Lawyers Guild, The

Follows the audio · click any line to jump

1. philosophical, and racial antagonisms. That is our mission.
2. You gotta have freedom. You gotta have freedom. You gotta have freedom. You gotta have freedom.
3. 90.7 KPFK Los Angeles.
4. Good afternoon and welcome to this week's edition of the Lawyers Guild Show.
5. I'm Jim Lafferty.
6. This week we listen to two powerful interviews we recently did for our national show,
7. Law and Disorder, where I co-host and which is now carried in close to 200 radio markets in America.
8. It covers two topics, the U.S. threat to overthrow the Cuban government
9. and the brutal behavior of Chicago cops who apply military-grade torture to secure confessions from black arrestees.
10. When the Cuban Revolution succeeded on January 1st of 1959,
11. it drove the American-supported Batista dictator out of the country.
12. One of the first things that the revolution government did was to create a law, which is very popular because a lot of people who would have fought on the side of the revolution benefited directly from it, to initiate a comprehensive land reform.
13. Previously, large tracts of land had been owned by American corporations.
14. The average peasant worked part-time, seasonally, was not literate, and lived from hand to mouth.
15. What the revolutionary government did was to nationalize the big properties, which was their right under international law.
16. Not only did it nationalize the large plots of land, but the government told the former owners that they would be compensated for their losses.
17. They said to the American owners, quote, we will pay you exactly the amount you said the land was worth when you listed it for tax purposes, close quote.
18. Well, the Cuban government was turned down by the United States on that offer.
19. In retaliation, the United States, which was refining all of Cuba's oil in American-owned oil refineries, stopped refining the oil, and Cuba was cut off from gasoline.
20. What did the Cubans do?
21. They nationalized the oil refineries.
22. Then the bus company was nationalized.
23. The phone company was nationalized.
24. the nickel mines were nationalized, the top levels of the economy were all nationalized.
25. Instead of having production for profit, which is really irrational and anarchical,
26. they had a planned economy, which is called a socialist economy.
27. That's what happened very quickly to America's surprise in Cuba.
28. Getting that property back has been the aim of American foreign policy ever since.
29. Cuba has great respect and support internationally because of the example it set.
30. It has free education, universal health care, inexpensive housing, wonderful art and music and dance.
31. The USA has aimed to overturn Cuba's accomplishments and example.
32. Its economic, political and diplomatic aggression against Cuba has been relentless for 67 years now.
33. But under Trump, it's never been worse.
34. We speak today with a longtime Cuban supporter, Ike Nahum.
35. He is a founder and leader of the New York-New Jersey-Cuba Sea Coalition.
36. He has organized labor and educational tours of Cuba.
37. Mr Nahum is a retired Amtrak locomotive engineer Well Ike Nahum a warm warm welcome to Law and Disorder Radio Thank you so much for having me
38. You know, Mr. Nahum, Marco Rubio, of course, is the American Secretary of State.
39. What's his family background? Because it's relevant here, isn't it?
40. What interests does he represent, and what do those interests want to get from Cuba?
41. Well, Marco Rubio, my understanding, I haven't deeply went into his biography, but I know for sure that his family left Cuba before the revolution when it was under the Batista dictatorship.
42. He often tries to portray himself in a lying way, which is typical for him as an exile from the revolution and so on.
43. I don't particularly know what his family's relationship was with the Batista dictatorship,
44. but obviously in the United States as an emerging political figure,
45. he grew up and developed in the exile community after the revolution,
46. which built a big political base in South Florida thanks to major subsidies from the U.S. government.
47. And ever since then, he's been a primary voice in the United States and in U.S. bourgeois politics for the overthrow and the destruction of the Cuban Revolution.
48. So the interests that he represents are the interests of those in the United States that feel that the Cuban Revolution represented and still represents to this day a political threat because of its example.
49. What about President Donald Trump?
50. What does he represent and the people around him?
51. And what do they want to get out of Cuba?
52. Well, Trump, that was part of his base and donor base and political base of the community in Miami and South Florida that opposed the revolution.
53. He ingratiated themselves with them.
54. There were rumors at some point he wanted to build hotels in Cuba, whatever, but that's not relevant.
55. I mean, there's many examples of politicians that before they get elected, they give lip service to opposing the blockade and the embargo and U.S. policy.
56. I don't think Trump ever fit into that category.
57. Once they get in office, they generally – this is true for like for Barack Obama, for example, until the end of his second term.
58. They generally try to promote, sometimes with tactical differences because it's a hot issue in the world and in the hemisphere and in U.S. politics, that you have a country that had a successful social revolution on the doorsteps of the United States and has consistently fought to defend the interests of the oppressed and exploited in the hemisphere and internationally.
59. internationally, that's something that is just not tolerable. And in the case of Cuba, the fact
60. that it had successfully defied U.S. dictates over many, many decades is another reason for them
61. to hate Cuba. So what interest does Trump represent? What interest does Rubio represent?
