little. starving for attention inmates in california stage the biggest hunger strike in ten years i mean a country with one of the largest prison populations in the world has anyone really listening to their pride for help. the orleans get stuck in this kind of like puritan mentality that's completely antithetical to everything that's happening to stubbs forward one step back we'll have an update on the reason and his crimes against nature walk along the mainstream media isn't telling you about. it by the media to be full of. guilty until proven guilty from perp walks to screaming headlines just how can anyone be innocent until proven guilty in the mainstream

media's involved. and big talks first and big money issues so as president obama tries to build a bridge with top lawmakers will the result make for a more divided america. it's thursday july seventh eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for sound you're watching our team. all right i want to start off this evening by making an observation and i'm certainly not alone in this people in this country are obsessed with the u.s. justice system these days with murder and juries and evidence the defense versus prosecution we can blame it on the casey anthony trial but it's not just casey anthony and it's not totally new thirty years shows like law and order and c.s.i.

have dominated the airwaves so if it's the laws of the land you want then that's what you'll get let's talk about it i want to turn now to a law in louisiana but you've probably never heard of but one that's been in place since before louisiana was even a state in which people were prosecuted as felons for having oral sex and anal sex so when you're prosecuted as a felon you're then forced to register as a sex offender which changes things like where you can live and whether or not you can get a job and this isn't one of those laws on the books that's largely ignored this has been used in convictions as recently as last year and while the state of louisiana just gathered enough courage to abandon the law at least for felony convictions it's now just a misdemeanor because antiquated law though was so interesting to us here at r.t. that we traveled to louisiana to look deeper into this subject moon brings us the report. this is the carnival of colors and sounds.

that is new orleans louisiana. mississippi river port city awash in its southern roots its colorful french creole charms and its overtones of piety. it's very catholic very catholic very bad just even very few who on a city that lives according to code your lines get stuck in this kind of like puritan mentality that's completely antithetical to everything that's happening people carmen have conventions here because they know there is the french quarter they know they're strip clubs prostitution. this is bourbon street. for about two hundred bucks you can buy yourself six more specifically straight up intercourse. with a new orleans street walker anything else oral sex anal sex can be negotiated but

anything else is also. against the law. according to a law called crime against nature it basically prohibits anything other than they are ordinary intercourse there's no police out there going into a neighborhood saying you can't have sex with your husband you can't have oral sex with your wife right no one's actually enforcing that but it isn't forced and enforced heavily on the prostitutes of new orleans these are people who can least afford to be charged with something like this so you have to do is have an undercover officer driving around in plain clothes in a plane in an unmarked car and often do is drive around and drive up to people who they believe are prostitutes or known are known prostitutes. and just ask how much and she answers. she's just opened it to trolling for. a huge haul because a crime against nature charges punishable by as much as

a twenty year prison sentence incredibly large fines and. you're talking about a woman who's in her early twenty's who has to register as a sex offender for the next fifteen years. for a city whose sole job quietly includes pleasures of the flesh why they need to criminalize sex which just about anyone you can gauge it's not just all of these cases and up in a plea to probation and finds fines and. and the important part about the fines and fees is that's all revenue coming in to pay for the court system to pay for police to pay for the jail to pay for prosecutors officers simply put an antiquated nineteenth century law. passed on the guise of christian values. only. maybe being used today still to make money it's a five year felony you can use that to encourage people to plead guilty very

quickly justifies higher bonds to hookers often instead plead guilty to a lesser charge of prostitution leading down to a misdemeanor means you can charge higher fines and fees prostitute who usually can't afford those fines in fees pay for them they're paying for it by getting more prostitution which they get hit again then they get caught again and right they have to engage in more prostitution it's a vicious cycle this is an old law to stupid law it's a law that a lot of people even within the criminal justice system don't agree with now you can see how some are trapped in the carnival that is new orleans. and if you think they're the only ones. there are others. on r.g.p. . i don't know about you i was a little disturbed to find out that this law has not only gone on the books for so long but it's been used in prosecutions especially i under cover police officers up until last year that the tactic bring in revenue of course but the people had to

pay had to pay a big price not just with money but with their freedom as well and joining me for more on this is new orleans community organizer and offer jordan flaherty. jordan goes if you. want to know how much was this long known about or talked about in new orleans. well certainly among people that work with sex workers it was well known but i think in the media at large it wasn't well known and it was really just in the last couple years when community organizers were to get out awareness of the law and they were able to pass these reforms and build a coalition that could and why did community organizers like yourself why did people think that this is an important thing to focus on to make this law known about it and to sort of get it overturned well started with an organization called women with a vision this is a twenty plus year old organization that works with or primarily african-american

