Speaker 1: Keep on rodden with us as we continue to broadcast
Speaker 1: the balance and defend the discourse from the Hip Hop
Speaker 1: Weekly Studios.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'm your host, Ramsy's jaw.
Speaker 2: He is Rams's jaw. I am q Ward. You are
Speaker 2: tuned in the civic Cipher, Yes you are, and we
Speaker 2: are having a.
Speaker 1: Wildly informative conversation with a man that we respect and
Speaker 1: that we tap on the shoulder from time to time
Speaker 1: to give us some clarity into the goings on in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. So be sure to stick around for more
Speaker 1: of the conversation. The one and only Ganet Gill is
Speaker 1: here with us. He is a human rights lawyer and
Speaker 1: based out there in DC, and he's worked with Congress
Speaker 1: with two progressive members of the House of Representatives. He's
Speaker 1: an accomplished human rights advocate defending marginalized people across the
Speaker 1: United States and abroad. And he is dropping some information
Speaker 1: for folks that don't know that need to be informed
Speaker 1: about how vulnerable we are and what we can do
Speaker 1: to push back against those vulnerabilities. But before we have
Speaker 1: any more discussion, time to Beaba become a better allied.
Speaker 1: Baba and today's Baba. We want to shout out universities
Speaker 1: that are pushing back against the Trump Administration's attack on diversity,
Speaker 1: equity and inclusion initiatives. I'll share from the economic time.
Speaker 1: Several leading US universities have quietly formed a private collective
Speaker 1: to push back against the Trump Administration's efforts to control
Speaker 1: research funding and academic policies.
Speaker 2: According to The.
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, the group, made up of about ten
Speaker 1: prestigious institutions, including Ivy League schools and major private research universities,
Speaker 1: has been meeting privately to planned strategies. Their discussions intensified
Speaker 1: after the administration presented Harvard University with a list of
Speaker 1: demands viewed widely across academia as a threat to university autonomy.
Speaker 1: The collective includes university presidents, trustees, and other senior leaders.
Speaker 1: They have discussed setting clear boundaries for negotiations with the
Speaker 1: government and have prepared for different scenarios if funding is
Speaker 1: cut or regulations are tightened. The goal is to prevent
Speaker 1: individual schools from making separate deals that could set precedents
Speaker 1: affecting the entire sector.
Speaker 2: Is familiar with the efforts, said.
Speaker 1: The Trump administration has used the threat of freezing or
Speaker 1: canceling billions in research grants to pressure schools citing a
Speaker 1: need to address anti semitism on campuses. According to a
Speaker 1: source familiar with The Wall Street Journal, the government's task
Speaker 1: force said that the administration had worn at least one
Speaker 1: university leadership group not to coordinate with others in resisting
Speaker 1: these demands. The universities have agreed they will not compromise
Speaker 1: on core issues such as control over admissions, faculty hiring,
Speaker 1: and academic curriculum. One participant in the discussions pointed out, quote,
Speaker 1: several of the schools have been around for three hundred
Speaker 1: years years while President Trump has been in office for
Speaker 1: three months.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they are.
Speaker 1: The Trump administration is trying to frame the free speech
Speaker 1: as anti semitism, of people standing up for Palestine, as
Speaker 1: anti Jewish, as opposed to anti Israel, and so now
Speaker 1: these institutions are having to fight this made up fight.
Speaker 1: But the fact that they're banning together means something, and
Speaker 1: we'll take it.
Speaker 2: So okay, Yannick, thank you for.
Speaker 1: Giving us some perspective on like the conversation about that
Speaker 1: we had earlier about USAID and how that provides so
Speaker 1: much vaccines around the world and how diseases are Human
Speaker 1: diseases attack humans, and humans are all over the planet.