62. They represent the interests of the ruling billionaires in the United States, and they
63. have a definite stake in trying to crush an example like Cuba that proven so stalwart over the years And I wonder Ike what are they doing in Cuba to essentially asphyxiate the Cuban people I mean
64. to demolish the Cuban government, really, and the people with it, the people of Cuba?
65. The word asphyxiate is a perfect word to describe what they're attempting to do now with the oil
66. blockade, with the intensification of sanctions, which in Trump's first administration, which he
67. reversed the limited openings that Obama had finally initiated in the last period of his
68. second term. I believe they introduced 243 measures in that first period that tightened on every level
69. the sanctions and putting Cuba on the terrorism list and all these things that now have culminated.
70. Because over the years, this is a policy that's been going on and developed for 67 years now.
71. And it's had its ups and downs.
72. There's been attempts to try to use the carrot, but mostly it's been the stick.
73. And in the last period, especially signaled by the January 6th invasion of Venezuela, the kidnapping of Maduro and Celia Flores, that was a signal that they were going to really try to go in for the kill.
74. That's what they've been trying to do.
75. The forms that that takes, in addition to the oil blockade, the pressuring of governments not to sell oil to Cuba, just on every level of a full court press to try to asphyxiate Cuba.
76. Ike Nahum, how long has the blockade been going on, and what has it done to stunt the development of the Cuban economy?
77. Well, the blockade, which is really an economic and political war, began shortly after the triumph of the revolution when the revolutionary government began to implement the serious social and economic reforms that they organized the July 26th movement and the revolutionary struggle around.
78. Most of these concretely were laid out in Fidel Castro's speech, History Will Absolve Me, a famous speech.
79. But everything from controlling rents, from a major land reform to overcoming and really smashing the Jim Crow segregation modeled after the U.S. that dominated in Cuban society, to expanding health care access, making it free.
80. All of these reforms, especially land reform, affected the material interests of major U.S. corporations.
81. And up until the Cuban Revolution, the Cuban economy and politics was overwhelmingly dominated by U.S. interests.
82. So the development of the economy has been egregious because you have the largest, most powerful economy in the world, 90 miles from Cuba, that tries to use its weight in every way they can to prevent the island's development.
83. I don't remember the exact figure, but a number of economists in Cuba, I think connected to
84. the United Nations have estimated that over the years tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars have been indirectly extracted from Cuba and Cuba development by these sanctions
85. But at the same time, Cuba has resisted that, has fought to expand its relations with economies around the world, and despite this incredible pressure, has managed to have really impressive indices around health care, literacy, infant mortality.
86. Of course, all of that is under big pressure now.
87. It's a very increasingly unbearable situation because of the step up and escalation of the economic war.
88. But they like to say in their duplicitous sophistry of language and stuff, they say, oh, Cuba's a fail straight.
89. Look, they can't even keep the lights on.
90. But, of course, they all conveniently leave out the impact of the blockade.
91. I'm sure we'll get into how Cuba is fighting that on an international level and why we need more solidarity than ever.
92. But it's had a horrific impact on the development of the Cuban economy, on its industrialization, on its trade with other countries, on the tremendous expenses that it has to do to carry out trade with faraway countries when they could have easily very trade with the United States and so on.
93. When the vote comes up in the United Nations, we're talking about the legality of all this.
94. When the vote comes up in the United Nations on the legality of the U.S. blockade of Cuba, which it has for the last 30 years, which nations support Cuba and which nations do not?
95. Well, the overwhelming majority of nations that vote in the UN General Assembly for this resolution against the commercial, economic, and financial embargo of the United States against Cuba, this is the wording of it, overwhelmingly for the past, I think, 32 years, number of people in the General Assembly.
96. Unfortunately, it's a non-binding vote, but it's overwhelming in every area of the world.
97. In fact, it's one of the most remarkable things.
98. I generally organize lots of people to go inside the UN to watch this vote every year and have done so for many, many years.
99. And you have the most amazing array of otherwise mutually hostile forces that unite to vote against the blockade.
100. Iran and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India, you know, over the years.
101. The Cubans very cleverly about 35 years ago used a procedural mechanism in the U.N.
102. when the U.S. delegates were napping or something to slip in that this vote would take place every year.
103. At first, many nations abstained in the vote because they didn't want to counter the tremendous U.S. pressure
104. that came down once they realized that this vote was going to happen.
105. So the first couple of years, the vote was like maybe 60% against the U.S.,
106. another 20%, 30% abstaining, and then a handful of nations voting with the U.S.
107. Over the next decades, that vote became virtually unanimous.
108. The United States would pressure dependencies like the Solomon Islands
109. and other places to vote with them.