women in new orleans and tried to drive health care and other advocacy for women that are really at the margins and that includes drug users sex workers homeless women and so they just found a lot of their clients were facing these issues when they were these were women as the on haywood directly with the vision says they don't define themselves with that's workers or even the profits and they just call it survival these are women who sometimes for a place to stay for the night or for some days you know regularly had to trade sex for survival and it's survival sex and these women that are most on that on the margins of society that were really getting criminalized by the law and so you know i think for the scene it wasn't really about this these because mostly women and the piece a lot of them were get locked up because they see that as well i want to talk to you about something that was mentioned in the report that rick mentions sort of the vicious cycle of the domino effect of this law that if convicted with

a felony at least for performing a lot of people does that are normal sex acts you might be forced to have to register as a sex offender and of course it was dropped a misdemeanor you have to pay a hefty price and you know it seems that let's face it how do prostitutes earn more money to pay off fees while they probably work more. well you know there are stories that i've heard which were really alarming. a lot of a lot of women found the officers we used as a leverage against them so they would be pulled over by an officer an officer would demand sex in exchange for them not charging them with a crime against nature you've got them charging them with nothing at all or charging them with prostitution is that a crime again so you know having this leverage in the hands of the officers gave the power to the awful fear and i call these women on the margins to be even more terrorized and more. weight so you're saying that some of these officers actually used this law to get back something these women absolutely in fact last week

the new orleans police department went on the thing operation and arrested several men that were propositioning and cease and they arrested and ok the officer is part of that thing when you talk to women they're done with that they say over and over again that they face the police all the time and the police are always demanding sacks from him basically wow so interesting. let's switch gears now to just kind of when you and other community organizers were getting the word out about this at first what was the reaction that you got were people surprised that this was actually a law that was still sort of being used. there's definitely surprise and shock and i think it brought some sort of national even international attention to the folks from women with their vision actually went to the united nations and complained and i think folks like myself who are writing about in the national media are getting national attention and i think that's part of by the law was

changed you know our legislature here in what we see and it is extremely conservative and very hesitant to pass any law that will. do what they say is lightning the criminal justice complex a lightning burden on people in that prison industrial complex and so for them to have passed this law for governor jindal to have signed a law that actually lessens the sentence or for some people who have been convicted of crimes is almost unprecedented in recent reasoning and history and it shows the people that are at the grassroots really did a great job of spreading the word and i think shaming the state for having a law like this on the books and for and forcing it now certainly it seems like a lot of times lawmakers in whatever position whether it's at the city level or the federal level a lot of times people just want to be known as sort of a tough on crime person even if the crime that they're being tough on is either antiquated or you know the law that should be in place and i'll talk a little bit about the bigger picture here other laws other symbols of justice

either in louisiana or in this country i mean people are obsessed with with law and order right now. what do you see as a community or an organizer as things that need to be changed here. well anymore and it's a really interesting story right now because we have a police department that's known as one of the most brutal and corrupt in the country we have two officers who are on death row for murder charges actually we have six officers. six officers there on trial this week for killing people in the aftermath of katrina killing two or we just had another couple of recent files of officers for other post katrina related murders and you can train them murders we have the federal investigators looking at the police department and so new orleans has paid for reform of the overall criminal justice and investigators have been asked to look not just the police but other aspects. of

a coroner's office that goes along with. the story and judges that have acted suspiciously. lined up with police officers and with prosecutors so this is a really important moment for the whole country to look at can a police department in a criminal justice system is deeply problematic and the structure really that can be reformed in can the justice department do what they need to do to fix these problems such an important question glad we are talking to you about it community organizer and author jordan flaherty thank you. well keeping with this theme of justice in america let's talk about the notion that in this country there is a presumption of innocence until you're proven otherwise this is important because of that the foundation of what most people in this country see as vital to our freedom let's hold on a second and i suspect that's all about let's take a look at the ties between the u.s. criminal justice system the media and the court of public opinion are not really

totally independent of one another and in this day and age with technology where it is you could make the case and instead it's guilty until proven innocent artie's honest us your church has this report. innocent until proven guilty it's a whole mark principle of the american justice system weekly after show this side from the vigor of some of the arrests young african black and brown subjects being sat down in history in an obsessive kind of way fifty shots sixty starts laying on our stomach in our back as we ride or as we work or flee to bleeding suspects into offenses in cases of entrapment entrapment is not legal in traveling is getting someone to do something that they would normally do to perp walks but read suspects in handcuffs for the world to see. to

a media frenzy devouring some cases and not others i finally did before the. guilty until proven guilty in these cases the government is changing the laws and tar is a former white collar convict who knows the criminal justice systems discrepancies inside and out i read while on the road two years probably not by crimes. when i decided to cooperate with the thread it took two more years. now a teacher he says media coverage also affects the jury pool they see an image of a guy in handcuffs and see an image of a person being arrested they see the image of a person doing the perp walk and there are facts just like everybody else. so are you presumed guilty from the get go and how much of a role does the media play if you're accused or became a spy it's going to be a huge headlines on page one when you're exonerated it's on page twenty seven below