Speaker 1: And so you know, for people that cast their vote
Speaker 1: because they are it's a little bit of racism wrapped
Speaker 1: up in fear. You know, they would never admit to
Speaker 1: the racism, but they would admit to the fear. So
Speaker 1: that's what I'll say. People that are afraid that, you know,
Speaker 1: these people are getting too much power, these people are
Speaker 1: taking too much from them or whatever, and they vote
Speaker 1: for a person like this. Ultimately, what you've done is
Speaker 1: given perspective on how the world is less safe for
Speaker 1: them too as a result of that. What you've done
Speaker 1: ultimately is you've reframed the conversation around how we kind
Speaker 1: of all need each other and we should be building
Speaker 1: systems to support each other as opposed to like trying
Speaker 1: to isolate ourselves. Because there are some things that are
Speaker 1: bigger than our communities, that our individual lives, our families,
Speaker 1: our cities, our countries. And this administration I think is
Speaker 1: hyper focused on really one group of people in this
Speaker 1: country as opposed to humanity, the globe, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: I think this is why we have a lot of
Speaker 1: this weird back and forth from the White House. You know,
Speaker 1: these these tariffs and you know all this Donald Trump
Speaker 1: saying he's negotiating with China. China is like, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about dude. The Chinese Empire has been around five
Speaker 1: thousand years. We're not worried about America has been around
Speaker 1: for three hundred. You know, like talking talking crazy, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And so you know that clarity
Speaker 1: and a bit of levity I think goes a long
Speaker 1: way around here.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I want you to continue helping us out, So do
Speaker 1: us a favor. Talk to us a little bit more,
Speaker 1: because I know that you kind of touched on it.
Speaker 1: But talk to us a little bit more about, you know,
Speaker 1: our Latino brothers and sisters at what they're dealing with.
Speaker 1: And share a little bit more about kind of the
Speaker 1: deportations that have been taking a place of not just
Speaker 1: you know, people whose citizenship status is kind of in limbo,
Speaker 1: but actual US citizens, American citizens who've been deported to
Speaker 1: El Salvador.
Speaker 2: So share a little bit more with us about that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And I want to start off by making something
Speaker 3: very clear, these are not deportations. We I even sometimes
Speaker 3: slip up, but using that word suggest a legality succest
Speaker 3: a processed, and that is not what's happening in the
Speaker 3: United States in twenty twelve. Folks are being snatched off
Speaker 3: the road, snatched in their homes, snatched in their places
Speaker 3: of worship, schools, places in previous administrations that were protected
Speaker 3: without any due process based on the mere allegation, the
Speaker 3: mere suggestion that they may be affiliated with a gang.
Speaker 3: This is being done through tattoos. This is being done
Speaker 3: through living in the wrong neighborhood or being in the
Speaker 3: presence of the wrong people. But unlike previous administrations, it's
Speaker 3: not as simple as going through a legal process or
Speaker 3: even fondly charged, finding access to counsel and sorting things out. No,
Speaker 3: these people are being deprived of any right to do process,
Speaker 3: which I remind you everyone is entitled to, regardless of
Speaker 3: their nationality. Yeah, being shipped way to a land where
Speaker 3: they've never been, and being subjected to torturous conditions, having their
Speaker 3: head shaved, being locked away without access to a phone,
Speaker 3: without access to their families. The term that we are
Speaker 3: using with human rights first is being disappeared, which is
Speaker 3: far more accurate of what is happening and the reason
Speaker 3: why we are attempting to ring the alarm and how
Speaker 3: terrifying this process is is because, as you suggested, your
Speaker 3: citizenship isn't going to protect you. Now. Although I live
Speaker 3: in Washington, d C. I'm a proud Florida man, so
Speaker 3: I still every once in a while try and keep
Speaker 3: up what's happening back home, and more and more the
Speaker 3: news is depressing, to say the least. I bring up
Speaker 3: Florida because Juan Carlos Gomes Lopez happened to be in Florida.
Speaker 3: As his name suggests, He's a Latino and he didn't
Speaker 3: look American enough, because despite being born and raised in
Speaker 3: the United States, Juan found himself in a deportation proceeding
Speaker 3: to a country that he had no nationality. His mother panicked,
Speaker 3: collected his birth certificate, brought it to the courts, and
Speaker 3: while the judge was able to authenticate that it was
Speaker 3: a real birth certificate.
Speaker 2: He still sat, couldn't do anything, and a.