110. But the votes were like, you know, 180 to 2.
111. Now, the one nation that has consistently followed the U.S. lead in their votes has been Israel, even though over the years, Israel and the U.S. actually had economic relations.
112. They had diplomatic relations and some significant trade.
113. trade, but Israel always voted with the U.S. in favor of the blockade. The one year they abstained
114. was when the U.S. abstained in that last vote under Obama, when the U.S. abstained in the
115. resolution against itself. But this goes even further. Even U.S. puppet regimes that they
116. installed, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, could not bring it to themselves to vote against Cuba. So
117. So it's been quite a remarkable occurrence.
118. And that has provided a very important shield, in a sense, to Cuba, this international solidarity that's been shown.
119. But like I said, it's a non-binding vote.
120. And it's always accompanied by these incredible documents.
121. You can look them up where they point out all the deleterious effects of the blockade, total opposition.
122. But the U.S. usually sends an assistant to the assistant to give their position, which is ridiculed.
123. And that's been how it's been.
124. This year, we will again be organizing people to go inside and watch it.
125. And in the world, the volatile world political situation that exists today, and given the fact that the threats to carry out a military strike against Cuba in the context of Trump being politically weakened with the unfolding debacle in Iran, I think it's going to be a much more fraught situation.
126. And we'll see what that entails in the vote this year.
127. This is Attorney Michael Smith here in New York City.
128. I'm speaking with Ike Nahum, who is one of the leading organizers in support of Cuba here in New York.
129. My ex-law partner and co-host Jim Lafferty is speaking with us from Los Angeles.
130. Ike, I wanted you to answer this question, which perplexes me.
131. Why did President Raul Castro, who's 85, 95 years old, he's been indicted for murder by the United States.
132. Could you please speak about this?
133. Why would they do that to a 95-year-old man?
134. Well, they're very interested in adding on things.
135. I mean, if I had $20 for every court ruling against Cuba, this is sort of particularly insulting to Raul Castro.
136. But they like to just pile on these suits as a – I guess it's as a way to make up for the fact that they haven't felt that they've created their conditions to directly militarily destroy Cuba.
137. Now, Raul was indicted for what took place in the early years of the so-called special period after the collapse of the Soviet Union when Cuba was in another very dire economic situation.
138. And they were clinking champagne glasses in Miami and in Washington, anticipating that the Cuban Revolution would fall any minute.
139. They always had these illusions that the Cuban Revolution was a one-man show, as Hillary Clinton called it, that did not have popular support and so on.
140. So in this context, they felt emboldened to step up their subversive activities in Cuba, which included this outfit called Brothers to the Rescue, which is also the case today.
141. the tremendous economic pressure and the horrible conditions.
142. I just got back from Cuba not that many weeks ago
143. and I could see firsthand the day stress and difficulties to just to live in Cuba The number of children surgeries backed up children dying because there no access to medical care all of this But in that period
144. in the early 90s, they stepped up, air raids, violating Cuba's territorial integrity and air
145. space, many times buzzing the city of Havana with low-flying planes, dropping leaflets and
146. and all the stuff that the CIA and those folks do.
147. This was the same period that Cuba sent heroes into the country
148. to try to monitor the activities of these terrorist groups.
149. I'm going to give my first little plug for a website where people can look it up.
150. Go to us-cubanormalization, one word, .org,
151. where we have a pamphlet that thousands of copies have been distributed
152. that documents the number of terrorist activities, sabotage, murder, assassination organized from U.S. soil over the decades,
153. including assassination of Cuban diplomats and so on and so forth.
154. Well, in this context, the Cuban government on numerous occasions warned the United States that if these provocations continued,
155. that these planes would be shot down if they entered Cuban territorial waters.
156. After many warnings, they did that.
157. Those planes were shot down. A couple of the pilots were killed. That is the so-called legal basis for this ridiculous indictment. But it's just trying to demoralize people, trying to indicate that as far as the rule of law goes, it's like a joke, just like it is in Iran.
158. But at the same time, Cuba upholds international law, and that's one of the reasons why Cuba has the moral high ground in this fight.
159. With respect to the Raul Castro indictment, is this likely to be used as an excuse for the United States to go into Cuba militarily to attempt perhaps to arrest Raul Castro?
160. What do you think the next steps might be in the current imposition of even harsher and harsher blockade having under Trump doing this, including the denial of oil to Cuba?
161. All of this, is it preparatory, the Raul Castro indictment preparatory to a more direct intervention in Cuba on the part of the U.S. military?
162. I do think that that's their thinking in their fantasies.
163. They obviously, after the so-called success of what they were able to pull off in Venezuela on January 6th, that they started to believe their own BS.
164. They thought, despite many people warning them, that that would not be the case.
165. In fact, those were some of those false premises that informed Trump and Rubio and Netanyahu's enormous blunder of thinking they could evade Iran and not have similar consequences.
