in Settlement To Torture Victims
Last month, in a landmark verdict, a jury in a federal court in Virginia found a government contractor liable for its role in the torture of three Iraqi men at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison back in 2003-2004, and ordered the company to pay a total of $42 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the men who brought the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs were represented by attorneys from the famed Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City and pro bono counsel from Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, and Akeel & Valentine. The private defendant company, acting as a government contractor, was CACI Premier Technology, Inc.
The company was found liable for conspiring to torture and commit cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of the Iraqi men, one a middle school principal, one a fruit vendor and one a journalist.
Guest – Attorney Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights filed this landmark case more than 16 years ago. Her areas of legal expertise include matters of torture, war crimes and militarism. Among her many major cases is the case titled, Situation of Afghanistan at the International Criminal Court; and the case titled, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests-v-Vatican. Prior to her work at the CCR, she worked at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
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