Law and Disorder

May 4, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Journalist Put On FBI Terrorist Watch List Starts Class Action Case; and Stevens Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine

Philadelphia-based journalist Dave Lindorff learned in spring 2019 that he was on the FBIs Terrorist Watch List, used to require special searches of international fliers from and to the US. The list is readily accessible on computer to all domestic law enforcement agencies and most corporate security departments. Lindorff is about to bring a case against the US government over the list on First Amendment grounds. Guest - Dave Lindorff. He is a contributor to The Nation, and writes forSalon, London Review of Books, and Counterpunch.

The promise of the declaration of independence that all men are equal before the law was fulfilled, at least for a while after the Civil War. Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens was the foremost political leader in the struggle, even more than Abraham Lincoln.
Guest - Bruce Levine has published a biography of Stevens Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice.

April 27, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Speaking In Turkish: Denying the Armenian Genocide

Around the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th century. The unspeakable and gruesome nature of the killings"beheadings of groups of babies, dismemberments, mass burnings, mass drownings, use of toxic gas, lethal injections of morphine or injections with the blood of typhoid fever patients"render oral histories particularly difficult for survivors of the victims.

Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.

April 20, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Remembering Attorney Ramsey Clark

Attorney Ramsey Clark died in his home in Greenwich Village from complications from a fall last Friday, April 9, 2021. He was 93 years old. He came from a prominent New Deal Texas family. His father Tom Clark had been the Attorney General of United States and then served on the Supreme Court. Lyndon Johnson appointed Ramsey Clark to be the US Attorney General. He served in that position for 18 months severely disappointing Johnson who remarked that he thought he was appointing Tom Clarks son. Clark opposed the death penalty and declared a moratorium on it when he was in office. He opposed wire tapping. He supported the civil rights movement and helped draft the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was a key person empowering federal desegregation orders. At a cabinet meeting he declared his opposition to the war in Vietnam.

Guests - Attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, Attorney Alan Levine, a law partner of Ramsey Clarks for five years and Ralph Nader, one of the nations most effective and well-known social critics.

April 13, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Vaccine Passports, Privacy And Civil Liberties; and Attorney Flint Taylor : Police Brutality And The Derek Chauvin Trial

New York State became the first in the country to premier a Covid-19 vaccine passport. They call it the Excelsior Pass and proponents say its a safe and efficient way for people to return to sporting events, concerts, Broadway theaters and other large group settings. You show a QR code proving a recent negative test or full vaccination. Registration in the program requires three pieces of information: Name, date of birth, and zip code. The pass is matched to vaccination and testing records using a series of questions to prevent fraud. When the person arrives at a venue, all they have to do is show a photo ID with their code, which will generate a green check mark at the venue. Guest - Attorney David J. McGuire, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut.

The cruel and sadistic police murder of George Floyd last June on a Minneapolis sidewalk was videoed by a courageous 17 year old bystander. Her video was viewed by Americans across the country and the world. Onlookers gathered in protest as the murder progressed but their intersession was of no avail. Still Chauvin persisted, kneeling on a dead man. An ambulance came to take away George Floyds corpse. We are now in the midst of the trial of killer cop Derek Chauvin. Millions of Americans are watching the trial. It seems to them that this latest racist police outrage is the culmination of so many past murders. They are asking, what is to be done? Guest " Attorney G. Flint Taylor is a founding partner of the People Law Office in Chicago starting out over 50 years ago representing the family of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, Who was assassinated by the Chicago Police Department with the help of the FBI.

April 6, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Sensing Injustice: A Lawyer’s Life And The Battle For Change

We are going to spend the entire hour with attorney Michael Tigar to discuss his just published magnificent memoir Sensing Injustice: A Lawyer's Life And The Battle For Change By the time he was 26, Michael Tigar was a legend in legal circles well before he would take on some of the highest profile cases of his generation. In his first US Supreme Court case - at the age of 28- Tigar won a unanimous victory that freed thousands of Vietnam war resistors from prison. Tigar also led the legal team that secured a judgment against the Chilean Pinochet regime for the 1976 murders of dictator Pinochet opponent Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronnie Moffit in a Washington, DC car bombing.