the fold two column inches and your neighbors somehow didn't manage to catch it that day so everyone still thinks you're a child molester not guilty take the not guilty verdict in the casey anthony murder case involving her two year old daughter the court of public opinion remains split from a court of justice all thanks to nonstop media coverage of the case for the past three years she's guilty. as brazen maybe it's great they had to get that from the media since she was going to go free in the case of former i.m.f. head though many strong current media satisfied their gluttonous taste with extreme passion only for the case to crumble i think there should be a. media outlets are required to play your exoneration as big and as long as your accusation this is rarely the case as dubious practices in the criminal justice system spread so does the finger pointing and questioning the future of human rights in the us where as we go on as americans i'll set someone new zone on life.

this is getting low going this is really good the principles of the u.s. once prided itself in our fire suspects are having to fight their battles publicly to the minute of their arrest in attempts to prove their innocence thunder lightning that the discrepancies in the u.s. criminal justice system are alive and kicking the citron out party new york. well for the last week prisoners in several california prisons have been taking part in a hunger strike refusing state issued meals to show solidarity with those at the pelican bay state prison in northern california inmates there are protesting what they call inhumane conditions by some estimates more than six thousand inmates are involved making it the largest california prison hunger strike and more than ten years young as a member of the revolutionary communist party and is in our los angeles. and our clyde i know you've been monitoring this hunger strike what's the goal here yes

i just want to make one correction i'm speaking out on my own behalf of the revolutionary communism the former prisoner not for any party or those no problem at all we appreciate your insight here so what's going on here what's the goal of these prisoners. well i think the prisoners have issued five demands five core demands and we can speak to those later if you like but a lot of them go to the core of the conditions that they're actually facing in the security how housing unit at pelican bay and in fact there's tens of thousands of prisoners similarly. incarcerated or isolated throughout the country so what they're doing is calling attention to a barbaric situation that exists there and their demands are quite just and legitimate they're not raising demands that are outrageous or anything of that sort but they are actually speaking to what the conditions are that they are facing in

the security housing unit they are held convey and i know i did a story recently in which i looked at you know solitary confinement i look at the size of the cells how many people are being put in the cells a lot of times it's not for the most violent criminals it's for different reasons but what clive should you know regular american taxpayers know who've never set foot in a prison what kind of conditions a lot of people have to deal with on a daily basis. well i think the kind of conditions that people have to deal with on a daily basis. is that you know i myself was incarcerated for eight years in the one nine hundred sixty s. but i was never subjected to any treatment like this that's going on in pelican bay where people are subjected to is being in a prison cell that's in many cases no bigger than a bathroom and it's windowless. in many cases it's soundproof you can't hear you know prisoner in an adjoining c.e.o. and also they are held under those conditions for twenty three hours

a day and they're only let out every time they're let out of the cell they're subjected to a cavity search in their handcuff by guards so these are horrendous conditions i think is nothing short of torture and it's not consistent with international law i think a lot of people have even called it torture i know this sort of came to light a little bit with bradley manning the private first class accused of leaking a lot of information to the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks he was previously in solitary some really harsh conditions and so it was sort of in the discussion in the light for a little while do you see things changing much. i don't see them changing in that regard i think i'm very impressed with what these prisoners are doing because they're doing it a great great risk to their own health they've said that they don't want to die but they're prepared to die in order to address to have their have their grievances

addressed and again their grievances i should just mention some of them i think they're quite just inappropriate one of them is taking in group punishment there were an individual prisoner breaks a rule the prison officials punish a whole group of prisoners of the same great number to abolish debriefing and modify active in active gang status criteria false or in or highly questionable evidence is used to accuse prisoners of being active in active members of the prison gangs. who are then sent to the shu security how housing unit where they were subjected to long term isolation and torture is conditions one of the many ways the prisoners can get out of the shoe this is one of the only ways a person is going to actually be brief or inform on other people for you kind of out there is very wide with you kind of have to turn the prisoners against the people that they've sort of been in solidarity with before you go on that let's go back to the first one that you said you talked about yes the entire race being

punished when one prisoner you know messes up or or does something wrong and yeah yeah this is not an uncommon this is not an uncommon thing in prison what's peculiar about this is that if one person. a particular race does something that's against the rules of the prison and then they punish everybody of that race this is highly outrageous and that's really what you're doing punishment is a common thing in prisons and let's get back to this hunger hunger strike itself you said you know people don't want to die but they're willing to to fight for this from what i understand once an inmate refuses nine meals in a row the state requires prison medical staff to sort of closely monitor that inmates health possibly transfer him to an outside hospital for care i mean what do you see happening clyde if inmates start to have to be treated for starvation. well i think that first of all i think the prison authorities will resort to whatever

