Law and Disorder

June 6, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

The Alliance of Families for Justice and Dark Money And Conservative Courts

The Alliance of Families for Justice ("AFJ") was founded seven years ago by attorney Soffiyah Elijah. Its headquarters is in Harlem, a community heavily impacted by mass incarceration. AFJ also has satellite offices in Albany and Ithaca. AFJ seeks to heal families and individuals who suffer from their own imprisonment or that of a loved one. It seeks moreover to organize and empower them to challenge and change the system of mass incarceration. AFJs legal support unit provides free legal representation to incarcerated people and their families. AFJ holds weekly community organizing meetings and family empowerment circles, and monthly healing circles for formerly incarcerated people. Guest - Attorney Soffiyah Elijah, knows intimately what happens to families whose loved ones are put in prison. Attorney Elijah has headed legal clinics at the City University of New York School of Law and has served as the Deputy Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University, under Professor Charles Ogletree.

When Donald Trump became president in 2016, one of the most terrifying prospects was that he could signal a new era for the Supreme Court of the United States " where vacancies would be strategically filled to create one of the most conservative courts in nearly a century, which could roll back constitutional rights and liberties we've been taking for granted. Indeed, even though Donald Trump was not re-elected in 2020, the conservative 6-3 majority that exists, and the havoc they are wreaking, could last for decades. While I'm sure Donald Trump would like to take all the credit, the battle to buy Supreme Court influence and push votes to the right long precedes his tenure as president. Guest - Andrew Perez, has devoted his life and career to exposing the money, influence and secret transactions made among the most powerful people in the world to control the United States laws, government and people. He is an investigative reporter and senior editor for The Lever, which was just awarded the 2023 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in the independent media by Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College

May 30, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

The Nakba Didn’t End in 1948, It Continues to Impact Palestinians Daily and Junior ROTC In High Schools: Pressure To Join

On May 15, Palestinians marked the 75th anniversary of al-Nakba, which means the catastrophe in Arabic. On that date in 1948, Israelis ethnically cleansed nearly 750,000 Palestinians from their lands and destroyed more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages. In addition, on May 15, for the first time ever, the UN General Assembly officially condemned the Nakba. Israel maintains an illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. And the United States enables this occupation by providing $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel each year. Guest - Michel Moushabeck, is a Palestinian American writer, editor, translator and musician. Michel wrote the article titled, The Nakba Didnt End in 1948, It Continues to Impact Palestinians Daily, which was recently published by Truthout.

On her first day of high school, Andreya Thomas and several other freshmen at Detroits Pershing High School learned they were enrolled in a class called J.R.O.T.C., or Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps. School administrators told them the program was mandatory. Funded by the U.S. military, the program required students to wear military uniforms in class, recite patriotic declarations, and obey orders from an instructor who often yelled at them. When several tried to drop the class, school officials refused permission, even though the Pentagon says that requiring students to take the programs runs counter to its guidelines. Critics of Junior ROTC say that the programs militaristic discipline prioritizes obedience over independence and critical thinking. . With its concentration in schools with low-income and nonwhite students, some claim J.R.O.T.C. encourages students to enlist in the military rather than explore other routes to college or jobs in the civilian economy. Guest " Rick Jahnkow works for two San Diego-based anti-militarist organizations, the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, or YANO, and the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft. We spoke earlier with Rick about YANOs J.R.O.T.C. textbook review project.

May 23, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom and John Pilger: The Coming War With China

America was not founded as a Christian nation. Church and state were separated. The founding fathers were mostly deists, not Christians. They did not believe in a personal all powerful God that knew everything and intervened in human affairs All this is changing in America now under the thumb of a right wing activist politicized majority on our Supreme Court. They were put there by an extremely well funded well organized conglomeration of ultra right wing figures and organizations. They have an agenda and they are carrying it out. The newest Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett had a message for new lawyers. She said being a lawyer is but it means to an end. and the end is building the kingdom of God. Guest - Andrew Seidel, author of American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom. He is a constitutional attorney with more than a decade of experience arguing about religion and law.

China has the second largest economy in the world. It will soon be the first. In response to Chinas commercial threat the United States of America has responded militarily by surrounding the Chinese industrial heartland with 400 bases in what has been called a noose. The USA has some 1100 bases around the world, China has six. President Obama initiated a multi trillion dollar vast nuclear buildup. This was coordinated with what he termed a pivot towards Asia. Most of the U.S. Navy now patrols the waters off of China. Tensions have been exacerbated with respect to who governs Taiwan. We live in a country whose government has been in a perpetual war the last 3/4 of a century, except with a brief interlude after its 20 year old war Vietnam ended in defeat. Guest - John Pilger covered that war as a young reporter and understood that it was based on the lie that Lyndon Johnson told falsely stating that the North Vietnamese had attacked an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin.

