Civil Rights

Talk Nation Radio: Tim Schwartz on How to Do Whistleblowing

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Tim Schwartz is the author of a new book called A Public Service: Whistleblowing, Disclosure, and Anonymity. Tim Schwartz’s career focuses on data privacy and digital information as an artist, activist, and technologist. He specializes in teaching techniques for challenging power while protecting one’s identity. Schwartz co-organizes the digital training organization Los Angeles Cryptoparty, a member of the Electronic Frontier Alliance. He read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Lisa Fithian on Nonviolent Direct Action

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Lisa Fithian has just published a terrific guide to direct action and strategic civil disobedience as the most radical and rapid means to social change, called Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce Loving Resistance. Fithian has been described by Mother Jones magazine as “the nation’s best-known protest consultant.” She has supported countless movements including the Battle of Seattle in 1999, rebuilding and defending communities following Hurricane Katrina, Occupy Wall Street, and read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Chip Gibbons on Felony Prosecutions for Protesting Trump

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Chip Gibbons is policy and legislative counsel for Defending Rights & Dissent, as well as a journalist. His work has been featured in the Nation and Jacobin. He has contributed to the Henry Kissinger Files, forthcoming from Verso Books. His recent article in the Nation is called “The Prosecution of Inauguration-Day Protesters Is a Threat to Dissent.”

Follow him on twitter @ChipGibbons89

Here’s his website: https://chipgibbons.org

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
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Trump’s Articles of Impeachment: A Greatest Hits Collection

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By David Swanson, FireDonaldTrump.org

Some say the world will end in Trump,
Some say in Pence.
From what I’ve heard out on the stump,
I hold with those who favor Trump;
For if he’s stopped they both might be.
If not, the chance may come too late
For Mr. Pence the throne to capture
And make our fate
His longed-for rapture.

Several years back, I led a team of authors drafting articles of impeachment against then-President George W. Bush for then-Congressman Dennis Kucinich. We drafted read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Joshua Holland and Bryce Covert on How People in Denmark Get Happy and Why Dads Should Stay Home

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Joshua Holland is a fellow with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and a contributor to The Nation who focuses on the intersection of money in politics and inequality. He is also the host of Politics and Reality Radio. Before joining The Investigative Fund, he wrote for Moyers & Company and was a senior writer and editor at Alternet. He also authored The Fifteen Biggest read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Deirdre Enright on Freeing Innocent People from Prison

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-deirdre-enright-on-freeing-innocent-people-from-prison

Deirdre Enright is director of investigation for the University of Virginia Law School’s Innocence Project Clinic. Enright previously worked at the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center, where she represented clients and consulted on cases in all stages of capital litigation, with primary focus on federal and state post-conviction proceedings and Supreme Court certiorari review. After graduating from the University of Virginia Law School in 1992, Enright worked as a staff attorney at the Mississippi Capital Defense Resource Center. We discuss the work of freeing innocent people from prison.   See: http://www.innocenceprojectuva.org  Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.

Pacifica stations can also download from Audioport.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!

Please embed the SoundCloud audio on your own website!

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Love Beyond Flags: Nothing More Beautiful

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When Iran’s democracy was overthrown by the CIA in 1953, many Iranians had what they still have: affection for the people of the United States, as distinct from the U.S. government.

If — even with Michael Flynn out — the U.S. government/military manages to stir up a war on Iran, and the Iranian government responds with less than perfect nonviolent wisdom, it will be the job of U.S. citizens to distinguish the wonderful Iranian people from their government.

This ought to help matters. read more

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Chasing a Northern Confederate Out of the South

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The Washington Post proclaims: “Protesters mob provocative Va. governor candidate as he defends Confederate statue.” Six seconds of video of the incident involved is likely to show up eventually here or here.

I was there on Saturday shouting down the “provocative” celebrator of racism and war, together with my kids and some friends. The only hostility I saw came from supporters of keeping the giant statue of Robert E. Lee in the park here in Charlottesville.

This was an email read more

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Good Riddance to Robert E. Lee

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Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, the city of Charlottesville, Va., city council has voted to remove an imposing statue of Robert E. Lee (and the horse he never rode in on) from Lee Park, and to rename and redesign the park.