they can to stop this protest that's one thing i think i have to go on record as saying they'll do whatever they can to stop the the protests including under the guise of actually protecting the prisoners health i think it's it tells you something if people have gotten to the point where they're willing to risk put their lives on the line for demands that they're that they're raising and then again as i said these demands are quite legitimate and quite jest but the prison officials so far as far as i understand they're not even the go shooting with the prisoners so i think they do sometimes even use the medical procedure probably sooner than nine days in order to try to break up a strike i think it's nine wheelings and. yes yes it will that may be right i don't know the exact information all really really interesting for really interesting stuff i do appreciate you speaking to us certainly important that these kind of things that are happening are at least brought to light activists quite young thanks so much. yes thank you. let's switch gears now to the economy just down the

street from our studios earlier today from pretty big talks going on between president obama and top lawmakers over the battle to come to an agreement on raising the fourteen point three trillion dollars debt ceiling while raising taxes on the wealthiest americans seems to still not be on the table more cuts to programs that help the poor may be on the table this is a battle that's brewing in a much more concentrated way a little further down the road in the state of minnesota where the state government there is still shutdown or similar issues there the republican led legislature refuses to raise taxes on the wealthiest two percent of the population there governor mark dayton a democrat doesn't want to cut more programs it is very important to keep an eye on what's going on there i know a lot of lawmakers are protesters are now starting to take to the streets i talked of this a little earlier too with gerald celente publisher of the trends journal and director

of the trans research institute i asked him for his thoughts on the recent government shutdown in minnesota and what this might mean for the u.s. on a larger scale. it's the beginning of world we're going to see more of as governments continue to fail state governments we all know about their pension problems and other issues that they cannot need funding issues in the future we're just going to keep seeing this spiral out of control and it's also very interesting to see what they cut spurs let's close the parks you know it's a holiday weekend let's make sure that the people have nowhere to go with people i could afford it the least and you just keep bringing that photo of christina it's the same thing that the obama administration and the republicans it's all being about it's cutting the people's programs i have it those those that are injured making too much money and their benefits let's cut those why don't we cut so most

social security benefits people aren't getting much now we could even lower that and then the need so i'm let's give those golden nationals like general electric that made fourteen billion dollars last year they don't have to pay any taxes that or doesn't seem to really make sense i mean it seems to me along with this is about is a growing gap in any quality and what it means now i lot of people have been talking about and i want to play a clip of an interview former national security adviser dr zbigniew brzezinski from yesterday he was on and that can be seen as morning joe and he gave some of his predictions of what could be around the corner. this sense of social injustice can be character demoralizing inclusively in the long run very dangerous but conclusive size social economic issues create a radical this is class conflict streamers and i think that's a real risk and i was surprised to see facts are present kalpa talks about seeing

a slide into quote intensified social conflicts hostilities and radicalism in general i mean do you think that this is what the head i will go people be taking to the streets across this country yes they are taking the streets all over the world they have the big lie out there for example that it's a pro-democracy movements going on in the middle east north africa has nothing to do with it look what's going on in spain with what's going on in greece it's the same story this is the radicalization it's called fascism it's the merger of state and corporate powers let's call a spade a spade over here the big guys are getting all the breaks and the burdens falling on all of the people so of course this is going to happen but of course it's old news it's what we wrote about a year ago off with their heads two point zero that people know the game when the money stops flowing down to the man on the street the blood starts flowing in the

streets i think a perfect example and i do i think it's important to look all around the country this country is made up of cities and towns even some of the smallest towns there's one in texas called alto they just laid off their entire police force and from what i understand that state also has no money for new textbooks in public schools so from an economic standpoint i know you say this isn't a new story how should we see this the these things happening in our towns in our schools. it's a much bigger picture it's the beginning of the great war that we've been writing about you're seeing the global ponzi scheme collapse the only way they keep it going is by printing this digital money that's not worth the paper it's printed on and christina has the great hypocrisy as this walking about you know reiterate readjusting the consumer price index which they've already readjusted and as they talk about social security and veterans' pensions cutting those what are they not

talking about how about the pence budget how about the one point two trillion dollars being spent it defense and defense related projects each year not p.c. well i mean i think they are talking about it a little bit but they're making cuts that sound big to us you know the first one i think that was in seventy eight billion dollars but but you're right well i mean that's a drop in the bucket in the defense budget but they're talking about it just to be out there talking about thing though is jive talk forty billion a year doesn't add up in a what's he doing three trillion dollar deficit. and that was gerald celente a publisher of the trends journal and director of the trends research institute and that is going to do it for this evening for more on the stories we covered for archie dot com slash usa also check out our you tube page you tube dot com slash our team america you can also follow.