166. Well, in Cuba, that would not be the case in any way.
167. There's no way that they will be able to logistically, politically pull off something similar to some kind of commando raid, Hollywood production against Raul or President Diaz-Canal.
168. It's a completely different political situation.
169. But yes, in their fantasies, I think they think that out.
170. They have people that work 24-7 in the Pentagon and the CIA to come up with scenarios and
171. so on.
172. They are unleashing what the great socialist Frederick Engels once said they unleashing controlled forces that they hope to create the conditions to overthrow finally after all these years the revolutionary Cuban government
173. But at the same time, they're setting off uncontrolled forces,
174. which includes world public opinion, hemispheric opinion,
175. and the Cuban people are organized.
176. And I mentioned earlier I was in Cuba over May Day.
177. I saw an amazing demonstration of this, which was literally a demonstration on May Day, where hundreds of thousands of Cubans, despite everything, poured into the streets, including thousands, tens of thousands of Cuban military personnel in uniform that were there expressing if Trump dares to carry out what they call in the Pentagon euphemisms a kinetic strike against Cuba,
178. that they will face tremendous resistance.
179. I believe Cuba has a military doctrine.
180. They call it the war of the entire people, and they are being organized.
181. The main defense of Cuba, of course, on paper, by any formal metric,
182. obviously the United States is 330 million people.
183. It's 1,500 miles wide and 3,000 miles long, or maybe I got that wrong.
184. And Cuba is an island of 10 million people under tremendous economic stress.
185. So technically, they could easily do it on paper.
186. But in reality, the fight back, the resistance hemispherically and including inside the United States will be very fierce, and they have to take that into consideration.
187. American policy towards Cuba has been extremely hostile.
188. One of the ways that the United States goes after Cuba, it labels it a communist dictatorship.
189. And as you've written before, it's neither communist or a dictatorship.
190. The leaders are communists, but they haven't developed an economy.
191. You could really call it a communist country.
192. But what did the Cuban Revolution accomplish in all these years?
193. Well, the main thing that the Cuban Revolution did was overthrow a neocolonial dictatorship under Batista.
194. And it was a real revolution in the sense that social relations and economic relations that had dominated in the neocolonial system were really radically overturned.
195. And a government whose personnel was different social classes, working people, landless peasants, young people, Afro-Cubans, women, these became the dominant forces and forged new social relations.
196. Now, what form did this take concretely?
197. It wasn't like all of a sudden the revolutionaries took power and said, we're communists.
198. That's not how social revolutions unfold.
199. in terms of just a label.
200. That's how the United States likes to just reduce everything to a label
201. that they can define however they want.
202. They took the form of concrete social measures backed by mass mobilizations
203. that grew as the hostility of the U.S. government grew.
204. It began with things like rent control,
205. like passing a law that said your rent could not be more than 10% of your income.
206. It passed amazing laws abolishing race discrimination, opening up jobs to Afro-Cubans that had previously been excluded.
207. It closed down the mafia and the whole organized crime nexus in Cuba That was a huge amount of capital in Cuba that resulted in a sordid oppression of women
208. It's estimated that maybe one out of five women in Havana were employed by the commercial sex industry in Cuba, which was vast.
209. People can go back and watch The Godfather Part II.
210. There's about a half hour scene because a lot of it takes place in Cuba, and it's very well depicted with a lot of, if I can throw a big word out there, verisimilitude.
211. But that describes that.
212. And that continued so that women's rights, in the early years, there was a lot of prejudice against gays.
213. That was overcome.
214. But all of these measures, Cuba, the unionization of working people, all of these measures, smashing illiteracy.
215. And I think above all what the U.S. government and the ruling billionaires in the United States hated most of all was that Cuba had a foreign policy that was based on international solidarity.
216. They can never forgive Cuba for the decisive role it played in defeating apartheid South Africa, leading to the unraveling of apartheid and the independence of Namibia and defending the independence of Angola.
217. One of the previous questions you asked, I was pointing out that there's been ups and downs.
218. There's been times in some motion under Obama where the international isolation of the Cuban, the policy against Cuba forced them to make concessions at times.
219. Under Jimmy Carter, they were very close to normalizing relations and ending the sanctions.
220. And Carter said, I just want you to do one thing.
221. Just pull your troops out of Africa.
222. If you do that, then we can really overcome all these differences, we'll give you aid and so on.
223. But Cuba had a principled position that they were not going to stop their solidarity with Southern Africa until the apartheid regime was defeated.
224. And I can give you many, many examples of this, where they put their internationalist principles ahead of any narrow viewpoint to just achieve normalization.
225. So that's an exemplary thing, and it's something that the United States rulers have a very, very hard time forgiving.
226. How can the American people express solidarity with Cuba at this time?
227. We have a growing movement in the United States, and it's more united than ever, despite differences over other questions.
