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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 1, 2022
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Remembering The Life Of Glen Ford
Glen Ford died last July 28 of lung cancer. I knew Glen the last seven years of his life. I first met him in 2014 after a speech that he gave at Harlem’s Riverside Church church on the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the Black Agenda Report of which he was the executive editor. The two other editors were Margaret Kimberley, who has taken over as the editor, and the late Bruce Dixon of Chicago who died two years ago. They were a formidable threesome. That night he spoke about what he called the Black misleadership class, a description he coined, and how it was an enemy of the movement. He said the Democratic party, which they populate, was not the lesser of two evils but the most effective of two evils. In particular, he zeroed in on New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. I kept in touch with Glen. He was a guest on Law And Disorder several times. I helped assemble a selection of his writings titled The Black Agenda which will very soon be published by OR books. Two months ago the publisher of OR books, Colin Robinson and I drove out to New Jersey to visit Glen.
He had just got out of the hospital where they took fluid out of his cancerous lung. He was somewhat frail but pretty chipper. We ate bagels and cream cheese at the dining room table and talked politics for two hours. As we left Colin remarked that it was a shame we hadn’t recorded our conversation. Glen was brilliant. Glen was the real thing. A Black nationalist and a socialist, as he described himself. He was a former Black Panther and usually wore a black beret when he spoke. He ended his speeches with his right arm held high in the air saying “power to the people.“
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The Black Misleadership Class Versus the Movement and its Legacy
We go now to hear Glen Ford speaking at the Black Agenda Report 7th anniversary gathering at Harlem’s Riverside Church. The theme of the event was ““The Black Misleadership Class Versus the Movement and its Legacy.” Ford gives strong criticism of newly elected New Jersey Senator Cory Booker as the essence of Black misleadership, showing the many ties of the current Newark mayor to corporate America.
Guest – Glen Ford, editor of the Black Agenda Report. Ford founded the Black Agenda Report and has edited it since 2006. He was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and he has delivered presentations at many colleges and universities.
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Law and Disorder July 25, 2022
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The Case Of Bernina Mata And Clemency
In 1998, Bernina Mata was convicted of first-degree murder in the killing of John Draheim, who she’d met at a local bar. After he tried to rape her, she fought back in defense and stabbed him. At trial, prosecutors portrayed Mata as a man-hating lesbian, and literally described her as a “hard core lesbian” who they claimed killed because the victim made an unwanted sexual pass at her. They claimed Mata’s sexuality was the motive and showed the jury books from her apartment—Call Me Lesbian, Homosexualities, and Best Lesbian Reading —to support their theory. Prosecutors claimed that “a normal heterosexual person would not be so offended by the (victim’s) conduct as to murder.”
The jury found Mata guilty and sentenced her to death. In 2003, her sentence was commuted from death to life in prison after former Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of everyone on death row in that state in response to a historic organizing clemency campaign. Now, Mata’s defense team – are asking Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker to grant her release from prison. They filed a petition for executive clemency, saying her case was plagued by racism and anti-lesbian oppression.
Guests – Attorney Joey Mogul and Deana Lewis, Joey Mogul is a partner at the People’s Law Office and has represented Mata since 2002. Deana Lewis is an Associate Director at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Deana is involved in the work of several Chicago community and national organizing collectives including Love & Protect, Just Practice Collaborative, and Survived & Punished.
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Joanne Page: The Fortune Society
Each year in the United States, more than 600,000 individuals are released from state and federal prisons. A staggering 6.9 million people are on probation, in jail, in prison, or on parole. On top of that, an additional nine million persons cycle through local jails.
As grim as these numbers are, more sobering is the fact that more than two-thirds of prisoners are rearrested within 3 years of their release. Half of those are reincarcerated.
Why is this recidivism rate so high? It has much to do with the failure of re-entry support programs. We have the world’s largest carceral state but no effective support system for people finishing their sentences and re-entering society. Consequently, crime rates soar, more individuals are victims of crime, families and communities suffer when we fail to deal with the consequences of over-incarceration. When reentry fails, the costs are high — more crime, more victims, and more pressure on already-strained state and municipal budgets. There is also more family distress and community instability. Community reintegration impacts several larger areas such as community health, education, employment, family relationships and housing.
In every aspect, failure to support recently released individuals is costly to society.
Guest – JoAnne Page is the President and CEO of the NY-based Fortune Society. Policymakers and researchers frequently cite the organization for its pioneering work. A graduate of Yale Law School, Page cultivated and created many of Fortune’s signature programs including substance abuse treatment, counseling, family services, HIV/AIDS health services, mental health programs, job training and employment services, parenting initiatives, and supportive and permanent housing. Page is a leading authority on issues including prison reform, solitary confinement, wrongful convictions, the over-incarceration of young men of color, sentencing reform, violence prevention, homeless housing, effective policing strategies, legislation, sex offender registries, and more.
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Law and Disorder July 18, 2022
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Far Right Supreme Court Decisions Not Seen Since 1931
During its last term, the Supreme Court demonstrated that it is the most right-wing court since 1931. In cases involving reproductive rights, entanglement of church and state, the right to carry guns, and the ability of congressionally-mandated administrative agencies to regulate climate change, the high court’s conservative members handed down reactionary rulings. The court has agreed to hear a case next term that could radically change our electoral system.
Guest – Stephen Rohde is an author and social justice advocate who practiced civil rights and constitutional law for more than 45 years, including representing two men on California’s death row. He is the former chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and former national chair of Bend the Arc, a Jewish Partnership for Justice. He is also a board member of Death Penalty Focus.
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ALEC: Five Decades of Government Influence
The United States underwent a “public interest” revolution in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the first half of the ’60s, Congress passed precedent-setting environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Water Quality Act. And in just three years, from 1969 to 1972, the federal government adopted a raft of new environmental, public health, workplace and consumer protections and established new agencies to administer them, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
That revolution sparked a counterrevolution that is still reverberating today. Wealthy conservatives, corporations and libertarian foundations poured money into new think tanks and advocacy groups, including the Heritage Foundation and Charles Koch’s Cato Institute. A less-well-known group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, was founded around the same time. It goes by its acronym, ALEC.
Unlike Heritage and Cato, ALEC—a network of nearly 300 corporations, trade groups, law firms, and libertarian foundations—operates at the state level. The group provides state legislators with a variety of ready-made bills that, among other things, roll back voting rights, thwart efforts to address climate change, and bolster corporate profits.
State lawmakers introduced nearly 2,900 bills based on ALEC’s recommendations from 2010 through 2018, according to an investigation by USA Today, the Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. More than 600 of them became law.
Lately ALEC has been coaching state legislators on how to spin the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. ALEC has also been working behind the scenes to amplify the false GOP narrative on voter fraud. Writer Elliott Negin has been following ALEC off and on for the last decade, and he recently posted an essay that explains in detail how ALEC turns disinformation into law. We are fortunate to have Elliott as our guest today.
Guest – Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a national science advocacy organization. Prior to joining UCS in 2007, he was the Washington communications director for the Natural Resource Defense Council, a former news editor at National Public Radio, the managing editor of American Journalism Review, and the editor of Nuclear Times and Public Citizen magazines.
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