{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":""First They Came for the Pro-Palestine Activists" - Attorney Terry Lodge on the Suppression of Dissent in Wartime","description":" Attorney Terry Lodge on the increasing attacks against the First Amendment Right to free speech This is a repost of a new podcast I'm hosting with the Community Environmental Legal Defense fund. If you'd like to subscribe, you can find the show on Substack here (https:\/\/celdf.substack.com\/t\/truth-and-reckoning), or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. I'll be republishing episodes of this show on The Green Flame podcast. \u201cFirst they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out\u2014because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out\u2014because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out\u2014because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me\u2014and there was no one left to speak for me.\u201d \u2014Martin Niem\u00f6ller Niem\u00f6ller was a Lutheran Pastor who at first supported the Nazi regime, but then came to oppose the party after Hitler\u2019s rise to power. He was held in Nazi concentration camps and prisons from 1937 - 1945, and came to believe that Germans had been complicit through their silence in the rise of Nazi ideology, the establishment of authoritarian rule, crackdowns on political and ethnic targets, and eventually, genocide. Welcome to Truth and Reckoning, a podcast from CELDF \u2014 the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. On this episode we speak with CELDF legal director Terry Lodge Lodge has been a movement attorney for more than 40 years, litigating cases ranging from environmental (rights of nature, NEPA, Tribal sacred sites, mining, pipelines, criminal and civil defense, etc.) to anti-war (nuclear power, nuclear weapons, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.). Lately, he\u2019s been active in the movement to stop the genocide in Palestine. Our conversation in this episode focuses on repression, authoritarianism, and the rapid erosion of civil liberties and basic freedoms in the United States under the Trump Administration, especially in relation to the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and on the relationship between this and the destruction of the planet. This topic is close to our hearts here at CELDF, not least because we and our community have been targeted with lawsuits, gag orders, SLAPPs, harassment, and other forms of intimidation for our political speech for many years. Recently, CELDF offered support and solidarity to students at Columbia University who we have been connected to via rights of nature work, and who are now facing repression due to their stances on Palestine (see below for more on this). \u201cWhat\u2019s happening is phenomenal,\u201d Lodge says. \u201cIt hasn\u2019t always been this way. But the tendency [towards severe repression] is very deep rooted, and the arc of our history has been in the direction of what we\u2019re seeing today.\u201d In our discussion, we touch on: The suppression of dissent, especially regarding criticism of the Israeli occupying entity and the U.S. foreign policy supporting it with weapons, intelligence, and even by waging undeclared war in Yemen to defend the genocide. What Lodge calls \u201cthe jingoistic invocation of antisemitism\u201d being \u201chypocritically mobilized as a means of shutting down dissent\u201d in a method \u201cakin to red-baiting during the McCarthy-era and the anti-Vietnam war era, where terrorism is the new communism.\u201d The bi-partisan nature of repression and expansion of authoritarian and executive power in the United States in what Terry calls \u201cthe early stage of a dramatic shifting in the nature of the corporate state\u201d \u2014 away from inverted totalitarianism and towards open authoritarianism. How all of this is not actually an anomaly in U.S. history. While this is an extreme moment, there have been other times similar to this in the past in this country, where we've seen this combination of foreign adventurism, imperialism, genocide, and internal repression all happening concurrently. See, for example, Stephen Carr Hampton\u2019s recent piece on parallels between U.S. responses to the Trails of Tears in the late 1830\u2019s, and public responses to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. And finally, we conclude by discussing the necessity and urgency of action \u2014 radical, effective, and committed action \u2014 against all of this. Read the letter sent by the Veterans for Peace to the Department of State, drafted by Lodge, outlining how the U.S. supplying weapons to Israel violates multiple existing laws including the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, Foreign Assistance Act, Arms Export Control Act, War Crimes Act, and Genocide Convention Implementation Act. On May 9th of this year, CELDF\u2019s director of education wrote to NYU\u2019s More than Human Rights (MOTH) principles to share concern for the Law School\u2019s disciplinary actions against student protestors. From the letter: \u201cThe recent disciplinary actions against student protestors. . . raise the specter of authoritarian intolerance flooding into higher education. . . When we try to answer the Lorax\u2019s question, \u2018who speaks for the trees?\u2019 an institution that tolerates or enforces political suppression of free speech rights cannot credibly advocate for the expression of other-than-human rights. Nature depends on the ability of human members of local natural communities to speak freely on its behalf. CELDF urges you to use the platform of the MOTH program to stand for the defense of students and their right to protest without draconian and irrational harassment from the school of law and the NYU administration. . . CELDF stands ready to meet and consult with you anytime over legal and administrative strategy and to help organize the [rights of nature] movement to come to your aid. Please feel free to contact me if you\u2019d like our help. We also intend to contact MOTH law students to explore the prospect of building resistance to the disciplinary campaign. ","author_name":"The Green Flame","author_url":"http:\/\/greenflame.libsyn.com\/","html":"