May 16, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

Justice Thomas Fails To Disclose Luxury Gifts From Billionaire Harlan Crow and The Right to Housing In California

Justice Thomas Fails To Disclose Luxury Gifts From Billionaire Harlan Crow. In 2019, Crow flew Justice Thomas to Indonesia in his private jet and funded a nine-day island-hopping cruise aboard Crows superyacht, a trip valued at more than $500,000, nearly double Thomas's annual salary. But in spite of the Ethics in Government Acts requirement that federal judges disclose gifts over $415, Thomas failed to file such a disclosure. In 2004, Thomas refused to recuse himself from a case in which Crows real estate company was being sued, despite a federal law requiring federal judges to recuse themselves when their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. While a Code of Conduct binds lower federal court judges, members of the Supreme Court are bound by no such code of conduct.
Guest - Professor Ellen Yaroshefsky is the Howard Lichtenstein Professor of Legal Ethics and Director of the Monroe Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University.

The Right to Housing In California. The state of California has been described as ground zero in a national housing crisis. Plagued by escalating housing costs, lack of affordable housing stock, and stagnating wages, more than half of the country's unsheltered residents and a quarter of all unhoused people live in California, even though state residents comprise just 12% of the nations population. In a recent report, Recognizing the Right to Housing, the ACLU and other organizations assert that guaranteeing every person the right to housing provides an important government obligation and legal tool to ensure that Californians have access to affordable and adequate housing. Such a rights-based approach will bolster California's existing Housing First policy, based on decades of empirical evidence that houselessness is best remedied by access to permanent and stable housing, with minimal requirements for entry. A 2020 poll shows that 60% of Californians support the constitutional amendment. Guest - Attorney Kath Rogers from the ACLU of Southern California. Before joining the ACLU, Kath was Program Manager and Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California, where she co-authored the housing report.

May 9, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

The First Amendment And Julian Assange and A Set Of Ideas Under Threat

The First Amendment And Julian Assange - If as is likely the imprisoned journalist Julian Assange is extradited at Americas request from his solitary prison cell in Londons Belmarsh prison where he has been kept for four years and sent to Virginia to be tried for espionage he will be certainly be convicted and sentenced to life in prison. His victimization is being accomplished under the 1917 Espionage Act, a law originally put into place during World War I to imprison spies. It is now used to get truth tellers like Julian Assange silenced. Guest - Kevin Gosztola who more than anyone has covered the whistleblower situation since he attended the court martial trial of Sergeant Chelsea Manning. Kevin Gosztola's book Guilty of Journalism was published by Seven Stories Press and Censored Press last month.

A Set Of Ideas Under Threat - American history has been marked by ongoing conflicts between those who are seeking an open, equal and inclusive society and those who cling to the racist origins of the United States and seek to literally whitewash that history and perpetuate white privilege We find ourselves in the midst of one of those conflicts today.The right of Black people to learn their own history is being denied them. The same is true of anyone who is not heterosexual.

May 2, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

Prosecution Of Assange Would Lead To End Of 1st Amendment Experts Warn and Citizen Spies: The Long Rise of Americas Surveillance Society

May 3rd marks the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, established by the UN to remind governments about the necessity to respect their commitment to freedom of the press. The Biden administration touts press freedom but continues the Trump administrations efforts to extradite Julian Assange from the UK to the United States for trial on Espionage Act charges that could lead to 175 years in prison. Assange is being prosecuted for obtaining and publishing classified military and diplomatic documents evidencing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the first publisher to be charged under the Espionage Act for revealing state secrets.

April 25, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

Workers’ Rights And Leadership Moving Forward and Mumia Abu Jamal’s New Trial, Exculpatory Evidence

Under a viral form of capitalism. known as neoliberalism, in

Most recently, Mumias attorneys have sought a new trial for him based on thequality of wealth has reached enormous proportions. Half the population of our country are poor or near poor. Healthcare, education and housing go abegging with 15 million people about to lose their health care and hundreds of thousands of others sleeping on the streets. Sections of the American working class are fighting back. Workers are organizing in Amazon and Starbucks. 9000 of them are on strike at Rutgers University. United Automobile Workers are gearing up for a strike. Polls show that most working people would like to be in a union. But Americans are fighting back with one hand tied behind their backs. They have no independent working class party that defends their interests Both the Republican and Democratic parties are Corporate capitalist parties. In fact, last year, the Democratic Party received more massive dark money than Republicans. Guest - Paul Street, historian and activist has written 10 books, most recently This Happened Here : Neoliberalis, Amiericaners, and the Trumping of America. He wrote the introduction to Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA co-edited by Law And Disorder cohost Michael Steven Smith. He writes regularly for Counterpunch and manages The Paul Street Report on Substack.

