Democracy Now! May 28, 2003

9:00-9:01 Billboard 9:01-9:06 Headlines 9:06-9:07 One Minute Music Break 9:07-9:20: More than 100 cities and one state have adopted resolutions condemning the USA Patriot Act. But last month Arcata, California took it a step further. The Arcata City Council adopted a city ordinance that makes cooperation with the Patriot Act a crime. Starting this month, any city department head who voluntarily complies with investigations or arrests under the Patriot Act will be fined $57. The USA Patriot Act gives the government new powers to snoop on citizens including the use wiretaps and electronic surveillance and gathering information from public libraries. Opponents say it violates civil liberties, supporters say it helps fight terrorism. Guest: David Meserve, City Council member in Arcata, CA who wrote the ordinance 9:20-9:21 One Minute Music Break 9:21-9:33: The Supreme Court handed a victory to the Bush Administration yesterday when it refused to hear a challenge to closed, secret deportation hearings held for hundreds of immigrants detained after the Sept. 11 attacks. Following the attacks, the government ordered all immigration hearings closed if the detainees were deemed so-called special interest' cases because of possible links to terrorism. Only the government can decide if a case is a special interest case. The appeal was brought by a group of New Jersey newspapers seeking information about the detainees. We asked the Justice Department for a comment, but the media office declined to join us today. * Nancy Chang, senior litigation attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and Author of Silencing Political Dissent. She represented the North Jersey Media Group, which brought the case. * Lee Gelernt, lead council for North Jersey Media Group Contact: http://www.ccr-ny.org/ http://www.aclu.org/9:33-9:40: Immigrant attorneys and advocates have compared the detention of Muslims post 9-11 to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Now the government is investigating allegations of abuse in two INS facilities: Passaic County Jail in Patterson, New Jersey and the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Right now, a report from Noah Reibel, who is a student at Columbia journalism school. Behind the INS Curtain , by Noah Reibel, 9:40-9:41 One Minute Music Break 9:41-9:58: Right now, a conversation between two of the most pre-eminent social critics of our time. One of them was born in Shillong, India in 1959. She studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives, and has worked as a film designer, actor, and screenplay writer in India. Her first novel, The God of Small Things, won the prestigious Booker Prize. The other was born in 1922 in Brooklyn, New York to two Jewish immigrants who worked in factories. He grew up in slums there, worked in a shipyard, and was a bombardier in World War II. In 1960, he decided to try to write a new kind of history of the United States, a view from the ground up, from the people who built this country, the workers, the immigrants, the slaves. He spent the next two decades researching and writing. In 1980 he published his history and beyond all expectations, it became a best seller. A little while ago, he sold the millionth copy that history book. I am talking about Arundhati Roy, and Howard Zinn. A couple of weeks go, Arundhati Roy and Howard Zinn had a conversation in front of thousands, in Riverside Church in Harlem. The event was sponsored by the Center for Economic and Social Rights, and the Lannan Foundation. This is what they had to say to each other. <sum> Howard Zinn and Arundhati Roy, Riverside Church, May 12th 9:58-9:59 Outro and Credits Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie Karran, Sharif Abdul Kouddous, Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press with help from Noah Reibel and Vilka Tzouras. Mike Di Filippo is our music maestro and engineer. Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Emily Kunstler, Orlando Richards, Simba Rousseau, Rafael delaUz, Gabriel Weiss, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Karen Ranucci, Fatima Mojadiddy, Denis Moynihan and Jenny Filipazzo.