The statue of this non-Charlottesvillian had been put up in a whites-only park during the 1920s at the whim of an extremely wealthy and racist individual. So, for a representative government to vote, following a very public deliberative process with voluminous and read more

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Talk Nation Radio: U.S. Mass Incarceration, Police Militarization, and Crimes Against Palestinians

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-us-mass-incarceration-police-militarization-and-crimes-against-palestinians

Two guests this week: Jeff Fogel and Ntebo Mokuena.

Jeff Fogel is a candidate for Commonwealth’s Attorney here in Charlottesville, Virginia. After graduating from Rutgers School of Law in 1969, Jeff received a fellowship to work providing legal services to indigent residents in Newark, New Jersey.  After several years, he left that read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Chip Gibbons on Anti-Russia Committee and Censoring Criticism of Israel

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-chip-gibbons-on-anti-russia-committee-and-censoring-criticism-of-israel

Chip Gibbons is the Policy and Legislative Counsel for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. He is also a writer whose work has been featured in Jacobin, Truthout, and Counterpunch. We discuss U.S. Congressional efforts to censor criticism of the Israeli government, and to create a new McCarthyite Anti-Russia Committee.

The petition we mention is here.

The account of a sleeping read more

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New Rogue Anti-Russia Committee Created in "Intelligence" Act

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I don’t know why we didn’t pick playing with live electrical wires and call that “intelligence” instead of the stuff we do. I think I’ll stick with calling what the U.S. government does “counter-intelligence.” So, here’s the latest from the counter-intelligence community.

Section 501 of the Counter Intelligence Act creates a “Committee read more

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Millennials Organize Gun Violence Prevention Intersectionality Summit

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Millennials Organize Gun Violence Prevention Intersectionality Summit to Bring People Together Post-Election to Combat Divisiveness and Hate for a Day of Education, Organizing, Solidarity, and Art

Strength in Synergy Summit to be help December 10th at American University, DC

WASHINGTON, DC – On Saturday, December 10 from 9:30am – 7:30pm, a gun violence prevention summit organized by millennials will hold workshops, panel discussions, breakout grassroots organizing sessions, and conclude read more

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Disobey or Die

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Back in the winter of 1982, Air Florida flight 90 took off from National Airport. The first officer noticed dangerous readings on some instruments and pointed them out to the captain. The captain told him he was wrong, and he accepted the captain’s authority. He did nothing. Thirty seconds later the plane crashed into the 14th Street Bridge. Everyone on board died except for four passengers rescued out of the icy river.

During the latter decades of the 20th and first part of the 21st century, read more

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Slavery Was Abolished

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By David Swanson, World Beyond War

I recently debated a pro-war professor on the topic “Is war ever necessary?” (video). I argued for abolishing war. And because people like to see successes before doing something, no matter how indisputably possible that thing is, I gave examples of other institutions that have been abolished in the past. One might include such practices as human sacrifice, polygamy, cannibalism, trial by ordeal, blood read more

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Don't Imprison Amy Goodman for Journalism

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I’ve started a petition to the State of North Dakota that I would imagine and hope just about everyone would want to sign.

Here’s the whole text of the petition:

Drop the illogical and illegal charge of “rioting” that you have brought against Amy Goodman for her commission of an act of journalism. Similarly, drop the felony charges you have brought against documentary film maker Deia Schlosberg who filmed activists shutting down pipelines.

Amy Goodman filmed and reported on read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Benjamin Madley on the California Indian Catastrophe

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-benjamin-madley-on-the-california-indian-catastrophe

Benjamin Madley is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is also chair of American Indian Studies. He discusses his new book, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.

Pacifica read more

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Who Killed the People of California? Should Kaepernick Protest His Uniform?

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San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been given much deserved credit for protesting racism by sitting out the Star Spangled Banner, which not only glorifies war (which everyone, including Kaepernick is totally cool with) but also includes racism in an unsung verse and was written by a racist slave owner whose earlier version had included anti-Muslim bigotry. As long as we’re opening our eyes to unpleasant history hiding in plain sight, it’s worth asking why read more

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One City Is Following Through on Protests of Confederate Monuments

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Charlottesville is a diverse, enlightened, and progressive college town in Virginia with its public spaces dominated by war memorials, in particular memorials to Confederate soldiers not from Charlottesville who represent a five-year moment in the centuries of this place’s history, as viewed by one wealthy white male racist donor at another moment in the 1920s. As the Black Lives Matter movement took off nationally this year, many Charlottesville residents demanded that imposing monuments read more

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