Speaker 3: Detention proceeding until human rights advocates, until the local community,
Speaker 3: until social media protested saying, what is happening? That is
Speaker 3: Trump's America. Thank God, in this case, there was enough
Speaker 3: noise that this American was released from deportation. Proceedings. But
Speaker 3: it only highlights what is really happening without due process
Speaker 3: to suspect it a led gang members. And I emphasize
Speaker 3: those words because in more cases than not, we have
Speaker 3: been able to investigate and look in and find not
Speaker 3: only do these alleged victims not have criminal records in
Speaker 3: the United States, not have gang affiliation in the United States,
Speaker 3: but even in Venezuela, they have no criminal history.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's something like seventy five percent of them
Speaker 1: had no previous criminal histories.
Speaker 2: Exactly what I think. I heard that earlier today or
Speaker 2: something like that, so I have to check it.
Speaker 3: But nope, of course, and I hesitate to put a
Speaker 3: specific figure because it highlights the issue. We don't have
Speaker 3: access to these people. We have been attempting to gain
Speaker 3: access to represent and see what is happening, because until
Speaker 3: you are convicted, you have rights to council to prove
Speaker 3: your inny sense to some form of due process. That
Speaker 3: is the Fifth Amendment, and that is what is being attacked.
Speaker 3: So Al Salvador, and unfortunately Al Salvador, unfortunately is the
Speaker 3: start of what we fear is going to be many
Speaker 3: agreements that President Trump is looking to utilize to remove undesirables,
Speaker 3: people that don't fit his concept of what American again
Speaker 3: should look like. And before I wrap this point, I
Speaker 3: do want to highlight while we're talking about Latinos today,
Speaker 3: I always bring up the case of Sean Brown brother
Speaker 3: born in Philadelphia, who happened to be in Florida again,
Speaker 3: who ended up in deportation proceedings to Jamaica, a country
Speaker 3: had only been two hun a cruise. Because you have
Speaker 3: to understand, you can't look at someone and accurately guess
Speaker 3: their nationality, perhaps, their ethnicity perhaps, but that doesn't provide
Speaker 3: access to their nationality, which is completely different than someone's heritage.
Speaker 3: They seem to understand that with Irish communities, Irish American communities,
Speaker 3: they seem to understand that what the Italian American community
Speaker 3: with immigrant groups. I've been here for centuries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see where you're going.
Speaker 3: But again, it's an attack on black and brown communities
Speaker 3: that is being shaped under the auspices of deportation. So
Speaker 3: while many of us are slipping up and using the
Speaker 3: language because it seems natural that we want to bring
Speaker 3: in a process some form of legality, let's be clear
Speaker 3: that these are disappearances. They're stomping on our constitutional rights.
Speaker 1: If I may right here, I think that just for
Speaker 1: our listeners to give them some perspective, because a lot
Speaker 1: of folks haven't traveled beyond this country, and Q and
Speaker 1: I we've had We've been very fortunate.
Speaker 2: We've been all over the world.
Speaker 1: Just if you can just imagine if you're in a
Speaker 1: foreign country wherever you've always dreamed of going. You're in
Speaker 1: a foreign country, right You're a million miles away from
Speaker 1: your family, from the political system that you know that
Speaker 1: you believe to be fair. Here in the US, you're whatever.
Speaker 1: You're in France or something, pick a place, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: And then you're accused of stealing a candy bar and
Speaker 1: then they disappear you and you don't have have like
Speaker 1: due process. Can I at least go in front of someone.
Speaker 1: Is there someone that can help me translate? You know,
Speaker 1: I was here on business, whatever whatever your story is.
Speaker 1: But just imagine how how having some formal process would
Speaker 1: help you, would serve you as a human being, whether
Speaker 1: or not you're a citizen of that country. You would
Speaker 1: think that's fair. And so I think that's the point
Speaker 1: that you're trying to make here, Yannick, is that you know,
Speaker 1: for people that are snatched off of the street and
Speaker 1: then put on an airplane's shipped off without due process,
Speaker 1: that is fundamentally anti human and what we would imagine
Speaker 1: would be Unamerican.
Speaker 2: Am I right about that?
Speaker 3: I could have said it better myself. I tried, But
Speaker 3: you're doing my job.
