Blood on all our hands

April 13

 

GUEST: Cassandra Dixon, long time peace and justice activist who spends a month each year in occupied Palestine, protecting school children from settler violence, talks about the physical attack and hospitalization that she endured recently.

Expert condemn Israeli violence in occupied West Bank

Ms. Dixon has had a long career of being a human rights advocate. She knew that her work was dangerous, especially in the hyper racist state that Israel has become. Still she was shocked when a settler attacked her from behind, sending her to the hospital with a dangerous head wound. 

She had been attacked before, and hit by rocks as she walked Palestinian children to school. The settlers are the very dregs of society, much like the early followers of the Nazi Party in the 1930s. Many of the settlers are not even religious. Their righteous anger is all about taking more land from the indigenous Palestinians. It is greed combined with self interest, a powerful mix that challenges the very concept of what human beings can be. 

When will Americans heed Cassandra Dixon's message? The billions we send to this apartheid state puts blood on all our hands. 

 

Representative Shrestha is democracy's best chance

April 6

GUEST: Sarahana Shrestha, first generation immigrant from Nepal, surprise winner of a race for NY state Assembly, and committed social justice reformer, talks about how the very rich and their corporations try to roll back any progress in meeting social needs.

Tax the rich, says freshman assembly member

Assembly Member Sarahana Shrestha is not giving up on her government or her new country. She ran as a progressive who refused to be bribed by the very rich and their corporations. Where did she get the courage to do that? And moreover, how in the world did she win her seat in the Assembly, when so many others run for office already compromised by dark money? How did she think she could make a difference in a  democracy so dependent on cash from the filthy rich?

What would a government look like that was not swamped by the influence of the few? When that neoliberal con artist, Michael Bloomberg, spent some of his billions on attack ads, she just kept working: for the environment, for criminal justice reform, and for campaign finance limits. Representative Shrestha is democracy's best chance. And if she fails, who but the very rich will stand by our hopelessly corrupted system in its hour of crisis?

How human rights abusers are "shielded"

March 30

 

GUEST: Joanna Schwartz, Professor of Law at UCLA and one of the country's leading experts on police misconduct litigation, whose writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post, talks about the difficulty of holding police accountable. Her new book is Shielded, How the Police Became Untouchable.
 
Police are 'shielded' from repercussions of their abuse

Joanna Schwartz's book is a fascinating look at how the police and the criminal justice systems have stacked the deck when it comes to accountability. It has taken decades to achieve this level of lawlessness, but the results were worth it for the human rights violators and abusers who now petrol our streets. 

Was no one pushing back? Since most of the beatings and killings were done to Black people, the white majority tended to look the other way. And the national media played its part, showing video after video of Blacks stealing cars, breaking into stores, and committing other crimes. Cop shows became even more effective than right wing hate groups in churning racist hatreds. 

To be fair, our politicians are equally as good at engendering racism. As a result of this constant drumbeat, white people have been trained to fear Blacks. In a society built on racism, from slavery through Jim Crow, there will always be official violence based on race. Just look at one of the most egregious of apartheid societies, the nation of Israel. Jewish settlers, police, and soldiers all reinforce the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank. That is what full spectrum oppression looks like, and the US supports this racist assault every step of the way. 

That would be my suggestion, that there be a chapter in Ms. Schwartz's book on how human rights abusers are "shielded" in other countries. It is the same process, and our tax dollars support Israel to the tune of four billion dollars a year.    
 

A gift for stirring racial and ethnic fears

March 23

GUEST: Dr. Sarah Rogerson, Director of the Justice Center at Albany Law School, as well as its Immigration Law Clinic, talks about law and policy regarding victims of  child abuse and neglect, persecution, domestic violence and sexual assault.

Undocumented doesn't mean illegal

Sarah Rogerson offers Activist Radio listeners a lot of history. We do learn the traditional stories, from elementary school on. Ellis Island and America, offering hope to those oppressed in their own countries. It is a stars and stripes account, one that omits so very much.

But lets face it, the hidden history of our country is much more interesting than the textbooks make out. I have tutored junior high students, so I know how stultifying the approved version really is. There are no bumps, no scrapes, and no hidden secrets that make any real account of our history so much more entertaining.   

The history of immigration is all the more whitewashed. We are a nation of immigrants, and yet know little or nothing of the systems and laws that have shaped our ethnicities and racial compositions. A look at the history of immigration helps us understand the highly charged discrimination that still plagues our society. 

