Nationwide Peaceful Protests Against Genocide In Palestine and Julian Assange Extradition Case Update

Nationwide Peaceful Protests Against Genocide In Palestine

Around the nation, peaceful campus protests against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza are spreading. And they’re meeting with a rash of arrests by local police departments, dozens of school suspensions, and evictions from student dormitories. Many of those evicted have been students of colors, students with disabilities, and first-generation students. In New York, the NYPD arrested 108 students at Columbia University, and gave them 14 minutes to gather their belongings and leave their dormitories. New York University erected a plywood wall around Gould Plaza, an outdoor campus space in Greenwich Village, where police had earlier arrested protesting students.

All this because they took part at the large protest. Officials at Harvard University closed Harvard Yard in anticipation of possible protests and suspended the student group Palestine Solidarity Committee. Police arrested 9 students at the University of Minnesota for their refusal to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment. The California campus of Cal Poly Humboldt was shut down after students occupied a building. Shutitdown4Palestine.org

In an April 23 letter to the New York Times, nearly 60 parents of students at Columbia and Barnard, from a variety of religious faiths ad social backgrounds wrote that they find the actions taken by the administration deeply troubling and contrary to the principles of liberty, justice and academic freedom that are fundamental to the mission of higher education.

Guest – Brian Becker is the director of the Answer Coalition, a founder of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and host of The Socialist Program.

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Julian Assange Extradition Case Update

Regarded by many as the greatest journalist of our generation for exposing American war crimes Julian Assange is about to be extradited at America’s request to a federal criminal court in Virginia to be tried for his journalistic activities which exposed extensive murderous American crimes and embarrassed the US government particularly the CIA.

Julian was a young computer genius in Australia. He figured out a way to receive information from whistleblowers anonymously. This was done in order to protect them when his publication company WikiLeaks revealed to the world the activities of the CIA,the American military and U. S. diplomats.

As published by WikiLeaks the Vault 7 revelations exposed the CIA had developed technologies to turn cell phones into listening devices, even when turned off and tap our personal computers, and even control our automobiles. WikiLeaks exposed American torture in Afghanistan. They published a video of an American gunship helicopter murdering Iraqi civilians, even children, and two Reuters journalists on the streets of Baghdad.

Julian was given political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he holed up for seven years. Then five years ago the British police at Americas request removed him from the embassy and put him into solitary confinement in the notorious Belmarsh Prison.

Now the United States has succeeded in getting a compliant British court to extradite Julian , despite the law, preventing extradition of political prisoners, especially to a country that has the death penalty, and no guarantee of free speech for foreigners.

Guest – Vincent De Stefano is the National Organizing Director of the U.S. Julian Assange Defense Committee. Mr. De Stefano is on the Southern California ACLU board of directors and executive committee and he has worked with Amnesty International for more than four decades.

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