228. But in many cities, Cuba solidarity and anti-blockade coalitions are being formed.
229. We had the recent convoy. We have material aid campaigns that are stepping up, including a major campaign by global health partners and the Saving Lives campaign to send material aid to Cuba to help with maternal neonatal care and many, many campaigns like that.
230. I would urge your viewers to go to cubacnynjcoalition.org, Google National Network on Cuba, us-cubanormalization.org, and plug into the mounting activities.
231. The other side of this is that when they threaten war and when they go to war against Cuba or elsewhere, it's always accompanied by threats to restrict our democratic rights here at home and to restrict democratic space.
232. Well, we have to fight to preserve that, and we are doing that.
233. at our movement. In fact, if I can plug a demonstration that we're going to have on
234. Saturday, June 26th at Penn Station, it will be another demonstration. But there's demonstrations
235. all over the U.S., many activities that people can plug into. Get active in your group, in your city.
236. It's the pressure that we create from below. It's the links that we make with similar groups around
237. the world. Cuba has the moral high ground, and the U.S. policy can be defeated through mobilization.
238. That's my message to folks, and I hope your wonderful program will help get the word out
239. to people. Mike Nahum, we certainly appreciate your contribution to the cause, and for joining
240. us here on Law and Disorder, we thank you for that as well. Thank you so much.
241. Thank you.
242. I'm Jim Lafferty, and you're listening to The Lawyer's Guild Show.
243. Stay tuned, and you will now hear an interview of a Chicago civil rights lawyer interviewed for our national sister show, Law and Disorder, a show that I co-host.
244. He talks about his new book wherein he exposed the torture used by Chicago police to coerce confessions from black arrestees.
245. The comedian Lenny Bruce used to joke that Chicago was so corrupt it was thrilling.
246. He had no idea.
247. Bruce was referring to run-of-the-mill bribery of a traffic cop or a police officer
248. taking your floor mats out of your car in lieu of a ticket or a payoff of a local bar owner.
249. The corruption in Chicago ran much, much deeper.
250. It went from the prosecutors, who were actually in the police station,
251. listening to the screams of men being tortured
252. before they went and took a signed confession from them.
253. It was John Burge, the commander of a whole section of the police,
254. who learned how to torture people from a tour of duty in Vietnam.
255. He brought back an electric machine that they had actually used against the Vietnamese.
256. This machine was used on black people in Chicago.
257. 300 people were convicted on the basis of tortured confessions.
258. The corruption ran all the way to the top, to the mayor's office.
259. Mayor Richard Daley knew about it all and said nothing.
260. It was only the work of a few attorneys like Flint Taylor and the community and the Black Panther Party and the activists and the progressive politicians who exposed this all.
261. Their victory included reparations.
262. The torture of people in police stations on the west side and south side of Chicago is now taught to eighth graders and tenth graders in the public schools H Rapp Brown the leader of the student nonviolent coordinating committee called SNCC said famously in the halls of justice
263. the only justice is in the halls. We speak today with our guest Flint Taylor, a founding member
264. of the Chicago People's Law Office. He represented the families of slain Black Panther leaders
265. Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. He continues to represent many survivors of police torture
266. and wrongful convictions. Attorney Taylor is co-consul in the current Malcolm X assassination
267. case in New York City and is the award-winning author of the historical memoir, The Torture
268. Machine. Flint's new book, The Conviction Machine, is a captivating account of the most corrupt and
269. blood-soaked chapter in Chicago law enforcement history.
270. Flint Taylor, a hearty welcome back to Law and Disorder Radio.
271. Michael, it's great to be back again.
272. Always good to talk to you.
273. Likewise, Flint.
274. Flint, the People's Law Office started in 1969 in a converted sausage shop in Chicago.
275. How did you get involved, and how did you choose the name PLO?
276. I got involved with the People's Law Office as a second-year law student.
277. I was at Northwestern, and I started working with several committed young lawyers
278. who were representing the Black Panthers and the Young Lords and SDS
279. and other radical and revolutionary organizations in 1969 here in Chicago.
280. When it was no longer feasible for these lawyers to work for legal aid,
281. which is where they were working, we all decided to start our own office. So in August of 1969,
282. we rented and converted an old sausage shop. And on the north side of Chicago,
283. we opened the People's Law Office. The People's Law Office was so named because I like to tell
284. this story. There's several versions of it, but the one I like the best is that we were
285. representing the Panthers and the Panthers had People's Medical Clinic, they had the People's
286. Breakfast Program and we as their people's lawyers took on the name of the People's Law Office
287. and we still have that name today and we take that very seriously. Who was Fred Hampton and what were
288. the Black Panthers in Chicago trying to do? Well Fred Hampton was chairman of the Illinois chapter
289. of the Black Panther Party. He was a 21-year-old young man with tremendous leadership skills. He
290. was very charismatic. And the Panthers were organizing here in Chicago. And not only did
291. they have programs such as the breakfast program, the health clinic, newspaper, and they also had
292. a ten-point program. And they also called for self-defense against police brutality.