Speaker 2: I got a good teacher.
Speaker 3: It's that simple. And the additional word is that what
Speaker 3: we believe at Human Rights First is that those acts
Speaker 3: are also unconstitutional. It's not just that it's immoral, it's
Speaker 3: not just that it feels wrong. We are stating that
Speaker 3: it is illegal. There's a reason it's unprecedented, because you're
Speaker 3: not allowed to do that. And we're in a scary
Speaker 3: time where despite court orders from the Supreme Court, who
Speaker 3: has ordered back individuals who have been subjected to Donald
Speaker 3: Trump's heinous acts, the Trump administration is still continuing to
Speaker 3: ignore them. So we're in a place where you're calling
Speaker 3: on Congress. We're continuing to file and marry out of lawsuits.
Speaker 3: But we also need people everyday, folks who not just
Speaker 3: are afraid of what may happen, but who are concerned
Speaker 3: for our neighbors, who have already been objected to susterranny
Speaker 3: to speak out, to yell and scream, because in the
Speaker 3: same way that we were able to shine a light
Speaker 3: on Wan's case in Florida and allow him to prove
Speaker 3: that he was an American, we have to do that
Speaker 3: with folks who may not have the same nationality as
Speaker 3: you or me, because regardless of their nationality, regardless of
Speaker 3: the ethnicity, regardless of their race, in the United States,
Speaker 3: they still have access to constitucial protections, and the Fifth
Speaker 3: Amendment says the process as part of that.
Speaker 4: You know, during the campaign, during election season. And I
Speaker 4: like to pause a second on election season because I
Speaker 4: hear adults, in order to justify their apathy or their
Speaker 4: lack of action, say I'm not really political. I think
Speaker 4: what they mean is the electoral process.
Speaker 2: They don't participate. But everyone here is political.
Speaker 4: Every aspect of your life is affected by politics, from
Speaker 4: the way that you buy groceries, the way you go
Speaker 4: to school, your civic engagement, traffic lights, the fact that
Speaker 4: you're supposed to be able to have due process if
Speaker 4: someone accuses you of doing something illegal.
Speaker 2: All of this stuff is inherently political.
Speaker 4: We and I know we because we talked the three
Speaker 4: of us during the last election season, saw so much
Speaker 4: of this coming, and even the other side knows that
Speaker 4: it's wrong, because they denied they would do it when
Speaker 4: they were trying to get elected. They tried to distance
Speaker 4: themselves from it, and they were trying to get elected
Speaker 4: because even they know it's wrong. But now, because they're
Speaker 4: you know, a religion, they will find a way to
Speaker 4: back their messiah figure with the zealot like passion and
Speaker 4: find a way to justify every decision that's made by
Speaker 4: this administration, even when it is blatantly illegal and blatantly
Speaker 4: in direct conflict with our constitution. We've seen the suppression
Speaker 4: of disagreement. We've seen the suppression of criticism. We've seen
Speaker 4: the suppression of honest journalism, and on a large scale,
Speaker 4: the suppression of immigrant college students.
Speaker 2: All of us are in an.
Speaker 4: Interesting space where there's public dissent with what's going on
Speaker 4: with the administration. And I've expressed my fears of all
Speaker 4: the things that the three of us do for a
Speaker 4: living being considered legal at some point in the near
Speaker 4: future by this administration, because that shouldn't even sound ridiculous
Speaker 4: to anyone of us, or to anyone listening.
Speaker 2: Where are we on it?
Speaker 4: And when students can't protest, when journalists can't disagree, when
Speaker 4: even law firms and attorneys are being attacked in some
Speaker 4: again preemptively bending the knee and falling in line.
Speaker 2: Scary doesn't really say it. I can't find the right way.
Speaker 4: To articulate the space that we're in now, and this
Speaker 4: is something that you're living every day.
Speaker 3: I acknowledge that I'm at times afraid because it is
Speaker 3: a scary time. It's an unprecedented time, and I've been
Speaker 3: fooled at times into believing that the constitutional protections that
Speaker 3: sometimes don't impact my community would at least impact America
Speaker 3: and impact everybody. But we're in a time where we
Speaker 3: are seeing outright defiance not just our Constitution but our courts.
