FREE SPEECH ZONE | Shades of Gray: Listening To the Infamous “Genocide Denier”

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There were only a dozen or so of us gathered at the May Day Bookstore basement at 3PM on Monday afternoon. The hastily-scheduled event left little time to get out the word that the recently returned political prisoner/law professor Peter Erlinder was speaking about his arrest and imprisonment in Rwanda. The professor quickly explained as he began his presentation: he wanted to thank some of his supporters who wrote/called/demonstrated on his behalf during his recent ordeal – and he brought along with him the “real hero”, one of his Kenyan attorneys who risked his own freedom and life to stand up on Erlinder’s behalf. Erlinder explained: “Before I traveled to Rwanda, an attorney representing [one of the many political prisoners in Rwanda] was safe. After I was arrested and imprisoned, any attorney coming in knew they might also suffer the same fate.” Continue Reading

Why I joined the picket line

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I’ve never been a member of a union. In fact, I was raised in an anti-union family. My father-in-law broke a union picket line as a management-level worker before I was married. My lens was always from the management side of the labor equation.

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FREE SPEECH ZONE | Alberto Mora: (Almost) An American Hero

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Alberto Mora spoke with clarity and conviction. As a life-long Republican, Mora was appointed by President George W. Bush as the General Counsel of the US Navy from 2001 to 2006. While in this position, he served as a strong, vocal critic within the Administration arguing that the policy of “enhanced interrogations” ordered by the President was not only illegal but also counterproductive in the so-called War on Terror. Speaking at the U of MN’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs today on the topic, Military Justice in an Age of Terrorism, Mora chose to draw a sharper line for criticizing the human rights abuses that led to the torture scandals of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Mora argued on using a lesser standard than “was it torture?” Continue Reading

Adventure to Obama’s White House, part 5

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After 28 straight hours in four different jails, I was physically and emotionally exhausted. We had been arrested the day before as part of a civil disobedience action against the wars in front of Obama’s White House the day before his first State of the Union speech. Continue Reading