293. And they also were very much committed to coalition building, building coalitions between
294. organizations in the city, such as Puerto Rican organizations, the Young Lords, white organizations
295. such as SDS and the Young Patriots and other organizations.
296. They were also attempting to organize the very powerful street gangs here in the city of Chicago and try to get them focused on revolutionary concepts rather than the kinds of violence that the gangs were involved in in the communities
297. here in Chicago.
298. Flint, assassination is a political murder. Why was Fred Hampton assassinated?
299. Fred Hampton was assassinated for several reasons. As I mentioned, he was a very charismatic
300. young leader. He was targeted and the Panthers were targeted not only in Chicago but nationally
301. by the FBI. At the same time here in Chicago, a very ambitious and aggressive elected states
302. attorney of Cook County, a man by the name of Ed Hanrahan, had also, along with the mayor
303. at that time, the very powerful Richard J. Daley, had declared a war on gangs. But the
304. The war on gangs was really a war on black youth and enveloped a war against the Black
305. Panther Party.
306. So Fred Hampton and the Panthers were targeted and attacked and ultimately Hampton was assassinated
307. as part of the COINTELPRO program but also as a part of the prosecutor's office here
308. in Chicago and the Chicago police's war on gangs.
309. Attorney Ed Hanrahan was, as you mentioned, the Cook County State's Attorney in Chicago.
310. Why do you write that he was the prime villain, and what was his role in planning the assassination
311. of Fred Hampton and the subsequent cover-up of that assassination?
312. Well, my second book, The Conviction Machine, deals with prosecutors, politicians,
313. and police violence in Chicago.
314. And it starts with Ed Hanrahan.
315. And Hanrahan, as I said, was a very powerful and aggressive state's attorney of Cook County.
316. And he not only prosecuted, but he had his own little cohort of police officers assigned
317. to him. This was unusual in the sense that he used these officers not for such things
318. as serving search warrants per se or subpoenas or things like that, but he used these officers
319. in his war on gangs. Specifically, he used 14 of these officers to raid the apartment
320. where Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and several other Panthers were staying on the west side
321. of Chicago, this being in the early morning hours of December 4, 1969.
322. So Hanrahan and his first assistant, along with the police officers, planned this raid
323. and executed this raid and left Fred Hampton and Mark Clark dead and five other Panthers
324. wounded.
325. This raid was one of the most important political events in the history of the city of Chicago,
326. And Hanrahan called it a shootout and it was widely publicized in all the newspapers and
327. on TV here in the city of Chicago.
328. But unfortunately for him, he left the apartment open and we all were able to go and take evidence
329. there.
330. And in taking evidence over the next 10 days, we were able to show the world that it wasn't
331. a shootout, but that it was a shoot-in.
332. And over the next few years through litigation and through community outrage and organizing we were able to uncover that it was not only a shoot but in fact that it was a murder that they intentionally went into the apartment
333. into the bedroom where Fred Hampton was sleeping and put bullets into his head
334. and body. The other thing over the years that we were able to show, not only that
335. it was a shoot-in and a murder, but it was a political assassination. And that
336. That piece of it we learned through uncovering the fact that the COINTELPRO program from
337. the FBI was also conspiring with Hanrahan and the police to plan and execute and cover
338. up this raid.
339. They did it through an informant provocateur by the name of William O'Neill.
340. They did it through a floor plan that O'Neill drew that showed the exact spot where Hampton
341. would be sleeping. That was passed on to Hanrahan and the police for use in the raid. And they
342. did it by claiming that this was a part of the FBI's COINTELPRO program. And in further
343. support of this involvement of the FBI in this assassination, they gave O'Neill a $300
344. bonus, and his control agent, Roy Mitchell, another bonus for their roles in setting up
345. the raid and making the raid, which of course left two leaders of the Black Panther Party
346. dead, several others wounded, and seven survivors charged bogusly with attempted murder. That
347. was what they called a success.
348. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover instructed the local offices to prevent the rise of a black messiah.
349. Did he work with Hanrahan and the local Chicago Police Department?
350. Actually, the terminology of the FBI was prevent the rise of a messiah who would electrify and unify the black nationalist movement.
351. Yes, of course, the FBI didn't do this alone. They utilized, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly, in terms of what the local police knew.
352. They utilized the local police and they utilized the prosecutors, both federal and state prosecutors, local prosecutors, to not only disrupt and destroy organizations such as leaders such as Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and others, Fred Hampton, H. Rap Brown, Martin Luther King.