March 30, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer

Michael Ratner's memoir Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer will be available at OR Books. As listeners know, Michael Ratner was one of the most important civil rights attorneys in our era. He spent his life fighting on behalf of those who state and empire sought to crush, from the leaders of the prison uprising at Attica to Muslim prisoners held in Guantanamo, to Julian Assange. We hear interviews about Michael Ratner with Chris Hedges's show On Contact, Attorneys Eleanor Stein, Richard Levy and David Cole.

March 23, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Jodie Foster Plays Attorney Nancy Hollander in The Mauritanian; and Senator Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine

We spoke with Nancy in 2018 about her client Mohamedou Ould Slahi, whose release she obtained after he served 15 years in the American offshore prison camp in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, without ever being charged of a crime. Slahi wrote a memoir about his experience in prison called Guantanamo Diary, where he was tortured in ways. Fast forward to 2021. A new film, The Mauritanian, features Jodi Foster as Nancy and the film sheds light on Nancy's tenacious fight to free her client, the secretive prison camp and the illegal practices therein. Guest " Attorney Nancy Hollander has been a member of the firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan, P.A. since 1980.

Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens was the foremost political leader in the struggle to bring about the abolition of slavery and was a leader in the effort during Reconstruct to make the United States a biracial democracy. This wise and eloquent revolutionary has been vilified and rendered rendered obscure during most of the years since he died 153 years ago. Guest - Bruce Levine, emeritus professor of history at the University Illinois and the author of four previous books on the Civil War era.

March 16, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Amazon Workers Unionize At Fulfillment Center In Bessemer, Alabama; and Florida Based Organization Tries To Unite Political Divisions

There's an historic battle for union recognition going on now at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama where mostly black workers package and ship orders to customers across the South. The votes of 5800 Amazon workers are being counted. On March 29th we will know the outcome on whether the first ever labor union representing Amazon employees with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union will prevail. Guest – Michael Goldfield, former civil rights and labor activist and agitator, Professor Emeritus, and currently a research fellow at Wayne State University in Detroit.

The tone and nature of debate between politicians has become less fact-based, less respectful, less substantive, and more negative in the past few years. The founding fathers knew that with any political issue came disagreement so they created a system that runs on disagreement. The checks and balances between the branches of power depend on division to protect freedom and liberty. So political disagreement, even bitter disagreement, isn't new. Guest - Liz Joyner, Village Square founder and CEO. Liz has a Masters Degree in Social Work and created the Village Square after her experience working in politics convinced her that the way we work out disagreements in today's public square is fundamentally flawed.

March 9, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

The 1871 Anti-Klan Act And The NAACP Lawsuit; and Ross Ulbricht: Petition For Clemency

Black Mississippi Congressman Benny Thompson with the support of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the NAACP) last month sued former president Donald Trump, his disgraced lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the fascist group Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers,, a far right organization of ex-military and policemen. Thompson used the 1871 anti-Klan act as a basis for his lawsuit. He alleges that there was a conspiracy between Trump and the other defendants to stop Congress from doing its business when Trump incited the January 6 ransacking of the Capitol.

Seven years ago a NY jury found Ross Ulbricht guilty on charges related to operating the Silk Road website. The 29-year-old convicted on seven charges, including a kingpin charge, and Judge Katherine Forrest imposed two life sentences and 40 years without the possibility of parole, for the young, nonviolent and first-time offender. The sentence was far longer than prosecutors sought. Ross wasn't convicting of selling illegal drugs but rather of creating an e-commerce website that others elected to use for that purpose. At trial several violations of Ross's rights cast doubt in the legal and technology communities on both the conviction and the extraordinary sentence.

March 2, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Activists Face Felony Charges In Action Denouncing Elijah McClain Murder; and The Current Risk of Nuclear War And Treaty Restoration

On September 17, 2020 at least six anti-racist activists were arrested in an action denouncing the Colorado police, notably for the murder of Elijah McClain. In the summer of 2019, three Aurora Colorado police officers put 23-year-old McClain in a chokehold and medics injected him with ketamine. The social justice activists now face a litany of felony charges, and possible decades in prison, on charges that include kidnapping.

When Donald Trump was president, the Democrats called him Putin's poodle. They falsely claimed that Russia influenced the election and caused Hillary Clinton to lose to Trump. Clinton famously said all roads lead to Russia. But the truth of the matter was quite different. Despite Trump seemingly adoration of Vladimir Putin as a strong man, American policy towards Russia was not completely friendly. The question now is what will Biden do?