Yet coming to terms with the racism that has guided our immigration policies for the last two centuries can also be liberating. Can one understand Trump without considering how he manipulates immigration for political gains? He, like most effective demagogues of the past, has a gift for stirring racial and ethnic fears. The US border is the perfect symbol of the US under attack. And attacked by immigrants, the very people who now make up 98% of our population.  

Isn't it time we learned the real story of immigration? Without it we are vulnerable to the worst type of racist provocateurs.

Overlooking apartheid for all that cash

What can $32,488 buy? Maybe we should be asking our former House Representative Antonio Delgado that question. According to OpenSecrets.org, that is the amount the Israel Lobby paid to House Member Delgado in 2022.  

There are several problems with this "generosity." The Israel Lobby considers itself immune to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires the reporting of money coming from Israel, and an accounting of what that money is used for. More recently, the Lobby has been going into primaries, spending 24 million last year on pro-Israel candidates.

One of the Lobby's recent targets was Rep. Andy Levin, who told an MSNBC reporter that he was: “a really Jewish candidate whose positions on Israel represent the mainstream…I’m not just Jewish, I’m one of two former synagogue presidents in Congress, along with Sen. Jackie Rosen…But AIPAC can’t stand the idea that I am the clearest, strongest Jewish voice in Congress standing for a simple proposition: that there’s no way to have a secure home for the Jewish people unless we achieve the political and human rights for the Palestinians.” The Israel Lobby spent big and defeated Levin in his primary.

The Lobby whitewashes one of the most brutal and persistent of the world's apartheid states. These bribes to members of Congress keep their mouths shut when it comes to Palestinian rights.     

Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader, was paid $440,400 by the Israel Lobby last year. Let's see how much apartheid he overlooks for all that cash.

Elites don't read poetry or think about their grandchildren

Joe Biden may well put us over the top. From the vast oil fields of Alaska now open for business, to the tanks, planes and warships making their way to Ukraine and Taiwan, these assaults on reason threaten the very survival of our species.

We know that the world must drastically reduce its use of fossil fuel, but some greedy billionaires are willing to risk it all for a few more zeros after their net worth. If that weren't enough, we are challenging the other two nuclear superpowers of the world to a game of chicken. It seems as if the empire has lost its head.

Must the people of our planet choose between burning up from climate change or freezing to death from a nuclear winter? "Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice." Robert Frost seems to have foreseen our fate back in 1920.

So is it death by Joe Biden, or by that fascist crook who would rule us through ignorance. racism and greed? Isn't a democracy about having better choices? But of course, ours is a plutocracy, the rule of the very rich. Elites don't read poetry or think about their grandchildren. They accumulate money in some of the most despicable ways, by cheating workers, starving poor children, and perpetuating our present system of mutual and guaranteed military annihilation. Let the ruling class fly away in their rocket ships, so that the rest of us don't have to debase ourselves by wringing their necks.  

Free speech is often seen as an impediment to large cash gifts

March 16

GUESTS: Two members of Vassar College's Students for Justice in Palestine talk about some of the challenges of advocating for human rights on campus, especially when calling for a boycott of apartheid Israel.

The National Students for Justice in Palestine

Perhaps Students For Justice in Palestine will lead to an evolution in colleges and universities. At the present, many institutions of higher learning are as bought off as most members of our US Congress. There should be an OpenSecrets.org website to track the money that the Israel Lobby pours into higher ed.

Rich and influential alums, who support Israel despite its apartheid tendencies, serve as the watchdogs of political activism on various campuses. When things get out of hand (a Palestinian speaker is brought to campus or a professor publishes an anti Zionist book), the threatening calls begin. Sometimes these calls are made to alumni offices, and sometimes right to college presidents. And just to make sure that campuses are not open to pro-Palestinian ideas, the national media is sometimes brought in. For example, take a look at "Majoring in Anti-Semitism at Vassar," an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal. The two writers of this hit piece have long histories of supporting of Zionism, and condemning students or professors who would dare refer to Israel as an apartheid state. 

As a graduate of Fordham University, I am ashamed of my university's lack of moral conviction. When it comes to choosing between human rights for Palestinians and contributions from wealthy alumni, Fordham holds its nose and takes the cash. Like so many institutions of higher learning, Fordham is run like a neoliberal enterprise rather than a purveyor of knowledge. 

Let us celebrate the fact that we still have organizations like Students For Justice in Palestine. They stand for what is right in an often hostile college campus. They also expose the hypocrisy of how these institutions of higher education are run. Free speech is often seen as an impediment to large cash gifts and lucrative corporate sponsorships. Most US colleges actively support the seventy years of Palestinian oppression in the Holy Land.