353. They were all targeted by this COINTELPRO program.
354. program. Not only were they targeted, the FBI was working in cooperation with and in
355. conspiracy with local police departments, with local prosecutors in order to implement
356. their COINTELPRO program and its objectives, which included disruption and destroying organizations
357. and destroying organizations and their leadership, starting with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm
358. X, dealing with Dr. King, Stokely Carmichael and Students for Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
359. and of course in the late 60s, the Black Panther Party and its leadership, particularly Chairman
360. Fred Hampton here in Chicago.
361. This is Attorney Michael Smith in New York City.
362. I'm speaking with Attorney Flint Taylor in Chicago.
363. We're speaking about Flint's new book, The Conviction Machine, on Law and Disorder Radio.
364. Flint, the second half of your book, The Conviction Machine, goes into the situation with Jackie Wilson,
365. who was tortured by Commander John Burge of the Chicago Police Department.
366. What happened to Jackie Wilson?
367. Well, the reason that I put the Wilson case as the second part of this book, The Conviction Machine,
368. along with Hanrahan and the prosecutor's role in the Hampton assassination as the first part,
369. was because of all the corruption and the connection to extreme violence here in the city of Chicago,
370. police violence, that the Wilson case was an extreme example of.
371. And Wilson and his brother Andrew Wilson were tortured in 1982 by a police commander by the name of John Burge.
372. And Burge now is notorious with systemic police torture here in the city of Chicago.
373. But back in the 70s and early 80s, when he was first torturing people on the South Side, African-American suspects in serious cases,
374. Prosecutors were working hand in glove with him, taking confessions, testifying in court that no torture happened, prosecuting people with the tortured confessions, sending them to the penitentiary and often to death row here in Chicago.
375. Chicago.
376. In the later 80s, we got involved, that meaning myself and others at the People's Law Office,
377. in representing Andrew Wilson, who was brutally tortured by Burge and his men with electric
378. shock, with a bag over his head, being burned up against a ribbed radiator, just tortured
379. for almost an entire day to get a confession from him.
380. Ultimately, after 10 years of litigation in that case,
381. we were able to resolve it favorably.
382. But during those 10 years, we started to uncover the fact
383. that it was systemic and that went all the way to the top.
384. And it went all the way to the prosecutor,
385. the elected prosecutor at that time,
386. who was Richard M. Daley, Richard J. Daley's son.
387. So we had Hanrahan in the 60s and early 70s being intimately involved in the assassination and cover-up of Fred Hampton.
388. Then we have Richard M. Daley and his prosecutors deeply involved in the torture and the cover-up of the torture for decades.
389. And so that's how the two very, very significant events of political and racist history here in the city connected.
390. And Jackie Wilson was also tortured, and he spent 36 years in the penitentiary before we were able to get him out.
391. And during that 36 years, there was a trail of prosecutors who committed misconduct in
392. order to cover up the truth about the torture of Jackie, to keep Jackie in prison, and also
393. to cover up the systemic nature of the torture.
394. So the conviction machine deals with that case as symbolic of seminal to the systemic torture and cover and the prosecutor involvement in it
395. And ultimately, Jackie went through three trials before he was exonerated.
396. And during that time, several prosecutors were involved in perjury, were actually indicted for their actions in Jackie Wilson's case.
397. That piece, the Jackie Wilson story, the Wilson story being he and his brother, which spanned almost 40 years of history here in the city of Chicago, and ultimately ended just a year or two ago.
398. after Jackie was exonerated, we brought a civil lawsuit on his behalf,
399. and Cook County, on behalf of the prosecutors and the city of Chicago,
400. ultimately settled the case for just about $30 million.
401. So that was a 40-year struggle that I document and discuss
402. in the second part of the conviction machine.
403. That's just an extraordinary story.
404. Flint, you documented more than 130 cases of torture under Chicago Police Commissioner
405. Burge and Mayor Richard Daley, who knew about the torture.
406. You got an apology at City Hall from Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and you got what you termed
407. a remarkable package of reparations for the victims of police torture.
408. What were the reparations?
409. Well, the struggle for reparations started in the early 2000s.
410. It was thought about all the way back in the 1980s, but the struggle was so focused on
411. getting Burge fired, getting people out of the penitentiary, getting them off of death
412. Row, taking it to the United Nations to have international condemnation of the torture
413. here in Chicago, ultimately the indictment and prosecution and conviction of Burge, and
414. also the pardon of four innocent men who were on death row in the early 2000s along with
415. clemency that was given to everyone on death row by Governor Ryan. So those were all events
416. that happened along the way of this struggle, this intergenerational and interracial struggle
417. against police torture, which I mentioned started in the 1980s. But in the early 2010s,
418. there came together artists and activists and lawyers who decided that they were going to raise or re-raise the question of reparations.
419. And they did a remarkable job. This was a remarkable movement that raised this question politically and legally and had a perfect storm politically in the sense that Rahm Emanuel,
420. who came in as mayor of the city of Chicago on the coattails of Obama.