Speaker 3: The word that we're experiencing is authoritarianism, and we often
Speaker 3: think about that word as something that happens over there.
Speaker 3: I mean, we point to Russia, we point to China,
Speaker 3: we even point to Cuba. But if we just look
Speaker 3: at the way that things are being implemented in the
Speaker 3: United States today, there's no other way to articulate what
Speaker 3: is happening. And you pointed out something so key anywhere
Speaker 3: that they see resistance uprising, quite frankly just questioning they
Speaker 3: are attacking it. We're going to compare two very different groups.
Speaker 3: One will be Ivor League college students. The second will
Speaker 3: be nonprofits and law firms. And I'm going to frame
Speaker 3: it within those same executive orders. I started by talking.
Speaker 3: I started off our conversation. The attacks on law firms
Speaker 3: was quick and swift because they were afraid to fight back.
Speaker 3: There was no fight. They immediately thought and strategized, similar
Speaker 3: to the same businesses we talked before. Who's going to
Speaker 3: be in power? Where do we win? And they removed
Speaker 3: again years years of precedent of working in tandem with
Speaker 3: the US government to ensure that people that don't often
Speaker 3: have a fair bide at the legal system had a representation.
Speaker 3: This is a public service that helps all of us.
Speaker 3: You want people to function through the courts because you
Speaker 3: want people to trust the courts. But that was attacked
Speaker 3: and removed. Why because statistically and human rights First has
Speaker 3: seen this time and time again. When there's counsel involved,
Speaker 3: people have a much higher chance in naturalizing into the
Speaker 3: United States or in our case, having access to asylum
Speaker 3: that they are entitled to under both international law but
Speaker 3: domestic law. How does that tie it to the students.
Speaker 3: They were expressing disdain for atrocities happening on the other
Speaker 3: side of the Atlantic Ocean, something that they have a
Speaker 3: constitutional rights to the First Amendment protections to speak out against.
Speaker 3: But it didn't fit in line with exactly how Trump
Speaker 3: wanted things to do or to happen again, authoritarianism. This
Speaker 3: is not the way our country should function. This is
Speaker 3: not this way our country has functioned. But unless we
Speaker 3: stand up, unless we the people, not just human rights lawyers,
Speaker 3: not just members of Congress, not just these Ivy League students,
Speaker 3: but you the listener, You regular person with a regular job,
Speaker 3: that here's this and thinks this is not right. You
Speaker 3: should also be thinking this could be me as evidenced
Speaker 3: by the three kids that were deported US citizens again
Speaker 3: facing deportation, facing let me correct myself again, disappearances under
Speaker 3: an authoritarian system. Yeah. So, while I'm afraid of what
Speaker 3: may happen, I'm also angry that anger that conviction has
Speaker 3: to cause us to resist, has to cause us to fight.
Speaker 1: Okay, listen, I know that this conversation could go on
Speaker 1: and on and on. You have a brilliant mind and
Speaker 1: we appreciate your strategy, but we're gonna we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to leave.
Speaker 2: It right here.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank you for taking the time to
Speaker 1: come and talk with us this week. Do us a
Speaker 1: favor before you go, let folks know how they can
Speaker 1: tap in with you on social media, websites, you know,
Speaker 1: anything that you got going on so people can get
Speaker 1: some more of this game because we need.
Speaker 3: It absolutely and it's been a pleasure. Look forward to
Speaker 3: continue the conversation. As always, brothers, I am pretty easy
Speaker 3: to find Yanet Gil across most platforms, and also it's
Speaker 3: really important in twenty twenty five that we support the
Speaker 3: organizations doing the work, so I could also be found
Speaker 3: through Human Rights First again, a human rights organization doing
Speaker 3: strategic litigation and adgacy both here and abroad. I look
Speaker 3: forward to chatting more about y'all in the next one
Speaker 3: hundred days, hopefully with a few more wins under our belt.
Speaker 2: Well we look forward to it too.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on social media at Civic Cipher.
Speaker 2: And subscribe to the podcast and the YouTube. And until
Speaker 2: next week, y'all, Peace,