American political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal has served over 40 years in Pennsylvanias harshest prisons; 16 of them on death row -for the murder of a
Philadelphia police officer that he did not commit. His trial was a sham from day one. The judge who convicted him was overheard promising, Im going to help fry the N-word. Before Mumias conviction, he was a nationally broadcast, award winning radio journalist, and the head of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He reported on the murderous racial violence of the Philadelphia police department and its notorious Police Chief, and later Mayor, Frank Rizzo. Mumia had been a member of the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party. While in prison, Mumia has written 13 books and had a weekly radio show, Live from Death Row. He holds a masters degree and is working on a PhD in history.eir discovery of exculpatory evidence clearly supporting his innocence. The newly discovered evidence had been wrongly kept from Mumias lawyers at the time of his trial, being deliberately buried in the prosecutors files. This evidence documented that key witnesses had received promises of money and favorable treatment in their own criminal cases, in exchange for their perjured testimony in Mumias original trial. The petition also documented the unconstitutional practice of striking Black jurors during Mumias original trial. Guest - Noelle Hanrahan, is a Pennsylvania attorney and longtime supporter of Mumia, and the producer the long-running radio show, Prison Radio. She was in the courtroom when the newly discovered evidence was presented in support of Mumias petition for a new trial, and again when it was recently denied.

April 18, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

It Was Genocide: Armenian Survivor Stories

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. Why did this happen? Despite being deemed inferior to Turkish Muslims, the Armenian community had attained a prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire and the central authorities there grew apprehensive of their power and longing for a homeland. Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.

April 11, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

UN Report Sounds Alarm On Climate Change and CCR Lawsuit: Louisiana’s Cancer Alley

A new flagship United Nations report on climate change shows that harmful carbon emissions have never been higher in human history. And that this is proof that the world is on a fast track to disaster, with scientists arguing that its now or never to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Indeed, the reports scientists claim that at the dismal rate matters to address climate change are now going, the world has but ten years "ten years--until catastrophic climate change is irreversible. Or as the UNs General Secretary Gutierrez puts it, the planet is now nearing the point of no return. Guest - Eleanor Stein, professor of law at Albany Law School, where she teaches Transnational Environmental Law is the author of Book Review: The Philosophical Foundations of Environmental Law: Poverty, Rights and Nature, as well as the book, Ecological Sensitivity and Global Warming: An International Human Rights Violation?

The call it cancer alley. It is the 135 mile long strip along both sides the Mississippi river between Baton Rouge, Louisiana south down to New Orleans In an environmental racism case, three Louisiana organizations sued on March 21 in Federal District court in New Orleans against the Parish Council of St. James Parish. A Parish is a county in New Orleans and the Parish Council is their government. Guest - attorney Astha Sharma Pokharel of the Center or Constitutional Right where she specializes in international human rights law and in challenging racial and environmental injustice. In the cancer rally lawsuit she represents the Mount Trump Baptist Church and inclusive Louisiana. A project at the Tulane law school represents RISE St. James. These are the three Black neighborhood organizations that are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

April 4, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You’re Innocent and Expert Panel On Grutter v. Bollinger

There is a common belief that if you're arrested, you are probably guilty because where there's smoke, there's fire. People assume that only the guilty confess to crimes because why would an innocent person confess to a crime they didn't commit? And when a person pleads guilty or is convicted by a jury, that's the end of the matter, in the minds of most people. In fact, many innocent people are arrested, especially people of color, due to racial profiling and other forms of discrimination by law enforcement. Implicit bias often infects the case as it moves through the criminal legal system " from the initial police stop, to interrogation, arrest, charging, trial and sentencing. This is particularly tragic when a person is charged with a capital crime for which the death penalty is imposed and that sentence is carried out. Guest " Justin Brooks criminal defense attorney and law professor has spent decades working to free innocent people from prison. The Founding Director of the California Innocence Project, Brooks is the author of the provocative new book, You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent.

Last October, Law and Disorder aired a segment exploring the possibility that the Supreme Court might be poised to overrule Grutter v. Bollinger and gut affirmative action. That's the landmark 2003 case that held that the 14thAmendment allows public universities to consider race as a factor to assemble a diverse student body. The National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter and the Society of American Law Teachers, or SALT, held an educational panel exploring the two affirmative action cases that the Supreme Court will decide by June or July. The speakers are Victor Goode, former Executive Director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and Professor Emeritus at CUNY School of Law. Corinthia Carter is a board member of the NLG-NYC Chapter Foundation and president of the Legal Services Staff Association of the UAW. Rounding out the panel is law professor Vinay Harpalani from the New Mexico School of Law and a member of SALT's board of governors. The panel was moderated by Olympia Duhart, co-president of SALT and a law professor at Nova Southeastern University College of Law.