421. He was very in much disrepute and disfavor in the black community
422. because he had shut down schools, he had shut down clinics,
423. other health services predominantly in the black community,
424. and he was up for re-election in 2015.
425. So the people who started organizing for reparations a few years before did a remarkable series of events in the community very creative and very powerful and got the attention of Emanuel and the politicians here in the city of Chicago organized many of the more progressive council persons to support a package of reparations
426. And ultimately, just before the 2015 election, because of this movement and because of these demands, Rahm Emanuel reluctantly agreed to the reparations package that was presented.
427. And that reparations package not only included $100,000 per survivor, regardless of whether they were, they had no other legal claim at this point because the statute of limitations had run on the torture.
428. So that was the financial portion of it to the 60 surviving persons who had been tortured, but also some other remarkable reparations that were unique to this reparations package and to some degree being pursued in other cases, police violence cases across the country.
429. And that package included establishing, at the city's expense, a center on the south side of Chicago where torture survivors, their families, and others could come for treatment, to educate each other, and to discuss what they'd been through.
430. And the center has flourished for over 10 years now and is a very important aspect of the reparations.
431. Another important aspect was job training, education for survivors and their families, if they so chose, an apology from the mayor.
432. And this apology took place at city council.
433. Many of the survivors and lawyers, including myself, were there.
434. And the mayor, whether how sincere it was or not, he gave a real full-throated, detailed apology facing the men in the city council chambers who had been tortured.
435. And then there are 50 city council members in Chicago, 48 of them.
436. The vote was 48 to 0.
437. those council members all turned around, many of whom I have to say resisted us for decades politically,
438. but others supported us.
439. All 48 of them turned around, gave an ovation to the torture survivors.
440. But along with all of those portions of reparations,
441. perhaps the most important was an agreement that they would teach the true nature of the police torture struggle
442. to the 8th and 10th graders in the Chicago public schools.
443. That, along with a memorial, the ground is about to be broken for some 11 years later
444. that will honor the torture survivors.
445. Before I have to say goodbye because we've run out of our allotted time,
446. could you please tell our listeners how they can get your new wonderful book,
447. The Conviction Machine?
448. Well, we're going to have an official launch at Haymarket House here in Chicago on June
449. 18th.
450. That's Thursday, June 18th at 6 o'clock.
451. I think it be live streamed as well as people are encouraged to come in person of course There be other events across the city They can get the book in various bookstores and they can also get it online
452. from Haymarket Books here in Chicago,
453. if necessary, from Amazon, of course.
454. But it's somewhat of a sequel to The Torture Machine,
455. which went in much more detail into the Burge
456. and the torture, the systemic torture here in Chicago.
457. But as I said, this book focuses more on prosecutors, politicians, and their connection to the assassination of Fred Hampton and the torture of the Wilson brothers and others over a 40-year period.
458. Flint, before I say goodbye, I just wanted to mention that you are now involved in a very similar case to the Fred Hampton case involving Malcolm X and the assassination of Malcolm X.
459. In any case, people should look into that.
460. They can look up the People's Law Office and follow your work.
461. Flint Taylor, thank you very much for being on Law and Disorder.
462. Thank you, Mike. Always great to be with you.
463. You take it easy, Flint.
464. I'm Jim Lafferty.
465. You've just heard here on the Lawyers Guild Show
466. two interviews from our national sister show, Law and Disorder.
467. We'll be back with you again next week at the same time.
468. Until then, thanks for listening today.
469. Stay healthy, stay active, and stand up for your rights.
470. Donating your car or boat is an excellent way to help KPFK stay alive and on the air.
471. All you have to do is call 877-KPFK-AUTO.
472. That's 877-KPFK-AUTO.
473. And we will take care of everything.
474. Seriously, it's that simple.
475. Thank you.
476. more and more controlled by Trump-friendly oligarchs.
477. So if you want facts and information to inform a motivated majority
478. to save our democracy before it's stolen next November,
479. tune in Mondays to Thursdays at 5 p.m. and on Sundays at 11 a.m.
480. for your background briefing here on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles
481. and worldwide at kpfk.org.
482. Will Gear Theatricum Botanicum returns this June 6th through October 4th
483. with outdoor repertory theater, events, and educational programs for all ages.
484. A Midsummer Night's Dream is back, alongside Romeo and Juliet,
485. Treasure Island, Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings,
486. and Bernardo Cubrilla's dark and incisive new comedy,
487. the people of Pompeii set in the aftermath of the 2025 Palisades fire.
488. Theatricum is located in Topanga Canyon, just off the 101 freeway,
489. in the shade of the California live oaks.
490. Explore and picnic in the gardens before the show.
491. Further information available at www.theatricum.com and at kpfg.org.
492. You're listening to KPFA.
493. 20.7 FM, Los Angeles, 98.